"TSA All Stop drills are wrong"

I just read about an airport TSA “test” called “All Stop.” A TSA agent yells it out, then all the TSA agents watch and yell at anyone who moves. This was done INSIDE the “secured” area to people who had already “passed” security. Thus, our police-military-security establishment (part of the Military/Industrial Complex) once again proves that comedians are our best truth-speakers. George Carlin said, “All this stuff we do in airports, taking off our shoes, all that, is not done for security. It’s done to show that we (the government) can fuck with you anytime we want to.”

This is a foretaste of what could happen to all of America in the age of terrorism. ALL government security employees, right down to the lowest levels, will have the power of life and death over ALL common citizens. Even volunteer "neighborhood watch" folks, right Travon? It is outrageous and unacceptable. This isn't China, but we're getting closer all the time and the thing that kills me is that the majority of people will accept it out of fear. Fear of all kinds – when in the situation, when thinking about writing a letter to the editor, talking about it to coworkers, etc.

It would be hard to organize, it would be expensive for individuals who participate, but you know I'd love to see this: after the TSA agent ends the "All Stop" drill everyone in the entire airport, passengers and workers, sit down wherever they are and just silently sit there, ignoring all orders to get up and move.

If you think this is a Democratic/Republican Party issue you’re wrong. Neither party will have the nerve to stop this. Only a renewed, reinvigorated, America could stand together and demand an end to the madness. The fact is it only takes one determined individual to create a chaotic, deadly mess. In other words, some terrorism will happen no matter what. But you know, you’re more likely to get bitten by a rattlesnake you’re fucking with than one you leave alone. So, to me, the issue is, “Are we going to continue down the road to constant fear, constant war, constant punishment, constant control, constant surveillance, etc., or can we grow up as a nation to fulfill the destiny best expressed by Thomas Jefferson in the introduction to the Declaration of Independence? Personally, I prefer the pursuit of happiness. It’s my right. 

"about the Patriotic response to 9/11"

A New York Times OP-ED contributor named KURT EICHENWALD wrote an article called 

"The Deafness Before the Storm," published: September 10, 2012. The article details the remarkable lack of concern by the Bush administration about intelligence warnings prior to the 9/11 attack. It wasn't just one memo. It was an entire set of memos produced for months and flagrantly ignored by the entire Bush administration. The article ends with the question and its unfortunate answer: "Could the 9/11 attack have been stopped, had the Bush team reacted with urgency to the warnings contained in all of those daily briefs? We can’t ever know. And that may be the most agonizing reality of all."

I make the argument in many of my posts that the time comes when one CAN'T know the answer because those who know the truth hide the answer too well. And I further argue that, when you CAN'T know the answer, you go with common sense.

Common sense, to me, dictates that Bush/Cheney/Rice at the very least WANTED something like 9/11 to happen. Common sense tells me that the American taxpayer paid more than enough money to be protected by existing agencies of the government and the evidence points towards the deliberate thwarting of that protection or ineptitude of an unbelievable level. They either wanted it to happen or they CAUSED it to happen.

The superior attitude of Americans that we are "a shining beacon on the hill," "the only hope of the free world," etc. is the number one mistake we make. It causes us to self-blind ourselves to the evils that exist in America. "We see no evil; we hear no evil; we speak no evil."

As Jennifer Peltz quotes in her 9/11 piece on Huffington:"After all, "9/11 has defined politics in America" since 2001, said Costas Panagopoulos, a Fordham University political science professor. "At the end of the day, 9/11 was a public tragedy that affected the nation as a whole."

Our nation has a cancer at its heart. WE, the People, have sat back and allowed the 1% to rule us ever since the end of WWII; the 1% IS the Military/Industrial Complex. We let them get away with the murder of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King. We let them get away with the degrading of the entire planet, so no wonder a Congresswoman can be shot in the head without our leaders holding a serious debate on what the second amendment means TODAY. Like the tottering Congresswoman, we stumble through the Pledge of Allegiance and other daily routines pretending all is well.

But all is not well with America. There needs to be a national outpouring of whistleblowers and we need to listen and we need to indict. There will be a day of reckoning, but who will bring it? If it's only brought by one wo/man, s/he will be killed or demeaned. If it doesn't arise from the masses like an Arab Spring, how will it arise?

Aren't we really a nation as controlled as Communist China? Haven't we surrendered our common sense? 

"about misleading journalism"

I have some thing about Huffington Post. I kind of like it, but I hate it's slipshod journalistic practices. So, it's just like 99% of all American journalism. Today, there was an article about a woman who moved to Charlotte, NC and found the local Occupy Wallstreet movement. OK, but,

“Jason Cherkis, or whoever wrote the front page headline to his article, and Huffington Post need to mature a bit journalistically. On the front page is a picture of a very serious, accusatory-looking President Obama paired with the headline, " There's a level of intimidation coming into this." Then, once the article is read you see that Obama did not say these words nor is he a focus of the article. By the time I finished this post I see the article has been moved to the Politics page. Whatever. The point is that Huffington Post needs to match pictures and headlines with the article since it is obvious HP wants to be taken seriously.” That was the comment I left on HP.

It's not so new, this hit or miss journalism. I had the wonderful life experiences of working in both "old-style" radio and "old-style" newspaper journalism. I was a proofreader for the Amarillo Globe News back around 1966-67. One night I wandered over to the teletype room and saw a series of pictures with captions from the Associated Press. The pictures showed an American GI in Viet Nam interrogating a suspected Viet Cong captive. The first several pictures showed a calm scene of the two men with captions like, "GI questions Viet Cong suspect." There was a picture captioned, "GI offers water to Viet Cong suspect," accompanied by a shot of the GI offering his canteen. Then came the shocker - the "suspect" was restrained on the ground, a handkerchief over his face, and the GI was pouring water from the canteen onto the handkerchief! He was waterboarding the man! But, back then we didn't know the term waterboarding. So, any newspaper could show either the entire series or simply pick and choose. The Amarillo Globe News only ran the picture of the offer of water.

And to think how far we have fallen in journalistic practices when we were already so low!

Well, gosh, two can play at this game click here to see the fantastic Cher promoting none other than yours truly (what else, there's my name in the background)!