Tom made a comment to watch out for Homeland Security if I participated in the parking garage scaling portion of the Raid on the Rock race mentioned here previously on unknown dog by that venerable scribe and thinker, bturnip. Tom might have a point. Things are slowly ramping up here, with the Clinton Library set to open in less than a month. We, we being the employees of Acxiom and the building we occupy, are right across the interstate from the Library. As such, we are going to be subject to some security measures. Among other things, I have heard (unconfirmed) that there will be no going out onto the balconies, loitering in the parking garage, mumbling in odd fashion to one’s self, etc. I am guessing basketball on the top of the parking garage is going to be a firm ‘no’ as well.
In related news here are a couple funny/sad stories:
Story #1: Homeland Security officials stopped by some small toystore in Oregon and told the owner to remove a toy called the Magic Cube, as it was an illegal copy of the famous Rubik’s Cube. Turns out Homeland Security was wrong, as the patent for the toy had expired. Why Homeland Security is handling patent claims is a mystery. Instead of pointing straight to the article, here is a link to the article snippet where I first found it on a blog I watch called Boing Boing. Boing Boing has a link to another article about the TSA that shows how there is no tragedy too tragic not to exploit for every fucking dime that can be wrung out of it. The article is from the NY Times, which requires a free registration. If you are too lazy to do so, read on…
I did say that the reason Homeland Security was involved in tracking down couterfeit Rubik’s Cubes seemed to me to be a mystery. Note that I didn’t say that it was a surprise or a mystery to me how they could have screwed it up completely.
Story #2: TSA celebrated their two year anniversary by spending half of a million dollars on a self congratultory party. First heard about this on the CNN newsite. All the ungodly, shameful spending shennanigans that have become somewhat commonplace. $81,000 on award plaques. Some of those plaques were apparently Lifetime Acheivement Awards. Pretty classy, eh? Here is the TSA take on the affair. Round out your daily dose of the news by making it a trifecta with the FOX article detailing the same. Bon Appetit!
Yeah, I want a revolution too. One segment of Fahrenheit 9/11 was about this group in California that was basically old hippies who got together once a week to talk about stuff and bake cookies that was infultrated by a Homeland Security agent. The group was something like “Citizens for World Peace” and they would meet once a week to talk about love and peace and hippy stuff. So one day they see in a newspaper that a guy that had been attending their meetings for a year or so had been killed in a car accident and in his obituary it said that he worked for the CIA or some agency. They come to learn that he had secretly infultrated their group and was spying on them and reporting back to the government.
The danger that our civil liberties face right now cannot be overstated and very few people seem to care. Maybe it’s the Norm Fuller in me talking, but I see the fact that legislation like the Patriot Act can pass as an absolute national crisis. It’s largely reactionary to 9/11 and half the people in this country are too dumb to see that the measures are doing little or nothing to deter terror attacks, yet we’re losing our civil liberties at an alarming rate. As far as I’m concerned, that might be the only think that has made this country so great for so many years. Take away our rights to privacy and our right not to be hassled by Johnny Law and all this other crap ain’t worth it anymore.
I had to take a drug test to get this job. Yeah, lots of people have to take drug tests to get jobs, but to me, standing there, peeing in that cup so someone could inspect my urine to know what I had put in my body, felt degrading. I know I’m on a tangent right now, but to me it is fundamentally important that we have these rights to privacy. If it means having a system that lets a few drug addicts sift through that shouldn’t, then that’s an acceptable price to me as long as everyone else can have their rights to privacy. It’s the entire basis of our criminal system. We knowingly take the hit of letting a lot of criminals walk on technicalities, because it gives us the best chance of not locking up innocent people for no reason. Does it suck that some murderers get away with the crime? Yes. But to me the fact that we’re willing to take that hit when very few other countries in the history of the wolrd have been willing to take it is one of the best things about our country.
Greg and I were talking about the election yesterday and we agree that it’s just so frustrating to hear the logic people use to cast their votes. It doesn’t even matter if they were voting for Bush or Kerry in most cases, they give their reasons for voting and I think “How can anyone even think that’s important, what about all the other reasons involving the economy, civil liberties and foreign relations.” The last gubernatorial election in Georgia was decided by the state flag issue. A bunch of rednecks wanted the “stars and bars” of racism to stay on the flag so they elected a jackass who said he would put it up for a vote (which he never did, btw) and the post-election surveys show that this was the deciding factor in the election. People are just so utterly stupid and have such convoluted priorities, it’s dumbfounding.