I’m pretty sick of the TSA controversy already. It’s funny to watch the same libs who cried out in anger about the wiretapping program under George W Bush now saying they don’t mind being physically violated because they know it’s making them more safe. That’s the talking point, almost word for word from Juan Williams and the ladies on the View on Wednesday. (Liz had it on)
So whatever, libs just react the way they are told, what’s new?
It occurred to me that the TSA does not keep us anymore safe than if we were allowed to walk right to the gate like we could 10 years ago. The TSA exists for one purpose: the perception of fairness. If as a country we were serious about security, we would have no qualms about racial profiling. Hello, terrorists look like, well, terrorists! Just like illegals from Mexico look like Mexicans. But America is not mature enough to be honest with itself, so we have to inconvenience everyone else for the sake of equality.
Of course this all stems from a culture of legal retribution. Trial lawyers love civil rights cases because Americans have acquired a great deal of guilt we are not permitted to ignore. If the oppressor happens to be the U.S. Federal government, you can bet your house there will be a line of attorneys salivating at the prospect of a huge payday. So a hundred billion dollars and millions of hours wasted in lines later we all suffer just so one small group or other can’t sue.
But it’s all BS, because behind the scenes the government is profiling, with secret lists of likely suspects who share common skin tones or surnames. That’s where security actually happens, not at the front door of an airport terminal. The TSA is a huge scam, a cover up for the real operation. Unfortunately we just have to deal with it, but what they are doing now with these scanners is too flagrant. People are already starting to talk. It’s too expensive, and it goes too far. The thin curtain of fairness is in serious danger of being torn down. So much the better.
You want to know how safe the TSA makes us? Try this thought experiment. What happens when a suicide bomber walks into an airport and waits patiently until he gets to the middle of one of those long lines queuing up at the TSA checkpoint, and then sets himself off? He can kill just as many people as he would on an airplane if not more, and at the same time totally destroy the myth of TSA “security” forever. What’s the government response then? Put TSA outside the Airport? Just blow up that line, then. You see, wherever you perform fairness is where you expose people to greatest risk!
The TSA is a colossal waste of time and resources, but until the country accepts that terrorists actually do fit a profile all the rest of us can do is complain.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
High Speed Rail: Pros & Cons
I was listening to WPR yesterday morning while running errands, driving around town wherever I pleased by whatever route appealed to me, on nobody’s schedule but my own, and the topic of the hour was the High Speed Rail initiative. Joy Cardin had two guests, both of them very much in favor of commuter rail. They recited all the Obama talking points for why it is good for Americans generally, and Wisconsinites specifically, and then fielded questions from mostly pro-rail callers.
One of the callers asked why if Europe has been using rail successfully for decades America can’t seem to get it going. This question was asked while I pulled into the massive free parking lot in front of the local Ace Hardware store. Nobody on the radio acknowledged the subtle irony.
I finally decided to run through the pros and cons of railroad travel in my head instead of just listening to people regurgitate talking points. Here goes.
Pros:
- It’s nice to have someone else do the driving once in a while, especially when the distance is long. Anything over 2 hours can be tedious.
- Today’s Amtrak Passenger cars are relatively comfortable, if you can find a newer reclining seat.
- It is often nice to have restrooms and a food car available at all times without having to stop.
- Railways carve through some beautiful country you otherwise do not have a chance to see from a car or plane.
- Once a certain passenger threshold is met, trains are more environmentally friendly than other forms of transportation.
- Trains have the potential to get you from place to place very quickly. Some French trains can go 300 mph!
These are the fanciful arguments you hear from people who want it, appealing to the emotional but impractical ideals of those who don’t think long enough to get to the actual implications of the proposal or the real-world cultural roadblocks that will quickly doom this venture to Amtrak-style failure times a thousand. In the spirit of common sense, here’s my list of cons.
Cons:
- Train travel can be prohibitively expensive. A one-way ticket from La Crosse to Milwaukee costs, on average, $51 per person. An entire family can make the trip in a single vehicle for half that.
- Trains operate on schedules. Americans are conditioned by three generations of travel by car. We leave and arrive whenever we please.
- Trains are political animals, and succumb to the failings of jurisdiction. If a municipality wants a stop, and they are willing to pay for it, they will probably get one. That means one more 20 minute delay for anyone trying get from one side of the state to the other. Ideally a high-speed train would not have this problem, but get serious already.
- Once you get to the end of the tracks you still need to get to your destination. One of the major differences between Europeans and Americans is that Euros walk. Think Americans will be willing to walk a mile or two after getting off the train? Good luck. Oh, but we could take the bus…
- Europe has been resigned to train travel because its cities were not planned around roads or parking lots. Ours were. Americans are not forced to take the train, and the only way to change that is to make car travel much more expensive. This will be accomplished by a gas tax. On a cultural note, Americans are rarely won over by negative reinforcement. That’s the kind of thing that causes landslide elections.
- Trains are incredibly annoying. You cannot control who you share a car with, and you’re just likely than not to be in a car that smells bad or has out of control children and screaming babies, or people taking up more than one seat or coughing or talking too loud and generally being inconsiderate, or the bathrooms being disgusting and the food car being out of just about everything.
- Security is impossible. First of all, nobody has brought up the ominous prospect of installing and operating TSA-like security at every train depot. Imagine airport TSA issues times a hundred in terms of cost and manpower and logistics and delays. And don’t forget unions!
- It will be a simple matter for terrorists to walk up to any length of track in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin and put a bomb on the track and detonate it from the comfort of a sunny hillside and watch the speeding train pile into the surrounding fields and kill hundreds or more. If I have thought of this, trust me, terrorists already have stretches of track in mind. They’re just waiting for Obama to supply them with human targets.
- Our current infrastructure of freight track cannot handle so-called bullet trains. Trains that move at 300 mph need tremendous lengths of straight, flat track. The cost to get the United States up to French standards could be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
- We do not have enough track to simultaneously accommodate current freight traffic with desired passenger traffic. The cost of the current plan includes a proposal for new track, but expect freight lobbies to want in on the new track or use it as leverage for massive public expenditures to upgrade existing track. The cycle never ends.
- Finally, the current proposal creates a supply for which there is insufficient demand. If there were, Amtrak would be profitable, or at least break even. Americans enjoy the freedom of travel by car, and until that fundamental right is legislated away high speed rail will not be viable.
I’m sure there are many more considerations, including all the political infighting in every municipality the trains will travel through. I cannot imagine this thing ever getting beyond the planning phase, but I am certain the debate, now that it’s started, will never, ever, end.
One of the callers asked why if Europe has been using rail successfully for decades America can’t seem to get it going. This question was asked while I pulled into the massive free parking lot in front of the local Ace Hardware store. Nobody on the radio acknowledged the subtle irony.
I finally decided to run through the pros and cons of railroad travel in my head instead of just listening to people regurgitate talking points. Here goes.
Pros:
- It’s nice to have someone else do the driving once in a while, especially when the distance is long. Anything over 2 hours can be tedious.
- Today’s Amtrak Passenger cars are relatively comfortable, if you can find a newer reclining seat.
- It is often nice to have restrooms and a food car available at all times without having to stop.
- Railways carve through some beautiful country you otherwise do not have a chance to see from a car or plane.
- Once a certain passenger threshold is met, trains are more environmentally friendly than other forms of transportation.
- Trains have the potential to get you from place to place very quickly. Some French trains can go 300 mph!
These are the fanciful arguments you hear from people who want it, appealing to the emotional but impractical ideals of those who don’t think long enough to get to the actual implications of the proposal or the real-world cultural roadblocks that will quickly doom this venture to Amtrak-style failure times a thousand. In the spirit of common sense, here’s my list of cons.
Cons:
- Train travel can be prohibitively expensive. A one-way ticket from La Crosse to Milwaukee costs, on average, $51 per person. An entire family can make the trip in a single vehicle for half that.
- Trains operate on schedules. Americans are conditioned by three generations of travel by car. We leave and arrive whenever we please.
- Trains are political animals, and succumb to the failings of jurisdiction. If a municipality wants a stop, and they are willing to pay for it, they will probably get one. That means one more 20 minute delay for anyone trying get from one side of the state to the other. Ideally a high-speed train would not have this problem, but get serious already.
- Once you get to the end of the tracks you still need to get to your destination. One of the major differences between Europeans and Americans is that Euros walk. Think Americans will be willing to walk a mile or two after getting off the train? Good luck. Oh, but we could take the bus…
- Europe has been resigned to train travel because its cities were not planned around roads or parking lots. Ours were. Americans are not forced to take the train, and the only way to change that is to make car travel much more expensive. This will be accomplished by a gas tax. On a cultural note, Americans are rarely won over by negative reinforcement. That’s the kind of thing that causes landslide elections.
- Trains are incredibly annoying. You cannot control who you share a car with, and you’re just likely than not to be in a car that smells bad or has out of control children and screaming babies, or people taking up more than one seat or coughing or talking too loud and generally being inconsiderate, or the bathrooms being disgusting and the food car being out of just about everything.
- Security is impossible. First of all, nobody has brought up the ominous prospect of installing and operating TSA-like security at every train depot. Imagine airport TSA issues times a hundred in terms of cost and manpower and logistics and delays. And don’t forget unions!
- It will be a simple matter for terrorists to walk up to any length of track in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin and put a bomb on the track and detonate it from the comfort of a sunny hillside and watch the speeding train pile into the surrounding fields and kill hundreds or more. If I have thought of this, trust me, terrorists already have stretches of track in mind. They’re just waiting for Obama to supply them with human targets.
- Our current infrastructure of freight track cannot handle so-called bullet trains. Trains that move at 300 mph need tremendous lengths of straight, flat track. The cost to get the United States up to French standards could be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
- We do not have enough track to simultaneously accommodate current freight traffic with desired passenger traffic. The cost of the current plan includes a proposal for new track, but expect freight lobbies to want in on the new track or use it as leverage for massive public expenditures to upgrade existing track. The cycle never ends.
- Finally, the current proposal creates a supply for which there is insufficient demand. If there were, Amtrak would be profitable, or at least break even. Americans enjoy the freedom of travel by car, and until that fundamental right is legislated away high speed rail will not be viable.
I’m sure there are many more considerations, including all the political infighting in every municipality the trains will travel through. I cannot imagine this thing ever getting beyond the planning phase, but I am certain the debate, now that it’s started, will never, ever, end.
Californicating With Itself
I went home for lunch and turned on FoxNews and watched reports on two separate, totally unrelated stories.
The first was on the recent California court ruling that illegals in that state are eligible for in-state tuition. California isn’t alone in this – you might be surprised to know that Texas offers the same benefit. Incredulous, I asked myself, “Self, what is the point of in-state tuition? Why give someone a discount just for being a resident?” Universities know that the cost structure for educating some number of students is relatively unaffected by providing education for that number plus 1. Higher education institutions, despite claims to the contrary by professors and administrators who say they are “overworked”, can absorb many more students than are enrolled. The game they play is to extract as much tuition as possible and also as much state subsidy as possible, and encouraging in-state tuition for illegals accomplishes both. The bottom line is that illegal immigrants are good for the business of education.
The problem comes when the professors and administrators who complain about being “overworked” convince enough of the Regents or legislators, depending on the funding source, that they need either more teachers, more administrators, or more infrastructure and buildings to meet the greater demand for education posed by the exploding population of illegal immigrants.
Which leads me to the second story.
Students in California are rioting over proposed 8% college tuition and fee increases in their state.
I wonder how many of them voted Democrat two weeks ago. Do you think they understand cause and effect? Just wait until Jerry Brown gets his hooks into things.
The first was on the recent California court ruling that illegals in that state are eligible for in-state tuition. California isn’t alone in this – you might be surprised to know that Texas offers the same benefit. Incredulous, I asked myself, “Self, what is the point of in-state tuition? Why give someone a discount just for being a resident?” Universities know that the cost structure for educating some number of students is relatively unaffected by providing education for that number plus 1. Higher education institutions, despite claims to the contrary by professors and administrators who say they are “overworked”, can absorb many more students than are enrolled. The game they play is to extract as much tuition as possible and also as much state subsidy as possible, and encouraging in-state tuition for illegals accomplishes both. The bottom line is that illegal immigrants are good for the business of education.
The problem comes when the professors and administrators who complain about being “overworked” convince enough of the Regents or legislators, depending on the funding source, that they need either more teachers, more administrators, or more infrastructure and buildings to meet the greater demand for education posed by the exploding population of illegal immigrants.
Which leads me to the second story.
Students in California are rioting over proposed 8% college tuition and fee increases in their state.
I wonder how many of them voted Democrat two weeks ago. Do you think they understand cause and effect? Just wait until Jerry Brown gets his hooks into things.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Obama, Foreign Policy Disabled
Clearly the media has dramatically understated the scope of epic failure that was Obama’s foreign policy mission to India and the Far East this month. He completely failed to negotiate even one useful trade agreement. He couldn’t even get the South Koreans, one of our closest allies in the entire world, to agree to a minor addition to the existing trade agreement brokered by President Bush. Basically, Obama wants the rest of the world to agree to buy more American cars, specifically GM so he can give a boost to the IPO and the “Government Motors” debacle won’t be such a bad deal for American taxpayers. Nobody's buying.
Obama is an international laughing stock. Fresh off his party’s historic drubbing at the midterms, the Campaigner-In-Chief’s gravitas is at an all-time low. You’ll remember that he made an ass of himself when he grovelled around the Mideast apologizing for America’s “arrogance”. The message to the world was crystal clear: Obama is weak, and by association the United States is also weak. By the way, the first rule of diplomacy is, ALWAYS NEGOTIATE FROM STRENGTH. So now when Obama says that a strong US economy is good for everyone, he may be right, but he's got no balls so the rest of the world just says, “Whatever, dude.”
Obama further undercut his chances before leaving by signing off on Bernanke's plan to effectively devalue the Dollar. The purpose for this is to make US exports relatively cheaper and therefore more attractive. The problem is that most of these countries also own a significant amount of US debt, which is also devalued! Not only that, but how in the world does Obama expect other countries to enter into binding trade agreements in good faith when he is brazenly unwilling to do the same??? I can’t believe this story is not getting more attention, at the very least for the inexplicably bad timing of the Bernanke maneuver with Obama’s Trade trip.
This has to rank among the absolute worst foreign policy gaffes of all time!!
He couldn’t get one single country to agree to condemn China’s currency manipulation strategy. No shit Sherlock – you've got the US doing it to! Way to go, BO!
Idiot.
Meanwhile, why do we even have a State Department? Still a frighteningly popular figure among Democrats, Hillary was conspicuously deployed oversees during the last two weeks of the campaign season, but during that time she had zero impact priming G20 countries for Obama. What’s that term for a porn actress who’s not attractive enough to be seen on film so she sits off camera and her job is to keep the male star ready to go? Oh yeah, fluffer. Hillary is Obama’s personal fluffer, but apparently she’s terrible at it. That explains Bill’s behavior.
America needs to get rid of these bozos, grow a new pair, and resume telling the world how its gonna go down, or we are Greece in our lifetimes.
Obama is an international laughing stock. Fresh off his party’s historic drubbing at the midterms, the Campaigner-In-Chief’s gravitas is at an all-time low. You’ll remember that he made an ass of himself when he grovelled around the Mideast apologizing for America’s “arrogance”. The message to the world was crystal clear: Obama is weak, and by association the United States is also weak. By the way, the first rule of diplomacy is, ALWAYS NEGOTIATE FROM STRENGTH. So now when Obama says that a strong US economy is good for everyone, he may be right, but he's got no balls so the rest of the world just says, “Whatever, dude.”
Obama further undercut his chances before leaving by signing off on Bernanke's plan to effectively devalue the Dollar. The purpose for this is to make US exports relatively cheaper and therefore more attractive. The problem is that most of these countries also own a significant amount of US debt, which is also devalued! Not only that, but how in the world does Obama expect other countries to enter into binding trade agreements in good faith when he is brazenly unwilling to do the same??? I can’t believe this story is not getting more attention, at the very least for the inexplicably bad timing of the Bernanke maneuver with Obama’s Trade trip.
This has to rank among the absolute worst foreign policy gaffes of all time!!
He couldn’t get one single country to agree to condemn China’s currency manipulation strategy. No shit Sherlock – you've got the US doing it to! Way to go, BO!
Idiot.
Meanwhile, why do we even have a State Department? Still a frighteningly popular figure among Democrats, Hillary was conspicuously deployed oversees during the last two weeks of the campaign season, but during that time she had zero impact priming G20 countries for Obama. What’s that term for a porn actress who’s not attractive enough to be seen on film so she sits off camera and her job is to keep the male star ready to go? Oh yeah, fluffer. Hillary is Obama’s personal fluffer, but apparently she’s terrible at it. That explains Bill’s behavior.
America needs to get rid of these bozos, grow a new pair, and resume telling the world how its gonna go down, or we are Greece in our lifetimes.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
The Next 9/11: High Speed Rail
With all the heated discussion about high speed rail, one aspect is consistently overlooked: security. I have yet to hear anyone ask the question, "How do you secure all the rail in this country?" There's nearly a quarter-million miles of track in this country, and every spike and tie is a ripe target for terrorism.
Imagine a fundamental change in transportation infrastructure - Obama's vision for a future without cars. Everyone depends on trains to travel long distances, all in the name of a greener, less polluted world. We learn to tolerate the inconvenience of living by train schedules, traveling only where trains go, and being stuffed together into uncomfortable train cars built for quantity of transference and not quality of travel experience. We simply have no alternatives, the government having legislated in favor of environmentalism.
And then one day a series of small improvised explosive devices, placed along lengths of track no one ever sees except from the inside of a rail car, is detonated, coordinated to cause maximum damage in a single moment of incredible destruction. When trains moving at 90 or 100 miles per hour or more jump track the result will be unlike anything we've seen since September 11, 2001.
It becomes a simple matter for a terrorist organization to kill tens of thousands, and they would not even need to sacrifice to do it. The bombs need only be large enough to derail the lead car - maybe 10 feet of damaged track is all - and the entire train would wreck. The destruction would be awful. And what's more, government would react predictably, shutting down all rail traffic everywhere, disabling an economy with no other means to travel. You thought 9/11 shut us down? Just wait.
If the politicians pushing this idea - mostly Democrats - would admit to the likelihood of such an even, and then were forced to consider the cost of making high speed rail secure, we would quickly come to the consensus that it is unmanageable.
Attacks like this have already occurred - most recently in Spain. But the United States remains the big prize for extremists, and they will bide their time to get the biggest bang for the buck. Believe me, if I took this long to think of this then professional terrorists already have stretches of track in mind.
All they need to do is wait for Democrats to provide them with human targets.
Imagine a fundamental change in transportation infrastructure - Obama's vision for a future without cars. Everyone depends on trains to travel long distances, all in the name of a greener, less polluted world. We learn to tolerate the inconvenience of living by train schedules, traveling only where trains go, and being stuffed together into uncomfortable train cars built for quantity of transference and not quality of travel experience. We simply have no alternatives, the government having legislated in favor of environmentalism.
And then one day a series of small improvised explosive devices, placed along lengths of track no one ever sees except from the inside of a rail car, is detonated, coordinated to cause maximum damage in a single moment of incredible destruction. When trains moving at 90 or 100 miles per hour or more jump track the result will be unlike anything we've seen since September 11, 2001.
It becomes a simple matter for a terrorist organization to kill tens of thousands, and they would not even need to sacrifice to do it. The bombs need only be large enough to derail the lead car - maybe 10 feet of damaged track is all - and the entire train would wreck. The destruction would be awful. And what's more, government would react predictably, shutting down all rail traffic everywhere, disabling an economy with no other means to travel. You thought 9/11 shut us down? Just wait.
If the politicians pushing this idea - mostly Democrats - would admit to the likelihood of such an even, and then were forced to consider the cost of making high speed rail secure, we would quickly come to the consensus that it is unmanageable.
Attacks like this have already occurred - most recently in Spain. But the United States remains the big prize for extremists, and they will bide their time to get the biggest bang for the buck. Believe me, if I took this long to think of this then professional terrorists already have stretches of track in mind.
All they need to do is wait for Democrats to provide them with human targets.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Demise Of The American Century
I was reflecting this weekend on how good life is, despite all the negativity among coworkers and politicians who believe they deserve but are not willing to earn. When you really think about what we have it’s not too bad, and any failings are my own and no one else’s.
This windfall is the direct result of an era of American exceptionalism that many have referred to as “The American Century,” a subset of the Twentieth Century, but more than that because its exact duration is more than 115 years.
It began emphatically on October 9, 1893, when nearly three-quarters of a million people visited the Chicago Columbian Exposition, the greatest exhibit of technological and societal achievement ever presented in one place, and in so doing shattered the attendance record set the previous decade in Paris and signaling to the world that the United States of America had seized a place ahead of Europe on the world’s stage.
And it terminated with equal fanfare with the inauguration of Barack Obama, a bona-fide Communist, as President of these same United States. The message could not have been more clear – a majority of American voters were either apologetic or even openly hostile to the exceptionalism fought for and enjoyed by preceding generations. Obama went to work immediately, apologizing for our arrogance, bowing to the unelected kings and despots of other countries, and deferring to the will of the United Nations in managing affairs of interest to our nation. Legislatively, Democrats went to work plowing under the risk-reward philosophy of capitalism in favor of a new socialist paradigm which discouraged prosperity by hard work, elevated Marxist fairness rhetoric, and destroyed the American Dream.
The American Century is over. Anything resembling a new rise to prominence for Americans will be something different and less durable. History tells us that to recapture a measure of our former glory will take nothing short of Revolution. I believe the revolution has already begun, and after tomorrow’s vote we will take the next step.
This windfall is the direct result of an era of American exceptionalism that many have referred to as “The American Century,” a subset of the Twentieth Century, but more than that because its exact duration is more than 115 years.
It began emphatically on October 9, 1893, when nearly three-quarters of a million people visited the Chicago Columbian Exposition, the greatest exhibit of technological and societal achievement ever presented in one place, and in so doing shattered the attendance record set the previous decade in Paris and signaling to the world that the United States of America had seized a place ahead of Europe on the world’s stage.
And it terminated with equal fanfare with the inauguration of Barack Obama, a bona-fide Communist, as President of these same United States. The message could not have been more clear – a majority of American voters were either apologetic or even openly hostile to the exceptionalism fought for and enjoyed by preceding generations. Obama went to work immediately, apologizing for our arrogance, bowing to the unelected kings and despots of other countries, and deferring to the will of the United Nations in managing affairs of interest to our nation. Legislatively, Democrats went to work plowing under the risk-reward philosophy of capitalism in favor of a new socialist paradigm which discouraged prosperity by hard work, elevated Marxist fairness rhetoric, and destroyed the American Dream.
The American Century is over. Anything resembling a new rise to prominence for Americans will be something different and less durable. History tells us that to recapture a measure of our former glory will take nothing short of Revolution. I believe the revolution has already begun, and after tomorrow’s vote we will take the next step.
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