I love Doonesbury.
Especially with the American mid-term elections coming up.
Category: government
I listen to Rush Limbaugh
Only in the States (feeling the “vibe“) and only in rent-a-cars. And only on white trash AM radio.
But I have to admit — the big, fat idiot makes the miles fly by.
Rush Limbaugh – Wikipedia
He is a master Republican defender. And gutsy. I even heard him spin the absolutely indefensible Mark Foley and make it sound like Bill Clinton’s fault.
Limbaugh’s an intelligent guy, obviously. I can’t imagine he believes everything he spouts. Perhaps he does. There is a consistency to his line of argument.
Those who listen only to Limbaugh, watch only Fox News, should check out the anti-Limbaugh — Al Franken.
North Korea builds the world’s tallest hotel
Want to book reservations at Pyongyang’s Ryugyong Hotel?
Sorry.
The “hotel” is an empty shell that can be seen from anywhere in the capital city. Construction was stopped in 1992 due to a lack of funds and safety concerns about crooked elevator shafts and cracking concrete. Plus, no tourists.
A perfect symbol of the hubris and stupidity of totalitarian rule.
Pyongyang: Home to the Tallest Hotel in the World That Could, but Will Never Be
student “security researcher” threatened with arrest
Locking up this guy will really make me sleep better.
Security researcher Christopher Soghoian created the Northwest Airline Boarding Pass Generator in the hope of spurring Congress to look closely at the nation’s aviation security policies, which he calls “security theater.”
The site lets anyone create a facsimile of a Northwest Airlines boarding pass, with whatever name they choose.
On Friday, Congress heard Soghoian’s message loud and clear. But instead of promising to reform broken airport security procedures, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts), a member of the House Homeland Security committee known for his defenses of privacy, wants the site shut down and Soghoian arrested. …
Soghoian, a Ph.D. student at Indiana University, says he has never used one of the fake boarding passes, which are likely good enough to get someone through airport security into the “sanitized” area of the airport, but not good enough to get anyone on a plane. He was waiting for clearance from lawyers at Indiana University before attempting to test if the method worked to get through security. …
“I want Congress to see how stupid the (Transportation Security Administration)’s watch lists are,” he said. “Now even the most technically incompetent user can click and generate a boarding pass. By doing this, I’m hoping (Congress) will see how silly the security rules are. I don’t want bad guys to board airplanes but I don’t think the system we have right now works and I think it is giving us a false sense of security.”
Wired News: Boarding Pass Hacker Under Fire
Thanks George.
“security theatre”
Like every tourist in Page, Arizona, I popped in to visit Glen Canyon Dam. I’ve really enjoyed similar tours of other large dams.
And the impact on the environment caused by the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam is more controversial than most. It sounded interesting.
But I was turned off by over-zealous security officials.
After a slow line-up, turned out I was not allowed to carry anything into the facility. They rushed and flustered a bus load of French tourists too. Everyone present was painfully aware that there was zero security risk. It was an embarassment.
This going-through-the-motions has been called security theatre. Too right.
Rather than this useless song and dance, why don’t we study what the Israelis do? The security procedures of El-Al airlines, for example. El Al has has had no successful terrorist attack on board any of its aircraft for over 35 years.
Major dams are terrorist targets. They deserve the highest level of security. But hassling tourists does not help. Shut the facility down from tourism completely, if necessary. Shut down the highway, if necessary.
But don’t pretend you are preventing a serious attack by preventing me carrying in a wallet.
» next travelogue post on this trip – when did Halloween get … BIG?
“Queer and loathing on Capitol Hill”
… more boring US politics
You would be hard pressed to prove that Democrats are any better politicians than Republicans.
But Republicans are far more hypocritical. They fear monger, pander to racism, cheat, steal and out-lie the Democrats by a wide margin. (Some would say they are more skilled at the “art of politics”.)
Case in point — “happy-go-lucky sexual predator, Mark Foley, the Republican congressman from Palm Beach, Florida, who had been luring teenage congressional pages to his townhouse of iniquity” — only the latest in a long line of two-faced Republicans.
Publicly Foley had been fervently anti-Gay. And the first elected official to vote to “protect children”.
Sidney Blumenthal gives a run-down of the scandals among GOP lawmakers if you want to be reminded of past deceit.
turn the lights on in North Korea
Check this picture of North Korea by night, deep in darkness. And see also, just below, the lights of South Korea blazing so warmly.
Question: Which of those two Korean countries do you think decided to follow America and go capitalist?
Andrew Bolt is a raving extremist so far as I can tell from this rant.
But the photo could be real.
Tibetan refugee shot by Chinese army
A terrible story.
One killed for sure. Children led off to be “detained”.
It hit the major media an hour ago.
My read on this crime against civilians posted on my hiking blog.
China unblocks Wikipedia – right on!
China has unblocked Wikipedia.
Wikipedia refused to censor itself to appease totalitarian Beijing, but China unblocked it anyway. China needs Wikipedia and Chinese net-users would access it using circumvention tools — the block on Wikipedia made Chinese Wikipedia users into automatic dissidents.
Boing Boing: China unblocks Wikipedia, even though it won’t censor
getting your news from The Daily Show
New research confirms what we already knew — The Daily Show is as “substantive” a source of US political news as the real news shows.
Using the entire half-hour programs as the basis of analysis yielded the same results: there was just as much substance to The Daily Show’s coverage as there was on the network news. And The Daily Show was much funnier, with less of the hype—references to photo ops, political endorsements, and polls—that typically overshadows substantive coverage on network news, according to the study.
The Daily Show is as substantive as the “real” news
Fox News is actually funnier than The Daily Show, but Fox is trying to be serious.
Rick McCharles 