Rich and Strange Aeons

TSA doesn't screen ground crews. You want to bomb a plane, subvert the
baggage handlers.
http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/2010/11/22/tsa_screening_of_pilots/index.html
TSA FUD
http://www.slate.com/id/2275839/
US airlines more crowded, have higher fees, fewer flights
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/business/24travel.html
TSA humiliation and willing submission of America
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/23-5
http://www.cracked.com/article_16656_6-brainwashing-techniques-theyre-using-you-right-now.html
TSA patdowns spreading disease
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=231733
TSA objectors referred to as domestic extremists, now intelligence targets
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/30286
"gate rape"
opt-out dealt with by turning backscatters off
http://gizmodo.com/comment/33032822
US may drop color coded alert system
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/24/AR2010112401239.html?hpid=topnews
TSA patdowns will kill Americans -- encourage people to drive, which is
more dangerous
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/11/the_tsa_is_literally_killing_a.html?f=most-commented-24h-10
TSA scanner skin cancer concerns. probably worse for children
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/travel/news/full-body-airport-scanners-as-likely-to-kill-you-as-terrorist-bombs/story-e6frg8ro-1225958588299
Ebert vs. TSA
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/11/where_i_draw_the_line.html
TSA workers punish mother over breast milk
http://www.menwithfoilhats.com/2010/11/x-ray-nation-tsa-glass-box-mother-over-stored-breast-milk/
TSA patdowns don't even work
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/nyregion/28critic.html
danger of X-ray backscatters
http://myhelicaltryst.blogspot.com/2010/11/tsa-x-ray-backscatter-body-scanner.html?spref=fb
police officer observes TSA lack of coherent policy, practices aimed at
compliance rather than security
http://gizmodo.com/5696160/why-the-tsa-could-lead-us-to-public-rebellion-or-a-terrorist-attack

TSA molesting surgery patients
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/15360808-post118.html
air safety myths
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/254351/eight-air-security-myths-john-c-wohlstetter

TSA searches diplomat
http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20101208/NEWS/12080332/Female-diplomat-patted-down-at-Jackson-airport

TSA San Mateo DA threatens prosecution for patdowns
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news%2Flocal%2Fpeninsula&id=7793386
Dayton agent sexual assault
http://www.ourlittlechatterboxes.com/2010/11/tsa-sexual-assault.html
opt out day
http://www.optoutday.com/
TSA glitch killed baby in 2008
http://www.samoanewsonline.com/viewstory.php?storyid=2342


Obama claims rights of assassination of US citizens without judicial oversight ('old' news but ongoing)
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/11/08

to the north,
Canadian provinces seek trade links with China, unencumbered by pesky
concerns about human rights
http://rfmcdpei.livejournal.com/2569844.html

Random
* Terrorball
* Canadian PM Harper criticizes Parliament for interfering with government (line from James Nicoll)
* Deciphering monkey calls
* Google may stop censoring in China

Krugman

* Europe: social democracy works, and doesn't lead to stagnant economies. Column and blog; the latter looks at military spending as %age of GDP, to refute the common claim that the US can't afford social democracy because we're defending the free world.

Actually, it'd be fairer to say we can't afford social democracy because we're spending too much for health care (for which we get lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, and lots of medical bankruptcies and economic distortion). Defense spendings are 1-3% of GDP... US might have drifted up to 4 or 5% what with the not-so-defensive wars. Health care spending is 8-10% for most developed countries, 15% in the US or maybe 17% by now. Obviously if you have an extra 9% of your economy handy, then it's easier to afford good schools and free child care and such, because you can have people doing useful things rather than treating prostate cancers that won't kill people or building yachts for doctors.
* Also (old), French family values. Less GDP/capita, a lot more vacation time. Something which is hard to negotiate with an employer for most people -- and even harder to negotiate on a coordinated basis, with the whole family or your friends getting vacation time.

* Europe may be okay, but the Euro currency may not be, which leads to the open question of how many currencies an area should have. He talks about closeness of trade and easy of labor mobility, and economic compensation between differently affected regions: the US is one country, the EU still isn't. Also, monetary and fiscal policy. I view it as a case of the problems that arise when levels aren't coordinated. One currency, one monetary policy, 20+ fiscal (though supposedly constrained) and employment policies, legally but not culturally or linguistically free movement. We have a different example in the US: the vaunted ability of the 50 states to experiment in undermined by free trade and travel mandates. Not that those are bad things, but they make the natural level of economic regulation and taxation be federal, not state.

* Quotes of economists denying the bubble even as it happened

Ezra Klein
* Racism and health care
* Technical: Combining the House and Senate bills, national vs. state Exchanges
* If reform is a windfall for insurers, why did they oppose it?
* The problem with Senators getting leverage by acting as if they'll oppose a bill: they convince their constituents it's a bad bill, and take blame for finally voting for it.
* How Wall Street drags down the economy
* Federal Reserve profits

Links from him:
* Mortgages are business contracts, not moral committments, and the penalties for non-payment are right there, surrendering the house. So feel free if you need to, businesses do all the time.
* Reid and color bias

jsnead summarizes an article about various British ex-Jihadis and how they got that way. Good stuff. A few quotes:

{But there was an inhibiting sympathy for the victims of 9/11 -- until
the Bush administration began to respond with Guantanamo Bay and bombs.
"That made it much easier. After that, I could persuade people a lot
faster." }
{"Nobody ever said " you're equal to us, you're one of us, and we'll
hold you to the same standards," says Husain. "Nobody had the courage to
stand up for liberal democracy without qualms. When people like us at
[Newham] College were holding events against women and against gay
people, where were our college principals and teachers, challenging us?"
}
{Every one of them said the Bush administration's response to 9/11
-- from Guantanamo to Iraq -- made jihadism seem more like an accurate
description of the world.}
{But the converse was -- they stressed -- also true. When they saw
ordinary Westerners trying to uphold human rights, their jihadism began
to stutter. Almost all of them said that they doubted their Islamism
when they saw a million non-Muslims march in London to oppose the Iraq
War}

Torture
* Pressure mounts to investigate and prosecute Bush admin torture. McCain disagrees: "Look, in banana republics they prosecute people for actions they didn't agree with under previous administrations. To go back on a witch hunt that could last for a year or so, frankly, is going to be bad for the country, bad for future presidents," McCain said on CBS Right, because prosecution for illegal torture is politicising things.
* FBI agent speaks out about torture and it's ineffectiveness. Says the FBI refused to torture, creating a wall between the CIA and FBI, inhibiting cooperation on terror investigation. Also claims that it was contractors more than long-term CIA officials pushing for torture. (Plus, of course, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.)

Gay marriage
* 53% of New Yorkers polled support gay marriage
* New Jersey, too 49-43.
* Connecticut's governor signed a gay marriage bill, putting into law what the supreme court had decreed.

Misc
* Rise in housecalls. Article also mentions that they save the system money -- but the particular hospital loses ER fees. Reminds me of Krugman's point about how the US system inhibits preventive care. Insurance company paying for prevention now may save money for some other insurance company or Medicare, so why do it?
* Geocities closing. If there's content you want, go download it.

* Iowa's Senate majority leader rules out an amendment to ban gay marriage. We learn that Iowans get to vote on having a constitutional convention every 10 years -- nice touch along Jefferson's ideas of permanent revolution. We also get:

Former state legislator Chuck Hurley, president of the conservative Iowa Family Policy Center, said gay marriage opponents would step up the pressure on Gronstal.

"He is denying 2.1 million Iowans of voting age of the right to vote on an issue of great importance to 550,000 schoolchildren,"

Schoolchildren? What? I can only think he's blowing on the "pedophile" dog whistle, in a spectacularly illogical fashion. -- Gronstal's speech is online, I'm told it's moving.

* In other Iowa news, the Senate votes to provide health care to nearly all children. The Republicans say... absolutely nothing new.
* The state supreme court eviscerated standard talking points. Pandagon samples Free Republican and legislative responses.
* In today's news, Vermont's legislature overrode the governor's veto of gay marriage legalization, making it the first state to pull that off. (Lost in the Prop 8 hoopla is that California's legislature had legalized it -- but Arnold vetoed, claiming he wasn't opposed but the voters or courts should make a decision like that. Way to go, they split the difference. (ETA: ah, he had a point of sorts, conflict with Prop 22.) DC's council voted unanimously to recognize gay marriages from other states, though I don't know if that takes effect -- Congress gets to run DC. I predict California will be the first state to have the voters legalize gay marriage; Prop 8 only got 52% after all, and the trends are against bigotry. (Though reportedly there's a bias to vote "No" on any amendment.)
* Overseas, Sweden voted for gay marriage the same day of the Iowa decision.

* Journalists allowed to cover returning dead soldiers
* Senate Republicans seek to keep torture memos secret.
* Obama defends and expands Bush wiretapping policies, invoking a hugely broad interpretation of sovereign immunity. The EFF calls his DoJ worse than Bush.
* Red Cross indicts medical role in CIA torture; article also notes the "disappearance" done to our captives, where we wouldn't tell governments or families who we'd taken.

* Black soldiers were kept out of the liberation of Paris. The Pope didn't want them in Rome, either. That's Piux XII.
* 'Sexting' hysteria extends to teachers.
* Boys being abducted in China.

* NYC to try to reduce salt intake, in what might be a big uncontrolled experiment. Lots of links in that article; this is Gary Taubes' article debunking salt and CVD in Science in 1999.
* Temperature/climate variation, and why a steady average temperature for the past 10 years doesn't disprove long-term warming trends. Look on the pictures.
* People who feel good about themselves may misbehave more
* CO2 air capture

President Obama's plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials -- barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees -- discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them.

...

Evidence gathered for military commission trials is in disarray, according to some former officials, who said military lawyers lacked the trial experience to prosecute complex international terrorism cases.

In a court filing this month, Darrel Vandeveld, a former military prosecutor at Guantanamo who asked to be relieved of his duties, said evidence was "strewn throughout the prosecution offices in desk drawers, bookcases packed with vaguely-labeled plastic containers, or even simply piled on the tops of desks."

Bush Administration incompetence knows no limit, it would seem.

Remember the anthrax attacks? James links to a news article that a US anthrax researcher has committed suicide, right before he was about to be charged in the attacks. After a wikipedia article, James links to a Salon piece which goes back to the time of the attacks, how the letters in the attacks tried to implicate Muslims, and the false reports of bentonite linking the letters to Iraq, fabricated reports in which ABC played a key roll. Regardless of whether the highly Christian Ivins was personally responsible, the US government is now saying a US government lab was responsible -- so a US lab contributed to the climate of fear post 9/11, and falsely linked it to Islam in general and Iraq in general, thus helping create the attitudes that made invading and destabilizing another country, resulting in tens of thousands of prevantable deaths, seem reasonable.

Me, I'd thought that was obvious it was an inside job, given how the envelopes targetted Democratic politicians and "liberal media" figures, but I hadn't thought about it for a while, nor known of ABC's role.

Welcome to the US! Even our Reichstags are privatized.