Wayne Chirnside wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

-=> ROY J. TELLASON wrote to WAYNE CHIRNSIDE <=-

 RJT> Wayne Chirnside wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 > Here it is,  the anniversary of 9/11,  and I really don't have a
 > whole lot to say about it.

 > Except that I'm *really* getting tired of hearing the talking
 > heads raise the issue of "how much safer the country is" over and
 > over and over...

 WC> The country is likely at far greater risk.

 RJT> I think I would rather tend to agree with you on this.

 WC> Do you think any of the tens of billions of dollars for Homeland 
 WC> Security and civil liberties intrusions will actually make any 
 WC> difference? I don't

Are they spending that much already?  I thought it usually took them a bit
longer to work their way up to tens of billions...

No,  I don't think it's gonna make much difference.  Not in any positive
sense,  anyhow.

 WC> We've got a war on drugs too and some senior DEA people I've heard 
 WC> admit we maybe intercept 15 percent of the drugs. We've had 
 WC> decades and billions, law enforcement out the wazoo, AWAC's in the 
 WC> air and everything else and still they come.

Sure.  And that's not ever gonna change,  either,  as long as there's
demand for the stuff.  But they've gone through setting all sorts of legal
precedents because of this horseshit and doing all sorts of things that a
generation ago would never have been tolerated,  much less condoned.

 WC> Some clown just shipped himself across country in the cargo hold 
 WC> of a commercial airliner!  That's airline security for you.

I heard about that.

 WC> Look towards Israel as an example. Though Israel has secured their 
 WC> airlines and we should emulate them there are plenty of targets of
 WC> opportunity here and locally available materials with which to 
 WC> cause destruction and terror.

 RJT> Sure.

 WC> Anyone that can brew beer can ferment anthrax, are we doing well 
 WC> if we intercept 15 percent of that like we do with drugs?

Yep.

 WC> Speaking of anthrax when that first happened the news was on about 
 WC> it and how terrorists hadn't yet found out how to weaponize it. 
 WC> Well using keywords on the evening news I plugged them into google 
 WC> and what pops right up but a paper on just how to accomplish this 
 WC> in detail from no less than Lawrence Livermore Labs :-(
 WC> Gave me the warm fuzzies :-(

Oh,  wonderful.  Did you take notice that they were also behind those
micro-transmitters I posted about recently?  At least I think it was them, 
I'm not so sure at the moment,  but it was somebody outta Berkeley anyhow.

 WC> We've recruited for Al-Qaeda, they weren't in Saddam controlled
 WC> Iraq before but they are now :-(

 RJT> I just heard some mention on the news this evening about them going to
 RJT> talk about who's crossing the border _into_ Iraq to do all this stuff
 RJT> that's being done to our guys over there.  

 RJT> Maybe border control should be a little bit higher priority?

 WC> Over there, good luck. Logistical nightmare.

At least.  And *somebody* should've been looking at this stuff before we
went in there...  Don't they pay enough bureaucrats to have had somebody
look at this issue?  Or even the logistics of the situation in general?



 WC> Perhaps George got the wrong country?
 WC> Perhaps Bush family ties to Saudi oil influenced George's choices 
 WC> too?

 RJT> One wonders what factors went into all of the decisions...

 WC> From my POV years of heavy alcohol abuse leading to wet brain 
 WC> syndrome and a desire to enrich the elite few at the expense of 
 WC> the vast majority.

Hey,  that seems to describe an awful lot of the politicians out there
these days,  particularly at the federal level.  Teddy K comes to mind
right off,  but I'm sure there are lots of others as well.

 WC> Now George W. is on about his overtime wage cutting bill which 
 WC> will deprive a whole lot of workers of a living wage.

 WC> I worked at a company where I made a huge amount of money in 
 WC> overtime for five years.
 WC> In that time they experimented with a second shift printer and 
 WC> every time it winded up costing them far more in printing plate 
 WC> costs, machine downtime, parts costs, quality control and machine 
 WC> shop costs to maintain the printers rose dramatically.

 WC> During one of these experiments they almost lost the Walmart 
 WC> account which was a *very* substantial part of their sales.

I guess it would be.

 WC> Seems Walmart is rather picky about the universal product bar 
 WC> codes on products they purchase actually scanning at checkout.

Yeah,  it works better when it works the way it's supposed to.  :-)

 WC> I got them that Walmart account  and after they send some twenty 
 WC> tractor trailer loads of product their way every couple days I 
 WC> begin to suspect my overtime costs were not hurting the company 
 WC> too badly.

Heh.

 WC> BTW I later cut my overtime when I realized it was putting me into 
 WC> a higher tax bracket and most of the extra money I'd been making 
 WC> just went for more taxes out of my check.

I hate it when that happens!

 WC> On his own I don't believe George W. Bush capable of keeping a 
 WC> Burger King in the black for a year let alone keep his oath of 
 WC> office to protect the principles of the U.S. Constitution.

 WC> I've got to stop watching the news it's really beginning to anger 
 WC> me.

Hey,  that's the reaction I get to this stuff all the time.  One of the
major reasons I've kept this echo going over the years.  Now if _enough_
people get to feeling that way,  maybe something will happen to change it
for the better.  But most people aren't going to care,  or don't want to
make waves,  or figure that if they just "work the system" as it
stands currently they'll do okay...

---