Cogitamus

Life in the USA - A Photo Album

Library Book Returned -- Finally, Some Good News!

For 64-year library delinquent, return is better late than never

Charming story in today's Baltimore Sun about an 84-year-old just-post-WW-II veteran who's been living abroad all these years and is finally returning a book to the Enoch Pratt Free Library (first free library system in the country).

Reminds me of the hilarious Library episode from Seinfeld, where this actor, Philip Baker Hall, as "Bookman," does one of the best comic monologues in the history of television:

(Oops -- the embed code has been disabled, so you'll have to click on this link, which takes you directly to YouTube, to watch it.)

Pilot Punished for Pointing Out TSA is a Farce

Sacramento area pilot punished for YouTube video

SACRAMENTO, CA - An airline pilot is being disciplined by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for posting video on YouTube pointing out what he believes are serious flaws in airport security.

The 50-year-old pilot, who lives outside Sacramento, asked that neither he nor his airline be identified. He has worked for the airline for more than a decade and was deputized by the TSA to carry a gun in the cockpit.

He is also a helicopter test pilot in the Army Reserve and flew missions for the United Nations in Macedonia.

Three days after he posted a series of six video clips recorded with a cell phone camera at San Francisco International Airport, four federal air marshals and two sheriff's deputies arrived at his house to confiscate his federally-issued firearm. The pilot recorded that event as well and provided all the video to News10.

At the same time as the federal marshals took the pilot's gun, a deputy sheriff asked him to surrender his state-issued permit to carry a concealed weapon.

A follow-up letter from the sheriff's department said the CCW permit would be reevaluated following the outcome of the federal investigation.

The YouTube videos, posted Nov. 28, show what the pilot calls the irony of flight crews being forced to go through TSA screening while ground crew who service the aircraft are able to access secure areas simply by swiping a card.

"As you can see, airport security is kind of a farce. It's only smoke and mirrors so you people believe there is actually something going on here," the pilot narrates.

. . . The pilot's attorney, Don Werno of Santa Ana, said he believed the federal government sent six people to the house to send a message.  "And the message was you've angered us by telling the truth and by showing America that there are major security problems despite the fact that we've spent billions of dollars allegedly to improve airline safety," Werno said . . . .

DHS and Walmart: A Match Made in Heaven

In a perfect melding of the Keystone Kops Meet O'Brien, Janet Napolitano is coming to a Walmart near you.  Her video, urging "If You See Something, Say Something," is rolling out at W emporia all across the country:

The message will be continuously looped on TV monitors at the 588 Walmarts in the U.S.  One can only imagine the hilarity that will ensue when one gun-buying customer doesn't like the looks of another.  But then maybe Napolitano doesn't really know the People of Walmart that well, after all.

"Report suspicious activity to your local police or sheriff.  If you need help, ask a Walmart manager for assistance.”  Ah, yes, ask a manager for assistance!  Next time you get in a tug-of-war with another customer over the last Game Boy in the store, just report that sucker to management for "suspicious activity."

Espionage Act: How the Government Can Engage in Serious Aggression Against the People of the United States by Naomi Wolf

Ballgame just brought this column by Naomi Wolf to our attention in another thread, but I think it deserves its own post.  Excerpt (bolds mine):

. . . These two Senators, and the rest of the Congressional and White House leadership who are coming forward in support of this appalling development, are cynically counting on Americans' ignorance of their own history -- an ignorance that is stoked and manipulated by those who wish to strip rights and freedoms from the American people. They are manipulatively counting on Americans to have no knowledge or memory of the dark history of the Espionage Act -- a history that should alert us all at once to the fact that this Act has only ever been used -- was designed deliberately to be used -- specifically and viciously to silence people like you and me.

The Espionage Act was crafted in 1917 -- because President Woodrow Wilson wanted a war and, faced with the troublesome First Amendment, wished to criminalize speech critical of his war. In the run-up to World War One, there were many ordinary citizens -- educators, journalists, publishers, civil rights leaders, union activists -- who were speaking out against US involvement in the war. The Espionage Act was used to round these citizens by the thousands for the newly minted 'crime' of their exercising their First Amendment Rights. A movie producer who showed British cruelty in a film about the Revolutionary War (since the British were our allies in World War I) got a ten-year sentence under the Espionage act in 1917, and the film was seized; poet E.E. Cummings spent three and a half months in a military detention camp under the Espionage Act for the 'crime' of saying that he did not hate Germans. Esteemed Judge Learned Hand wrote that the wording of the Espionage Act was so vague that it would threaten the American tradition of freedom itself. Many were held in prison for weeks in brutal conditions without due process; some, in Connecticut -- Lieberman's home state -- were severely beaten while they were held in prison. The arrests and beatings were widely publicized and had a profound effect, terrorizing those who would otherwise speak out.

. . . I call on all American citizens to rise up and insist on repeal of the Espionage Act immediately. We have little time to waste. The Assange assault is theater of a particularly deadly kind, and America will not recover from the use of the Espionage Act as a cudgel to threaten journalists, editors and news outlets with. I call on major funders of Feinstein's and Lieberman's campaigns to put their donations in escrow accounts and notify the staffers of those Senators that the funds willonly be released if they drop their traitorous invocation of the Espionage Act. I call on all Americans to understand once for all: this is not about Julian Assange. This, my fellow citizens, is about you . . . .

The American Dream

Welcome to Your Police State - Grand Central NYC

Uh. Does anyone know why the TSA is performing random bag searches at the Grand Central Terminal subway hub?
posted by @metalia from Twitter for iPhone 23 hours 38 mins ago

Here's the URL.

UPDATE:  Well, this has been going since April.  But I guess since so few people give a shit, as you'll see from the chipper comments in the article, it barely caused a ripple.  Oh, well.  The horse left the barn long ago.

Oh, well . . .

Well, I've been saying it from the beginning.  But what the hell.

Next step for scanners trains, bus, metro, says Napolitano

By Jordy Yager - 11/23/10 02:09 PM ET

Man Arrested for Videotaping TSA Officials While Stripping Down to his Underwear

Another brave soul.  Bravo!

Man Arrested for Videotaping TSA Officials While Stripping Down to his Underwear

In clear contradiction of what Transportation Security Administration officials have stated in the past, a man was arrested for videotaping TSA officials at San Diego International Airport Friday.

Sam Wolanyk was also charged with "failing to complete the security process" - even though he seemed more than happy to allow them to search him when he stripped down to his underwear.

Wolanyk initially was asked to step into the see-through scanner, but opted to have them pat him down instead.

That was when he stripped down to his underwear . . . 

Wolanyk was then paraded through two terminals in his underwear. At one point during this interaction, he videotaped TSA officials with his iPhone, which was confiscated.

The incident was confirmed by Harbor Police Sergeant Rakos who said Wolanyk was arrested on two misdemeanors, “failing to complete the security process; violation code 7.01 and illegally recording the San Diego Airport Authority (they confiscated his iPhone); violation number 7.14 (a).”

 It is not clear which "violation codes" he violated. A search though severalSan Diego city and county codes did not produce anything remotely close to what is listed above . . . .

Young Boy Searched (though not "stripsearched" as header says)

Quoting videographer:  

****** THIS VIDEO OCCURRED AT SALT LAKE CITY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT ON NOVEMBER 19TH AT AROUND THE TIME OF 12 PM **********

Lets get the facts straight first. Before the video started the boy went through a metal detector and didn't set it off but was selected for a pat down. The boy was shy so the TSA couldn't complete the full pat on the young boy. The father tried several times to just hold the boys arms out for the TSA agent but i guess it didn't end up being enough for the guy. I was about 30 ft away so i couldn't hear their conversation if there was any. The enraged father pulled his son shirt off and gave it to the TSA agent to search, thats when this video begins. 

FIVE WORDS

FIVE WORDS:

Philip Zimbardo.

Stanford Prison Experiment.

Be gone, ye evil comedians!

This is turning out to be a copy-&-paste day.  Excerpt from internal memo posted at the media compendium Poynter Online:

* NPR journalists may not participate in marches and rallies involving causes or issues that NPR covers, nor should they sign petitions or otherwise lend their name to such causes, or contribute money to them. This restriction applies to the upcoming John Stewart and Stephen Colbert rallies.

No word on whether a similar memo was issued before the Glenn Beck rally.  Odds, anyone?

Christine O'Donnell Gives Us A Math Lesson

Now, now, naughty children, I know you may not have done all your math homework in school and therefore might not appreciate the elegance of the Transitive Property, but lucky for you the ever-magical Christine O'Donnell (with a little help from Stephen Colbert) can explain it all.  I don't know which is better, the demonstration of the property itself or the debating skills bit that precedes it.  You decide:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Transitive Property of Christine O'Donnell
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election March to Keep Fear Alive

Welcome to Baltimore, Hon

 
When people from other parts of the country ask me what Baltimore is like, I always refer to John Waters movies.  "It's just like that," I say.  "His movies aren't fiction; they're real.  That's Baltimore."

I've always reveled in my adopted city's wonderful wackiness, its eccentricities, its characters.  And hoo-boy, are there characters.  (One of them, Divine, lived in my house, long before I moved to Baltimore; I still use the original tub in which his divinity bathed.)

Our Fair City's charms are so inspiring, apparently, that Second City has come to town to check them out.  The fruits of the troupe's labors will be on display from December 30th to February 20th.  I, for one, can't wait to see what they come up with.

More TSA Abuses: Woman Beaten; 71-year-old man & 16-year-old girl groped, stripped

Just another day in the USA!

"We are your neighbors, friends, and relatives"*

 
*first words on the TSA website

I just got back from a business trip requiring me to fly through BWI (Baltimore-Washington International). BWI was one of the first airports in the country to implement the TSA strip-search scanners, but it's the most convenient airport for me. Besides, as the TSA itself tells us in several different places on its website, "advanced imaging technology screening is optional to all passengers."

Many of us on this blog have already discussed the bullshit-o-rama that is airport security, especially the pointless and invasive strip-search scanners. Costing taxpayers billions of dollars, they are the biggest boondoggle to come down the pike in a long time. Like so many of the other procedures we go through at airport checkpoints, they don't make us any safer, they just provide a showy bit of theater in which we all play our parts: we pretend we're actually doing something to protect ourselves from The Terrorists. Because The Terrorists are always On The Verge of Getting Us.

So of course I was prepared to step into my starring role along with everyone else, except that I knew I was going to decline the strip-search scanner.

Presidential Bons Mots

Language is the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl

Via comments on different Reddit threads, a delightful and hilarious double bill on language - if you're into that kind of thing. (I am.)

This video, mocking the "meaningless, guttural sounds" of the Danish language, is (the YouTube description says) from a Norwegian TV show called Uti Vår Hage:

This video, meanwhile, is from a somewhat ancient A Bit of Fry and Laurie episode - recall that bygone fixture on the evening program? The visual quality is admittedly shopworn, but the words still string together like a caravanserai of radioactive fava beans on the prowl:

Great Depression Cooking with Clara

She's the newest hot babe on the internet (and though this has nothing to do with anything, observant women out there will notice that even at age 93, Clara's skin is beautiful and looks years younger -- that's from not frying herself in the sun!). 

Her grandson started taping her two years ago, when she was 91, just for the family, but then posted the videos on YouTube.  She's become a sensation.  CBS did this charming story on her recently; sample video below.  (I confess that, being the daughter of a Depression-era mother, I grew up with this kind of cooking, and still practice it today.)

Baltimore Stardust

      

Okay, okay, you know how it is:  we all like to lay claim to a little bit of glory now and then, and to bask in the glow -- well, in this case, blinding light -- generated by a hometown hunk hero.  I'm no different.  Michael Phelps grew up four miles from where I live, near where we take our kitties to the vet; he used to eat breakfast at this little place on 32nd & Greenmount, a few blocks from our house; and no, we've never run into him:

      

And I just found out he bought a house in a beloved neighborhood called Fells Point.  So after Beijing it's Baltimore-bound the boy will be!

We're all bursting with pride here in Charm City.  And yes, I'll probably go to the celebratory parade to see him, along with thousands of other starstruck fans, camera in tow, cheering and screaming and tearing up with the rest of them.  In a world of misery and cynicism, it's wonderful to be able to watch hard work and sheer talent in action.  Congratulations, Michael Phelps.  And thank you.

Cheesecake That Won't Make You Fat

I admit to having had a wee bit of the vapors when I watched HBO's new series Generation Kill the other night.  Not because of the subject matter -- the Iraq War -- and not because of the at times tedious demonstrations of Cooped-Up-Male Behavior, which I am more than willing to overlook because David Simon and Ed Burns created this series and they can do no wrong.  No, it was because of the appearance of one Rudy Reyes, real name of both real person and fictional character. 

Be still my beating heart.

Okay, I've purposely posted only a thumbnail here instead of the picture in all its full-blown glory, in case you, too, gentle reader, are induced to a quickening of the heart or a raising of the blood pressure, whether from an assault on your aesthetic senses or your political ones.  Before you scream, please note, first, that 100% of the proceeds from this go to a good cause -- wounded Iraq veterans and their families (and yes, I know the calendar is out of date, but hey, think of it as a collector's item; since Generation Kill started airing, they'll probably be sold out in no time flat); and second, I also posted, many moons ago, this calendar, which, as it happens, is still up to date and on sale to boot.  So equal opportunity and all that.

R.I.P. Cyd Charisse

Unquestionably the most beautiful, sexy, elegant, mesmerizing, classy dancer in Hollywood history.  I feel inadequate to express what so many us feel today upon learning of the death of this dance icon.  86 years old and a class act to the end.  Ave atque vale, beautiful lady.

I'm In Telly Heaven*

*With closed captions.

Quick!

If you've got cable TV, run over to your set right now and switch on BBC-America.  They're broadcasting a Monty Python's Flying Circus marathon all day, until dinner time, so fans like me can shun the humidity and blazing May sun hovering outside and bask instead in the wonderful wit and absurdity of my country's Best Comedy Export Ever. (And you have to admit, we've sent you guys some good stuff over the past few decades, haven't we?!)

Wow, where have the last thirty-four years gone? I remember watching the Pythons for the first time when I was in high school in Miami; it was love at first belly-laugh. My friend Vicky gave me The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief--a 33rpm vinyl album (remember those?)-- for Christmas that year, and when Monty Python and the Holy Grail premiered in Coral Gables, we waited in line for hours so as to be among the first in South Florida to see the now-legendary (and eminently quotable) movie.

I love all of those comedians, too, so please don't ask me to name a favorite Python.  I will say I'm terribly fond of Terry Gilliam, the artist and lone American-born member of the troupe who went on to direct some of my all-time favorite movies, including the stunning Brazil, Time Bandits, 12 Monkeys, and The Fisher King.  Interestingly, Gilliam, who for thirty years held both British and American passports, told Der Speigel in 2006 that he had renounced his American citizenship in protest of George W. Bush (if you follow that link, you'll need to be able to read German if you want to make heads or tails of it.)

My favorite sketches?  Oh...let's see.  Cheese Shop, The Four Yorkshiremen, Albatross, and the famous Dead Parrot sketch--the well-known ones--are all up there, of course. And the swanning-about drill team (posted above) never fails to elicit shrieks of laughter in my house.

Screw This Up Again, Pal--We'll Send You Over to Fox News

Now with footage of Bill O'Reilly's producer.  Ahem.  Oh, but this is beautiful--O'Reilly must be praying for the earth to crack open and swallow him whole at this point. Or perhaps not, shameless hack that he is.

Robert and I caught this video at the end of Countdown, when the fabulous Rachel Maddow, who was guest-hosting tonight, introduced it; we literally shrieked and doubled over with laughter.

Not safe for work or children, which, come to think of it, are one and the same, no?

Enjoy.

By BarelyPolitical

Also at litbrit.

Uncommon Sense

Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom.  But the tumult soon subsides.  Time makes more converts than reason.

These words open Thomas Paine's first pamphlet, published anonymously in 1776, called Common Sense, a call to action by the American colonies against the tyranny of the British monarchy.

Now, over 230 years later, Paine's words are being invoked again, against a different kind of tyranny.  Five writers who have worked on, among other things, the stellar HBO series The Wire, the finale of which will air on Sunday night, have written a column for Time magazine decrying the so-called war on drugs.  Ed Burns, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, and David Simon declare that if they were ever to be seated on a jury in a non-violent drug case, they would automatically vote to acquit.

Yes, of course, that declaration now guarantees that none of them will ever be seated on a jury in a drug case -- or probably any other kind of case -- but the point is that they have come out publicly against the idiocy of the drug policy in this country, and will, perhaps, prompt other citizens to likewise examine it.  As they correctly point out, no politician, Democrat or Republican, has the guts to do it. 

One, I recall, though, did.  And was pilloried for it.