Dying to Talk with You

I can never fear that things will go far wrong
where common sense has fair play
--Thomas Jefferson

Common sense is not so common
--Voltaire

Always you have to contend with the stupidity of men
--Henry David Thoreau
__________________

Oprah Winfrey is doing more to protect you than Homeland Security, and she's not even sharing in their pork. Her campaign against the use of cell phones and texting while driving will do more to save your life than will the entire Homeland Security apparatus, and she does so more efficiently and intelligently.

Oprah presents the stark facts: A person driving while talking on the phone is four times as likely to have a wreck than is a person legally drunk, regardless of using an earphone. A person texting while driving is eight times more likely to wreck than a drunk.

Texting while driving? Dear God, what could possibly be that important? How can one write and drive? Not just write, but push tiny little buttons at the same time one is supposed to be looking through the windshield and at surrounding mirrors; impossible.

She reports 6,000 deaths annually resulting from such accidents. Four years ago a young woman in a large SUV crashed into my car, ripping the door off. Her first words were, "I didn't SEE you!" She was also legally deaf, and wearing a hearing device.

For perspective, ~3,000 die in the Twin Towers in 2001. No one dies from the efforts of the Shoe Bomber, the Underwear Bomber, Zazi or Padilla. But every day people are being mangled in The Homeland by idiots on cell phones, and most municipalities do nothing to stop the carnage.

The greatest threats facing average Americans have nothing to do with terrorism, but result from our daily behaviors. If one were to have access to figures of annual U.S. victims of terrorists, Ranger will bet the farm it is less than 50.

Compare that to the homicide rate in any major U.S. city. Who would walk the streets of Cleveland, Detroit or any inner city after hours and feel safe? Viewed realistically, terrorism is nothing more than an easily-contained irritant.

Our daily lives present the threat, but we ignore it because terrorism is such great entertainment. The fact that Jack Bauer and the Show "24" is going off the air says terrorism in mainstream; de riguer before it ever really got started. We suffer from terrorist ennui in the same way we do vis-a-vis the real killers, like cell phone-induced wrecks.

As a motorcyclist, Ranger can say that nothing is more terrifying than being run off the road by another driver. That fear has canceled out my life-long love of the machine. The fact is that someone may kill you any never even skip a beat in their tawdry little soap opera life, maybe just for sport, maybe just to create their own little real-world version of Death Race 2000. Entertainment is king in America, after all, and it is becoming a very private, isolated endeavor.

Who in the hell is everyone calling and texting? What is so important that everyone walks around with a device in their hands, or their ears or in front of their face? Does life have so little meaning that this sort of constant verification of existence is necessary?

Calling and texting while driving should be prohibited, and the criminal punishment for violation severe, especially for those who kill or disable another as a result of their recklessness.

If we protected our citizenry in this real-world way, we could dismantle Homeland Security -- a phony agency contrived to provide non-protection against a minor threat to the Homeland, best handled by agencies dealing with foreign and domestic criminal matters.

Homeland Security

Ripley: These people are here to protect you. They're soldiers.
Newt: It won't make any difference.

Frost: It's hot as hell in here.
Hudson: Yeah man, but it's a dry heat!
--Aliens (1986)
________

A little trip down memory lane:

On 2 Mar 71, Ranger was a young captain and redeployed back to CONUS from RVN. This was the Nixon good-faith move that the U.S. was drawing down the war by taking the vaunted 5th Special Forces Group Airborne out of the equation.

The rub, however, was that only 53 of us brought the colors back home to good old Ft. Bragg. On 2 Mar 71 everybody wearing the Green Beret in RVN merely changed their headgear and became an element of USArmy VN -- USARV. Nice sham.

The SF left RVN, yet all the men remained behind, left in contact with the NVA/VC. Well, it played well in Peoria.

So here we are, 17 Oct 07, and the Army is making much out of drawing down a single combat Brigade. Ranger wonders if all the personnel will make it back to home station, or will they simply be absorbed by other formations? Just something to consider.

In "Military Sets Iraq Drawdown," the following quote reveals a disconnect in CI logic as practiced by today's Army:

The shift in Diyala in December could be a model for follow-on reductions next year, with a redrawing of the U.S. lines of responsibility so that a departing brigade has its battle space consumed by a remaining brigade. At the same time, Iraqi security forces would assume greater responsibility.

The Army obviously and understandably considers its occupied space as battle space. . . but, what else? Of course, where else would warriors hang out? Yet miraculously, when our warriors vacate this battle space, somehow it seems to morph magically into something Iraqi security forces can handle. Poof!

Wouldn't it be more instructive to consider this battle space (pardon Ranger, but the term battle space really cranks up my amps) the country of Iraq, or the city of Baghdad, or "their homeland"? Iraqis live, breathe and occupy these battle spaces. These are their homes and neighborhoods.

U.S. troops would best serve the Iraqis by giving them back their own backyards.

They have had more than enough of U.S. battle space.

On a Wing and Prayer

The trains all run on time here
Got such a straight and narrow mind here

The things he says are always right
The things he sees are black and white

--Paper Tiger, by All

__________

Atlanta resident Andrew Speaker--he of the deadly, drug-resistant Tuberculosis--is yet another case of why you should be very concerned about the paper tiger known as Homeland Security.

Mr. Speaker was a compliant, known carrier of the deadly virus, but our Centers for Disease Control dithered for days on deciding whether to issue Mr. Speaker a ''no-fly'' order. Health officials knew he intended to leave for Greece, but by the time they decided to serve him with the order, he was already gone. Now the CDC is backtracking, trying to find passengers who sat near him on two trans-Atlantic flights last month.

It seems Homeland Security is flying by the seat of their pants versus an established protocol. As Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote, ''Aren't these the same bureaucrats who are charged with handling something much more serious, such as an outbreak of bird flu? (Inept Public Health Agencies Don't Inspire Trust.)''

''It is a tale of public health agencies that remain indecisive and inept, despite years of planning for crises.''

The CDC had a committed jet which could have flown Mr. Speaker from Italy to the hospital in Denver which could treat his case. Instead, officials dithered again on whether to provide the transport. Mr. Speaker, fearing permanent quarantine in Italy, took it upon himself to board a jet to Montreal, where he then rented a car and drove back to the States, finally turning himself in in New York. There were passport warnings, yet he also eluded international border checks.

So, while our czars map out future bio-pandemics as potential excuses for applying martial law, allowing them to further consolidate their power over the citizenry, they again fail to address the actual threats which present themselves, failing to actually keep us safe.

Yes, Andrew Speaker was only one infected air traveler, but the incident clearly indicates flaws in contingency planning for such hazardous situations. Not a jet could be found to neutralize this bio-hazard impersonating an Atlanta lawyer.

Yet the U.S. can find commercial jets at the drop of a burka to provide extraordinary rendition to secret prisons in secret locations.

How do you spell Homeland Security?

Any Road

If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there
--English proverb

The trouble with our age is that it is all signposts and no destination
--The War Cry

I believe... that security declines as security machinery expands
--E.B. White

The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenseless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenseless against ourselves
--Arnold Toynbee
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Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times was as good an accompaniment as any for a bit about a society gone mad, turning gears for gears' sake.

Just to get a little perspective: We can confiscate vats of little shampoo and water bottles at the airports, yet we can't deal with a crazed student with a gun. A student who had given years of prodigious evidence as to his violent instability, to boot.

Just think--if the students had only had their deadly ballistic fingernail clippers which were confiscated on their last trip through the airport on their Spring break, they might have had a fighting chance.

What a farce and a boondoggle is Homeland security. We don't even begin to understand the concept of security because we can't define the threat. My guess is, the threat clearly doesn't go to church on Sunday. Oops, except in Cho's case.

--by Lisa