9 years later...

A great piece by Fareek Zakaria on the true costs of 9/11.

Top Secret America

The Washington Post has a very interesting feature this week called Top Secret America.  It appears a few of their reporters spent a couple years investigating the government's response to 9/11 and the large amount of money being spent on top secret activities.  While this was compiled using publicly available data, there are now questions as to whether the consolidated report would be considered classified using the controversial "mosaic theory".  It is very interesting reading, considering we have now spent over $1T on anti-terrorism measures.

This is very alarming to me, when you take into account that very, very few people are killed or harmed by terrorists.

Phelps gets off

Michael Phelps won't be charged.

Now what needs to be done is to fire that idiotic South Carolina Sheriff, Leon Lott, for wasting taxpayer money going after a true hero.

Does Sarah Palin Speak in Tongues? And a new scandal

Sarah Palin just may belong to the looniest part of the fundamentalist Christian movement.  It is now being reported that she is a pentecostal, a group that is known to speak in tongues.

They also believe in faith healing.  Maybe she'll bring some snakes to the Whitehouse too!  Yes, Pentecostals are that same religious group that handles snakes.  This would extreme to even Pat Robertson.

Regardless of whether she speaks in tongues, it seems that she always speaks corruption.  She has been billing the state for her kid's trips.  Now, I understand that when you have 5 kids, you might want to keep some of them with you while you travel, but that should be on your own dime, not the taxpayers'.  She also billed the taxpayers to pay for her meals while she was in her own house.  I thought she was supposed to be a fiscal conservative!

A Bad Week for Airlines

This past week, three airlines went out of business.  Two of them had been around for over 30 years.

Aloha Airlines, ATA, and SkyBus are no longer with us.  While I have never flown any of these airlines before, the latter two went under extremely quickly, with little warning.  I think that while the rest of our airlines are having issues, none of the large carriers like Delta, NWA, USAir, etc are going to go under anytime soon.

The one transportation company that should be going under is Amtrak.  The government company that almost nobody uses refuses to die, mostly because politicians with a toy-train fetish keep it alive.  Who in god's name would take a train from NYC to Los Angeles, a 3 day journey that would cost several hundred dollars for a seat, and over $2,000 for a bedroom one way!!!  Considering that I could fly on an airline such as Virgin Atlantic which offers free TV and MP3's (which Amtrak does not have) for $250 (round trip).

So, now that we all agree that the choo-choo should die, let's write our congressmen and tell them to introduce a bill to save the taxpayers over $1B a year (unfortunately we spend that much in Iraq in 3 days) and stop funding Amtrak.  The Acela, the "high speed" (1/2 the speed of the TGV in France) train will likely survive, as it rides from DC to NYC to Boston, but who honestly would ever hop on that train from NYC to LA?

Quote of the day

"It was a tremendous waste of time and manpower, but we still had a job to do, and our officers did it."

-Kronenwetter Police Chief Daniel Joling, speaking about the raid of a root beer party.

$1.2B down the drain

The fact that we have an aircraft that costs $1.2 billion is bad enough.  

The fact that it can't stay in the air makes it even worse.  At least the pilots survived, unlike the poor fucks who are lucky enough to fly in the Osprey.