Exploding Underwear and Other Bad Ideas

I'm seeing spots in front of my eyes this week, as my mind reels from the bizarre and absurd and just plain frickin' annoying things that have been going on. A wannabe terrorist crams plastic explosives into his undies but is too inept (thank God) to set them off without alerting the surrounding passengers who (thank God) put some major hurt on the almost-bomber, stopping his efforts -- a fine act by the passengers, but the entire scenario makes me think we're being toyed with, distracted by "incompetent" terrorists, etc., to lower our expectations about what they're capable of doing. If we become lulled into thinking that our enemies, in particular those bent on suicide terrorist acts, are bumbling idiots, then the high-skilled well-focused highly-destructive plans that we SHOULD be aware of but aren't, continue to ramp up undetected. We need to beware scurrying around after these possible "decoys" and investing huge amounts of manpower and money on them instead of the larger scale threats under development.

It reminds me of "spamming" and "junk email" events going on by the billions of incidents daily: According to CIA, FBI and other knowledgeable evaluations, most of these are in reality well-organized Middle East and Asian web-attack centers with high-skill teams who are TESTING the boundaries, poking the perimeter, wiggling the fences, and steadily determining our most electronic vulnerabilities. Plus, they're effectively costing America BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in lost productivity in the workplace and throughout industries of all kinds, as that spam/junk email must be dealt with by employees, IT departments, webmasters, companies security systems and teams, etc. And because that Internet Tsunami "looks" like nothing more than aggravating nonsense selling products for sexual performance, Nigerian money transfers, get rich quick schemes and the like, we aren't paying enough attention to what it all is really doing, in damaging our economy and weakening/draining resources from our private and public sectors. Decoys, folks, decoys.

And don't EVEN get me started on the TSA policies ... travel over the holidays included various flights to various states other than Florida. We milquetoast white folks who were polite and nice were always the ones singled out for extra security checking, no doubt because we'd behave and not kick up a ruckus (including several very elderly paleskins in wheel chairs, no kidding, watched it myself -- not an internet myth). Meanwhile, surly, shifty-eyed, foreign, grumbling mumbling types who are probably on all kinds of "watch lists" just shuttled on through unnoticed, unchallenged and undelayed (no doubt how the exploding underwear guy was ignored as well). Ridiculous! Obscene in its political correctness.

And as an unrelated but incredibly annoying postscript related to increased traffic on the roadways (or perhaps traffic in general all the time): all you morons in the left lane of traffic going fifteen miles an hour under the posted speed limit, MOVE OVER and let that line of cars behind you go by!!! Hey, Florida DOT -- make it a law that any and all cell phone use in a car must be HANDS FREE devices only! Stupid parents with loose children in their vehicles, STRAP 'EM IN SEAT BELTS! Lady putting on your lipstick while swerving around, WAIT TO DO THAT AT A RED LIGHT you nitwit!