On Sun, 11 May 2008 07:31:30 -0400, "Roger Long"
wrote:

"Herodotus" wrote

The crazy thing about these paranoid regulations is that I can arrive
by air, get a rental car and drive any bloody place at any bloody time
I so please. I can even buy the materials to make any number of
explosive devices I wish. The only reason I can think of for this
ridculous state of affairs is that it was personally thought up by Mr
Baby Bush himself as I really don't think that anyone else could be so
thick.


It's taken me a while to figure out the rational behind these apparently
crazy regulations that are creeping into every aspect of life in the US.
They actually do make perverted sense.

The idea is to so completely depress tourism and the economy that, in the
case of boats for example, there won't be anyone out on the water except the
terrorists. Homeland security then won't have to sort them out from the
legitimate pleasure boaters. Why would DHS so damage our coastal economy?
Their job is just keeping terrorists out. The economic health of the nation
is someone else's job. It's like when the CIA didn't bother telling the FBI
that the 911 terrorists were in the US because the CIA is only concerned
with things that happen overseas (gross oversimplification but the general
principle).

Bush didn't think this kind of stuff up. After all, it's been pretty well
proven that he doesn't think. He did however establish the top down
directive that terrorism is the the ONLY national agenda. Without the
paranoia created by that environment, he never would have made it to his
second term. Every agency in the government is operating with tunnel vision
on their area of responsibility focused on that directive.

Why is it easier to drive a rental car around picking up fertilizer and
diesel oil with a foreign visa than moving a harmless foreign yacht from the
marina to the fuel dock? Simply because the economic interests hurt by
keeping foreign yachts out of the US aren't large and powerful enough to
raise enough campaign contributions to exert any influence. One dollar -
one vote democracies work differently than real ones. DHS obviously can't
make this kind of thing happen all at once but they keep turning the screws.
US tourism is already suffering but not as badly by normal routes as you
have noticed.

Thank the Constitution that there is an election coming up. Maybe nothing
will change but at least there is an opportunity.

Thanks for the gallows humour Roger but I am confused about your
mention of the Constitution. I thought that you had given all that
away when you so meekly allowed the Patriot Act to be passed as a
temporary measure and then later allowed it to be enshrined in virtual
perpetuity.

I love the constant reminders of the external threat that is always
played over the public address systems at the airports I travel
through when I transit through America about the terrorist threat
being at code orange and the need for vigilance about unattended
baggage. The funny thing is that these are broadcast in the gate
waiting areas after all the bags have supposedly been scanned. Keep
'em scared and you can legislate anything and even admit to torture as
being acceptable. Not even Uncle Adolph admitted to putting his
external threats, the Jews and Communists, in concentration camps.

Damn it! The rest of us used to look at you as the bastion of human
rights and decency.

I for one would welcome a return to sanity as I really would like to
cruise the eastern coast in my own home at leisure and not have to
resort to an RV or motels.

Still, there has been some improvement over the years. Once I used to
queue up at immigration under a sign which said "Aliens" (shades of
little green men). Now I am an "Other passport holder" (s) as opposed
to a "US citizen".

Oh, this time I had a 3 hour wait for planes at the new Dallas Fort
Worth airport. I was really impressed. It was a truly magnificent
place, especially terminal D with the walkable acoustic scuplture.
Great place, great food, very nice and friendly people. There were
even interdenominational rooms for prayer with chapel and mosque
signs and with chairs and prayer rugs and the marked direction of
Meccah on the ceiling - all in the same room. Surprising no Cross but
in its place a modernistic backlit stained glass window. A couple of
people were on their knees at prayer with rosaries when I laid one of
the prayer mats down on the floor. They kindly invited me to coffee
with them afterwards. A very humbling experience. As I said, nice
place, nice people.

BTW. Can't somebody hurry up the presidential elections. I am getting
tired of them on the TV news. Why not just have a quick and simple
vote like we in the ex British colonies do and put Obama in?

cheers and regards
Peter