Monday, July 29, 2002

I ran for president once. Now I can't make it past airport security. [OpinionJournal] When I go to an airport these days I don't worry about a terrorist bomb. I've been flying steadily and unsteadily for 60 years, beginning with my days as a bomber pilot in World War II. I've always known that a bomb in somebody's suitcase could blow up the plane I was on, just as I knew every day in 1943-45 could be my last. No one can ever take all the risk out of flying. On the wrong day you can even be hit by a drunken driver going to or from the airport. But what terrifies me at the airports now is not the terrorists or drunks. It is the fear that I won't be able to get through all the checkpoints, or that my car will be seized for parking within a mile of the airport, or that I will have forgotten my identity card, or that I'll forget one of my shoes while my toes are being examined for explosives, or that my foot odor will offend some examiner and get me arrested as a public nuisance. I worry that the little nail-clippers in my toilet article bag will be detected by the X-ray machine and get me arrested as a threat to the pilot and flight crew. But most of all I worry about missing the deadline for being checked in, rechecked and checked again before finally reaching my assigned seat flustered, humiliated and exhausted. The author, George McGovern, was the Democratic candidate for President in 1972. It's interesting to note that he sounds like a modern Republican. comment () trackback ()  12:25:42 PM     The "Truth" About Second Hand Smoke: Which"Truths" Are More Truthful?. Dragomire at Kuro5hin - The "Truth" About Second Hand Smoke: Which"Truths" Are More Truthful? - The 1993 EPA study, claiming that so-called second-hand smoke is harmful, was seriously flawed. But you knew that. [kuro5hin] [End the War on Freedom] The article is a lengthy discussion of the flaws in the EPA study, but the reactions of the readers are more interesting. It's amusing to compare the posts from anti-smokers (which generally display a great deal of hatred and irrationality) to the posts by smokers. comment () trackback ()  10:05:08 AM     Liberal lunacy always blames things, not people. After a particularly gruesome mass murder in the Middle East, the website for the moderately conservative Fox News Channel headlined the news story with the simple but accurate proclamation: BOMBER KILLS 17 IN ISRAEL. Over at CNN, however, the politically correct panderers announced the story with a subtle but crucial difference: "BOMB KILLS 17," their headline declared. [...] Nothing describes and discredits left-wing lunacy of the moment more precisely than the discomfort of its advocates with any questions of morality or values. When your outlook makes it impossible to blame the individual for his own horrible deeds, then it leads inevitably to the fatuous notion that bombs, rather than bombers, commit mass murder. [WorldNetDaily] comment () trackback ()  9:12:06 AM

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