At what point humiliation?

Homeland insecurity

Chertoff has recently been busy rubbishing Martin Broughton, the wise British Airways chairman who said many security checks were redundant — calling him “ill-informed.” Early this year Chertoff called on Congress to “fund a large-scale deployment of next-generation systems.”

Rapiscan and its adviser the Chertoff Group will certainly profit from the deployment underway (some of the machines were bought with funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act). Americans as a whole will not.

Chertoff in my opinion is a buffoon. Remember he was the one who told us to use duct tape and plastic to seal ourselves in place in the event of a chemical or biological attack. That's not even standard operating procedure for first responders or emergency response personnel. Depending on room and family size you'd have about 45 minutes or less of air before your demise. In essence what Chertoff was telling us was to drop dead.

Fear can only be sold for so long and it appears that those in power are far more fearful than the average American. Let's take inventory. Since 911 we've had the shoe bomber, the underpants bomber, and threats from bottle bombs. All of these threats happened overseas and were the result of lapses in security there not in the U.S. Bin Ladin must be chuckling from his undisclosed location as we jump at every turn with the next scheme. It's almost to the point where such plots need not be carried out but merely be leaked for Homeland Security to impose the next humiliation on the masses. What's next? Please place your jacket in the bin. Remove your shoes. Remove your pants and bend over for inspection. When someone comes up with an anal insert bomb then the airlines would be finished.

And at what price do we pay for this sense of security? Spending trillions of dollars in two wars doesn't sound too prudent when this country is in recession. It's sure not helping to move the economy as it did in WWII unless your part of the arms market. Then there's the loss of life and limb from our troops. The total price will not be realized for years to come as yet more bases are built and the effects of PTSD and rehabing our troops are factored.
Lastly there's the funding. Funny how there's always money to fund the military but never any to help the unemployed or uninsured. And all of that military funding was done off the books as if it didn't count yet we'll have to pay for it later.

Update: No bank fails this week.