by Michael Ramirez 12/30/09
I think the whole Detroit terrorist thing is being blown out of proportion. I feel the reason security sucks at the airport is because TSA is the stupidest department ever created and the people who work for them are your average people. Average people, after awhile, tend to start slacking off. "Now wait a minute," you might say. "The post office also hires regular people and they do just fine." And they do. But the post office works because the post office is for regular people. Security at airports needs to be handled by security firms hired by the airports and the airlines, not the government that way when/if something does happen, there is a layer of accountability. The way it's set up now it's a circle of blaming: airport blames security, security blames government, government blames security so security blames airport. By using an accredited security firm hired by the airport or airline, we know who to blame if this happens again.
by Rob Rogers 1/1/10
It's only a decade of terror because we made it a decade of terror. We could not watch any speech made by President Bush or nearly any Republican without them evoking 9/11 or alluding to it at some point. Riddle me this, stuff is blown up all the time in the Middle East (Israel and Palestine in particular) but when something blows up there, they immediately rebuild as a way to say "You may have blown us up but we are still here". Now look at the World Trade Center site. It's still a hole! It's tangled up in a mass of red tape caused by the Port Authority and lack of funds. But I guess it's your right to walk around scared of every Arab you see walking down the street and fearing that your small town of 60 in Nebraska is Ground Zero in the next 9/11-type attack but I won't. I have more important things to do.
by Matt Bors 12/28/09
I was reading through the government's recovery.gov website and one of the jobs the stimulus kept was half a job. Half a job? Really? Anyway, I'm not completely blaming Obama (although I did at least have a job while Bush was president) but I do blame him for not being tougher on all of this. Yeah, road and bridge projects are great but I am not qualified for construction jobs nor is anyone else I know. Sure, I could probably do it but when that project was done, I'd be laid off because I wouldn't be a good enough worker. In the 1940s, for a WPA project, Kansas made a whole set of books about their ghost towns (the Dead Town List). Why can't stuff like that be funded or something similar where histories of states and towns are preserved. I know a couple museums around here that could use some money to help catalog stuff.
by Marshall Ramsey 12/31/09
And thus we say good-bye to 2009, one of the worst years I have ever been around. I am more upset about the economy and the lay offs than I am about H1N1 but I understand what Ramsey is saying. Happy New Year everyone. Hope this decade is better than the last.
