As everyone was made well-aware by many of cable news networks, the terror alert level was raised to “orange” around the holiday season. The purpose of the terror alert scale is to heighten the awareness of Americans to suspicious activity that could be terror related.
Well, according to ABC News, the FBI has just revealed the newest secret weapon of terrorists worldwide: almanacs. If your neighbor is engaging in suspicious activity and you know him or her to own an almanac, please notify the authorities immediately.
I can’t wait until I get pulled over by a cop. I can see it now, he comes up to the window, “License and registration. Sir, do you have any almanacs in the car? Yeah, I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the car.”
How did almanacs get bad names in the first place? Well, they contain information about landmarks, high-population cities and terrorist targets. The crazy part is that that information can be found in other locations, such as the Internet. I think one just needs to step back and look at the whole picture.
Almost everyday we hear that the chances of a terrorist attack are strong, although President Bush is trying his hardest to beef up security.
Speaking of beefing up security, recently the Bush administration began a program that fingerprints and photographs all visitors to America. Well, not all visitors. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, travelers from 27 foreign nations, almost exclusively European countries, will not participate. Remember the guy who hid plastic explosives in his shoes and tried to detonate them during a flight? Yeah, he’s English. Many of the hijackers from the horrible events of Sept. 11th made stopovers in Germany and other European countries before making their way into this country to begin their reign of terror.
This strikes me as a very ineffective way to prevent the entry of terrorists, but I don’t think that is a concern of those who are responsible for it.
Fear is sowed in the minds of shocked Americans and then everyone runs to big, tough Mr. Bush, Jr. His administration then pumps out some legislation that won’t really solve anything. The administration then makes it look fancy and gives it a cool name that sounds great, but the name couldn’t be more misleading.
Take the Patriot Act for instance. It has the power to effectively take away citizenship from Americans without trial. The Patriot Act was given new powers on the same day that Saddam Hussein was captured according to the San Antonio Current. Must be a coincidence that a controversial piece of legislation was expanded on a news day that certainly wasn’t slow.
Bush has signed one other bill in the past year on a Saturday and that one directly affected the operation of the federal government on the next business day. So why the hurry, George? Don’t bother to answer, maybe Homeland Security is not your thing. What is? The economy?
Huge deficits that my generation will have to pay interest on, hundreds of thousands of people who have to give up looking for jobs because there aren’t any available capable of supporting a family and small tax breaks that mask increased expenditures, such as college tuition.
Maybe not? You must be making great strides in foreign relations? I think we all know how that went —- “freedom fries” in government cafeterias.
Health care then, you must have improved health care? Oh, you spent all that money on the war? Sorry, I forgot. With that record, re-election might take a huge campaign. He may have that started but he’s probably not going to be getting any donations from The Farmer’s Almanac.
E-mail Russ with your comments and questions to [email protected].
