Chemistry 101

[filkertom]

Jayzus H. Christ on a bicycle.

Even if you completely buy into everything the Bush Administration has ever said about terrorism, this is just insanely stupid and incompetent. And, if you don't... it's right in line with every other damn thing.

Comments

[renquestor.livejournal.com]

*Shakes head*
You know, this level of idiocy shouldn't surprise me, but still. I really don't think any of the people in our upper echelons of government are mentally capable of doing their jobs.

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

They don't have to make sense. They don't even have to care about making sense.
1) The people who vote for this administration and believe in it are basically stupid. If you want to be nice about it, they are anti-intellectual.
2) People who shout and scream that the Bush administration is acting in the manner typified by this picture are labelled intellectuals and thus are not listened to by the segment of the electorate that put this administration in office.
3) The people who actually bankroll this administration need for the majority to be stupid enough to keep spending all their money and working for too little money to keep the bankrollers swimming in profits.
4) The administration needs to keep the bankrollers happy so that they, the corrupt government "servants," can continue rolling in slush money and exercising/abusing their voter-granted power.

The only solution to this is to make being an intellectual "sexy" again, and make being educated the It thing to be. Educated people think, argue, and don't tend to vote for idiocy like this twice unless they have tied their own interests to an engine like this. (IE Karl Rove, a cunning and intelligent man who knows he's in the eye of a BS hurricane and loves it)

[umbran.livejournal.com]

We get the government we ask for.

Throughout the history of American democracy, when something goes wrong, the public collectively shouts "The government oughta do something!" And government officials understand that if they dont' make a show of it, they won't get elected.

The problem is that we have a situation where the Administration can save more lives by spending on highway safety than on foiling terror plots with airport security. But, the system requires they do something they can point at and say that they're on top of things. Even if they were entirely competent, they'd have to make a show. And they have to do it right now, or else they look unresponsive. That means things are unplanned.

The liquids folks bring onto plains are basically innocuous - mostly potable fluids and toiletries. And those are perfectly safe to dump together. There are no powerful acids or really noxious things in the mix. When the people involved had maybe a couple of hours to devise a plan and get it rolling, it isn't all that nonsensical.

It only fails when put up against real malice - when some wiseass decides to make life even more difficult for everyone by dropping in some chlorine bleach and a well-chosen household cleanser to release a cloud of toxic gas at a gate.

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

While your thinking is probably spot on, I wouldn't get too worked up over the picture.

A picture of some woman pouring out her coffee into a trash can could be on the other side of the airport from the TSA checkpoint. Its unattributable.

Saw an item on the local news showing how the TSA is handling the disposal of liquids and they actually are being smart about it.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

It's a logical extension of the mindset that says "we have to DO SOMETHING about this, never mind WHAT" to the notion that "if they're doing something that is an extremely intrusive pain in the ass that everyone complains about, it HAS to be stopping terrorism". (Maybe it just wouldn't be fair to suffer so much inconvenience without it doing anything, so God will protect them in return for their suffering?)

[umbran.livejournal.com]

Second try...

For your amusement, from someone who does know something about chemistry:

David Farber - On the implausibility of the explosives plot. (http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200608/msg00087.html)

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The British manage to foil a terror plot. (With the help of Muslims! They're not "Islamofascists", you racist chimpy fuck.) This part is great, so far.

So what comes next? Regulations imposing fear and inconvenience on probably close to a million people. And Bush and his cronies basically doing the terrorists' job for them.

But of course, the goals of Bush and the terrorists are ultimately the same - to intimidate and cow the American people into a course of action desirable for each of them.

[tropism.livejournal.com]

I'd kind of like to see a bunch of people pour in bottles of chlorox ... followed by a bunch of people with ammonia...

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

I have a better idea. Instead of trying to ban everything, the government should not only allow people to bring weapons on flights, they should encourage it. How many terrorists are going to try anything if they know there might be some Dirty Harry type just ready to say, "Go ahead, punk -- make my day!"?

If liquids are bad, why are solids safe?

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

So here's one rare occasion where the explosive is in liquid form... But what about all those other bombings where the explosive was a solid?

The fact that travelers are allowed to bring solids on board with them, represents a potential security breach.

Of course, that'll force the terrorists to use gasous explosives, so we can't allow passengers to bring gasses with them either.

Clearly, the only safe way to let people fly, is stark naked, after a supervised period of fasting and a deep colonic. Anything else lets the bad guys sneak one past us...

way off topic (pardon my rabbit trail)

[connor-campbell.livejournal.com]

i haven't read this latest bit of insanity of our vaunted and vacillant (mis)government, nor its very veracity-lacking vernacular and vacuous verbage. until we can give our valediction to violence, our valetudinarian values make a comback from coma, i have all but given up on our elected officials. and so i propose something on a lighter note. this showed up in my friends list tonight, and i tagged you in my response. thought it might be interesting...

random bookage
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6. Tag six people.

tag, you're it!

I had a feeling this was the case

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

When I first heard of the arrests, the code red over here, and the near-immediate unified slamming of the Lamont victory, I was sure the Bush administration had something to do with the timing. Now whether or not the rest of the US news media will pick it up remains to be seen.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14320452/