“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” — Winston Churchill
Sorry I haven’t had much time to post — busy, busy, busy — but with the election going on today, I thought I’d put up an open thread. Feel free to discuss anything at all in this thread; self-linking is welcome.
When capitalized, "Sie" is the formal way to address adults of either gender in polite German. I majored in the…
If one assumes that a person is making their money, including enough money to have no incentive to "work", by…
Ob sie wirklich Deutsch spricht. Normalweise, kommt die US Soldaten nicht ins Stadt und spricht nicht so oft mit denn…
As for being a Nazi, ich spreche fliessend deutsch und wohnte in Deutschland fuer drei Jahre mit der americanishe Luftwaffe…
And of course this "incentive" only applies to poor people: Rich people who already have enough to live off of…
I hate early voting. Not a big fan of absentee voting either, even though I use it every election year. (I had to choose between “consistent” and “handsome” during character generation, and my mama didn’t chargen no fools.)
I hate them because things change. Candidates are supposed to have up until Election Day to make their case, and voters are supposed to have up until Election Day to make up their minds. Allowing an early vote short-circuits the last days or weeks of the election. I can easily imagine some PUMA Democrat deciding on October 27 to vote for non-Democratic candidates as a protest vote…then on the 30th reading the polls and seeing that what they saw as a protest vote turns out to be an actual get-a-Republican-elected vote, and wishing they could change their mind.
I understand the accommodation concerns that make absentee and early votes popular. But I think that for absentee ballots you should have to at least present a reason why you can’t get your butt down to the polls, and early voting should be one day, the day before the election.
Hi all! This is the awesome anthology of which I am the co-editor. I hope you’ll pass along the call for submissions to any interested parties or networks you may know of!
-Katie
————————————————-
Perverts of Color Anthology
http://pervertsofcolor.com
Call for Submissions
The voices of US racial minorities in alternative sexual communities are important but often unheard. If you are a POC who has been or is involved in the kink/poly/swinging community, the Perverts of Color anthology needs to hear your story.
We are accepting non-fiction essays (1,500-5,000 words) related to the theme of the intersection of race and alternative sexual practices. New authors are welcome. Fiction, erotica, and poetry are not accepted. The Perverts of Color anthology is intended as a multi-ethnic, multi-racial collection, so we encourage all POCs to submit their stories. We invite POCs of all genders, ages, religions/spiritualities, sexual orientations and socio-economic backgrounds. Authors may use a pen name in order to maintain anonymity. All authors will keep the copyright to their submission, have a printed biography, and receive one copy of the completed book.
Contact Us
If you are interested, email us at pervertsofcolor@gmail.com with a one-paragraph summary of your essay (250 words maximum) and a short bio (250 words maximum). All submission summaries are due by December 15th at 12 midnight (Eastern Standard Time). We will contact authors individually to express interest in a complete submission.
I have some pictures of some of the signs that people were carrying during the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear up on my blog.
I voted, trading barbs with a good friend who by happenstance was voting at the booth back-to-back from mine. I overheard the election judge discussing the turnout with a newly-arrived fellow judge. Apparently it’s higher than what was to be expected. This in a suburban Chicago district.
I voted a split ticket. My Congressman, Rep. Lipinski, is a Democrat, but he voted against the healthcare bill. His reason in my heavily Catholic district was that it did not guarantee that Federal money would not be used to fund abortions. He’s a strong supporter of the military and is apparently a go-to guy in issues for Veterans’ affairs. I’m no fan of the fact that he essentially inherited his office, but I have to admit he tends to vote along lines I approve of.
I voted for Mark Kirk (R) for Senator. Twice, and legally. This is a very important issue. The first vote is to fill the vacancy created when now-President Obama left the seat for the White House. The Illinois General Assembly – and by that I mean Rep. Michael Madigan (D), Speaker of the Illinois House and the most powerful person in Illinois politics – decided that holding a special election was too risky, as a Republican might win. So they let Gov. Blagojevich’s (D) appointee stay in office. Then they impeached and convicted Blago after he was indicted for (among other things) attempting to sell that seat to the highest bidder. And then Madigan still let his appointee stay in office. Eventually a judge held that the State had violated State law and required them to hold a special election.
All of which becomes important because that means that the winner of the first vote (who will presumably also win the second vote) will be seated IMMEDIATELY, not just in January, and will have an influence on the lame-duck session of Congress. Polls have him with a 4% lead, but that’s also the polls’ margins of error.
I also voted for Brady (R) for governor. Patrick Quinn (D), who presently holds the job, got it because he was Lieutenant Governor when Blago got booted. He is a populist who was there to make Blago look like a reformer but who was never expected to actually get the job. He’s talked big but doesn’t make the actual hard decisions. Recently he a) signed a deal giving various unionized public employees a 4%/yr raise for the next 3 years without reforming their ruinously expensive pensions and then b) accepted a $50K donation from their union the next day. I’m done ignoring that $h!t. Polling is the same – Brady has a lead, but it’s about the same as the margin of error.
I voted for Jesse White (D) for Secretary of State. The Illinois SoS job has historicaly been scandalous. White’s immediate predecessor sits this day in prison for making his employees donate to his run for Governor on pain of otherwise losing their jobs, to the point that said employees were soliciting and accepting bribes to pay those donations. It all came to light when a part fell off a truck despite repeated attempts by other drivers on the road to contact the driver. The part was run over by a minivan. The driver (a pastor) and his wife and 3 of their children escaped the van. His other 6 children didn’t and burned to death. It turns out that the driver didn’t answer the radio calls because he didn’t speak English. It turns out that it’s a requirement to speak English to get a CDL. It turns out that he paid a bribe to get his license. And so on up the food chain. White, OTOH, has never had a breath of scandal touch him in the last 8 years, so I am content that he keeps his job.
I also voted (D) for Attorney General (Lisa Madigan, Mike’s daughter) and (R) for Treasurer and Comptroller. Do your job properly, don’t steal or cheat and you’ll get my vote.
(Small, meepish anti-trans-erasure response to one of the signs RJN photographed: Women don’t own all the vaginas, actually.)
Mandolin:
Not so meepish, especially when you look at the content of the website–which I will not link to, but if you google the title of the book, it’s the first thing that comes up.
“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” — Winston Churchill
“man has dominated man to his injury”
Ecclesiastes 8:9
Welcome to the Shit Show. Ladies and gentlemen, my sister. This is exactly what I would be like if I got angry and I was more of a misanthrope than I already am. Really. Well, that’s what everyone who knows both of us says, but in different words than that.
Commentary on, and the actual hour’s worth of oral arguments over, the appeal of the Arizona immigration law to the 9th Court of Appeals.
I left your sister a note. I won’t comment on politics on any blog post that’s not about politics on her blog, how’s that?
I think P.J. O’Rourke has got the mood of Election Day just right. “This isn’t an election; it’s a restraining order.”
Tomorrow will be a different day. Control of a house of Congress means that you’re expected to try to do something. We’ll see if they can. But I think P.J.’s got today pegged to perfection.
Does that imply that we should try something that hasn’t been tried before?
I like early voting. There are some people (I used to be one) who skip voting because taking unpaid time off work to get to the polls is simply more trouble than it’s worth. I support making accommodations so that people who can’t just get up a half hour early and drive to the local elementary school on the way to work, or take a long lunch from their salaried job, can vote with less sacrifice.
Also, I really don’t think there is all that much of value in the last few days of electioneering. A person who is interested in politics enough to make an informed vote can get all the information they really need well before the actual election. And a person who makes voting decisions based on which candidate scares them the most the last time they saw an attack ad on TV will be making just as uninformed a vote as they would have made on election day. But maybe, just maybe, candidates will focus more on getting their actual message out than covering the airwaves with trash on Monday night.
Heard from an NPR anchor this afternoon that there were reports of voter suppression (not sure in which state(s)), mostly through phone calls – telling people they could vote online, telling people not to go to the polls today but to wait until Wednesday, etc.
A friend of mine in Southern California had an election judge improperly demand her ID when she went to vote. I told her to report it but by then it was near poll closing time and she’d voted in the morning.
Given all the projections, I’m pretty “meh” on the election results. About what I expected. Could have been worse. Etc.
I am sad that Russ Feingold won’t be in the Senate anymore. I think we’re poorer for it.
I’m relieved that Angle didn’t win, not so much out of any great love for Harry Reid but just relief that someone who actually thinks Sharia law is being imposed on American cities isn’t in the Senate.
It’s absolutely amazing, but there’s no way I’ll ever be there in the winter. I’m rarely outside in the winter at all, come to think of it. God, I hate the cold.
We vote by absentee ballot, but we don’t mail it in–we walk it into the polls. It gives us time to stare at the actual ballot and mark everything carefully, and still saves time on voting day, so we get the best of preparation and time-saving. Obviously, that won’t work for everyone, but it works for us.
I didn’t even know you could do that. I wonder if you can here.
By the way, as some of you might remember, Doug S. and I had a bet over the election. I lost, and am donating $100 to the charity of Doug’s choice.
It turns out I am really rather impressed by the charity of Doug’s choice. My $100 is going to save somewhere between 0.2 and 1.0 lives. I feel less bad about losing the bet.
The charity is the Stop TB Partnership. There is information about them at http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/stop-TB
P.J. was very right in California, but probably not in the way you or he are thinking, RonF.
Thanks for posting about the bet, Robert! I was wondering who had won (I couldn’t find the original bet.)
On another note, has everyone seen George Takei calling out the school official? I regret his choice of the term “douche-bag” but overall, I think it’s still a pretty awesome call-out on anti-gay BS.
MSNBC asserts that it has standards.
Not that I follow Keith Olbermann, Glenn Beck or any of the TV or radio blowhards much. But I thought it was interesting that Olbermann would have someone interview on his show and then give their campaign $3000 a few minutes later. Seems a little blatant.
I don’t like KO’s show much. But it does seem odd that MSNBC employees like Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan give money to conservative candidates multiple times without getting in any trouble at all, but a liberal does it and is immediately fired. KO never pretended to be nonpartisan; his show was clearly editorial in nature.
That said, NBC of course has every right to fire KO for a stupid reason if they want to.
Don’t forget that Olbermann used to have Richard Wolff on his show as a political analyst for ages without disclosing that Wolff was a paid political operative. Well, he didn’t disclose it until his hand was forced.
See the bottom of this article for a few details on that.
Then Olbermann said that Wolff had lied to him about his non-MSNBC job. Yet, Wolff appears regularly these days. I wouldn’t have him on my show again had he lied to me about that subject. Either Olbermann doesn’t care or Olbermann lied when he said that Wolff had lied. Either way, trust has been flung out the window.
Olbermann’s credibility is, at this point, less than perfect. Better than most of Faux News, but still not good.
Whether MSNBC is applying its policies consistently is another story. I imagine that will be between Olbermann’s attorney, MSNBC’s legal departments and, possibly, the courts.
I might be wrong, but aren’t Scarborough and Buchanan commentators, while Olbermann is supposed to be a journalist?
Edited to add: no, this isn’t it. All three of them are commentators. Maybe ScarBuch has a different contract? Or maybe MSNBC management is just a bunch of huge hypocrites.
Jake, I had forgotten about the Wolff thing — that was pretty awful. Plus, I thought Olbermann (along with many other media dopes) was pretty sexist towards Hilary Clinton during the 2008 primaries. And he’s just generally a yelling, preening jerk of the sort who turns public discourse into crap.
So it’s hard for me to feel sorry for Olbermann. But the particular excuse used by MSNBC seems both dubious in logic and unfairly applied.
Bill Kristol agrees: it’s ridiculous to fire Olbermann for this. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/keep-keith_514980.html
Here’s a thought: it’s about the money.
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/5minute_arguments/vas_iz_der_meaning_ub_der.php
The way I heard it, the policy is that employees can make contributions as long as they disclose them. Olbermann didn’t, hence the firing.
But I do wonder if Sarah Palin will be tweeting in order to defend Olbermann’s “1st amendment rights.”
One bizarre feature of this election visible in the exit polls:
Roughly 25% of people who voted for Republicans want the government to spend more money creating jobs. Oops. Somehow, I don’t think those people are going to be too happy with the result of their votes.
I’m pretty sure that those people are too ignorant to ever be able to tell if they’re happy or not with their votes.
At least with Robert, I can say, “You’re wrong and/or evil,” and know that he’ll be able to respond. Those voters probably understand as much as I say as the dog in the famous Far Side “What Dogs Hear” strip/panel thingy.
I’m one of the 25%.
I’d like the government to spend more money “creating jobs”. There’s disagreement about what that might MEAN, but I’d love to shift $100B of wasteful defense pork into entrepreneurial programs. If we’re running big budget surpluses, I definitely favor targeting the subsequent tax cuts towards job creation.
I’d also like to cut another $100B in defense pork and another $200B in social spending and put the public fisc. back into balance.
I voted Tea Party, naturally. I’m not deluded. I have different priorities than you.
Well, Robert, that makes picking out your Christmas present easy!
Size L. I’ll send you an email with my mailing address.
Pages 21 through 44 of this report shows something of what that would look like — except that their most severe scenario still cuts $50 billion less in social spending than what you’re talking about. So on average, you’d be increasing all their projected non-military cuts by about a third — meaning, for instance, that you’d be cutting 93% of highway funds rather than “only” 70%, if you were using the scenario where no one’s taxes go up.
In the long run, it would be economically devastating. It would harm our economy if the federal government just stopped building roads altogether and slashed maintenance by two-thirds. And as the economy fails, revenue will drop, and the long-term deficit will increase.
And it wouldn’t do more than balance the budget for a couple of years. Then the deficits would come roaring back. Because the real deficit problem isn’t current spending; it’s the rate at which the cost of medical care (and thus the cost of Medicare/Medicaid) is increasing, and the fact that our revenue stream is not increasing. If you’re not seriously discussing those two problems, then you don’t have any serious ideas about reducing the deficit. Period.
(Source.)
So eliminating highway maintenance or whatever other horribly painful cuts you’re imagining wouldn’t actually do much for the long-term deficit.
There has, of course, been a recent, serious attempt to begin addressing rising medical costs. That was the affordable care act, which the tea party wants eliminated. Meanwhile, most tea partiers want Bush’s temporary enormous tax cuts made permanent, which is by far the single largest increase to the deficit that’s currently on the policy table.
Robert, I *know* you don’t live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
They forward stuff to me.
Barry, the cost crisis in medical entitlements you are worried about is soluble at the stroke of a pen. It is the will not to spend that is needed, not drastic progressive reforms sheeps-clothinged in as spending “cuts”.
Robert, I sincerely hope that the GOP gets publicly and loudly behind a policy of not spending money on Medicare, because that would end of the GOP as a viable political party. But they won’t do that; instead, they’ll try to disguise the cuts as not-cuts, which I doubt will work forever, because seniors aren’t idiots.
Maybe you want to live in a society in which we don’t give a damn about medical care for seniors. I do not, and neither do most Americans. The fact is, we DON’T have the will to just let our seniors suffer and die for lack of ability to afford medical care, and wishing we did is completely unrealistic. We don’t have that will, and we never will have that will (barring another great depression). So wishing we did have that will is not a serious policy solution.
As for the ACA, no doubt the CBO is part of the liberal conspiracy, and that’s why they said the ACA will reduce the deficit.
A fascinating redistricting game from the Annenberg Center (discovered while googling for North Carolina’s redistricting rules, as my home state just switched to the Republicans for the first time since reconstruction). It’s a fun little time waster with an interesting message (personally, I like the results of bipartisan gerrymandering).
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Rep.-elect Allen West (R-Fla) intends to join the Congressional Black Caucus. That should liven up the meetings some. The other black Republican who was elected, Tim Scott (R-S.C.) hasn’t made a statement yet on whether or not he’s going to join. So far no spokesman for the CBC has commented.
I find myself in need of some better links for my Delicious “pc” tag. Zuky’s excellent takedown of the sloppy “politically correct” saw is now available only via the Internet Wayback Machine and the other two essays I have linked don’t really make the kind of punchy point that would be useful in stopping a “wahh, pee cee” de-rail. I know I’ve seen some excellent brief quotes here but I can’t put my hands on them; I’d also appreciate any URLs to good essays.
Obviously I’m only looking for responses from progressives here. I am well-stocked at the click of the Google search bar with links that declare how everything is going to hell and nothing is any fun any more because everything is so PC.
Holy crap:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnm_cSgPzmM&feature=player_embedded
A post I originally wrote for my LiveJournal about TSA screenings has been edited a bit (OK, expanded) and put up on the blog of California NOW:
http://www.canow.org/canoworg/2010/11/civil-liberties-now-with-more-privileged-people.html
My latest car entertainment, provided for your entertainment: NEW (to me) TONGUE TWISTERS!!! the first two are my favorites.
A bloke’s back bike brake block broke.
A proper cup of coffee from a proper copper coffee pot.
A real rare whale.
Black background, brown background.
Crisp crust crackles.
Fat frogs flying past fast.
Five fat friars frying flat fish.
I wish to wash my Irish wristwatch.
Also:
If you are a dog owner, or live with a dog, or travel with a dog, you should read this.
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/11/dogs-dont-understand-basic-concepts.html
(be warned, do not read it while drinking unless you like coffeenose.)
Awesomest link of the day, G&W.
OMIGOD, gaw, like awesomest link of the month. So hilarious!
What a to-do to die today
at a minute or two to two
a thing distinctly hard to say
but harder still to do.
We’ll beat a tattoo
at twenty-to-two
a rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-too
and the dragon will come
when he hears the drum
at a minute or two to two today
at a minute or two to two.
(Tongue twister heard on the Colbert report that I loved so much I memorized it.)
I guess I should have put more funny dogs in my essay. :-/
@Elusis – I’m somewhat dismissive towards your essay because you seem to think that TSA is profiling people. In fact, they do randomized searches, which is what leads us to absurdities like elderly nuns and little children being accosted while single men visiting from Pakistan for the first time walk through.
TSA engages in security theater, and while there are valid critiques of how they do it from a liberal point of view, a significant portion of their ineffectiveness and population-alienating behavior comes from a misguided attempt to soothe liberal sensibilities by pretending that EVERYONE poses a threat.
Everyone doesn’t pose a threat, and we have a relatively good idea of the identities of the small groups that make up most of the risk pool.
(By the way, I’m in at least a couple of those groups, so yes, I am calling for profiling of people like me.)
Many years ago, I read somewhere–no idea where–that this was the world’s most difficult tongue twister: The sixth sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick. I think, though, that some of the ones G&W posted are as hard.
Richard:
It was, probably among other sources, in either the 1987 or 1988 edition of the Guiness Book of World Records. Probably both, but I don’t remember specifically which edition I had. Except it had an additional “sick” in there: “The sixth sick sheik’s….”
Yes, there was an actual category for most difficult English tongue-twister. No, I don’t know how they determined that.
Robert – I’m not sure where you got that from my post. Nowhere do I talk about profiling of any kind.
“Private citizens being arbitrarily singled out for intrusive searches and rough treatment by authority figures because of their appearance, their “attitude,” or just a momentary need for an endorphin rush by a small-minded bureaucrat? Welcome to the phenomenon of Driving While Black, the lives of women, of people of color, of transpeople, of disabled people (oh hi, Canada!). Intrusive searches and civil rights violations were happening to people on the margins well before 9/11.”
You’re saying that TSA is profiling on attitude and appearance. Would that they were.
Robert,
a) You have no idea how US airport security works. We have had country of origin screening for nearly a year.
b) Actually, there is pretty universal agreement among security experts that random and universal security is more effective than profiling (the Israelis prefer to do random and universal screening plus profiling, but they certainly don’t do just profiling). If you do profiling, then terrorists can do dry runs and see if they get pulled aside for enhanced checks. If they don’t then they can then do an attack using the same people and types of tickets.
And we do have enhanced security on certain profiles, they are based partly on how and when you bought your ticket. Buy a one way ticket same day with cash, and your more likely to get screened than if you buy a round-trip ticket six months in advance. Fly through any of a list of countries (or carry their passports), and you are guaranteed to get screened. Would Nigeria have been on the list of profiled passports if the list had been instituted before the Christmas Underwear Bomber? I doubt it.
Both the Taliban and Hamas have used child suicide bombers, and Hamas has used women in their 50s and 60s as suicide bombers, and the Chechen military has used women suicide bombers to blow up planes. And nun costumes are easy to make or buy.v Do you really want being an older woman wearing a nun’s habit to be a free pass to reduced security? Al Qaeda has used a Jamaican Briton and a Nigerian as (failed) suicide bombers. They have influenced a US military psychologist to murder his fellow soldiers. They even ran Richard Reid through a dry run on an Israeli airport to make sure he didn’t get picked out for enhanced security.
Who are the security experts who support your position? Where is the peer reviewed published research showing that profiling is more effective than random searches?
a) Good. You’re right that I didn’t know this. Glad they finally are doing it.
b) Profiling + random screening is fine with me. Of course you need to have some random element, to avoid the system-gaming which terrorists will be glad to engage in. It’s the universal randomization of our system which drives people crazy and which makes no sense.
c) Peer-reviewed research? For heaven’s sake. The world is not the academy. I don’t have any peer-reviewed research that tells me not to deliberately run my car into concrete posts at 100 mph, but somehow I manage to stay alive day by day.
As for experts, I’ll go with Isaac Yeffet, former chief of security for El Al. You know, the airline that despite being hugely focused on the most terrorist-targeted nation on earth, has never lost a plane to terrorist activities. Yeffet calls on us to use intelligent profiling, with educated and well-trained agents asking the right questions of people whose behavior (most often), travel pattern, origin, etc. raise questions.
From that same article, there’s a comment by Roger Dow, head of the US Travel Association and my former boss, mumbledy years ago. Roger is a pretty good guy, for a tool/shill of the travel industry, and even he recognizes that profiling has a place.
Ignoring his unintended inversion of what common sense means in the second paragraph, he is on the right track.
Even if he doesn’t have a peer-reviewed study to back him up.
If you’re looking for which security experts agree that the current U.S. policy is a whole lot of bullshit, universal or not, that’s pretty much all of them, if they’re not talking publicly.
Universal scrutiny is best IF it is done at a high enough level. But doing it at a high enough level involves a whole lot of intrusion on people who don’t really need it.
Profiling is handy because it makes no sense to ignore the people who we believe to be high risk. they should be subjected to a high level of investigation.
Random is necessary because it serves as an additional disincentive to people who might either not get profiled or who would be smart enough to ignore the profiling. Some people also need to be subjected to a high level of investigation.
But what’s missing from the U.S. is that (1) our universal stuff has a high ratio of invasiveness to security; (2) our profiling stuff is poor and the people doing it are bad–those “educated and well-trained agents” aren’t easy to find, educate, and train; and (3) our “enhanced” security isn’t hot; i.e. we don’t have a great job of handling the gradations between “claim something is saline and bring it on a plane” and “get waterboarded.”
the problem here is also that we want the impossible, which is to say that we want BOTH “high security” and “low invasiveness.” I’m no so sure that would agree to subject all airplane passengers to El Al-level security even if it would reduce by 90% future terrorist attacks on planes.
I don’t think i’m unusual in this respect.
Where i am unusual is that I understand and accept that there is no magic pill, and that refusing security will risk additoinal attacks.
I just fail to see how security is being advanced by forcing people to be subjected to invasive, degrading procedures, and charging them with a crime if they so much as twitch when being violated in this way.
That our current airport security policy is shitty I don’t disagree with. Robert’s claim that if only our airport policy weren’t unduly influenced by woolly thinking liberals (sure were a lot of those in Bush’s TSA, I’m sure), we would be doing profiling and NOT harassing kids and old women (because leaving gaping obvious holes in your security system is the best way to keep out terrorists, who can never be old women or kids, nor could they ever use old women or kids as bomb carriers) is what I disagree with and that I doubt there are any security experts who would agree with it.
Also, Robert, if you honestly think that Elusis was talking about a coherent program of profiling based on criteria related to who is most likely to be a terrorist, I don’t know what to tell you. Do you think that “driving while black” is about profiling based on accurate criteria of who is most likely to be engaged in criminal activity too? Elusis is talking about harassment of people who are easy targets for harassment.
If you really think that the TSA has been operating on a system of purely random searches rather than being allowed to do searches on the basis of suspicion, you really have absolutely no idea what the airport security system is or has been for the past decade. Zero. Nada. Zip.
Hard-boundary profiling runs into an obvious problem. Yes, the underwear bomber did a bunch of things that might have set off a profiling system. If airport security had been absolute on “any Nigerian who buys a one-way ticket to the US using cash in Ghana gets a full body search,” then Al Qaeda would have either not used that bomber or gotten him a fake passport from another country (if it was all Nigerians get searched — how hard is it to get a fake Ghanian passport) or paid with a credit card, or bought a round trip ticket (is the extra $1000 for the return ticket a bridge too far for Al Qaeda, do you think?). They didn’t have to take those extra steps because they thought he had a fair chance of getting through security without them, but none of those steps seem particularly likely to be out of their range.
Maybe they should have had him dress as a nun, since searching nuns is an absurdity that only a fuzzy minded liberal would tolerate.