Security theater

This guy does what I would do if I weren't chicken.  He tests and routinely skirts airport security to demonstrate that it is flawed.  Now when can we go back to the days of easier flying?

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/airport-security

A shattering moment in America's fall from power

The global financial crisis will see the US falter in the same way the Soviet Union did when the Berlin Wall came down. The era of American dominance is over. [more...]

So says John Gray of the Observer. It reminds me plainly of words I heard from a Mexican friend living in Taxco, Gro. shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. "Your empire will fall," he said. I pondered those words. Empire? Yes, and nothing could be more demonstrative of our hubris than our invasion of Iraq on false pretenses without global support.

Gray says, "Meltdowns on the scale we are seeing are not slow-motion events," particularly regarding the financial sector falling apart, but as he points out, this meltdown has been in development for the last two decades as regulation has become unfashionable and the corporations have bought the government.