Sarah Palin is 100% UNQUALIFIED to Be Vice President !!!

Oh dear God, this is just so terrifying.  If this woman is actually elected to the vice presidency, I will seriously lose all faith in the intellect of the American people.

And I just might move to Canada.  No… really.  I’m not kidding.

Cartoon of the Day: September 25, 2008

Sorry for the lack of posts, or comments for that matter, but things have been hectic here at AIG.  Long hours plus high stress environments does not make trader a happy guy.  The cartoon I am posting, however, does put a giddy little smile on my face, because it is relatively true…

 

MALINTENT !!!

Is this progress or a totalitarian nightmare?  As our friends at Fox News like to say, you decide:

MALINTENT, the brainchild of the cutting-edge Human Factors division in Homeland Security’s directorate for Science and Technology, searches your body for non-verbal cues that predict whether you mean harm to your fellow passengers.

It has a series of sensors and imagers that read your body temperature, heart rate and respiration for unconscious tells invisible to the naked eye — signals terrorists and criminals may display in advance of an attack.

This whole security array — the scanners and screeners who make up the mobile lab — is called “Future Attribute Screening Technology” — or FAST — because it is designed to get passengers through security in two to four minutes, and often faster.

But the testing — and the device itself — are not without their problems. This invasive scanner, which catalogues your vital signs for non-medical reasons, seems like an uninvited doctor’s exam and raises many privacy issues.

But DHS says this is not Big Brother. Once you are through the FAST portal, your scrutiny is over and records aren’t kept. “Your data is dumped,” said Burns. “The information is not maintained — it doesn’t track who you are.”

Burns noted his team’s goal is to “restore a sense of freedom.” Once MALINTENT is rolled out in airports, it could give us a future where we can once again wander onto planes with super-sized cosmetics and all the bottles of water we can carry — and most importantly without that sense of foreboding that has haunted Americans since Sept. 11.

“Human Factors division in Homeland Security’s directorate for Science and Technology” – sorry, but that title sounds a bit foreboding…

McCain Campaign Suspended

I want to share some of my thoughts on John McCain’s suspension of his campaign, as it is certainly an unusual move just five weeks before an election.

Surely this decision was partially, if not wholly, political.  McCain must believe that this move can result in a spike of his poll numbers.  He wants to portray his leadership abilities (his penchant for decisive action, I suppose), differentiate himself from Barack Obama, and show that he is concerned about the economy.  Perhaps all this is intuitive, but can there be another motive at work here?  Maybe McCain believes he needs more time to prepare for the debate.  He might fear he will be beaten Friday and now hopes to use the economy to delay the date (I cannot believe he thinks it might be fully canceled).

What about the non-political side of this?  Could this be the right thing to do?  I cannot disagree with Senator Obama when he says that a president must be able to deal with more than one major issue at once (a multi-tasking of sorts).  Further, how much can one Senator do to alleviate the financial crisis?  Will his presence and undivided attention make any kind of difference?  That is doubtful.  All this said, however, I am not able to fully condemn Senator McCain’s action in this case.  Maybe he’s doing the right thing.  Perhaps our candidates should know when to put politics on the back burner and actually work (first and foremost) for the good of the country.  And, quite possibly, I’ve been duped by Rick Davis.