Friday's Odds and Ends

Getting a late start in my office this morning. The burn bans that have been in effect all summer and into fall here in East Texas have been lifted, and I had piles of dead brush and other things that needed to be burned, so I played with fire this morning. Felt good to get at least one big brush pile burned. Didn't roast marshmallows or hot dogs, though. Too early for that. Maybe next time I'll burn closer to evening and have supper, while I'm out there enjoying the beautiful fall weather.

According to a column I read about three weeks ago by Joe Nocera of the New York Times, Jon Corzine, CEO of MF Global Holdings, is primarily responsible for "running the firm into the ground." Yet Corzine stood to get  up to $12 million in severance if he managed to sell the firm before it went bankrupt. The sale never happened, and MF did go under on October 31, laying off nearly half its staff, including more than 1,000 employees of the company's broker-dealer unit.

For a while it looked like Corzine and J. Randy MacDonald, head of global retail for MF Global Holdings, might still get nice severance packages, but the latest report from Nick Brown and Jonathan Stempel states that the two have left the company without severance in hand. That is one bright spot in this mess that seems to be repeated endlessly in big business. 

In another bright spot, yesterday, the trustee overseeing the liquidation of assests for MF Global won court permission to distribute $520 million of cash to customers.  Customers won, top executives lost. Finally someone is getting it right. 

I'm all for safety, and I know we have had this discussion about airport screening before, but the process of protecting us from possible terrorist threats can get absurd at times. In a recent trip from New Orleans to Dallas, Dallas Morning News columnist Jacquielynn Floyd set off alarms at the screening. She was wearing a skirt that had a series of snaps down the front and around the waistband that trigered the alarm. "The screener said, "I can't clear this. You'll need a full body search."

When Floyd tried to show the snaps, which could hardly be large enough to contain explosives, the lady  simply repeated her statement. That's when Floyd admittedly "lost it." Rather than go through the indignity of a body search, and in a moment of pique, she decided to drop her skirt and send it through the conveyor belt to be X-rayed. She figured standing there in her tights and long shirt was less humiliating than having a full body pat down that includes someone touching her breasts to check around her bra.

That was a good plan until something went wrong with the conveyer belt, and Floyd ended up having to stand in the screening area without her skirt for much too long until the problem got solved and her skirt came through.

This is a good example of why I have not been on a plane in almost ten years, and may never get on one again. That, and the absurd fees for everything that used to be part of the ticket price..

Friday's Odds and Ends

Recently a woman in Dallas was asked why she wanted to model for Playboy.  "Before I get married and find someone, it's something I want to get out of my system."

Sure, that's what every young woman should put on her list of things to do before marriage.


Why Hillary didn't win -- she's not a cowgirl. In her book, Big Girls Don't Cry, Rebecca Traister writes about the "rootin'-tootin' female politician" and America's fascination with them. She says it is "symptomatic of the too-narrow ways in which the United States is willing to accept women as leaders."

I remember when Ann Richards was elected governor of Texas in 1991. While she didn't have that "take me to the wilderness so I can shoot something" persona of a Sarah Palin, she was promoted as a tough Texan who could hold her own with the good ol' boys. 

So maybe Hillary should stop trying to prove how smart she is and start acting like a cowgirl.

We've seen record cold temperatures and storms across the U.S. this week, and people still think we are not experiencing climate change?

New approach to airport security - mice who can detect explosives. Israeli scientists developed a mouse trap that contains three canisters, each filled with eight specially trained mice capable of picking up faint traces of explosive residues. The scientists say that  mice are more effective bomb-sniffers than dogs because they don't require constant human interaction, and they actually have more scent receptor genes than canines. 

They don't eat as much as dogs, either, but a dog is more fun. Read more about the mice HERE

Security-- At what Cost?

We have a bit of a conundrum here in the United States. According to the FBI al -Qaeda has been recruiting Westerners to carry out terrorist plots, and there is a new imperative to be more vigilant. That includes reporting suspicious behaviors to law enforcement.

So, if you see a person in a Home Depot or Lowes buying a large quantity of fertilizer, you need to alert law enforcement. They can then investigate that person and make sure he is not planning to blow up a building full of people.

Trouble is, in some parts of the country, you would be reporting the local rancher who has 100 acres of hay meadow to fertilize.

The Justice Department has started a project called the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative.  Centers will be set up for federal, state and local law enforcement will analyze reports of suspicious activities.  In the reporting process people are required to base the report on suspicious behaviors, not on what the person looks like.

Like that will really work.

I don't often agree with the ACLU, but I agree with their concerns over this. Look at how many innocent people have been detained since 9/11 just because of their ethnic or religious background. Look at how many innocent people are treated like criminals every time they board an airplane.

Yes, we need to take steps to protect ourselves and ensure the security of our country, but we must not walk on the backs of innocent people to do that.

I'm feeling real secure over this

According to a news story in the New York Times, an eight year old New Jersey boy is subject to extra scrutiny from TSA agents when he flies because his name appears on a "selectee" list.

Najlah Feanny Hicks said her son, Michael Hicks, a Cub Scout who travels often with his family, has had to go through extra security screening for most of his young life, receiving his first invasive pat-down at the age of two.

The "selectee" list contains around 13,500 names of people who are subjected to higher levels of security screening at airports, a larger group than the government's official no-fly list.

Apparently the boy gets extra pat downs at airport security because he shares the same name as someone else who was already on the list.

This is just another example of the absolutely ridiculous approach to airport security that creates havoc for travelers. This blanket approach to restrictions -- no liquids, take off your shoes, stay in your seat for the last hour before landing -- may be making us safer, but I don't know for sure. I haven't seen any reports of how many possible terrorists have been caught since these restrictions went into place.

And what possible benefit to our safety was there in frisking a two-year-old boy just because his name was on a list? Not because there was something in his background, or his family's background to raise alarms. He just has the wrong name.

I also wonder why the child's name can't be taken off the list? Is the list cast in stone?

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What do you think? Is this a necessary precaution?