Sue Us.

I'm glad New York is considering a ban on the TSA's body snatcher, I mean, body scanner machines from both JFK and LaGuardia, though I already avoid the latter at all costs. That would be where I learned the ticket I'd purchased for my first trip back to New Orleans in 2005 did "not exist," for one of many happy memories, another being the crazyass busdriver who shuttled me between terminals to a flight that did exist.

I really want to know what it's like, the training sessions for those new TSA policies. Sounds like they could be comedy gold. But what is it like to actually think that way, to be that sadistic, that afraid, that...? CBS says 80 percent of the American public is in favor of the snatchers, er, scanners, but that survey is based on a sample of 240 or so people (I refuse to link to it here because it's such obvious hasty p.r.). Playing along for a second, though, how many of the good timers surveyed for this little poll have actually experienced being scanned, or groped, by the TSA -- or under other circumstances?

Those rubenesque blue body scan images

I remember when places like Kansas didn't have so much concern, such patriotism for New York. Back when everyone thought anyone from New York, wherever in the state it was, was strange, off somehow, filthy even. Then September 11 happened and that changed. Or did it? This legislation feels like a ground zero saying thanks, but no, to these faux protections for its own good. At last...

Now what?

Election Eve Special

The Nobodies
by
Eduardo Galeano

Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that, one magical day, good luck will suddenly rain down on them - will rain down in buckets.

But good luck doesn't rain down, yesterday, today, tomorrow or ever. Good luck doesn't even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day on their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.

The nobodies: nobody's children, owners of nothing.

The nobodies: the no-ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way.

Who are not, but could be.
Who don't speak languages, but dialects.
Who don't have religions, but superstitions.
Who don't create art, but handicrafts.
Who don't have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have faces, but arms.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the crime reports of the local paper.

The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.