Following are some things that I have been thinking about but am unlikely to have the time to expand on them individually. So here they are in capsule format:
Apparently the water that I purchased in a secure area and was allowed to take on a plane in Tokyo is no longer safe once I am in the corresponding secured area at the Houston airport. TSA forces you to discard water before you can pass through security for a connecting flight even though you’ve been in the ‘sterile’ area the entire time. Hasn’t this been thoroughly disproved as a viable threat? What a joke. And has anyone done an environmental impact on all of the force-discarded water bottles?
Why do Republicans go on and on about ‘personal accountability’ when social programs are being discussed, but providing corporate welfare to oil and huge corporate agribusinesses with record profits is a-ok. Same with the people who followed their advice to ‘buy the biggest house you can’ and are now stuck with a ballooning sub-prime mortgages. And the financial institutions that made money off the suckers, for a while anyway. No discussion of personal accountability, rather lots of talk of bail-outs. Why isn’t the press in the US throwing the ‘amnesty plan’ rhetoric back in their sniveling faces? Oh, thats right, because we don’t have an effective independent press in this country any longer.
While we are on the topic of bailouts, how does creating a whole organization to manage the bailout square with the right-wing distaste for ‘big government’? I guess government can’t be big enough when it benefits other right-wingers. Ditto with extending the Fed to manage and oversee banks, and other financial institutions. Why am I reminded of the definition of fascism when I think about the last eight years?
For what is supposed to be such a technologically advanced country, it is darn near impossible to find wi-fi access in Japan, (specifically Tokyo or Kyoto), let alone free wi-fi access. I suppose the mobile carriers might have a hand in this — if you get your ‘wireless’ via your mobile phone, there is not a lot of incentive to provide non-handset based access. My favorite wi-fi moment: On the bullet train platform in Tokyo station are big signs announcing ‘free high speed wireless’ access — from a WEP secured base station. Go figure.