Straight From the Journal Junction

The pictures are only to prove that I'm not making this shit up. But, I wouldn't make up something this patently absurd. For the record, I live in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia where there seem to be a lot of meth labs. I think this is the last place a terrorist would be, but my personal feelings aside. I ripped this one straight from the newspaper's (The Martinsburg Journal) call-in section called the Journal Junction.

I'm going to skip over the article about making bike riders get a license and the request for aid in eradicating a bat. The real gem is this one from a caller in Berkeley County:

Has any thought been given to the possibility that sleeper cells of al-Qaeda could use the features, such as Journal Junction, to communicate with each other through coded messages?

Aside from being a grammatical nightmare, the sheer point is ludicrous. Unless this sleeper cell is primarily white, I don't think that they will be using the Journal Junction to get things done. Also, seeing as they can't even bust up all the meth labs, I'm fairly confident that the cops won't find a sleeper cell for al-Qaeda even if they hung out at the Waffle House on Foxcroft Ave.

If the submitter is trying to suggest that there are Muslim extremists in the area, I would ask, um, where? I don't think that I've seen an Arabic person in the whole time that I've lived here. I live across the street from some Indian cats, but I doubt that they are a terrorist cell. If they are, they've clearly put their priorities in the wrong place. Also, don't these guys normally plan stuff in places where they can gain a lot of information and have those things that are important. Oh right, targets. Yea, that's it. I mean, they can hit the house of Confederate Generals and a Confederate spy in Martinsburg, but that's no skin off my back. Hell, blast away. Fuckers tried to keep me enslaved and fought a war to do it.

The United States of Alarmism

Yesterday, Homeland Security Head Michael Chertoff (yes, he still has a job after Hurricane Katrina, which he oversaw) made a quite shocking announcement in a very public forum yesterday. From the LA Times:

Fearing complacency among the American people over possible terrorist threats, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday that the nation faced a heightened chance of an attack this summer.

"I believe we are entering a period this summer of increased risk," Chertoff told the Chicago Tribune's editorial board in an unusually blunt assessment of America's terrorist threat level.

"Summertime seems to be appealing to them," he said of Al Qaeda. "We do worry that they are rebuilding their activities."

Notice the language in the quote. "I believe," "summertime seems to be," "we do worry." See the waffling, the self-assurance, the total lack of proof in making these statements. I didn't even need this paragraph to tell me that Chertoff has no idea of what's going on:

Chertoff said there were not enough indications of an imminent plot to raise the threat levels nationwide. He indicated that his remarks were based on "a gut feeling" formed by previous patterns of terrorist attacks, recent Al Qaeda statements and intelligence he did not disclose.

I'm OK with the government telling me to watch out for a strike that they KNOW will happen. But, Chertoff, oh no. He wants to keep the entire country scared shitless of a perpetual terrorist threat, even if he made it up in his head. The thing that surprises me about this all is the fact that I know this is par for the course. Everything that the Bush administration has done is with the intent to frighten us and keep us blind to the fact that they are stripping us of rights while also being horribly inefficient in implementing actual policy instead of stumping. I thought presidents stopped stumping once they actually won the election. I guess this alarmist rhetoric is also why so many feel that we aren't safe from terrorism.