After breezing through a practically non-existent security line yesterday afternoon in the DFW airport, I laughed it up watching CNN before my flight with the correspondents talking about how miserable it was at the nation's airports.  Hell, my plane even left a few minutes early. 

I wasn't laughing on the other side.

I don't know if  it was because of the added volume of checked baggage but it took an entire hour to get my bag at JFK at 10:30PM.  Then another half an hour to wait for a cab since everyone from several flights seemed to all get their luggage at the same time.  It took a little over two hours to get from the plane to the hotel.  The flight from Dallas to NY is a little over three hours.  From now on, I'm buying my toiletries at my destination.

Then again, maybe it was all f*cked up because it was NY and sometimes it's just like that.

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Mike Wallace's 60 minutes interview with Ahmedinejad of Iran here.  I actually heard a caller to a talk radio show Sunday night say in all seriousness that he felt a lot more comfortable criticizing Bush policy on Iran and didn't know how we could be against such an intelligent, reasonable guy as the Iranian President.

From the American Jewish Committee:

Freedom of the press is one of the golden virtues of American society, a fundamental value totally absent in Iran. But there is a line between a respected journalist and media outlet exercising that freedom and succumbing to the trap of becoming a mouthpiece for a foreign government, a dangerous adversary. In this interview, the line was obliterated by Wallace, and President Ahmedinejad owes CBS a debt of gratitude.

Anything for ratings.

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I always thought that one day, Israel will withdraw from all contested terorritories and then when the Arabs strike, Israel will receive the backing of the entire international community in a final effort to defeat it's enemies and secure it's borders.  I do not believe that anymore.  If  any Israelis ever believed it, I'm sure they don't anymore either.  A lot more people are going to die in the not too distant future and I don't see any way out - the world has backed Israel into a corner.  Attacks on the civilian population in israel proper are treated as legitimate tactics and the perpetrators are rewarded, while every attack to disable and disband Hezbollah ( a legitimate armed force apparently) is treated as a war crime.

For all the worries some Americans have about "not recognizing" their own country under Bush, I'm not sure I recognize the whole world I live in under everyone else. That's why I'm willing to take a dose of castor oil (Bush) as a tonic.

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A picture of Bush at the "real" CTU.  Doesn't look that much different than the set of "24" if you ask me.  It sure as hell doesn't look like my workplace.