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Nightly Ramble: We Need a Game Changer

I’m at College Point, Queens New York this morning. I’m delivering a load of Gatorade to the local Pepsi distribution center. Extremely narrow streets around this place, and as a result I’ve never come in here where I haven’t done some very serious side walk driving. That’s an accomplishment with a big rig.

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I have to tell you, in all honesty that I have never had a more intense driving experience then coming into New York. Understand, I’ve lived in Rochester all my life. I’ve driven in just about every state in the Union, most of it in a big rig. The funny part is, I in all that time had never been to New York City.

Yes, I know, for most of you the conception is that if you live in New York State, you are quite familiar with New York City. What you need to understand is that Rochester is some 400 miles from New York City. And until such time as I picked up this job, I never had a reason to go to New York.

So it was that my first experience with new york city was pilot ing a 53 foot trailer down the BQE. And let me tell you, there is nothing on the face of this planet that will cure a case of constipation faster than driving a 13 6 truck under a bridge that’s marked 12:2 that happens to be a national monument. Those familiar with New York will understand that I’m talking about the Brooklyn Bridge.

New York you see has a habit of marking bridges in a manner that is unlike any place else in the country. Its a guessing game by which standard they are marking such bridges anymore. So if you haven’t been down a particular road before you really have to watch what you’re doing.

I finally did figure out the formula though. And it’s a rather simple one. If you’re not sure of the route, park yourself behind another 13 6 truck. Do what he does. If he makes it under the bridge, the chances are you will too. If he doesn’t like it, chances are you’ll be entertained for about an hour and a half. Either way you’ll remain on unhurt.

From here, I will likely run down to South Jersey to pick up another inbound load, though I don’t know. It sounds like things are changing on the itineraries. after awhile you pick things up and I understand the feel of things. I don’t know how to describe it better than that, but anyone who’s worked at a job for any length of time will know what I mean. Welcome to my world.

I see where Obama’s budget proposal got knocked 98-2. Okay, maybe presidential budgets being turned down is not an unusual occurrence. Most of them don’t make it past square one. But, 98 and one? That’s not going to buff out.

I see also where the evidence points to the German plane crash the other day being deliberately caused by the co-pilot.

The moment I heard that news, I knew what had happened. Islam again. Mere hours later this story [2] came out, and I was unfortunately proven correct. The co-pilot it seems was a recent conversion to Islam.

I suggested here on BitsBlog, when the policy makers first came up with the idea of making the cockpit inaccessible during flight, made the assumption that those in the cockpit are trustworthy. We’ve seen several times where that’s a questionable assumption, and in this case it proved the fatal one.

Back in 06, I wrote a piece that attempted to address the issue of governmental corruption. The lead into the article, though, is I think equally applicable here. You’ll see what I’m driving at in a minute.

One of the biggest problems I have in my garden is keeping the squirrels out of my bird feeder. The tehnological war between us and the squirells has gone to insane levels. But, nothing we do keeps them out; eventually, they figure a way around the security systems in place to get at the food. Eventually, I just took down the bird feeder. Darned rodents, anyway.
Even in the human world, security experts will tell you that there is no security system on the face of this planet, that cannot be broken down and bypassed by a determined criminal, no matter how high a wall you put up, no matter how many safeguards you put in place. If somebody’s determined to get by them, they will. Systemic answers to security simply do not work, in the end.

The kind of situation we see in this German wings thing, is precisely what I’m worried about when I say there is only one enemy. Islam.

Any open society, depends on a certain level of trust existing, or there is no openness. The copilot was trusted based on his activities and his attitudes prior to his recent conversion to Islam. It’s the recent conversions that are the most dangerous, because they are the most easily manipulated.

So the question becomes now, how do we defend against this? Is there a way without hanging Muslims on sight, to deal with the problem?

Unless we can change our cockamamie gun laws, and permit concealed carry without license, I honestly don’t see how we can fight this.

Further, this event provides further proof that Iran, being driven by the same philosophies that the copilot was, cannot be trusted with any weapon above the size of a lady finger. Even assuming that some mastermind within the world of Islam didn’t program this copilot to do what he did, it raises the question of assorted crazies acting independently should Iran ever get a hold of atomic weaponry.

Understand, the nation of Iraq are not our enemy, not at least of any consequence. It’s the philosophy that is our enemy. It operates above and beyond the level of national borders. That’s precisely why I found the argument that Bush attacked the wrong country back in the day to be so incredible. This isn’t about countries, this isn’t about national borders. I honestly don’t think we can win if we don’t change the game. We can’t win this war fighting by our rules. It’s not going to happen. There has to be a game changer.

In any event, but it would seem that Germany has now had its 9/11. It will be interesting to see how they react. I wonder if it will prompt the rules being changed. Frankly, I hope so.