Situation is getting worse for US citizens who would like permission to leave their "free" country

[pyesetz]

Two articles showed up on SlashDot today:

Story 1: US Citizens leaving the country via Detroit or Atlanta will have their fingerprints taken.  In the quoted article, there is no statement about what the government will do to US citizens who decline to be fingerprinted, but the two obvious choices are (a) prohibit them from leaving the country or (b) arrest them as presumed illegals, since surely any legitimate citizen would be only too willing to undergo this procedure.

Story 2: Cancer patient held at airport for four hours because he has no fingerprints.  The man is taking capecitabine, which causes fingerprint ridges to peel off the fingers.  Without fingerprints, he was presumed to be a security risk, although the putative correlation between having fingerprints and being aligned with American Corporatist interests is only poorly demonstrated in the literature.

Comments

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, it's to ensure that teh person coming back is the same person who left, rather than a terrorist who killed him and took his passport.

and considering how they can't stop poorly educated people from Central America from coming over our southern borders in wave after wave, I don't think this will protect us one iota. So why waste the time, money and hassle to the traveller?

[pyesetz]

So why waste the time, money and hassle to the traveller?

To maintain the Yellow Alert status that is needed to make conservative politics work.  Obama is a "liberal" only because that term has become debased in the USA to mean "anyone to the left of Hitler/Franco/Perón".

Most normal Americans never leave their country for any reason, so anyone wanting to travel abroad is suspicious.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Most normal Americans never leave their country for any reason, so anyone wanting to travel abroad is suspicious.

You make that statement without the least sense of irony, I'm sure :)

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Admittedly, any sort of border security measure is at present compromised by the Mexican situation, but apart from that, why on earth would you (or anyone) object to identifying yourself when you cross a border? I've never understood that attitude.

In re #2, someone without fingerprints obviously needs to prove his identity in another way. That was done, and he got on with his trip. The whole thing's a minor, if rather odd, incident. I think his doctor ought to have said something to him, if that's a common side-effect of the drug.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

And the original article was incorrect anyway - US citizens aren't subject to being fingerprinted.

[pyesetz]

Did you see Jonathan Haight's TED talk about the differing morality of conservative vs. liberal humans?

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html

[xolo.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. My initial reaction is that his statements are largely true, but his analysis of the usefulness of this truth is naive. I'll want time to consider his views.

That page he points to is interesting as well. I have a very low 'animal disgust' rating on the disgust scale :)

[pyesetz]

At YourMorals.org, my 'animal reminder' disgust rating is elevated (2.6 vs normal 1.6), perhaps because mortality is staring me in the face due to all the medical issues.  My 'core' and 'contamination' ratings are only 0.1 above average.

Remind me to call you the next time I have a dead Qat that needs to be picked up with bare hands.

Oddly enough, my score on the RWA authoritarianism scale is about average, while my score on "social dominance" is above average.  Apparently only liberals take these tests?  They claim that my "moral foundations" scores are more typical of disgusting Fascist Republicans rather than the pinko doves I usually hang out with.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

My results were mixed, which doesn't especially surprise me. On the five values test, I got:

harm 2.0
fairness 3.0
loyalty 3.7
authority 3.7
purity 1.3

So, a conservative in pretty much everything except the idea of purity, which accords pretty well with my sociopolitical attitudes as I experience them. Variety is harmless fun (I'm making palak paneer for dinner), but Western civilization, laws, and culture are plainly superior to any other. It does interest me how common it is for people to automatically assume you're a liberal if you suggest going to the Indian or Thai restaurant for dinner.

For the disgust scale (which frankly interests me more, as it told me something I'd not have predicted in advance) my average was 1.6, perfectly average, but my 'animal reminder' disgust was 1.1 (I compensated with a high 'core' disgust). I think that's perhaps too high, even. Examining their scoring, I see that they count 'seeing maggots on a piece of meat' as animal reminder disgust, but to me that's more of a core disgust issue - a piece of meat is food, even if it's in the garbage and no longer fit to eat. Had it been put as 'seeing maggots on a dead bird', say, I'd have rated it much lower.

I'm quite sure that I internalized the idea of being an animal at a very young age, probably around four or five. Certainly by the time I was seven or eight I took logical and philosophical exception to the idea that I (and humans in general) wasn't an animal, and wasn't shy about saying so. That's when I first really became aware that my perceptions in this regard were at variance with the majority. That's why I talk so little about furry issues, which you've commented on before. It's something that I've internalized long ago. There's little to talk about. I do feel way, way more comfortable around other hardcore furries than around anyone else, though.

My RWA is 3.9 (possibly low - I don't have any real problem with the idea of authoritarian government per se, so long as it's not oppressive), and my SDO 4.4. On the whole, I'm quite in favour of the way that the Republic and the West operate :)

[pyesetz]

palak paneer
I had to look that up.  My usual "Indian" dish is Rogan Josh, but made with beef cubes instead of lamb.  Dogs eat meat!  Dogs eat the same thing every day!

Western civilization, laws, and culture are plainly superior to any other.
The main evidence for this is that most other peoples are copying American culture.  But in ancient times the thing to copy was Roman civ/laws/culture; yet now, when we look back at their women-as-chattel conquest-is-value culture, all we see is barbarism.  Still, it must have been fun for males to live in a culture where penis ornaments hung in the front garden!

Had it been put as 'seeing maggots on a dead bird', say, I'd have rated it much lower.
I once found a bird on my back deck with a broken neck.  Don't know how it got there.  But it didn't want me to come near it, despite the fact that it could only turn its head halfway and clearly needed medical attention.  But it wanted to be left alone so I left it.  Later its corpse was covered in ants.  After that I used to shovel to move its remains behind the shed, sharing space with the mummified squirrel I shoveled out of the shed.

by the time I was seven or eight I took logical and philosophical exception to the idea that I (and humans in general) wasn't an animal
Yup.

I do feel way, way more comfortable around other hardcore furries than around anyone else, though.
My current status as a breeder makes me feel like a bit of an outlier in such groups.

I'm quite in favour of the way that the Republic and the West operate
Obama is a better emperor than Bush, but he's still an emperor.  His main job is to preserve and extend the empire.  Do you like the RIAA and the feudalism they're pushing? (A "criminal" is someone who opposes my company's profits.)