Silflay Hraka

Well, all those emails kept some poor person after work on the day before Christmas Eve. I just got this, which was sent out about 8:00 pm Portland time.

Dear Mr. Bigwig*

Name removed to protect the innocent
Customer Information Specialist
Portland International Airport
Port of Portland
email removed to protect the innocent

I’m always a bit surprised when some stranger responds to my missives. My default expectation is to be dismissed as a crank, so it’s a bit disconcerting when I’m not.

As you can see from the letter, the buck has been passed up to the Feds, and though it is dressed up in officialese, they don’t contradict the version of events on the Net.

So I guess it’s off to the TSA, to see that they say.

To report specific violations and concerns about security, please contact the Consumer Response Center. After business hours, please leave a message and your call will be returned promptly.

Phone: (866) 289-9673
Email: TSA-ConsumerResponse@tsa.dot.gov

* no, they didn’t write “Bigwig” If you really feel the need to know my name, poke around the site a bit. It’s readily available.

Update: More TSA e-mail addresses
Brian Doyle, Transportation Security Agency Spokesman – brian.doyle@tsa.dot.gov Note: I don’t know for sure that this is a correct address, but it follows the pattern of the TSA email addresses below, and my e-mail to this address has not yet bounced.

Heather Rosenker, Assistant Director for Media Relations – heather.rosenker@tsa.dot.gov

Emily Chodkowski, Transportation Security Specialist, Office of Security Regulation and Policy – Emily.Chodkowski@tsa.dot.gov

General enquiries – TellTSA@tsa.dot.gov

Sensitivity to Goobers

Okay, there is a group protesting the fact that the latest “Lord of the Rings” movie is entitled “The Two Towers”. I realize that a lot of people were directly affected by the attacks of September 11, and I know it is a painful memory that will never fade for many, many people. But this is just the kind of PC horseshit that I just cannot abide. I won’t refute the groups argument here. I’ll let you read what was written at Plum Crazy. Thanks to Plum Crazy for the link.

Update: I can’t find the original petition to have the movie’s named changed. Supposedly it was at http://www.petitiononline.com/twotower/. However, I was able to locate plenty of other petitions protesting the original petition. I signed one.

And I’ve decided that I have no sympathy for the f#cking morons that created the site and the petition in the first place. They classify the naming of LOTR: TTT as “hate speech”. Go repress someone else, Nazi.

Okay, so I took BigWig’s advice and I emailed many of the addresses in this story with the link to this story. Guess what? They called me. No shit. Someone from Portland PDX called me. I don’t know how they got my number, but I did send them my name and a link to my newspaper address (http://www.news-record.com). I assume they called the front desk and asked for me. I don’t care, really. I don’t see any point in maintaining my anonymity when I stand up to be counted. (Except for here, of course. I don’t know you people. You could be crazy.) I don’t know if it was someone from the list below. Bob someone, I think. They asked me if I’d forwarded an email and I assured them that I had and that I thought they might be getting lots of responses to this particular story. They told me that they were looking into the story to make sure the writer had fairly represented the actual occurrence. I got the feeling that he called more to intimidate and berate me, but I told them that it was refreshing to see that they cared enough to get the story right, at any rate, and that was that. I am sure they were less than pleased with my forwarded comments, but I was not that critical. I wish I’d saved my comments. They went something like this: I hope that this is being investigated and I hope that if it is determined that someone lied to save their own skin that they are reprimanded or released. I also said that these kind of occurrences might happen too often to investigate, but if someone actually took time to investigate even one, maybe they wouldn’t happen so often. I sent the comments and story link to everyone on BigWig’s list, but got system admin errors on chestm@portptld.com and brantm@portptld.com.

So, anyway. Having them call is a little spooky. You never know when some overly arrogant security type might see my commentary as occasion to litigate. Even worse, maybe I am now marked as a terrorist agitator or something and will be put on a government watch list. Anyway, I’d feel better if more of you guys chose to forward the story link to the addresses in BigWig’s post. They can’t make us all disappear…can they?

Protect your civil rights!

Out, out, damned geek!

Blogging may be light for the rest of the day, if not week, or year. I just spent more than I should have buying cards for the online version of Magic: The Gathering. Nothing like spending money on something without any physical nature whatsoever to liven up the day.

Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wife?s Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why We Put You There?

If you feel like emailing the story ( I know I did) and some appropriate comments to Portland International Airport staff, use these addresses;

Customer Service – PDXCustomerService@portptld.com
Port of Portland Executive Director – BillWyatt@portptld.com
Portland Airport Security – pdxsecuritytaskforce@portptld.com (Update: No longer a good address, apparently)
Kate Brown, State Senator, PDX Security task force member – brown.sen@state.or.us
Mike Schrunk, Multnomah County District Attorney, PDX Security task force member – michael.d.schrunk@co.multnomah.or.us
Michael Cheston, Airport Manager – chestm@portptld.com(Update: No longer a good address)
Michael Brant, Chief of Police, Port of Portland Police Dept – brantm@portptld.com(Update: No longer a good address, as the new chief of police there is Phil Klahn. I have no e-mail for him as yet)
Elisa Dozono, Media Contact, Portland Airport – dozone@portptld.com

Link via the Blogatelle

Update: We’re off to an X-mas party; I’ll add more e-mail addresses when we come back. If you have any that dopn’t appear above, drop them into the comments, and I’ll add them as well. E-ailing them will not work, as I’m away from my home e-mail until Thursday. Also, spread the story, and the good addresses. We’re already getting results, as Kehaar posts above.

More e-mail addresses: as suggested by Friend of Hraka mfinley.com

Oregon Dept. of Tourism – info.oregontourism@state.or.us
Portland Business Alliance – info@portlandalliance.com
Joe D’Alessandro, President and CEO, Portland Visitor’s Association – joe@pova.com

Don’t Cross The Family

Instapundit is predicting that Condi Rice get the VP slot for 2004, even though Bush has already announced that the spot is Cheney’s if he runs again.

I don’t think so. Remember the Bush family’s obsession with loyalty? Remember Jeb? Remember when he was the Bush most qualified to be the president? He ain’t getting any less qualified.

For George this isn’t about what is best for the Republican Party, and this isn’t about what is best for the nation. This is about family.

In Texas, it is commonly assumed that one of the prime factors that motivated George W.’s decision to run against Gov. Ann W. Richards in the first place was her famous “silver foot in his mouth” speech about the senior George Bush given at the Democratic National Convention in 1988.

Family loyalty became a near-obsession with George W. after his father’s 1992 defeat at the hands of Bill Clinton, say many of those who know the son. “He is intensely protective of his father?and that emotion came through loud and clear,” recalled Torie Clarke, President Bush’s 1992 campaign spokeswoman. “As the campaign went on, fewer and fewer Republican officials would appear with [President Bush]. George W. was deeply offended. He expressed real aggravation at the lack of loyalty for people his father had helped for years and years and years. I don’t think he’s forgotten who they were.”

This about making sure that Jeb has the clearest possible field in 2008. Now that Jeb’s been re-elected in Florida, he has a clean record and a clear shot, and he’ll be all of 53 years old. He’ll even have two years off to raise money and build a campaign after his second term ends.

I think the the only way Condi gets the 2008 Republican nomination, assuming she runs for it, will be if Jeb and George have surveyed the terrain and decided that the Republican nominee will lose, much like the major Democrats did in 1992.

Zod: That whole post seems….familiar, somehow.
Shhh!. I’m navel-gazing.

They don’t like me, they really don’t like me!

Dammit, another year’s gone by, and I still didn’t make the list.

Zod: Not enough muttering to the voices in your head, if you ask me.
Surprisingly, I did not.
Zod: Now see, that’s what I’m talking about.

Blogs Make the Headlines
Mainstream journalist’s self-pitying cries of derision drown out sound of approaching clue train.

“Bloggers are navel-gazers,” said Elizabeth Osder, a visiting professor at The University of Southern California’s School of Journalism. “And they’re about as interesting as friends who make you look at their scrap books.”

She added, “There’s an overfascination here with self-expression, with opinion. This is opinion without expertise, without resources, without reporting.”

When your scrapbook is measured in terabytes, Elizabeth, it cannot help but have some interesting stuff in it. The scrapbook itself is our resource, navigating it is our expertise. Using that resource, and my expertise in navigating it, I reported on the NYT’s misrepresentation of one of the leading public health figures at VCU last week. Last I checked, offline journalism hadn’t mentioned it. Perhaps ya’ll were too busy writing the latest breaking story on how video games have doomed our culture.

Not all bloggers claim to to be journalists, though according to Webster, they most certainly are. The form itself harkens back to the early days of journalism, when many papers were a melange of news and commentary. It’s something I would expect a professor of journalism to know, though perhaps I expect too much.

Stay Free

I know that BigWig posted a link regarding the death of Joe Strummer. I felt it necessary to make my own post. I saw the headline this morning and I am absolutely devastated. I can’t believe it. When Joey and DeeDee Ramone both passed this past year, I felt the loss, but I understood it. I am having a hard time believing that Strummer is really dead. The Clash was and is my all-time favorite band. I believe that “London Calling” is one of the top 10 finest songs ever written, and the album one of the best as well. I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I believed that maybe The Clash would get together and play one more time, if only for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Wow. Rest in peace, Joe.

Train in Vain

Joe Strummer has died.