We are now at Terror Alert: Orange
Now, seriously, wasn't the whole point of the "threat chart" was to try and indicate to the public realistically what the "imminent threat" was of being attacked by those Men Of Evil.
But we've been into "high risk" several times already, with nothing in sight. In other words, I don't buy it. It's not doing it's intended purpose. I see "orange" as "ooo, pretty color", and not that there's a real threat of harm because we've been here so many times already.
In other words, it appears that the "scale" they're using is way off. If, in real life, you do something "high risk" a bunch of times, you'd expect that the risk would catch up and something happen one of the times. We've yet to see that with Threat Code: Orange.
So this member of the populace has reached the point of ignoring the colors. They're meaningless.
I think it's just an excuse TSA people, et al, can point to during the holiday season, when people are most likely to complain about the jackbooted-thug treatment at the airports. After all, the heightened alert statuses do tend to coincide with the peak travel periods all the time....
Oh, fuck. Couldn't they have waited until *after* I got on the fucking plane.
The even better part is that it's no doubt just a way to keep people scared of the boogyman, allow more of their personal freedoms to get trampled, and willingly give up more $ to Gov. Bush and the blank check that 3000 lives bought him.
/cynical
Well...my line of thinking leads me to believe that we would need to have more "acts of terror" committed in order to calibrate said Terror Alert Scale. You really need to take it to extreme highs (Nuclear Holocaust/World War III, large rabbit reproducing and overrunning the earth) and extreme lows (waiting for paint to dry, watching the grass grow, visiting with a senile geriatric relative) in order to calibrate the scale properly for future references.
God help us if Bush's approval ratings fall too low. We'll be at red alert level faster than you can say "right-wing propaganda keep the nodding lemmings in fear" system.
US is crying wolf.
Crying wolf - see here:
http://wslap.blogspot.com/2003_12_01_wslap_archive.html#107240034731838640
Interesting thing on CNN a couple of days ago about the whole alert level things, saying the obvious. It's political.
If they were ever to go to "red", and nothing happend, they'd look like asses. If they moved it to the lower levels (green and blue?) and something happened, they'd look like asses. So they bounce between orange and yellow to avoid going too high, or too low.
I'm glad I live in a sane country, all I have to really worry about is my hockey team choking in the third. Go Canucks!