The whole scenario of the British "bombers" who were caught allegedly plotting to blow up flights from the UK to the US has exponentially increased the fear factor for Americans who see mean brown people behind every bush (punny? I make'em, you decide). The August 10th incident which has led to the ludicrous banning of every liquid imaginable on US flights, when absolutely no evidence has shown that there was a plot to do anything at all here is such an incredible politicization of the event that it's just sad that people are buying into it.

The explosives that the shmucks in Britain were trying to allegedly make were apparently binary explosives whose formulation, while not overly complex would not have been exactly simple to create on an aircraft in flight. Besides needing all the right chemicals like among other things quantities of sulfuric acid and a lot of ice to control the temperature of the reaction, the smell apparently and the time required to formulate the explosives would have been dead giveaways that something was up in the lavatory on the plane. Unfortunately, the public's reference for binary explosives is probably "Die Hard with a Vengence", without a rational explanation of the difficulty of actually formulating an effective compound in sufficient quantity in a uncontrolled environment. Even in the movie, the binary components were already formulated and ready to go; there was no "back-story" on how they got there.

Even the dumbest fucking air marshal in the TSA might figure out that there was a problem when he saw a passenger going into the lav with heavy duty rubber gloves, an apron, several flasks and a cooler of ice. Really.

But listen to the voice of the adminstrator of the most useless government agency on the planet as he continues to beat the "all fear, all the time" drums:

Three weeks later, the nation's top aviation security official said the threat remains. "This continues to be a very serious threat and we are taking no chances on the security of our aviation system," said Edmund S. "Kip" Hawley, head of the Transportation Security Administration. "It would be a mistake to conclude that because of the arrests in the United Kingdom that we can lower our security posture."

The absolute paranoia that the 1600 Crew has induced has lead to a spate of incidents, none of which have proven to be any more related to terrorism than the man in the moon.

In the days after the TSA increased security, more than 10 flights were diverted or searched, and at least one airport was shut down. On Aug. 16, a flight from London to Washington Dulles International Airport made an emergency landing in Boston because an unruly passenger acted up in the cabin. The woman made references to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, told crew members that she had visited Pakistan and urinated on the cabin's floor, according to an FBI affidavit. The woman, who is under evaluation for mental illness, is being held on federal charges of interfering with a flight crew. She had no connection to terrorism, officials have said.

More security incidents followed. A Delta Air Lines jet was searched after a flight attendant became suspicious of a passenger who spent too much time in the restroom and may have tampered with a smoke detector. An American Airlines jet made an emergency landing in Tampa and was searched after the crew found that both lavatories were locked.

An airport in West Virginia was evacuated after a woman's glass water bottle and a container of face cleanser tested positive for explosive residue. The FBI later determined that the woman had no explosives.

The next week, a Northwest Airlines flight returned to Amsterdam shortly after takeoff when a U.S. air marshal became suspicious of 12 passengers who passed around cellphones and ignored orders to keep their seat belts on. The 12 were detained but released by Dutch authorities, who also said there was no connection to terrorism.

There have been other incidents of people being denied boarding because of things written in Arabic on their clothing, or their speech or appearance. Instead of going on with our lives, we are allowing the very idea of the possibility of terrorism to control our lives and our destinies. Wouldn't that mean that the bumbling, fumbling terrorists have won the day, and that we have become what they expect us to be, weak, scared people who crave the surety of Big Brother in the Nanny State at all costs.

Even and most especially our self-respect.

"We've educated the public to be afraid of things," said Bob Hesselbein, an airline pilot and chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association's national security committee. "Let's hope they never find a way to weave explosives into clothing because it's going to be pretty darned embarrassing on an airplane.. . . We are treating everybody as a potential terrorist, and that breeds more fear."

As the Church-lady would say: "How conveeeninent".