If you travel internationally, the terrorists win!

Interesting stories today

Egg McMuffin Inventor Dies. I feel as though I have been cheated my entire life, I thought Ronald McDonald invented this stuff, then bam, just kidding! This guy also wrote their first national advertising campaign, “Where quality starts fresh every day.” Really?

Passports Made Abroad. What I don’t understand about this one is US officials saying we can’t make them here because of the high-tech chips that are placed in all new passports (please note the chips are meant to INCREASE security). I guess only European companies can make the chips, which they do in Singapore, but then why are they being sent to Thailand before they arrive in the states? My only guess here is that Thai labor to place the chips in the passport covers is cheaper than having it done here, but it really just ends up being a ridiculous vicious cycle.

We need the chips to “keep the terrorists out” but we can’t make the chips, so they are made in Singapore. The problem is, the chips are so expensive, not to mention all the money spent on having the airport loud speaker announce the threat level every 3 minutes (etc. etc.), so we have to cut corners and have the covers assembled in Thailand, which will cause more of a security risk thus increasing the amount spent on national security and eventually the cost will be so high we will probably have to find even cheaper labor in a place like, I don’t know, Iran, or Korea, or even Iraq while we are at it. Awesome.

And I’ll end on this story, Dozens Killed As Iraq Fighting Rages, which goes into a lot of the stuff I was complaining about yesterday, but I am still frustrated at the cavalier way it is reported. The article talks about the construction workers that have been missing for a year, I wonder how many Iraqi construction workers are missing. I’m sure someone is examining the thousands of Iraqi remains to find their bodies as well.

And finally, John Stewart is great.