Taking a walk through the city
Decided to walk from my office to Union Station yesterday; it was not beastly hot as it's been for the last few, and I probably needed the exercise. I made an effort to do so in an alert manner, trying to take stock of my surroundings for, well, blogging purposes later. DC is a weird city, and there are stories just about everywhere.
- As I walked by the Forrestal Building, I heard a persistent and unnerving crackling sound. It took a minute before I saw the loudspeakers on the corners of the entrance lobby, and realized they were broadcasting periodic bursts of static. Given that most govvie buildings in DC are arranged like latter-day fortresses, as if this will stop terrorism, and having read some non-fiction about intelligence services in the U.S. (particularly in the Post the other day), hearing something like that is particularly creepy.
- Speaking of the Post, I noticed their headline from the box on the corner, concerning the immigration bill that recently got killed in the Senate. Looks very much like the Republicans have their "wedge" issue...and over this. I'm sorry, but I can't see what it is about immigration that makes it such an issue. Sure, we should have a decent immigration policy, but it's rather like seeing NASA's budget or a soybean trade pact on the front above the fold. There are Presidential candidates who have based their entire campaigns on the subject, fergawdsake (Tom Tancredo, from the prominent border state of Colorado). It's not that I don't have an opinion, but I really can't get that excited about it. There are a host of issues, such as the war, or health care policy and Big Pharma, or decent energy policy, or electoral reform, or corporate welfare, or the many crimes of the Bushies and the fact that the Democrats are too chickenshit to actually enforce laws, or many, many others which have orders of magnitude more impact on our lives and economy, and it's not as if xenophobia is anything new in this country or the world. I suppose it's not as visceral to the legions of voters who can't read to talk about the billions of dollars wasted on the war and Big Oil rather than scary Mexicans coming across the border to menace our lovely virgins, but please, people...how many Mexicans do you know? How many of the people who are up in arms about this have never met one? Yes, we have lots of people in this country - they all need jobs and some of them don't look like you. Next topic, please.