You talkin' to me?

Via Talking Points Memo, I see that the conversion of the United States from Republic to Empire to Rickety Oligarchy to Senile Gerontocracy proceeds apace. With Rummy farting beets and lambasting a bunch of shell-shocked, postprandial veterans about Vichy America and Ted "The Bridge Goes to Somewhere, Just Nowhere Important" Stevens babbling about the tube-er-net (as if the whole thing had been constructed by The Shadow, or the architect of your local drive-through bank), you'd think that someone would flip the channel to a nice Golden Girls rerun so the old fellas could rub one out in peace and leave the rest of us to enjoy the tail end of the ride and the open bar on the H.M.S. Spengler. Instead, we get Senator Conrad "It Is My Real Hair" Burns noting that:

the United States is up against a faceless enemy of terrorists who "drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night."

I'll go out on a limb and claim that I've popped around the block in a fair few more taxis than this latest loudmouth Senatorial refugee from the dialysis lab, and never once have I found myself confronted by a driver without a face. More pointedly, I'll note that from the World Trade Centers to the Madrid and London bombings to the latest blasts out of Iraq, every major incident of terrorism in the last six-odd years has occured in daylight, which begs the question, doesn't it: Why is it so goddman hard for a perfectly caucasian gentleman to get an Uptown cab after three AM? I ask you.

At least the Soviets obliged us with good footage of their hokey here's-my-phallic-warhead parades up and down Red Square, high-kickin' like a lot of commie Rockettes. That put a real face to the Ruskie. Then all we got out of bin Laden et al. was a lot of B-reel of grown men climbing on jungle gyms and running through obstacle courses. Senator Burns tries mightily to concoct an image of pure terror, but alas in its facelessness it falls short of terror and clocks in just barely north of spooky and a little bit gross.