Somewhere Between Bert And Ernie

Woke up to this morning’s news about the foiled plot in Britain to combine benign substances smuggled aboard at least 8 aircraft flying between London and the US and cause a series of catastrophic explosions.
I heard the original live press conference with Chertoff, now I’m listening to Torturer-General Alberto Gonzalez following up on National Public Radio… I predict that very soon there will be some further erosion of civil rights, because it’s odd to me that a country’s atttorney general being prepped and primed to speak so soon after a major news break of this nature. It just feels a little too smoothly arranged somehow.
Heathrow is horribly fubared at the moment with hundreds of people waiting to be searched one by one, and all hand luggage to be banned, all liquids aside from infant formula and prescription banned (and good luck to the people that have to determine if a liquid is medicine or not without taste tests).
There will be a tremendous cascade effect owing to the huge amount of international air travel that is routed via London, so I’m going in to the office early just to help out on the phones this morning.
Tonight is going to be ugly, and I may be asked to volunteer to take calls into the late evening. By then, all the international travel arund the world will be affected due to a ripple effect – expect delays if you’re traveling via Britain, or on a flight that originates in Britain, or is routed via Britain.
So far, we seem to still be at Bert, but supposedly we’re at Ernie, and the British are currently at Ernie, the highest threat level.