paranoia

My son loves hanging out at Barnes and Noble. They used to have a train set up and they have plenty of books that you can read without buying. Of course all that just leads to kids saying "can I have this...can I have that." So it does sell stuff. That said, I have noticed over the months that people leave the place a mess and stuff disappears. So although it inspires kids to demand parents buy stuff, it also is a source of pilfered and damaged stuff. In general I felt sorry for them for the damaged and stolen merchandise.

Today the children's area was empty. That's unusual. Often it's quite crowded. Today it was empty. The train set is gone. No surprise. I hear they lost some 150 trains in the span of three months…so no surprise they discontinued that particular sales technique.

I also noticed that there was a cop there. Fully uniformed, on duty cop. That is definitely NOT usual. But, well this has become such a police saturated society that I barely thought anything of it. Police are now watching us EVERYWHERE it seems, either in person or on camera.

Let's think about the context in NYC. Cops now patrol most of the train stations I frequent. I hear at least twice a day, often more, announcements on the subway from the NY Police Department warning us to report suspicious packages and people and to "remain alert." Sometimes it’s a recorded message, sometimes the train conductor gives the message, occasionally cops themselves come on board and deliver the message. Sometimes cops patrol the train car-by-car. There are many ads in the subway telling us that if we see something we should say something to the police. And just this weekend we noticed cops in the local branch of our library, searching everyone's backpacks. We walked in with our son in his stroller with all the various bags and backpacks associated with a kid (beverages, food, toys, cloths, changing pads...) hanging off it. The cops searched it all. They seemed surprised that I found it unappealing that cops were searching our stuff in a public library. It is a sad comment on our society, but it has become omnipresent.

Saw this one on Daily Kos (someone's eyewitness account of strange happenings on the White House lawn). It seems that a terrorist was stopped on the White House Lawn. Here is a file photo of the culprit:

It is amazing how paranoid and strange the Presidency has become during Bush's tenure. I can't help but think that it would have been handled a little less dramatically by earlier administrations. This is nothing if not surreal:

I'm looking out my window next door to the White House. The police have shut down several square blocks around the White House from car and pedestrian traffic. There's a bomb squad parked out front. The issue appears to be a few suspicious objects that have been thrown over the fence at the Old Executive Office building.

These objects include a grocery bag, a stuffed dog, and what appears to be either Elmo or a red Teletubby. So I'm not too worried (now, if it was a purple Teletubby, that would be a different story).

I'll update the diary if anything actually happens.

UPDATE: The cool robot is gone and has left awesome treadmarks all over the Old Executive Office building lawn. 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue have been reopened to traffic. Elmo has apparently been determined to be grating and annoying, but not technically a terrorist threat.