OK. Now they’re really pissing me off. I didn’t mind the extra long lines to get through security. Nosiree I handled that fine. After all, I figured, it’s only to make everything safer. Then came the shoe bomber, and for month’s we’ve all been having to take off our shoes. No problem with that either (once they finally started telling you to do it, instead of just telling you it was optional but not mentioning that if you didn’t, they’d have to do secondary screening). I understood, and was happy to doff my shoes to avoid getting blown up.

But now they’re fucking with my wine.

It’s now illegal to carry any liquid onboard any flight in the United States for the forseeable future. Which means all of us used to doing only carry-on luggage either have to check our bags and leave all our toiletries behind. But even worse, it means that in a couple weeks when I go up to the Willamette valley to do some wine tasting, I can’t bring any home in my checked luggage.

Luckily for me, I can just have these folks ship the wine to me at a later date without paying an arm and a leg, but I’d be freaking out if my trip were to Provence instead of Oregon. Ruth and I are used to bringing a couple of cases home in our carry-ons, but we’d never trust the airlines with wine in our checked luggage.

You know, the thought occurred to me that these terrorists might be really smart — so smart that instead of actually blowing up planes, they just get as far as a reasonably coordinated attempt and then watch a whole nation suffer under outrageous and highly restrictive travel security measures for months. In some ways it’s much more powerful than killing a bunch of people. This way they’re making millions suffer, every day.

What I can’t understand is why they’ve targeted the wine lovers. Don’t they know that Bush thinks wine is for uptight liberal sissies?