Tag Archives: TSA

The TSA…again…

Well….there have been developments in the TSA scanner mess that I felt I had to comment on….the more you hear about this great boondoggle of these multi-million dollar machines, the more you just want to say “what good is the TSA?” First, let’s start with the fact that the owners of the companies that make the machines have been spending million of dollars lobbying for their installation across the US…why do they have to lobby if these things are so wonderful and do what they are sold to do? I have a problem with any company making profit on fear that leads Americans to gradually lose their freedom….and with the latest revelation that the machines will only detect explosive material if it is in a block shape; not if it is shaped into anything resembling body parts…or into flat shapes that can then be taped to the body. Yep, that’s right folks..you have given up your freedom and dignity for a technology that does not work…oh, you’ll hear the TSA say it does because they’ve found small amounts of marijuana and a few “sharp objects”….but don’t say what those sharp objects were…a child’s hair comb? When was the last time anyone brought down a plane with marijuana? And, as shown on the show “Mythbusters”, you can just saturate clothing with odorless explosives and then make them explode…what’s next, do we all have to wear a TSA mandated jumpsuit that we are given before we can board an aircraft?

Now…in the last week or so…we’ve seen the unchecked power of the TSA being turned on the pilot that expressed his first amendment rights to criticize the agency by an “investigation” being started into his background and everything else in his life. If that is not terrorism, what is? These kind of tactics are not even done in supposedly backward countries anymore…

Let’s get down to the bottom line, even if you don’t think the 4th amendment violations are enough to justify removal of these imagers, the plain, true fact is that we are being taken again by that wonderful repub combo of big money and fear…just like they did in the last election…aren’t we tired of that yet?

The MAD thing…

Well…lest you think I’m one of those squishy folks that think it is a sin to use American power to further our security ends, this one will put that to rest…I hope. For all of us that have lived through he cold war and the threat of having 20,000 nuclear warheads from the Soviet Union rain down on our heads, this fearful overreaction to a bunch of cave dwellers with a few pounds of plastic explosives is just laughable. I mean, please, we disrupt our whole way of life, give up essential freedom, and spend billions of dollars on scanners and other security measures that are always chasing the last attack while we stand for the humiliation that chips away at the very idea of America. I propose that we stop playing defense…that we get rid of these scanners, the TSA, and stand up like the country that won World War Two…

My proposal is simple…we let the world know that in the event of any attack on any American anywhere, we will spend 6 months finding out who is behind it…and then, whatever country is responsible will have one of their cities turned into a puddle of glass. I know the argument that these terrorists are an amorphous, stateless entity, but they get support from many well-known countries like Pakistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia with money and logistics. A very simple, easy to understand set of consequences…why do you think the Soviet Union with one of the largest armies in the history of the world never attacked us…it was the policy of MAD…Mutually Assured Destruction that made the price too high. I just propose that we again make the price too high…that we stop cowering in our stocking feet being searched like criminals and become Americans again.

The answer to the terrorist’s statement that they will defeat us with a “death of a thousand cuts” is to reply with a death of a million degrees…geez…

A little civil disobedience can be a good thing…

Well…it’s about time that we Americans started to say “enough” to the actions of government as embodied in the TSA and their new passenger screening techniques that are being rolled out at US airports. First, it was the pilots that started to rebel at being fondled or blasted with radiation so they could do their jobs, now, ordinary people have started to do the same, to say “enough” to the gradual chipping way of our freedoms to the overreaching god of security. But, as you could easily predict, the masses…that great group of the easily led who have bought into the lie that there is danger under every bush, who have bought into the lie that by giving up the basic freedom to be let alone, they can be safe, have vilified these individuals. How has safety come to trump freedom and those who stand up for it?

I want to encourage this kind of behavior that says “enough”, that says just wait a minute, that says no one asked me if I wanted to be afraid….that no one asked any of us whether the American people are such wusses that we can’t take a little danger in exchange for freedom. All of the generations before us made the right decision, that freedom from government interference is a core value that we will not give up because some danger befalls us…we have always stood up as a nation and said we are tougher, we are greater than that…there is no power on earth that could make us give up our freedom because we are afraid and these times are no different.

I have to pass on one of the quotes from Benjamin Franklin that I always believe goes to the core of the balance we need to remember in America…and points out the danger we are in succinctly….”those who give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither”. Thanks, Ben…

We’re tougher than this…

Well…after the release of the new TSA screening processes, I feel heartened that there is a growing group of us that are saying enough. We do not need to be molested in the name of safety by a government agency that has become as much a terrorist organization as al-Queda. Well…that is a bit of hyperbole but these folks use fear to change peoples behavior just like the terrorists; the TSA continues to inflate the threat of attack to raise their budgets and consolidate power over the people. But, as I said earlier, the people are starting to revolt, they are starting to actually think and realize how much of their freedom they have given up…completely disproportionate to the chances of any danger to any traveler from the terrorists. I think this is the pendulum starting to swing back to the American values of toughness…and people are seeing that fear is no way to live their lives and want to challenge these cave-dwelling idiots that want to do us harm. I, for one, am completely willing to take increased risk to protect the values that made this country great..after all, life is a risk…you are 100 times more likely to die in a car accident than from a terrorist attack. Are you going to stop driving?

With the lessons of 9/11 still clear in our minds, I wouldn’t want to be a terrorist going up against a planeload of pissed off Americans…please government…let us take care of ourselves…geez…