America was made just a little bit safer recently, when TSA airport screeners decided to look for explosives in the soiled adult diaper of a 95-year-old female leukemia patient.
Granted, Islamic radicals want to hide their bombs in the last places you'd ever want to look, but even they've presumably got their limits. Although to be fair, if any terrorist did place a bomb inside a 95-year-old woman's diaper, he'd probably be enthusiastic about volunteering for suicide-vest duty just to get the image of something that looked a lot like Willie Nelson out of his head.
But seriously, how hard would it be for the TSA to check records before a flight and determine that an old woman, sick and on her way to a nursing home after living her entire life in this country, is no threat? Assuming, of course, that her wheelchair isn't being pushed by a new attendant named Mohammed Hussein Death To America Mohammed.
At some point, political correctness needs to be put aside so that our limited security resources can be focused on those who are most likely to be genuine threats. But will that day ever come?
Depends.
In the event of hearings over the TSA incident,
Democrat Senator Al Franken has agreed to recuse himself.
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Democrat Senator Al Franken has agreed to recuse himself.
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24 comments:
Every problem has a solution and we used to pride ourselves on our ability to find those solutions. TSA is not the solution to the terrorism problem; it was a poorly thought-out stopgap response that became a problem unto itself. Neither the Bush administration nor the Obama regime has anyone in it smart enough to figure this out. Now they want to extend the degradation to train and bus passengers? Pity the TSA fool who has to grope the privates of denizens of the Greyhound terminal at 3:00 AM on Saturday. And shame on us for accepting these insults and humiliations. We should be better than that.
And every month or so we hear about new degradations oth our citizens and the normal citizen on the street is not standing up and protesting this behavior and treatment....If I as a private citizen "patted" down a woman like the TSA agents do I would be arrested, charged with sexual assault, and more then likely have to register as a sexual predator. Not only are these indignities perpetrated on the adults in our communities but also on children and the elderly.
I think it is time to come up with a better way of checking passengers and providing security. What happened to the "bomb sniffing" sensors that were talked about a few years ago....they were supposed to be able to detect 1000's of chemical signatures. But if I remember correctly when these devices were first discussed a whole host of left-wing group threw a fit because they would be an invasion of privacy....well guess what folks....walking through a detector that can sniff me and tell if I've been playing with explosives recently sounds a whole lot better then getting felt up by a government drone.
They laugh at us in Texas for wanting to take action against these ididots. TSA is out of control and totally lacking in adult leadership. It is time to kick these fools to the side of the road with the rest of Team Obama.
Thanks a lot for that picture of Franken-putz. Talk about images you can't get out of your head!
"Senator Al Franken" - that phrase would be hilarious all on its own, were it not so totally tragic. And I'm certain my brother voted for him. On purpose.
I am ashamed to say I live in the state Al Franken supposedly represents. When he announced his candidacy for senator, there was the question of whether he was an actual citizen of Minnesota, but evidently that didn't matter. Then there was the question of Franken's not paying employer's taxes--but that was all explained away. Then we had the recounts--with hundreds of "forgotten" votes turning up in the back of someone's station wagon, that just happened to all be for Al Franken. Then Gov. Tim Pawlenty (who followed boa-wearing ex-wrestler Gov. Jesse Ventura) declared him the winner of the senate race. Just goes to show ya--the Illinois electorate have nothing on us Minnesotans.
@Readers- There was another interesting addendum I wanted to include today, but it didn't fit with the cartoon/commentary. Following the filing of Freedom of Information Act requests, it's been discovered that the TSA operators of the new full-body scanners are developing cancers at an atypical and alarming rate. Moreover, the documents show that the scanners haven't ever actually been pronounced truly "safe" to use.
At the bottom of an ocean somewhere, Osama bin Laden is still laughing.
Well, Stilton, TSA, OSHA and a guest appearance by the late Madame Curie (who can tell all about the cumulative health effects of constant low level X ray exposure) and you have tomorrow's theme...
As for 'Senator Al Franken', it always sounds like a rejected skit idea from Franken's SNL days. But then, most political developments today feel like a rejected SNL skit idea.
My brother went on a business trip to Israel following hip replacement surgery. He was surprised that he was not pulled out of line or given any extra scrutiny when boarding El Al. He asked someone about it later and was told, "Oh, Mr. (my brother's last name) we know all we need to know about you." Clearly, they had already done the background check that eliminated any concerns about his reason for flying on their plane. We've had more terror attempts on our flights recently than Israel. And Israel is hated more than us. They seem to have the profiling thing figured out.
@Andrew & Earl- The reason we have to rely on technology (apparently unsafe technology) instead of actual intelligence (as the Israelis do) is that hiring only smart people for these critical jobs would likely be seen as discriminatory.
And so the flying public is strip-searched or baked like potatoes, all so the jobs can be accomplished by someone as dumb as a bag of hammers.
@Earl (& others)
It appears that you and El Al suffer from the same affliction: Common Sense. Let us all hope that a contagious strain of this can be found, and that it can be directed at government officials.
One might consider that the Gestapo was set in place "for the common good" and just kept expanding its power, due to lack of effective resistance. Likewise, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn vocalized his (and others') time in a gulag as being the result of the general populace cowering in their hovels, hoping that they weren't the target of the latest middle-of-the-night visit by representatives of the State. Of course, the timing of a raid is not planned so much to strike terror in the hearts of the mundanes, so much as to provide maximum safety for the representatives of the State's "department of public safety"....
This may explain why authorities in Arizona "visited" the home of a man known to have been a combat veteran and to have just worked the graveyard shift in mid-morning ... when he would've been at his groggiest. His crime? It seems that he had relatives who were "persons of interest" in an investigation, and his combat-zone awareness caused him to observe and report scrutiny of his own home by undercover operatives of the local enforcement folks.
Didn't "Big Sis" tell us all that if we see something, we're supposed to say something? After all, doing so is for our own good.
...And if you believe that, I can get you a great deal on beachfront property in Japan!
I travel a lot -- on way way tickets -- so I get patted down way too much, and my stuff inspected, and my bags opened, and it's getting grating on my nerves. If I can't even fly around my own country to visit friends and family without such nonsense I guess I'm going to start driving more often the 1000 miles here, the 1500 there (to help "global warming" I suppose, hehehe) -- and screw the airlines. They should say something too at this point, it's going to affect their bottom line, and not just the bottoms of old ladies.
Meanwhile, I'm sure some TSA is about to start checking cars on freeways and at toll booths --
except if there's Mohammed and his Hajib wearing wife. Oh, it just aggravates me. And all that extra time. Just ban Muslims from flights, and be done with it.
Oops, "one way" not "way way" tickets -- yikes, I hate booboos.
Pete(Detroit) - I'm afraid a LOT of people voted for Franken.... several times even.
Earl - AND, the Israelis also know what to do with the terrorists after they catch them, and I'll bet it doesn't involve civilian courts!
I don't know what I'm going to enjoy more. Seeing comrade Obama moving out of the White house while Michelle moves in, or seeing all the idiots, morons and assholes that he brought with him sent packing, too. Imagine a government with no Geithner, Napolitano, Holder, Clinton, Biden, Chewbacca....
@Colby and Pete: Yes a lot of people voted for Franken many, many times over, but being long dead and buried at the time, they didn't feel it.
The dead in Chicago haven't missed an election since 1850.
In the things can always get worse department, don't forget that the Dems would LOVE to unionize Homeland Security and the TSA. Too many of the screeners already act a little too "post office" and "d.v.m. Not in the murderous rampage sense, but in the "pay lots of attention to unimportant details" sense. It would give new meaning to card check and work stoppage.
By the way, I meant Michelle Bachmann was moving in , not the other Michelle who is already there.
Wow I didn't know about the cancer clusters. Figures. That's ironic on many levels....
I have to fly twice this year and in a way, not looking forward to it. Its crazy out there... and they are just sooo intrusive anymore.
Last time I flew, I learned the hard way not to bring my cake decorating supplies with me in my luggage....I could tell the TSA agents had their grubby hands in some tubs of edible sugar fondant I was taking with me. Really? Read the ingredients. It won't blow anything up. Promise. How do all these people do it who have to do cake competitions on tv, anyway?!
PS: I would have slept better tonight without the second picture. Ha.
It still amazes me that there are people who honestly think the same government that is responsible for the TSA is capable of providing for their health care and other personal needs.
The same president who actually jokes about the misery the TSA inflicts upon innocent American citizens could put an end to the madness with a single executive order. But he won't. Instead, he'll spend his political capital droning on about "high speed rail", which will we all know would inevitably be made as miserable as air travel.
Meanwhile, the talking heads ponder if this latest indignity will be the last straw for the TSA. I don't know why it would be. After all, if all of the other TSA scandals involving thefts, groping, feeling-up small children, etc wasn't enough, why would this latest episode be? And soon the TSA workers will be unionized (the original goal when the TSA was formed, btw) so firing the most cretinous of the cretins will be next to impossible.
Passing through the airport is has become just another way for the state to remind you that you belong to them.
@John the Econ- I shudder to think of the security issues surrounding highspeed rail. Instead of just guarding the door to a jet, you have to guard hundreds of miles of track. AND the door to the train.
Great summation that this is all "just another way for the state to remind you that you belong to them."
It appears that many of us have forgotten that we owe a Bi-Partisan thank you to government for the Patriot Act. Republican scum are no better than Democratic scum. Both appear determined to violate the Bill of Rights at will. The Constitution was not put in place to give Government power over the people ... but to establish the limits of that Government.
"The defeat of America need not be accomplished by destructive weapons and violence. There are easier and cheaper ways of conquering a politically incompetent nation. It can be accomplished by psychological weapons, by economic strangulation, by political chicanery, by intellectual subversion." - Willam J. Lederer 'A Nation of Sheep' 1961
@ElCedar- Good point. Granted, the Patriot Act was created under Bush...but every aspect of it has been renewed (and frequently enlarged in scope) under Obama. And perhaps the TSA is deliberately testing the limits of what Americans will put up with before they cry "enough!" If ever...
Not really relevant to anything, but wanted to point out that the Franken pic you used is a well-known fake. Not sure why anyone bothered, since he's done loads of genuine humiliating things you could show off -- it kind of comes with being a comedian.
@megmouse- Thanks for calling this to my attention. I hadn't been aware that the picture was a fake, but I still believe it reflects a certain verisimilitude which captures the essential character of the man. (grin)
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