Is this not coming through in english?
I don’t know how or where but people seem to be getting the impression that I’m OK with Mineta’s Morons. I have read what I wrote, and I cannot imagine how anyone would get that impression; the TSA is a bloated loaf of innefficient asininity, and there is no question that it does absolutely nothing to make anyone safer, and if they ever DO catch anyone, it is strictly by accident.
All the people telling me I shouild be OUTRAGED!!! YES, I SHOULD BE OUTRAGED BY THIS!! have missed the entire point of the post I made.
Being a dick to anyone, least of all a person in a position of authority over you, is stupid.
You can argue that they don’t deserve that authority, and you’d be right, but that is not the point.
You can argue that the authority they have is overreaching and unneceasary, and you’d be right, but that is also not the point.
Yoiu can argue that SOMEATHING OUGHT TO BE DONE!!! RIGHT NOW!!!! and you’d be right, but what? nobody answers that question. Nobody has the answer. As a reminder, even if somehow you managed to magically keep every one of the 1.8 million passengers per day OUT of the airports, as happened in the days after 9/11, the government will step in and use your tax dollars to prop the airlines up- and the loss of one or ten or a hundred thousand people who won’t go into air ports out of dislike for the TSA hurts the airline industry not at all.
There is no fix for this that I have ever heard.
At my last company there was a finance person who was a nitpicky pain in the ass about expense reports. More than once she refused to pay because the name of the restaurant was spelled wrong. She drove everyone nuts. And that’s exactly what she wanted to do. And it worked, for the most part. SHe was a puppeteer, an insignificant bitch who harshed everyone’s mellow by making everyone dance to her tune. I refused to dance then, I refuse to dance now. I cheerfully filled out the reports exactly as I was told and got her every piece of documentation she requested and never let her have the satisfaction of seeing me lose my cool.
She hated that. It drover her nuts that she couldn’t rattle me like she did everyone else.
THis is the best revenge, until there are real solutions. She eventually quit. The TSA mess will get worse or better, but I have yet to hear anyone say a single useful word about how to fix it. Or point out to me a place where I said I liked it (which does not exist) or agreed with it (which also does not exist) or tell me how acting like a petulant child while standing in line fixes a damned thing,
20 comments Og | Uncategorized
Dude, they get it, they’re just fuckin’ with ya. Just like that finance bitch. Also like when I was fucking wid you guys about the group reach-around over Velociman’s prose.
Don’t let’em see you squirm.
WTF happened to Velociman anyhow? I miss looking up them big words.
The Anti-Federalists were right:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig10/sale5.1.1.html
MUCH better men than we have tried to stop the slow progression of Tyranny for over 200 years and have failed. It’s over.
It displeases me greatly to write that but, alas, it’s true. About the only thing we can do now is stand athwart History yelling, “Slow down!!!”
No, I’m not screwing with ya. You are NOT recognizing the point that these outrages cause reactions that are viseral and automatic. They can’t be controlled.
When going through TSA, I’m docile until challenged and then my wife, among others, always gets upset at my reaction.
I still say telling those of us who have these reactions to calm down and act civil is like telling me to relax and enjoy the show while a female member of my family is being assualted and sexually violated.
And yes, I’ve missed flights because of all the drama, but it is a reaction I can NOT control…
All The Best,
Frank W. James
I get it. What annoys me most about the TSA is their policy of Immunity from having their actions questioned. You are not allowed to joke about having an A-bomb in your underwear. Nor can you criticise the TSA employees incompetence. You can’t take pictures of them doing stupid things and post them on the internet. They are protected by law from the consequences of their own incompetence.
And they have never caught a single terrorist.
I had to tell one stupid b***h to do whatever she wanted to the voucher(she was changing conversion rates without bothering to tell me) but to just remember that I would get my money one way or another.
My boss just authorized me to add overtime hours on my time sheet when I told him what had happened.
I offer this, first of all; whenever I read it I imagine Og.
Second: Frank J, the point isn’t to control the visceral reaction, it’s to control your reaction to the reaction. I get pissy as hell when I go through airport security, but I keep a lid on it. I’m not denying the feeling; it’s there and it’s strong. But I am careful to keep control of how much of that feeling I let show. That’s the part I exercise control over. And yes, it took a lot of practice in other situations to get to the point where I could do that. But it can be done.
Also: You’re seriously comparing airport security to watching your wife or daughter being raped?
TSA isn’t a hill I want to die on.
On one hand I’m rooting for High Speed Rail to get away from this. On the other hand, I feel the TSA will follow and fubar that also. I can deal with competent people in the BMV, the emissions testing center, the Post Office, the doctor’s office.
I cannot tolerate the gubmint hiring a bunch of crips and bloods from the ghetto and bringing them into the airport to make them the boss of me, while able people of all ethnicities sit unemployed. My life allows me to avoid airports. I’ve had a friend have his laptop stolen off the conveyor (the TSA people worked together to divert his attention the same way groups of Gypsies do), a cousin had a wad of Christmas present money seized and when he questioned “where was it” they were ready to send him to Sing Sing, a girlfriend had to empty her luggage and lay out display-style every piece on the floor like she was up for an army room inspection.
And every one of these described the airport security doing this to be either the quintessential 300 pound angry ghetto woman or the gangbanging “disadvantaged yoots.” Not one said “He reminded me of General Powell.”
I wonder if they’ll at least talk dirty to us:
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/tsa-pat-procedure-airports/story?id=11998304
Get us excited about the project.
Why has it seemed for twenty five years that voting Dem or Rep makes little to no difference at all?
http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2006-fall/decline-fall-american-conservatism.asp
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/anatomy-of-neoconservatism/
Because now that the neocons have taken over the Republican Party, they’re basically two sides of the same coin.
Frank: There certainly isn’t, to my knowledge, any place where you can go and have someone duct-tape you to a chair while you watch a loved one get raped. Certainly, I would not make that choice. Airline travel, on the other hand, is in fact a choice, and one everyone is free to make or not make. When you make the choice to fly, you make it knowing full well you will not only have to pay dearly, but that you will be paying to be manhandled by tsa goons. There is nowhere, to my knowledge, that you can fly that you can’t visit via other methods of transport. Flight merely increases convenience and decreases time spent travelling. The tradeoff is dealing with the morons.
I have no doubt you have strong feelings about you and your family being abused. So do I. And there is nothing you can or ever will do to change that. If you choose to allow your feelings to get the better of you and do- well, whatever, that’s your business. I would appreciate it if you didn’t do so ahead of me in line. The outcome of that sort of confrontation is certainly never good for anyone.
I choose not to fly unless there is no other practical alternative. I don’t like any of that shit either and like you, I don’t see getting all upset and making a scene as a good choice.
When I worked for John Mellencamp, I was escorting his crippled buddy, Jay through security and they were training a new guy. Jay had a colostomy bag. When the guy felt that bag under his shirt you could see his ass pucker up big time. He had Jay raise his shirt with his one good hand and that’s when I (Like a moron) said real loud, “Watch it. No telling what kinda shit is in there!” Fortunately, the trainers thought it was funny and I didn’t end up in jail.
OT, og, but I just clicked on Big Dick’s Place and got sent to some stupid go-daddy page. Is BD down do you know?
Og: Well, it is pretty hard to travel across the pond without the TSA hassle because they are also in charge of passenger boarding on ships now.
As for the airlines, the only time I pay to fly now is when I go out to see our son. Otherwise, I drive.
In my latest contract negotiation one of my requirements was they pay me to fly; as well as pay for the ticket. The alternative is they pay for the mileage which I prefer, but the accountant objects.
Yeah, like everyone else I’m a sell out for convenience (I would drive to California but the wife objects something awful), but at least for business I’m being paid to endure this gross violation of my rights.
Otherwise, I’ll stay here on the farm where I still have some control over my destiny…
All The Best,
Frank W. James
Amen, Brother og.
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I have to hold my tongue but my face always gives away the contempt I feel when I wander through airport security the few times a year that I fly.
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I’m a ever greying, ever balding 50 something aged anglo saxon white man but I always have a good sun tan and I have long hair and a beard.
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I generally buy my tickets late and many times pay cash, and coming from places like the Florida Keys stinking of fishing boats or out of rural places in West Virginia from Mines and Explosive plants I’m almost always on the “enhanced screening list” where they won’t let me check my luggage at the curb and force me to go through each and every hurdle they have inside the terminal building including me and my bags being diverted over to the “special” area where I have to spend at least an extra five or ten minutes per flight .
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I’ve learned to expect it, and just like good cops and bad cops you see the TSA employees that are professional and see that they really are wasting their time and your time and sort of joke through the process but we both know that we have to go through the process anyway just BECAUSE.
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Every now and then I encounter some asshat that wants to flaunt their position and power and I just let them go through the motions because in the end I want to get on a given airplane at a given time (IF it is actually on time) and busting their chops and acting up will only get me further delayed or possibly arrested.
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I loved one time when I had been fishing for a week in the Keys and my suitcase smelled like a high school gym locker full of socks or possibly nuclear waste and I got to watch the TSA “screener” rummage through my dirty underwear and fish blood stained Columbia Outdoors Pants/Shirts wearing rubber gloves.
.
Hopefully they changed those gloves after they finished with my bags.
Grumpyunk: Now I know why you’re grumpy. The two very brief encounters I have had with Mr Mellencamp gave me the distinct impression he is a first water dickhead.
Mr James: Didn’t know about the TSA/liner thing. The only person I know to have travelled by ship since 9/11 went on a freighter, and the “security” was the purser of the ship.
[…] This follows on the heels of Og’s post on the TSA. The TSA has a hard as you can get job to do, and they hire the flotsam and jetsam to do it. I was part of the base security detail during Desert Storm, and it was a son of a gun trying to catch the ruses they set to check us, as well as work within the stupid rules they set (you can open hoods, you can’t open hoods, you had no rounds in your weapons, etc.) that hobbled you so much that you had no option but to stand and watch the show if anything did go down. […]
One thing to add for Joanna: While it was not rape, it was, in my opinion, a deviant sexual crime when I observed a TSA employee single out my wife and run her through the backscatter machine before I could get to her. She was in another line so we get through faster. He was on the radio the whole time so it was pretty obvious to me. She was singled out and they wanted to know what she looked like in the ‘nude’.
When I told her what just happened her response was, “…they must be pretty desperate…”
Still, it’s bullshit and there is damn little we can do…
All The Best,
Frank W. James
I just recently flew. I ate many beans beforehand, and I left souvenirs with each TSA agent I was near until I was empty. Some of the smells horrified even me.
When I was empty, I’d walk up to the ones loafing in the terminal past security, and say things like, “Wow. Do they make you wear those gloves ALL the time? Isn’t it really uncomfortable?”
I just want them to be thinking about how it sucks to be them without realizing they’re being helped.