Los Angeles Times: Shut up and be scanned
Boston Globe: The new “enhanced” patdown by airport screeners has sparked an unfortunate backlash among some fliers and privacy advocates
Springfield Republican: Let’s consider these searches the 21st-century equivalent of a WWII rationing card.
Spokane Spokesman-Review: TSA is on our side. […] [M]odest traveler inconvenience is a reasonable price to pay for a little added peace of mind.
Author: lemkin
The Wrath of the Bond Vigilantes
At first, the vigour with which Dublin wielded the spending axe won plaudits from bond markets. But the deflationary impact of the cuts has since seen the deficit widen.
Clearly the answer to this is simply deeper cuts. But only to services for the poor and unemployed. Couple that with a massive tax cut for the top 2% and you’ve got yourself a recipe for runaway growth…
John Boehner, Man of the People
John Boehner flies commercial, just like you and me:
As he left Washington on Friday, Mr. Boehner headed across the Potomac River to Reagan National Airport, which was bustling with afternoon travelers. But there was no waiting in line for Mr. Boehner, who was escorted around the metal detectors and body scanners, and taken directly to the gate.
I really don’t see what all the hubbub is about. These filthy proles are just never happy with anything we give them.
Got a message today via some tin cans, and dig this, there wasn’t even any strings hookin’ ’em up. They helped me recall that it was behind bars, amongst 400 cons, that I enjoyed the best Thanksgiving of my life. Me and the other guys, we filed in from the yard, those of us who weren’t in solitary, and got in a big ol’ line outside the dining hall. As we filed through the chow-line, we go to take as big a helping as we wanted, ’cuz I guess even in the calaboose, Warden Viglietta recognized the need for overindulgence on that day of all days.
We had plastic plates just brimming with pressed turkey and sweet potatoes and green beans. After a brief interruption when one of the new guys tried to swipe a cleaver from the kitchen, Joey “King” George got up on a chair and he recited a passage from Pilgrim’s Progress. “A man there was, though some did count him mad, the more he cast away, the more he had.”
Then man, we just all dug in. Joey King’s punk Junior The Weatherman got a jug of applejack that he’d been fermentin’ since the Fourth Of July, and we passed it along under the table, spikin’ our cider when we were free from watching eyes. I remember that “Dog” Hanson even got a little wacked on the stuff; he stabbed a guy just for pinching his yams. Little Billy Boner tried to get a round of Christmas carols going, even though it was a month early.
The mellow sweetness of a pumpkin pie off of a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
Chris in the Morning ruminates on the meaning of the day.
TSA Enhanced Pat Downs : The Screeners Point Of View
Molester, pervert, disgusting, an embarrassment, creep. These are all words I have heard today at work describing me, said in my presence as I patted passengers down. These comments are painful and demoralizing, one day is bad enough, but I have to come back tomorrow, the next day and the day after that to keep hearing these comments. If something doesn’t change in the next two weeks I don’t know how much longer I can withstand this taunting. I go home and I cry. I am serving my country, I should not have to go home and cry after a day of honorably serving my country.
It’s just as bad for them as you might imagine. Read the whole thing.
(via Instapaper)
Another Good Time
This is probably another good time to remind you all that all of us were carrying actual assault rifles, and some of us were also carrying pistols.
Well worth a read to see just how far the TSA goes, even when dealing with soldiers returning from one of our forever wars.
Setting the CIA aside for the moment, I’m hard pressed to come up with a better example of a rogue and seemingly uncontrollable agency in the federal government.Also: I’d wager this is likely to be the one and only link to Red State you’re ever going to see here. So live it up.
Nope. Never had someone in Uniform do the terrorism. Never. Ever.
If a domestic terrorist chooses to execute his (or her) cunning plan by enlisting, deploying for some period of years into an active war-zone, surviving said deployment, and then flying back on a plane full of other military personnel at which point the stunning plan can become known: to seize control of and crash the airplane on which they are all flying using a pair of nail clippers, then so be it.
I’m sorry, but I think that’s a level of “risk” with which a free society can live.
Another Good Time
This is probably another good time to remind you all that all of us were carrying actual assault rifles, and some of us were also carrying pistols.
Well worth a read to see just how far the TSA goes, even when dealing with soldiers returning from one of our forever wars.
Setting the CIA aside for the moment, I’m hard pressed to come up with a better example of a rogue and seemingly uncontrollable agency in the federal government.
Also: I’d wager this is likely to be the one and only link to Red State you’re ever going to see here. So live it up.
Mr. Obama still has immense power, if he chooses to use it. At home, he has the veto pen, control of the Senate and the bully pulpit. He still has substantial executive authority to act on things like mortgage relief — there are billions of dollars not yet spent, not to mention the enormous leverage the government has via its ownership of Fannie and Freddie. Abroad, he still leads the world’s greatest economic power — and one area where he surely would get bipartisan support would be taking a tougher stand on China and other international bad actors.
But none of this will matter unless the president can find it within himself to use his power, to actually take a stand. And the signs aren’t good.
Paul Krugman, shrill as always.
Glenn Beck is the moderate center of Fox News; Bill O’Reilly is its liberal wing.
Adam Serwer in response to Roger Ailes latest maundering about NPR and Nazism. I mean, you knew they both started with an “N” didn’t you? How clear do they have to make it?
I’d say that about sums it up.
I’d say that about sums it up.
[My study] found the exposure [from millimeter wave scanners] to be about one-fiftieth to one-hundredth the amount of a standard chest X-ray. [I] calculated the risk of getting cancer from a single scan at about 1 in 30 million, which puts it somewhat less than being killed by being struck by lightning in any one year, [and] while the risk of getting a fatal cancer from the screening is minuscule, it’s about equal to the probability that an airplane will get blown up by a terrorist.
Peter Rez, a physicist and professor at Arizona State University. This is exactly the way we should be talking about this. You are trading one minuscule risk for another, and are doing so with no measurable impact on the overall risk in terms of either health or the likelihood that you can actually even interdict an attack with this stupid machine.
Hey hey, hey ho: porno-scanners have got to go. And etc…
Hey hey, hey ho: porno-scanners have got to go. And etc…
Lemkin 