TSA Out of control: Takes 3year toddler teddy bear and requires pat down

[laktrash]

My wife said she heard that muslim women are expept for the pat down? I don't know where she got info or if there is any truth to it. Anybody heard anything along these lines ?

Edited November 19, 2010 by laktrash

[leroy]

....I love that clip. ...

Chuck:_____________

I watched the video clip this morning. I have to join Punisher, Mike, and AR in saying that i believe it is a most appropriate response.

It sums things up with extreme brevity and much truth.

Keep up the good work brother!!

Leroy

[Punisher84]

My wife said she heard that muslim women are expept for the pat down? I don't know where she got info or if there is any truth to it. Anybody heard anything along these lines ?

Janet Neopolitan ice cream or whatever her name is was advocating it, but I don't think it is going to happen.

[MacGyver]

So I'm going to close this thread before somebody gets booted because of it.

I count myself fortunate to be someone who spent the morning of September 11 in 1 World Trade Center and watched both planes go in. I witnessed the first plane from directly below the impact. I also spent the next nine months within the red zone working the rescue effort, the recovery effort and finally some special projects related to the cleanup.

Why do I count myself fortunate? First of all, I lived. My office was on the 78th floor, on the exterior wall, on the side of impact. American Airlines Flight 11 hit on roughly the 81st floor. Had I been in my office as opposed getting a cup of coffee due to a delay at the security desk, I would have been one of the people that we simply never found. The second reason I count myself fortunate to have been there, was that I got to be a part of the effort in the days following one of our nation's greatest tragedies. While it was a terrible time for our country, and to some extent our world, it was a great time to be in New York. The nation and the world were united and standing solidly with us. It was great to be a part of that.

Unfortunately, we've squandered much of that goodwill. And that infuriates me.

Make no mistake, we are absolutely at war. But, we are to some extent in a proxy war. This war isn't between us and Muslims. It's not between Christianity and Islam, or Jews and Arabs. This is a war between a group of extremists who happen to be Muslim and the rest of us - whether you realize you are a part of that group of the rest of us or not.

We've become distracted. We went to Iraq, and while I believe that the world certainly needed to hold Saddam Hussein to account, that effort took our eye off the ball a bit. It changed the conversation from combatting extremists to words like "empire", "nation-building", and "occupier". As misguided as any of those representations are, those became the focus.

All the while, there's still this group out there that hates us. And, nothing we say or do is going to keep them from hating us. They would like to kill you because of who you are, and who you represent. These people need to be removed from the gene pool. Authoritatively.

Here's the tricky balance, though. We are America. We are the greatest country in the world. We are better than them. Not because our religion is better than theirs, not because we have better stuff than them, not because we are smarter than them. America is the greatest country in the world, because we can take in the tired, poor and oppressed from any other place in the world, and make them Americans. I'm fortunate that I get to see pretty much every third world backwater that exists. They all have two things in common. Food from street vendors will kill you, and it's not hard to find someone who wants to come here - who is completely willing to give everything they have for the remotest chance to become one of us. An American.

We've got this Constitution that makes us great. We are founded on a belief that all men are created equal. It was, and is an experiment. Your family that you were born into, your class, your religioin - none of that guarantees you anything. Anyone can come here, step up to the plate, work their ass off and make a better place for themselves and their family. You can build a border fence 100 meters tall with snipers on the top, and people will still come. They are willing to risk everything they have, including their lives for a chance to be an American. One of us.

If we lose that, we've lost the war. Unfortunately, despite our missteps, despite being engaged for a period longer than our involvement in WWI and WWII combined, we have only seen the opening salvos of this war. Because of our modern "sensitivities", we aren't going to have the conversations we need to have or do the things we would have to do to bring this war to a swift end. We're going to be engaged here for a long time.

I agree with the fact that the TSA is nothing more than an expansion of a government jobs program and is really not much more than security theater. A lot of us seem to have bought into the illusion that all of this theater makes us safer. It doesn't. If you are willing to commit your life to an objective, you have a pretty big playbook to work from. There isn't much you can't achieve if you are willing to commit to not walking away from it. There is no machine that's going to stop a threat like that.

People should expect to be reasonably safe when they fly, and should also fly with an acknowledgement of the risks. We are at war. There are some people who would like to blow up the plane you're sitting on. You chose to get on, deal with it.

Frankly, the airlines could put a stop to the TSA's overreach, but they are so dependent on government's largesse with your money that they keep their mouths shut. They could handle security much more effectively, but they won't. For now.

So we find ourselves in a bit of a morass. The TSA is a consequence, if you will, of not recognizing the true enemy and doing what we need to do to remove humankind of their presence. We are better than them. We don't need to profile Muslims, because frankly, most of them just want to live here and make a better life for their families. They are Americans, too. Just like you and me. We need to kill the ones that need killing - whatever your deluded religious claims happen to be, make it abundently clear that if you attack us, we will kill you, and then get on with our lives. Our enemies know that we aren't willing to do this right now, so they are emboldened.

You do have a choice with the TSA. Don't fly. Then, write two letters. Write one to your representative. And then, write one to the airlines. Let them know that you would have loved to have flown, but chose not to because of the waste of time and dignity that dealing with the TSA represents. The TSA isn't going anywhere until the airlines realize how much their bottom line is affected.

Oh, yeah. Play nice. I hesitate, but I'll leave the other thread on airline security open for now. But, respect one another. You're grown ups. You can express your point without calling names or initiating personal attacks.

Edited November 19, 2010 by MacGyver