. . . This is my body. I decide who touches me. I decide who sees me naked."

A double amen to that!

Let me guess. The "enemy" is hiding bombs inside prosthetics so it's totally justified molestation, right?
Fuck. That.
There has not been one reported case of the TSA finding anything of the sort. Ever.

This really angers me. I also will not submit. I am to fly next month for a meeting. If they harass me or I see anyone else harassed(I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut), I guess I won't be going. No matter the consequences. I told them I'd rather drive, it would be an 8 hour drive, but my employer said no. We'll see what happens. I am so angered by the fact that I have to be so concerned for what may happen at the airport...it should not be this way in the US. I fully support disbanding the TSA.

For all you regular readers of the Goddess' blog you can skip past this post. I'm going to post my regular rant about not needing the TSA. For all you new readers, please read it carefully and refute any statement or misstatement. ;-) And please copy this and send it to your congress critters preferably with a copy of the U.S. Constitution

=================================================
The TSA was not needed one hour and one minute after Tower II was hit!

The paradigm, the norm, the expected, what everyone was taught to do was to sit down, shut up and wait for the plane to land and the negotiations happen. That was the model from Entebbe onward.

The passengers on board did not really know what was about to happen on September 11, 2001 at 8:46:30 when Flight 11 struck Tower I.

Even the passengers on Flight 175 probably didn't realize what was about to happen when they struck Tower II at 9:03:02.

The Pentagon crash of Flight 77 at 9:37:46 may have been still a matter of ignorance.

At 10:03:11 on September 11, 2001, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after the brave souls counter-attacked and caused the hijackers to crash the plane.

The time difference is 60 minutes and 9 seconds from Tower II being struck to the crash of Flight 93. The shoe bomber and panty bomber were taken down by fellow passengers as well. Recently, JetBlue's Flight 191 pilot was taken down by the passengers once he was out of the cockpit. Additionally how many times have you heard of passengers' concerns and diverted flights?

The TSA is and has always been a joke, no make that a total stupidity, that has wasted our country's fortune going down a rabbit hole.

If you don't believe me look at the 9/11 timeline.

There will never be another 9/11 style attack unless the attackers can arrange planes full of geriatrics, and even then it would be doubtful.

Oh, and someone brought up that bombs are an issue. If bombs were effective and simple then the Lockerbie bombing would have been repeated multiple times between 21 December 1988 and 11 September 2001. That's 4647 days or 13 years. Where was the TSA in that time.

I wonder if she can leave the leg a bit loose and have it "accidentally" drop off while they're patting her down?I'd pay good money to see that!

The TSA is a government sanctioned exercise in the violation of citizen's constitutional rights. While not inherently evil, it is evil in its application.

Okay, say your job is to prevent this.

How are you going to do it?

(Jim P, there have been ten actual or planned airliner bombings since 1988. None originated in the US).

[Sabrina:] There has not been one reported case of the TSA finding anything of the sort. Ever.

You realize, of course, that means the TSA is so effective no one is even trying to attack airliners from within the US.

There's an old joke about that Jeff. My cats are there to scare off the elephants. "But there aren't any elephants here?" you say. Yep, that's how good they are at it.

Preventing something like Philippines 434 is basically impossible (except for the vigilance of the other passengers, as Jim P points out). Yes, making people take off their shoes, etc, blocks this specific mode of attack. But he obviously knew ahead of time what would get picked up and what wouldn't. It wouldn't get done the same way next time, they would attack other weaknesses. And groping people isn't changing that.

I have some sympathy for your point of view, in that the attackers are mostly too incompetent to innovate, but it's at a terrible cost...

"You realize, of course, that means the TSA is so effective no one is even trying to attack airliners from within the US."

The apologist is back. Yuck.

Fellow, you are totally deluded if you think this - or, you are paid in some way to support the TSA.

The ineffectiveness of their methods, their appalling lack of background checks on their employees, the multiple cases of criminal prosecution for theft, bribery and assault...

...the gaps in coverage w/r/t baggage handling, catering and aircraft service. The lack of boundary security at airports.

The amazing stupidity of insisting that if only airline passengers are searched, America is "safe" from terrorism.

All have been demonstrated to you.

Go shill somewhere else.

Jim P, there have been ten actual or planned airliner bombings since 1988. None originated in the US. -- Jeff Guinn at September 21, 2012 12:38 AM

And how many airplanes have gone down because of the bombings? An effective tactic needs to be repeatable, many times, to the point that your enemy gives something up or surrenders.

We still have airplanes and airlines. It means that none of the terrorists have found an effective means to change the risk/reward ratio to flying.

The TSA has changed the risk/reward ratio for me a lot more. And probably a lot of Americans feel the same way.

or, you are paid in some way to support the TSA.

Radwaste, please don't do this one. It's one of the standard methods for anti-capitalists to attack those who speak inconvenient truths. "You're funded by the oil industry/big business/whatever".

You are absolutely correct that they treat employees differently to passengers, and that that gives a complete lie to their arguments.

[Ltw:]There's an old joke about that Jeff. My cats are there to scare off the elephants. "But there aren't any elephants here?" you say. Yep, that's how good they are at it.

There's another old joke. My dog scares off bears. Oh, wait, that isn't a joke.

So what's your point? That there's no one out there who would love to bomb an airliner?

There have been four fatal aircraft bombings since Lockerbie. Two attempts in the last several years. It should be obvious that security measures are forcing terrorists to make ever more convoluted, and therefore less likely to be successful, attempts.

You are right, the cost is high. I'm not sure it is terrible, though.

Terrible is landscape scattered with aluminum and body parts.

[Radwaste:] The ineffectiveness of their methods ...

Oh, come on. By definition, the TSA has been 100% effective.

Note, I didn't say efficient, or pleasant, or any of those other things.

The amazing stupidity of insisting that if only airline passengers are searched, America is "safe" from terrorism.

Okay, you are so damn smart. How are you going to keep explosives off airplanes? Really, the traveling world is holding its collective breath, waiting for your answer, so brilliant that it is beyond their poor, limited minds.

[Jim P:] And how many airplanes have gone down because of the bombings? An effective tactic needs to be repeatable, many times, to the point that your enemy gives something up or surrenders.

Since Lockerbie, four. Close as dammit to five.

How many is enough?

We still have airplanes and airlines. It means that none of the terrorists have found an effective means to change the risk/reward ratio to flying.

Gosh, do you think that might, just might, have something to do with airport security?

I get that airport security is an annoying, expensive, time sponge. I go through it way, way more than you do. I'm sure every American feels that way.

But I'll bet most of them understand that the alternatives are worse.

So Ltw, you agree with Jeff that the TSA is the only thing stopping terrorist from blowing up planes with bombs, or forcing their way into the cockpit to turn planes into misseles?

Jeff, you've failed to ansswer this question every time I've posed it. But here we go again

Name one person or plot foiled by the TSA. Just one

[lujlp:] Name one person or plot foiled by the TSA. Just one

I have answered this question every time: All of them.

You just don't get it, do you? Keeping explosives off airplanes requires multiple levels of security. The FBI / CIA / NSA hope to discover and circumvent plots before they are brought to fruition. The TSA's goals are to make operational planning sufficiently difficult so as to require convoluted plans with a low likelihood of success, and to deter Islamofascists from even trying.

Regardless of anything else, in the regard the TSA has been effective. Islamofascists are reduced to panty and shoe bombers, and what they have gotten up to, they have attempted outside the US.

Now here is a question I have asked repeatedly, and no one has even touched: what would you do to prevent another Philippine Airlines 434? Or do you just not give a damn if a bunch of people get blown up?

> All of them.

You're demanding that we accept that the security regime as implemented is what's kept people from successfully taking airliners out of the sky. I don't accept this premise. I might as well presume that Brittney Spears is the demonic force that's brought the Taliban into my life... I don't think I'd heard of them before "Whoops I did It Again" hit the charts.

> Or do you just not give a damn if a bunch of
> people get blown up?

Even if they were responsible for a flight, or two, or maybe quite a few more making it to their destinations (a scenario I regard as a metaphysical imposibility), I don't think the establishment of the TSA mentality of intrusion has been worth it.

These horrible TSA monsters have inconvenienced, delayed and humiliated sixty or a hundred thousand Americans (and others) each and every day since 9/11. They've acclimated the highest-performing people on the planet to a theatrical presentation of weakness, stupidity and voodoo. If an attacker HAD brought down another plane, we certainly would have investigated to find those responsible, and gained a more realistic picture of modernity's adversaries. Instead, we've pissed away uncounted years of high-performing lives, uncounted gallons of shampoo and bottled water, and God knows how many sets of nail clippers to an army of diabetic high-school dropouts who want nothing more for America than their own federally-guaranteed paychecks and bennies.

For what? For what?

No.

Lukkilpk goofy, though. We don't agree.

Admit it: You've thought the same thing about Spears, right?

Cowinky-dink? She's not that innocent.

[Amy: ] Anyone with an IQ over the speed limit could put a bomb on a plane with a little thought and a few bribes.

So according to you, there is no one on this planet with an IQ over the speed limit who wishes to bomb an airliner.

And that there is no one on this planet with an IQ over the speed limit who hasn't been able to, already, and on an ongoing basis, kill Americans with bombs.

You can't be serious.

An unskilled worker, with minimal training, touching my vagina ...

Of course, you could have prevented that by just going through the scanner.

... is going to stop a terrorist plot?

Unlike you, I don't think TSA workers are, in general, subhuman morons who shouldn't be allowed on the street without continuous supervision.

So, I think it within the realm of possibility that their training is sufficient for them to be able to present a high enough likelihood of detecting an explosive or its paraphernalia that it deters splodeydopes from making the attempt.

[crid: ] You're demanding that we accept that the security regime as implemented is what's kept people from successfully taking airliners out of the sky. I don't accept this premise.

I'm pretty sure "demanding" isn't the right word. Rather, I am asserting that there is an ironclad case to be made that there are people with the motive and the means to blow up airliners, and that the only reason they haven't is because they lack the opportunity.

The reason they lack the opportunity is defense in depth. One of those layers is the TSA making it sufficiently difficult to sneak sufficient explosive material on an airplane to bring it down so that most of those who wish to, decide not to. And of those who make the attempt, airport security (which is pretty much the same, unless it is more intrusive, in every country I go to) makes the task difficult enough to require so much plotting that it, in turn, makes them easier for the FBI / CIA etc to detect.

Since the argument (Amy's) that these people don't exist is fallacious, andinsulting to all the US military who have been blown up over the last decade, then the question is:

Even if they were responsible for a flight, or two, or maybe quite a few more making it to their destinations (a scenario I regard as a metaphysical imposibility), I don't think the establishment of the TSA mentality of intrusion has been worth it.

That is a value laden answer; that doesn't make it wrong or right, only that people's mileages vary. IMHO, if it was one plane every several or so years, then I might be inclined to agree with you (Although those on that particular plane might be entitled to their own ex post facto opinion. Also, the expense of a lost airliner every several years would be about 1/20th of the TSA's budget over that period. People routinely buy insurance with far lower payoff odds than that.)

The problem is, though, that I don't think you can pick some level of security less intrusive than the TSA's that will yield just the amount of aluminum showers that attains some predetermined acceptable loss rate.

Which raises this spectre: what if guess is wrong? What if less intrusive security allows, say, six splodeydopes in one day (certainly an achievable number, based upon 9/11)?

I think it pretty safe to say the that costs of that many airliners crashing so close together will greatly exceed that of the planes, funerals, and ravaged survivors: it would essentially shutdown the entire airline system.

These horrible TSA monsters have inconvenienced, delayed and humiliated sixty or a hundred thousand Americans (and others) each and every day since 9/11 ...

Yes. It would be wonderful if the Islamofascists all became Unitarians. But until they do, I, for one, cannot think of a way to keep explosives off airliners without some sort of intrusive inspection regime.

Whenever Muslims riot over some offense or another, our political and chattering classes would earn their keep by forcefully reminding Muslims just how much crap the rest of us have to put up with because of their preposterous Religion of Peace ™

Well, first of all, Amy can speak for herself on this point, and will no doubt do so... Badly. But —

> So according to you

Lookoodilpits has been doing this same thing for years, without shame, and to zero rhetorical effect: Extrapolating something he disagrees with (or doesn't comprehend) into a ludicrous caricature, and feigning surprise and offense when no one's interested in his thoughts.

But you oughta know better:

> there is no one on this planet with an IQ
> over the speed limit who wishes to bomb
> an airliner.

She didn't say that.

> I'm pretty sure "demanding" isn't the right word.

When you say "All of them," you're not considering competing forces.

> there is an ironclad case to be made that
> there are people with the motive and the
> means to blow up airliners, and that the only
> reason they haven't is because they lack
> the opportunity.

I don't buy it. I can imagine that they lack the opportunity because —

• International communications are monitored more closely than ever before, and 9/11-style stunts aren't as easy to co-ordinate

• The financial channels for these groups and individuals are much more encumbered than they once were; many have been disassembled

• The groups and governments that would formerly have supported such a venture looked at what's happened to Iraq and Afghanistan and Osama (and Qaddaffi) and said "To Hell with that."

• Modernity is happening to the offenders anyway... The attraction of that kind of misconduct will continue to lose allure as the blessings and temptations of Western civility (and depravity) creep into their lives

• Who knows what's really going on out there. Trusting only the media, we'd have thought there were zero instances of misconduct or drunkenness by air marshals until about 2006, when a few instances became just to monstrous to cover up.

And again, I WOULD RATHER FACE THIS HAZARD MYSELF than count of these most pathetic federal employees.

It's not worth it. It's not worth it. It's not worth it. Even if it works and it doesn't, it's not worth it.

> What if less intrusive security allows, say,
> six splodeydopes in one day (certainly an
> achievable number, based upon 9/11)?

We'll investigate, identify the bad players, and fuck them up Rambo-style, further crippling their networks.

> I think it pretty safe to say the that costs of
> that many airliners crashing so close together
> will greatly exceed that of the planes,
> funerals, and ravaged survivors: it would
> essentially shutdown the entire airline system.

Baseless speculation. Bad things have always happened, but civilization moves forward. London goes through bombings periodically; the usual response of the burghers is break a piggybank and go shopping the next day.

> That is a value laden answer

I'm cool with that. My values are better than those of other people... Better constructed and more rewarding for all. To wit: You apparently think nothing is more important than getting planes up and down without incident, and you'll pay any price to make that happen.

I don't like your values, either. They're laden! You've given us no reason to think they're effective, no metric by which we can test your enthusiasm, no logic by which we can resist further intrusion, and no sunset for the freaking GENITAL MOLESTATION we presently endure.

Also, I think you threw a pebble into Lewis' gearbox. You should be ashamed.

Whoops, "your enthusiasm" should have been "their efficacy".

I was writing late at night.

You understand that there IS going to be another attack someday, right? And that even if the event is horrible, it doesn't mean that someone in government made a terrible mistake or that people are insufficiently alert or that we're all just sitting ducks or that the whole worlds hates us...

yes, yes crid - we all know I cant spell.

At least I dont molest kids like you

> there is no one on this planet with an IQ > over the speed limit who wishes to bomb > an airliner.

She didn't say that.

Lookoodilpits has been doing this same thing for years, without shame, and to zero rhetorical effect: Extrapolating something he disagrees with ...

Yes, she did: [Amy: ] Anyone with an IQ over the speed limit could put a bomb on a plane with a little thought and a few bribes.

I might be wrong here -- self awareness has never been one of my strengths -- but what Amy said is self contradicting. She often posts about the nihilistic murderousness of Islam, then, one post later, effectively says that all nihilistic murderous Muslims must have room temperature IQs. That is, in fact, according to her.

After all, if it was so easy to do, then it would have happened. But it hasn't. So either they really are all congenital idiots, or something else is going on.

And again, I WOULD RATHER FACE THIS HAZARD MYSELF than count of these most pathetic federal employees.

Correction: These hazards.

IMHO, the Federal Air Marshal program is a complet waste of money. IMHO, the FFDO (pilots carrying weapons) program is a complete waste of money -- male passengers and intrusion resistant cockpit doors have made that completely redundant. IMHO, all the effort devoted to keeping guns, knives, etc out of airplanes is utterly beside the point.

However.

Explosives sufficient to bring down an airliner are a lot harder to detect than all those things. So if the goal is to prevent the latter, then the former are along for the ride.

To wit: You apparently think nothing is more important than getting planes up and down without incident, and you'll pay any price to make that happen.

Umm, no. After all, any price is not what we are currently paying. Beyond that, though, not everyone, or even most people, have the analytical skills you do. If we were to lose an airliner or two to splodeydopes, then the consequences for civil liberties would be far worse than what we have now.

I don't like your values, either. They're laden!

Absolutely. Probably at least as laden as yours, in so much as I lost my job because of 9/11. (Pedantic reading comprehension point: I don't dislike your values -- never came close to saying I did.)

... no metric by which we can test your enthusiasm, no logic by which we can resist further intrusion ...

Sure there is. Show the threat doesn't exist. Show that it is better to kill a few hundred people than undergo a really, really irritating 40 extra minutes at the airport.

... and no sunset for the freaking GENITAL MOLESTATION we presently endure.

Oh for pete's sake. Don't like getting groped? Then just walk through the frikken scanner without making a scene. It is interesting that someone will have a cow about that, yet happily go to the doctor to get a pelvic exam, or get her boobs squished for a mammogram. If it's her life it is saving fine. By all means, do whatever is necessary.

Someone else? Hell with 'em.

Also, I think you threw a pebble into Lewis' gearbox. You should be ashamed.

Two, actually. It was a long toss, but I did have the advantage of height.

More later. Not done! Not done!

> Yes, she did:

No! She didn't! Doooooooooooooood

> either they really are all congenital idiots, or
> something else is going on.

The universe of possibilities is much wider than either of you describe.

> Explosives sufficient to bring down an airliner

Again, keeping every last plane perfectly safe forever is not our highest purpose, and certainly not the only one.

> If we were to lose an airliner or two to
> splodeydopes, then the consequences for civil
> liberties would be far worse than what
> we have now.

HOW? HOW? WHERE ELSE CAN WE GO WITH THIS?

Do you think Americans were begging to be searched and molested and irradiated and abused? Do you think, if another airliner goes down, that they'll be begging to be excluded from air travel completely (or whatever)?

> Show the threat doesn't exist.

Oh Jeff, that's nuts. It's just not how the world works. If we allowed government to intrude every time a threat was NOT proven to be absent, life would grind to a halt.

> Don't like getting groped? Then just walk
> through the frikken scanner

NO. Neither is acceptable. I just don't understand how Americans could become so submissive and complacent. Mammograms are effective in healthcare; airport scanners are stage props for security theater.

What WOULD be too much for you? Are you really content to think that this will be going on, or accelerating, for the rest of history? Are you happy thinking that your children and grandchildren will be delayed, molested and irradiated as well, all while being taxed to make it happen?

Is there any limit to this at all?

Listen, seriously... If you just say 'The thought of being in a plunging airliner is intolerably horrific for me,' then I'll let go of this. Or if you lost someone dear on United #93 or something... OK, well, I think you're wrong, but we each have opinions.

But three, maybe five generations of Americans — the kindest, strongest, most disciplined, thoughtful and compassionate people history has ever produced — had come to regard convenient & proficient air travel as a birthright... A workaday miracle, perhaps, but still a bright light in the constellation of blessings that come to us for living as we do in the modern world. Our civilization is synthetic: Americans have to learn, on an individual basis, all the disciplines, courtesies and allowances that make these things happen... And for a century, no one on the planet did airplanes as well as did the United States, and we earned that achievement, even if we were merely customers.

Why would you let that go? Why would you let your own government brutalize that miracle so much more harshly than Al Qaeda could ever have hoped to do? What other blessings will you surrender so readily? Private banking? Cheap telephony? Access to whatever grocery you can afford? Personal choice of music and athletic amusements?

(Again, if you tell me that your dear Aunt Gertrude — the angelic woman who used to cuddle you and read Seuss aloud as you fell asleep in footed jammies — went down, coach class, in an MD-11 just off the coast of Bermuda in 1975, then I'll let this go. Honestly - No offense intended.)

No matter what happened, no matter WHAT happened, the hazard from terrorism was never going to be greater than the hazard from air travel itself... An threat that well-motivated airlines in a competitive market had a reduced to an almost trivial (im)probability.

An attack IS GOING TO HAPPEN. You understand this, right?

When it does...

• Are we going to assume that the problem was a performance failure from the TSA?

• Are we going to assume that the problem was a budget shortfall for the TSA?

• In either of the above responses, are we going to investigate the source of the attack, or is it ALL about molesting coastal advice columnists? If the whole of Pakistan affirms as a national project the takedown of American airliners, will we respond to them in any context other than the TSA?

I could go on.

I probably will.

If we were to lose an airliner or two to splodeydopes, then the consequences for civil liberties would be far worse than what we have now.

HOW? HOW? WHERE ELSE CAN WE GO WITH THIS?

Internment camps. HUAC. Enemies lists. We've been there before.

> Show the threat doesn't exist.

Oh Jeff, that's nuts. It's just not how the world works. If we allowed government to intrude every time a threat was NOT proven to be absent, life would grind to a halt.

Not proven absent is not at all the same thing as proven present.

> Don't like getting groped? Then just walk through the frikken scanner

... Mammograms are effective in healthcare; airport scanners are stage props for security theater.

Bollocks. Scanners will detect a piece of paper. (But hey, what do I know? I only have first hand experience to go on.)

As for mammograms, that points out the contradiction facing you and Amy. You have already (I am presuming here, since you are about the same age as I) allow yourself to be anesthetized, bent over, and have total strangers shove a camera up your fundament.

Why? Because you have skin in the game. Submitting yourself to the prep and procedure will reduce your likelihood of dying from colorectal cancer from 50-ish / 100,000 people to the mid-30s. (While running a risk of serious complications of 80 / 100,000, Unless those strangers feel the need to do a biopsy or polypectomy, which increases the complication risk ten times.)

So, when your life, or Amy's, is involved, you will willingly subject yourself to any manner of invasive procedures.

But when it isn't -- after all, the odds of you dying in a bombed aircraft are close as dammit to nil, even though the odds of someone buying the farm are 100% -- you step right into high dudgeon at what is nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

What WOULD be too much for you?

More than is required to deal with the threat. Since there is a lower limit to the amount of explosives required to down an airliner, there is a corresponding upper limit to screening.

IMHO, (I am not an explosives expert) I think the current generation of scanners is sufficient to deal with the threat, indefinitely.

Are you really content to think that this will be going on, or accelerating, for the rest of history? ...

What do you mean by "this"?

If by "this" you mean the security screening, then I think we have reached stasis (now, if only someone could figure out how avoid having to take off our shoes).

Otherwise, if by "this" you mean the predations of the Religion of Peace™, then who knows what else those nihilistic homicidal maniacs will cook up. There is no such as too much savagery in the pursuit of the greater glory of Allah.

No matter what happened, no matter WHAT happened, the hazard from terrorism was never going to be greater than the hazard from air travel itself...

Man, I can't believe you typed that.

Let me straighten it out for you. The hazard of air travel is the sum of all the individual hazards of air travel. Therefore, at most, the terrorist hazard to air travel can only equal the total hazard to air travel if all other risks are reduced to zero.

An threat that well-motivated airlines in a competitive market had a reduced to an almost trivial (im)probability.

More accurately, a threat that the reactive FAA (aka the Tombstone Agency) has reduced by focusing on increasingly small hazards. Since the mid-80s, the number of airliner mid-air collisions is about the same as the number of bombings, and the loss of life less. Lately, not nearly so much.

The amount of money spent on equipment to keep bombs off of airplanes is probably less than that spent on collision avoidance systems alone (at least $22,000 per aircraft, uninstalled) or ground prox warning systems (must be really expensive, I couldn't find a quote), or ...

I could go on, and on, and on, but the point is that over time, more money is spent on smaller increments in safety. The money spent on controlling the bombing risk is trivial compared to all the money that is spent controlling all the other risks.

An attack IS GOING TO HAPPEN. You understand this, right?

Yes.

When it does...

• Are we going to assume that the problem was a performance failure from the TSA?

• Are we going to assume that the problem was a budget shortfall for the TSA?

Who the hell knows? What will be the nature of the attack?

Why would you let your own government brutalize that miracle so much more harshly than Al Qaeda could ever have hoped to do?

Harsh and brutal is getting splattered by a bomb.

Taking off your shoes, emptying your pockets, and standing in a scanner for three seconds, not so much.

(Again, if you tell me that your dear Aunt Gertrude — the angelic woman who used to cuddle you and read Seuss aloud as you fell asleep in footed jammies — went down, coach class, in an MD-11 just off the coast of Bermuda in 1975, then I'll let this go. Honestly - No offense intended.)

I have absolutely no direct connection to anyone who has ever been involved in any kind of terrorist act.

No offense taken.

---

My position is clear: it is not unreasonable to require explosives be excluded from airplanes, and that screening commensurate with that requirement is preferable to the alternatives.

Okay, your turn. What should we do, instead?

More later

There have been 9 fatal hijackings in the US since 1970.
There are over 9 million flights per year in the US.

Even if every single event were in 1 year, each flight would have a risk of 0.000001% on every individual flight.

You can never get your risk to zero. How many rights and how many billions of dollars to waste to get less than a 0.000001% improvement.

No events since 2011 doesn't mean the TSA has done a damn thing to help. There were only 5 between 1970 and 2010.

I'll do this one on Friday, I promise.

OK, Saturday.

> Internment camps. HUAC. Enemies lists.
> We've been there before.

Yes! It sucked! We shouldn't go there again! We're on a bad path! You agree with me! I should let up on the exclamation marks!!!

> Not proven absent is not at all the same
> thing as proven present

Your link's busted, but you're confusing things anyway. The burden of proof is on the TSA, and they got nuthin'. They got nuthin'. And even if they had sumthin', it wouldn't be worth the inconvenience we've suffered. (You'll see that this is a theme in my comments about this.)

> But hey, what do I know? I only have
> first hand experience to go on.

You have first-hand experience of a terrorist being stopped by a scanner? (You you you [and the TSA] are the ones with the burden of proving a negative.)

> So, when your life, or Amy's, is involved,
> you will willingly subject yourself to
> any manner of invasive procedures.

Well, the probing of Amy's flesh is her own beeswax, though I think her vocal objection to airport assault was well-stated and something for all of us to listen to.

But I am in NO sense 'willing to subject myself to any manner of invasive procedures.' I have very stringent standards about the invasions I will withstand and pay for, the courtesy and privacy in which they'll be administered, and the expectation of results I will demand of them. I mean, you got that really, really wrong.

> More than is required to deal with
> the threat.

1. There no reason to think you or they are dealing with the threat: none.

2. The "threat" isn't the end of civilization.

3. You've conceded that the "threat" isn't going to be stopped anyway.

> If by "this" you mean the security screening
> then I think we have reached stasis

Statis in an advanced state of sickness. As with Obama and the financial collapse, government seems only able to treat cancer by freezing the patient's condition at three hours before death, for which it expects his gratitude.

> now, if only someone could figure out how
> avoid having to take off our shoes

FIRE THE TSA , JEFF. Then keep your shoes on. Jesus Christ, I've figured it out: WE'RE GROWN AMERICAN MEN. We shouldn't put up with this.

Suddenly I'm remembering why it took all week to find time to answer this comment.

> then who knows what else those nihilistic
> homicidal maniacs will cook up.

Exactly! Yes! We're in a long-term effort to bring them into modernity, and to battle with them until we can. So why are we focusing with such laserlike paranoia on our air travel, except that the Careerist Monster Napolitano is a power-mad lunatic?

> The hazard of air travel is the sum
> of all the individual hazards of air
> travel. Therefore, at most, the terrorist
> hazard to air travel can only equal the
> total hazard to air travel if all
> other risks are reduced to zero.

Sophistry. Carve away the threat from terrorists: Everyone on that plane will die anyway, and some will die in plane crashes. If you're that afraid of the terrorists OR airplanes, does that mean the rest of us have to stop being American every time we want to travel?

> Who the hell knows? What will be
> the nature of the attack?

JEFF — JEFF — JEFF — JEFF — JEFF

If you don't know, why are you so paranoid about airplanes?

>> An attack IS GOING TO HAPPEN.

> Yes.

Then why are you putting up with this? For the price we're paying in time in freedom, its not permissible to say that bad things will happen anyway. NO. If they are, then we should let go of this repugnant intrusion.

> Harsh and brutal is getting splattered
> by a bomb. Taking off your shoes,
> emptying your pockets, and standing in
> a scanner for three seconds, not so much.

Says you. I say anything that involves the phrase "empty your pockets" is a far greater offense than a free man should suffer through the course of his work-a-day life. THIS IS NOT THE FUTURE YOU SHOULD WANT FOR YOUR CHILDREN, and I can't understand why you're giving them the example of your patience with it in the present.

> Okay, your turn. What should we do, instead?

Fly, eat, fuck, read, buy and sell like free men and women. This will nourish the excellence of the Western project, enhancing its allure to Islamic primitives to an irresistible sweetness. When people take down airplanes, find them and punish them instantly and harshly.

Meanwhile, don't pretend that Napolitano is just doing the best she can in a difficult situation. The woman is a horror.

HUAC? Venona.

I'd never hearda that.

I'll do this one yesterday, promise.

Okay, tomorrow.

[Katrina:] No events since 2011 doesn't mean the TSA has done a damn thing to help. There were only 5 between 1970 and 2010.

Wonderful. However, I'm not, and explicitly haven't been, talking about hijackings.

Google [wikipedia timeline of airliner bombing attacks]. (The broken link from my previous post)

Then [wikipedia philippine airlines 434].

[crid:] [The TSA] got nuthin'. And even if they had sumthin', it wouldn't be worth the inconvenience we've suffered.

Wouldn't be worth it to whom?

But hey, what do I know? I only have first hand experience to go on.

You have first-hand experience of a terrorist being stopped by a scanner?

No; contrary to Amy's assertion (which was also contrary to the source she cited, but never mind), I have first hand experience that the scanners are effective. A month and a half ago, in Newark, I accidentally left a small piece of paper in my pocket.

Scanner found it.

Oh, BTW, the scanners no longer show the body's image. Instead, they display any objects on a generic outline.

I have very stringent standards about the invasions I will withstand and pay for, the courtesy and privacy in which they'll be administered, and the expectation of results I will demand of them. I mean, you got that really, really wrong.

True, if that was my point.

But it wasn't. So, to repeat: when you have skin in the game, you will willingly submit to all manner of invasive procedures.

But when you don't (we could lose a half dozen airliners a year and, statistically speaking, you wouldn't), you can't be bothered with the tiniest inconvenience.

1. There no reason to think you or they are dealing with the threat: none.

The threat is a suicide bomber. I think the TSA is effectively (note, not efficiently, or pleasantly, etc.) dealing with the threat. At least that is what the box score says.

But I'm tired of repeating myself on this.

What's your option? (Other than some combination of going belly up, and whistling past the graveyard, that is.)

2. The "threat" isn't the end of civilization.

Never said it was. It is a foreseeable hazard to aviation, which deals with all kinds of foreseeable hazards.

Take another example. The law prohibits pilots from having more than .04% BAC. In order to enforce that prohibition, the FAA conducts random urinalyses. So, every once in a while, I have to pee while someone watches.

Since that is the least intrusive way of giving teeth to the reasonable prohibition, I don't have any problem with it, and the traveling public sure as heck doesn't, and I'll bet you don't, either.

Goose, meet gander.

3. You've conceded that the "threat" isn't going to be stopped anyway.

Reduction and elimination aren't the same.

Yes! We're in a long-term effort to bring them into modernity, and to battle with them until we can. So why are we focusing with such laserlike paranoia on our air travel …?

First, because they are. The Caliphascists are enthralled with airplanes.

I say anything that involves the phrase "empty your pockets" is a far greater offense than a free man should suffer through the course of his work-a-day life.

Okay, I'll take that as granted. Now what?

(no time to proof read, as I have to pack for TSA experiences at Anchorage, Orlando, and Atlanta.)

Been awhile, but needs this capper:

The assertion has been that TSA has been effective at foiling bomb plots, etc.

That assertion is subject to a simple giggle test.

Name the Federal indictments for terrorism initiated by a TSA search.