As the Thanksgiving travel day of Wednesday looms, irate Americans are planning a national Opt-Out Day in order to "punish" TSA workers for having to perform onerous, time-consuming, and invasive body searches for those who choose not to have the full body scan. But who's getting punished? TSA workers are paid by the hour so they don't care if you miss your flight to Sheboygan. After their shift, they go home to their families while you are stuck suffering at the airport, not with your families. Passengers who unnecessarily delay other travelers in order to make a stupid point about the TSA are in fact....stupid.
If full-body scans offend you that much, and having TSA goons feel you up for a minute or two is that awful, then drive or take the bus. But slowing down travel for fliers all over the country is only hurting them, not the TSA.
8 comments:
Exactly right, Ed. Why ruin everyone's trip?
I don't get the big problem with the scanners anyway. Having some stranger in another room look at a crude x-ray or millimeter wave image of my body to check for a bomb seems a little far from a police state. The groping pat-down is different.
The TSA Gauntlet - as I like to call it - is my second least favorite part of air travel. What's my least favorite part you ask? Well, that would be the flight!
I read yesterday that former HLS secretary Michael Chertoff owns a significant share of the company that supplies most of these full-body scanners. This explains why he's on the TV regularly talking about how important they are to national security. Furthermore, the TSA's hands are sort of tied here. They aren't allowed to profile yet they're expected to keep all 30,000 commercial flights each day 100% safe. I don't blame the workers, I blame our politically correct government for not allowing profiling.
I concur. But the workers are not very smart. Most breathe through their mouth.
I have a lot of empathy for the TSA folks. They have a decent paying job in this terrible economy - anyone quitting in protest would be quickly replaced and forgotten. The majority seem to be trying their best to be courteous and professional. I can't imagine doing this all day. The problem is the empahsis on "things" instead of "intentions" which are of course much harder to gauge. Most of us could fly around the country armed to the teeth and no harm or danger would result - we're responsible citizens. I have never understood why a "Trusted Traveler Program" hasn't been a major emphasis. Many of us have been investigated at length for security clearances, yet this counts for nothing at the airport. People should be given a chance to undergo a complete background investigation in return for bypassing most of this foolishness. Then the lines would be that much shorter for those who choose not to participate.
I know that Israel profiles behavior and we profile objects but, Israel has what 3 airports? You could train 5 weapons load crews to cover those airports. It would take tens of thousands to cover US airports, not to mention the cost of traiing. The solution will end up being to nuke the source of the terrorism I'm afraid. Otherwise we all have to live like this, suspects in our own land. I'd like to hear an argument that the terrorists haven't already won.
Clearly they have "won" in the sense that only an idiot would prefer to live in a country at war, with all that entails. Their goal of driving us out of the entire Moslem world and creating a globe spanning "Caliphate" is a complete bust so far, and no closer to realization than ever.
I don't think their goal is limited to us leaving the Muslim world. I think it's also to force us, through terrorism, to change our way of life. Clearly we've done that. We should leave the Muslim world. Our business over there is limited to keeping the oil flowing to our economy and kicking the asses toute suite, of whoever tries to stop it. Other than that, let them kill each other till the cows come home. I don't really care to police a dysfunctional, third-world shit-hole for humanitarian reasons....only for oil.
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