TSA: Stands For?

Tough shit, America!

Security Theatre with Jeffrey Goldberg

If you haven't read "The Things He Carried" by Jeffrey Goldberg for The Atlantic, November 2008, here, you should. 

He successfully sneaked the following past security and onto aircraft at major airports all across America:

pocketknives, matches from hotels in Muslim countries, dust masks, rope, cigarette lighters, an 8 oz. tube of toothpaste in a front pants pocket, box cutters, a Beerbelly wrapped around his stomach containing two cans of beer, and a variety of terrorist-themed souvenirs.

Oh yeah. He also tore up fake boarding passes in full view in a bathroom and no one reported him. And he used one to get on a plane with a 12 oz. bottle of saline no one verified was saline.

The TSA's Goal is Humiliation, not Security

"[T]he effectiveness of pat-downs does not matter very much, because the obvious goal of the TSA is to make the pat-down embarrassing enough for the average passenger that the vast majority of people will choose high-tech humiliation over the low-tech ball check."

-- Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic, October 29, 2010, here 

The M/O of Tyranny: Crush Resistance, Enlist Accomplices, Screw Slowly

As Barack Obama transforms the creations of George Bush into the architecture of the national security state, it is well to remember how the process worked in another time, another place, for clues about what one could expect as the TSA tightens its grip on the American people:

There were perhaps three key factors to the success of the anti-Jewish measures in Holland. First, the initial wave of public protest on the part of the Dutch population was immediately and ruthlessly suppressed with extremely severe reprisals. From that point on protest became a more private matter, conducted largely by small underground groups engaged in sabotage against the Germans, or in aiding Nazi victims, particularly Jews, to hide or escape. As public protest disappeared, the Germans were encouraged to proceed with their systematic plan to empty the Jews from Holland.

The second factor was the German device of setting up a Jewish Council, the Joodsche Raad, composed of a group of prominent middle-class Jewish leaders, for the purpose of conveying German commands efficiently to the Jewish population. The Jewish leaders reasoned among themselves, as they did in other occupied countries, that their role in keeping the channels of communication with their German oppressers open, and of maintaining law and order in the newly formed chaotic ghetto population of uprooted families, would help the bereft Jews more than harm them. In retrospect it is easy to see how wrong they were, as the Council quickly became the unwitting tool of the German destruction machinery, actually delivering the Jews directly to the German deportation trains.

The third factor was the gradual nature of the implementation of the anti-Jewish measures, which lulled Jew and non-Jew alike into believing that despite the difficulties and inconveniences, things weren't that bad, and the Germans' demands could be accommodated. The common feeling was that the Germans would certainly lose the war and it was just a matter of waiting out the interim as best as possible. With this in mind, a great many Dutch Jews willingly reported to the trains, which they believed would take them to work camps where they would labor for the Reich.

Learn more from this episode here.

Well Known Politicos Profited as Employees of Scanner Companies

So says USA Today, here:

Linda Daschle, wife of Democrat Senator Tom Daschle, lobbyist for L-3 Communications;

Michael Chertoff, former head of Homeland Security under George Bush, paid consultant to Rapiscan Systems;

Beth Spivey, former aide to Republican Senator Trent Lott, lobbyist for Rapiscan Systems. 

"I Want to Take TSA to the Next Level"

So said the new head of the TSA, John Pistole, in July, quoted here in USA Today.

That means security gauntlets at subway and rail stations, here, in America:

"Given the list of threats on subways and rails over the last six years going on seven years, we know that some terrorist groups see rail and subways as being more vulnerable because there's not the type of screening that you find in aviation," he said. "From my perspective, that is an equally important threat area."

The architecture of the national security state is being planned before our very eyes. George Bush started it. Barack Obama is transforming it. The airport scanners are only the tip of the iceberg. Americans must stop this march to tyranny before it is too late.

Question authority! Resist! Boycott! Protest! And above all, arm yourselves, and learn how.

Think if their motto had been "Every Jew a .22," instead of this:

Look at them. Some in proper hats, suits, ties, and pocket squares, dutifully complying with the law, lining up for death. The most civilized peoples, Christians of high culture, all over Europe watched and participated in the systematic extermination of scapegoats.

They say it can't happen here. 

How did it happen there?

Biochemist Warned White House in April Scanners May Threaten Skin Cancer

A group of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) raised concerns about the "potential serious health risks" from the scanners in a letter sent to the White House Office of Science and Technology in April.

Biochemist John Sedat and his colleagues said in the letter that most of the energy from the scanners is delivered to the skin and underlying tissue.

"While the dose would be safe if it were distributed throughout the volume of the entire body, the dose to the skin may be dangerously high," they wrote.

More here from Agence France-Presse.

TSA Wrote to Complainer: Find a Different Form of Transportation

Reported here about this woman:

Miernik said the worst experience she had came when her 7-year-old granddaughter was at the airport with her. When her granddaughter saw the pat down, “She went ‘Grandmama, they touched you on your special girl spots.’”

Miernik was mortified, as was her granddaughter, she said.. She believes the pat downs are unnecessarily intrusive, and she hasn’t even experienced the “more aggressive” pat downs the TSA started employing Oct. 29.

“If this happened to me in college on a date, I would have called the police,” Miernik said.

According to the US Code here, the TSA's mandate involves security for all transportation which comes under the jurisdiction of the federal Dept. of Transportation, not just airline transportation:

How long will it be before the invasive procedures of the TSA affect every other way we get around in this country?

ABC News Employee Gets Free OB-GYN Exam From TSA

An ABC News employee said she was subject to a "demeaning" search at Newark Liberty International Airport Sunday morning.

"The woman who checked me reached her hands inside my underwear and felt her way around," she said. "It was basically worse than going to the gynecologist. It was embarrassing. It was demeaning. It was inappropriate."

That search was against protocols and "never" should have happened, TSA Administrator John Pistole told "Good Morning America" today.

Lots more here, summarizing similar incidents in recent days.

Yes Sir, Right Away Sir

TSA Throws Down the Gauntlet to National Opt Out Day

John Lantigua for The Palm Beach Post here reports that the TSA says it owns your ass until they say so if you enter the airport checkpoint.

Refuse the naked scan and refuse the enhanced pat down sexual molestation and it won't just be a simple matter of not flying. You won't get to leave the checkpoint area until they say so, and if you do leave before they say so, you face fines up to $11,000 and arrest. In addition, police may be called in to determine whether there is probable cause to search you anyway.

This is pure intimidation.

The only way to stop this is going to be economic, by boycotting all air travel until the airlines and the politicians feel the pain.

The American people are not the enemy. Muslim extremists are the enemy. Go after them, not us.

Selling China The Rope They'll Hang Us With

Pat Buchanan still isn't finished ridiculing the 20th century Republican party, trying to get it to remember what it used to be:

The policy the Chinese are pursuing, economic nationalism, was virtually invented by the Republican Party. Protectionism was the declared policy of the GOP from the day its first president took office in 1861 to the day Calvin Coolidge left in 1929.

Free trade was the policy of a Great Britain whose clocks those generations of Americans cleaned, even as the Chinese are cleaning ours.

Read more from "Who Fed the Tiger?" here.

Go Ahead, Line Up for the Airport Scanners. They Would Have, Too.

Representative Ted Poe (TX-2) On Unreasonable Search and Seizure

Quoted in TheHill.com, here:

"There is no evidence these new body scanners make us more secure. But there is evidence that former Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff made money hawking these full body scanners."

"[T]he populace is giving up more rights in the name of alleged security. These body scanners are a violation of the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures ... There must be a better way to have security at airports than taking pornographic photographs of our citizens, including children, and then giving apparent kickbacks to political hacks."

You rock, Ted.

Burritos? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Burritos!

In China, Those Who Mock Japan Bashers Go to Labor Camp

Reminding us yet again that political correctness and totalitarianism go together like a horse and carriage:

A Chinese woman has been sentenced to a year in a labor camp for retweeting a Twitter post that mocked Chinese protesters who smashed Japanese products during a recent demonstration, her fiance said Thursday.

CNN.com has the story at this link.

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. Hasn't Gotten It For Years

That whole freedom thing kind of glazed over years ago when he picked up his ball and left the midwest for the beltway.

Here he defends the scanners and the groping, and joins the sheeple:

The other day, a CBS News poll found that 81 percent of Americans approve of the use of the high-tech machines at airports, but that means nothing to Drudge. How many more Americans would welcome a soothing pat-down midst the hurly-burly of travel at our nation's stress-filled airports I do not know, but count me in -- especially if the patter-downer is a cute little number on the order of, say, Sarah Palin.

Yes, and the majority of Americans were loyalists and against independence in 1776, too.

Count me in, er, out. Well, you know what I mean. 

Unemployment Tab to Date is $319 Billion

The cost of unemployment benefits already paid over the last three years has soared to $319 billion, according to this story from CNNMoney.com, $109 billion of which has been federally funded borrowed, and $41 billion of which to date the states have had to borrow from the feds.

Employers face $26 billion in new taxes by 2015 to replenish and pay back the depleted and borrowed funds, which represents an increase of 68% from the $38 billion businesses paid in 2009.

Another reason jobs are in short supply.

Strict Control on Internal Travel The Hallmark of a Police State

It starts under the appearance of protecting the public, until the public becomes the enemy and the protection becomes tyranny.

From The Washington Times editorial page:

Once freedom at airports is "locked down," it's inevitable that TSA will next target buses, trains and the Metro. After all, al Qaeda has attacked each of these modes of transportation in other parts of the world. Strict controls on internal travel is the hallmark of a police state.

Read the rest at this link.

Uncalled House Races Update: Republican Wins in IL-8

CNN.com reports here that the incumbent Democrat Melissa Bean has conceded to the Republican challenger Walsh in the IL-8 House district race.

It appears that Walsh won by fewer than 500 votes in the race where a third party Green candidate siphoned-off 3% of the vote on the Democrat's left.

That would give the Republicans a net gain of 62 seats in the US House, with four races still to be decided: CA-11, CA-20, NY-25 and NY-1.

Real Clear Politics also shows IL-8 a Republican pick-up overnight.