Scanners and Gropes are Beneath You, America

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1755

TSA Thugs Think Airports Are No Longer Part Of America

The constitution no longer applies in the airport, according to the TSA, and also apparently according to the courts, so if you just plan to buy a ticket to fly like John "if you touch my junk" Tyner,  that simple commercial transaction now means you are relinquishing your rights under the constitution:

Tyner was told by a TSA supervisor on tape, “By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights.” ...

According to [Michael J.] Aguilar, [TSA Chief, San Diego], Tyner is under investigation for leaving the security area without permission. That’s prohibited, among other reasons, to prevent potential terrorists from entering security, gaining information, and leaving. ...

Aguilar said that once a passenger enters the security area, there is a legal obligation to follow through with the process.

So by buying a plane ticket and entering the airport, you become the TSA's slave, in their view.

The complete story from The San Diego Union Tribune is here.

The Golden Fact of the Day

From James Grant in The New York Times:

From 1900 to 2009, at much lower nominal gold prices than those prevailing today, the worldwide stock of gold grew at 1.5 percent a year, according to the United States Geological Survey and the World Gold Council.

Fascinating reading, here.

Refuse the Backscatter Scanner, Get Felt Up

As reported here:

“They’re feeling up old ladies and children and they’re calling it security, but it’s not security,” said Babb, 

of wewontfly.com.

Bank Failure Update: FDIC's Deposit Insurance Fund Balance is Minus $19.8 Billion

The insolvent banks are being bailed out by an insolvent FDIC.

From Richard Suttmeier for Minyanville, here:

The FDIC Deposit Insurance fund has now been drained by $2.2 billion in the fourth quarter to date, which brings the DIF Deficit to an estimated $19.8 billion. The FDIC has already burned through the assessments for 2010. The assessments for 2011 and 2012 have been pre-paid at $15.33 billion per year. ...

The three failed banks last Friday had extreme overexposures to C&D and CRE loans. C&D exposures for the three overexposed were between 143.7% and 654.7% versus the 100% regulatory guideline. The CRE exposures were between 896% and 1397% versus the 300% of risk-based capital regulatory guideline. The CRE loan pipelines were between 96% and 99% funded versus a healthy pipeline of 60%.

Unreasonable Search: You're Guilty Until Proven Innocent By The TSA

The San Diego Union Tribune details the story of John Tyner, who told the incompetent and authoritarian TSA, "You touch my junk and I'm going to have you arrested":

Tyner points out that every terrorist act on an airplane has been halted by passengers. "It's time to stop treating passengers like criminals and start treating them as assets," he said.

Uncalled House Races Update: Republican Challenger in KY-6 Concedes

As reported here, the Democrat Chandler holds on to his seat, winning by less than 700 votes.

The Republican net gain continues at 61 seats, with 5 uncalled races: CA-11, CA-20, IL-8, NY-25, and NY-1.

Massive Social Security Hearings Backlog: Millions Waiting, Many More Than Two Years

Sure that Obamacare thing will be different. You won't have to wait that long. Maybe only half as much! You can live with that hernia for a year, right?

As reported here:

A Senate subcommittee is expected to hear testimony on Monday at a field hearing in Akron, Ohio, about the rising number of threats, as well as the status of the massive backlog in applications for disability benefits, which are available to people who can't work because of medical problems.

Nearly 2 million people are waiting to find out if they qualify for benefits, with many having to wait more than two years to see their first payment.

This Is The Way We Check You Out, Check You Out, Check You Out

Boycott the Airlines Until the Scanners and the Gropers Come Out

From Steve Chapman for The Chicago Tribune, here:

The good news is that last year, the House of Representatives voted to bar the use of whole-body scanners for routine screening. But only a sustained public outcry will force a change.

We will soon find out if there is a limit to the sacrifices of personal freedom that Americans will endure in the name of fighting terrorism. If we don't say no when they want to inspect and handle our private parts, when will we?

S&P 500 Fair Value is 900

So says Jeremy Grantham, here.

Defining Middle Class

Maureen Callahan for The New York Post takes a look at the big squeeze of the middle class in "Class Dismissed: Why Middle Income Jobs Are Not Coming Back."

Here's an excerpt:

‘I don’t know if I’m middle class anymore,” says Mark Lieber, 54. “From what I read, if you’re earning over $150,000, you’re in the top 5% of earners.” He echoes Francese: “In New York, that’s not rich.”

Here's how you know you're solidly middle class:


You retired last year at age 65 and your last salary was $107,000. You own your 3 bedroom house and one car outright, you're still married to your first wife who never earned a paycheck but raised your four kids, for whose college educations and the weddings of two who were girls you paid (mostly), and you have no debt and about $391,000 socked away in cash.


That's the territory between the third and fourth income quintiles from 1980, adjusted for inflation.


Know anyone like that?

The Time to Get Serious About Coastal Defense is Long Past

In the summer of 2009, after Russian nuclear submarines were detected only 200 miles off our East coast, one commentator on the subsequent news story which bragged about our ability to detect  two  boats thought saying nothing about it would have been smarter in the absence of an official recommendation that the US actually beef up its coastal defenses with conventional defensive submarines. The reason? They're might have been three Russian subs.

The US military's response to the California mystery missile incident 35 miles off the coast of Los Angeles on Monday hardly inspired more confidence. We should have said nothing at all. Instead we said we didn't know what it was. Piling on to the airplane contrail theory a day later only made that worse, giving the impression the military was grasping at straws.

Unfortunately, from the commander in chief on down our government and military give the impression of being run by un-serious people. From the delay measured in days in responding to the Christmas Day underwear bomber to telegraphing our disengagement schedules in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's as if matters of war and peace are at best distractions from the really important matters like Obamacare, repealing DADT and defending the Ground Zero Mosque.

We could learn something about coastal defense from the Chinese, who understand the realities of American forward air, surface and submarine operations off their waters all too well. They have embarked on an ambitious naval modernization to counter our activities, which includes a commitment to robust coastal defense and power projection with submarines of varying designs. One such submarine, a Song, punked the USS Kitty Hawk in October 2006 over there, and it may be that Monday's incident over here was the work of a lately launched submarine of more recent design:

As other nations continue to develop naval capabilities we need to recognize that the operation of submarines off the US coast is going to become more common, not less. Indeed, what is the first thing China will do when tensions at sea rise over Taiwan or some other matter? Most likely, the deployment of submarines off the coast of Guam, Sasebo, Pearl Harbor, and if the PLA Navy has any strategic thinking at all, San Diego. ...

But this is what the US Navy needs to think about... the submarines off Guam, Sasebo, and Pearl Harbor can be Yuan class, because Yuans appear to have much better endurance for submerged operations than Song class submarines do, but for west coast operations it will be nuclear submarines.

Whether or not a missile was fired off the California coast this week to send such a message to America, we'd better get busy and start preparing for defensive submarine operations ourselves. Because sooner or later, Chinese boomers will come calling on the west coast just like the Russians do on the east.

 But we'll have to get serious first.

Who Said It?

"We can’t constantly explain to our voters that taxpayers have to be on the hook for certain risks, rather than those who make a lot of money taking those risks."

-- Barack Obama Angela Merkel

To Hell With The TSA

"We spend my child's whole life telling him that only mom, dad and a doctor can touch you in your private area, and now we have to add TSA agent and that's just wrong," he told Reuters. "At some point the terrorists have won."

More here.

Uncalled House Race Update: VA-11 a Democrat Hold

Real Clear Politics has been showing this race a Democrat hold since yesterday.

Politics Daily shows the incumbent Democrat Connolly with just 920 votes more than the Republican challenger Fimian.

Three third party candidates could be blamed for the Republican's loss. The Independent garnered 1,838 votes, the Libertarian 1,381 votes, and the Green 959 votes. All together those votes represented barely 1.75% of all votes cast.

Net Republican gains remain at 61 with 6 races still not called: CA-11, CA-20, IL-8, KY-6, NY-25 and NY-1.

Was Monday's California Missile Launch a Chinese Cruise Missile?

Did history just rhyme on Monday with an incident which embarrassed the US Navy back in October 2006? Has the People's Liberation Army been (California) dreamin' about this since 1996?

Consider this from James Kraska, a former adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

In 1999, the PLA Navy introduced the sophisticated Song-class diesel electric submarine. Reportedly quieter than the fast attack US Los Angeles-class boats, the Song was equipped with wake-homing torpedoes and anti-ship cruise missiles. In one incident in October 2006, one of the ultra-quiet Song submarines surfaced inside the protective screen of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk. Admiral Gary Roughead, who was commander of the US Pacific Fleet and who would later go on to serve as Chief of Naval Operations, was visiting China at the time of the incident. In 1996, at the end of the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, PLA General Xiong Guangkai warned a visiting US envoy, ‘‘. . . you care more about Los Angeles than you do about Taipei.’’ ...


[T]he US Pacific Fleet was in panic after the Kitty Hawk embarrassment over its vulnerability to Chinese diesel-electric boats.


In the decades after the end of the Cold War, China closed the gap in naval capability, even surpassing the United States in some areas in terms of both quantity and quality of platforms. For example, China concentrated on advancing its large diesel-electric submarine force. Sweden became the first nation to develop a diesel-electric submarine with air-independent propulsion (AIP), which extended underwater endurance from a few days to one month. The first in class of these vessels, the HMS Gotland, was leased by the US Navy for two years in order to practice anti-submarine warfare. The Gotland proved extremely quiet and effective, and AIP submarines are able to sprint under water—greatly increasing their attack radius. China integrated AIP technology into the Type 041 Yuan-class boats, which followed the Song. Having launched several of these smaller, stealthy boats each year since 2004, a decade later, the US Seventh Fleet could never be certain whether China was shadowing US vessels.


Monday's incident could have been a shot across our bow, meant to embarrass the president in his own backyard while he's visiting in theirs.

Cutting Paychecks of 535 Members of Congress by 10% is Silly

Do the math:

$174,000 per year

10% of which = $17,400

x 535 members of Congress = less than $10 million.

That'll really hurt the plutocrats like John Kerry and Darrell Issa.

$10 million dollars goes into a $3.5 trillion budget 350,000 times for crying out loud. It's like taking a long piss in the Pacific ocean. NO ONE WILL NOTICE!

Get serious! Cut an entire Cabinet level department or two, starting with Education.

Story here.

About Half of New Republicans Term Limit Themselves

Pure idiocy.

To paraphrase George C. Scott playing General George Patton: Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won by term-limiting himself for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard term-limit himself for it.

These dopes haven't learned a thing on the outside. Why, I'll bet they're ready to compromise on all sorts of things. Heaven help us.

I predict rising spirits among Democrats.

Politico has the story here.

Another Guy Goes on the Record that it was a Missile

According to National Journal here:

Naval expert Norman Polmar, a long-time consultant to the Navy and Pentagon, said he believes the missile was almost certainly launched by the US military. “From the video it’s clearly a land- or sea-launched ballistic missile, and it couldn’t have come from a French or British submarine, because they are only deployed in the Atlantic and Mediterranean,” he told National Journal. “Chinese submarines have never ventured farther east than Hawaii, nor have they ever successfully test fired a ballistic missile. That only leaves the Russians, but for the life of me I can’t fathom why Moscow would have a submarine sail 5,000 miles to launch a missile off the coast of California.”

I can fathom why a North Korean submarine would do it, or a Chinese submarine, especially just ahead of Obama's arrival in Seoul for the G-20 meeting.

But the capability question is still there in both cases.

Do the North Koreans have a blue water submarine, let alone the technology?

Do the Chinese have the technology?

And why would the US government lie about a test of its own?