Posted on 04/25/2008 1:26:20 PM PDT by The_Republican
America is in line at the airport. America has its shoes off, is carrying a rubberized bin, is going through a magnetometer. America is worried there is fungus on the floor after a million stockinged feet have walked on it. But America knows not to ask. America is guilty until proved innocent, and no one wants to draw undue attention. America left its ticket and passport in the jacket in the bin in the X-ray machine, and is admonished. America is embarrassed to have put one one-ounce moisturizer too many in the see-through bag. America is irritated that the TSA agent removed its mascara, opened it, put it to her nose, and smelled it. Why don't you put it up your nose and see if it explodes? America thinks.
And, as always: Why do we do this when you know I am not a terrorist, and you know I know you know I am not a terrorist? Why this costly and harassing kabuki when we both know the facts, and would agree that all this harassment is the government's way of showing "fairness," of showing that it will equally humiliate anyone in order to show its high-mindedness and sense of justice?
All the frisking, beeping and patting down is demoralizing to our society. It breeds resentment, encourages a sense that the normal are not in control, that common sense is yesterday. Another thing: It reduces the status of that ancestral arbiter and leader of society, the middle-aged woman. In the new fairness, she is treated like everyone, without respect, like the loud ruffian and the vulgar girl on the phone. The middle-aged woman is the one spread-eagled over there in the delicate shell beneath the removed jacket, praying nothing on her body goes beep and makes people look.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
because liberals would cry and scream if we profiled - like we should be doing. Blame no one else.
Good point! She left out “Do you know who I am”
If not, then profile.
This will have impact down the road.
Yessiree.
She isn’t saying any thing we don’t already know.
It’s plain just from looking the postings at FR.
I think we just expected him to continue to stand up to the world as he did after 911 but that seems to have slipped away some how.
I’d like to think that like Roosevelt he’s been laying the ground work for the coming struggle, quietly building our
defences, our armed services our infrastructure, doing what he can to prepare our nation for what is coming, I just don’t know.
t.
Peggy’s still in her “speechwriter scorned” snit.
I won’t fly anymore. It’s too intrusive. I don’t care if the airlines all go out of business.
I blame Norm Mineta, and his boss, George W. Bush. And no one else.
I agree with Peggy on this one. I think this is all about reducing Americans down to the level of the the powerless nabobs of socialist Europe. This is a major power grab. Food shortages, gas price escalation, indoctrination in our schools and on the MSM to be good little citizens of the world and worry night and day about Global Warming. Keep you eyes off the ones who are pulling the strings. Make the people beg the GUVMINT to fix everything. This year we have absolutely no candidate that deserves the office. Ratcheting down expectations.
There should be rational profiling so that resources and efforts can be intelligently directed. At the same time, no category of people can be completely exempted from attention because terrorists are quite capable of adapting to meet a loosened security system. Imagine a Lynne Stewart or Bernadine Dohrn, looking like a nice middle aged white lady, who had been recruited to join a terrorist plot.
But 10 points for the hysterical exaggeration in her article.
Al Queda is recruiting non moslem appearing westerners to carry out terrorist attacks. They use women and children, they blackmail people into blowing themselves up, on and on.
It would be the height of insanity to not search anyone who a guard thinks "doesn't look like a likely terrorist".
We go through this because in one day terrorists killed 3000, attacked the Pentagon, wounded our economy, and destroyed two of the tallest buildings on Earth, and they are planning worse next time.
I have a personal story to tell. Once I think either Portland or Seattle, there was a flight going to Alaska. Had lots of Old ladies. Now I don’t know what the hell are old ladies going to Alaska, but I checked the board and that gate was for that flight. That’s not important.
What is important is that one old lady, she was most certainly in her mid-80s if not late 80s. She was using a support to walk. I don’t know what its called. She was so fragile that I was worried she was even walking.
THE SECURITY ASKED HER TO TAKE OFF HER SHOES.
She can’t balance herself, so she had to get out of line, and then one slow baby step at a time, walk to the lounge where there were chairs. A security person walked with her. It took her long time to get there and was difficult for her to just seat herself. Then she took off her shoes.
SHAME ON YOU STUPID [Fill in whole bunch of 4 letter words here] ROBOTS.
What Peggy says here is the cause of my melancholy:
“..Here’s some comfort for him, [Obama] for all Democrats. In Lubbock, Texas – Lubbock Comma Texas, the heart of Texas conservatism – they dislike President Bush. He has lost them. I was there and saw it. Confusion has been followed by frustration has turned into resentment, and this is huge. Everyone knows the president’s poll numbers are at historic lows, but if he is over in Lubbock, there is no place in this country that likes him. I made a speech and moved around and I was tough on him and no one – not one – defended or disagreed. I did the same in North Carolina recently, and again no defenders. I did the same in Fresno, Calif., and no defenders, not one.
He has left on-the-ground conservatives – the local right-winger, the town intellectual reading Burke and Kirk, the old Reagan committeewoman – feeling undefended, unrepresented and alone.
This will have impact down the road.
I finally understand the party nostalgia for Reagan. Everyone speaks of him now, but it wasn’t that way in 2000, or 1992, or 1996, or even ‘04.
I think it is a manifestation of dislike for and disappointment in Mr. Bush. It is a turning away that is a turning back. It is a looking back to conservatism when conservatism was clear, knew what it was, was grounded in the facts of the world.”
Bush got confused and thought he was a big spending, big government Democrat and then compounded the error when he mistakenly thought he was President of Mexico and stood with them against us.
While all three choices we have now will be worse, I'll be glad to be rid of the Bush's.
Yes he was. As much as I admire the GENIUS of the ARCHITECT, he effd up.
W was told that if you give the people who “cling” to Guns and God, most Conservative Judges and Ban PBA, you are Golden. You can BUY the love and support of everyone else and live happily ever after.
Architect made the same mistake in his analysis that Obambi made - People don’t want handouts, instead they prefer self reliance and self respect. At least the ones who voted for W.
“you know I am not a terrorist”
Oh, but you might just be one of those newly recruited “white muslim” terrorists!
Who knows how to dress up like a middle aged woman.
I’ve gotten the shakedown from the TSA Nazis. Warned me that I was lucky I wasn’t being strip-searched.
It’s not about fairness or even PC. It’s about raw power.
Agreed. It was actually too intrusive *before* 9/11. But, I went ahead and put up with it. But I won’t put up with it now; it is way, way overboard.
Airliners are a gun-free zone, and were that way before 9/11. That’s what allowed 9/11 to occur. If people had been able to defend themselves, the terrorist would never have even tried it.
I guess the terrorists have won.
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