>>While there are dumb and rude TSA workers, by and large they work hard and try to be accommodating where they can.<<
Don’t fly much through DCA (Wash-Reagan) or IAD (Dulles), do you?
Rudeness and arrogance on a good day.
Rant on (not directed at you, sir)
Those of us that travel a lot, like over 150,000 miles per year, see TSA as ineffectual harassment.
Nothing is more frustrating than to suffer through TSA screening and know it is eye-wash and ineffective.
3-oz containers? Take your 9-oz bottle of shampoo and pour the contents into three 3-oz bottles and place them in the 1-qt baggie. Now, did that silly TSA limitation on 3-oz sizes do any good? Nope.
How about this: just don’t pull your liquids out of your carry-on, as liquids cannot be seen on the x-ray machine—that is why they are asking you to pull them out in the first place. Will Ackmed place his dangerous liquid in a tub to be seen when it can’t be detected by the machine? Nope.
How about just having Ackmed fill his shoes with Anthrax spores and when he takes his shoes off to go through the unsanitary-never-cleaned, x-ray portal, he leaves a trail behind and all the passengers that follow plant their feet in his foot-fungus cultural, too include the spores he left behind.
Forgot your ID? No worries, TSA will let you through as long as you agree to secondary screening. Refuse to show your ID and you are turned away. This makes sense? Apparently to TSA goons it does.
An airline pilot has to be screened like the rest of us, but at the same time he has an axe in his cockpit (and some even are certified to be armed in the cockpit), AND if he wants to, he can simply crash the jet anyway. So, where is the sense in that?
Pre-cleared traveler program? Pay a third-party contractor to do a quick background check on you and you are good-to-go, but your US Government Top Secret clearance means nothing and you are subjected to intrusive screening and physical pat-downs by TSA screeners that are un-educated, ineffective, common-sense deprived, Muslim and (in some cases), illegals.
I will take TSA precautions seriously when they apply the same standard to people riding a Wash DC Metro 8-car Orange Line train full of 800 commuters. Right now, for the Metro it is zip in, zip out, no take-your-shoes-off and inspect your bags. . . even though we know Ackmed has attacked trains and subways before (Madrid, London, for example).
Profiling works but our ever-silly ACLU/CAIR ninnies won’t allow that smart tactic to be employed, so we end up doing a kabuki dance and the sheep delude themselves into believing the dance is keeping the wolves at bay.
Rant off.