There must be at least an opinion or two in Yakima regarding the issue of full body scan as a part of airport security. What do you think??
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Gizmo, does it seem like the whole Homeland Security apparatus is less designed to protect the citizenry, and more to provide for private enterprise to profit by making and selling unproven equipment to the DHS/TSA? These body scanners are a good example of this: this particular model has a pretty unreliable record for finding hidden items and substances in body cavities. There are better, more economical ways of accomplishing this task, so why aren’t they doing them?
My body is titanium enriched so that every time I walk into a federal building or a boarding area I will be wanded and patted. The imaging equipment is less annoying or personal when used according to the expressed protocols.
Last June Congress passed an appropriations bill to fund TSA screening technology and installation. Plans were to be completed by October and implementation phases begun. TSA is however functioning with an acting chief thanks to a knucklehead Senator from South Carolina. Incidentally more than a hundred Republican Representatives opposed the TSA appropriation bill despite the minority caucus recommendation to vote for the bill.
I fly a lot..I have no problem with any screening procedure they’ve used. Is this really a partisan issue?
It might be if you forgot your derringer was still in your bag.
Whatever it takes to keep me safe. Many good minds are required to stay in front of of ‘em.
SC Sen. Jim DeMint (r), wants to further delay the appointment of the President’s choice, Erroll Southers, to head up the TSA because Southers is pro-union (gasp!!). DeMint certainly can’t complain about Southers’ resume: a former FBI Special Agent and counter-terrorism expert, former head of Homeland Security for California, and currently one of the chiefs of security services for Los Angeles World Airports. Apparently the good senator from SC is more concerned that a new agency chief may want a living wage for screeners, and is willing to sacrifice the public safety to make his point. With DeMint, crushing unions and their members is more important than keeping Americans safe.
http://www.truthout.org/topstories/123109vh2
Mainstreeter- I think we’ve all learned how utterly stupid and irresponsible it is for a pro-gun republican to totally forget where he left his firearm, and he has to be reminded of its location (inside his carry-on bag), by baggage screeners. This was an unfortunate incident, not only for Dave Ettl, but also for any frightened passengers in the screening/boarding area, who must’ve been thinking, “What kind of reckless moron tries to get on board a plane with a gun?”. You need to cut Ettl some slack, because he knows (now) that what he did was stupid, arrogant, totally irresponsible, embarrassing, and showed a total lack of regard for the safety of others when he forgot he had a deadly weapon. In his carry-on bag. As he boarded a commercial passenger plane.
Looks like Drew and Streeter have no intention of staying on the thread here…Surprise Surprise.
As for Dave?? Seems clear he intended to jack a Horizon plane, crash it into the SunDome, wiping out 24 basketball players, 2 coaches, 3 beer vendors and 7 spectators. And a partridge in a pear tree.
As for unionizing those poor TSA folks? Seems just as smart to do the same for the Secret Service and the FBI.
Yes, neal’s right- the FBI and the Secret Service (who make twice as much as minimum wage folks without a union) has a lot to do with the topic of baggage and passenger screening at regional airports.
Cons: never happy unless they can put even more people below the poverty level. If they succeed in doing this to TSA agents, then they will have more money to buy overpriced equipment that doesn’t work.
Unionizing baggage screeners doesn’t give them the same pay grade as Secret Service and FBI officials, and you know that.
As federal and state employees make an average of 50% more than the private sector, your “poverty” argument is the usual red herring.
Drew…did you get the new 2010 edition of the Little Woodchuck’s Socialist Democratic Manifesto handbook yet? I hear it comes with a secret decoder ring this year!
Neal, do you need the lecture about staying on topic now?
Clearly the program that is in place now is not working, What now, will we need to remove our underwear before being allowed on a plane.
I’m all for the scanner that scans to the skin. If it bothers you take the train or drive or stay scared in you home.
It is apparent Obama could care less about our safety. Obama is the currant president and needs to take action and responsibility as he has been in office almost one year. It is time to man up and quit blaming the last administration.
BTW the gun and Ettl and the airport in OLD NEWS, it is a dead horse, he got punished MOVE ON with life.
DeMint is blocking the appointment of Erroll Southers as head of the TSA. How is that Obama’s fault? Republicons voting against any funding for the TSA seems pretty obstructionist.
It is clearly evident that the GOP isn’t interested in keeping anyone safe.
unions did wonders in Detroit… I can’t wait until our Airports look like Detroit factories!
Unions were in place for decades in the auto industry in Michigan. Decades. Obviously, the fact that “Detroit” was slow to respond to the world trend of making fuel-efficient cars, or the fact that the U.S. automakers were relocating to places like Ontario where health care is more economical for everyone had nothing to do with it. The cons have worked feverishly to crush the middle class in America since Reagan and Nixon, by protecting corporations when they fire employees for organizing, and lifting protections so that those same companies can offshore thousands of American jobs, and raid employee pensions. Unions like the UAW had been in place long before the cons tossed away their morals and values to crush the middle class that put them in office. One of the main reasons that Toyota and Subaru chose to build new plants in the South, rather than take the cheaper route of buying and retooling existing assembly lines in MI, OH and IN is because many of the southern states have your kind of laws in place to keep wages down, and unions out.
Yes, you cons have done great things to the middle class.
And look at how well those car companies are doing, Toyota and Subaru are not asking for money to stay afloat.
Toyota and Subaru are employing middle class workers…how many workers have been laid off at the car companies in MI, OH, and IN. Yeah, sounds like the unions did a lot for those laid off workers.
Folks are forgetting that the original “screening” took place in Amsterdam. How much control does the U.S. have over foreign airports? We can require more secure measures here but they will not necessarily keep us safe from those coming into the country.
Well, there was talk this week of placing air marshals on every flight inbound to the U.S., meaning we’d have to start positioning these agents all over the world. So much for the GOP dream of not expanding government.
We do not have much control over foreign security. We can only hope that they are as concerned about safety as we are. Do remember that the Brits turned the trick on a dozen or so airliners that were to come down at once, not so long ago. That is reassuring, and at last the pilots union has spoken out, saying security measures are not good enough.
It could be a lot worse. The TSA people have been very courteous to me, even complimenting me on my packing procedure. Can you imagine their job, dealing with every sort of humanity that walks and talks. That does not dismiss their responsibility or the responsibility of their superiors or their equipment manufacturers to give us the very best security possible.
In the end, it is not likely population will decrease, and so airports should be built with more features for passenger comfort as well as safety, so that when the system must be slowed, us humans can lie down and sleep in comfort. And security procedures should be such nobody even gets into an airport with weapons, bombs, fuels or whatever.
But, the TSA and the rest of the government and the airlines all know that they have a captive audience and they can do nearly anything and people will still fly. Yeah, stic is right, we could take the Greyhound, drive or just huddle at home, shaking. Not very nice alternatives, but alternatives.
BTW, the Ettl-Derringer episode is still fresh enough to allow further discussion, and I am pretty intense about ANYONE trying to tell me what I can talk about and what is taboo. It is called “apriori censorship,” and not a very nice way to play. Ettl deserves every criticism for having tried that ploy and then attempting to establish the “prop” and “I didn’t remember I had it in my bag,” alibis. He was testing the system. I have declared weapons on two different flights, and the system was courteous and efficient. Nothing was harmed, including my ego, and I claimed them at the end of each flight with absolutely no hindrance.
What really confounds me are the methods that must be used to convince a person to destroy their own lives in order to further what some other entity deems a method of getting even. Just what part of “getting even,” do suicide people relish? There is much good to be done in the world, so what impels a person to do so much bad? Mental instability? Monetary gain for family and friends? Religious zeal? Escape from the reality of a cruel world? An expression of love for the hypnotist that sends them on their body-and-mind destroying mission?
I cannot help wondering what Al (whatever his name was) told the Muslim-captain-psychiatrist at Fort Hood to make him do his deed? Perhaps I am too soft in my nature, but all the violence erupting here and abroad reinforces the idea that we are just children, guarding our toys and threatening anyone who touches them. Nostradamus, the Mayan calendar, the Book of Revelation–maybe that is what the self-sacrificer’s nightmares are–the world is ending anyway, so what do I have to live for–let me do something momentous!
Neal:
Making funny about death is not one of your high cards.
“As for Dave?? Seems clear he intended to jack a Horizon plane, crash it into the SunDome, wiping out 24 basketball players, 2 coaches, 3 beer vendors and 7 spectators. And a partridge in a pear tree.”
De Mint is desperate, as head of the LAX police dept, Southers presided over unionized members of that police dept who along with others in law enforcement have a long tradition of organization. DeMint, another South Carolina republican, figures!
Whoopee,
I guess I needed to add this disclaimer:
“No liberals died in the making of this blog”
Hopefully the new year brings you the raise you deserve. Use it to buy a sense of humor.
As long as Southers can learn the idea of “not lying to Congress”, he may be OK.
Liberals, as well as conservatives and the apolitical die all the time, and it’s never funny.
I don’t see a lot of the cons coming to defend your sense of humor, neal. I’ll be keeping mine (everybody else seems to like it, especially on Friday and Saturday nights over several friendly games of pool). I know that your brand of con isn’t big on sincere apologies; never has been.
Holy crap, Drew..Surely you must have something better to snivel about..
Ooops…I when I called you “surely”, Streeter thought I was talking about her..sorry..
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
Just stating a fact. Cons hate them.
And who is “Streeter”?…you are not allowed to bring your imaginary friends to the blog platform, neal.
DeMint comes from a state that is known to be notoriously anti-union. He is also in a party that doesn’t want to see the middle-class survive, much less, succeed. It’s like a republicon haven down there, where the poor stay poor, big-business gets bigger (while complaining how hard their struggle is, and how much they fight for their workers).
I guess every state has to have a Hastings.
Interesting that former DHS Chertoff had a 2 page ‘ad’ in the Washington Post telling us how the full body scans were necessary. What it really says in the tiny print at the bottom is, he is a former head of the DHS and a partner in the Chertoff Group, his security consulting agency, includes a client that manufactures the machines.
Chertoff’s an example of capitalism without morals.