Frosty the Terrorist

It's the holiday season.

The kids will be out of school.

Government offices will close for a couple of days.

Family gets together.  But family no long all live within an hour's drive, and flying remains (however cramped the seats and however much you might yearn for the days when they served peanuts - or even full-course if not full-flavor meals) statistically the safest way to travel.

So head for the airport.

What's that?  You don't want to be sexually molested assaulted  groped professionally frisked for weapons of mass destruction?  Or photographed naked by the dick measuring device?  Damned spoilsport.  Suck it up and get in the scanner.  Or so says former TSA agent "Mom."

Flying is a privilege not a right.  As such, it can be and is regulated.  Requirements can and are set up to ensure that everyone who flies is safe.  If you don’t like it, then don’t fly.  You may not be as concerned as the next guy about the safety or you may be more concerned.  Point is the job of TSA is to ensure the entire traveling public is safe not just you.  TSA officers don’t care what you as an individual want, they can’t, it just isn’t possible.  You may be ok with lax security but what about the next passenger who wants thorough security?
Your right to privacy isn’t being violated at all.  You always have the option to drive a car, take a train, grab the bus or start rowing a boat.  You do not have to fly, you just want to fly.  The minute you decide you want to fly then you have to accept that security is involved and you are going to have consent and submit to it period the end.
. . .
Now if you want to fly, suck it up and accept that you have to submit to the security procedures.  Yes you think they are stupid or unnecessary but TSA officers and TSA don’t care what you think.  They try to make it all warm and fuzzy but they can’t because it is security not a trip to Disney World.  Shut up and get in the scanner or don’t fly.

Though even Mom admits that the groping is a bullshit.

Ok that one is bullshit.  It is a terror tactic by TSA to get you to walk through the more thorough body scanner.  I can’t defend TSA on this one.  I have talked to the TSA officers and it is no more effective than the old pat down procedure.  They tested it out with trainers and each other.  It is purely a terror tactic by TSA.  Shame on TSA and anyone who has to get one should write a complaint in afterward. 

But really, you know that everything can be dangerous.  They should probably just make us all fly naked.  And no baggage at all.  Then we'd be safe.  (Unless the engine falls off or something, but hey, that's not TSA's problem.)

Just ask the people who hoped to use the Bradley International Airport in Connecticut last week.

From the Hartford Courant (via Turley).

State police say a harmless snowglobe in a carryon bag caused a partial evacuation at Bradley International Airport.

State police Lt. J. Paul Vance says a Transportation Security Administration worker spotted something that looked suspicious while screening bags and alerted state police shortly before 11 a.m. Sunday.

Vance says Terminal A was evacuated as a precaution but was reopened about 45 minutes later, after authorities determined the snowglobe did not contain explosives and was not a danger. 

I feel safer now.

Of course, there's also a fair chance they broke the snow globe.

Ah, for the days when the only problem was that they couldn't get the damn planes off the ground and kept you sitting in the airport. You remember.

(Sorry, I can't find a version of Paxton singing it. )