| Saturday,
June 16, 2007 If you want a picture of the future, read this:
http://www.nowpublic.com/nightmare_at_reagan_national
_airport_a_security_story_to_end_all_security_stories
The purpose of the TSA is to make the American people understand they
are now subjects, not citizens. Bush has accomplished this much if
nothing else. We are no safer for the TSA -- airplanes are not hijacked
now because of better cockpit security and getting rid of the rules that
forbid passengers to defend themselves. The airplane security rules in
effect before TSA coupled with stronger cockpit doors and better
instructions to the crew would have stopped 911; the billions spent on
employing otherwise unemployable deficients who demand "respect" when
they know they are contemptible could have been better spent on real
security; but that is not the purpose of TSA. The purpose of TSA is to
humiliate the American people. Does anyone suppose that the
present system is the best way to secure air travelers? It is obvious to
those with the power to change it that it is nothing like the optimum
way; but that does not matter.
It is not only Bush. The Democrats won't abolish this idiocy. No one
seriously running for office would.
Of course if the supervisor had actually done the job it was hired to do,
the incident would never have happened at all, since it was very clear to
everyone in the room, supervisor included, that the sippy cup was no threat
to the passengers or anyone else. But that would have required a modicum of
intelligence and might actually have merited some "respect" and this
creature was not capable of that. But be sure to "respect" the TSA
employees.
At the moment an actual kowtow knocking your head on the floor would be
considered sarcasm and disrespect; but I wonder if some of you will not live
to see that become the usual required obeisance to Federal "law enforcement"
officials in future? You cannot lie to them. You cannot "disrespect" them no
matter how stupidly they act. You are subjects, and do not forget it.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/06/fbi_terror_watc.html will
not make you feel better...
Thanks to Hortensia for the references, as well as
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/9deb730a-19ca-11dc-99c5
-000b5df10621,dwp_uuid=73adc504-2ffa-11da-ba9f
-00000e2511c8,print=yes.html
Freedom, not climate, is at risk
By Vaclav Klaus
The writer is President of the Czech
Republic
Published: June 13 2007 17:44 | Last
updated: June 13 2007 17:44
We are living in strange times. One
exceptionally warm winter is enough – irrespective of the fact that in
the course of the 20th century the global temperature increased only by
0.6 per cent – for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest
radical measures to do something about the weather, and to do it right
now. ........
Rational and freedom-loving people have to
respond. The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one
permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on
us. Everything else is denounced.
- "H"
It is all of a piece. There are those who want to control other people,
and persuade themselves that they are doing a "service" when they do so. In
the old days aristocrats were supposed to have a modicum of good sense and
judgment, and the oath of fealty ran both ways, down as well as up; the lord
was supposed to bear true faith to his subjects. Of course heredity was not
a reliable way to select those with such awesome powers, and was replaced by
counting noses to select the top people, who then select those they think
fit to be the lords. So long as those on top did not stay there, and were as
subject to the laws and restrictions as any others, this worked passable
well, since those in charge did not have a great incentive to expand the
command powers: after all, they too would be subject to them at some point.
But we now have career "civil servants" and career politicians, who will
never be subject to the laws that govern the rest of us. Our masters have
little incentive to restrict the scope and power of government. And if we
thought taxation without representation was bad, think about what taxation
with representation has achieved. Of course there are those taxes we vote on
ourselves and those we vote on other people; and of that latter there is no
limit nor incentive to have a limit. Let the rich pay. And any tax reduction
is of course a "gift" to those who formerly paid them. We need those
additional taxes. How else are we to pay the TSA?
================
An interesting drama played out at the beach. Drama is not the proper
word. Farce might be more appropriate.
First, about 9 AM two San Diego Police on horses rode by, headed south on
the beach. Then a cruiser came by on the paved road near us. Our place is on
the Bay Shore Walk; you can't drive here unless you care to drive on the
sand, but there is a paved spit nearby with parking.
A few minutes later an unmarked Mercury of the sort my wife drives --
these are favorites for unmarked police cars and detectives -- came up and
parked more or less illegally. A uniformed SD officer got out and walked
down south carrying a clip board. He vanished into a house a few houses down
the beach.
An hour later the two mounted police came back up along the beach shore.
Their horses were magnificent. One was a palomino gelding, beautiful animal.
As they rode along the shoreline I wondered aloud if they had to pick up the
poop, and if so, where they put it.
They came up to discover the illegally parked unmarked car. One used a
radio. They laughed. (This is about 50 feet from us, on the road out to a
spit in Mission Bay.) The other sent a text message on a Blackberry or
something like that. Five minutes later a marked SD SUV with a lone female
uniformed officer appeared, drove out onto the sand, and did a U turn. The
officer got out. Opened the back. Produced a pitch fork and some kind of
bag. Proceeded to retrieve the poop and put fork and poop into the back of
the SUV. Then she drove out the spit to where the two mounted officers were
waiting. They talked. About the poop? I don't know, as they were too far out
on the spit to overhear. I wondered how they selected the person to retrieve
the poop. Roberta wondered how much poop you have to pick up to merit a
promotion.
Two more mounted police came out onto the spit; whereas the first two
were both men, this was a male and female pair (the female officer was
riding a mare). All four now stopped to look at the illegally parked
Mercury. They talked for a while. Then one began writing a ticket. They put
the ticket on the right side of the windshield. All four then rode west
toward the ocean beach. As they passed I called "You do know that car was
left there by a uniformed officer?" One of the MP's laughed and said she
knew that. They rode into the -- well, not sunset since this is still before
noon. Into the west.
Ten minutes later the uniformed officer came out to his car from
whichever beach house he had been visiting. He stowed his clip board and
drove off. Roberta thinks he had not yet seen the ticket. I think he saw it
and was ignoring it.
I would love to know the rest of this story, but I don't suppose I ever
will. So it goes.
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