There have been some good ideas for National Opt-out Day, or Tease-a-TSA day as I like to call it. Kilts. Can't have too many kilts, in my opinion. And I'm sure the guys are all in favor of the lady who decided to travel in a bikini. My suggestion would be a discreetly placed cotton ball drenched in some wretched perfume, such as Giorgio, that could be removed once security was cleared. Don't want to gas your fellow passengers, after all. I'm sorry the TSA screeners have to deal with fat smelly people. Did it occur to them the fat smelly people did not wander up and insist on getting a gropeathon? That someone ORDERED the fat smelly people to get molested in public? I cry precisely two tears for TSA's sufferings.
So, objection #1 to the new TSA order of things is it is capricious. First they say nobody under the age of 12 will be groped, sorry, "patted down", then there are two different Youtube videos showing precisely that. Objection #2, the people making the rules don't have to live with them. Nobody is groping Janet Napolitano (see "fat smelly people" objection above) and she can get away with it. We shouldn't object to the ICUNekkid scanner, but she won't go through and show the public exactly how unobjectionable it is. Objection #3 is the new regime is not uniform. You can board a plane from some small obscure airport and not have to deal with anything but the metal detector, and catch further flights in major airports without getting scanned or felt up. So right there, any bad guys know to fly out of Lower Bumstupf Municipal Airport, and we are right back where we started before the x-ray goggles came out. Objection #4, the New! Improved! scanner system would not stop existing known terrorist attempts, e.g. the PantyBomber. We only survived that one because he was an idiot and doped up to the point he didn't notice his crotch was on fire, plus the passengers leaped at the chance to put out a forest fire at 30,000 ft. Which to me means the solution is to give all passengers a Vicodin and a blackjack on boarding. Objection #5, the scanners in use here are x-ray machines. I can guarantee the TSA folks manning the buttons do not have x-ray technician training. They might, with coaching and flashcards, be able to correctly pronounce the phrase "ionizing radiation". One or two might be able to tell you what it means. Why does this matter? Even if the machines start off with correct, safe settings, you are just one "I wonder what that dial does" moment from turning it into an
unsafe machine. Objection #6, this does not make us safe. The full gamut of metal detector, scanner, and grope search will not find suppositories or tampons full of C4. The detonator could be something innocuous like a cell phone. So this is all USELESS. Well, no. Lots of people are going to be publicly humiliated. Someone must want this. Useless for making us safe, rather. And if the TSA thinks there's an uproar now, wait until they roll out the cavity search line!
I do not understand how people can claim we should just accept this. It has gone too far. It is NOT OK for a stranger with latex gloves unchanged from the last search to do things to me only my gynecologist does, and in full view of the public. I might have accepted the scanners, if all the promises they made hadn't turned out to have an expiration date. The images CAN be saved. The scanner screen, showing you in all your natural glory, has been reported as visible to the public on multiple occasions. The scanner would NOT detect the Crotch Payload. And even if you agree to the scanner, they can STILL pull you over and grope you.
I recently met up with some rather liberal friends. I didn't have to bring the subject up; they mentioned it first and they are
angry. Look, folks, if you can tick off the conservatives AND the liberals, maybe you did it wrong. Just a thought.
