The last straw (updated)
January 2nd, 2010 at 5:14 pm by NigelI’m done flying.
I already hate everything about flying. I find it insulting that soon-to-be-unionized brain-dead idiots who couldn’t find employment anywhere else “secure” our terminals (sorry if I offend any TSA agents, but I doubt most of them can even read). I find it absolutely moronic that I have to take off my freakin’ shoes to board an airplane.
Now the TSA has more stupid rules for flying. We can’t “profile” Muslims flying from overseas, but we CAN yank the pillow from a child:
Onboard, we learned of more new TSA rules (for flights to the U.S. originating abroad). All electronic devices would have to be turned off an hour before landing instead of just on descent. And no one could have a pillow or blanket on their person during the last hour of the flight. Seriously. Cut to my daughter screaming bloody murder as the flight attendant yanks the pillow from under her head. Seriously.
This is all bullshit. I’d write a scathing letter to the moron Obama has running our TSA…but Barry never got around to actually picking someone to run that agency. Well, until now.
Anyway, until our gubbermint takes SERIOUS measures to protect us on airplanes, I’ll just rent a car and drive. SERIOUS measures. Give the ACLU a giant middle finger…and PROFILE:
Since Muslims took down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, every attack on a commercial airliner has been committed by foreign-born Muslim men with the same hair color, eye color and skin color. Half of them have been named Mohammed.
And so, despite 5 trillion Americans opening laptops, surrendering lip gloss and drinking breast milk in airports day after day for the past eight years, the government still couldn’t stop a Nigerian Muslim from nearly blowing up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day.
The “warning signs” exhibited by this particular passenger included the following:
His name was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
He’s Nigerian.
He’s a Muslim.
His name was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
He boarded a plane in Lagos, Nigeria.
He paid nearly $3,000 in cash for his ticket.
He had no luggage.
His name was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
More common sense from Ann Coulter:
Update: Via Hot Air, Mark Steyn checks in:
On Christmas Day, a gentleman from Nigeria succeeded (effortlessly) in boarding a flight to Detroit with a bomb in his underwear. Pretty funny, huh?
But the Pantybomber wasn’t the big joke. The real laugh was the United States government. The global hyperpower spent the next week making itself a laughingstock to the entire planet. First, the bureaucrats at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) swung into action with a whole new range of restrictions.
Against radical Yemen-trained Muslims wearing weaponized briefs? Of course not. That would be too obvious. So instead they imposed a slew of constraints against you. At Heathrow last week, they were permitting only one item of carry-on on U.S. flights. In Toronto, no large purses.
Um, the Pantybomber didn’t have a purse. He brought the bomb on board under his private parts, and his private parts weren’t part of his carry-on (although, if reports of injuries sustained in his failed mission are correct, they may well have been part of his carry-off). But no matter. If in doubt, blame the victim. The TSA announced that for the last hour of the flight no passenger can use the toilets or have anything on his lap — not a laptop, not a blanket, not a stewardess, not even a paperback book. I can’t wait for the first lawsuit after an infidel flight attendant confiscates a litigious imam’s Koran as they’re coming into LAX.
January 2nd, 2010 at 10:26 pm
I have always enjoyed flying. No longer, though, unless driving to my destination is absolutely impossible. This summer I had a water bottle confiscated by TSA because it had 4 oz instead of 3 oz of water. I asked to see the rulebook they were quoting, and the TSA officials informed me that the rulebook was “classified”. I asked how I was supposed to adhere to “classified” standards. It got really tense, extra security showed up, and I, like an asshole, backed down. It was only a water bottle, but the sheer incompetent, unapologetic, arrogant rule-citing, meant only to impede and not to secure, pissed me off big time.
Another good takedown of the situation:
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1794-Starve-The-Beast-Airlines.html
January 2nd, 2010 at 10:44 pm
I hate flying, too–but do it occasionally to get somewhere I can’t drive to. And I have no problem taking off my shoes, but it makes me furious to be pulled out of line and treated like a low-life, while Middle Eastern men just float right through the line.
I’m always uncomfortable in airline seats. I’m five-foot tall, 63 year old grandmother, and I get cold easily, and have a painful back condition. If I can’t have a pillow and a blanket–for comfort, and can’t get up to the bathroom for the last hour of a flight– my oh my, what am I going to do? Duh–I won’t fly!
And there are millions like me who will make travel plan changes in favor of not putting up with this baloney. I will NOT be made miserable, while paying a high price to fly, so that this idiot government can continue to be pro-Muslim and anti-American, in the name of political correctness.
So here goes another industry that this incompetent, lying, and evil administration is ruining. It’s 2010–let’s get busy kicking these bums out of office! Starting with the special election in MA.
January 3rd, 2010 at 3:05 am
I stopped flying years ago because of the unpleasantness, absurdity, and literal pathology of it all. Yes, there are many places I had planned to go and actually need to go to which I would have to fly, but when I think of the insult I have to go through to get there, the destination loses its luster.
I’ll fly there after I die. I hear we can do that. Without a plane. Except the astral plane.
January 3rd, 2010 at 10:14 am
Good catch from Denninger, Gabriel.
January 3rd, 2010 at 10:23 am
[...] at Six Meat Buffet has had it with flying, and explains [...]
January 3rd, 2010 at 1:44 pm
The thing is that flying is a customer service oriented business and these government regulations are extremely intrusive. It would be like ordering McDonald’s to lecture you on how fat you are before you can eat the food you ordered.
I had only flown a few times prior to 9/11 but if you go outside of the country and come back in it is a pain in the effin’ ass. Where’s all this white privilege that I keep hearing so much about? My bags are always searched and I get the sweetest little notes admitting it. I get searched and run through scanners so many times that I might as well show up in a housecoat and slippers.
Unless it’s business, I’m not flying anywhere again. Couple that with the full body scanners and I hope one day someone can explain how using a device to snap pictures to see through kids’ clothes isn’t child pornography and that your $8 a hour security guard isn’t going to figure out a way to distribute them.
Somebody said something once about when people give up liberty in exchange for security – except that we’ve already given up a ton of liberty and received no added security. I guess they knew what they were talking about. Political correctness is already the death of us.
January 3rd, 2010 at 7:48 pm
Happy New Year! I am glad that said scumbag is being represented by a well practiced defender of terrorist rights. Next, proceed to beat said attorney until the terrorist wets his pants. See, that way, the terrorist wasn’t tortured. Says nothing about the attorney.
Am I right? Huh? Huh?
January 4th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
I am a former screener with the TSA, I am also a retired Corrections office and former aux Police Office. Most of the blame lies not with the screeners themselves, but the inept and incompetent management and supervisors. I have seen corruption and incompetence at the highest levels at GRR in Grand Rapids, Michigan before I left.
January 4th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Rogue, I have seen imcompetence at the gate. I have no doubt that management and supervisors are corrupt and incompetent. Perhaps Grand Rapids has a small enough airport to be choosy in selecting qualified and competent screeners.
But in San Diego and Los Angeles (the two airports I fly out of most), the TSA screeners are complete dumbshits. I once saw a 70-something granny with a cane go through a pat-down and secondary screening that took another 15 minutes, while two VERY Arab looking guys in front of me sailed through “security”…in fact the barely-out-of-high-school screener barely glanced at their passports and spent more time scrutinizing mine.
Oh…the reason I know granny’s secondary screening took 15 minutes? I was in a barely crawling security line where I was able to see all of this. Her poor husband (also in his 70s I’d guess) was exasperated, but could do nothing because the TSA agents all act as if their badge means something.
Which I guess it does since they have the power to make flying a miserable experience.
January 4th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
I pretty much second everything that Ginny says. I also refuse to travel ANYWHERE by air unless I cannot drive.
I can’t wait until these evil government people are in charge of our healthcare. God save us all.
Somewhat OT: You do realize that the Christmas crotch would be bomber is getting terrifically wonderful medical care…they might even be able to repair his genitals so he can meet those virgins promised in his screwed up stupid religion. (any religion that relies on force to convert isn’t a religion, it’s slavery)
Are we living in 1984 or what here?
January 6th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Two things.
My granny, who had a broken shoulder, had to take her sling off before they would let her through the gate. Sheesh.
I keep hearing about “white privilege” too. Maybe it’s just that we have the privilege of having an acceptable few of our number sacrificed to Allah every once in a while so that we may show Muslims that we are a tolerant beneficent people.