BURN: The Collective's TSA Civil Liberty Two-Step

Fisking a Eugene Robinson piece is too easy.  I feel guilty...most of the time.  "Fish in a barrel..." and all that.  But Robinson and several other Collectivist "thinkers" are curiously comfy with the TSA police-state policies, and they invert both fact and logic...again.  Some more...

Eugene starts from this premise; sure, the TSA policy is stinking bad, but the only alternative is the civil-liberty destroying monster of PROFILING.  Those two choices he offers us, and nothing more.

Sure, the "don't touch my junk" guy touched a nerve. I spend enough time fighting my way through airport security lines to share his frustration at ever-changing procedures that seem capricious, intrusive and sometimes just bizarre. But what, specifically, is the alternative?  [My emphasis]

Apparently, Eugene does not have time to read.  Or think much.  Why, for instance, were we not subjected to invasive pat-downs nearly a year ago, when the Fruit-Of-Kaboom bomber very successfully brought a bomb aboard a US bound flight?  The TSA says that the full-body scan machines were not ready before recently, but TSA people with hands and gloves were in no short supply a year ago.  Why now?

If Eugene could find the time, he would read excellent mind-expanding pieces like this, from Michael Totten, describing the Israeli method for airline security.  I mean, I'm a practicing attorney, and I found the time.  Eugene would have learned that RACIAL PROFILING is not what the Israelis do.

They also don't look for stuff primarily.  They look for people.  They are PROACTIVE, where our TSA is REACTIVE.  We are looking for the stuff people used LAST TIME.  Which is beyond stupid.  The 9/11 murderers weaponized airliners using OUR REACTIVE POLICY in response to conventional hijacking.  They used box-cutters, so all "sharp objects" are now verboten (including finger-nail files).  Never mind that one can kill you at least as effectively with a common ball-point pen (which nobody cares about).

What the critics really mean is not that the TSA should let underwear bombers board planes. What they're saying is: Don't search me, and don't search my grandmother. Just search the potential terrorists.

Hmmm...  That sounds SUPER REASONABLE to me.  Eugene never offers any rationale why that might be a bad idea, except...

In other words, they want profiling. That's a seductive idea, I suppose, if you don't spend a lot of time worrying about civil liberties. But it couldn't possibly work. Our terrorist enemies may be evil, but they're not stupid.

"Profiling"...OMG, we could not have THAT.  But some of us DO spend a lot of time worrying about civil liberties...and how the tension between them and public safety ALWAYS has to be carefully weighed.  Eugene and Howard Kurtz, among other Collectivists, seem quite sanguine about the CIVIL LIBERTY invasions the TSA thinks are mandatory.

If we only search people who "look like terrorists," al-Qaeda will send people who don't fit the profile.

But nobody suggests that we do that, Eugene.  Nobody.  That would be as stupid as our TSA policy is right now.  We have the INTELLIGENCE to deal PROACTIVELY with terrorist threats, and that would not entail stupid prohibitions on U.S. air travelers, mowing down civil liberties, OR worse than useless practices that expose us to another attack.

CRASH: "Profiling" Versus Fixed Fortifications

George S. Patton is reputed to have said something like, "Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man".  By that Patton, a very astute student of military history, meant that in the modern battle-space, pouring resources into a fixed fortification was not efficient.  Motivated people of considerable genius would find a way to defeat them, by-pass them, or even use them against you.
(linked at http://directorblue.blogspot.com/...THANKS, DOUG!)

The TSA specializes in building fixed fortifications...which are all false front buildings like you would see on a movie set.  They are not even real defenses.  Not even for the LAST terrorist attack.  Motivated people of considerable genius are working to defeat them, by-pass them, and even use them against us.

Like movie sets, they are part of an illusion.  In this little melodrama, they are meant...supposedly...to give the flying public some semblance of security that the flying experience is safe.  This is gilding the lily, and at enormous cost.  Flying is safe...it is the safest mode of travel of which I know.  One of the paradoxes of the police-state TSA practice is that it is forcing more Americans to drive, and more of us will be killed.  And that will happen to no good end.

The cost/benefit ratio is completely askew.  The smart play would be to do as the Israelis and many Europeans do.  It is not "profiling"--it is way more than that.

The Israelis do not pull Middle-Eastern-looking men (or women or children) out of line...mostly because so many Israelis are Middle-Eastern-looking people.  Duh.  Rather, they use intelligence...in the several meanings of that term...to provide a telescopic process of evaluation applied to only certain passengers.  Race has very little to do with it, just as race has very little to do with good police work on the streets of your town or city.

An Israeli-Arab passenger will receive hardly a look, where my passport might flag me as someone who needs special attention.  That special attention does not (from all I can read) include making me strip down to my underwear.  It DOES involve having to answer some questions, put by very sharp people who only do that a few times a day.

Most importantly, it works.  It is not a sham.  It fluidly responds to fluidly changing threats.  It is only minimally invasive...and not at all invasive for the vast majority of passengers.  It is, most importantly, not a stupid kabuki that kills the very people it pretends to protect.

BURN: The National Disgrace Of Texas

A few years back, a beer was advertised as "The National Beer Of Texas".  It was a clever ad campaign, as it exploited an understood bit of humor.  Unfortunately, Sheila Jackson-Lee is not a joke.  She is the National Disgrace Of Texas.

Now that is going some, because we have some real hum-dingers floating around Texas.  But Jackson-Lee has recently put herself head-and-shoulders above the pack of disgraceful Texas pols.

Congresswoman Jackson-Lee is not new to the pack of gob-smackingly STUPID people Texas sends to Washington.  She has at times been the going-away favorite, earning her pole position by such questions as where the photo of the U.S. flag planted by astronauts on Mars was to be found.

But comments she made last week add to her infamy in ways that set her apart as not just STUPID, but also as a viciously racist demagog, as well.  Don't get me wrong; Sheila has been a known corruptocrat here in Texas for a lonnnngggg time.

Lest someone accuse me of having nothing good to say about Ms. Jackson-Lee, let me now say that I have personally observed her to be a very hard-working politician.  She does constituent service well.  She is also one of those people who you NEVER want to have catch you blocking her direct line-of-sight to a camera and/or microphone.  You WILL be trampled.

Which brings us to an interesting vignette about our Sheila; if you review video of any W SOTUS, you will see Sheila front and center in the press to shake his hand...every time.  It's that camera thang!  She kant hep it...as Anne Richards would say.

But Sheila left the realm of risable idiot the other day in a statement supporting the NAACP resolution smearing the TEA Parties, and she did it in a way that earns her the undying contempt of anyone who either loves the truth, or gives a fig about history.  Especially those of us who both love truth and history.

And I thank you professor very much. I’m going to be engaging you with those very powerful numbers that you have offered on what the tea party recognizes, uh, or is recognized as. Might I add my own P.S.? All those who wore sheets a long time ago have now lifted them off and started wearing [applause], uh, clothing, uh, with a name, say, I am part of the tea party. Don’t you be fooled. [voices: "That's right.", applause] Those who used to wear sheets are now being able to walk down the aisle and speak as a patriot because you will not speak loudly about the lack of integrity of this movement. Don’t let anybody tell you that those who spit on us as we were walking to vote on a health care bill for all of America or those who said Congresswoman Jackson-Lee’s braids were too tight in her hair had anything to do with justice and equality and empowerment of the American people. Don’t let them fool you on that [applause]….

That smear of the TEA Party is a flat lie, which she likely knows is as vile lie as any told in the past few years. Sheila ALSO knows her "those who spit on us" statement is also a deep, sinful lie that she employs to put herself where...not only nobody was...she was nowhere near.  Nobody spat on anyone, unless you include "stage-spit".  Nobody called anyone racial epithets.  It is all a pack of lies, and Sheila resurrected them, and poured that filth on herself for pure self-aggrandizement.

But that was not the alpha and omega of Sheila's racist rant.  Oh, no...

....But let me just say this. We have had a challenging time with African-Americans on the question of immigration. As it first begun, uh, it looked as if it was a job killer bill for all of you. It looked as if these were folk who were interlopers who were attempting to move in on your territory. My brothers and sisters, once they begin to divide us [voices: "That's right."], once they begin to point out this one and that one [voices: "Yes."], for many of you don't realize that immigrants are Haitians, they are Liberians, they're Nigerians, and they come to this nation as we did, first in the bottom of a belly of slave boat, to make for a greater time. Wouldn't it be better if we linked arms with them to find the justice that is [inaudible] our people. [applause]....

....Immigration reform is not something we should be frightened about. We should grab it and make it ours and make it work for us as it works for those who are seeking a better life. Now let me just pose why you should look to this, uh, if you can't bring yourself to, uh, use the terminology civil rights, uh, then use the terminology human rights and human dignity. For I would compare two disparate situations which will hopefully turn the light bulb on - Arizona, there might be some of our constituents saying, go ahead, right on. But if you understand what the Arizona law says, and thank you NAACP, it says that if you as a police officer, police state that we are fighting against [voices: "Yes." "That's right."], all the places that we look askance and say oh my goodness, look what they're doing in Sudan. But if you are in Arizona the police officer has a right, if they have reasonable suspicion, and I am strong supporter of law enforcement, I'm on the Judiciary, I want them to be treated fairly, but every human being has the ability to have human error....so if they have reasonable suspicion, uh, masterful attorney, they can stop you, they can ask you papers that you left at home because you were going to Seven Eleven, they can arrest you criminally...

Adding to her calumny and racism, Sheila doubles down on hypocrisy. Within days of her praise of an actual Klan recruiter, Sen. Robert Byrd, she is tarring people of good will...but opposing politics to her's...with the Klan smear.  She earned the title: National Disgrace Of Texas.

BURN: Regulated To Stupid

The Federal government regulates oil drilling activities very heavily.  Virtually every procedure requires approval by a regulator, and some regulations in place in the Gulf simply required stupid.

Barack Hussain Obama, from the Oval Office, tilted with his friend, Mr. Straw Man.  He implied that oil exploration in the U.S. was an unregulated, full-tilt boogey exercise in rapacity--

One place we’ve already begun to take action is at the agency in charge of regulating drilling and issuing permits, known as the Minerals Management Service.  Over the last decade, this agency has become emblematic of a failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility -- a philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own rules and police themselves.

As we've noted before, we know Obama was lying because his lips were moving.  No such philosophy exists, and certainly not in the real world of oil exploration.  Indeed, many of the players in the industry are better, more responsible actors than the regulators and "scientists" who staff the agencies supposed to police the rapacious thugs.  The government players respond to perverse incentives, and those produce monstrous results.

From a WSJ piece today:

BP PLC and other big oil companies based their plans for responding to a big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on U.S. government projections that gave very low odds of oil hitting shore, even in the case of a spill much larger than the current one.

The government models, which oil companies are required to use but have not been updated since 2004, assumed that most of the oil would rapidly evaporate or get broken up by waves or weather. In the weeks since the Deepwater Horizon caught fire and sank, real life has proven these models, prepared by the Interior Department's Mineral Management Service, wrong.

MMS said in early 2000, in a notice to lessees, that it planned to require oil companies operating in deep-water to use new oil-spill predictions specifically designed for deep water.

That regulation never came into effect. Oil companies today still base their contingency plans on the government's models, designed only for surface spills.

Exxon Chief Executive Rex Tillerson pointed out that much of the company's response plan "is prescribed by regulation, including the models that are used to project different scenarios for oil spills."

In other words, not only is the oil industry VERY regulated, but (like most heavily regulated fields) it is fighting an over-burden of useless...or even disasterous...red-tape imposed by its regulators.  Oil drilling interests had to have a plan.  But that plan had to be based on what the regulators told them to base it on, which was a known pile of manure (scientifically).

Concurrently, the Federal government was MANDATED to have a tested, tried, and viable plan IN PLACE for dealing with a spill...FROM WHATEVER SOURCE.  It seems no great leap of conjecture to conclude that one branch of bureaucratic mush was relying on another Federal branch of bureaucratic mush in formulating the plan the LAW required of them.

As noted here before, this is precisely what one expects to see from BIG GOVERNMENT.  Far from protecting the environment...or its borders...or its law-abiding citizens...it puts them at greater risk, partly though the delusion that regulation is working.

CRASH: We Can Fix Illiteracy; You Can't Fix Stupid

The amazingly long...and growing...list of major Obami who have roundly criticized the new Arizona law, but never read it, shows a distinct Obami trait; voluntary stupidity.

In this, they amply represent the Collective.  It has to volunteer to be stupid...or delusional.  Reality cannot be dealt with, so it must be denied.

BURN: Linda Greenhouse Is A DOPE...!!! UPDATED!!!

"Breathing While Undocumented" is Linda Greenhouse's considered, thoughtful bag of BS about the new Arizona law.  She isn't always stupid, so what did it for her this time?

UPDATE: Too Good to Check   [Mark Krikorian]

Let's consider this 'graph...

What would Arizona’s revered libertarian icon, Barry Goldwater, say about a law that requires the police to demand proof of legal residency from any person with whom they have made “any lawful contact” and about whom they have “reasonable suspicion” that “the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States?” Wasn’t the system of internal passports one of the most distasteful features of life in the Soviet Union and apartheid-era South Africa?

But, Linda...why be THAT selective in your effort to smear?  You left out Nazi Germany.  But, more telling, you left out Mexico, which has immigration laws WAY more draconian than ANYTHING in Arizona.  You also left out MOST EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, including those in modern, socialist Europe.

I’m not going back to Arizona as long as it remains a police state, which is what the appalling anti-immigrant bill that Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law last week has turned it into.

Of course, Arizona is far less a police state than is Washington, DC...or New York..., but how do we get to this law being an "appalling anti-immigrant bill"?  The bill has absolutely no impact on legal immigrants, or on documented temporary workers.

So, Linda, we're left with the conviction that your problem isn't really documenting the legal status of aliens (since virtually all nations do that), but that somebody in the United States is doing something effective to cut back on illegal immigration.