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: There's No Fool Like An Old Fool

Unless the fool in question is a delusional, egomanical, self-aggrandizing old fool like Jemma Caarta OR his enablers in the MSM.

In one of the MOST amazing developments in an amazing political season, Jimmy Carter's latest stab at rehabilitation is certainly up there in terms of chutzpa, if nothing else.

Asked by NBC's Brian Williams to explain the photo of Carter with the other living Presidents, this is how the weird back-patting developed:

BRIAN WILLIAMS: The last photo of you with your-- fellow former presidents, you were well off to the side on the right. And I thought to myself, well, there's-- there's a possible metaphor. What is it-- about you, you think, the way you've-- decided to conduct your life and post-presidency? Do you feel listened to? Do you feel-- that you receive your due? Or do you feel, in fact, apart from the crowd?

MR. CARTER: "I feel that my role as a former president is probably superior to that of other presidents. Primarily because of the activism and the -- and the injection of working at the Carter Center and in international affairs, and to some degree, domestic affairs, on energy conservation, on -- on environment, and things of that kind. We're right in the midst of the -- of the constant daily debate. And -- and -- and the Carter Center has decided, under my leadership, to fill vacuums in the world. When -- when the United States won't deal with troubled areas, we go there and we meet with leaders who can bring an end to a conflict, or an end to a human rights abuse, and so forth. So I -- I feel that have an advantage over many other former presidents in being involved in daily affairs that have shaped the policies of our nation and the world."  [My emphasis]

When I think of Carter and his international "work", I think of his flabbergasting support for dictators and election abuse, for his incomprehensible anti-semitism and friendliness with terrorists, and for his FAILURES to support human rights fighters and unflagging acceptance of human rights abuse.

Carter CHOSE to lay a wreath on the grave of Yassir Arafat, warmly embracing the Hamas leadership on the same trip.

There is simply no tie to reality in Carter's "CarterCare" claim made on seeBS.  It is simply bizarre.

"The fact is that we would have had comprehensive health care now had it not been for Ted Kennedy's deliberately blocking the legislation that I proposed." 

"It was his fault. Ted Kennedy killed the bill."

All this truly begs credulity!  It rivals Barack Hussain Obama's Recovery Summer as a living, breathing dirty joke.

BURN: We'll "Own" The World...EXCELLENT

We have to fight, but there is no reason we can't do it with humor.  This is excellent. 



Pass this around!!!

CRASH: Napolitano's Minions DECIDE Not To Bother With Phones

Nappy Jan's people DECIDED NOT TO PICK UP THE PHONE, calling New York area air carriers regarding Faisal Shahzad, WHO SUCCESSFULLY planted a bomb in Times Square...that SUCCESSFULLY initiated.

Just exactly WHY...???  According to the story, the FBI asked the TSA not to call the airlines...except for a few domestic lines.

I've read that the Feds wanted Shahzad on the plane, perhaps hoping he would contact others in a network once he thought he was in a secure place...maybe even other passengers on the same flight. 


Still, it sounds like a cluster-fark of the first water.  There is no way the FBI will confirm the notion they asked TSA not to call.  The TSA has made such calls in the past.
 

BURN: Incompetent HLS Chief Terms Lethal Bomb "Amateurish"

Amateurish Grossly incompetent Nappy Jan Napolitano called the latest terrorism attempt to hit Times Square "amateurish".  People who know what they're talking about said the bomb was lethal. When will people call for her ouster? 

"This wasn't make-believe. This wasn't a false alarm. This was the real deal — to hurt people," said Fire Commissioner Sal Cassano, adding that the force of a bomb could have taken down the front of a building. 

But, meanwhile...

Janet Napolitano, the US Secretary of Homeland Security, said today that the unexploded car bomb found in Times Square in New York late yesterday appeared to be an "amateurish" terrorism attempt.  (h/t MMalkin)

Nappy Jan also assured us this was a "one-off attempt" at terrorist destruction.  Like that's supposed to make us feel better.  The Fort Hood massacre was a "one-off attempt", too.  Those seem to be getting kind of common, like the Christmas attempt to "amateurishly" blow the wing off a jet liner over a major American city.

But good ol' "The System Worked" Napolitano just isn't really concerned.  She has TEA Party blue-hairs in her sights.  Oh, and states to put in their place.  And our southern border to keep more secure than ever...

The police and firemen in NYC have real guts.  Alert street vendors did a brave and good thing.  But the fact is, when that bomb was detected, it had already initiated.  Everybody near it should be dead or terribly injured.  The system didn't work...again.