BY KAREN WEBB
If there were a guy in charge of the department that oversees the screening, George W. Bush would have given him a Medal of Freedom to show how much confidence he had in him or at the very least he would have given him an “attaboy.” Former envoy Paul Bremer and ex-CIA Director George Tenet both got Medals of Freedom for overseeing screw ups and Michael “Brownie” Brown got an “attaboy” for New Orleans. And former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had job security well past the time he should have been canned.
There is no one to give a medal to because South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint wants to make sure screeners can’t have a union to ask for safety regulations, better pay or benefits. DeMint gets to raise his own pay and increase his own benefits. In most cases DeMint isn’t required to face down, pat down or confront possible bombers. Why don’t they put all congressional pay raises to a vote of the people? As far as I am concerned airport security should be paid more than DeMint or maybe even the president.
That was a really good and forceful speech President Obama delivered and I wish I could give him an “attaboy.”
He is less interested in blaming someone or bringing the responsible person to account than he is in fixing the problem which is what he has said from the day he was sworn in. That is one of the most purely politically motivated statements I have ever heard and he uses it regardless of whether he is talking about starting wars, torturing people or leaving the masses without food and water in the aftermath of a hurricane.
What would I do if my chief of police said, “I am less interested in finding the person who set fire to your house or beat your neighbor to death than I am in making flameproof houses with burglar bars or putting more policemen on the street.”? I believe I would be calling for a recall vote.
All kinds of people are trying to make ME feel secure about relieving ME of more of MY rights to privacy. This morning on the Today Show they did this by having a guy, who is trying to sell scanners, show us his scanner. It should be noted that he was not the person who stepped in front of the scanner, but he did say it was no big deal.
They made a point of saying privacy isn’t that much of a concern, but they had to block out the guy’s genital area in order to show it on TV. This fellow had a pretty good body. Ann Curry didn’t step up there to show us what you see when a woman goes through. Maybe she was on the rag and didn’t want to show off her Maxi pad with wings. Could you get powder through a scanner if you are wearing a Maxi pad with wings or a Depends?
The guy says you can’t see anything below the skin, like breast implants, but what could you put in a tampon? If you go through and they see the string from your tampon will they think it is a fuse of some sort? If you are suicidal anyway why not do what drug mules do everyday and put it in a baggie and ram it up where the sun don’t shine? People are suggesting drug dogs, which is not a bad idea.
Call me silly, but I still think good intelligence is the way to go. The 23-year-old Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, should have been on a list and at some point you just have to refrain from saying, “don’t do this again” and fire someone. Someone misspelled the guy’s name at the State Department. I can understand that; my spell checker is still kicking out Barack Obama as a misspelled word.
Have we ever had a suicide bombing attack that involved a Cuban or Cuba? Exploding cigars don’t count, do they? When they did hijack planes it was to get a ride to Cuba, not to explode the plane or to crash it into a building. Cubans just never appeared to be that suicidal.
Oh, and as soon as you pass the scanner your image is deleted. Right, and if someone gets by with some sort of contraband, the security people who sold the scanner do not want proof that they did scan this person and you couldn’t see the contraband. Maybe they will delete it because proof the thing doesn’t catch everything will be bad for sales. The idea that they might destroy evidence of a possible crime or the proof they need to make sure they aren’t sued or prosecuted is absurd.
They are going to put the people who are looking at my body in a room far away from the action so I won’t hear them giggling or getting excited. If they get excited they have a worse problem. It doesn’t see breast implants, but if you wear a padded bra, stuff it with TP or wear falsies they will have to do a strip search to make sure you aren’t carrying powder. What about exploding nursing pads?
These days, someone will always find a way to hack into whatever electronic device you have. Look what happened when people took cell phone pictures and videos at Abu Ghraib. Someone who cares about rights will always mess you up. There will always be someone to tell you if Angelina Jolie has a ticket today and when she will show up. Someone will say, “Hey, guys, there is a real babe 20 people down the line.” There will be people who take cell phone pictures of the scanning unless you scan the scanners.
There will be cell phone videos of the guys laughing in the airport scanning booth. What a job for guys who like Playboy! Somehow the Christian right should be refusing to allow good Christian boys to do this job of looking at all these bodies. They might be tempted. They should be refusing to allow their women to go through these.
There is no such thing as perfect security. The president has a right to refuse to have his picture or his wife’s picture used to sell things or ideas, even if they agree with them and I should not have to show off my entire body to get on a plane. I should also not be put on a terrorist list for disagreeing with the government.
I live in the Oklahoma City area and I had a relative killed in the 1995 Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing, so when are they going to put blond, blue-eyed guys traveling from Arizona or Kansas on a no-fly list or scan them driving across the border?
– Karen Webb lives in Moore, OK and is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer
