AIRPORT MAYHEM

Bureaucratic nonsense at airports: "I recently flew back to the United States, my birthplace and home for most of my life. I didn't like it. It was wonderful seeing good friends, some of whom I hadn't seen for almost 20 years. But travelling in the US is now so unpleasant that I prefer to give the US a miss. There are too many places in the world I haven't seen to worry about being hassled by little people with big authority who now dominate American airports. ... The first inkling of what a hassle it would was the announcement on the air plane regarding what forms one had to fill out just to get bureaucratic permission to leave the airport. Previously announcements regarding this took a few seconds. This time it dragged out."

Transportation shakeup urgently needed: "One of the highest priorities for whoever succeeds Tom Ridge at Homeland Security should be to take political correctness and a fear of litigation out of national security decisions. From immigration enforcement to intelligence gathering, government officials continue to compromise safety in order to avoid accusations of "racial profiling" -- and in order to avoid publicly acknowledging what the 9/11 Commission finally said: that the enemy is "Islamist terrorism." This blind antidiscrimination reflex is all the more worrying since radical Islam continues to seek adherents and plan attacks in the U.S. The government antidiscrimination hammer has hit the airline industry most severely. Department of Transportation lawyers have extracted millions in settlements from four major carriers for alleged discrimination after 9/11, and they have undermined one of the most crucial elements of air safety: a pilot's responsibility for his flight. Since the charges against the airlines were specious but successful, every pilot must worry that his good-faith effort to protect his passengers will trigger federal retaliation".

More TSA arrogance: "The Transportation Security Administration, that federal bureaucracy that keeps the peripatetic public safe from attack by fingernail file-flailing fanatics, threw itself a half-million dollar awards ceremony at the Grand Hyatt in DC. Expenses included $81,000 for plaques, $500 for cheese displays and $200,000 for travel and lodging. Senior executives awarded themselves bonuses averaging $16,000 apiece while one employee was presented a 'lifetime achievement award' (the TSA is two years old).

The roving hands of airport insecurity: "Under normal circumstances, if a strange man tried to stick his hands down my pants, one of us would end up lying on the ground bleeding. But we have entered into a world of the surreal -- a world where millions of otherwise intelligent Americans are willing to stand in line and wait their turn to be groped by a complete stranger. I'm not exactly sure how it happened. But, I certainly seem to have done something to get myself on the airlines 'bad boy' list. Every time I set foot in an airport these days, I get dragged off for one of their 'random' special searches -- three times in a row during a recent trip."

Breast exams at the airport "Beginning in mid-September, the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) put into place a policy that provides for the physical frisking of selected airline passengers prior to boarding. The purpose of the new policy is to detect nonmetallic explosives of the sort that apparently were used by two Chechen women in terrorist attacks that destroyed two planes and killed ninety airline passengers in Russia earlier this year. ... Women passengers have been especially unhappy about the new policy and have made numerous complaints. In addition, there is reason to believe that the numbers of complaints understate the true scope of the problem, because -- as with sexual assaults generally -- women's distress at being fondled by airline security personnel may be underreported."

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ELSEWHERE

A good comment from Wayne Lusvardi: "Here is a story which shows how off base the mainstream media is. It reports that homeless Iraq war vets are showing up in homeless shelters. Anyone who has dealt with the homeless is aware that many of them claim they are Viet Nam vets or vets of some war in order to get sympathy and benefits. The media doesn't even question this."

I have never so far put up a link on this blog to an audio file because text files tend to be much quicker to absorb but there is a time for everything (as Solomon said) so here is a link to an interview with Keith Windschuttle that I found very informative. I have known for over 40 years that the White Australia policy (designed to exclude Chinese immigrants) had its principal base of support in the Australian Left (Australian Labor Party) but it is only from this interview that I learned that the principal opposition to the introduction of the policy was the Free Trade party! Score one for conservatives and libertarians, I think. Belief in individual liberty has many ramifications. It was also the Democrats in the USA who were mainly responsible for Jim Crow laws of course.

Opinion Journal has an excellent takedown of Berkeley's wacky Professor George Lakoff.

Two Swedish economists recently published a study that asks how European countries would fare if suddenly admitted into the American union. The results? If the UK, France, or Italy became U.S. states, they would rank as the fifth poorest of the fifty, ahead only of Arkansas, Montana, West Virginia, and Mississippi. The richest EU country� Ireland� would be the 13th poorest. Sweden would be the 6th poorest. In fact, the study found that 40% of all Swedish households would classify as low-income in the U.S. [Leftist wriggle out of such facts by saying that money isn't everything and that is no doubt true but most people seem to want more money anyhow]

A good email from a reader: "My experience with people who apply the "liberal" label to themselves is that they are almost exclusively hyper-sensitive and intolerant. This morning a group of us was discussing the upcoming Christmas Party. One of the group then reminded everyone that a certain someone, who originates in Brooklyn, New York, takes great offense at the term "Christmas Party" and insists that it is a "Holiday Party." Being reminded of that, I intend to use the term "Christmas Party" as much as possible in her presence. The woman in question is hardly the only self-proclaimed "liberal", with whom I am acquainted, to behave in such an intolerant fashion. I wonder if these people realize that their intolerance belies the label they love so much".

Be thankful for this man: "This is the story of a military veteran whistleblower. He spoke out against someone he thought was dangerous for the nation, talked to local newspapers, and appeared on talk shows. In return, he was vilified by reporters, threatened by a political operative, fired by his company, and now he's broke.... Gardner explains he was sitting at home in Clover, S.C., when he first saw Kerry on television. It was before the primary races. For 35 years, Gardner says, he hadn't talked about his tour of duty in Vietnam. But when he saw Kerry talking about running, he says he got up, called the newspaper in town, called radio stations and "talked to anyone I could about why this man should never be president." .... And, even though Gardner is broke and jobless for speaking out, the husband and father of three says he'd do it all over again. He says it wasn't for politics. It was for America."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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