Since I'm flying tomorrow (leaving O'Hare, of all places), I've been anxious, terrified, nervous, panicked, relaxed and then manic about the new TSA security. My ride drops me off a little after 4.30, will I be able to catch my 7 PM flight back home?
Will I be selected to go radioactively au naturale? Or should I get groped until they feel resistance?
And for the love of all that is logical, why is this going on? Even Hillary Clinton, when asked whether she'd go through the pat down procedure, replied "Not if I could avoid it. No. I mean who would?"
Well, I spent most of the day reading and ended up on the TSA.gov site. There, I realized something that seemed really, really odd. They kept putting up all this information that was supposed to promote how effective they were but... it really showed the opposite.
I apologize for the image format, but I actually made this up to put on Reddit (which has hysterically named the TSA opposition subreddit "OperationGrabAss").
Anyway, in the era of impotent GOP budgetary maneuvers and concerns over the deficit, why not look at the TSA?
You'll notice that the TSA doesn't receive, relatively speaking, tons of money. However, it's money specifically designed to humiliate, harass and threaten private citizens (which has been extensively covered on this site). And, if we use their statistics, it's woefully ineffective. $1.8 million dollars a day to find some little pack of drugs or beer bra or other nonsense less than once a day? That's not productive.
And, considering that only 60% of people go through places where these screens are available, presumably people going through other airports smuggle these "concealed prohibited items" onboard without incident.
As I mentioned on Twitter earlier this week, I expect that we'll see quite a few stories this week.
Combine a tearful recollection of harassment or what could be considered a lewd assault (the patdown), the government (or its agency, the TSA), holiday travel (a cause of stress for everyone) and a scary graphic? This is going to be local news catnip.
Hopefully, we see a dialing back of the new procedures, especially when you consider that making the airports more intimidating and discouraging air travel leads to an increase in deaths due to increased travel by car and harms the economy.