TSA's Double Standards

This past week I flew out of Memphis International Airport and had to strip down to my pants and shirt for the full body x-ray scan, and then a groping because my right ankle has pins in it that go back to an athletic injury when I was 17 years old.  I've never been happy with this, but grudgingly have come to live with it, as a frequent traveler.  I'm not sure it has stopped or ever will stop a terrorist attack on an airplane, as I've always been a fan of the Israeli model of (the horrors) profiling of potential terrorists.  But in our current politically correct environment, it is not going to happen until there is a nuclear or chemical attack on the US.

But I digress......

Today I was also going through TSA screening at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport (AVP), whose name is bigger than the airport.  TSA at AVP lost their full body scanner to a larger airport that needed it, supposedly because of sequester, and I was "forced" to walk through just a plain old metal detector that I've been dealing with all my flying life.  My checked bag was searched by hand and the poor bastard got to see my dirty undies.  I did not get patted down, and it seemed like the good old days before some TSA person got his/her jollies comparing penis and breast sizes from the x-ray photos.

Ok, I'm making fun of those hard working unionized government "workers" who spent hours standing around waiting for a flight to depart or arrive, but there is a bigger issue here.

If these full body scanners are supposed to be the end all, be all of airport security, why has a small town airport like AVP lost theirs.  All terrorists need to know if they have something that can get through the metal detector in podunk USA, they can board a major airline flight and reek havoc at their next stop.

The real problem is that the full body scanners have not done a damn thing to make our country more secure, and just hassles legitimate travelers.  So business travelers, if you want to avoid long lines in the northeast airports with the intrusive searches, try some places that don't have them anymore like Scranton, Binghamton, and Ithaca.

And don't worry about ethnic profiling in those places, the Dagos, Micks, and Pollacks ain't gonna put up with a raghead showing up in their airport without a cavity search.  No scanner needed.

Being a conservative in the twitter world

Most people who know me, understand that I'm a Christian conservative.  I don't tend to bad mouth people or bring up their family heritage when we have disagreements.  Apparently a twitter link set off a some trip cord that just brought all the leftist west coast "friends" out to have their say.

Bryan Y ‏@technor 6h

@Keith_Martin2 You're an idiot. The sequestration happened because of GOP obstructionism in congress. It was a self-inflicted wound.

Was kind enough to reinforce what I know.  Yes I'm an idiot.  I'm an aerospace engineer who has worked in the flight simulation industry for over 3o years.  But yes, Obama's original proposal for sequestation got acted on by the Republicans, passed the Democrat controlled Senate and Signed by Obama is a GP problem.  Thanks foe helping with that.

Some Guy Named Phil ‏@philtheswo 13h

@Keith_Martin2 You are a terrible person.

Yes, I am a terrible person.  Thanks for point that out.  How many old ladies did you push in front of a car today?  I never had an interaction with Phil before, but he seems to be a good judge of character.  Phil, have you ever worked in the public sector or been in the military, or just because you are a union thug, you can judge people?

I could go on with this.  but it is pointless.  The ever so tolerant left is nothing more than 2013 brown shirts who just want to shut down anyone who disagrees with them.  

Marx, Lenin and Mao are not dead, they just hide in our political system as people who want to purseu their agenda, "For the Children (tm)".

 Bring it on twitter fans, I'm happy to hear from all of you.

Who is Edward Snowden?

Who is Edward Snowden?  I have no idea, and the media and bloggers don't seem all that interested.  All I know is he was a data analyst contracting at the NSA.  He was only in his current job for 3 months, and dumped the data he had access to and promptly fled to Hong Kong.  Hong Kong is  "Special Administrative Region" of China, meaning a place where Beijing pulls all the puppet strings.  He has since disappeared, not likely without the secret police knowing his whereabouts.  So where is he, and who has him now?  I have no idea, and neither do you, and nobody seems to care too much.

Today I'm seeing people calling Snowden a hero or a traitor, but they are missing the bigger question.  Who the hell is this guy?  How did he get a crypto clearance as a contractor, and where did he get this clearance before working at his last job at the NSA?  This sort of clearance takes upwards of a year to receive, if you get one at all from the DoD.  They don't just hand these out.  I have a clearance that is somewhat lower than the one to deal with NSA data and it took 9 months, so he must have been employed by the DoD or CIA in some way prior to his last assignment.  Why are no journalists looking in to this guys background?   This is a big deal, and nobody seems to care.

Next question, is why did Snowden chose Hong Kong for refuge?  This is not exactly the bastion of free speech and democracy.   I don't know and apparently the media doesn't seem to care enough to pursue that question too much.  There are many other countries closer to home that do not have extradition treaties with the United Stated and are far less hostile to us where he could have taken flight.  Is he a Chinese agent?  Is he hoping to get the big bucks for turning over information to the Chinese?  Still nobody knows.

So now Snowden has turned up missing in Hong Kong.  A high level visitor, and he could not make a move there without the secret police knowing his whereabouts.  So, where is he and who has him?  These are things the media ought to be pursuing rather than trying to pass judgement on the guy before all the facts are known.

This is indeed a strange story, but the real questions are not being asked.

Update: After reading his interview at the South China Daily Post I'm thinking that Snowden is a bullshitter.  He wasn't at the NSA to get the data he claims he has, unless he is a hacking genius, and he is talking too much to the press without revealing anything.   Ok he is in hiding supposedly.  Are the ChiComs protecting him or laughing at him?  A contractor just does not get access to data that Snowden claims he has after just 3 months, or at least is did not used to be that way.

It will be interesting to see when the US sues in Hong Kong for his extradition, and the Chinese response.

If he ends up in China he will be a useful idiot for awhile and then sent to the rice fields of Harbin province to feed the rural peasants or more likely managing an Apple manufacturing facility.

The Castle

I was doing a bit of late night trolling for a good movie to watch on Netflix last night, and came upon a movie I remember seeing years ago, but has long dropped off the DVD sales or rentals.  "The Castle" is a funny and clever independent Australian film from 1997 with a cast of people most of us never heard of yet all turn in good performances.

It's the story of a family who lives in a small subdivision "conveniently" located at the end of a runway at Melbourne International Airport.  The land is not worth much, and the houses are.....well lets just say not castles.  The local council has decided to declare eminent domain and pay off the owners what it considers reasonable property value and sell off the land to a developer who wants to put up a commercial business that would be tied to the airport.

Most normal people would have quietly taken the offer and accepted the offer.  But the politicians, and the corporation that wanted the land never met Darryl Kerrigan.  What followed was a man who fought all the legal battles, often with poor legal consul against both the government and a thuggish company. 

Darryl and his family are not the brightest people in the world, but are decent people who just want to stay put, and they are also a good loving family who care about each other, even the son who is in prison for doing something stupid, and didn't have good legal consul. 

On the Ed Morrissey scale, I'd give this a solid 4.  Rent it or watch it on Netflix streaming video.  There is currently no DVD available.

On a slightly more serious note.  Back in the mid 1980's I purchased a small condominium in the far northern city of Queensland city of Cairns.  It is the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, and a nice city.  At the time there was an ordinance against high rise buildings, a wise thing.  There really is not a good beach there, and you have to drive an hour north to Port Douglas to get to a really nice beach.

A thousand miles south of Cairns is an area south of Brisbane called Surfer's Paradise that was ruined, in my opinion by high rise hotels and condos that totally blocked out the sun on a very nice beach in the afternoon, and Cairns wanted nothing of that....for a while.

Well, as usual, money talks.  The Nikko Hotel chain of Japan wanted the piece of land where my very nice condo complex in Cairns was located, and paid off enough of the people on the local council to get the property condemned.  Most owners were people from out of state and had their condos either as vacation properties or mike me used it for investment properties.  We were offered pennies against the dollar for the value of the property, and told that is what the condos were worth.  This was not an old run down property and was only 10 years old at then time and well maintained.  The condo association tried to fight it in court, after trying to get our properties reassessed, but Nikko had better lawyers and politicians in their pockets.  Of course few of us were permanent residents of Queensland, let alone Cairns, so the local politicians didn't give a damn about us.

We eventually settled for substantially more money after a protracted legal battle, but still we all lost money.

Two years later I got a letter from my former next door neighbor who's home is in suburban Melbourne, not at the end of a runway at Tullamarine Airport though, and said what was left of the condo complex was a big pit with concrete and rebar in it and that the hotel developers went bankrupt.   Also 2 of the councilmen got indicted for taking bribes and had trials coming up, on something unrelated to this development.

I'm not a vindictive person, but that certainly brought a smile to my face.

Growing old and dealing with aging parents

My 56th birthday is next week and good friends are taking me out to see the Triple A Redbirds play at AutoZone Park, arguably the best baseball stadium in the minor leagues.  I know it will be a good time.  But growing older has me thinking more and more about my mortality.

My 83 year old dad does a "Meals On Wheels' run every Thursday in a town near him home in suburban Scranton.  Many of these people really need this service, but a few of his "Customers" are just lazy welfare people supposedly recovering from some sort of addiction, or a bad marriage, or has a herd of kids.  Still most appreciate dad and let me know it when I helped him with his route this past week.

I know, I know, you want me to get to my point.  Patience grasshopper.  There is more.

My youngest nephew, Ben, graduated from Shippensberg University with a perfect 4.0 GPA over 4 years and was top of his class.  I'm so proud of him.

That is not necessarily off topic, but let me continue.  The day before we had drive from my parents home in a Scranton suburb (which is much nicer than Scranton), there was a huge wreck on I-81 at a major interchange in Harrisburg and all traffic got diverted to another route.  Driving through there was awful.  It only took a little under 2 hours to get to Harrisburg, but took almost almost 4 hours to get around the mess.  Dad insisted on driving, although I implored him to let me drive.  Neither of us see well.  I'm blind in one eye, from an old accident and dad just has old age issues with vision. Well we survived the mess.  Got to out motel in Carlisle, met one of my nephews and brother for dinner at my parents favorite crappy chain restaurant Cracker Barrel.  I personally hate these places and think they have lousy food and service, but mom and dad like it.

It poured all night, and my brother called me up early Saturday morning to tell me that the graduation was moved indoors to the field house and the M-Z's were going to be at 3PM.  Dad's idea of driving home on Saturday were shattered.

We all had a nice time, Ben got his degree and his honors, and we all had a nice dinner in a very good restaurant.

Here's where it gets serious.  From what I observed, Dad has early Alzheimers onset.  When not engaging with people, he hums, and hums loudly.  He hummed at the graduation, hums at church in the middle of prayers and the sermon.  Mom is no help.  She just shrugs it off, but every person from my grandmother's side of the family who lived into their 80's had dementia.  I may very well fall in that category someday.  Dad certainly is in early stages, though very aware of everything once you speak to him.

My problem here is how do I get my mom to understand or at least acknowledge that there is a problem?  And he really should not be driving anymore.

I know that the day is coming and soon I'm afraid where I'm going to have to put my parents in assisted living, and they will hate me for it.  Being the good son sometimes means doing things that may get you cut out of the will.

Why does everyone hate America, and why should I care?

My friend Ron, who is a Filipino, has been working in Singapore for the last few years and likes his job.  He has to endure this lunchtime "conversation" with his colleagues every Wednesday though, and is requires to participate.  Usually he endures through the ordeal where the boss starts conversations very Piers Morgan style, about what is wrong with the West.  Last week it changed a bit, the topic was, "Why does the world hate the United States of America".

Ron is not only pro-American but had the guts to tell this group who were overly in the "America is the cause of all the ills in the world" opinion.  He cited how the US never colonized a country for gain, although they were in the Philippines for 50 years.  President McKinley did not want to have foreign colonies, like Spain maintained, but perhaps knew if we just let the go they would be swallowed up by the Dutch or the Chinese.  And we fought a short war against their nationalists, and more so Islamists,  General Pershing knew how deal with Islamists in a way we can not do these days.  I personally don't give a damn if they love us or hate us.  We are not a superpower because everyone loves us.

Getting back to the topic, he cited how the US took basically a slave culture under the Spanish, who kept them impoverished and uneducated and introduced public education, English as a second language and brought tons of industry to the Philippines.  We also introduced democratic institutions there and established self rule on all but foreign affairs.  This is now what imperialists do.  Total independence was scheduled for 1946.  WWII got in the way and the Japanese had different ideas.  We Americans sacrificed many lives liberating the Philippines, and much of the pacific islands, and do not have an empire to show for it.  We do however have the largest overseas cemetery and it is in Manila.  In 1946 they became an independent republic. They haven’t done all that well since independence and the Marcos regime chased a lot of business out of that country.

Well after Marcos was overthrown the incoming governments courted foreign investment and a commercial trade zone at Subic Bay was established, and FedEx went in there in a big way.  Well, they had elections, like all democratic republics, and the people elected what is best described as the Bruce Willis of the Philippines.  Joseph Estrada is an uneducated actor but was able to buy an election based on his popularity.  First thing he did was fire the administrator of the Clark and Subic Bay free trade zones and replace them with cronies, and their job was to shake down foreigners.  Bad decision, Erap.  Don’t fuck with Fred Smith.  FedEx called his bluff, built a new Asian hub in Guangzhou China and left the Philippines.

This gets me back to the original topic. “Why does the world hate America?”
Ron talked about the American history in the Philippines and basically told his colleagues that the US is not the problem, and it is mostly envy.

He did not get a warm reception on his comments, and got called into his bosses office and was told to write a letter of apology for offending his colleagues. 

Singapore is not the USA, and thank god we are not them yet.  But with political correctness run amok we may not be too far from that.

The Stupidity of Earth Hour

I was talking to my good friend Ron this evening, who has been visiting his hometown in northern Mindanao, Philippines.  Iligan is a small city, not a rich place by any means, but has a good university.  Ron lives and works now in Singapore, not too far by air, but a million miles away in many ways. 

He mentioned how the city had daily black outs of electricity because of decaying infrastructure and an increasing demand on electrical power.  Since Earth Hour is upon us, it really seemed ironic.  Here we are in a country that still has abundant energy resources, that the green weenies and the current Obama regime want to suppress, the Philippines is a poor 3rd world country that would love not to have imposed blackouts because they have no infrastructure that they can maintain.

Ron is now back in Singapore, a place that was a 3rd world backwater as recently as the late 1960's that got kicked out of the Federation of Malaysia, because it was a drain on their economy and is an economic powerhouse now, outshining all its neighbors.  I doubt the people there, especially from the generation of Lee Kwan Yoo's generation want to celebrate Earth Hour.

It's easy for liberals and green weenie activists who have never lived in a 3rd world country to celebrate Earth Hour.  Most have never had to endure in a country with no electricity, heat, air conditioning or food.  Earth Hour is a daily celebration is North Korea, Laos, Burma, and most of Africa.

Go there and ask them how they like Earth Hour