Yo Bart Dude, go have your morning latte and chill yourself out. You're gonna blow a gasket.

Ok dokey, now let's take the time to go over a few points.

1) I am a half a retard, who didn't graduate high school, who drove a cab from 12 years and who has spent many a graveyard shift frying potatoes and flipping burgers. I know from low intellect-low paying jobs. Believe me, I KNOW.
Like said Judge Smails, "well the world needs ditchdiggers too"

2) You're right, the word "underbrained" does not officially exist in the English language, but I am starting a one man campaign to get in in there. People are starting to use the word all the time, in fact, a quick Google search indicates that there are currently 326 pages on the net that use the word. Make that 327, cause you yourself just used it. (see above) Hey, ya wanna join me in my campaign? BTW, what does haughty mean?

3) Don't take life so serious, we're all gonna die soon anyway. It's happens to the best of us all the time and there ain't nothing we can do about it.

4) If I was a TSA screener, I'd do the same thing. I'd make EVERYONE take off their shoes, I'd double and triple search every hot chick that came through, I'd especially bust the balls of old people, guys in expensive suits and quadrapalegic amputees in wheelchairs plus I'd generally treat everyone else like the pieces of crap that they are.
Why?
Because they are going on a vacation and I'm stuck here, wearing this stupid uniform with a one way job to nowhere that I hate and I just wanna feel important too. It's just human nature.

5) I define being a man by my penis. I have one, albeit a small one, but none the less it's a penis and it makes me a man. Plus, I could beat you up in a fight and that makes me even more of a man too. Oh and I have a pickup truck too. More of a man.

6) You wrote: "It appears that your attitude towards people in the service industry is one of regarding them as beneath you or not worthy of your respect. It certainly reflects a contempt and a predisposition you have to abuse people in these jobs."

Are you angry with me? Please don't be. I'm really a nice guy.
Let's just all be friends.


7) I gotta go now, my computer time here at the institute is up and another patient needs to get online.

Peace and love.

ENM


Moderator, someone needs to straighten this thread out. It's getting seriously off topic and out of hand.

See this is where your problem is flawed. I agree that some TSA employees don't always think before they do but a lot have common sense but can't use it because the whole system goes against it, I know I worked for the TSA for nearly 2 years

I didn't make it a point to harass anyone but the fact is the TSA SOP go bad in years that old people were nearly a strip search towards the end of my time working there. It was embrassing but I couldn't change it.

TSA screeners only power is the power to chose people to harass if they are like that. And that kind of person works there, they need to be fired. The process should chose who to be screened and who not. The all shoes off policy isn't always a screener thing. Example from me:

We had a poster come out the last month and half at my airport and it showed a lot of shoes to come off. Instead of challanging it one of my two supervisors said all shoes off because thats what the poster shows, the other said to use some common sense. And to help out that Supervisor came up front with the entry person and pointed out the shoes he thinks need to come off which weren't a lot.

Did a screener have a choice in the matter? Nope they only did what they were told. Common sense can't be used at that point, because the real decision was made by a supervisor, one good and one bad.

To try to get back to the point of this thread, I think there are several purposes of "airline security":

1) Washington, D.C. wants to look like it is doing something, so voila, TSA, a government agency to address the problem.

2) Democrats saw a job creation program with the desirable side effect of generating new Democrat-voting government employees.

3) Bureaucrats saw a chance to spend taxpayer money, expand their turf, and create job prospects for themselves, per this article in today's Washington Post: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7566353/
Highlights in this article include spending $500,000 on artwork and silk plants for a new operations center and an unidentified manager at the center who steered much of the contract work at the new operations center to an unnamed tool company which hired the manager in October 2003 (shades of Boeing and Darleen Druyun).

Actual passenger security is way down on the totem pole. If it were higher, cargo on airliners would be screened with a fraction of the attention paid to American passengers.

Are you referring to PSA # 1771? I just want to clear up a few things.

1771 crashed in the hills between Paso Robles and the coast, over 100 miles from Fresno.

The person who caused the crash was a PSA employee who had been trying to keep his job after being accused of taking some missing money. He had a meeting with his supervisor the day before the crash.

The motive was probably not depression but more likely anger over losing his job and taking revenge on both the company and his supervisor who was on board the flight.

The next day he was still in possession of his company ID badge and used it to bypass security at LAX to board 1771 with the gun. My recollection is that from the cockpit and tower tapes the investigators believe he shot his supervisor, then the pilots, then himself.

Your memory was a lot less fuzzy than mine. I did remember, however, that it was an "inside job" as you're described.

Well......you said it.

Back to the topic - Two towers are missing from the NYC skyline and the U.S. Military was attacked on 9/11, courtesy of Islamic jihadists, which created a need for extra airport security no matter how feeble an attempt it is. Even if the airport security is only for "peace of mind" it keeps passengers on the planes and the economy moving.

Given our short-term collective memory, the public would have returned to flying TSA or no TSA.

The demonstrations of security are just that:

a) to make the insecure feel secure
b) to create an image of "we are under attack and on the attack, big and small, and we are doing much to win a 'war' "
c) to catch a lone-wolf idiot with ill intent and absent-minded fools
d) to deter and punish those listed in Item C
e) to push larger-scale terrorist plots away from inflight scenarios

It appears to me, that the emphasis is approximately as follows:

50% a; 20% b; 15% c; 10% d (especially for unpopular ethnic or religious minorities); 5% e.

Yes, but there would have had to been demonstrations of some change (regardless of the efficacy). Remember we are talking about politicians and bureaucrats here and a mass market (of largely passive news recipients).