Don’t Touch My Junk

Charles Krauthammer – Dont touch my junk

As usual, Mr. K zeros in on the point while cutting away all the nonsense that tries to hide it.

Good quote…

In “Up in the Air,” that ironic take on the cramped freneticism of airport life, George Clooney explains why he always follows Asians in the security line:

“They pack light, travel efficiently, and they got a thing for slip-on shoes, God love ’em.”

“That’s racist!”

“I’m like my mother. I stereotype. It’s faster.”

That riff is a crowd-pleaser because everyone knows that the entire apparatus of the security line is a national homage to political correctness. Nowhere do more people meekly acquiesce to more useless inconvenience and needless indignity for less purpose. Wizened seniors strain to untie their shoes; beltless salesmen struggle comically to hold up their pants; 3-year-olds scream while being searched insanely for explosives – when everyone, everyone, knows that none of these people is a threat to anyone.

And another…

We pretend that we go through this nonsense as a small price paid to ensure the safety of air travel. Rubbish. This has nothing to do with safety – 95 percent of these inspections, searches, shoe removals and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary. The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling – when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and universally known. So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches.

Gotta love the K man.

Profiling Whole Nations – Tunku Varadarajan

Profiling Whole Nations – Page 1 – The Daily Beast

The first half of this article plays some politics, but the second half has some smart solutions to the airline security issue – such as…

• Put real “you’ll be cuffed if you look at me cross-eyed” police on all flights.
• Review all visas from suspect countries and revoke those that don’t pass the smell test. Individuals get a review even if they’ve merely passed thru a suspect country.
• Utilize peer pressure to encourage separation of “good” travelers from the bad. The idea is that if enough legitimate Saudis have to put up with restrictive security measures then they’ll lean on their radical brethren to clean up their act.
• Change the crippling cultural viewpoint prevalent in both the US & UK that passing judgment (profiling) is worse than killing innocent people.