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Monday, November 15, 2010

Just say NO to the TSA!

New Transportation Safety Agency rules require all passengers to be scanned with the full body scanner (known by the operators as the “dick-measuring device”) prior to boarding a commercial airplane.  The alternative to doing so is an intrusive manual pat-down which will not exempt your private parts. 

This violation of your personal privacy is a direct assault on the Fourth Amendment, which states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Let’s review that. . . “The right of the people to be secure in their persons. . .  against unreasonable searches. . .  shall not be violated.

This is an unreasonable search.  This intrusion of privacy would result in criminal charges if any citizen engaged in such behavior.  The government has no special exemption with regards to civil or criminal behavior.  In performing this search, the government does not have probable cause – boarding a commercial aircraft does not constitute probable cause.  TSA does not have a blanket search warrant to engage in such searches – such a warrant would be unconstitutional because of a lack of specificity.

The only reason the TSA gets away with this is because people let them.  The next time you book a flight, tell your boss that you may not make the flight if TSA interferes.  Stand up for your rights, and deny the TSA their unconstitutional search.  Demand that the airline reimburse you if you miss your flight.  Do your best to cost the airline as much money as possible over this.  Tell your friends to do the same.  Go through your TEA party connections if you have them and tell all freedom loving Americans that we’ve had enough!  I would feel much safer on an airplane if they issued every able-bodied male a snub nose .38 with a load of rubber bullets and dispensed with all this useless hand-waving over screening passengers. 

If even 50% of people flatly refused to submit to such a search and stood their ground against government bullies, this nonsense would stop in a New York Minute.

I will be traveling on business in late January.  Are there any lawyers that want to represent me when I collide with the TSA, assuming they’re still pulling this BS?

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Response from the TEA Party - We've Been Angry for Awhile.

There's a piece of liberal dreck making the rounds in the leftist blogs called Message to the TEA Party, what took you so long to get Mad? Maybe it's my penchant for tilting at windmills, but I can't let this pass silently.  Below, I respond point by point to this nonsense.

You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.  
No, I didn't, because I recognized that we couldn't keep counting votes for four years or until the Democrat won.  The fact is that NO recount ever showed a win for Gore.  The Supreme Court merely stepped in and acted a s a responsible adult.  The outcome wouldn't have changed, so what's your point?  I did get mad when Military absentee ballots weren't counted and polling places were closed early in the Republican panhandle area. 

You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate Energy policy and push us to invade Iraq .
As I recall, the resolution to invade Iraq was a Bipartisan vote.  Even John Kerry voted for it.  Go figure.  I wasn't sure that it was a great idea at the time.

You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.
Valerie Plame was not an active operative, and "outing" her had a net result of zero.  This whole thing was much ado about nothing - this coming from a group of people who see nothing wrong with the actions of Daniel Ellsberg, which amounted to high treason, giving aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war.  People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.
No, I got disgusted.  Still am.

You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.   You didn't get mad when we spent over 800 billion (and counting) on said illegal war. 
There was nothing illegal about it, it was authorized by the United States congress in a bipartisan vote.  The Saddam Hussein regime was a well known supporter of international terrorism, and posed a clear and present danger to the international community in general, and to his on citizens in particular.  Those are the facts, and all the revisionist history you heap on it doesn't change a thing.

You didn't get mad when Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined.
Yes, I did, and I got furious when Barack Obama borrowed more money than the previous 43 presidents combined!

You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars in cash just disappeared in Iraq.  
Yes, I did, and I got furious when 750 billion dollars just disappeared in the good old US of A in the name of hope and change.

You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.   
No, I didn't, not in the least, because I don't equate pranks that amount to a college hazing and making some barbarian think he might drown as equal to maiming people, pulling out teeth and fingernails, amputation of digits, and beheading - all of which are practiced by our enemy.  Aggressive interrogation does not equal torture, you idiot.

You didn't get mad when Bush embraced trade and outsourcing policies that shipped 6 million American jobs out of the country.
That's a pretty general statement.  Which policies, specifically?  Would that be the policies that support the labor unions which ensure that the American worker cannot compete on the basis of cost?  The punitive corporate tax laws that make the USA one of the most expensive countries in the world to manufacture in? Or the protectionist policies that ultimately limit our ability to export?  Get real, companies are going to go where it's economical to manufacture.  Soon enough investment will raise the standard of living in these other countries, and the jobs will return here, because it will make no sense to build there.  In the meantime, we're building a bigger customer base.

You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.   
I wasn't wiretapped.  Were you?  Wiretaps were placed on calls which were going outside the country - generally to locations know to be rife with our enemies.  This is called gathering intelligence.  The average American was not being tapped on calls that originated and terminated in the US.  Get over it, whiner.

You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.
Yes, I did and I still am.  Didn't your messiah promise to make this a priority?

You didn't get mad when Bush rang up 10 trillion dollars in combined budget and current account deficits.  
That's a made up number and we both know it.  Obama makes Bush look like a model of fiscal responsibility.

You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed. 
Yeah, I did.  Has Obama fixed that?  I hadn't noticed.

You didn't get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans drown. 
The president could do nothing until the Democratic governor of Louisiana asked for federal Assistance - which he did not do until way too late.  Like you could have stopped Katrina and prevented the flooding anyway. 

You didn't get mad when we gave people who had more money than they could spend, the filthy rich, over a trillion dollars in taxbreaks. You didn't get mad with the worst 8 years of job creations in several decades. 
As I recall, everyone got a tax break.  What is to you if a rich person gets a break?  It's not your money, and you don't have to make up the deficit.  You don't get poorer because that person is rich.  And you don't employ anyone.  The rich person does.  A "rich" person probably employs you.  And the rich bear the brunt of the tax burden in this country anyway.  So, no, I didn't get mad.

You didn't get mad when over 200,000 US Citizens lost their lives because they had no health insurance. 
No, they lost their lives because they were sick. Our hospitals are clogged with illegal aliens receiving health care and not paying for it.  As long as illegals can get health care for free, your boo-hooing about people lacking health insurance doesn't impress me.

You didn't get mad when lack of oversight and regulations from the Bush Administration caused US Citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments, retirement, and home values.   
The Bush administration and Senator John McCain both warned of the dangers of the housing bubble and runaway credit extensions that were unsupported by any real wealth, and they were shouted down in the democrat controlled congress.  The banking fiasco originated in a Democrat community reinvestment act, and was overseen by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.  Top campaign contributions from Fanny Mae went to Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Barack Obama. See my earlier discussion of this mess.

No.....You finally got mad

When a black man was elected President and decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.
No, I got mad when a bearded, self-professed socialist who flatly stated that he wants to take my wealth and "spread it around" was elected to the highest seat in the nation.  I got mad that when this man was asked to present his bonafides for eligibility, he not only refused to do so, but spent millions of dollars to block any attempt to independently verify same.  I got mad when the uneducated plebes of this nation discovered that they could vote themselves health care from the public treasury, and did so without regard to the sustainability or wisdom of doing so, in spite of more than two centuries of evidence that the government is incapable of doing anything within budget.

Anonymous author, the TEA Party members have been angry for awhile - we've watched ove rthe last eighty years as the constitution was relegated to irrelevancy bit by bit.  But unlike your lefty colleagues, the TEA party is mostly working class stiffs who don't have the luxury of ditching class to demonstrate against a perceived injustice.  We're the folks who make America work, who are usually too tired at the end of the day to even turn on the TV.  We don't do telethons, we just give quietly at church every Sunday.  We're typically not loudmouths or rabble-rousers, and don't subscribe to whatever "cause" is chic at the moment.  We've been uneasy for years over what you have been doing to the foundation of this country, but we've had faith that the country could take it, as long as you at least paid lip service to the constitution.  But this latest power grab over a huge part of the US economy, potentially interfering with one of the best medical industries in the world, with congress "deeming" that a bill has passed without even bringing it to a floor vote, is not the sort of thing we're ready to sit still for.  The government is out of control, printing and spending money that it doesn't have, indebting our grandchildren with a ruinous debt, and devaluing the dollar to the point that even the Chinese are thinking twice about buying more of our debt.  This is more a democrat problem than a republican one, but both parties are complicit, and it's time for the government to recognize that THE GOVERNMENT WORKS FOR THE PEOPLE.


We'll do it at the ballot box, hopefully.  If that doesn't work, keep making us mad, we'll do it with guns eventually.