screwed the pooch

I still love that expression!

http://ancaptees.com/firethetsa.jpg

TSA is not about security, it’s a big business to get fat cats fatter, and a job creation program for otherwise unemployable larvae.

The biggest problem TSA has is finding a way of continuing to collect all the money they get without having to deal with you, the nuisance that keeps showing up at the gates…

FWIW: I was given clear and reasonable explanations while going through the full pat-down. Perhaps there is some new training?

one year on and nothing has changed…

Hard to know whether his were of this type or not.

Hard to know whether his were of this type or not.

just another example of why we don’t need the crap the TSA puts us through

I go through more background checks doing my job than any of those rent a cops and still have to let them touch my junk to get on a plane?? What BS.

Anybody that has worked in the Criminal Justice System will tell you that these BS TSA searches are a complete joke. I could bypass them about five ways without trying hard…And I still believe in the Constitution that requires a warrant or probable cause for a search.

Do not delude yourself into thinking you are any safer with TSA around. They are a joke and a bad one at that!

That said, knife material is largely over estimated. This is all, presumably, to prevent an airplane hijacking scenario. Knives are steel and ceramic because those materials are sharp and durable. What you want is something sharp and pointy. Durability isn’t really a factor here.
It’s not like you need your knife to work as good on your 100th hijacking as your 1st.

They make nylon knives that are sharp enough to do lethal damage but don’t keep the best edges.

http://www.worldknives.com/products/blackie-collins-buttonlock-all-nylon-knife-orange-blor-2611.html

I wouldn’t try and shave with one, but it’s plenty sharp and won’t set off anything.

“No, those tanks had Oxygen in them, not Nitrogen or regular air. Oh – and they were FULL – these tanks are EMPTY.”

I do NOT like to take regs on and off more than I need to. Call me over cautious, but the threads are the point most likely to fail and I’d rather mess with them as little as possible.

The problem is each airline has it’s own rules, and half the time the people working there had no clue and were inconsistent. One time they are cool with it, another they wouldn’t let you fly.

I wrote for a magazine and knew people who actually designed the regulators. I had a plan to get with the various airlines with and help them make a consistent policy with information on how employees can insure the tanks are empty. (not that it would matter too much, it is unlikely a tank would fail. If it did, the carbon fiber keeps the shrapnel contained. And they have bursts disks to prevent over pressurization.)

In other words, keeping knives from going through a specific checkpoint, when they’re easily available after that checkpoint, is a lot like stopping onlookers a few blocks away from a house fire and making them surrender their lighters before letting them get any closer.

Given the choices for inflight movies (and the many flights which offer none), that sort of entertainment might be worth it. Just make sure “Yakkity Sax” is on your iPod.

@melted crayons re: “we are fighting wars for oil ”

When I hear ‘war for oil’, it is like nails on chalk boards for me. If this were true, we would have US controlled oil fields in Iraq that we don’t pay for. And Afghanistan doesn’t have oil. They do have sweet, sweet H, though.

Exactly. Before 9/11 people had no issues with pocket knives etc. 9/11 didn’t happen because terrorists were armed. It happened because people assumed hijackers weren’t going to ram their plane into a building. Just lay low and they would eventually be ok.

If there is anything the “post 9/11 world” has taught us, it is that on site security is completely worthless and a waste of money. They have caught absolutely nothing and managed to spend billions of dollars doing it. On the other hand, telling passengers to not act like cows and to beat the fuck out of anyone trying to take over the airplane is nearly 100% effective and has foiled every post 9/11 plot to take over or blow up an airplane. Toss in a reinforced door to give the passengers a little extra time to hand out beatings, and you are talking about a completely effective $250 per airplane solution to in flight terrorism. Cheaper than a pr0n scanner and vastly less asinine.

The solution to the “war on terror” is for Americans to stop acting like fucking cowards by throwing money at the problem and mewing to the government to sodomize their civil liberties. The solution is to step in and fuck up anyone trying to act like an asshole and to not act like such terrified little children at the prospect of a one in a few million chance of being struck dead by terrorism. We seem to have the capacity to look deep into our pants and find the balls to eat McDonalds food which WILL fucking kill you, but OMFG, if there is a chance that a terrorist bomb will kill a a few dozen out of the 300,000,000+ Americans our bowels release, we shit our selves, and we whine and whimper for politicians to get rid of our pesky rights on the off chance that we can slightly mitigate the chance of dying to a method that ranks below chocking on the food you stuffed into your own face.

We put all that expense and energy into the Manhattan Project in 1945… are our security issues tied to energy, global climate change, etc. any less of a threat today?

Former McDonald’s employees obviously did not see the chef’s knives as a terrorist threat.

That’s uncalled for. Most McD’s employees are probably honest hardworking individuals.

We’d be safer down the road if we’d simply quit fucking with every country in the world that has resources we want and finally develop a massive Manhattan Project dedicated to sustainable energy.

I second that. Too bad we’re blowing all our money on a superfluous engine for a jet we don’t need.

Besides what if theres something on the wing… sooome-thiiing, on the wing?

Or what if the plane flies over some weird island and falls apart and when everyone wakes up there is a surgeon who needs someone to heal, a southern rogue, a pretty but tough fugitive, a pregnant Aussi girl, a junkie rock star, a Korean couple, a bald guy, and a bunch of disposable red shirts; but the federal marshal hauling the fugitive back to L.A. has no suitcase full of guns, the bald guy has no bag-o-knives and there are scary others on the island and nothing is ever satisfactorily explained in the end and you want to murder the writers, but thanks TSA, no guns or even knives?