Keith Tanner wrote: I used to work as a flight attendant.
As a traveler myself, I would like to extend a hardy Thank You for what must be an unbelievably thankless job.
-Rob
Keith Tanner wrote: I used to work as a flight attendant.
As a traveler myself, I would like to extend a hardy Thank You for what must be an unbelievably thankless job.
-Rob
No thank you required, it paid well 
Business travelers were great. Everyone knew how things worked. It was the vacationers coming back from the all-inclusive resorts on the cheapest flight they could find that were the real headaches. They expected constant service and were not happy about going home. 
Keith Tanner wrote:rob_lewis wrote: But, I guarantee you that if they relaxed any of the things they've implemented and something DOES happen, it'll be a proverbial E36 M3-storm. They're in a no win situation.That's why we need some sort of penalty for overreaction, to balance things out. In this case, all it would have taken would be an intelligent person stopping by and taking a peek at those papers instead of delaying a flight for two hours. The idiot got flown on a different flight and huge costs were incurred by the airline due to all those delayed flights. The whole Boston freakout over some LED signs is another example.
And the ability to actually prosecute false 911 callers, seriously, I was told I'd go to jail before them for simply pushing that notion too far.....
Keith Tanner wrote: That's why we need some sort of penalty for overreaction, to balance things out.
We do have a penalty for overreaction. Unfortunately the penalty is loss of freedom and safety.
novaderrik wrote:Appleseed wrote: Back on 05, we took a buddy to Vegas for a Batchelor party. On the way home, another buddy was "picked" to go through the bomb sniffing machine. Upon emerging, I yelled, " HEY RYAN! CONGRATULATIONS! YOU'RE NOW STERILE!" TSA was not amused.the TSA is never amused... they aren't paid enough to be amused, and if they were amused they couldn't show it because showing any sort of humanity would show the general public that they are the most useless agency in the government and have not actually prevented anything big from happening in the entire time their department has existed..
the only good thing about the department of homeland security... the Coast Guard got put in with them. They are actually getting modern ships, helicopters, and equipment now. Back in the 90s, many 3rd world navies put the USCG to shame
In reply to mad_machine:
5th largest maritime force in terms of tonnage; 25th oldest in terms of the average age of vessels.
We (NYC Transit) have "if you see something say something" plastered on buses, trains, commercials, announcements ect. As a result we get reports of suspicious people and packages all day usually by nut jobs with overactive imaginations and occasionally for legitimate concerns. There is a disturbing percentage of the population that lives in fear of every stray wrapper they see waiting for The terrorists to attack. Generally common sense lets us determine whether it's trash, lost property or something that needs further investigaton. In the end it doesn't matter what we decide because if the driver doesn't evacuate everyone and call the police nosy do gooder will call on their own and call the company to complain about the employee so we often end up being overly cautious to make some people happy. It ends up tying up people and disrupting service for many because one old biddy won't believe a Big Mac box is just trash. It just gets worse as we continue to drum fears of terror attacks into people's heads.
I had an argument with a woman last week because i wasn't doing anything about a bus driver going to a mosque every day. Apparently at the end of his trip this guy who is brown and wears s little hat ducks into his mosque near the terminal and uses the restroom. This woman has grabbed me while I was near by to tell me about how he was probably getting his orders and any day now he'd blow his bus up. She claimed police didn't take her seriously, now I'm not so we were all being reported to DHS.
In reply to Wall-e:
and yet suggesting an IQ test before a breeding license is permitted is considered "crazy" while people glued to their idiot boxes make the world a far more difficult place for the few of us normal people left. I feel for you, and anyone that has to deal with these "people" who wouldn't remember to breathe if it wasn't an automatic function on a regular basis.
Although hearing things like this reminds me why I'm perfectly happy squirreled away at my house, interacting with maybe 10 people on any sort of basis.
I won't go into my thoughts on the "war on terror" because I will wind up under Margie's patio.. let's just say I am sick to death of it, the constant fear that is drilled into us about it, and the hypocrisy of some people in regards to it
Fear is your only God.
Safest I ever felt on a flight was when I took a Pan-Am 747 from Ft Bragg to Saudi Arabia back in 1990. 100% of the passengers aboard were highly trained and armed to the teeth. Seems like a great resource that is being entirely mismanaged. If soldiers and veterans were given free flights in exchange for being armed guards (in uniform) we could disband the entire air marshal program and save millions.
This is not new
NOHOME wrote: ...Actual damages from actual terrorist attacks would pale in comparison to what is being done to society as collateral damage by the "War On Terror".
That was the stated intent. To bleed America to the point of bankruptcy.
foxtrapper wrote:NOHOME wrote: ...Actual damages from actual terrorist attacks would pale in comparison to what is being done to society as collateral damage by the "War On Terror".That was the stated intent. To bleed America to the point of bankruptcy.
While that certainly was the intent, I an not sure that our Governments have not seized the initiative and created something even more clever.
Lets face it, the consumer economy is on life support and dying. The respirator of zero interest rates cant go any lower and people are running out of money to buy "Stuff" as they have for the past 60 years.
So, what better way to continue extracting money from a stone in order to run a bureaucracy than to create a Terror economy? The communism poster and the war fund posters above are good examples. Just look at the Homeland security budget to get an idea of how tax dollars are being mined today. Military spending goes 100% unquestioned because it keeps us safe from the Hordes waiting to instill terror. Lets not forget that the Media needs the terror economy to pay its bills. Of course we all know that Government and Media are independent of each-other...right?
Gotta wonder what the next tactic will be. I hope that its like fashion where everything comes back eventually and we just return to "Sex Sells".
In the meantime, I surrender, I am more afraid of our side than their side.
NOHOME wrote: ...I am more afraid of our side than their side.
You've good reason to be.
Read a little history on things like the old but not gone War on Drugs. Asset forfeiture, warrentless arrests, legal kidnapping, etc. It's not new.
The Espionage and Sedition acts from a few decades before that. Handy way to dispose of any who dare get in your way or create problems.
The suspension of Habeas Corpus before that.
The much earlier Alien and Sedition Acts before that.
And so on, and so forth. As well all the things in between that I didn't mention and don't know.
If there's any comfort, it's that we've gone down this river before, and always manage to survive it, and in fact generally come out of it better than when we set sail.
You'll need to log in to post.
