Thanks for the report David, I’ve been wondering how the hearing went this morning. I hope to watch the whole thing on C-SPAN’s website tonight.

Janet Napolitano and John Pistole need to start spending more time with their families.

love the vid

TSA Administrator John Pistole acknowledged “concern” about striking the right balance between security and privacy.

I think I heard Pistole on NPR last night saying pretty much this same bunkum. Chertoff, Cheney & their band of crooks have done a great job at brainwashing a significant portion of the population into believing we all “should” give up our rights to privacy, freedom, etc, all in the name of “safety from terrorists.”

The terrorists are homegrown, not from overseas. It’s a bunch of greed-heads out to rip off the US public once again, while further limiting our rights to liberty, privacy and democracy.

I’d really love to see more information come out into the public sphere about exactly who owns the rape-scan companies, what kinds of contracts these crooks got from the US govt to use taxpayer dollars for what is, essentially, a frackin waste of time & money, while subverting democracy.

Thanks for the post.

OT, but I just got an e-mail from the White House “Tell us what you think.” Oh, believe me I have, and I’d like to again.

It’s a survey and, just as you might expect with the Obama administration, it times out before it loads.

I suppose people could use the survey to tell them what they think of these porno scanners and groping.

Bottom line for me – F*** their f***in’ planes, airports, screeners, and any other timorous, yet profit-hungry type who thinks that wholesale unwanted sexual contact on everyone from minors to grandmas is going to keep America safer for one nanosecond.

Chicken Little didn’t fly, and neither will I – anywhere, for any reason…And I don’t care about the personal inconvenience to me, or whether some airline’s profit model suffers as a result of others sharing my predilection. I’m done with this stupidity.

;>)

Why weren’t any Democrats quoted? Is it now part of being a Democrat that you favor groping or pornoscans?

Amazing isn’t it? I already saw a news article about Poe’s remarks. It reminds me of the Democrat’s hesitation to speak out on the financial crisis, and the opening that gave business and Republicans to start their little tea-bagging astro-turf movement. At this point, I have to conclude that the Democrats’ one and only concern is to be good little corporatists and not make waves.

Here’s a website where people can post their experiences with these outrageous TSA’s porno-machines and full-on groping: http://www.thousandsstandingaround.org/

The public perception of the answer to that question may well be yes.

I was talking with a libertarian friend the other day, a generally intelligent and reasonable man, who said in effect that “progressives” support an ever expanding government that commits such sex offenses.

As you might imagine, I set him straight, but was shocked to realize that this bipartisan effort at the TSA (under both Chertoff and Napolitano) is being viewed as Democratic policy. And why not? With Napolitano and Pistole going in out public defending sexual assault as a “screening tool”, why would anyone think differently?

Obama and all his little henchmen have completely obliterated even the term progressivism. And as long as the Veal Pen and Obamabots keep giving cover to mass sex crimes at airports (among Obama’s other political failures), we will have to go find ourselves a new name as well as a new party and new President.

Napolitano and Pistole need to be FIRED. And I mean now, before they make things any worse than they already are.

I fully expect a big fat nada from Dems. Like everything else, they will roll over and play dead-doggie on this. Guess they got their cut of the profits, so screw the “small people” once again.

The public perception of the answer to that question may well be yes.

Indeed. Just like everything else that Obamaco touches… this is turns to sh*t and makes the so-called “progressive cause” look like worthless rubbish. Who would want to be identified as “progressive” or vote as such if THIS is the result? Once again, the Trojan Horse of Obamaco sent forth to kill off the progressive cause by being more NeoCon than Bushco.

Road blocks and check points are next. You can run but you can’t hide.

Road blocks and check points are next.

Don’t forget they have versions of these machines mounted in vans that scan your car as they pass you.

There are some rather antisocial countermeasures for that sort of presumptuous police state behavior, or so I’m told.

;>)

Road blocks and check points are next.

We’re already there, in the name of stopping drunk driving.

This could be big:

At a private meeting on Tuesday afternoon, George Soros, a longtime supporter of progressive causes, voiced blunt criticism of the Obama administration, going so far as to suggest that Democratic donors direct their support somewhere other than the president.

Hurray for Soros

Every day another Republican out-lefts Barack Obama.

Aside from the bankster bailout, this is the first time the left and the right have come together to combat Bush-Obama Fascism. Ant that’s a real good thing.

bottom line pistol said he is not backing down on groping us. wait for some new terror attack to happen to justify this and move it out to our schools, malls, etc. So question is when that happen are you going to back down from your new found courage and go back to being sheeple?

HS and TSA are more akin to SS and SA.

Might have known.

One of the most powerful legislators on the issue gave TSA an impassioned endorsement on Tuesday.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who chairs the Homeland Security Committee, told Pistole that had the Northwest Airlines plot succeeded, the public would have demanded tougher pat-downs.

“This is unfortunately the world in which we live,” Lieberman said. “We have to do everything we can to protect the traveling public.”

doubt will have to wait long for another “attempt”

Real bipartisanship. Unlike what Obama and his brain keep singing about.

Once again, the people making these decisions “for our own good” will never be subjected to their own laws. Neither they nor their families will ever have to walk through a rapescan machine or be groped by some minimum wage employee who got fired from McDonald’s for petty theft or spitting in the “food”.

Me too. I told the WH what I thought in a reply that will likley go now where.
Re TSA, despite being ample, my breasts do not pose a threat to the flying public. But that didn’t stop the TSA smut-snatchers from feeling me up all over the place. I was offered an opportunity to go to a “private area” for my fondling, and I passed because a “private area” was not going to make me feel less degraded, but it would have made the feeler-upper less embarassed and would have denied the rest of my “fellow travellers” the effects of the sudden imposition of a police state.
I expect that my sturdy bra will trigger alarms in the future, and the TSA will grope me to ensure we all win the fight against resistance to “security theatre.”

Any policy favored by Joe Lieberman is obviously deeply wrong. It was VERY disappointing hear soon-to-be-former Senator McCaskill defend the groping as “love pats” and making the porno machines sound just super-awesome and convenient. (She’ll lose in 2012 just because Missouri is Obama-hating country now).

BTW, that video is completely hysterical!

I hope part of the public outrage morphs into questioning the legitimacy of having police state measures in effect in the first place instead of simple outrage at the latest intrusion. Every person groped or subjected to porno-scanning should let their anger turn into cold, objective analysis of the “War on Terror” and its foundational myth 9/11. Because I’m sorry but the official myth just wasn’t designed to stand up to any kind of thoughtful scrutiny but rather to be blindly accepted at face value without thinking too deeply about it. Do precisely what the elite doesn’t want you to do America: Think for yourselves and make up your own mind about the wars for energy resource dominance, don’t let the ruling class force you to argue everything on their right-wing terms because that’s a losing proposition as it’s designed to be. Start by deconstructing and demolishing the fairy tale that underpins the whole right-wing worldview. It isn’t hard to do when one takes so much as an afternoon to look into the details.

Come on, there’s proven, reliable technology TSA could use instead. I’ll go so far as to call it “Man’s Best Friend”.
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/11/05/rebeccas_war_dogs_of_the_week_obamas_entourage_of_30_sniffer_pups

And as I mentioned yesterday, pigs have an even acute sense of smell. There’s a former Israeli Army dog handler, Geva Zin, who trains bomb sniffing pigs. Give that guy Chertoff’s contract. :o)
http://www.worldpress.org/Mideast/1635.cfm#down

But how do Rumsfeld and the bird flu vaccine manufacturer, Chertoff and Rapiscan, and Dick Cheney and Halliburton profit from such a practical alternative? That is thequestion.

i just heard that germany’s putting out the terror scare BS now

‘WATCH YOUR NEIGHBORS AND REPORT ANY SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY’

the world’s going right back to the SS tactics, ugh

What gets me is that we’ve lost so many liberties because of 9/11 and the need to “stay safe” when the real, true reason 9/11 happened was a half-assed President who was more interested in having a vacation than in doing his job. Our intelligence was good enough. It’s not their fault those who were to act on it did nothing. So, instead of admitting this, we have to gin up fear and ratchet up “protective” measures. I’d rather have a little more uncertainty and my liberties, thank you.

oh, I know!

I try not to punish myself with the what-ifs, but sometimes that’s hard. dham him

There is big money to be made here, by Chertoff and the manufacturers. These machines will not be placed in airports, only. Don’t people who go to the mall, ride subways and trains, or go to football games want to be “safe,” too?

And as I mentioned yesterday, pigs have an even acute sense of smell. There’s a former Israeli Army dog handler, Geva Zin, who trains bomb sniffing pigs. Give that guy Chertoff’s contract. :o)
http://www.worldpress.org/Mideast/1635.cfm#down

And what animal do they use to find Truffles?? And you Can paint lipstick on those pigs, they earn their way!!

Big money indeed, mspithy, we are being funneled into the police state, easier to keep us controlled.

Coming to a town near you:
Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans

And of course the TSA doesn’t actually hire the screeners. They subcontract out. Here is the company that handles SFO:
http://www.covenantsecurity.com/

Actually, I just looked closer. They cover maybe 50 airports.

oh man, Covenant Security sounds way too “Christiany”
in the worst possible sense of the word.

Well, it’s pretty common in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, LDS, and in other religions also. But hey, we gotta keep the “Homeland” “Secure” so we subcontract the job out to a private “Covenant” “Security” company who pays their employees $12/hr to start to squeeze our balls and boobs.

I’d rather have more liberty even if it means more uncertainty as well. But the whole truth about 9/11 is far worse and far more creepy than a lackadaisical president ignoring things. Believe me, I wish that were the case but examination of the facts shows us sadly it is not. You can start by pondering the reason that Bush had war plans for an invasion of Afghanistan on his desk ready to be signed two days before 9/11 as reported in 2002 by MSNBC.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4587368/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4585010/

But waitaminute. Without the traumatic events of 9/11 an invasion of Afghanistan would have been impossible to sell to the American public as even the USA Today newspaper admitted in 2004.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-03-23-war-analysis_x.htm

So why would Bush have plans ready to be signed and sitting on his desk for a war that would have been impossible to begin without the events two days later? We have two possibilities: Either 1.Bush is psychic and can see into the future with amazing clarity; or 2.9/11 was a false flag operation designed to be used as a pretext to justify the invasion of Afghanistan and the rest of the wars for energy resource dominance, er sorry, “War on Terror”.

Amazing isn’t it that Israel DOESN’T use these machines:

A leading Israeli airport security expert says the Canadian government has wasted millions of dollars to install “useless” imaging machines at airports across the country.

Indeed:

http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/2010/06/airports-with-body-scanners.html

Italics were unintentional in my #38 post.

You should include how Richard Haas and Richard Armitage violated the AUMF. The AUMF said to go after any nation connected to 9-11, which does not include Irak. However it does include Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Pakistan, its ISI has had a major role in most terrorism including 9-11.

That would be true regarding Saudi Arabia if the official story of 9/11 was true but it is unfortunately the most ridiculous tissue of lies ever perpetrated upon humanity, bar none. Why is it that the “hijacker pilots” couldn’t even fly small propellor planes worth a damn let alone trying to fly anything with jet engines? Uh, that would be because they didn’t have to actually hijack or fly anything that morning, the official story is provably bogus.

Why did guys who we are supposed to believe were so devoted to Islam as to be willing to sacrifice their lives for it instead behave like not even practicing Muslims? Drinking liquor, eating pork, snorting coke, smoking pot, gambling in Vegas several times, getting lapdances at strip clubs, going to adult bookstores? Because they weren’t Islamic fundamentalists at all but rather a bunch of westernized guys who thought they were in training to be C.I.A. drug pilots smuggling coke into Florida. Their purpose wasn’t to fly or hijack anything but to provide a trail of hamfisted “evidence” to flesh out the official backstory of the nineteen hijackers. Nothing that happened that morning happened in the way the official myth would have you believe.

I wonder if Smerkonish (sp?) and all the gutless talking heads on MSNBC right now get patted down or do they get a lifetime free pass for carrying the company water? *s*

That would be true regarding Saudi Arabia if the official story of 9/11 was true

do not want to get too 9-11 ish but Philip Zelikow did lie about Saudi Arabia. The oil sheikhs financed several of the”hijackers” through the CIA’s Riggs Bank. Prince Bandar and the Politico.com owners the Allbrittons were fined a modest penalty for financing terrorism.

Here is one of my rants. And it is RIP for the Washington Independent.

I can’t wait to hear Sean Hannity’s criticism of the first porn scene to begin with an advanced pat down or naked scan.

Liberal bias in pornography!

The “hijackers” were patsies but they may have financed several of the patsies through Riggs. See my post at #38, 9/11 was a blatant false flag attack, not done by Islamic fundamentalists. That is the only possibility that fits with all the available evidence as the official myth has more holes in it than a colander whether one wants to start with the pre-9/11 war plans for the invasion of Afghanistan; the lack of skill and lack of real Islamic faith with the “hijacker pilot” patsies; the Air Force which was conspicuous by its absence; the fact that Bush’s Secret Service staff allowed him to remain in Booker Elementary for over a half hour after being told “America is under attack” (when instead, were the official myth true, they would have had no way of knowing that Bush was not even a possible target that morning and would have been placing his life, their own lives and jobs and the lives of those schoolkids [not that they cared about the kids] in jeopardy by letting him remain in place); the record amount of “put” options on the stock of American Airlines, United Airlines and several businesses in the WTC complex, the options being placed in the week just before 9/11; the pre-9/11 warning to the mayor of San Francisco to avoid flying on September 11th; the remote control antennae on the underside of the one plane we actually have real footage of it as it’s crashing; F.E.M.A. being in place in Manhattan for a mass casualty exercise and having their triage center all set up and ready to go in time for 9/11; the numerous military exercises and intel. exercises scheduled for that morning including one based on the premise of a plane crashing into the N.R.O. headquarters; the several “hijackers” who turned up alive and well days later wondering why their names and photos are being connected to something they obviously couldn’t have been involved with as reported by the BBC; the obvious controlled demolition of the Twin Towers and WTC # 7 building; the destruction of evidence by shipping the structural steel from the WTC off to China and India to be melted down as soon as possible; the stonewalling of Bush and Cheney against allowing a commission to investigate 9/11 to even be formed for over a year then relenting only when they were allowed to dictate its scope (no deviation from the “nineteen hijackers” myth allowed), to handpick its members all with a vested financial interest in keeping the truth buried and allowed to dictate the terms by which they themselves (Bush and Cheney) would testify, namely behind closed doors, NOT under oath, with their attorneys present and with no notes kept and no recordings made of their testimony; or any of the other numerous glaring holes in the official story that render it about as believable as that pathological liar character on Saturday Night Live played by Jon Lovitz. Sorry but the official story just doesn’t hold water. At all. The ones pushing this patently false myth on the American people are the ones behind it in the first place.

Can I be conspiratorial for a minute. Even if no government ever committed False Flag Ops or no spies ever went rogue, there are still powerful corporations.

Skeletor Chertoff and his co-conspirators in the X-Ray Irradiation business, are very important players. There are billions of dollars involved at all levels of the Corporatocracy. Even some mid-level corporate criminal might want to pull some variation of the Underwear Bomber Stunt to scare people into subservience. There are always Airline stocks to bet on, as Buzzy Krongard would know.

Well it isn’t as if the two are mutually exclusive anyway. Certainly the government itself is nothing but the tentacles of big businesses in the first place so it’s a matter of semantics at this point.

Something else that tips their hand was the laughably contrived anthrax scare using a strain traced back to Fort Detrick, the Army’s bioweapons lab. Consider the timing: Anthrax envelopes were sent to the offices of the two senators who were most critical of the Patriot Act and had the results of 1.both of them changing their tune immediately after what amounted to a combination death threat/attempt on their lives; and 2.shutting down the Capitol Bldg. and its main offices until they could all be checked for anthrax spores and decontaminated, meaning the senators and their staff had to work out of disjointed hotel rooms.

And the other anthrax letter? It was addressed to the photo editor of the tabloid that had recently beforehand published embarrassing photos of Jenna Bush falling down drunk. It doesn’t exactly take Sherlock Holmes to figure out who had the motives behind it.

I would suggest leaving Jenna out of this insofar as there are plenty of other fat targets. But if only we had a Sherlock Holmes, or Jim Rockford, or some brilliant detective…

Money is what the desire craves, IMO. Some think that it can protect them from consequences and perhaps, for a time….but not necessarily forever.

The injection of former Bush ‘executive talent’ into the private sphere should be a major cause for concern among citizens of the U.S. and abroad.
The agenda never goes away with such people…they’re always operational.

;>)

“I would suggest leaving Jenna out of this insofar as there are plenty of other fat targets.”

Well I’m certainly open to suggestions as to other possible reasons why it was addressed to that photo editor at that tabloid. The embarrassing photos are what leaps out at me as the obvious reason. My guess is that the tabloid anthrax was an add-on to the operation after the rest had already been planned.

By the way Frank, Emptywheel compiled a nice timeline on the anthrax attacks in that post you linked to but in reading it and looking over its comment thread I didn’t see that he reached a conclusion as to who was behind it when I don’t see how it could be any more obvious that it was an inside job serving the interests of the Bush-Cheney administration.