The TSA terrorist who molested me looked nothing like this. But even if she had, she ought to have been cuffed for running her giant digits on my chest and between my legs. My thanks to BAB readers Michael Marks and wife for snapping and sending this along. In impetus, the image reminds me of this repulsive Lindt ad. I went cold turkey after viewing the lighthearted look Lindt took at two TSA agents looting and lusting with impunity.
Lenore Zimmerman is defiant and articulate. Would that individuals like her replaced the Occupy Wall Street Idiocracy. The “85-year-old Long Island grandmother” is the latest victim of the homegrown terrorists of the TSA. She might be tiny and fragile, but unlike so many other TSA “victims,” Lenore is not weepy or weak:
Lenore … says she was on her way to a 1 p.m. flight to Fort Lauderdale when security whisked her to a private room and took off her clothes.
“I walk with a walker — I really look like a terrorist,” she said sarcastically. “I’m tiny. I weigh 110 pounds, 107 without clothes, and I was strip-searched.”
TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said a review of closed circuit TV footage from the airport shows “proper procedures were followed.”
But Zimmerman, whose hunched back puts her at 4-foot-11, said her ordeal began after her son, Bruce, drove her to the JetBlue terminal for the Florida flight. She lives in warm Coconut Creek during the winter.
She checked her bags, waited for a wheelchair and parted ways with her doting son — her only immediate relative.
When Zimmerman reached a security checkpoint, she asked if she could forgo the advanced image technology screening equipment, fearing it might interfere with her defibrillator.
She said she normally gets patted down. But this time, she says that two female agents escorted her to a private room and began to remove her clothes.
“I was outraged,” said Zimmerman, a retired receptionist.
As she tried to lift a lightweight walker off her lap, she says, the metal bars banged against her leg and blood trickled from a gash.
“My sock was soaked with blood,” she said. “I was bleeding like a pig.”
She says the TSA agents showed no sympathy, instead pulling down her pants and asking her to raise her arms.
These TSA legalized assaults happen daily in police state USA. The triumphant Republican majority in Congress claims to have a new-found affinity for freedom. If this were so, their first order of business would have been to stop the molestation en masse at the country’s airports. So far nothing has been done about the ongoing violations of the individual’s constitutional right to be free of unreasonable searches without probable cause.
Face it, the Republican Party’s fidelity is to the security state, not to liberty.
Constitution, Crime, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media
A rancher speaks out anon about the reality of life in the rural areas on the U.S.-Mexican border. And MSNBC, going against type, reports it. Is America’s news cartel beginning to sympathize with law-abiding American citizens under siege on the U.S.-Mexican border? MSNBC tells the story of “a South Texas farmer” who lives “in fear of Mexican traffickers smuggling drugs and illegal immigrants across his land”:
“I’m a citizen of the United States. This is supposedly sovereign soil, but right now it’s anybody’s who happens to be crossing here,” he said. “I’m a little nervous being here right now. Definitely don’t come down here after dark.”
The farmer said a federal law enforcement agent told him to buy a bulletproof vest to use while working in his fields. Whenever he goes out to survey his agricultural operations, he always tells his office where he is headed, and he has purchased a high-powered rifle.
“One of the basic points of the federal government is to protect the people of this nation to secure the border, and they’re not doing that,” he complained.
Like Bush before him, Obama “and many local officials have said the U.S.-Mexican border is safer than ever and that reports of violence on the American side are wildly exaggerated. But the farmer scoffed at that argument. ‘I walk this soil every day and have since I was old enough to come out on my own,’ he said. ‘In this part of Texas, it is worse than it’s ever been.'”
Remember Rancher Robert Krentz and his faithful companion, both killed by a marauder who beat a retreat to Mexico.
UPDATE (Nov. 27): Many more, mostly unmentioned, Mexicans than Americans have been gunned down as a consequence of “Operation Fast and Furious,” “in which a gang going by the acronym ATF—the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—sold assault rifles to Mexican gangsters and their local gun-runners, who later used their taxpayer-funded ammunition and immunity to gun down” these innocents.
The gang leader is Attorney General Eric Holder.
Elections, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Iran, Israel, Military, Nationhood, Republicans
CNN’s co-sponsors of the Republican debate from Constitution Hall, in the nation’s capital, were the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. That fact set the jingoistic, interventionist tone for the evening. There were lots of leading questions from scholars of these respective special interests. Implicit in all these questions was the demand for a better-defined role (read war) for America in Iran, Syria (“no fly zone”) and Sudan (all the better to inflame and focus the local Al-Qaeda chapter).
Mitt Romney ended this long, two-hour session by cementing the position of all the Republican candidates, bar Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman to a lesser degree: American exceptionalism means asserting America’s military superiority. Unclear was how that position coincided with US economic bankruptcy.
In the next hour, I will be teasing out the details of the debate for you with the analysis you’ve come to except here at BAB (donation buttons to the left of you).
Humorous highlights (all the more essential given the fact that these are dead-end debates; the resignation written all over Ron Paul’s face says it all):
Herman Cain (Chairman/CEO, Godfather’s Pizza) calls Wolf Blitzes “Blitz,” and firmly tells him, “No, Blitz.”
Michele Bachmann (U.S. Representative, Minnesota, State Senator; Attorney) about Pakistan: “It is too nuclear to fail.”
A scrappy Ron Paul (U.S. Representative, Texas, Physician) shouts half-way through the first hour: “How about the rest of us?” “Blitz ignores Paul, and his own promise at the onset to allocate fair time to all.
UPDATE: Okay to the meat of the exchanges:
Introductions: Rick P. touted the bliss of marriage and the beauty of his wife. Newt Gingrich sucked up to the hosts and think tanks named above. MB blew kisses to the troops. Ron Paul said what needed saying: “I am convinced that needless and unnecessary wars are a great detriment. They undermine our prosperity and our liberties. They add to our deficits and they consume our welfare. We should take a careful look at our foreign policy.”
Patriot Act: Ron Paul sustained the momentum by calling the thing unpatriotic, advocating that one prosecute cases as the crimes they are. Paul also warned about sacrificing liberty for security in pursuit of total safety and a total police state. The other candidates, with the exception of Jon Huntsman, plumped for an extension and an expansion of the Act.
The Nation’s Paid Pimps: Paul was not asked about the Transportation and Security Administration. Perry has moved to criminalize the TSA’s pat downs in his state of Texas, but here the governor spoke primarily about privatization, getting rid of the unions, and doing better counterintelligence, as if the government could do anything better. Rick Santorum spoke to the Israeli model. This meant what I call “rational profiling” (“Cabbies Do It Too). Ron Paul stepped in it (it was a matter of time, I guess). First Paul quite correctly called the other candidates on their circular reasoning: They all kept calling for Patriot-Act type preemption against dem “terrorists.” However, until you bring a case against someone, he is but a suspect. After that fabulous point, Paul went and ruined it all by saying something stupid like “don’t profile.”
Pakistan/Afghanistan: Newt Gingrich stood out in his quest to effect a sort of American coup in both Pakistan and Afghanistan—I thought we had already done so; semantics, really—take over operations and run these places like we need to. G-d help us. Mitt wants nation building. For a clever man he sure sounded stupid claiming that divesting from these hell holes forthwith would threaten the gains and investment in blood and treasure made so far. Perry had taken his meds for this debate. No pennies for Pakistan was his position. He also spoke of encouraging the region’s countries to trade. It’s probably as good as talking to the hand, but it’s sure worth suggesting barter over boycotts and bombs. Jon repeated his best lines from the CNN/Tea Party Debate in Tampa, Florida, where he advocated for divesting from these crap countries.
Interspersed were questions from the pompous audience about sanctions on Iran (more, more), possible attacks on A-Jad, and requests for foreign aid. The last position was advanced by no other than Bush’s Paul (Dundes) Wolfowitz. Naturally, now that Wolfy is president of the World Bank, he’d like to secure a supply of US funny money with which to sustain his new fiefdom.
I’m getting terribly bored. This whole competition will end badly. My report will commence tomorrow, if your interest is sustained. But Let me end with immigration, an issue on which they all sucked mightily, and should read “Suicide of A Superpower” and its sequel).
Like most Americans (except for us immigrants), the candidates, in their call for more special visas for highly skilled individuals, proved that they know close to nothing about America’s labyrinthine visa programs. They advocated for fixing the immigration system so that the US could import many more brilliant individuals, as if there was a limit on, or an impediment to, such immigration.
THERE are no limits on the number of geniuses American companies can import.
America already has an “Extraordinary Ability” Visa. In exchange for my spouse’s exceptional abilities and qualifications, he was awarded the O-1 visa. And we, in short order, gained green cards.
The primary H-1B hogs—Infosys (and another eight, sister Indian firms), Microsoft, and Intel—are forever claiming that they are desperate for talent. But, in reality, they have unlimited access to individuals with unique abilities through the open-ended O-1 visa program.
I believe that before the article titled “Why Aren’t The H-1B Hogs Satisfied With The O-1 ‘Extraordinary Ability’ Visa?” was written, no immigration expert had made the simple point above.
That’s right: The O-1 visa program enables the importation of as many geniuses as a company can find, from every corner of the world.