I'm sort of granting that Ron Paul, Reason et al form fifth column cohorts on the right and have consistent and sincere opposition to security theater. Is that all you're looking for taso? To exempt Ron Paul from my criticism? You win, he's exempt.

that's just what dvaut posts need more lengthy caveats.

I was reading a Yahoo news article on the story. I made the mistake of reading the comments below the story.

She's tired of hearing about rights!

I can see why Dvaut posted above. Stuff like this isn't balanced out by drooling rants on the left:
A lot of people find it suspicious that he taped it. Which I find odd considering most people I know are carrying little digital cameras around all the time in their phones. Its not like the old days where you would have to make an effort to tape something.

There are some pro cavity search voices:
And of course the obligatory racist doing his thing
- I'd bet there's no issue that can't be turned into a racist rant against people who aren't white!

I suspect I could do this for hours (40K comments) but life goes on...

lol you've lost your marbles and have ventured into pure DUville and Kosland. i'm looking forward to your thesis on how the recent elections were stolen by some republican relative working for Diebold

this seems to be a drudge crusade of late, i've hardly ever seen or heard a mention of it on rightwing radio/tv beyond the usual talking point of "but of course we can't profile," which has been around forever. the right has always been against these false shows of security.

Just some random TSA/security related things...

TSA office:



The computer background:




Former TSA agent blogs: Shut up and Get Scanned

(a few excerpts)


9th Circuit Court rules you may be subject to civil penalties for refusing to be screened by the TSA

I'm all for a few more planes getting jacked and flown into buildings or w/e to get through airport security faster.

politically connected scanner suppliers and TSA advocates

LOL DVaut gonna Fly

wait, what's the conspiracy theory part again? I'm not asking for much, just a couple of sentences on what exactly it is you think is a conspiracy equivalent to Diebold.

If you were just posting for the sake of posting and don't have anything relevant to say per usual, I understand bro.

http://blogs.forbes.com/artcarden/20...olish-the-tsa/

Disclosure: the guy who wrote this has also had posts on the mises economics blog, so he's probably a racist and probably doesn't know anything about economics, even though he has a PhD in it.

I dunno what Fly does with his privacy settings, but if you want to PM Fly and work out whatever tensions you have with him, that's probably okay.

I still use the line from the commercial "Got randomly screened at the airport today. Man, they're thorough... somebody owes me a dinner."

Changing the rules is Doing Something. Not changing the rules is Ignoring America's Security. The rules are pointless anyways, so it doesn't matter what they are. All that's important is that people are Doing Something and travelers are annoyed enough to notice that there's Security going on.

I'm saying your ramblings about Fox News, Drudge, White People and Obama have become as regular as the conspiracy theories were on DU. Basically every single political issue, whether Healthcare, Immigration, Taxes or Deficits comes back to hicks being led around by the racists on Drudge or Fox News. I think i could find a post by you in just about every single thread in this forum with this basic premise. The liberals, liberals, liberals! cartoon should be updated for you to Fox News, Fox News, Fox News!

Of course, it's easier to stomach a drubbing at the polls when you can just chalk it up to people being easily manipulated racists, bigots and rubes.

Are people seriously arguing that the mainstream right is against TSA insanity? They're not. The sort of Democrats who get elected to office aren't either. They're all either for it or apathetic. So are most Americans.

wat? Okay, so, back to what I actually wrote: tom wrote about how conservatives "seem against" this level of security. I posted that no, actually, some are perfectly fine with it, and those are aren't actually aren't adhering to a normative principle, they're just upset the state is making everyone (and just not scary dark people) go through security theater.

We're conceding then that this isn't a conspiracy theory, merely just an opinion, that's expressed as much as conspiracy theories are on some forum, so that's cool.

Now we're just onto you being indignant that I think a lot of the right easily manipulated racists and bigots who respond to right wing media types racist dog whistles? That's cool too, I guess. I mean a bunch of the rhetoric isn't even dog whistles. Go watch that Hannity/Malkin video. She openly declares that she's in favor of draconian security measures, so long as the TSA agents discriminate beforehand, and only apply the security measures to foreigners. Drudge's photo today, as YOU conceded, was basically "oh noes the Muslims feelin up the Christians, WTF AMERICA!!"

So, is it:

- the right wing media types like Malkin and Drudge aren't making racist appeals? Like I invented that all in my mind?
- or the right wing media types are making racist appeals, but the right wing hoi polloi, like the freepers and yahoo commenters et al cited, aren't responsive to it?
- something else?

TSA Porn...

Calmly say "Opt Out" and get the patdown, im not going through the cancer scanners

That's the thing, the pat down involves a stranger firmly handling your private parts. It's not a police frisk, it's way more involved.

Always great to see libertarians spend multiple posts sticking up for the group that tries to control people's lives more than any other mainstream organization in the world outside of north korea. You are aware of when, how, and by whom all of these national security measures, patriot act, invasion of privacy, the "if you didn't do anything wrong you have nothing to hide" mentality was constructed by? You are aware of which side groups like the ACLU generally attack? You do know who belongs to the 50% of americans that are anti-drugs, anti-gay rights, anti-abortion, pro-religion, pro-military interventionism, anti-condoms, anti-immigration....should I keep going? Fox news is by far the highest rated cable news channel with several hosts/contributors reaching damn near celebrity status, but no no no not all representative of the modern conservative movement.

I've strained pretty hard to find someone who actually represents conservatives aside from the Malkin/Hannity/Limbaugh/Drudge crowd, and all I get is "lol DUmmy rant!! diebold hurr hurr!" and the Ron Paul acolytes defending his honor.

I am happy to grant that the Ron Paul cabal is specifically not these people:

But THOSE people make up basically everyone you think of when you think of modern, contemporary conservatism in America. I mean maybe it's a little No True Scotmanish, but it's not like I haven't seen the libertarian Ron Paul crowd on this forum decry how the Tea Party movement, etc. was hijacked and exploited by the FNC Punditocracy.

So there seems to be some recognition that we're actually talking about two discrete groups of people here: as I said, I'm happy to grant that Ron Paul and Andrew Napolitano and Reason and John Stossel et al have had longstanding and principled objections to TSA and security theater. What I'm saying is that the rest of right wing America -- Hannity/Malkin/Limbaugh et al -- are cynically exploiting TSA overreach for political gain, and that they have no real sincere opposition to patdowns and high power scanners. Although I'll grant some are probably outraged that white suburban people are subjected to the heightened scruitny.

the only "group" I'm sticking up for in my above posts is the one which doesn't like stupidity, bad arguments and claims of guilt by association. sorry if you don't belong to that group.

DVaut- It's nothing more than Taso reading "the conservative right" as "each and every person who wants low taxes." We've had problems with essentially every libertarian in this forum making general/specific errors and wagon circling like this.

Which is obviously dumb, but also kinda weird if you think about it. Why is he including himself in that group? Why circle the wagons at all?

When I first read this story, I thought, "Oh great, another hard-core conservative hoping to become a media darling by attention-whoring in public ala the girl who got a 'B' carved into her face."

And then I remember, "Hey, this guy may just be being a pain in the ass, but he's using the same tactics employed by the Civil Rights movement." I'm sure this guy on his way to a leisurely hunting trip (not a business trip, because you can't really cancel that) knew just what to say to make sure he didn't get boarded (pun intended) and it's likely no coincidence he was 'ready to record' right when he did, like the Ron Paul supporter with the ten grand.

But there's nothing wrong with that. Some of the earliest civil rights leaders chose people who looked white enough but had some tiny percentage of afro-american in them that they would get arrested, thus ensuring they could challenge unjust laws in court. This guy is no different. He's sick of the insanity (and inanity?) of the TSA and would like some attention drawn to it so something might eventually be done.

Of course, in America, it's political suicide (especially for a Democrat) to want to reduce the illusion of security in airports, lest you be branded one who "forgot the lessons of 9/11". (and don't tell me that **** doesn't stick! Bill Maher once said 'The real axis of evil in America is the genius of our marketing and the gullibility of our people")

Maybe he's hoping the conservative party will, with its newfound powers, pull its head out its arse and actually do something that benefits the little people.

I, for one, would like to see some conservatives back in the conservative party. It would make it a much more appealing party to vote for imo.

It's like that Juan Williams thing, where hardly anyone would defend what Juan Williams actually said, but everyone was very insistent on circling the wagons to defend him and claim he took it back when he didn't.

It's also quite telling that taso thought an analogous situation would be applying what Olbermann and Maddow said to me, as if I applied what Hannity and Malkin said to him, when of course I wasn't talking about taso at all, and he hadn't even posted the thread when I was responding to tom. There's this bizarre level of self-absorption going on. I mean taso is basically looking to be personally offended here. He's actively seeking it out, despite multiple assurances I'm not talking about him. Like he saw my posts about how Malkin and Hannity are clowns and believe stupid things, and how the right wing hoi polloi bathe themselves in this rhetoric and buy it hook-line-and-sinker, and he showed up to note that I'll get my comeuppance when taso criticizes me for what Olbermann says. Kind of strange.