Mema and I visited the Seattle area this week with the purpose of looking in on our dear friend, Janet. We wound up bringing her back to Virginia with us but that's another story.
Seattle has one of the most disorganized, chaotic, mind-bendingly inept airport security systems in the country. At each end of their woefully undersized terminal building, passengers are literally herded through cattle-like lines (think Disney World on a busy day) where the requisite ticket and ID checks are made. Then they are spewed into the X-ray lines after being asked to remove shoes, coats, scarves, computers, etc.
The process took over 25 minutes and it wasn't one of the busy hours. Mema went through with Janet while I parked the rental car. The TSA folks there have adopted a "random" method of selecting which passengers need frisking and wanding. We were selected as possible terrorists - lovable ole me, Judy who needs a knee replacement and Janet who is almost blind, can't hear, and went through security in a wheel chair. I'm sure, with the current atmosphere of political correctness coupled with the fact that Seattle is a hotbed of social liberalism means that absolutely no olive-skinned, bearded, turban-wearing, Arab-speaking, Middle-Easterner, will ever be "randomly selected." God forbid we offend anyone trying to board a plane with explosive shoes. But grandmothers and infirm little old ladies are fair game to TSA.
The postscript to this is that, unbenownst to the average passenger (and I travel maybe 20 time a year) the "random" passenger has encoded on the boarding pass a code to alert the not-too bright TSA folks that "hey, pat this one down, Bruce!" Mine had such a code but it wasn't detected by the US Government employees at TSA. I didn't get frisked first time through. NOOO! I had to wait until my flight was called and the plane was boarding before an alert Delta gate person noticed and directed me back to TSA a distance of about 1/2 mile. Upon presenting my boarding pass it was somehow MY fault that I had escaped the frisker. I did make the flight -- barely.
This is our federal government at work. Now we find out that in major airports TSA can't find a fake bomb over 60% of the time. Remember when airport security was done by private firms? It was bad then but it WAS better by several percentage points. And this same government wants to run our health care industry. Try to imagine a doctor's office looking like the Seattle security area. Vote Republican.
Seattle has one of the most disorganized, chaotic, mind-bendingly inept airport security systems in the country. At each end of their woefully undersized terminal building, passengers are literally herded through cattle-like lines (think Disney World on a busy day) where the requisite ticket and ID checks are made. Then they are spewed into the X-ray lines after being asked to remove shoes, coats, scarves, computers, etc.
The process took over 25 minutes and it wasn't one of the busy hours. Mema went through with Janet while I parked the rental car. The TSA folks there have adopted a "random" method of selecting which passengers need frisking and wanding. We were selected as possible terrorists - lovable ole me, Judy who needs a knee replacement and Janet who is almost blind, can't hear, and went through security in a wheel chair. I'm sure, with the current atmosphere of political correctness coupled with the fact that Seattle is a hotbed of social liberalism means that absolutely no olive-skinned, bearded, turban-wearing, Arab-speaking, Middle-Easterner, will ever be "randomly selected." God forbid we offend anyone trying to board a plane with explosive shoes. But grandmothers and infirm little old ladies are fair game to TSA.
The postscript to this is that, unbenownst to the average passenger (and I travel maybe 20 time a year) the "random" passenger has encoded on the boarding pass a code to alert the not-too bright TSA folks that "hey, pat this one down, Bruce!" Mine had such a code but it wasn't detected by the US Government employees at TSA. I didn't get frisked first time through. NOOO! I had to wait until my flight was called and the plane was boarding before an alert Delta gate person noticed and directed me back to TSA a distance of about 1/2 mile. Upon presenting my boarding pass it was somehow MY fault that I had escaped the frisker. I did make the flight -- barely.
This is our federal government at work. Now we find out that in major airports TSA can't find a fake bomb over 60% of the time. Remember when airport security was done by private firms? It was bad then but it WAS better by several percentage points. And this same government wants to run our health care industry. Try to imagine a doctor's office looking like the Seattle security area. Vote Republican.
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