Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Second rate reporter says what?

No one could have predicted…

The words do not have to be perfect.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

This chaos was totally avoidable.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

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45Comments

  2. 2.

    BGinCHI

    Anyone who has seen the recent, excellent French film “A Prophet” will know that you can hold a razor blade in your mouth and do lots of damage with it.

  6. 6.

    Nutella

    Since we’ve got a new TSA thread I moved this over from the open thread:

    And here’s something we knew would happen at TSA checkpoints: “A woman, identified by Harbor police as Danielle Kelli Hayman,39, of San Diego was detained for recording the incident on a phone.”

  8. 8.

    Aaron

    It seems to me like the specifics of scanner-gate are rather unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Stepping back, what matters is that we are a nation that has become afraid of its own shadow. We are willing to surrender rights and dignity for pseudo-safety, which we know doesn’t work. We have essentially become a nation that values the theater of action more than meaningful change or long-term thinking

  11. 11.

    suzanne

    @Gravenstone: At this point, I almost wish I could get myself on the no-fly list. Then my family in the Northeast would have to stop guilt-tripping me about not flying out for the holidays.

  12. 12.

    Earl Butz

    The obvious conclusion: the TSA isn’t looking at anything with those scanners save your “junk”, and possibly your titties if you’re a “cutie in line 2” (as has been reported).

  13. 13.

    Dennis SGMM

    What, someone made fools out of people whose only job requirement is a High School Diploma? Shocking!

  14. 14.

    quaint irene

    A woman, identified by Harbor police as Danielle Kelli Hayman,39, of San Diego was detained for recording the in

    Is that TSA opt-out challenge still scheduled for tomorrow? That should be a beaut.

  16. 16.

    debbie

    A Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist says he has a simple fix for the uproar over the Transportation Safety Agency’s body scanners. Distort the image, Willard Wattenburg argues, and you take away (at least some of) the privacy objections that could be made. In Wattenburg’s formulation, noted by the Washington Post, bodies would be stretched as in a funhouse mirror, presumably removing any titillation associated with nudity.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/11/should-tsa-body-scanners-distort-naked-images/66877/

    I like this idea, but in honor of the season, how about shaping them like gingerbread men?

  18. 18.

    MattR

    Have we come up with a set of groping etiquette rules yet? Am I supposed to shave my balls before going through security this weekend?

  22. 22.

    MattR

    @Roger Moore: I have two comments
    1) Who hasn’t been caught masturbating at work?
    2) I am pretty sure that the story is BS. The article features this quote which not only sounds made up, but searching the CNN site for Rodney Schroeder returns nothing.

    “What do you want to do, get blown up by a goddamn Arab at 30,000 feet or we get to see your private parts? It’s up to you, the ball’s in your park,” head of the TSA’s scanning department, Rodney Schroeder, told CNN

    (EDIT: Nevermind)

  23. 23.

    Winston Smith

    A couple of years ago, my wife an I flew to NYC.

    When we unpacked after returning to Missouri, she discovered that she had a handful of .22 rounds (some hollow-points) and two 12-gauge shotgun shells with buck shot.

    The got through security in both directions.

    Be afraid. Be very afraid.

  24. 24.

    quaint irene

    Last time I had jury duty, I took my embroidery to pass the time in the waiting room. Everything had to go through a metal detector in the court house. Once I was through I realized they hadn’t picked up my sewing scissors.

  27. 27.

    suzanne

    Last time I went to the city courthouse to pay a traffic ticket, they scanned my purse and were confused by one item, so they did a manual search.

    Yes, they took my diaphragm out for inspection. In front of everyone.

  28. 28.

    peach flavored shampoo

    I’ve been flying 5-6 times a year for years and have never, ever abided by the “3-oz” lotion rule. I have also never, ever been stopped, questioned, or detained for doing so. Complex math says thats about ~24 flights since the ban/restriction, and not once in any airport did they see it, or care that I had it.

    I’m guessing it helps that I lack sufficient melatonin to be a terrorist.

  29. 29.

    Stefan

    OK, so you get two razor blades on a plane. Then what? It’s not like you can hijack the plane with them anymore. Sure, you can attack some of the passengers and crew, but the rest of the people on board will resist and eventually subdue you. So the risk is that you can take a weapon into an enclosed space and hurt people.

    But….if that’s the risk, why are you expending so much effort to guard against it on planes, and no effort at all to guard against it in other enclosed places like buses, subways, trains, van rides, churches, stores, etc.?

  30. 30.

    Stefan

    And here’s something we knew would happen at TSA checkpoints: “A woman, identified by Harbor police as Danielle Kelli Hayman,39, of San Diego was detained for recording the incident on a phone.”

    The linked article is about a man who stripped down to his underwear to avoid being patted down. Here’s the best part: “Wolanyk’s attorney said that TSA requested his client put his clothes on so he could be patted down properly but his client refused to put his clothes back on. He never refused a pat down, according to his attorney. Wolanyk was arrested for refusing to complete the security process. ”

    Get that — they requested he put his clothes on so they could pat him down properly. WTF? The whole point of the pat down is supposed to be to see if you’re hiding anything under your clothes. But he wasn’t wearing clothes, so they could see he had nothing, but they still wanted him to put his clothes back on so they could then search him to make sure he wasn’t hiding anything under his clothes — which they already knew.

    The mind reels.

  31. 31.

    Martin

    @Winston Smith: When I was 14 or so I was flying home alone and had a stone chess set my grandmother had given me as a xmas gift. It was in my carryon (so it wouldn’t break) and they gave me all kinds of shit at the scanner until I had unpacked and unboxed it to show them what it was.

    Turns out on the xray a box of 32 shotgun shell sized and shaped objects all neatly stacked up look remarkably like 32 shotgun shells.

    Turns out security in 1982 wasn’t so shitty after all.

  32. 32.

    Roger Moore

    @Stefan:

    The mind reels.

    It’s the bureaucratic mindset. The important part is following the proper procedures, not achieving the specified goals. The rules say he needs to be patted down, so he has to be patted down. It doesn’t matter that he’s already been searched more effectively than if he had been patted down; the search has to follow the accepted protocols.

  33. 33.

    Calouste

    Just wait until AQ gets a bit of a brainwave (don’t hold your breath for that though, these guys aren’t that smart) and works out that instead of sending mules on a plane that have swallowed condoms full of coke, they can send a mule on a plane that has swallowed a few condoms full of what possibly could be construed as high explosive. The TSA will make every one take laxatives and spend half an hour in a specially supervised restroom before they are allowed to board the plane when that happens.

  35. 35.

    suzanne

    @Martin: Funny you mention. Last year, I went to Munich, and I bought a wooden chess set while I was there. I packed all the gifts and souvenirs I had bought in my carry-on. I had to fly through Heathrow to come home, and the British made us go through their airport security when entering the country, even though we were just changing flights, and not leaving the terminal. So they scanned the bag with my chess set, and, like you said, the box with the chessmen aroused suspicion. They asked me what it was, and I told them. So the security guard said, “What do you have a chess set for?” My response: “Uhhhhhh… for playing chess?”

    Then I got their version of an enhanced pat-down.

  37. 37.

    Stefan

    It’s the bureaucratic mindset. The important part is following the proper procedures, not achieving the specified goals.

    Exactly. Which is why this all, ultimately, useless. Any determined, imaginative and reasonably intelligent person can get something past idiots as rule-bound as that.

  38. 38.

    Comrade Mary

    I refuse to believe that Adam Savage has a tiny penis. This makes him an unreliable witness and I can completely ignore anything else he says.

    LALALA
    theplanewillnevertakeoff
    LALALA
    thosepolishedshieldswilltotallysettheshipsonfire
    LALALA

  39. 39.

    Comrade Mary

    God DAMN it, why can’t a woman type “pen1s” in the privacy of her own office during a work day? FYWP.

  41. 41.

    monkeyboy

    For those who couldn’t understand what the razors were for, he said “a double bladed foam carver”.

    I have yet to google one up but I assume it is a tool used by say a surfboard builder to shape the foam core before covering it in fiberglass and resin.

  42. 42.

    Bill H.

    I think the underwear bomber was probably designed for the bomb not to go off. If the bomb had gone off and the plane had gone down, we would not have known where the bomb was and would not be searching people’s underwear. Al Queda wanted us to know it was in the guy’s underwear, so that we would be more freaked out and would start searching people’s underwear, which is the only thing we weren’t already searching.

    Al Queda is sitting in Pakistan, or wherever, laughing their asses off right now watching all of this crap we are indulging in and all of the “what if that underwear bomb had gone off?” shit. They’re saying, “Those idiots will never figure out that we never had any intention of that fucking bomb going off,” and “Look at the hoops we are making those idiots jump through.”

    They don’t care about blowing up any airplanes, they just love freaking us out. And we let them.

  43. 43.

    Origuy

    @Nutella:
    Via BoingBoing, TSA’s position on photography:

    We don’t prohibit public, passengers or press from photographing, videotaping, or filming at screening locations. You can take pictures at our checkpoints as long as you’re not interfering with the screening process or slowing things down. We also ask that you do not film or take pictures of our monitors.

    Of course, their official position and what any given TSA employee thinks it is can vary considerably.

  44. 44.

    wesindc

    In March of 2010 unknowingly flew from Amsterdam to the US with one stop with a 20oz bottle of lamp oil that was packed in a candle I had purchased. I went through 3 check points during the trip and it was never even questioned. I’m sure if I had nail clippers on me I would have been detained!

  45. 45.

    ben

    @Winston Smith: I can beat that story. About ten years ago, in an earlier job as a Justice Dept. lawyer, I handled a case involving bid rigging at an Army ammunition plant. I needed some of the ammo for trial exhibits, and was given:
    1. A cluster bomb
    2. About a dozen machine-gun rounds with various color codes (to designate normal and tracer rounds, etc.), in a short length of machine-gun ammo belt.
    3. An armor-piercing anti-tank round with sabot (a casing which falls away when the round leaves the barrel of the gun firing it).

    These were all marked “inert,” but with the exception of fake propellant and explosives, the components were entirely real. My plan was to check my suitcase and thereby avoid sticky questions at the x-ray machine. As it turned out, I was late for my flight and decided to carry my suitcase on, forgetting what was inside. Got through with no questions asked.

    Granted, this was pre-TSA, but still.

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