In a time of chimpanzees, I was a penguin.
The religious right is motivated by the suspicion that someone, somewhere,
is having fun -- and that this must be stopped.
Are you going to believe the reports of dozens of outraged women who say they have been inappropriately groped by male TSA employees at airport checkpoints? Or are you going to believe Mister Officer Friendly of the TSA, who says they're all liars? Gosh, our government would never lie to us, right? Right?!
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Ground rules: Comments that consist solely of insults, fact-free talking points, are off-topic, or simply spam the same argument over and over will be deleted. The penguin is the only one allowed to be an ass here. All viewpoints, however, are welcomed, even if I disagree vehemently with you.
WARNING: You are entitled to create your own arguments, but you are NOT entitled to create your own facts. If you spew scientific denialism, or insist that the sky is purple, or otherwise insist that your made-up universe of pink unicorns and cotton candy trees is "real", well -- expect the banhammer.
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Just like they would never lie to us about an ICBM shooting into the stratosphere off Catalina Island. Who are going to believe, the government or your lying eyes?
ReplyDeleteExactly! And my lying eyes saw an airplane descending towards me from high altitude. The contrail is the big clue there -- we've had very windy weather off the Pacific coast of California over the past few days, and if the contrail had been at low altitude, it would have blown away rapidly. Instead it hung around for the entire video.
ReplyDeleteBut then, I lived under an airport runway for close to a decade and watched aircraft descending from high altitude regularly, so I know what I'm seeing when I see such things. I suspect if I were an ordinary civilian who rarely looked at such things, I'd "see" a missile launch too... just as I saw UFO's as described in the UFO reports regularly on hazy evenings, which were actually landing lights of aircraft coming in for a landing, which became clear when said aircraft roared a few hundred feet above my head and made my apartment shake ;). (The landing lights are directional, so as the stacked planes came in the lights would seem to hover as a disk in mid-air and move in semi-random directions as the beams hit the haze in the air).
- Badtux the Helpful Penguin
The argument is raging over this at a site I visit, a former TSA employee calling everyone "mistaken" (read "liar") and swearing to governmental heaven that no woman is EVER patted down by a male.
ReplyDeleteMy eyes rolled under the desk so many times....
@ Labrys: Huh. Last time I flew, I got patted down by a male TSA employee when they decided my hoodie was too bulky for their scanners to work properly - and I'm sure as hell female. He did use the backs of his hands (I understand that now they're using palms and fingers) and only checked my ribs, belly and down by my knees...not that the hoodie was long enough to go down to my knees, so what was up with that?
ReplyDeleteBut you're just a civilian, so you're too stupid to be able to tell the gender of the TSA employee who is patting you down. Why, it might have been one of the Bieben from LesbiansWhoLookLikeJustinBieber.com, and you simply lack the training to tell that they're not as male as Justin Bieber :). Remember, our TSA employees are highly trained -- why, most of them even have a whole four hours of training -- so they know better than you untrained civilians, and if they say that the person patting you down was actually a transgender or butch lesbian rather than male, why, who are we going to believe -- you, or the fine upstanding highly trained personnel at the TSA?!
ReplyDelete- Badtux the Tongue-in-cheek Penguin
And oh, the chocolate ration is being raised to 20 grams this week. If somehow you misremember the chocolate ration being 30 grams last week, report yourself to Big Brother for thoughtcrime, citizen!
ReplyDelete- Badtux the Orwellian Penguin
RAndom? The TSA ex would like you to know that your story is not real evidence and is merely "anecdotal" in nature. Yeah, she said that.
ReplyDeleteMy eyes are still fuzzy from the rolling.
Oh, dear. You're right - I am just an untrained civilian after all, what do I know? Guess I'd better head on down for reprocessing- er, uh, 'retraining', so I don't make mistake Comrade-Sister for Comrade-Brother again! ...Or have we dispensed with gender entirely as of this week? My civilian brain can't remember....
ReplyDelete*cough*
That's the spirit! Thank you for properly embracing doublethink, citizen, it's doubleplusgood! Remember: War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength. And Big Brother loves you and wants only the best for you.
ReplyDelete- Badtux the 1984+26 Penguin
Bieben is the plural of Bieber? Jeez, I would have died in such ignorance, had I not learned this. (But might I have died happier?
ReplyDeleteSo glad you're aiming some snark at the TSA. I've mobilized my entire aresenal of pedantry against those shock troops of fascism this week. I'm hoping we're at the start of a real groundswell, though knowing America's sheeple, I'm not holding my breath.