Within the superb age of the Kamala Ascendency, the TSA is now not restraining its contempt for American vacationers. After squeezing thousands and thousands of butts and boobs and by no means catching a terrorist, TSA determined to have enjoyable by taunting its victims.
After a traveler requested on-line, “Why does TSA need social media anyways?” TSA’s Instagram account taunted: “Idk Kyle, why do your friends keep bringing stuff they shouldn’t in their carry-on?” Virtually 40,000 folks appreciated that put up (barely fewer than the entire variety of TSA workers).
The TSA Instagram staff added one other smack at vacationers who didn’t dedicate their lives to pleasing federal brokers: “You see how we don’t have 20 different things shoved in our pockets before airport security? Very cutesy, very demure.” Clearly, any American who doesn’t method a TSA checkpoint stripped down like a convict coming into a jail bathe bears all of the blame for no matter issues he causes.
TSA officers pirouetted as if that they had the ethical excessive floor. However TSA has perennially relied on idiotic seizure statistics in lieu of competently defending the American public.
A 2003 TSA press launch proudly introduced that it had “intercepted more than 4.8 million prohibited items at passenger security checkpoints in its first year, contributing to the security of the traveling public and the nation’s 429 commercial airports.” TSA chief James Loy bragged to a congressional committee: “We have identified, intercepted, and therefore kept off aircraft more than 4.8 million dangerous items.”
Besides that TSA is Idiocy Incarnate. Each fingernail clipper that the TSA seized from a hapless grandmother turned proof that the federal authorities is defending folks higher than ever. TSA checkpoint seizures included frying pans, dumbbell units, horseshoes, and toy robots—all of which presumably would have been used to hold out suicidal hijackings. Covert authorities assessments confirmed TSA screeners have been totally inept at detecting firearms and mock bombs.
I’ve been snared by TSA’s altering and boneheaded guidelines for cigar cutters. In 2018, I used to be flying out of Washington Nationwide Airport, heading to a Mises convention. A slack-jawed TSA dweeb got here up after my checkpoint screening and he gleefully introduced: “Your bag triggered an alarm—we have to search it.”
I adopted him to a particular space off to the facet for bag searches. The dude begins going by my bag, pushing underwear and socks and a lonely necktie apart however discovering no Uzis. Then, in one of many bag’s facet flaps, this aspiring Sherlock Holmes reached in and plucked out a grave hazard to secure aviation.
“You aren’t allowed to take cigar cutters on carry-on,” he introduced with the air of an elementary faculty cafeteria monitor catching a child who filched an additional donut.
“TSA’s website says explicitly that cutters are allowed on carry-on.” I had accomplished my due diligence pre-flight. This explicit cutter was an affordable plastic machine with two tiny medal blades that sliced collectively like a guillotine.
“Uh… no. You aren’t allowed to take this onboard.”
“TSA at other airports has never prohibited cigar cutters.”
“We have strict rules here. It doesn’t matter what the rules are at other airports.”
“What harm could it do?”
“It has a sharp edge.”
“Do you think I’m going to use it to break into the cockpit and circumcise the pilot?”
He simply stared and stored respiratory by his mouth.
I threw up my arms: “Fine—take it—I have a flight to catch.”
After getting out of sight of that checkpoint, I popped open my carry-on bag and confirmed that the TSA wizard missed my back-up cigar cutter.
No shameless emotional string-pulling could be full with no canine cameo. On Monday, [8/26], TSA introduced the winner of its 2024 Cutest Canine Contest Winner—a canine named Barni who sniffs within the San Francisco airport.
However TSA failed to say the position that its canines have in plundering any traveler who’s caught with greater than $5,000 in money—the magic threshold for feds contemplating cash “suspicious.” Most American forex has micro-traces of narcotics, and a stack of payments normally suffices for a constructive alert from a drug sniffing canine—thus entitling the feds to commandeer the money. Dan Alban, a savvy Institute for Justice legal professional, noticed: “This is something that we know is happening all across the United States. We’ve been contacted by people who have been traveling to buy used cars or buy equipment for their business and had their cash seized.”
If TSA needs to set a report for social media likes, it ought to craft a meme with a Monty Python-style witch drowning as an instance TSA’s devotion to the Fifth Modification and personal property rights.
However TSA is positively gloating these days over its newest high-profile seizure marketing campaign. “Peanut Butter is a liquid. We said what we said,” declared the TSA Twitter account final week, sounding like Moses on Mt. Sinai asserting a complement to the Ten Commandments. And since TSA claims that peanut butter is a liquid, it might probably successfully confiscate any jar it sees folks have in carry-on baggage. TSA’s Instagram account final week posted a photograph of the U.S. Olympic staff within the rain on a ship and labeled it, “TSA’s social media team on our way to explain why peanut butter is a liquid.” TSA provided mock heroics in lieu of frequent sense.
I bought snared by that bone-headed rule once I was flying out of Dallas final November. After the x-ray sounded an alert, a beefy younger feminine agent hoisted my bag and carted it to the tip of the checkpoint space. She summoned me to elucidate its contents and my depravity. “Is there anything sharp in this bag?”
“No,” I replied.
She unzipped my bag and started pawing by it. In lieu of a machete, she discovered a small half-full jar of peanut butter. “You can’t take liquids on a flight,” she introduced solemnly.
“It’s peanut butter. It’s not liquid.”
“It’s liquid and it’s prohibited,” was her decree. Did TSA covertly classify peanut butter as a bioweapon, or what?
“Ya, whatever,” I stated as I deserted the jar to federal custody. I’d had worse losses on earlier journeys.
Chatting with one other jaded traveler as I put my boots again after clearing the Dallas checkpoint, he requested if I used to be upset about dropping my peanut butter.
I smiled: “I’ll settle accounts with TSA later.”
Loads of irate vacationers settled accounts with TSA on Twitter after it posted its pompous decree on peanut butter as a liquid.
@gaborgurbacs replied, “You can demonstrate it by drinking a bottle. Post the video.” @la_smartine retorted, “You meant ‘is a bomb’. You’re welcome.”
@amitylee13 groused, “Your agency has exceeded its expiration date, unlike my peanut butter you stole from me.”
@_GlenGarry tweeted, “Peanut Butter won’t invade your privacy or assault you in public spaces.”
@ErikVoorhees replied, “Thanks for keeping Americans safe from peanut butter.”
@BecketAdams scoffed that TSA was “a permanent DMV for airports staffed by peanut butter-drinking perverts.”
@DrCarolLow warned, “They’ll steal your yogurt as well.”
@NHpilled snarked, “No wonder you guys have failed 90-95% of your b0mb tests.”
Some Twitter customers thumped the arbitrariness of the rule—since folks can load as a lot peanut butter as they please onto a sandwich and march unmolested by TSA checkpoints. As @thisone0verhere scoffed, “Peanuts are not [liquid] so I will see you and my new portable food processor on my next flight.”
The newest controversies are a reminder of the deluge of substitute company names for that TSA acronym—“Too Stupid for Arby’s,” “Tear Suitcase Apart,” “Thousands Standing Around,” “Take Scissors Away,” “Total Sexual Assault,” “They Steal Anything,” “Tactics to Suppress Accountability,” and “Three Stooges Audition.”
If TSA’s social media staff needs to be marginally much less ineffective, they need to sponsor a contest for higher substitute names for TSA.
