The TSA

Seems as if the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) has managed to outdo itself, now detaining a 5-year old boy because - and I am not making this up - his name matched that of someone on the infamous "no-fly" list of potential terrorists and known criminals. Homeland Security really is Clueless Fuckhead Central isn't it?

I have always viewed the TSA as no more than a "bureaucratics dream" and very much a case of popping oversized locks on the stable door loooooooong after the horse had succesfully bolted (and flown a couple of planes into the WTC)

Of course Bush managed to undermine the TSA anyway, initially promising that it would always be a strictly government-owned organisation, then quietly flogging it off to the private sector thus compromising its integrity.

I don't have a problem with airline security as a protective concept, but the TSA simply goes too far, infusing all their employees with the "inhuman" gene, wherein they treat everyone coming through the gates as guilty criminals rather than innocent travelers. Their employees' utter lack of any personality is the reason flyers hate them as much as they do the other inconveniences of removing shoes, belts, clothing, etc just to walk onto an airliner. To arrest and detain a 5-year old is just one example of their "got a job to do" inflexible bullshit at work.

It's almost as if Dubya's Washington wants to control the people by making it difficult for us to leave, enter or move about the USA? As with a lot of other things in the past 7 years or so, it's no more than politics using fear, and yes, it grips my shit.