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Weekly Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country of West Texas

Opinion

Friday, September 7, 2007

Smokey Briggs

Sage Views

By Smokey Briggs

Flying the friendly
skies, again

It had been awhile since I flew the friendly skies. Flying close on the heels of 9/11 felt like being trapped in a grade-B Orwellian movie about bureaucracy gone horribly mad.

But, I needed to make some time the other day, so I bought a ticket; four tickets actually, since Dixie is young enough to ride in mom or dadÕs lap for free.

I figured that six years later, the idiocy I had witnessed as the government stuck all ten fingers into air travel security surely had smoothed out a bit.

I am sad to report that such is not the case. Air travel today is a bigger exercise in mass stupidity than it was in the first couple months after 9/11.

The list of silly things I cannot take on a plane is longer, the room-temperature IQ dolts playing with the x-ray machine are permanently entrenched, and Americans are becoming very good at being herded around like irresponsible and defenseless sheep.

Now, if I really thought that any of this sheep herding was doing even a little bit of good Ðmaybe I would shut up. But, it is not.

A semi-smart dog could sneak stuff past the government employees with the wands and x-ray machine nine out of ten tries. You do not have to watch the process for long to figure this out.

Getting caught the tenth time deters decent people from trying. I doubt it is a serious deterrent to Muhammad Whakjob. As She-who-must-be-obeyed and I submitted to the silliness she suggested that getting a weapon through just would not be that tough.

ÒIf they wanted to test this, they ought to have a contest. Tell a bunch of high school kids that the first one to get a weapon through security gets a new Mustang GT,Ó SWMBO said.

So I started looking about. The list of weapons and methods got long pretty quick, and IÕm not really criminally minded. Ever hear of ceramic blades? They make whole knives out of the stuff. You can buy a nice one for less than $100. Tape it to the inside of your thigh and, as Dixie Jo would say, ÒTa da.Ó As least until you stepped into the can and ripped the tape loose. Something else might escape my lips at that point.

No metal detector will pick up ceramic and so far we are not being stripped searched.

Notice I said so far.

As we continue to react to each moronic incident it will get worse. We will be flying naked before this is over.

Half the folks on the plane wore flip flops because now we have to take our shoes off Ð all because one twit put some plastic explosives in his shoes and tried to light them on fire with a match.

Notice he did not have the metallic blasting cap necessary to really make a good bang.

But, now we take our shoes off. Of course, they call it plastic explosives because you can play with it like play dough. You can ball it up, make a cute little gopher, whatever.

Wonder if I could make a pair of skivy drawers out of some? All the computers had to be turned on. But that is all. Like having a power supply hooked to a motherboard some how precludes a quarter-pound of C-4 being molded into the space where the cd-rom drive used to be. Yeah right.

A blasting cap and the juice from the internal battery run through a capacitor or some such eletro-do-dad and boom, everybody on board gets to beat the ambulance to the crash scene.

A creative person could come up with a laundry list of interesting ways to take something prohibited on board.

Then there are the thousands of dollar/hour workers tossing bags and cleaning out the toilettes on the jets.

Even third-world fly farms nations have millions of dollars to throw at a terrorist operation. Do you think they cannot find a guy or two who will plant a couple of pistols on a plane for $100,000?

Yeah, me neither.

What it comes down to is this: If some dirty-bedshirt-wearing heathen really is willing to die to get a weapon on a plane, and maybe spend a million bucks doing it, he probably will succeed.

Of course, that horse is so far out of the barn heÕs in the next county now. I doubt the most retarded terrorist on earth is interested in highjacking a plane and trying to use it as a flying bomb.

Why?

Because, if the crazed passengers do not beat him to death with their flip flops, an Air Force fighter jockey is going to vaporize the jet mighty fast.

No jet, no bomb.

So, the only reason to highjack a jet is to try to get them to fly you to Casablanca or someplace for free and then, you still get an air-to-air missile in the tailpipe for your troubles, if you survive the crazed beating from 50 metrosexual-looking dudes with flip flops.

What it comes down to is that we are flying like nearly naked sheep, hurdling massive and growing layers of government stupidity that are not effective in the first place, paying huge sums in tax money for the privilege, and all to prevent something that simply is not going to happen again.

You want to prevent another 9/11?

Issue every passenger a shiv as they board.

Do that and I would not even fly with a guy named Jack for fear I would say, ÒHi Jack,Ó and promptly be drained of blood by wild-eyed old ladies and balding guys in blue blazers.

Anything else is just mass delusion Ñ and good training to play a bit part in a grade-B Orwellian movie about government gone tyrannically mad.

Maybe weÕre auditioning.

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