Congressman says TSA's Pistole needs to go

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75698.html

First Time I've anyone say this!

Time for a nice letter to Broun.

 

Not gone. Thrown into the sea tied to a big anchor. Putz.

other than that correction, great to have you on board, congressman!

 

Make it the marianas trench so his head and hollow organs implode at about 2000'...Then he will be human jerky for the bacteria and animals at that death.

 

And so it begins - at last!

 

(Forgive my transgression of posting "over there" before coming here. My excuse: it's easy to forget the ".org"...

Some interesting quotes:

Mica agrees, sort of...

It would be nice if a Democrat or two agreed with these two Republicans.

And, of course, the TSA Spokeshole was quick to respond:

One observation: Isn't the statement I bolded just what a team owner says about 24 hours before firing the head coach?

Getting rid of Pissy won't solve a thing. But, at least we would have the satisfaction of knowing we helped take him down. No other government agency would hire him (which has been the track record of every single senior TSA manager since the beginning of time), so I would expect him to wind up in the Chertoff Group somewhere.

 

TSA chief John Pistole must go
by BILL FISHER on APRIL 28, 2012

 

Good article Bill.

We need to keep focus on the fact that DHS as a whole is a very troubled group. Seems Secretary Napolitano is so far in over her head that she has little understanding of why there are problem, especially those problems at TSA.

We are only a few short months from national elections, many of us have Members of Congress running for office and we all have a President to choose.

In my mind TSA is an election year issue and if I don't hear the right stuff from my candidates I will not vote for these people. It is up to us to force the TSA issue, to keep TSA matters in the public eye, to require our representatives or those who wish to be elected to address the problem that TSA is.

At every mention of TSA try to associate your Congressional Representatives, the President, and those political appointees that are responsible for the TSA Mess!

 

Just keep in mind that what they might say bears no relation to what they'll do.

 

I feel it is important to turn up the heat of those running for office. Let them explain to the public how TSA Child Abuse can go unanswered for.

Then we must keep in mind that Napolitano has Gun Running, Secret Service Misconduct, and TSA to answer to just for starters.

 

O/T, but "secret service misconduct" -- well, as I put it in an email to friends:

"So the Secret Service patronizes hookers. Gee, ya think??? Why, I'm shocked, shocked, I say! ​

Over-privileged, militarily trained, testosterone-poisoned men whooping it up with prostitutes?? Who woulda thunk it?"​

 

Have fun w/ that Nappy. Tick tick tick...

 

Really. In other countries prostitutes are provided at government expense for the protective service.

 

WRT to Mica, my impression is that he wants more than just Pistole gone. He said that just cutting off the head isn't sufficient, that the problems run deeper than Pistole. Hopefully he wants Pistole and all of the top staff gone. Sounds like a plan to me.

If I was in the Romney campaign, I'd make this an issue and lay blame at Obama's feet. That would provide him some impetus to get this fixed before November.

 

Romney's "Security Advisory Team" makes him unelectable in my book. There will still be some stooges who vote for him, though.

 

I know Kip Hawley has a book coming out and that his comments about TSA missteps and incompetence are mostly for book promotion. But - the timing. If something is going down with Pistole, Hawley surely knows about it and may want to capitalize on it? Maybe he wants his old job back? Maybe it's just coincidence....

You never know. If they're willing to make Pistole the sacrificial lamb perhaps this is the (somewhat) face-saving way to get rid of the scanners. The next person in the job can blame it all on Pistole, remove the scanners and move to some saner method of screening.

The reason why I'm thinking this is because of the barrage of bad media on the TSA recently. The TSA is hated, hated, hated. And it's an election year. Maybe the Administration is thinking that a sacrifice is needed in order to keep the TSA in its current state. And yeah, I noticed the “The Secretary and the Administration have the utmost confidence in Mr. Pistole's leadership and his commitment to ensuring the safety of all Americans.” language too.

Who knows. Maybe I'm over-analyzing - it wouldn't be the first time.

 

Fine if they get rid of Pistole -- better than fine -- but that's obviously not enough. The scanners have to go. And I don't think the multi-billion-dollar "security" industry is going to take that lying down. And the gropes have got to go.

 

The scanners, by virtue of their existence alone at the checkpoints, forced the grotesque assaulting pat downs. Getting rid of them will greatly reduce if not eliminate the pat downs, except in very specific and limited instances. That is unless the a$$holes in Washington decide to regulate the TSA on top of changing the leadership.

 

The industry isn't going anywhere, that much is certain. The way it gets carried out is up for grabs, no pun intended.

Fundamentally, the industry doesn't benefit from having 60,000 high school dropouts groping kids and looking in bags. The big money is in high tech workers and systems, not relatively cheap nudie scanners and peep booth operators.

If they wake up and realize that they could clean up using risk analysis systems based on basic pax information, no one would notice them and they could charge a fortune.

 

I'm afraid that's one of the excuses buried in CISPA.

I'm still all for being a grown-up and accepting a certain amount of risk in life. We have preached risk assessment out the wazoo and proven it with hard numbers, yet as we know, most people simply don't want to see it. TSA apologists and naysayers and cowards don't want to see it. They don't care about facts. So I don't know where we're going to end up in this country. It doesn't look good.

A huge problem is also that the Rubicon has been crossed. People have shown -- they demonstrate it every day -- that they're willing to be groped and assaulted to get on a plane. They're willing to sacrifice their own children, for god's sake. The powers-that-be now know that. We all know it. How do we dial it back? The willingness to dial it back has to come from ordinary people, from the people at large. That's the only way. And right now, we ain't there.

Maybe they'll surprise me, though. Maybe they'll wake up.

 

The physicist in the Goldberg reply article nailed it. Most folks don't fly or fly rarely enough that they don't care.

It's an adventure for them, the "I didn't get groped" brag on FB, like it's a joke. When it does hit home they're stunned and find out it wasn't as funny as they thought. How many times have we seen that play out in the stories?