More Airport Insecurity

While Amsterdam was busy harassing me and forcing me to abandon my small bicycle tool kit at the airport in the name of national security, they allow on board someone who nearly blew up a plane last week.

I was able to take my tool kit on four earlier flights. The TSA says it's legal to take it on board in any event...yet, because our zero tolerance policy focuses security on white guys, white grandmas, nuns, priests, rabbis, paraplegics, asthmatics, and nursing mothers, they can't focus enough efforts on the most likely terrorists.

My odds, and frankly your odds, of dying at the hands of a terrorist are less than being struck and killed by lighting...yet we've spent over one trillion dollars, a million million dollars, fighting terror the world over and fighting white environmentalist bicyclists from packing a 2.5mm hex wrench on board flights. Since the state department has been keeping track since the 1960's, only 5,000 people have been killed by terrorists...as many by lightning. That many Americans are killing themselves each month on our roadways. The odds of either you or me dying by the hands of a terrorist are zero.

You know, in the end, this makes for fantastic blogging fodder. My house is nearly paid off, I have a fantastic recession-proof job, I'm outta debt -- I really couldn't give a rat's ass about how much you spend to fight phantom terrorists like me (carrying aboard a bicycle chain tool is the same as five pounds of Semtex according to TSA). I pay my taxes happily and wouldn't be bothered if I have to pay more for your happy shit to save Our Way Of Life From Terror. If you so choose to allocate a trillion dollars to prevent another 5,000 people from dying while ignoring the more obvious such as spending a tenth of that to get almost all our assholes off the roadways, well, that's your prerogative.

I will sit back and have a lot to blog about in twenty ten. I will be publishing my 2010 forecast shortly.