The only person you’re hurting is yourself. If you are at the security checkpoint early enough, maybe you can get out of line and check a bag at the airline counter.
We usually have pre-check which works pretty good now but baggage is $25 each or was until we got the Delta card. I think I’ll be OK but I’ve never really enjoyed the hassle and being in a cramped tube for hours, thousands of feet in the air, and breathing everyone else’s used air. Not to mention they don’t let me drive. Hang loose and blue skies.
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I know what you mean. I travelled cross country two of the last three weeks. On the Left Coast I had a three hour drive from and to the airport. I just tried to keep a good attitude about it.
I’m 73 now and I finally learned to pick the battles you want to fight. For me, fighting TSA is a losing game. I don’t go to airports just for the hell of it, I go because I want to get somewhere. If TSA insists on checking my pockets I guess I have to decide, do I want to fly or do I want to take a train or not go at all if it’s overseas. For $80 you can sign up for TSA Precheck, and for $100 you can get Global Entry. Either way you get speedy security checking and you don;t have to strip naked to get through the metal detector. You decide.
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Since I travel a lot for work, my company paid for my TSA pre-check. The company that owns the TSA pre-check is right down the road from where I work. They also do 90% of all drivers licenses in the US - among many other things.
Roll it up really tight and then slam the pointed end into their throat.
Or if you want to do it the Batman villain way, you twist it into a rope, affix it to the ceiling, and suspend a cobra from it. Then you slowly drip water on it. The water will weaken the paper and after it breaks the cobra will land on the victim and bite him. You have to be sure and make the water drip really slow, though, to give the hero plenty of time to rescue the victim. It helps if you spend a lot of time explaining exactly what your diabolical plot is to give Batman more time to get there.
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I think you jest. You’re not old enough to have been in the OSS.
Was I too subtle in mentioning the Batman method? 
I would imagine the OSS did it by using the newspaper to hide the revolver.
I dunno, the guy I knew wouldn’t talk about his OSS training but he was dang good at unlocking desks and file cabinets that folks had lost their keys to.
Travelling in Europe… I was with my adult grandson traveling from Switzerland to Ireland when our carryons were x-rayed in Zurich, They called hin to the x-ray and asked him what this was.
He turned pale when he saw the outline of his 3" Swiss army knife. He opened his bag and handed it to them. The handed it back to him with a laugh and said Oh, that little thing.
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I had a digging knife in my checked bag going to Thailand. I use it for metal detecting, it’s knife shaped but not sharp at all. They searched my bag for it at the x-ray in shanghai, then I got sent to a little room for a more thorough search. They let me keep the digging knife but they took my lighters, even a USB lighter that just glows. None of the other airports questioned it except that one in China. I was glad I didn’t buy the long ceremonial sword I saw at a market in Thailand, they probably would’ve confiscated it. I wouldn’t bring even a tiny pocket knife in a carry on bag, you’re just asking for trouble.
Hi, shall we get back to cars? Thanks!
On topic and on time!
Back to cars and car driver licenses…
What I have observed and what others have pointed out with their comments is something a bit disconcerting to me…
There seems to be quite a bit of variation in scrutiny given by folks responsible for checking the I.D. of people applying for Real I.D. or enhanced licenses and folks responsible for checking I.D., folks like TSA officials.
My northern location has a small town Secretary of State/DMV/Tax Collector office that is kinda Mickey Mouse. One overly friendly clerk there has loudly said things like, “What have you got so many cars/boats for?” when I register vehicles and loudly, non-privately asked for my birth date and social security number while I’m being waited on. I was delayed being waited on once because she was ordering a load of home driveway gravel from a customer while he was getting a license.
The only thing I needed for a driver license was my birth certificate and expiring license. The clerk did call over another clerk to look at something. Do you suppose they are supposed to have a witness to keep rogue clerks from issuing licenses to friends that may not qualify?
And security at airports varies greatly. Some barely check anything and others drive you crazy. Little Sarasota/Bradenton airport is very fussy, a real pain. I don’t mind the scrutiny because it makes me safer, but what about other agents or locations that aren’t too fussy? Shouldn’t they all be alike in the level of scrutiny?
Does the Real I.D. and Enhanced License idea break down at certain Mickey Mouse locations? Does checking the I.D. break down by certain law enforcement agents and certain locations?
It seems to me that to keep people safe it should be quite difficult to obtain I.D. and then to use it, too.
What’s with the woman who recently boarded an airliner, with no boarding pass, (did she even have any I.D.?) and sat in somebody else’s assigned seat and acted belligerently. She was taken off the plane by security. How does this happen?
CSA
People make mistakes. That’s part of what makes us people. At least the airline caught her before the plane took off.
Right, but how does this happen?
It seems to be a big hole in the system. How many people go through that hole and how many actually fly?
CSA
Not many, since almost all flights are full. Even if they aren’t full, the flight attendants count passengers to make sure that the passenger count matches the scanned ticket count. The situation described above didn’t get to that last check, the extra passenger was discovered when the unticketed passenger was caught when the ticketed passenger demander her seat.
In this case, the unticketed passenger had to get past security check and ticket scanning at the gate. This might be possible by sneaking from the terminal into the baggage handling area, then onto the tarmac, up the ladder at the end of the jetway, and into the plane. There could be other ways. The bottom line is that she was caught and removed from the plane.
I’m having trouble formulating any reasonable thoughts on this whole thing. I guess the idea of an ID system is to verify who you are. I’m still thinking about the big picture and how that prevents anything? We do not restrict, arrest, or punish people for crimes that they MAY commit sometime in the future. Take a given population of regular law abiding folks and a certain percentage of them will end up as murderers. So just trusting people that up until today have been fine may not be the ultimate safe-guard. I agree though with that many jurisdictions and clerks involved, bound to be issues and outright fraud. Does it make sense to punish 99.9% of the flying public to try find the .1% that mean to blow us up? Maybe there are other ways.
I read a study once that claimed the criminal future of a person can be determined by looking at their first two years of life. Not all of course but a higher correlation between certain child hood events that shaped their future. Kind of like imprinting of ducks. Of course it would be never allowed to review a person’s child hood before giving them a pass to fly, especially for international travelers. Before we could get permission to go to Russia though, the Embassy did a thorough review that took a month. Maybe they did look at child hood events, who knows?
I think we do! Think Guantanamo, suspected terrorists etc.
These are enemy combatants. Same as if you are in the military and covered under the UCMJ.
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Granted you will not get a ticket for thinking of speeding in your car, you might for planning to steal cars or parts from a dealership.