Was ist los mit Große Schwester? (What's up with Big Sis?)

Man, it seems that the furor over the Gropenfürher sure died down quickly after Thanksgiving weekend. After the biggest travel weekend of the year, we've heard nary a peep about heavy-handed TSA tactics. I find this a bit curious and damn near suspicious.

Being government functionaries, I sincerely doubt that in 2 short weeks they've completely retrained everyone and stopped their overbearing Gestapo searches.

Oh, wait... that's because the Lamestream media is covering other things instead. Fickle and possessed of the attention span of a fruit-fly, they seem content to bring us things like Bill Clinton's triumphant return to be Obama's Dress-Stain Czar and Timmy Geithner's kidney stones.

But while we were otherwise distracted, whether by radicals rioting in London or by Democrats eating their own, the TSA continued to do stupid things.

Among these would be selecting the sari-clad Ambassador to the United States from India for a feel up pat-down. Nothing like causing an international incident by feeling up a foreign diplomat. Ambassador Meera Shankar, 60, was selected for a pat-down last weekend by a TSA screener at Mississippi's Jackson-Evers International Airport. In fact, this was the second time in 3 months Shankar was selected for a pat-down.

(Hey, TSA.....a sari is not a burka...oh, wait, you wouldn't check anyone in a burka; that might offend someone).

India has protested, and Shrillary Clinton said she'd look nto it but offered no immediate apology.

Former Playboy Playmate and Baywatch actress Donna D'Errico was singled out & forced to go through a full body scan at LAX. Golly gee, I wonder why? Everyone wanted to scope the hottie. When asked by D'Errico why she was being scanned, the screener said "Because you caught my eye.". D'Errico further stated that after the search she noticed that the agent who pulled her out to be scanned was smiling and whispering with two other TSA agents and glancing back at her.

Has the TSA really stopped anything with these Draconian searches? I mean, we seem to be finding all these airborne attacks by accident or through FBI setups and stings. Dude screws up setting his shoe on fire; now we have to take our shoes off in a germ-filled public place. Dude tries to mix liquids in-flight to make a bomb and fails; now we can't take anything more than an eyedropper with us and have to buy all new stuff at our destination that we can't bring back with us. Dude sets his underwear on fire and fails; and almost a year later we've got Holiday Gropefest 2010. It's all reaction, not proaction. They do something, botch it, and TSA scrambles to make life harder on everyone without PROFILING THE PEOPLE THAT DO THIS STUFF. Old ladies, babies, Playboy models, and amputees....but heavens forbid we pat down Muslims in burkas.

Dude fails to set his bomb off properly in Times Square, gets caught after an observant person on the street alerts authorities. Dude is a naturalized American citizen and a Muslim. Hmmmmm. Dudes send bombs disguised as printer toner cartridges and bombs are found by alert people overseas, not by TSA. Dude tries to blow up a tree lighting and fails; young Muslim from Kenya. FBI stings a dude (an American Muslim no less) trying to blow up a recruiting office. Instead of stopping terrorists, the TSA is terrorizing the general public.

TSA has about 60,000 employees, and today there are about 350 full-body scanners in operation in about 70 of our nation's airports, with about 1,000 expected to be operational by the end of 2011. All of this costs more that $10 per passenger per screening. (That doesn't count fees that airlines charge passengers for everything under the sun) That also means that those of us who pose no danger will be forced into enhanced scans at the airports that have them, but the terrorists will simply choose to begin their flights at airports that do not yet have those procedures or equipment. Reactive, not proactive.

Christmas weekend is coming kids. Expect more lines. Expect more delays. Expect to hear about the TSA again, because while the Blamestream Lamestream isn't saying anything, some of us are.

Make sure you address your TSA storm troopers by their proper ranks and titles. This handy chart will help you out; just click it to see it better and save it to your desktop.

Goin' on Staycation...

In a couple weeks, I get to take the first of my two weeks vacation for this year. For a week, I won’t have to get up at 2:30AM, I won’t have to swelter in a 100-degree dungeon surrounded by screaming machinery and the foul stench of hydraulic fluid, rotten milk, and diesel fumes, I won’t have to shout to be heard, and I won’t have to spend 8 hours a day wanting to beat a co-worker to death with a milk crate.

Where will I go on my vacation?

Will I go to the tourist Mecca of Orlando to follow the herds through the Disney and Universal Studios attractions? Will I go to Scotland and hike the Highlands like I’ve always dreamed? Will I bask in the sun on the white sands of a beach on Maui? Will I wrestle a kangaroo in the Australian Outback? Will I go back up to Maine and nibble on lobster as I watch the moose trample by?

Nope. I’m going on Staycation.

A what?

A staycation, according to several definition sources, is where one stays in the immediate vicinity of one’s home on holidays, ostensibly to just relax at home or to enjoy the sights and scenes in the local area that one may overlook during the year. I hasten to add to that & expand it to mean that the economy is so screwed that people just can’t afford to go anywhere or do much of anything that isn’t pretty cheap.

If I were to fly to Maine for a week in August, the flight (according to a quick check of Travelocity and the Roaming Gnome) could be done two ways. If we went from Charleston, SC to Bangor, ME it’s $729.00 per person, but if we went out of Atlanta (a six-hour drive) and flew into Boston (4 ½ hours from Bangor) it’s only $256.00 per person. By the same token, I checked directly with Delta’s website and it’s $757.00 per person to go Charleston to Bangor, and $228.00 from Atlanta to Boston. Now factor in a thousand dollars for the local-owned hotel (not even a name-brand hotel…those were $1400.00), and we’d need a car rental too. Call that $270.00 at Budget for the smallest thing on wheels.

Now, you have to show up 3 or 4 hours early for the strip search and shoe exam and retina scan and ID check for 5 forms of ID, and then you still get jacked extra money on top of your tickets for surcharges like aisle seat, window seat, or for having checked baggage. And you can only carry an eye-dropper full of any liquids in your carry-on bag. Forget about getting a snack or anything for free, either. Peanuts were outlawed in the Great Nut Allergy Crisis of the 1990’s, and possession of a nut or nut by-product is tantamount to smuggling a WMD onto the plane to murder all 300 passengers who may be allergic to nuts.

Conversely, the 1100 or so miles to Bangor from my place in Walterboro would take about 3 tanks of gas in our Saturn ION, with 13 gallons at $4.00 a gallon being $52.00 a tank for $156.00 in gas to drive the 18 hours up there, and about $40.00 in road & bridge tolls. Looks like it’d be cheaper to drive to Maine and spend 36 hours in the car.

And y’know, a week toodling around the coast of Maine (another tank or two) is still cheaper by far than dropping $71.00 a person for a single day pass to Disney (and another $71.00 to do Epcot), and $68.00 for Sea World, although Sea World has a special Flex Plan that allows you admission to six parks, including Busch Gardens and Universal Studios in addition to Sea World, for $280.00. Parking will cost another twenty or so bucks at each park. By comparison, Carowinds is a steal at 36 bucks a pop and 10 bucks to park if you buy the tickets online.

Oh, crap….you still have to EAT too. If you don’t mind bagels and fruit, you can scavenge at the hotel lobby before 9:00 to take care of breakfast, but call it three squares a day out on the town. Cha-CHING!

So, I’m staying home. Target shooting in the back yard is $13.00 for a box of 50 rounds of .45 caliber ammunition. A drive to the beach and back will cost me lunch and maybe ¼ tank of gas. A matinee at a movie isn’t so much providing you don’t partake of the $10.00 Jujube’s, $20.00 Coke, and $30.00 popcorn. I’ll sleep in. Sleeping in, well, that’s utterly priceless in and of itself, that rare commodity that I shall indulge in most decadently.

Actually, I oversimplify things. My stepson will be visiting from Arizona for the week, and we’ll be doing all sorts of things with him, including a day at the beach, a day at the movies, and possibly a trip to the zoo. But there’s always that other week I have stored up…