The other night I made it a point to stay up a little later than I normally do in order to watch the Comedy Central Roast of Donald Trump.
Given that we are still in the first week of the daylight savings time offensive, staying up late was not the smartest of moves on my part.
During the annual “spring forward”, it typically takes me a few weeks to acclimate to the shift. Until the adjustment is complete, my waking hours provide additional time where I’m just plain bleary eyed and stupid.
Speaking of bleary eyed and stupid, I should take this moment to discuss America’s newest idiot savant, sans the savant part.
Among all of the “fish out of water” roasters which have appeared on these celebrity roasts, none have phoned in such a colossal fail as “The Situation” did to Trump and the rest of the dais.
As much as I feel compelled to inform you, one of the most educated blog readers on the web, who or even what the hell “The Situation” is, I won’t go beyond four words. New Jersey Doosh Bag.
As I’ve stated before, I spell that word that way in order to avoid conveying the point that the statements or opinions of the subject in which I assign the term “doosh bag” are capable of holding water. Maintaining literal accuracy in my metaphors is very important to me.
Let’s move away from the epitome of New Jersey Doosh Bags. The thought of even dedicating this much web space to such a display of idgitry (that’s a word; I just made it up) is purely ridiculous.
Let’s talk about how the U.S. government abuses us. No, I’m not talking about Obamacare and its assault on several elements within the Bill of Rights which insure our freedoms. Nor am I breaching the discussion of the populist rhetoric which fuels progressive taxation.
Legislation which tells us what light bulbs we can use in our dwelling is not really on order for today’s discussion.
Instead, I’m going to dedicate yet more web space to the security screenings which we encounter in the airports today.
“I don’t mind it. I just want to be safe.”
That’s probably the stupidest utterance I’ve heard throughout this debate. The prospect of subjecting oneself to government sanctioned nude photography and/or aggressive groping under the banner of fighting the creativity of terrorism is ridiculous.
If you’ll allow the government to treat you that way when you travel, then why don’t you just present yourself to that type of treatment all of the time? Strip down and let those in authority in the immediate vicinity take nekid pictures of you. If you don’t want the picture taken, let them grope you. The Lord only knows if there’s some radical jihadist in the area wanting to blow the joint up. Ignore them and make sure you pose no threat.
Ben Franklin said it a little more succinctly:
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
“Well geez, Randy. Why are you bringing this stuff up again? Didn’t you hash this out in November when the new rules went into place?”
That’s what you’re probably thinking right now, isn’t it?
Yes, I did hash if out back then. In fact, one of the pieces climbed its way to the top of all of the verbal brilliance you’ve read here on Tharpster.org as the most read post I’ve ever produced. Given that it’s only been around for four of the twenty month life of the site, I consider the piece to be a staff favorite.
The unique thing about that piece is that I wrote it as a gag news article revolving around a poignant current event. “Man farts on TSA agent during enhanced pat down procedure.” How could a story under that premise go wrong?
So far, it hasn’t. Granted, searches for flatulent pat down victims haven’t gotten readers to the story as much as very simple search terms like “pat down” or “TSA pat down.”
This does my heart good, and I’ll tell you why. It’s not because the hits bring more readership to my blog. Instead, my heart is warmed by the fact that people haven’t become complacent with the government’s assault on our privacy, our genitalia, or our desired privacy for our genitalia. This was one of my original fears about the practice when it was instituted. Those speaking out against it would eventually shut up, and the government would go about doing what it shouldn’t be doing.
The mere fact that people are still searching it out on the web is a good thing. I would love to see Congress take aggressive action on the policy and get rid of it. Frankly I don’t believe they’re moving fast enough or aggressively enough on getting rid of Obamacare. That’s a whole different rant though.
With regard to the two articles I wrote about the enhanced pat downs, I received an interesting request the other day. It came by way of a blog comment which is currently waiting for me to moderate it. The comment author is a blogger, and requested that I remove the picture of a pat down which I had featured in the two articles.
Uuuummmmm, what? Why on God’s green Earth would I want to do that?
Copyright infringement appears to be the compelling reason.
Upon performing a cursory search on the ole Google machine, I found an outfit named Righthaven (pronounced: rat bas-terds) which has taken to abusing the court system by suing the britches off of bloggers such as myself for using pictures lifted off of the internet. They presumably own the rights to various electronic media, including the photo in question, and didn’t provide the necessary expressed written consent to the blogosphere to share a depiction of the crime scene.
According to links provided to me by a concerned blogger out of North Carolina, Righthaven filed suit against him for using the same exact photo of a TSA pat down that I used back in November. They just filed suit without even making a request for him to remove the picture.
The blogger went so far as to offer to go to the airport, get a pat down and have a photo taken just so I could continue to provide photographic evidence in my original article.
If that should happen, it’s not because I’ve sanctioned it.
I’m not interested in darkening the door of any airport which uses those scanners anytime soon. At the same time, I will not encourage anyone to do so on my account.
There is currently an effort in the Texas state legislature to outlaw the enhanced pat down and the back scanning machines. I applaud and support that effort, and hope its fruit spreads nationwide.
“Well what about the terrorists? Do you want them to win? Do you want them to get through the security and carry out their mission?”
You didn’t just ask me that did you?
Who’s to say they haven’t won already?
Do you realize that among the many reasons they hate us, one of the biggest ones is that we are free? Has that not occurred to you? Yet still, our own government continues to take steps to limit our freedom in order to keep things under control. Does that make sense?
I’ve already provided a suggestion for stopping terrorists who hide explosives on their body, specifically when they do it in their underwear. I’ll take a crotch sniffing dog any day over a TSA agent who gets paid to play grab-ass.
Where the picture is concerned, know this.
This site is not commercial. I don’t use advertising, and I still haven’t found a good gullible venture capitalist with deep pockets to invest heavily in TharpSter.Org. As such, I have not derived any financial gain for having the picture posted here. Furthermore, I’m not of the belief my use of the picture will cause irreparable harm to the print media and their assorted websites. If they want to find out where said harm is coming from, they have nowhere to look other than that which spews from their cavernous cranial cavities and their ongoing desires to choose up sides.
The picture will still be featured.
Easy as that.
