Baird Naked Ladies

It's an horrid pun, I know. But it's an equally horrid move on the part of our currently and conveniently-prorogued government-in-absence.

I'm talking about rushing 44 full body scanners into the nation's major airports at 250k per. All without having to dilly-dally with that trivial pack of jackals called 'Parliament'. A massive, $11 Million intrusion into our trousers all because of The Adventures of Captain Underpants on Christmas Day.

This is overreaction in the extreme. Captain Underpants, aka Junior Jihadi, was obviously a singularly screwed up individual with apocalyptic delusions of grandeur. The fact that he even imagined that the materiel he was transporting wouldn't be compromised by his own foul taint-sweat over the course of a five-hour flight is itself laughable.

Yet, the 'Free World' now has its knickers in a knot. So we're collectively ready to wade through former head of U.S. Homeland Security - now lobbyist/security consultant - Michael Chertoff's clients' 'radio-wave' technology because it's supposed to make us all feel a little bit better? I wonder how 'pliant and servile' looks in one of those things.

This seems like a shoddy, ill-thought out, purely reactionary move by the gov't in absence, i.e., 'We need to be seen to be doing Something. Anything'.

Would that it were. In fact, it would be more reassuring if it were. Unfortunately, from what news reports suggest, it seems like this has been in the works for a while. Cap'n Underpants is a just a convenient entree to the New New Reality.

The brutal totalitarians in the East used to keep people cowered with fear of the all-pervasive state. Our Pols just use the fear of dusky-hued dweebs with powder in their gonch. In other words, whoever 'ran' Cap'n Underpants won.

It's pathetic. This culture has to (apologies for the gender bias, but it's just an expression) 'man-up'

Kinda like those pro-active folks who took out Underpants on that plane did.

...

Body scanners amount to little more than 'security theater'. Terrorists will always find a way around our futile gestures. Wanna beat the metal detector? Go to Staples and buy a few utility knives (had anyone heard the term 'box-cutter' prior to 9/11?) If they're on to those, move to shoes. Now that you have everyone taking their Crocs off prior to departure, move to something even more innocuous - Water.

And now, underwear bombs.

You're far more likely to perish in an aviation related disaster from mechanical causes. The odds of dying in a car crash are far, far, far greater than dying in a terrorist attack. Hey, with 75,000 people dying every year in North America from falls, maybe we can declare a War on Gravity.

It would be more effective than the absurdity that is airport security. And now that lines snake for miles around our terminals, one can just imagine determined terrorists hitting those, and foregoing the increasingly impossible burden of air travel altogether.

Who knows, maybe some intrepid legalist will mount a charter challenge to these Rube Goldberg devices. The case may go nowhere, but at least the government will have to explain why they made this little maneuver while Parliament was dark.

Until then, the government wants to look at your junk.