My wife had a pretty good idea yesterday...

[Odysseus]

Boots cost money.

If you want talent, you have to pay for it or convince altruistic people that it is a calling.

Teacher, military, firefighter, police, priesthood, ect can easily be sold as a calling. TSA, not so much.

Oh, I don't know... Any job can be made to sound attractive:

Scene 1: Interior, a major US airport. A spectacular blond traveler is talking to a dumpy, slightly balding, middle-aged TSA Screener. The Screener turns to the camera.

Screener

You know, a few years ago, if I'd tried to talk to a hottie like this, she'd have thrown her drink in my face and walked away laughing. Let's face it, I'm not much to look at, I barely made it through high school. College? Get real. And the military makes you get up way too early. I was looking at counter work at Kinko's or flipping burgers for the rest of my life. But then, a buddy of mine turned me on to the Transportation Safety Administration.

Screener
Glances over his shoulder at the blond traveler, who is looking at her watch and getting impatient.

They gave me a test that a five-year-old could have passed, and the training? Man, Helen Keller could find more stuff than we do. Now, I can detain first class travelers, keep them waiting, grope the better looking ones, and even save images of them from the scanner. You know, the kinds of people that used to look down their noses at me when they were pulling down A's and B's while I was getting stoned behind the gym. I can take out every frustration that I ever had, and you can too.

Text: 1-800-GROPING appears on screen. Behind Screener, two teenaged TSA screeners, Beevis and Butthead, begin to pat down the blond traveler, who stands there and takes it.

Screener

Just call the number on the screen, and you can put your hands over anybody that passes through your station. That's 1-800-476-7464, or if you can't remember that, just dial 1-800-GROPING.

Scene 2: Close on Screener as blond is dragged off behind him. He raises his hands into frame to show that he is snapping a rubber glove on:

Screener

TSA: It's not just a job, it's a filthy job. The filthiest job that you'll ever love.

Screener
Winks to camera

It's party time.

Scene 3: Screener follows Beavis and Butthead as they drag the blond traveler to a curtained screening area. Fade to black.

[Starbuck]

Well, it did fine job of moving the some out of the trailer park. Unfortunately, you can't remove the trailer park from their mentality. But hey, at least they have a badge and a uniform.

As James Carville said, "You would be surprised what you can catch if you drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park."

[Odysseus]

Right after 9/11, when the airlines were hurting, I thought that it would be a good idea for the federal government to make a bulk purchase of prepaid airline tickets for use by government travelers (it would have been a massive cash infusion at a time when they needed it, and it would have provided a means for the federal government to put the second part of my idea into operation. The DOD could have taken some of those tickets and made them available at a discount to military personnel, provided they were willing to undergo counter-terrorism training, fly in uniform and carry a taser or other non-lethal weapon on the flight. Flights would have been in a Permissive TDY status, with no expense to the government, so the cost of putting a uniformed person on the flight would have been limited to the discount on the ticket. Anybody think that the flying imams would have tried anyting with a few Soldiers seated next to them?

[Stoic]

Interesting thought, but the catch is this: the military personnel we're talking about--the best and brightest of those who have gotten out--would probably want nothing to do with the job.

I mean really, look at it. The TSA is there NOT to actually catch anyone: it's just a show. "Look at how diligent we are. It's impossible to get a weapon/bomb/whatever past us." When, in reality, if you wanted to do such a thing, there are a million better ways to do so than by trying to smuggle it through airport screening, most of which the TSA couldn't touch.

So yeah. Pointless, for-show jobs REALLY don't appeal to military types.

[Novaheart]

couple of things there ape... YOU'RE MARRIED!?!?

why would you saddle our returning vets with such a lack luster job? TSA requires inhale/exhale, that's it....
keeping the dregs employed keeps them off the streets.

if our government would kindly get out of the way, we could easily get the employment rate where it should be.

The CEO of major corporations jobs are already taken? Around here we have vets who work in all sorts of jobs from lawn services to call centers. I bristle a bit when someone takes a shot at a category of honest work.

I think that offering the TSA jobs to vets is a wonderful idea, at least we would have much less reason to suspect that the worker is actually keeping track of something and reporting it back to his imam. But what makes a person think that these people aren't vets?

[AmPat]

I suggest we get rid of the bloated and nearly useless TSA. We should have a set of minimum regulations for airline security and have a gutted TSA as oversight only with a cap on budget and manning. They should be big enough to inspect airports and be located centrally. The airports should be allowed to get their own security in place under those guidelines. There is no reason to dump Billions into a bloated government agency that delivers sub-par performance at taxpayer expense when private jobs could be generated overnight.

[Odysseus]

We need to merge the TSA with the Susan Komen Foundation, so that even if they don't catch any terrorists, they can at least check for lumps.

[m00]

You know returning veterans might wanna take their job seriously. That is ... w/o being manipulated for the sake of some leftist clowns ideological utopian dreams. They might take exception to some of the hair brain ideas. And they might actually give a crap about the diff between profiling for terrorists and just treating every American equally like the shit end of a stick. Like what our CIC and the First Wookie marxist appear to be.

Wow, really? I'm speaking as someone who pretty much stood alone on conservative message boards against the Patriot Act and the TSA and Homeland Security, and all these erosion of civil liberties that occurred under the Bush administration. I heard time and time again from self-proclaimed conservatives throughout 8 years of Bush that being hassled at airports and border checkpoints, being subjected to all sorts of intrusive procedures and having severe restrictions placed on freedoms was nothing to be afraid of unless you were a terrorist. And, in fact, anyone who suggested otherwise was probably a terrorist themselves.

So if you want to blame someone for Americans being treated like the "shit end of a stick" at airports, blame Bush and the Republican cowards serving in Congress during his administration, and to a lesser degree the Democrat cowards for not being a viable opposition party. And all the Republican voters that went along with it, and toed the party line.

[Janice]

Wow, really? I'm speaking as someone who pretty much stood alone on conservative message boards against the Patriot Act and the TSA and Homeland Security, and all these erosion of civil liberties that occurred under the Bush administration. I heard time and time again from self-proclaimed conservatives throughout 8 years of Bush that being hassled at airports and border checkpoints, being subjected to all sorts of intrusive procedures and having severe restrictions placed on freedoms was nothing to be afraid of unless you were a terrorist. And, in fact, anyone who suggested otherwise was probably a terrorist themselves.

So if you want to blame someone for Americans being treated like the "shit end of a stick" at airports, blame Bush and the Republican cowards serving in Congress during his administration, and to a lesser degree the Democrat cowards for not being a viable opposition party. And all the Republican voters that went along with it, and toed the party line.

Who said Bush was a conservative?

Oh... thats right. You did.

Now I get it.

[AmPat]

Wow, really? I'm speaking as someone who pretty much stood alone on conservative message boards against the Patriot Act and the TSA and Homeland Security, and all these erosion of civil liberties that occurred under the Bush administration. I heard time and time again from self-proclaimed conservatives throughout 8 years of Bush that being hassled at airports and border checkpoints, being subjected to all sorts of intrusive procedures and having severe restrictions placed on freedoms was nothing to be afraid of unless you were a terrorist. And, in fact, anyone who suggested otherwise was probably a terrorist themselves.

So if you want to blame someone for Americans being treated like the "shit end of a stick" at airports, blame Bush and the Republican cowards serving in Congress during his administration, and to a lesser degree the Democrat cowards for not being a viable opposition party. And all the Republican voters that went along with it, and toed the party line.

You're right. We should all convert to rabid and miserable little liberal creatures so that we can all sing praises to Chairman MaoBama. Why oh why didn't I see this before? A two year lock-step rule of complete Marxism has yielded so many successes that it should have been plain to all that the previous 8 years of an evil Republican, holding only one of the three branches of government, was devastating. We could have had SO much more. Why didn't we bow to the altar of Marxism so much sooner? Where was our collective sanity to not see the error of our ways? The answer is clear, after a three year track record under nearly complete Marxist Dimokratic rule, the utopia is right in front of our eyes.