TSA- PreCheck - The Only Way To Travel This Summer

After you sign up and are approved you will be issued your TSA Pre designation by the ticket issuing airline.

As the summer season tourist crush is already upon us, with long lines at many airports, weary travelers are wondering what exactly they can do to avoid the longest lines. In one straightforward answer: sign up for TSA -PreCheck, the government's trusted traveler program. It basically ensures you a speedy passage through TSA security lines, without the onerous need to remove shoes, belts, laptop and toiletry bags (with 3 oz. liquids).  All of that commotion takes time and hence is bound to back up the regular TSA lines.

According to 'Airlines for America' - as reported in the June 3 Denver Post, "summer travel is expected to be at an all time high"  AfA then observes that for DIA (Denver International Airport) alone, "traffic records could be broken every month during the busy summer season and July could end up being the airport's busiest month ever."

Even at the beginning of April, when we left for Barbados from DIA, there were massive lines (not when we departed - at just before midnight- but later the next morning with security lines flowing out into the next concourse and waits over an hour). People were going ballistic. But you don't have to be part of the chaos if you sign up and receive the TSA Pre designation when you get your ticket.

According to the Post, "as the looming security madness became ubiquitous in May about 16,000 people signed up for Precheck each day, double the daily counts in April"

SO what's the problem and why aren't more signing up?  According to one TSA spokesperson quoted in the piece:

"It's not a question of PreCheck not being popular. It's more a question of how many people actually know about it No one really knows about it and the benefits of being a PreCheck member."

Well, hence the reason for this blog post to try to inform many more people, who I hope will then take advantage of it!

Meanwhile, according to TSA, PreCheck enrollment nationally "is expected to reach 4 million by the end of the year "

So what do you have to do? Basically the main hurdle is to first nab an appointment at one of the TSA service centers near you. Then, a "pre-enrollment" is usually done in the same office as you  are asked a number of questions and have your fingerprints taken. The whole process lasts perhaps seven minutes, maybe fifteen in the case of Janice and myself when we signed up 2 years back.

You then have to have an FBI background check done, to ensure you are not some kind of a nut or terror sympathizer - and then - when you're cleared, you receive a formal letter from TSA acknowledging you've been enrolled as a bona fide PreCheck member.  (Note: You must be enrolled and accepted into the program before you book your flight to partake of the advantages.).

In other words, you can't just traipse to the airport after the interview and pre-enrollment, fingerprints, you must wait for that confirming letter.

Of course, some hardheads and other paranoids will chafe at the prospect of being in another gov't database, but hey - that's the price you pay for convenience in this new jet age, since 9/11. If you don't want to sign up no one's forcing you to, just be prepared to wait in ever long lines and likely tear your hair out after you miss an important connection!

Obama Executive Actions Do Not Infringe On Second Amendment

Contrary to the hair on fire screeching  and hysteria of the Republicans,  Obama's executive actions on guns do not violate the 2nd amendment. NO one's AR-15s are being taken away, or the right to purchase guns - say at gun shows. You can stash as many as you want under the specific laws. All Obama has done is to institute rational actions to allay some of the craziness that has surrounded gun purchases. His actions include:

- Requiring internet gun dealers to be licensed and conduct background checks.

- Changing a federal privacy rule to keep people with mental illnesses from buying guns

-Asking congress to approve funding for 200 additional ATF agents.

- Hiring more than 230 additional FBI employees to help process background checks,

If we agree that a gun is at least as deadly a device as an automobile, and we don't allow any person to get behind the wheel without a license, then one ought to appreciate the need for these actions.  Indeed, many of us don't think Obama went far enough and we'd like to have seen closure of the loophole that currently allows de facto terrorists (on the 'no fly' list) to purchase any weapon they want. After the San Bernardino attack this is plain nuts.

Granted some of those individuals on the list may feel they don't belong there, but that is a separate issue they must take up with the TSA and have investigated to get their names removed. In the meantime, however, they should not be allowed to purchase handguns or long guns. But Obama never issued an action to that effect.

I would also have liked to see him issue an executive action mandating that dealers could not carry regular rifles, handguns etc. unless they also carried smart guns. These are weapons that only work if the owner identity is recognized. They will not work if a 5 year old kid picks up the gun and tries to fire it, say at his sister or playmate.  It is a rational solution to a lot of senseless gun deaths and only a crazy would deny it..

(Here Obama did seem to want to pursue something be done, as he noted in his press conference this morning: "If a child can't open a bottle of aspirin we should make sure he can't pull a trigger on a gun. Again totally sensible!)

But make no mistake, as tame as these executive actions are, the Repukes will go bananas and try to make political hay over them. What else would you expect their motley crew of candidate clowns to do in an election year.

But if they have a real problem, let them bring it before the courts and fight it out. I believe all they will have shown is how much time they can waste, just as they've wasted millions of hours trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Lastly, the hysterical babble that Obama is "like Hitler" and "taking guns away as Hitler did" with the Jews is just plain old imbecility.  It is incredible anyone with an IQ over room temperature would even invoke this BS. Recall all Jewish gun ownership effectively ended on Nov. 11, 1938, when a new law was declared, prohibiting Jews from owning weapons of any kind, including swords, which many Jewish army veterans had kept as mementos from World War I.

The failure of Jews to mount an effective defense against the Waffen-SS in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 provides a good example of what would have happened on a large scale if Jews had tried to mount any sustained offensive against the Third Reich. In a word, the Nazis would have fire -hosed them to death house by house, and used heavy artillery too if they had to.  That would also have been the outcome in any case if German  ordinary citizens with small arms had attempted to go up against one of the most formidable military forces in history. The uprising in the Warsaw ghetto possesses enduring symbolic significance, as an instance of Jews’ determination to resist their oppression, but in the end they were stamped out like bugs - and no prisoners taken.

Yes, it would be better to "take a few Nazis" with you if the gas chambers were the only other option, but make no mistake a Pyrrhic victory is the only thing they won! In the end,  the uprising saved few Jewish lives and had little to no impact on the course of either World War II or the Holocaust. All it did is postpone the inevitable for some of the Jews in Warsaw.

 The idea (also)  that other Germans would have come to the Jews' defense is also malarkey that only a poorly educated (on history) moron could spout. Non-Jewish Germans knew full well the eyes of the Gestapo were on them 24/7 and one mistake - one neighbor's testimony - and they be in the torture chambers, getting minced 'bratwurst' enemas and nails ripped out.

So all these histrionic comparisons of Obama to Hitler really mean that that the blogger or whoever has just lost the argument before it even commenced.

Make no mistake that more than half the citizens in this country demand more action on guns and especially preventing them from getting into the wrong hands. Obama has provided at least a start in that direction.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-boehlert/65453/the-medias-missing-context-obamas-push-to-expand-background-checks-is-wildly-popular-with-gun-owners