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I am Tosk

In article ,
says...

On Wed, 30 Dec 2009 23:45:46 -0800, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:21:42 -0500, Harry
wrote:

wrote:
On Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:26:17 -0800, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

Completely untrue and diengenous tripe. You and Demint are so
terrified of
unions that you would rather leave the general population at risk.
What
heros.
a couple days ago Thunder said there was no connection between not
having a TSA director and the attempted bombing. You folks have to get
your story together.

... and how will having a union make us safer?

When you look at the GSA benefits and salary I still don't understand
why we need the extra bureaucracy of a union in there gumming up the
works. These people make 130% of the private industry wage and have
the same benefit package as Harry Reid.

I and Thunder don't coordinate our posts.

So, it would be a bit more expensive. At least they would have some
voice.
Is this a reason to hold up the security of the nation? Are you telling
me
that we should not have a person at the top coordinating functions,
dealing
with Congress, etc.? Or, is Demint just interested in playing politics?
Occam's Razor.

For all the good they are doing, we could get Wackenhut back in there
and fire the whole damned department.

How do we know "all the good" they are doing...or not doing.
The problem is, we'll never know. Even if there is a hijacking or
bombing, it doesn't mean the system has failed because there are far
more flights and passengers than there are ways to check them.

Some redneck from SW Florida was cited for leaving a 4" long 3/4"
diameter firework on a plane the other day. He said he had been
carrying that stuff (implying he had more) in his carry on for
several flights and nobody caught it.
If that had gone off it may have been more dangerous than the silly
thing Farouk was carrying. At least it would have worked.
They keep calling it a firecracker but firecrackers are not 4" long
More likely it was a fountain or a rocket. Something that size could
be a half stock of dynamite.

People still seem to be getting on planes with weapons and prohibited
items every day. My wife had a half liter of water in her purse coming
back from California and didn't see it until we were in the air. Good
thing it wasn't a bomb and we weren't terrorists.

It would not have been more dangerous. The stuff the Nigerian was carrying
would have destroyed the plane.

Not likely. You can blow a huge hole in an airliner and it will still
be OK if you don't break the hydraulic lines and they do have
redundancy on them. As I said, remember the Aloha Airlines 737 that
landed safely with 30 feet of the fuselage skin missing. This guy had
a tiny "bomb". (less than 3oz) The best he could hope for would be a
small hole in the side wall. It was about the same thing with Richard
Reid but he was potentially more dangerous because he could put his
foot on the floor and blow the hole there, where he might hit
something important if he could get to the aisle.
In his lap, his body would have contained most of the blast but I do
imagine people would not want their snack after that.
As it turned out, a polyester shirt might have been as dangerous as
this bomb. Good thing he was wearing cotton or he might have gone
"Richard Pryor" on them..

You can't confuse this with Pan Am 103 where 2 pounds of Semtex
exploded in the nose of the plane and blew it off. Air pressure coming
in the front of the plane ripped it apart. You don't get that from a
hole in the side.

You are making lot's of assumptions here. And from what I have seen, 50
grams of this stuff could do more than put a little hole in the side of
the plane... Either way, all of it is sooooo subjective, but I will ask
you how many other planes where small bombs went off landed safely with
30 foot holes in the side? I would imagine of the planes which have
suffered 30 foot holes, this is the exception, not the rule, really...