News and notes from around the interweb:
- Charlotte airport wants to add a runway. They completed an Airport Capacity Enhancement Plan five years ago. The earliest we might see that runway complete? 2027. And that’s after reducing the length of the proposed runway from 12,000 feet to 10,000. The U.S. infrastructure problem isn’t primarily about funding.
- TSA found crystal meth inside a burrito at Houston Hobby airport. Ha ha ha, right? But the TSA should be focused on threats to aviation, not narcing on passengers. The latter distracts from the former.
- Someone connected in Atlanta too many times.
Another way you can read this is that NASA is trolling Congress by doing something that makes Congress’s requirements obviously stupid.
— Eli Dourado (@elidourado) April 16, 2021
- Prince Philip piloted Concorde before it entered commercial service and video.
- Citibank is trying to sell its Australian credit card business, a rough business given the country’s rules on interchange and merchant charges for credit card payments.
- Visualization of airflow and sneezes on a plane (NYT)
Gary, your take on TSA finding crystal meth is way off base. Per the linked article, TSA noticed a unusually large burrito, examined it, x-rayed it and saw something inside wrapped in tape. What would you propose that they do? Just let it go? They obviously had to further investigate and see what it was. Maybe something fitting that description could be an attempt to smuggle explosives onto the plane, who knows. But even if they thought it was drugs from the get-go, what do you propose that they do, just ignore drug trafficking and let the (alleged) drug trafficker go on his merry way? In your opinion should they even have confiscated the meth? Should they have let the passenger take that with him? It would seem intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that a federal official working for the Department of Homeland Security would be obliged to report evidence of any crime—much less possession with the intent to distribute a Schedule II controlled substance—to appropriate law enforcement authorities. If they found a bloody knife, should they let that go too? Or what about finding 100 forged credit cards? Let that one go too?
Seriously Gary? You are pro-drug smuggler now? I guess they should have just ignored the drug smuggler in your world right? They were investigating something that they did not know what it was. I would hope TSA would investigate something like that to find out what is going on.
Citibank is leaving all other country’s retail market, except Hong Kong, Singapore, UAE, London. And it has nothing to do with Australia’s regulations.
Gary, you are right. The war on drugs is a fundamental violation of human rights as it says government owns your body and you don’t. It’s a leftist belief that government should be able to use force against you because of how you decide to live your life and what choices you make for your own body. Any conservative who supports the government using force against people for possessing or using drugs is a phony or an ignoramus.
The war on drugs is why the streets are unsafe. Half the people in jails and prisons are there because of people violating no rights of others and engaging in voluntary and consensual decisions for their own bodies. Government criminalizing these people is what forces the sale of drugs underground where gangs and cartels thrive. Just like during prohibition of alcohol, the war on drugs means our streets are full of dangerous criminals who only operate because something that costs $10 in a drug store costs $300 on the streets. Those innocent people who violated the rights of no one by possessing drugs now are pushed into committing actual crimes because they are economically disenfranchised from livable wage jobs. Cops planning to raid homes and throw flash bangs into rooms with little babies and children means they are not actually on every street corner deterring actual crimes like rape/theft/vandalism/battery/unjustified murder. That’s why TSA doing this is unsafe and harms airplane and airport security. Their mission should be to detect weapons and they should send those with them home as 99% brought the wrong bag with their concealed carry firearm. TSA focusing on drugs even just a little bit means the precedent has been set for diverting attention away from their actual role. TSA being the nkvd means the public will not trust TSA and won’t speak up about something they see that actually may be a threat.
@Rupert
Millions of government workers at the local/state/federal level turn a blind eye to illegal aliens who actually pose a severe threat to the future of this country. Just following orders is no excuse. Every TSA agent or police officer or federal agent is an individual who can say no to enforcing leftist laws that violate fundamental freedoms. A cop can decide not to pull someone over because he or she is not wearing a seat belt (whose body is it and whose choice should it be if one wears one?) and can decide not to see drugs. A fair and just country would have each cops being held personal
Y responsible by the public for their actions. Unfortunately, too many illogical republicans support the very people enslaving them.
Geez Gary you’re starting to sound like CNN with the intellectual dishonesty. TSA detected something unusual. It turned out to be drugs. What if it was something more sinister?
The TSA didn’t know it was drugs when they examined the burrito. Good for them for attention to detail!