Sipsey Street Irregulars: Back home, and an apology. The TSA protects us from the threat of diabetic shoe bombs.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Back home, and an apology. The TSA protects us from the threat of diabetic shoe bombs.

Made it back home yesterday after flying first to Chicago, changing planes and then riding a swift sardine can to Birmingham. Exhausted, I fell asleep once I hit the car after Rosey picked me up curbside, and was not awake long after I got home. I just collapsed.

Here's the weird thing: I was never groped. They never put their hands on me, nor was I run through the "naked machine." At Ronald Reagan, TSA paid particular attention to my diabetic shoes and said they needed "to remove the inserts." I objected, saying that they were specially constructed and if they did that they would destroy their utility. "Well, we've got to test them." "Non-destructive testing?" "Yes." So I found a chair halfway through the line and sat down while they took away my shoes and x-rayed them, sniffed them or let them be "mind-melded" by the little psychic midget woman from "Poltergeist," or whatever they do with shoes suspected of deadly intent. After ten minutes, I got my shoes back and hobbled on my way. Heaven knows how they would have reacted to my Darth Vader boot that I left at home for just that reason. My wound care doctor is going to to be upset with me next week, but it was a trade-off. I needed to be there. And I needed to get around while I was there.

Anyway, I want to apologize to those of you whom I promised to notify when I got home safely, and didn't. I'm sorry, but I just collapsed. I didn't have it left in me.

Now, having slept most of the night, let us "drink water and drive on."

6 comments:

Mark Matis said...: Heh. You're obviously just not cute enough for them. Next time travel with a loaded Depends. That seems to turn them on...; July 28, 2011 at 6:15 AM
Anonymous said...: The TSA nee DHS has put a "bug" in your shoe. Beware. . . . . (Serious? Joking? Don't know. Just something to possibly be aware of)

B Woodman
III-per; July 28, 2011 at 6:21 AM
Anonymous said...: Glad you made it back safely, Mike.; July 28, 2011 at 8:54 AM
Slobyskysa Rotchikokov said...: "I didn't have it left in me."-
that's what Barney Frank said.

Welcome home. Glad the TSA overlooked the encrypted microdots in your shoes. The information will be of immense use to your handlers at the NSA.; July 28, 2011 at 11:14 AM
Anonymous said...: Hey Mike saw your cane, right arm and shoulder on C-SPAN.

Man does Newell have big ears or what? Maybe they just look that way on TV or they grow with every lie he tells.; July 28, 2011 at 1:01 PM
Dennis308 said...: Welcome Back. Glad your safe.

Dennis
III
Texas; July 28, 2011 at 11:33 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Back home, and an apology. The TSA protects us from the threat of diabetic shoe bombs.

6 comments:

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