Tag Archives: homeland security

Biometrics

Homeland Security has announced it has a new scanner that can tell if you are hiding something, or plotting something, or have the merest thought they think suspicious just by scanning you. They call it Biometrics, and it works without you even knowing you are being bio’ed, or metricked, or something. You stand in line, tapping your feet impatiently, and the machines are probing your every breath, your heart rate, your eye blinks, your skin temperature, indeed, your every thought. They hope that in the next ten years it will even work on Arabs.

 

 

My lungs, my retinas, my heart

My breathing and my brain

All scanned before I can depart

I think I’ll take the train

 

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Come Joe Sardine In My Flying Machine

Used to be flying was a comfortable way to go. But no longer. Hours waiting at the terminal, bag fees, the endless security lines, small seats, no legroom, no going to the bathroom one hour before landing, somebody sneaking a smoke and setting the toilet on fire, and now the airlines are considering a new seating arrangement that will jam more people into the same sized airplane. Yes, it’s coming, folks, pretty soon the face to face seating arrangement will be standard, and people will be jammed together like the proverbial sardines, the only difference between the passengers and the occasional casket in the cargo hold is the dead are far more comfortable.  I believe they wrote about this situation, way back at the dawn of the aeroplane, in a song called Come Josephine In My Flying Machine.

 

 

Come Joe Sardine in my flying machine

And it’s up we go, up we go

And no you can’t smoke

And the seating’s a joke

As it’s up we go, up we go

Oh, oh, a little bit higher

Oh no, the toilet’s on fire

Come Joe Sardine in my flying machine

Going up, so long, goodbye

 

 

Homeland Insecurity

A Nigerian Muslim boarded a Northwest jet in Amsterdam with explosives in his underwear, evading the airport screeners, and managed to set the bomb off as the plane approached Detroit. The bomb fizzled, causing only a small fire, and a Dutch passenger jumped on the terrorist and held him till other passengers subdued him. When asked about the incident, Janet Napolitano, head of Homeland Security, smiled and said the system worked. Shortly thereafter it was revealed the FBI and CIA had known about the terrorist for years, his own father had warned the American Embassy in Nigeria about him, and the man was on an airport watch list, along with 500,000 other names. Despite all this comforting security the man was allowed to board an airplane with a bomb strapped to his crotch. To Janet Napolitano and the Department of Homeland Security, the fact that the bomb fizzled and the plane and all its passengers were not destroyed is proof that the security system worked.

 

 

Our Janet thinks a fizzled bomb

Is triumph for our side

She treats the thing with calm aplomb

Detractors are decried

Five hundred thousand on the list

And not a one is checked

She says so there’s one we have missed

That surely can’t affect

The way we handle terror threats

We do so with dispatch

We always try to hedge our bets

In looking for a match

If she’s the anti-terror czar

Then you would think she would

At least not let them in the car

That much be understood

She thinks that we are all so dumb

To think men mean us harm

And thinks the magic aura from

The O will be the charm

To turn this world to happy days

By making real amends

That steers them from their terror ways

And make them lasting friends