You folks with your incredible sense of prescience should work for airport security. I know I could never work out the safety of an otherwise odd-looking situation until I had all the facts in hand, but you folks seem to figure it out within a few paragraphs. That's some amazing work.

I know I could never work out the safety of an otherwise odd-looking situation until I had all the facts in hand, but you folks seem to figure it out within a few paragraphs. That's some amazing work.

Its all elementary, my dear Undertoad.

Either that, or bad armchair politics being discussed online, again. What else would I do at work, otherwise?

:guinness:

Armchair politics? Online?

You mean when people find a medium where they are anonymous and faceless, where fact-checking is nary impossible, no comment carries any consequences, nobody has any credibility whatsoever, they proceed to make...baseless claims?

That's preposterous ;-)

It'd be neat to set up a proper debate online. Get a bunch of people to argue a topic, and the spectators are responsible for checking every cited fact and then bashing the ones who pull "facts" out of thin air. You might say "nobody would be that anxious to nitpick".

And then I chuckle.

...bashing the ones who pull "facts" out of thin air...

But pulling facts out of my ass is still okay, right? If you take that away from me, this wouldn't be a real online debate, anymore! :)

I like the idea of a true, formal debate taking place online. I'm not sure how'd you'd do the fact checking, though. What would qualify as a "good source"? Its gotten to the point that if you provide a URL as a reference, I'm likely to dismiss it no matter where it points to. And that includes the news sites, because they don't always get it right and when they get it wrong they're often hesistant to do a proper retraction.

We must look to Ann Coulter for unbiased and accurate information.

My problem with airport security is that they don't seem to figure it out until 3 years later with the aid of a congressional investigation.

Airport security, and in fact any kind of security designed to protect the safety of a populace and its state, should not be the lowest paid job in the whole wide world, and should not attract the contempt of those it encounters.

I've lost count of the number of times I've been in an airport in the UK and the US and been "questioned" by someone who can barely string together three words of English (not because they're foreign, just because they're uneducated). And I've lost count of the number of times I've heard people around me berating security staff for being idiots, inconveniencing them, delaying them "unnecessarily" or being invasive.

I wonder which came first; our desire to cut costs so we can pay a high-school drop-out $2.40/hour to sleep while scanning bags or our desire to belittle those around us performing menial yet necessary jobs.

And I wonder if we'll ever realise that perhaps, in security as in the rest of the world, you get what you pay for.

I could be wrong, but after 20 minutes of thinking I'm pretty sure I detected a whisp of sarcasm in UT's post.

I never get to Anne Coulter and get pissed. If I get to Anne Coulter being listed as a reference, I get ready to grin, because it's certain that what I'm reading is a parody, and the punchline is just ahead. I read this article several times (yes, all the way through) because I just knew I had missed the joke. Coulter's every bit the reliable sorce that Rush Limbaugh is. She's nothing but a right-wing joke, on par with Pat Robertson, and everyone here is aware of that.


I'd like to read an independent account of this by one of the marshalls or flight attendants. People who deal with the flying public on a daily basis are bound to have a more reasonable view than this woman. If not, we're destined to turn all areas surrounding the U.S. into giant Gitmos where these fourteen innocents and others who look like them can be "locked up in chains" :mad: until our superior military and legislative minds can decide how to dispose of them.

anne coulter is a flame throwing entertainer... get over it. discount her all you want, but ignoring what another person says or reports just because they happen to find some value in coulter is foolish.

one of my friend's here in phoenix happens to think Mike Newcomb* is a brilliant political mind, and quotes him often. i think he is an ass, but i don't discount what my friend says just because he finds value in the ramblings of an ass.

*an extremely liberal talk show host who has gone so far as to say that bush may have helped the towers come down some how. about as fair and reasonable as hannity, just louder.

I won't get over the fact that we are treating this article like serious journalism. If that's the case, cites must come from reliable sources, and Anne Coulter is anything but. That's like getting cites about automobile safety from the guy who runs the demolition derby at the fair.

He probably knows more about automobile construction and safety than most people. It's worth a listen.

Newcomb? he is just a 3 hour belligerent political rant. on most days he makes al franken look like a bush supporter.

I think he meant the demolition derby guy...

I want to see the charges laid against the flight attendant for revealing the presence of air marshals on an aircraft.

Then I'll believe her whole account.

You know, I thought of that too. I imagined that old Eddie Murphy skit on SNL where he has makeup applied to appear white and goes about his business as a white man, finding that when blacks leave any given area, like the subway, a party starts immediately. He's given bank loans without credit hsitory or referneces, etc. "Shh! Don't tell anyone who's not lily-white, but I'm going to impart some secret information to you about our safety situation. Those dirty old darkies over there aren't being as outgoing and friendly and we'd like. They're acting weird and not speaking English. So just for you, because we're in a Special Club, here's some information that might ease your troubled little mind."


Then I imagined those fourteen guys standing around with their instruments before they got on board, saying, "You know what would be funny, guys? Why don't we walk around a lot on the plane. Back and forth to the shitter, right? I'll carry this Mickey Dees' bag around, and then you poke around in your carry on a couple of times. For a grand finale, Ali, you flip through the prayer book a coupla times and try to look pious."