I'm interested in the source for those seats...and why they continue to be used. Originally flying was a techie thing. Or for rich people. As flying became less expensive, seats would have been minimalist, in keeping with the penny-pinching concept of "economy." What I find interesting is that I've been flying in commercial jets since 1969, and, with the rare exception, domestic carriers nearly ALL use the same damned seats, and arrangement, they used then.

40-freakin' years!!!!!!!!!! 40 YEARS. And airline managers haven't seen fit to do something about comfort in the air.

I suppose it's because the incredibly lousy ergonomics of airline seating were not quite lousy enough to stop people from flying. so airline managers figured "what the hell." Why spend money to make the great-unwashed comfortable, when they don't seem to care about it??

It is rather amazing that airlines managed to avoid nearly every aspect of "total quality management" that, even now, influences so much business worldwide. Only in safety is this not the case, and a good thing too. Too many crashes and you really are out of business, so airlines have been very careful about that, mostly.

I agree Patrick, the situation is abominable, and I'd be very interested in a few interviews with the people who are responsible for keeping this situation the way it's been for 40 YEARS!!! Who are these people, and why have they been so heedlessly cruel to airline passengers for so long?

Jay Hanson pointed out years ago that when our fossil-fuel crisis really hits, our government will revert to a completely ad hoc approach to governance. and part of that ad hoc approach will be to point the finger of blame everywhere but where it belongs: at the guy/gal in the mirror.

Remember plausible deniability? That's what we'll have, on a national scale. With the Federal Government simply lying. Saying "who would have thought this would happen?"

That's the plan. To the extent there is one. Loot the national treasury for me and my friends, and when the bill comes due, blame someone else for it, and then make all the rest of America pay.

it has been ever thus, and the fact that millions upon millions of adults-of-voting-age continue to fall for this ancient bullshit again and again and again, simply proves the truth of Ben Franklin's dictat: "it's a Republic, if you can keep it."

I think it's clear now: we can't keep it. We're too short-sighted. Too adolescent. And, most of all, too lazy and ignorant to keep it. We will be like sheep to Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor: "feed us and we'll be your slaves."

Why anyone would think we could actually do it differently this time seems utterly mysterious to me. Not to mention bottomlessly naive.

I'm sure someone pointed this out already, but if these "low-information" voters are really so very smart, why have they been voting more or less continuously AGAINST their own interests for the last 40 years, if they are not pathetically vulnerable to the kind of crude agitprop swill the GOP has been slinging in all that time? Hmmm?

Obama had a point, Mr. Lind. So do you. But that does not made what he said any less plausible.

We've been flattering the rubes in this country for 50 years, and look what it's gotten us. I'd say, maybe it's time to stop flattering them, and tell a few hard truths.

For those who are familiar with HBO's drama "Conspiracy" based closely on documentation of the Wansee Conference, it's worth noting that Yoo corresponds almost exactly to Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart, State Secretary for the Nazi Germany's Ministry of the Interior. Stuckart was the co-author of the Nuremburg Laws, and a leading advocate for a *lawful* annihilation of the jews.

He got off relatively easily after the war. Still, he, like Yoo, was merely an instrument. The responsible parties were Hitler himself, with Goering and Goebbels...

The correspondences between both the process and outcomes in Nazi approval of the Holocaust, and the approval of torture by our government, are remarkably similar. Tyrants always work in the same way: seeking cover for actions they know are completely beyond forgiveness. Manipulating the populace, and, really, an entire political system, into complicity with crimes.

For those who decry comparing Bush to Hitler, I want to be very clear that I'm not comparing the scale of heinousness here, only the nature of the process.

And, it's worth noting, it's really just a very short step from torturing your "enemies" abroad, to torturing "enemies" at home. Just a little adjustment to the Fuehrerprinzip--same concept as the Unitary Executive, by the way--and you can torture anyone you want, "legally." Something else the Nazis understood quite well.

Nothing, that's what. Once the war went south, years ago (I'd say when Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army and the neocons figured they'd create a capitalist paradise in Iraq, that was the point of no return), Bush and Cheney and their cabal have had one goal:

Lie, lie, and lie some more, with whatever lies would work, to get re-elected, and to stay in Iraq until 2009. That's it.

Remember, they're NEVER talking to us. They're talking to the idiot 51% who voted for them. The Base, plus independents who barely know what time of day it is.

So, there's nothing mysterious here when you realize that they're not talking to us. They never have been.