Heh. This story made me irritable enough that I signed up for Salon letter writing privileges. May God have mercy on my soul.

Ms. Osteen has already paid out a $3000 fine for the federal offense of "interfering with a crewmember". Although she claims she did that "just to get that behind her", speaking from the experience of flying the line for a little over a decade, that particular charge only gets leveled when the passenger's conduct is completely out of hand. Trust me, if all it took was a "tantrum" (as the AP called it), we'd have a passenger or two on every leg in the dock.

Brown may or may not be one of those histrionic FAs everyone likes to complain about. But she didn't deserve to be assaulted for the crime of not kissing enough preacher lady keister.

Hey Carol, no offense, but please don't pull the "I have a son in the military who has a wife who doesn't like Obama" card. Let's see, I can pull the "I have a wife, who put up with me in the service during Gulf One and she thinks Ms. Obama is the bee's knee's" card.

I think we cancel each other out, don't we? Now can we get on with talking about what the lady actually said?

I know you guys in back have the toughness of trench warfare veterans. I some time ago, I spent a year and a half without F/As flying 19 seater commuters loading and unloading the pax all by myself. It was enough to convince me I could never do what you do on a daily basis.

That said, cut Brown a bit of slack. Said "boob jab" was to a breast that was still healing from surgery. Sounds like a direct physical threat to a crewmember to me, and you know what I mean. Osteen skated away with a $3000 fine.

I say, go "gold digger", go. I would have liked to seen some jail time for her, myself, but if 10% of her net assets is all the FA can get, then it will have to do

Shorts are the bulldog of the aviation world. They do their job, and they're functional. Lots of planes like that (the A-10 perhaps being the flagship of the lot).

The problem with the A380 is that it is so damned unimaginative. It's just another flying sausage. Those of us who were disappointed with the 777 find the A380 just another nail in the coffin of the romance of aviation.

And the Concorde gave us so much hope, once.

The snarky tone of Sonofloud's post aside, he's right. Yahoo news was gleefully chattering about how this is McCain's chance to spring into the lead, because Obama failed to get the usual convention bounce.

Personal guess is that neither party will get much of a bounce out of this. The Democratic convention buzz was sidetracked by McCain's VP pick, no question there. It doesn't matter if it was a GOOD pick, the point was that it was certainly news that would get people to tune in. Ergo, that's what the media covered, not Obama's listing of his policy points.

At the same time, Gustav managed to overshadow the RNC, and ironically, the Palin choice is also overshadowing the convention. Why tune in to the actual convention, when you can hear talking heads nattering about pregnant 17 year olds?

None of this makes sense, but then again, "convention bounce" doesn't make much sense, anyway. You'd think by now, most people would have taken the five minutes to look up the candidates' background and policies.

You'd think.

It's the same 42% who will happily tell pollsters that Obama isn't experienced enough to be president.

From the Anchorage Daily News:

http://www.adn.com/sarah-palin/story/515512.html

*Palin repeatedly (three times) asked the local librarian about how to go about banning books.

*The outraged local librarian said she would resist any effort to ban books. Later, she is threatened with termination for "not supporting" Palin.

*After a wave of public support for the librarian, Palin backed down.

One would think there is no way of making this look good, right? But let us create a straw man or two.

Step one: Point out that there is no list of books to ban ("But officer, I hadn't made up my mind who to kill yet!")

Step two: Point out the fact that no books were banned ("But officer, I shot and missed, that makes it okay, right?")

Step three: Repeat the two above points until the general public says "Oh yeah, that banned books thing. It was just an internet smear."

And so it goes...

Groucho (to pretty lady at dinner): Would you sleep with me for $52 million?

Pretty lady (laughing): Of course!

Groucho (leering wildly): How about for $10?

Pretty lady: Mr. Marx, what do you take me for?

Groucho: We've already established what you are. Now we're just haggling over price.

Why can't people just come out and say "I hate gay people, and don't want them to have the same rights as I do"? Instead, they mutter about "sanctity of marriage" and pretend to be offended by legalese on the marriage license.

But there are some people who spend nights awake upset that somewhere, someone else is not living exactly like they do. It doesn't matter if it affects them or not, they still get upset about it. The thing is, they know full well that feeling is absurd, and therefore won't admit it.

Is it too much to ask for a bit more honesty from our bigots these days?