I will be scarce next week, as I am going to very busy with work. I am sure that tgirsch and Kevin T. Keith will do their share to advance the casue of the VLWC in my absence. Gotta keep those checks form billionaire finaciers and the Liberal Meida pouring in …
Apparently, the sniveling little twit was so unreasonably panicked that the air marshals on the plane were concerned about the effect her overreaction would have on the other passengers:
Undercover federal air marshals on board a June 29 Northwest airlines flight from Detroit to LAX identified themselves after a passenger, “overreacted,” to a group of middle-eastern men on board, federal officials and sources have told KFI NEWS.
The passenger, later identified as Annie Jacobsen, was in danger of panicking other passengers and creating a larger problem on the plane, according to a source close to the secretive federal protective service.
Jacobsen, a self-described freelance writer, has published two stories about her experience at womenswallstreet.com, a business advice web site designed for women.
“The lady was overreacting,” said the source. “A flight attendant was told to tell the passenger to calm down; that there were air marshals on the plane.”
She was so overcome with panic, so convinced that innocent people were terrorists, that she was a danger to the safety of the flight. Jacobsen’s terror and hysterical cowardice was much more of a danger than those musicians. Who, by the way, have been completely cleared:
Jacobsen and her husband had a number of conversations with the flight attendants and gestured towards the men several times, the source said.
“In concert with the flight crew, the decision was made to keep [the men] under surveillance since no terrorist or criminal acts were being perpetrated aboard the aircraft; they didn’t interfere with the flight crew,” Adams said.
The air marshals did, however, check the bathrooms after the middle-eastern men had spent time inside, Adams said.
(snip)
Federal agents later verified the musicians’ story.“We followed up with the casino,” Adams said. A supervisor verified they were playing a concert. A second federal law enforcement source said the concert itself was monitored by an agent.
“We also went to the hotel, determined they had checked into the hotel,” Adams said. Each of the men were checked through a series of databases and watch-lists with negative results, he said.
The source said the air marshals on the flight were partially concerned Jacobsen’s actions could have been an effort by terrorists or attackers to create a disturbance on the plane to force the agents to identify themselves.
Air marshals’ only tactical advantage on a flight is their anonymity, the source said, and Jacobsen could have put the entire flight in danger.
So, it seems Jacobsen’s little racist based hysteria (and can anyone who has been following this story, who has seen Jacobsen and her right wing defenders insist that the men were on a dry run, or to insist that they were a danger days after the government has cleared them, or read the article above and notice that none of the flight crew was alarmed, think that her panic had anything to do with anything but race?) was more of a danger than the musicians. And if, by some miracle, they were terrorists, her hyperventilating, pee-in-her-pants reaction could very well have allowed the terrorists to identify the air marshals.
Link via Armed Liberal
Excellent article from Tom Oliphant (Boston Globe columnist) at The American Prospect on Kerry’s political career and the reasons for supporting him this year other than “anybody but Bush.” He paints a compelling picture of Kerry as authentic, intelligent, and hard-working, with a willingness to learn from his own mistakes and to do the ground-level grunt work necessary to succeed honestly. Conceding that Kerry’s not a political natural, or personally exciting, he finds a lot of substance in his career and eventual Presidency.
In today’s political culture, progressives tend to be neurotic, conservatives fanatical.The best cure for this neurosis is not artificially induced adulation but a rational decision to recognize Kerry’s strengths. This is a contemplative, serious person — well-grounded in progressive principles — who has the good habit of getting interested in new ideas that survive scrutiny. His work habits reveal an iron butt for grunt work, as well as considerable experience in working across party lines. A non-Bush president will have to repair considerable damage abroad and at home, complex tasks that will resist grand fixes and reward the patience and tough negotiating that are Kerry attributes. But a non-Bush president will also have to think and act big and new, and the work Kerry has already done on a range of issues should inspire confidence.
He is a sober yet imaginative person for sobering, dangerous times, but his looks and wealth conceal the steel that got him this far and often cause him to be underestimated.
He has an interesting review of Kerry’s political career and what it says about him as a person and as a leader. He also gives an intelligent overview of Kerry’s key policy initiatives that both explains Kerry and serves as a guide to the issues. The article is worth reading just for the discussion here.
Normally, positions on issues don’t work well for me as clues to a presidency, or as stand-alone reasons to be for someone. In Kerry’s case, however, he has made three contributions — in health care, on energy, and in foreign policy — to the national discussion over the past year that are vintage Kerry and powerful evidence of how his political mind works. They are not derivative, and, in each instance, the contributions were formulated not by the pollsters or the advisers but by Kerry himself.
His conclusion could be the slogan for Kerry supporters everywhere:
John Kerry is a good, tough man. He is curious, grounded after a public and personal life that has not always been pleasant, a fan of ideas whose practical side has usually kept him from policy wonkery, a natural progressive with the added fixation on what works that made FDR and JFK so interesting. I know it is chic to be disdainful, but the modern Democratic neurosis gets in the way of a solid case for affection. Without embarrassment, and after a very long journey, I really like this guy. As one of his top campaign officials, himself a convert since the primaries ended, told me recently, this is pure Merle Haggard. It’s not love, but it’s not bad.
Give it a read.
Link via Mark A.R. Kleiman.
A news report claims that Lance Armstrong, who basically owns the Tour de France to a degree that is getting embarrassing, has announced he will move on to other events after beating the crap out of the other competitors this year. Armstrong is now one of only five people in history to have won the Tour five times, and after he wins this year (as he will certainly do, barring some disaster - he currently leads by more than 4 minutes, and is one of the top few in history in days leading and in single-stage victories), he will be the only person ever to have won 6 Tours.
He is only 32 and will continue to compete; he could very likely win the Tour again, pushing the record even higher, but he chooses not to out of respect for the other champions.
Explaining why he said Armstrong, 32, will not ride in the Tour again, the official said Armstrong saw no point in going for a seventh victory, especially out of respect for the four other riders who have won five times.Armstrong wants to set a record for Tour victories, the official said, but he does not want to appear to be rubbing in any superiority over the feats of Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain.
Apparently the decision isn’t final, but this seems characteristic of Armstrong, given what little I know of him from the press. I think it’s charming to see someone deliberately pass up an opportunity for self-aggrandizement - and to embellish his already-guaranteed place in history - simply as an act of courtesy.
Good riding, Lance.
UPDATE (7/25):
Armstrong has now won his sixth Tour de France.
Apparently, the story mentioned above was premature. Armstrong has now indicated he will race in at least one more Tour, though perhaps not next year. It partly depends on what his new sponsors want him to do - they may not want their most visible team member to drop out of the highest-profile event.
O’Reilly claimed that the Paris Business Review proved his contention that the boycott of French goods — under his manly-man leadership — was seriously damaging the French economy. We liberals scoffed, pointing out that no one had ever heard of such a publication. Well, it looks like we owe O’Reilly an apology. The Paris Business Review does exist, and its even worse for the French than O’Reilly thought — they say the damage could reach a gazillion dollars!
I will never doubt the power of Bill O’Reilly again.
Link via emailer John G in CT.
Congress, as its last official act before summer recess yesterday, unanimously passed joint resolutions in both Houses declaring that the ongoing atrocities in Darfur, Sudan, constitute “genocide” and calling on the United Nations to take note of that fact.
The U.S. Congress passed a resolution on Thursday declaring that genocide is occurring in Sudan, which backers hope will pressure the international community to take action to protect Africans in the Darfur region from marauding Arab militias.In a rare show of bipartisan agreement, the House of Representatives passed the measure in a unanimous vote, and the Senate then approved it by a voice vote, in their last acts before Congress adjourned for a six-week summer recess. . . .
The United Nations has declared the situation in Darfur the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, but has not called it a genocide, which would force it to take action.
The 1948 UN “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” (part of the so-called “Geneva Conventions”) requires the UN to take action in any case of genocide. The UN therefore is slow to recognize genocide, because it would then be forced to intervene.
The United States, as a signatory to the Convention on Genocide, is also officially required to intervene when that convention is invoked. For this reason, the US is sometimes also slow to use the word “genocide” - most notably during the Bosnian atrocities, when the Clinton administration dithered at length trying to avoid using that term (and then was viciously criticized by Republican opponents when they did intervene - the reason ground troops were not used and the atrocities continued for months). The Congress’s willingness to call a spade a spade in the current case is a refreshing change (though one can’t help noticing that in Bosnia, Muslims were the victims of the genocide that dared not speak its name, while in the Sudan they are the perpetrators - perhaps that makes it easier).
Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again.
It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: "Kings. What a good idea." Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.
-- Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
