26 responses to
“Oh, great.”

1. 

   coozledad said on December 26th, 2009 at 10:13 am

   I’m just happy that Glen Beck has some­thing new to dis­solve into a pud­dle of urine for. I’m also anx­ious to see the chalk­board dia­gram that ties it all to Barry O’Hitler.

2. 

   James said on December 26th, 2009 at 10:33 am

   Now, I know that there are bad, crazy, and oth­er­wise delu­sional folks out there, and it was prob­a­bly pretty scary to be on that plane, but I had to laugh when I dis­tilled what hap­pened after com­ing home and see­ing all the “Break­ing News” ban­ners on CNN.

   The exec­u­tive sum­mary? Some goof­ball set fire to his crotch.

3. 

   coozledad said on December 26th, 2009 at 10:43 am

   Does this mean all the guys going through secu­rity are going to have their gen­i­tals pal­pated?
   I won­der if the air­lines are going to bill it as a hand­job.

4. 

   Joe Kobiela said on December 26th, 2009 at 12:20 pm

   Bad for the air­lines.
   Good for the char­ter busi­ness. Every time some­thing like this hap­pens, we see a increase in our trips. Coolzedad, went to Nashville Tenn last night, and then I was going to go to Char­lotte N.C. about 2:00 am. Seems you all had alit­tle fog down that way. Clt was 100ft and 1/8th mile vis, and every­where east of the moun­tains was just as bad, so I just took my mechanic back to Day­ton. Maybe ya’ll can get a big fan going down there.
   Pilot Joe

5. 

   coozledad said on December 26th, 2009 at 12:27 pm

   They were hav­ing thun­der­storms yes­ter­day toward Char­lotte. We just had a drench­ing rain for most of the day. It’s sup­posed to be clear for the rest of the week.

6. 

   ROgirl said on December 26th, 2009 at 1:02 pm

   I get a lot of cook­books out at the library and “How to Cook Every­thing” was the only one I wanted to own.

7. 

   beb said on December 26th, 2009 at 1:02 pm

   Nancy is so right about head­lines about new secu­rity mea­sures mak­ing peo­ple rethink­ing the whole idea of fly­ing. Accord­ing to an arti­cle in the New York Times one of the mea­sures being con­sid­ered is restrict­ing pas­sen­gers move­ments dur­ing the last hour of flight and ban­ning them from hav­ing any­thing on their lap. Being strapped into a cof­fin sized space with noth­ing to do for an hour vio­lates, I think, one of the Geneva con­ven­tions.

   A friend in Texas had snow on Christ­mas we had rain, with I thought, some thun­der. That is why Global Warm­ing is now being called Global Cli­mate Change. The warm­ing dis­rupts tra­di­tion weather pat­terns so Texas gets blasts of colder weather while Michi­gan gets an incur­sion of south­ern warmth. Per­son­ally, since we were trav­el­ing a lot before Christ­mas we’re just happy the rain never turned into ice.

   My daugh­ter has been cack­ling inces­santly over videos of fart­ing preach­ers. They’re on Youtube. I’m too embar­rassed by the con­cept to pro­vide a link but if you need a lift in low taste, I guess you can’t go wrong look­ing there.

   You know you might be crazy…. if you throw out your Christ­mas Tree the back before Christ­mas because the Sen­ate passed a Health Care bill!

8. 

   nancy said on December 26th, 2009 at 1:31 pm

   I wouldn’t be that flip, James. I thought that at first, when the report was “fire­crack­ers” and “some guy who imme­di­ately announced he was work­ing for al-Q.” That read as schizophrenic-off-his-meds to me, but now they’re say­ing the sus­pect was on a watch list and was car­ry­ing the infa­mous liq­uid incen­di­ary device. He cer­tainly botched the job, but even a small fire on a plane can be deadly. I wouldn’t be laugh­ing if I were on the plane, where the pas­sen­gers behind him said they could see flames above the level of the seat back.

   Any­way, as the cur­rent NYT story points out, the key to a safe land­ing turned out to be fel­low pas­sen­gers unafraid to act quickly, not the TSA, or what­ever the Niger­ian or Dutch equiv­a­lent of it is. In my worst moments I think human­ity is doomed to an “Idioc­racy” future, but then your fel­low man goes ahead and sur­prises you.

9. 

   mark said on December 26th, 2009 at 2:07 pm

   While it is pop­u­lar in some cir­cles to view these inci­dents as crim­i­nal mat­ters to be han­dled, in this case, by the Detroit cops, this appears to be prety seri­ous. The goof­ball in ques­tion was a trained engi­neer pos­sess­ing, report­edly, a very pow­er­ful explo­sive.

   A large plane destroyed cat­a­stroph­i­cally while land­ing at a major US inter­na­tional air­port on Christ­mas morn­ing would, in addi­tion to the loss of life, cause major eco­nomic loss and social dis­rup­tion. As it is, the failed effort is caus­ing delays and diver­sions on a pretty large scale.

   But who am I to tell some­body else what’s worth laugh­ing about.

10. 

    alex said on December 26th, 2009 at 3:08 pm

    My new cook­book for X-mas:

    http://​www​.hotand​hot​fish​club​.com/​?​p​a​g​e​_​id=340

11. 

    paddyo' said on December 26th, 2009 at 4:50 pm

    Say what? “The Amer­i­can pub­lic has been adamant that they don’t want body scans” . . . says the “expert”? I don’t believe it . . . The Amer­i­can pub­lic hasn’t really been given the option of try­ing it to any great degree because, well, this tech­nol­ogy is expen­sive (see the rest of that story Nancy linked). No doubt there are many prudes in our Puri­tan­i­cal land who would object to the “X-ray-vision-goggles” effect of such screen­ing, but can we all just grow up?

    I do agree that unless we’re will­ing to spend big­ger bucks on REAL screen­ing, we’re doomed to con­tin­ued attempts like this to beat the sys­tem.

    And if the Bozos (at the air­lines, FAA, Con­gress, et al.) go for nothing-in-your-lap-the-final-30-minutes-of-a-flight, well, the idiots WILL have won. Sheesh.

12. 

    paddyo' said on December 26th, 2009 at 4:51 pm

    P.S. — . . . unless we’re will­ing to go the El-Al route. The Israeli airline’s secu­rity pro­ce­dures seem to work . . .

13. 

    Carolyn said on December 26th, 2009 at 4:57 pm

    Merry Christ­mas, Nancy,
    I know what you mean about “How to Cook Every­thing.” I checked it out of the library and have already renewed it once.
    Need to buy it.

14. 

    Bruce Fields said on December 26th, 2009 at 6:09 pm

    “I do agree that unless we’re will­ing to spend big­ger bucks on REAL screen­ing, we’re doomed to con­tin­ued attempts like this to beat the sys­tem.”

    Given that much money to throw at secu­rity, there’s also some ques­tion whether the air­port check­points would be the place to spend it.

15. 

    coozledad said on December 26th, 2009 at 6:11 pm

    Wow. Mutallab’s dad was head of the first Islamic Bank of Nige­ria, heav­ily involved in the con­struc­tion of a liq­uid petro­leum pro­cess­ing cen­ter that was con­structed by Hal­libur­ton after Kel­log, Brown and Root paid Sani Abacha, Ole­gun Obas­sanjo and oth­ers 180 mil­lion in bribes through a British inter­me­di­ary. This was while Dick Cheney was CFO. Much of the bribe money is in Swiss bank accounts. From com­ments in Niger­ian news­pa­pers related to the bribery scan­dal, it would appear Mr. Mutallab’s son’s activ­i­ties could have been par­tially funded by our own Dick.

    http://​pa​-in​.face​book​.com/​t​o​p​i​c​.​p​h​p​?​u​i​d​=​4​7​1​9​3​5​4​6​2​6​0​&​a​m​p​;​t​o​p​i​c=8546

    http://​www​.newser​.com/​s​t​o​r​y​/​4​9​0​7​0​/​h​a​l​l​i​b​u​r​t​o​n​-​w​i​l​l​-​p​a​y​-​5​5​9​m​-​i​n​-​n​i​g​e​r​i​a​n​-​b​r​i​b​e​r​y​-​f​i​n​e​s.html

16. 

    Julie Robinson said on December 26th, 2009 at 6:58 pm

    One story I read sug­gested no access to carry-on lug­gage and noth­ing on your lap, as well as no one out of their seat the last hour of the flight. We’ll be head­ing to the air­port extra early on Mon­day; it could be a long day.

17. 

    beb said on December 26th, 2009 at 10:23 pm

    Exactly how long has it been since the last ter­ror­ist tried to blow up an air­plane? It’s been a while. We will never have com­plete secu­rity on an air­plane (or any mass trans­porta­tion vehi­cle) but we ought to look at the fre­quency of occur­rence of these events before pil­ing on a lot of painfully incon­ve­nient restric­tions.

    An arti­cle in The Reg­is­ter at the time that the British ter­ror­ists tried to sneak a two-liquid explo­sive mate­r­ial pointed out that the bomb being descried would take hours to pre­pare in flight, was unsta­ble long before it was explo­sive and in gen­eral was unlikely to ever suc­ceed as a weapon. As the arti­cle pointed out, they would have had bet­ter lucky smug­gling a few ounces of nitro­glyc­erin on board.

    The full-body imag­ine machine pro­duces a very detailed image of a per­son. So detailed that the oper­a­tor was removed from the on-site loca­tion to some­thing remote so they (he) wouldn’t be able to look at them first clothed, then naked. There were plans to have com­puter process the images first to blur the pri­vates. This sim­ply is an intru­sive inva­sion of pri­vacy. Between locks on the cock­pit door and stan­dard metal detec­tor screen­ing peo­ple are as safe as they ever will be on a plane.

    And if this guy was on a air­line watch list why was he ever allowed to board a plane bound for the US. What’s the point for addi­tional restric­tions on pas­sen­gers when peo­ple on a do not fly list are stil allowed to fly?

18. 

    Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 26th, 2009 at 11:28 pm

    Excel­lent tweet swiped from Jon­Henke — “The TSA is like an abu­sive drunk. Any­time some­thing bad hap­pens, they make every­body else suf­fer for it.”

    OTOH, it’s either full body scans or every­one get­ting a rather full pat­down from TSA. I’ll take the body scan, thank you very much, and will pre­dict the inevitable breath­less cov­er­age of the first screen­ers that fig­ure out how to hack the “delete after use” pro­to­col, down­load some “hot babes” scan shots, and share them, prob­a­bly over cell phones, with their buds. . . and cops still check out their friends’ dates and neigh­bors through NCI data­base. Life will con­tinue to be dif­fi­cult; for that, there’s no tech­no­log­i­cal fix.

19. 

    mark said on December 27th, 2009 at 12:01 pm

    Let’s trudge toward full body scans and man­a­cles and leg irons while on board for every­body because we are too enlight­ened to give extra scrutiny (or deny a visa) to twenty year-old, mus­lim, male pas­sen­gers, on a teror­ist watch list, fly­ing alone, with no checked bags, on a one-way ticket pur­chased with cash, from a coun­try with known al-qaeda activ­ity, even when a fam­ily mem­ber has warned author­i­ties not to allow travel to the US.

    And if we really want to crack down on crime in Detroit, we’d autho­rize ran­dom, war­rant­less searches in Grosse Pointe.

    This was a seri­ous fail­ure to respond to avail­able infor­ma­tion that pro­vides no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for has­sling grand­moth­ers and girl scouts fly­ing from Grand Rapids to Great Neck.

    Well, I guess I’m wrong and every­thing went accord­ing to plan. http://​www​.real​clear​pol​i​tics​.com/​v​i​d​e​o​/​2​0​0​9​/​1​2​/​2​7​/​n​a​p​o​l​i​t​a​n​o​_​o​n​_​f​a​i​l​e​d​_​t​e​r​r​o​r​_​a​t​t​e​m​p​t​_​t​h​e​_​s​y​s​t​e​m​_​w​o​r​k​e​d.html
    Failed det­o­na­tors are what we count on and “the sys­tem worked.”

    She should be fired.

20. 

    nancy said on December 27th, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    I believe in mir­a­cles, because I agree with Mark. Nine years after 9/11, fly­ing already a migraine headache, and the answer is more equip­ment and no bath­room trips for an hour before land­ing? I think it’s time for El Al.

21. 

    coozledad said on December 27th, 2009 at 1:33 pm

    Fire Napoli­tano? How about Lieber­man, who chairs the Home­land Secu­rity Com­mit­tee and is shame­less enough to come out swing­ing his with­ered chick­en­hawk cock to pro­mote another war.
    http://​attack​er​man​.fire​doglake​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​1​2​/​2​7​/​a​i​n​t​-​n​o​t​h​i​n​-​w​r​o​n​g​-​w​i​t​h​-​y​e​m​e​n​-​a​n​-​i​n​v​a​s​i​o​n​-​c​a​n​t​-​s​o​l​v​e​-​right/
    If I were a Repub­li­can, I’d wait until the next round of Sun­day shows fea­ture the Bush Government-in-exile spoke­stranny Liz Cheney. She’ll pro­vide a more com­pre­hen­sive set of talk­ing points.

22. 

    LAMary said on December 27th, 2009 at 2:07 pm

    How to Cook Every­thing is what I give peo­ple who are mov­ing into their first house. Mark Bittman is a genius. Have you ever seen the arti­cle in the NYT about his own per­sonal kitchen? He’s using the same equip­ment I use for the most part and he has a crappy lit­tle apart­ment stove, not some multi thou­sand dol­lar jazzy thing.

23. 

    Rana said on December 27th, 2009 at 3:28 pm

    We buy pretty much any book Mark Bittman pub­lishes – his food is always straight­for­ward and tasty.

    I am really rather tired of the “bubble-boy” approach to secu­rity in this coun­try. There are rea­son­able pre­cau­tions against pre­dictable risks, and then there are para­noid attempts to ren­der an inher­ently risky activ­ity risk-free. Why not just drug all the pas­sen­gers and rig them up with catheters for the dura­tion? That’d solve a ton of secu­rity prob­lems, wouldn’t it? Who cares about our pri­vacy and med­ical health, so long as we’re “secure,” right?

    Some days, I won­der how peo­ple ever leave their homes to step out into the big, bad, dan­ger­ous world. Oh, yeah, right. Most acci­dents hap­pen in the home.

24. 

    basset said on December 27th, 2009 at 9:26 pm

    Joe, where do you go in Nashville – BNA, Tune, or Smyrna? Or maybe Cor­nelia Fort?

25. 

    Dexter said on December 27th, 2009 at 11:51 pm

    Nance, same things grabbed my atten­tion.
    No bath­room breaks or leav­ing that seat for the last hour of sched­uled time. Some­times land­ing are delayed…more time chained to your seat. I am not one of those nervous-jervises who have to get up at meet­ings and get more cof­fee or donuts and fid­get around, but just know­ing the toi­lets are locked and you are going to be arrested upon land­ing if you leave your seat , well…I just wrote some friends that my fly­ing days are prob­a­bly over.
    It had noth­ing to do with my hol­i­day, but I Googled it, and I was 36.8 miles from Metro, safe in Toledo, but it gave me a creepy chill know­ing it hap­pened just up the road from where I was stay­ing. By now I have read many reports and saw a lot of cov­er­age on TV, espe­cially from Peter King, R-NY, and this was indeed no minor oper­a­tion and he damn nearly brought down that air­craft. Again we have heroes and I applaud them all the way.

26. 

    Jessica said on December 28th, 2009 at 10:51 am

    The real safety line is the other pas­sen­gers. We’ve now proven three times that pas­sen­gers will han­dle these nut­ters.

    And if they pro­hibit read­ing and other dis­trac­tions on planes for the final hour, there will be dozens or hun­dreds of crazed pas­sen­ger attacks on each other, flight atten­dants, etc.

    A greater risk, to my mind, than hijack­ers who will be over­pow­ered by pas­sen­gers any­way.