Crash humour

Reading Wolcott, I came across this anecdote about a white-knuckle airplane trip:

In the Seventies we flew together in a commuter prop plane to visit Pauline Kael in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, hit major storm turbulence, the plane bouncing and rocking so hard in the air that teeth began to hurt, and, as we descended toward the air strip, we could see people sitting on a nearby hillside, as if picnicking. What do you think they're doing? I asked, to which Clive [James] replied, "Waiting to see if we crash."

And it reminded me of Ron White's great stand-up routine:

So I flew in here to Phoenix from Flagstaff because my manager doesn't own a globe. He chartered one of those small private jets. I flew here on a plane this big, it was like a pack of gum with eight people in it.We were putzing along. We were going half the speed of *smell!* We got passed by a kite! There was a goose behind us and the pilot was yelling "Go around!" So about halfway through the trip, we start losing oil pressure in one of the engines, and the pilot says we have to turn around. It was a nine minute flight. Couldn't make it with that equipment. . . . The guy next to me is *losing his mind*. I guess he must have had something to live for. He says, "Hey man, if one of the engines goes out, how far will the other one take us?" I look at him. "All the way to the scene of the crash! Which is pretty lucky, because that's where we're headed! I bet we beat the paramedics by a good half hour!"

Google is your friend! When I googled "all the way to the scene of the crash" which is all I could remember of Ron White's joke, I also found this page from Dave Barry's blog -- first, his post:

ATLANTA AIRPORT UPDATE So I'm waiting to get on the plane, and the pilots arrive at the gate, and
as they walk past, one of them says to the other -- this is a direct quote -- "Hey, it flew in, it'll fly out."

Then, some of the comments:

Dave, Weren't those Amelia Earharts' last words?

Oh wait, those were her second to last words.....followed by "Well, shit."

Yikes! I once flew a small (8 seat)to Dallas. Sitting over the wing, I noticed oil streaming out of the engine. ISIANMTU [I Swear I Am Not Making This Up]...The guy in front of me, returning from a short trip said "Don't worry, it was doin' that yesterday too"

Once I was trying to get out of Minneapolis in a snowstorm. I had a hotel room reserved just in case and I needed to release the room by 6 or get charged for it. The gate agent was insisting that I would get a flight, but the pilot, standing nearby, looked me in the eye and said, "Keep that room." 45 minutes later they announced we were boarding and I overheard the same pilot say, "Holy S*?t! We're flying in this?" I lived to tell the tale...

Once, I was conversing with an older gentleman who was a friend of mine. Someone mentioned skydiving, and I stated that I could see no reason for EVER jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. My elderly friend, who had considerable aviation experience, said, "Honey, any pilot in the world will tell you there ain't no such thing as a 'perfectly good airplane'."

And check out this site for more airplane humour.

Home Sweet Home

Two views of the T.Don Hutto Centre where a 9-year-old Canadian boy is incarcerated with his Iranian family.
Edie's Daily Kos story gives us the background.
While I keep reading about how this isn't a jail, the Corrections Corporation of America's website for the facility describes the Centre's manager as a "warden". And here's a story from the San Antonio Current about the facility which also gives us more information about how the US immigration system is operating:

Last year Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced that the U.S. would end its “catch and release” policy regarding aliens from countries other than Mexico. DHS increased detention funding. According to DHS data, they’re detaining 99 percent of the other-than-Mexico undocumented immigrants they catch, up from 34 percent.
What Chertoff didn’t say is they’d be replacing “catch and release” with a new “catch, charge, and release” policy.
Once a detainee family is placed in the Hutto facility they can apply for asylum. This involves pleading their case to an asylum officer at the Houston office of the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. If the officer decides that a case is credible, detainees can get a hearing with a federal judge in San Antonio. This judge can grant freedom, for a price.
I met immigration lawyer Griselda Ponce in the prison’s lobby. She has served about 100 clients at the Hutto facility, and only about six have been deported or denied asylum. Nearly all her clients at Hutto are asylum seekers, and 80 percent have been released on bond. The average bond, she says, is $7,000, with $1,500 extra per child. Bonds can get as high as $50,000. The judges rarely use the other options, which include electronic monitoring and intensive supervision, Ponce says.
“The problem with ‘catch and release’ was not so much that people were fleeing and never coming back, but they had a very poor process of explaining to these families what they had to do after they were released,” Ponce said. “A lot of families would come into my office, and the client would say, ‘I have this permiso, but I’m wondering if it expired. I want to know how I renew it.’ That was their notice to appear in court. Nobody explained it to them.”

So maybe Canadians concerned about this boy should just start raising money to buy his way out -- sounds like it would be about $16,500 for the boy and his parents.
Mother Jones describes one family's experience:

Inmate Faten Ibrahim was unlikely to escape. She lived at a compound built as a prison for Texas' worst criminals, within a perimeter of razor wire. Her eight-by-eight-foot cell offered only a thin sliver of window, her toilet in an open corner left no cover for stashing break-out tools, and, at any rate, cracking the cell's thick steel door at night would have tripped an alarm. She certainly wasn't going to try bolting, especially since Faten, who lived in the cell with her mother for three months, is five years old.
. . . a typical prison routine still exists there: all children who are big enough must wear scrubs akin to prison uniforms, and there's little to occupy their time besides lounging in the "pod," the communal space walled off by prison cells. When not hanging out there, children receive a single hour of physical recreation each day and, at the time Brané visited, a single hour of schooling in the form of an all-ages English class (The classes were upped to four hours recently, and are expanding to the seven hours required in Texas public schools). Brané was not impressed by efforts to brighten the pod with carpet and a mural depicting an ocean scene: "It's definitely a penal environment."
Faten, the five-year-old detainee, suffered from nightmares and often sobbed uncontrollably at T. Don Hutto, according to a lawsuit seeking her family's release that was filed late last month by a private attorney. In one instance she was "yelled at and threatened with 'punishment' for her failure to 'stand still'" during the prison's daily population count, the suit said. Her mother, Hanan, who is now five months pregnant, complained of being too tired to join daily showers at 5:30 a.m., but was told that if she didn't she could be put in solitary confinement, according to the suit. To see a gynecologist, according to the lawsuit, Hanan had to travel two hours away, bound in leg irons the entire time, for each prenatal appointment. Her absence from the pod so upset Faten and her siblings, aged eight and 14, that their mother stopped seeking medical treatment rather than leave them alone. The suit also claimed that the family, who are Palestinian, was denied halal food at the prison cafeteria, prenatal vitamins for Hanan, and psychological counseling. "They were treated as inmates," said attorney Joshua Bardavid, "rather than a family being held for immigration reasons."
. . . The Ibrahims are far from the only residents to complain of ill-treatment at T. Don Hutto, where operations are run by the controversial prison staffing company Corrections Corporation of America. Lawyers with the University of Texas Immigration Law Clinic, which has represented some 25 of the inmates, say several have reported weight loss and frequent vomiting, and parents have been unable to tend to sick children at night because rules ban them from leaving their cells after curfew. Other women have also complained of a lack of prenatal and mental health care. "I'm not a psychologist, but I go talk to these people, and they are just in shambles," said law fellow Frances Valdez. "I mean, they are losing their humanity." UT law professor and clinic director Barbara Hines believes imprisoning children is on its face unethical. "I've been doing this for thirty years," she said, "and I haven't been this upset about something in a very long time. It's just heartbreaking to go in there." . . . Human rights investigators said access to the gym and playground is limited to a total of one hour a day, during the allotted recreation time. Many of the children kill most of their time fighting over a Sony Playstation in the pod, Brané said. She said the center was most lacking in developmental toys for younger children, especially soft toys such as stuffed animals that would be important to children experiencing trauma.
. . . when Brané recently interviewed detainees there, nearly every person she spoke with cried. She will release a report of her findings later this month and doesn't believe that T. Don Hutto can ever be made into a place that would be suitable for minors. Before she left the facility that day, a child ran up and pressed a folded piece of paper into her hand. "Help us," the note said, "ask questions."

I read the news today, oh boy.

Hmmm -- hoist by his own petard so to speak. But maybe the Conservatives could generate more revenue by selling the extra seats to lobbyists and the party faithful... "Come fly with me" could be Harper's slogan.

I'm glad those two "terror" provisions are gone -- the whole idea of a "sunset" clause in the first place was that such vague and heavy-handed laws should expire unless they are crucial for dealing with imminent terrorist threats -- a case that couldn't be made because neither provision has actually been used.

Digby says that if thrice-married Rudy Giuliani is really as popular among Christian evangelicals as the polls now show -- and he appears to be at least as popular now as Bill Clinton still is with the rest of the country -- then it means that American voters are not particularly obsessed with the sex lives of politicians. It really is only the media who think about sex all the time.

So the US Ambassador-designate to Belgium is either a liar or an ignoramus. Belgium will be so flattered.

And Stephen Colbert investigates Al Gore's garbage and finds that he is actually throwing out the end crusts from his breadloaves, when he could be saving them to make breadcrumbs. What a wastrel!

If you like cats. . .

Dancing dog -- enjoy

Advice for Dion

Cherniak gives some good advice to Dion and the Liberal brain trust:

We knew that Ignatieff and Rae were better communicators, but we picked Dion because we believed that he would make the best prime minister of the group. Instead of trying to change Dion's style so that he seems like a new person, we need to focus on his strengths. They are analysis, clarity and decency - not partisan rhetoric and word smithing. Let the rest of caucus throw the mud.

Exactly.

Great line of the day

From Cintra Wilson's oscars essay at Salon (via):

. . . Sunday night, Hollywood successfully Photoshopped Al Gore's foot into George W.'s ass.

One of these things is not like the other

Three phrases struck me from the most recent Sy Hersh article about the Bush Administration Sunni-Shiite shennigans in the Middle East.
Short summary: the Bush Administration (ie Cheney) is, at the behest of the Saudis, now supporting the Sunnis -- even though they are the Iraqi insurgents and Al Qaeda -- instead of the Shiites -- even though they are the majority in Iraq -- because the Shiites are the majority in the new bogeyman Iran. And Lebannon and Hezbollah and Syria and the Saudi government are in there somewhere too, and there's apparently lots of money floating around for off-the-books secret operations.
Anyway, back to the three phrases.
First was this description from Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy:

The new diplomatic approach ..."shows a real degree of effort and sophistication as well as a deftness of touch not always associated with this Administration."

Second was a description from "a former senior intelligence official" of why John Negroponti quit as ubermeister of US intelligence:

Negroponte "had problems with this Rube Goldberg policy contraption for fixing the Middle East."

Third was this description from "a former National Security Council aide" of the CIA reaction:

"The C.I.A. is asking, 'What's going on?' They're concerned, because they think it's amateur hour."

Now, which of these three is not like the others?
And, given the history and past performance, which would you tend to believe is the most accurate description of what the Bush Administration is now doing in the Middle East?

Punny -- very punny!

Found on a comment thread at Firedoglake

Logician: Here is an example of a syllogism. The cat has four paws. Isidore and Fricot both have four paws. Therefore Isidore and Fricot are cats.
Old Gentleman: My dog has got four paws.
Logician: Then it’s a cat.
Old Gentleman: So then logically speaking, my dog must be a cat?
Logician: Logically, yes. But the contrary is also true. . . Another syllogism. All cats die. Socrates is dead. Therefore Socrates is a cat.
Old Gentleman: And he’s got four paws. That’s true. I’ve got a cat named Socrates.
Logician: There you are, you see . . .

This logic gives me pause.
I just don’t know if it gives me four of them.

Groan....

Shorter

Shorter Stockwell Day:

Don't worry. Be happy.

Well, as long as you're not Mahar Arar, of course.

Bring it on

So some researchers asked about 400 young teenagers whether they had ever seen pornography and if so, how much.
Is anyone surprised that a hundred of the boys replied "yes, lots"?
For boys, that's not an admission, it's a boast.

Great line of the day

Yglesias talks about the US sabatoge of Israel-Syria talks:

. . . unlike American Middle East hawks, Israelis actually have to live in the middle of the Arab world and are relatively ill-served by the sort of grandiose transformational schemes the administration likes to come up with the justify their increasingly rudderless approach to the region.

Great line of the day

At The Galloping Beaver, Dave summarizes the sad and sorry Bush administration incompetence in dealing with Al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda survives because Bush let it survive. It grew stronger because his rubber-stamp congress endorsed every thoughless move Bush made. It may well be within reach of formulating another devastating attack because Bush and his cargo culture found al Qaeda an inconvenient barrier to an agenda from which they would not vary. They wanted to go into Iraq, they were going to go into Iraq and Iraq is where they ended up. The Republicans are not the capable military crew they purport to be. They talk a good story but when the truth of their accomplishments are analyzed they emerge as completely incompetent. In terms of foreign policy and global strategy, nobody has produced worse results than Bush and flock of war-bangers who supported him. They're good at beating people up, but they don't have the smarts to actually win a fight.

Emphasis mine. And not only are they incapable of developing a winning strategy, they have the attention span of a dung beetle.

JimBobby sings "Enviro-man"

Inspired by Ross, JimBobby writes a paean to our prime minister's new environmental sensitivity -- Sing Us a Song, You're Enviro-Man:

. . .
Now, Steve is an egghead Prime Minister,
There's a pit bull named Baird at his side,
Who snarls and snaps about emission caps,
While his limousine's idling outside.
And the Speaker is practicing politics,
As the insults and taunts fill the air.
While the climate is changing, they're just rearranging,
The Titanic's three hundred deck chairs.
La la la, de de da
La la, de de da da da
Sing us a song, you're Enviro-Man,
Tell us another one, Steve.
We're all in the mood for Kyoto compliance,
So, what have you got up your sleeve?

Here is the audio -- because you must hear it sung in JimBobby's inimitable "willie-nelson" voice!

Dastardly Librulls!

Oh, those dastardly Librulls! Singlehandedly stopping the urgent Air India investigation in its tracks -- a mere 22 years since it the disaster happened and a mere five years since the Anti-Terrorism Act was passed.
Why, it must be more Librull Corruption. Yeah, that's it. That'll be a winner theme.
And Harper lunged at it like a salmon to the spoon.
Vancouver Sun was following the Peggy Noonan Principle -- Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to! -- in their heavy-on-the-innuendo, light-on-the-facts article today, implying that Dion is opposed to extending some post-9/11 anti-terrorist legal provisions because he is trying to shield the father-in-law of a loyal MP from being questioned about the Air-India bombing. Here's the nut:

The Vancouver Sun has learned that [Mississauga-Brampton MP Navdeep Singh] Bains's father-in-law, Darshan Singh Saini, is on the RCMP's potential list of witnesses at investigative hearings designed to advance the Air India criminal probe.
But the ability to hold those hearings will be lost March 1 if parts of the Anti-Terrorism Act expire as expected, after the Liberals recently withdrew support for extending the provision being used to hold them.

Further down, the article passes lightly over the fact that the RCMP has been "preparing" for these investigative hearings since 2003 -- more than three years ago. And not even mentioned is the fact that they knew even in 2003 that the Anti-Terrorism Act was due to expire in 2007, so why didn't they get cracking on these hearings a little earlier? Of course, its always easier to blame politicians than it is to take responsibility for an inadequate investigation.
This Toronto Star article provides additional context:

Some Liberals have privately groused that Dion’s stance on the anti-terrorism provisions has been influenced by militant Sikh and Muslim groups, members of which helped secure the party leadership victory last December. Bains was instrumental in swinging the Sikh vote behind Dion.
But Liberals weren’t about to let Harper get away with linking Bains, however tenuously, to the Air India bombing. They repeatedly demanded an apology.
“The prime minister has just confirmed that to him, partisan advantage is everything — the truth does not matter, it is the allegation that counts,” bellowed an incensed Ralph Goodale, Liberal House leader.
“He just proved his devious and deceitful behaviour and he does not pay any attention to the consequences to any Canadian.” . . .
Dion said the fact that Saini’s name has been leaked to the media, when investigative hearings are supposed to be confidential, demonstrates why the anti-terrorism provisions shouldn’t be renewed.
“It’s an additional consideration that (confirms to) us that there is a problem with that because it’s smearing the reputation of somebody like this,” he told reporters.
That Bains has also been smeared demonstrates the “kind of guilt by association that this kind of provision may create.”
The issue appeared to help galvanize the Liberal caucus after a difficult caucus meeting earlier Wednesday. Sources said Dion appealed for a united front on the anti-terrorism measures, telling MPs it’s a crucial test of his leadership and warning that those who defy him may not be allowed to run for the party in the next election.