AmericaWest Flight 5004

Bombardier CRJ900
Crusing Speed: 515 mph
Capacity: 86 Coach
IAH (Houston) to CLT (Charlotte)

Pros:
The crew was nice! The preflight briefing was given by an attendant who had to be on one of her first flights; she spoke slowly and articulated perfectly, she had to be reading. After they memorize the "talk" it's all mumbling with the words joined together.
There was plenty of legroom.

Cons:
The seats friggin sucked! Hard and FLAT were the seat cusions. They reclined exactly 1 inch. every time I was able to ignore the ass-pain and start to nod off, my head did nod - down. Flop down, wake up, nod off, flop down, wake up... Did I mention the seats sucked?

The pilot that spoke to us was Spanish (Mexican). Might as well have been Swahleigh. For Christ's sake, I really don't care what color you are, or where you're from, but damnit, when I'm flying from Texas to North Carolina, all within the U.S. of A., I'd really think the freakin' pilots ought to speak english.

Did I mention the seats sucked?

Lancing the Boil

Lancing the Boil
By- Victor Davis Hanson
We quietly keep on killing terrorists, promoting elections in Iraq, pressuring Arab autocracies to democratize, and growing the economy.
For some time, a large number of Americans have lived in an alternate universe where everything is supposedly going to hell. If you get up in the morning to read the New York Times or Washington Post, watch John Murtha or Howard Dean on the morning talk shows, listen to National Public Radio at noon, and go to bed reading Newsweek it surely seems that the administration is incommunicado (cf. “the bubble”), the war is lost (“unwinnable”), the Great Depression is back (“jobless recovery”), and America about as popular as Nazi Germany abroad (“alone and isolated”). But in the real adult world, the economy is red-hot, not mired in joblessness or relegating millions to poverty. Unemployment is low, so are interest rates. Growth is high, as is consumer spending and confidence. Our Katrina was hardly as lethal as the Tsunami or Pakistani earthquake. Thousands of Arabs are not rioting in Dearborn. American elderly don’t roast and die in the thousands in their apartments as was true in France. Nor do American cities, like some in Chinese, lose their entire water supply to a toxic spill. Americans did not just vote to reject their own Constitution as in some European countries.
The military isn’t broken. Unlike after Vietnam when the Russians, Iranians, Cambodians, and Nicaraguans all soon tried to press their luck at our expense, most of our adversaries don’t believe the U.S. military is losing in Iraq, much less that it is wise now to take it on. Instead, the general impression is that our veteran and battle-hardened forces are even more lethal than was true of the 1990s — and engaging successfully in an almost impossible war.
Nor are we creating new hordes of terrorists in Iraq — as if a young male Middle Eastern fundamentalist first hates the United States only on news that it is in Iraq crafting a new Marshall Plan of $87 billion and offering a long-oppressed people democracy after taking out Saddam Hussein. Even al Jazeera cannot turn truth into untruth forever. Instead, the apprentice jihadist is trying to win his certification as master terrorist by trying his luck against the U.S. Marines abroad rather than on another World Trade Center at home — and failing quite unlike September 11.Like it or not, wars are usually won or lost when one side feels its losses are too high to continue. We have suffered terribly in losing 2,100 dead in Iraq; a vastly smaller enemy in contrast may have experienced tens of thousands of terrorists killed, and is finding its safe havens and money drying up. Panic about Iraq abounds in both the American media and the periodic fatwas of Dr. Zawahiri — but not in the U. S. government or armed forces.The world does not hate the United States. Of course, it envies us. Precisely because it is privately impressed by our unparalleled success, it judges America by a utopian measure in which anything less than perfection is written off as failure. We risk everything, our critics abroad almost nothing. So the hope for our failures naturally gives reinforcement to the bleak reality of their inaction. The Europeans expect our protection. The Mexicans risk their lives to get here. Indians and Japanese want closer relations. The old commonwealth appreciates our strength in defense of the West. Even the hostile Iranians, North Koreans, Cubans, Venezuelans, Chinese, and radical Islamists — despite the saber-rattling rhetoric — wonder whether we are naïve and idealistic rather than cruel and calculating. All this we rarely consider when we read of anti-Americanism in our major newspapers or hear another angry (and usually well-off) professor or journalist recite our sins.Al Zarqawi is in a classical paradox: He can’t defeat the American or Iraqi security forces or stop the elections. So he must dream up ever more macabre violence to gain notoriety — from beheading Americans on the television to mass murdering Shiites to blowing up third-party Jordanians. But such lashing out only further weakens his cause and makes the efforts of his enemies on the battlefield easier, as his Sunni base starts to see that this psychopath really can take his supporters all down with him.
The Palestine problem is not even worse off after Iraq. Actually, it is far better with the isolated and disgraced Arafat gone, the fence slowly inching ahead, the worst radical Islamic terrorists on the West Bank in paradise, Israel out of Gaza, and the world gradually accepting its diplomatic presence. The real hopeless mess was 1992-2000 when a well-meaning Bill Clinton, Madeline Albright, and Dennis Ross still deluded themselves that a criminal gang leader like Yasser Arafat was a legitimate head of state or that you could start to end an endless war by giving his thugs thousands of M-16s.
The European way is not the answer, as we see from the farcical negotiations over Iran’s time bomb. Struggling with a small military, unsustainable entitlement promises, little real economic growth, high unemployment, falling birth rates, angry unassimilated minorities, and a suicidal policy of estrangement from its benefactor the United States, Europeans show already an 11th-hour change of heart as we see in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, and soon in France. Europe’s policy about Iran’s nuclear program can best be summed up as “Hurry up, sane and Western Israel, and take out this awful thing — so we can damn you Zionist aggressors for doing so in our morning papers.”
The administration did not prove nearly as inept in the Iraqi reconstruction as the rhetoric of its opposition was empty. The government’s chief lapse was not claiming the moral high ground for a necessary war against a fascist mass murderer — an inexplicable silence now largely addressed by George Bush’s new muscular public defense of the war. In contrast, we can sadly recall all the alternative advice of past critics across the spectrum: invade Iraq in 1998, but get out right now; trisect Iraq; attack Syria or Iran; retreat to the Shiite south; put in hundreds of thousands of more troops; or delay the elections.Donald Rumsfeld’s supposed gaffe of evoking “Old Europe” is trumped tenfold and almost daily by slurs such as Abu Ghraib as worse than Saddam, Guantanamo as the work of Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot, Bush as the world’s greatest terrorist, the effort to democratize Iraq as unwinnable, and American troops terrorizing Iraqi women and children. Most Americans may grumble after reading the latest demonization in the press of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld, but they are hardly ready to turn over a complex Middle East to something like a President John Kerry, Vice President Barbara Boxer, Secretary of State Howard Dean, National Security Advisor Nancy Pelosi, and Secretary of Defense John Murtha — with a kitchen cabinet of Jimmy Carter and Sandy Berger.So at year’s end, what then is happening at home and abroad? For the last three years we have seen a carbuncle swell as the old Vietnam War opposition rematerialized, with Michael Moore, the Hollywood elite, and Cindy Sheehan scaring the daylights out of the Democratic establishment that either pandered to or triangulated around their crazy rhetoric. The size of the Islamicist/Baathist insurrection caught the United States for a time off guard, as was true also of the sudden vehement slurs from our erstwhile allies in Europe, Canada, and Asia. Few anticipated that the turmoil Iraq would force the Syrians out of Lebanon, the Libyans to give up their WMDs, and the Egyptians to hold elections — and that all the killing, acrimony, and furor over these developments would begin to engulf the Middle East and threaten the old order.In the face of that growing ulcer of discontent, we quietly kept on killing terrorists, promoting elections in Iraq, pressuring Arab autocracies to democratize, and growing the economy. All that is finally lancing the boil, here and abroad — and what was in there all along is now slowly oozing out, making the cure seem almost as gross as the malady.— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution

Potential Juror # 55

Potential Juror # 55

I could have titled this, "Standing in the Red square."  
The Harris County jury selection system has its act together. The mailings are easy to understand. One can reschedule up to 4 times within 8 weeks - and you can do it online!

The driving directions are pretty clear.  You can even ride the Metro bus for free if you show your summons.  The parking isn’t free, but there is a juror discount!  And you get paid $6 for the day. With the discount, parking is $5.50, so there’s a $0.50 profit for the day!

So I'm in a group of 60 standing in line in the tunnel waiting to go through the metal detector and up to the 18th floor of the criminal courts building.  At least it's not civil litigation.

The line isn't moving.  Something is wrong with the metal detector.
There's no reception down here and I'm starting to have withdrawal - I need my Bolglines RSS feeds!

We got through the detector and walked 14 miles under the street to the Criminal Courts building.  Then we packed 25 at a time into an elevator for a jump to the 18th floor.  "My advice is for you to take advantage of the facilities when you get off the elevator; it may be a while before you get another chance!", the deputy advised us.  You never have to advise a man over 50 to take a leak.

10:30 - So now we're in the hallways (all 60 of us) waiting...............   and waiting .........  There are iron benches - 4 of them, each one seating 3 people. That means 24 are sitting on hard iron benches.  Most everyone else is sitting on the tile floor; but the rest of us are standing and leaning against the wall.  My feet and back are beginning to complain.

Well, there aren’t 60 of us here in the hall.  24 of the folks have been stuck in the elevator for the last 45 minutes.  A deputy just came into the hall and told us the case had “plea bargained out” and our services wouldn’t be needed.  However, we can’t leave until the stuck-24 become unstuck and join us.

10:45 – There they are, here’s your proof-of-jury-duty absence slip and have a nice day.

The Truth On the Ground

The Truth On the Ground
By Ben ConnableWednesday, December 14, 2005; A29
When I told people that I was getting ready to head back to Iraq for my third tour, the usual response was a frown, a somber head shake and even the occasional "I'm sorry." When I told them that I was glad to be going back, the response was awkward disbelief, a fake smile and a change of subject. The common wisdom seems to be that Iraq is an unwinnable war and a quagmire and that the only thing left to decide is how quickly we withdraw. Depending on which poll you believe, about 60 percent of Americans think it's time to pull out of Iraq.
How is it, then, that 64 percent of U.S. military officers think we will succeed if we are allowed to continue our work? Why is there such a dramatic divergence between American public opinion and the upbeat assessment of the men and women doing the fighting?
Open optimism, whether or not it is warranted, is a necessary trait in senior officers and officials. Skeptics can be excused for discounting glowing reports on Iraq from the upper echelons of power. But it is not a simple thing to ignore genuine optimism from mid-grade, junior and noncommissioned officers who have spent much of the past three years in Iraq.
We know the streets, the people and the insurgents far better than any armchair academic or talking head. As military professionals, we are trained to gauge the chances of success and failure, to calculate risk and reward. We have little to gain from our optimism and quite a bit to lose as we leave our families over and over again to face danger and deprivation for an increasingly unpopular cause. We know that there are no guarantees in war, and that we may well fail in the long run. We also know that if we follow our current plan we can, over time, leave behind a stable and unified country that might help to anchor a better future for the Middle East.
It is difficult for most Americans to rationalize this optimism in the face of the horrific images and depressing stories that have come to symbolize the war in Iraq. Most of the violent news is true; the death and destruction are very real. But experienced military officers know that the horror stories, however dramatic, do not represent the broader conditions there or the chances for future success. For every vividly portrayed suicide bombing, there are hundreds of thousands of people living quiet, if often uncertain, lives. For every depressing story of unrest and instability there is an untold story of potential and hope. The impression of Iraq as an unfathomable quagmire is false and dangerously misleading.
It is this false impression that has led us to a moment of national truth. The proponents of the quagmire vision argue that the very presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is the cause of the insurgency and that our withdrawal would give the Iraqis their only true chance for stability. Most military officers and NCOs with ground experience in Iraq know that this vision is patently false. Although the presence of U.S. forces certainly inflames sentiment and provides the insurgents with targets, the anti-coalition insurgency is mostly a symptom of the underlying conditions in Iraq. It may seem paradoxical, but only our presence can buffer the violence enough to allow for eventual stability.
The precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops would almost certainly lead to a violent and destabilizing civil war. The Iraqi military is not ready to assume control and would not miraculously achieve competence in our absence. As we left, the insurgency would turn into internecine violence, and Iraq would collapse into a true failed state. The fires of the Iraqi civil war would spread, and terrorists would find a new safe haven from which to launch attacks against our homeland.
Anyone who has spent even a day in the Middle East should know that the Arab street would not thank us for abandoning Iraq. The blame for civil war would fall squarely on our shoulders. It is unlikely that the tentative experiments in democracy we have seen in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere would survive the fallout. There would be no dividend of goodwill from heartbroken intellectuals or emboldened Islamic extremists. American troops might be home in the short run, but the experienced professionals know that in the long run, quitting Iraq would mean more deployments, more desperate battles and more death.
Sixty-four percent of us know that we have a good shot at preventing this outcome if we are allowed to continue our mission. We quietly hope that common sense will return to the dialogue on Iraq. Although we hate leaving our families behind, many of us would rather go back to Iraq a hundred times than abandon the Iraqi people.
A fellow Marine and close friend epitomizes this sentiment. Sean has served two tours in Iraq as a reserve officer. During his last tour, he was informed of the birth of his baby girl by e-mail, learned his father was dying of cancer, and was wounded in the same blast of an improvised explosive that killed his first sergeant on a dirt road in the middle of the western desert. Sean loves his family and his job, but he has made it clear that he would rather go back to Iraq than see us withdraw.
Everyone in uniform does not share this sentiment. Thirty-six percent of military officers are less confident in the mission. But these officers will continue to work as hard as the rest of us toward success because they, too, are professionals. With men and women such as this, the United States has an excellent chance of success in Iraq. We can fail only if the false imagery of quagmire takes hold and our national political will is broken. In that event, both the Iraqi people and the American troops will pay a long-term price for our shortsighted delusion.
The writer is a major in the Marine Corps.

"But he didn't say 'bomb'!"

Federal Marshals: Alizar Didn't Say 'Bomb'
Categories: crime, law and justice / law enforcement / United States / crime / man-made disaster / anti-terror / terrorist attack / disaster and accident / terrorism / unrest, conflicts and war / terrorism / police / economy, business and finance / aerospace / science and technology / aerospace engineering / manufacturing and engineering / engineering
MIAMI, Dec. 9, 2005 (AP Online delivered by Newstex) -- The airline passenger who blew himself up along with 27 other passengers seemed  agitated even before boarding and later appeared to be desperate to get off the plane, some fellow travelers said.Federal officials say US Marshall Jeremiah Goldstein believe the passenger, Rigoberto Alizar just wanted to get off the plane.  Although some passengers on the plane thought he might have said it, Goldstein said, “I never heard him say ‘bomb’ at all”
Goldstein was saved when Alizar shoved him down the gate-check luggage ramp extending from the jetway.  When Alizar pulled the triggering device from his backpack, Goldstein tried to overpower him, but the crazed bomber was too strong and literally threw Goldstein across the jetway and into the luggage ramp.    “I never would have thought he had any device – I mean, he’d gone through and cleared the security checks!”
Twenty-five passengers and 2 pilots were killed when Alizar detonated what now appears to be a new kind of plastic explosive that is not detected by current screening devices.  
“Why didn’t the marshals just shoot him?” passenger Roberto Dominica cried.  Some passengers said they noticed Alizar while waiting to get on the plane. They said he was singing "Go Down Moses" as his wife tried to calm him.  Others said they saw him having lunch and described him as restless and anxious.  "The wife was telling him, 'Calm down.  Let other people get on the plane. It will be all right,'" said Alan Woodward, a passenger.  “The officials should have spotted his behavior and not let him on the plane,” said Herman Sheldrick, another passenger.
McAlbany, a 44-year-old construction worker who was returning home from a fishing trip in Key West, said he was sitting in Seat 21C when he noticed a commotion a few rows back."I heard him saying to his wife, 'I've got to get off the plane,'" McAlbany said. "He bumped me, bumped a couple of stewardesses. He just wanted to get off the plane."Alizar ran up the aisle into the first-class cabin, where marshals chased him onto the jetway, McAlbany said.  Some passengers, including John McAlbany, said they believe Alizar was a threat and should have been removed in handcuffs.  “So what he never said the word, ‘bomb’, when you see a guy grab his backpack and RUN up the aisle toward the cockpit, only an idiot would think he was NOT going to do something!”  "This was wrong," McAlbany said. "Twenty-seven people who should be with their families this Christmas are dead because the marshals didn’t believe he was a threat!"

Some war critics cross the line

Hurting moraleSome war critics cross the line
From: The New Hampshire Union Leader
FOR AN OPPOSITION party, criticizing the prosecution of a war is a tricky thing. Comments must be carefully crafted, arguments made with precision. If they are not, they can do more harm than good. The mass of elected Democrats, unfortunately, have yet to learn that.
In their zeal to hang the Iraq war around President Bush’s neck like an albatross, the Democrats have taken the war effort’s low approval ratings as a license for relentless criticism, little of it constructive. These armchair generals have nearly reached the point of calling the war unwinnable, and some critics have done even that.
Few would begrudge the Democrats their criticism were it given clearly for patriotic rather than partisan purposes. But much of it is not. And Americans can sense that. A recent RT Strategies poll found that only 30 percent of Americans think the Democrats are bad-mouthing the war effort because they hope to improve its execution. Most think the Democrats are just trying to score points against a Republican President and Congress. The poll also found that most Americans think Democratic criticism of the war is hurting troop morale. It is hurting morale at home, too.
To be very clear, we do not think that criticizing the war or its execution makes one unpatriotic. There are plenty of patriotic citizens who think the war is unjust or cannot be won, Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha being a notable example.
But too much criticism has focused on the American death toll and presented that as the only score to be kept, deliberately ignoring the enormous accomplishments our men and women in uniform have achieved under brutal conditions in a country very suspicious of American motives.
This, we think, crosses the line. To pretend that our fighting forces are losing this war, and attempt to convince the American people of this, just to gain partisan political advantage is to put one’s self-interest over the nation’s interest. And that is the very definition of unpatriotic.

Most say Democrats' war criticism hurts morale

Poll: Most say Democrats' war criticism hurts morale
WASHINGTON - Democrats fumed last week at Vice President Dick Cheney's suggestion that criticism of the administration's war policies was itself becoming a hindrance to the war effort. But a new poll indicates most Americans are sympathetic to Cheney's point.
Seventy percent of people said that criticism of the war by Democratic senators hurts troop morale - with 44 percent saying morale is hurt "a lot," according to a poll taken by RT Strategies.
Even self-identified Democrats agree: 55 percent believe criticism hurts morale while 21 percent say it helps morale.
The RTs in RT Strategies are Thomas Riehle, a Democrat, and Lance Tarrance, a veteran GOP pollster. Their poll also indicates many Americans are skeptical of Democratic complaints about the war. Just three of 10 adults accept that Democrats are leveling criticism because they believe this will help U.S. efforts in Iraq.
A majority believes the motive is really to "gain a partisan political advantage."
The poll results came from calls made to 1,001 adults from Nov. 17-20. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Lieberman v. Murtha Explained

From PowerLine
Lieberman v. Murtha explained


Mark Steyn begins his Sun-Times column with the contrast between the massive media fawning over Rep. John Murtha's call for an immediate pullout from Iraq and the massive media silence over Senator Lieberman's call to stay the course: "Dems determined to ignore progress in Iraq."
Coincidentally, earlier this week, reader Michael Valois asked Columbia Journalism Review editor Steve Lovelady "what he thoughtabout the MSM ignoring Joe Lieberman's positive report from Iraq." Valois wrote:

Steve, Sen. Lieberman just returned from his FOURTH
post-invasion trip to Iraq and writes in the Wall Street Journal: "I have just
returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real
progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are
in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of
Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood--unless the great
American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is
prematurely withdrawn...It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million
Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly
10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or
al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if
Iraq becomes free and modern."
Why can't we
read about Sen. Leiberman's views in the NY Times or in the Washington Post? Why
is it that President Bush and Sen. Lieberman can give facts to readers from BOTH
sides of the aisle, but Mr. [Calvin] Woodward can't manage to do so in an AP
wire dispatch?

Lovelady responded:

You think the New York Times and Washington Post
should write a story every time a neocon hawk pens an essay for the Wall Street
Journal's editorial page?

Somehow, I don't see that happening...
And there, ladies and gentlemen, you have it.