On Sun, 2004-12-19 at 10:53 -0600, J.A. Terranson wrote:
(1) Mr. Monahan seems to think that lies on police reports are an artifact of 9/11. Welcome to the real world Mr. Monahan.
I can concur with this, though it wouldn't surprise me if lying on police reports has increased since then.
(2) Monahan, and those like him who continue to fly, have nobody to blame but themselves: if you continue to feed these assholes by buying those tickets, then you have it coming: simple economics. If people refuse to fly, this will stop.
He may not have a choice. There are three choices for intracity travel in the US: air, automobile (I'm lumping intracity buses in with personal cars here for a reason that will be obvious later), and train. First, let's look at automobile travel, which includes buses. There is one major intracity bus company left and that's Greyhound. They tend to be cheap, and thus attract people who can't afford to fly. The only advantage over driving your own car, is you don't have to worry about doing the driving yourself ("Go Greyhound and leave the driving to us" if you remember the old commercials). Generally, automobile travel is nearly unworkable if you're going farther than, say, a 10-hour drive or about 500 miles. As for Amtrak (the last passenger rail line left), well, that may be just as bad in most cases. I have heard that the government subsidies of Amtrak are being dropped to lower and lower levels, and as such they are not making enough money to operate at acceptable standards to most of us. Read misc.transport.rail sometime and you will see what I mean. Also, you don't get there that much faster than with automobile travel, and I think it may actually cost more.
(3) As to the ACLU, again, welcome to the real world. Many of us have been down that road before you Mr. Monahan - while the ACLU is not a bad thing per se, they are a lot like the cops and courts: they are not there for any one individual, there are there for "the big picture". And the Big Picture requires money, which means you must be a minority (since how can anyone of the majority ever be "oppressed"?). In a nutshell, Fuck The ACLU.
I wouldn't speak so ill of the ACLU. Groups like the ACLU are just about the last thing standing between what's left of our democracy and an outright dictatorship. White people aren't even necessarily the "majority" anymore.
(4) Lastly, as to your cesarian, fuck you and your wife, and her cesearean. We don't give a shit about your personal problems, just like you don't care about ours. Sure, it makes for a pulpy little story, but when you get right down to it, do we really care? No. Because, again, you helped to create this beast you are now bitching about, and after it bit you, you *continued to fly*, and thereby feed it some more.
This is downright insensitive. (Mr. Monahan, if you actually get to read this, Terranson does *not* represent the views of all of us in the least.) I really have a good mind to archive this and send it back to you when your wife gets pregnant and something similar happens to you. And again, he likely didn't continue to fly because he wanted to. See #2 above. -- Shawn K. Quinn <skquinn@speakeasy.net>