Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wife's Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why We Put You There?

Shawn K. Quinn skquinn at speakeasy.net
Sun Dec 19 09:51:45 PST 2004


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 at speakeasy.net>





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