Saturday, February 17, 2007

You buy your ticket, you take your chance

The buzz this morning is about the hate machine's favorite spokesgal, Michelle Malkin's remark.
I have to tell you, in general, I’m skeptical of anything that has Bill of Rights tacked on to it.
In Malkin's case, as we know from her voluminous lunatic rantings on the matter, she really means it. She actually does disapprove of universal human rights and really hates the idea of equal treatment for anyone and anything not stamped with the wingnut approval label.

However, much as I hate to agree with Malkin even slightly, I have to question the wisdom of this move.
One day after hundreds of passengers were stranded on JetBlue flights for up to 11 hours, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer said she plans to introduce legislation in the Senate for a passengers' bill of rights. A spokesman in Boxer's Washington office said Boxer is working with Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, who is drafting legislation for the House following a similar incident in December.
I can think of ten things more important to address than whether people get stuck on airplanes and it's just this sort of "news" driven politicking that allows the GOP to paint the Democratic Party as partisan and frivolous. Furthermore, you just know the wingnuts are going to use to this to continue to flog their false Pelosi plane scandal.

I don't know how these plane delays even made such big news. People stuck in airports during snowstorms. Wow. Is there anybody who hasn't been stuck on the tarmac? I know I have and under worse circumstances. Air travel by its nature is fraught with delays. Does this really require Congressional action?

Personally, I'd like to see the Democrats addressing the rescue of the original Bill of Rights, starting with dismantling the Patriot Act and ending secret domestic surveillance.
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9 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

2 . To repeal the Military Selective Service Act. (Introduced in House)[H.R.424.IH]
3 . Department of Peace and Nonviolence Act (Introduced in House)[H.R.808.IH]

2:38:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why didn't they just let people off the plane till they fixed it? I would have pulled the emergency thing. It would be worth the jail time or even getting shot to be able to get off the plne. the boredom must have been horrible

3:40:00 PM  
Blogger Libby Spencer said...

Anon - a lot of bills are introduced and ignored. All the more reason to not dick around with some silly whatever bill of rights for passengers. They have the right not to take the airline.

Lester, it's a good question. It's partly to do with the fact that they schedule the planes so tightly that there isn't a gate or even a place to debark the passengers with a rolling stair. It's partly because they hope they're going to be able to get out sooner than later and taking the passengers on and off the plane takes a lot of time.

When I was stuck in Brussels, I certainly thought they should have let us get off while they repaired the bloody plane and certainly when it became apparent they were going to have to wait for the part to arrive from somewhere. Yeah, the tedium sucks but it's not life threatening. It's just incovenient. Life is like that sometimes.

Besides, if you travel in the middle of winter, you have to expect weather dealys. You should be prepared with a book or something anyway.

3:53:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

you can't hold people prisoner on a plane. what if it the plane took a month to fix? I've never heard of such a thing. I've had planes be delayed for long periods of time but at least I could go around the airport and drink at the bar and whatnot.

I'm never one to put up with anything and would have broken out of the plane after, oh, 30 minutes

5:42:00 PM  
Blogger Libby Spencer said...

LOL Lester. They wouldn't hold you for a month. But if you're going to fly you do have to be prepared for the occassional boring sit on the ground while you're waiting to take off. It's not different from being caught in a traffic jam on the highway.

7:22:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I wonder if michelle malkin isn't saying that she just doesn;'t like stuff that is called the such and such bill of rights. like david horowitz's "student bill of rights". that's how it reads to me

1:13:00 PM  
Blogger Libby Spencer said...

Of course that's what she meant Lester and I agreed with her. She would never come out and say she hates the original bill of rights but her history of racist posts and her books make it very clear that she finds the real Bill of RIghts inconvenient at best.

3:09:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's weird how huge the conservative industry and movement is and how unpopular bush is. there are lots of right wing talk show hosts and pundits and think tanks who make millions and have millions of listeners. yet, bush is barely at 30% and has been pretty much the whole second term. You figure with all those people working for him he'd be at like 90%

4:05:00 PM  
Blogger Libby Spencer said...

Really Lester. If he can't get any numbers with the noise machine on overdrive in support of his dunderheaded administration, you know it's really bad.

9:42:00 AM  

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