Ted Rall for January 18, 2010

i like the windows painted black added to the earlier hannibal lector face restraint.

Oakland, Aukland… what’s the difference?

It’s almost as though they WANT to forcibly push the entire airline industry into bankruptcy.

If I have a choice between taking a plane and not, I’ll choose not to. And I think I’m not alone.

Let’s see: 18-hour road trip of actually experiencing the country I’m passing through versus giving up all of my dignity for a quicker, anonymous journey through the air. What to do, what to do …

If you have the time, we have the highway system.

Pity we don’t really have the trains anymore.

I’ll think I’ll start a business manufacturing armored umbrellas. There could be a meteorite coming down with your name on it.

“…They do all that now..

”

Agreed

I’ve read that Japanese “Shinkanzen” bullet trains measure their delays at the end of the year in seconds…

Regarding flying, I’ve always advocated sedating passengers as a much more economical way to mass transport bodies. No flight attendants needed, no food or drink and you can use all the available space to stack ‘em up 4 or 5 high.

Heh heh heh

“Feel lucky?” haha 6/5 Ted

When my girlfriend flew back to Australia from San Francisco after we first met, she had a stopover in New Zealand of which I was unaware. So when she called me 12 hours after leaving SFO and said she was in Aukland, my response was “Half a day flying, and you’re only in OAKLAND?!?”

We’re better at compensating for each other’s accents these days…

Rode the “bullet train” many years ago- wish we had them here, we built freeways and shut down lines (rail beds) instead that could have been upgraded.

First ride on a 757, the attendant reached over to close my shade so people could “enjoy the TV more”- being claustrophobic a tad, I asked her if she wanted to keep her arm. I kept my view. Of course, today, I’d have ended up being hauled off the plane. Going through airports, and flying, is getting a LOT more difficult, and uncomfortable, because of morons, not “security”.

Many of those rail beds are now hiking and biking trails – at least that’s environmentally conscious. But it would be better if they did that to some of the freeways and we had more trains.

Well, no matter what happens in this crazy world, there is one thing which will never change; it is as constant as the Pole Star: “The Department of Homeland Security reports that our current Threat Level is Orange.”

Since the airlines have violated my Constitutional rights, I refuse to fly in an airplane. I suggest others do the same.

The last time I flew on an airplane voluntarily was in 1976. In 1994 I was forced to fly to a company reunion, and it was such an awful experience WITHOUT any of the recent security madness that I swore I’d never do it again. When I was younger I used to really enjoy flying above the clouds, and feel no desire or need to venture into space – having been 35,000 feet up is more than enough for me. But the idea of spending almost a week on a boat to cross the Atlantic doesn’t turn me on either. Anyplace you can get to on land, there’s no need to take a plane. If I ever want to go to a far-flung destination, I’ll bite the bullet and put up with it.

Fritz- the pole star actually does “move”, not fast, but it does, but only about as fast as Homeland Security. Your friend also made pretty good time to Auckland.

thanx, dtroutma, I was using “Pole Star” in its proverbial sense, as in Julius Caesar:

If I could pray to move, prayers would move me; But I am constant as the northern star, Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality There is no fellow in the firmament. The skies are painted with unnumber’d sparks, They are all fire and every one doth shine, But there’s but one in all doth hold his place. So in the world; ‘tis furnish’d well with men, And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive; Yet in the number I do know but one That unassailable holds on his rank, Unshaked of motion; and that I am he, Let me a little show it, even in this; That I was constant the Threat Level should be Orange And constant do remain to keep it so.

Dont forget to put slot machines on those planes.

We should use our money to buy weapons to kill the terrorists, not hire lawers to defend them. –Scott Brown

And the Neanderthals shall inherit the Earth.

^Are you saying Senor is gonna rule us all?

Harleyquinn, you were near, but still missed the gold ! Passengers will be blindfolded, have their clothes cut off with scissors, receive an anal sedative and nappies, be dressed in an orange jumpsuit, handcuffed, and shackled. What do you think they’ve been practising for on all those «extraordinary-rendition» planes chartered by the CIA ? And no complaining about Auckland or Oakland - either beats the hell out of Bagram or Guantánamo !…

Henri