I appreciate the welcome and encouragement to stay, but I've got a lot on the schedule between now and the new year. My fingers are sore.
"You're articulate and sincere, and I've seen you concede as many points as you've stood behind."
Whip I didn't think you had it in you. One day we could even be friends.
"What it does mean is that you're going to have to develop a pretty thick skin and not take the obvious frustration this is going to cause too personally."
I can do what I want, and hey, if frustration is where you think I'm at, I'm glad you care at least some, but it's more of a I don't have time to "bring it" the way I "want to bring it" when it comes to enlightening/discussing/debating/learning. When I do make the effort, there are plenty of dissenting opinions that mock me for things which I feel I am not oh cheapshots which are pointless because I only care to learn.
"My suggestion would be to just take a few days off and come back."
Might be a few weeks or months, that's probably be what'll happens, but I appreciate the exchange of Ideas thus far, bottom line, for JU to stay fresh and interesting it needs me more then I need it, and thats the same for all of us. The drive by posting, is at best rediclious and can be upsetting but I just need to keep it in perspective. As for some of the people who post here, who like to argue akin to is the earth flat or round, I can do without jumping into those threads as well, all learning experiences.
"I guess rather than stand up for what he believes, Dan is going to "cut & run"."
That's an insulting remark, if I had made it, I'd take it back. As for the actual meaning and point of your usage of cut & run, well, if you slowly read up, you'll see that I had the last post relevant to...
the article title,
the articles main points,
facts as they are in the police report,
presentation of my stated take on this situation;
To summarize these guys were simply flying home from a conference and both were under the eye of suspicion because they are Muslim, and because they also drew attention to themselves. All of the actions taken by the airline up until the point of re-denying them a flight were legit. It isn't discrimination because they were Muslim necessarily, but discrimination because the first day, they were allowed to fly up until found to be suspicious, not found to be in violation of the law but merely suspicious, on the second day after all wrong doing was cleared, they were not upgraded for the misunderstanding, to first class as you would expect a company to attempt to do to try to save a customer, not given even their prior arrangement, but denied a flight for no reason except because the airline didn't want to provide service. Yet that same airline had taken their money the day prior, accepted them, allowed them to board, tolerated them as any other passenger, and they weren't on any no fly list, or anything.
Nobody has disputed either the facts or the reasoning I used to conclude that the airline had made the right decision on the first day and the wrong one on the second day.
Yet I'm the one who's cut and run. I'm insulted, you should be ashamed for making said remark. "Cut and run" is a sound byte created in an election year to curry votes against something i.e. leaving Iraq, it's not a exit strategy, I didn't coin it, nor did I invent it. To describe, currently the only viable option in the essence of a lack of viable exit strategies, a situation created by a leader who thought it would be impossible for us to lose, as my fault, or link my presentation of the facts and statements to that is just flat out silly.
I didn't spill the coffee in Iraq, I'm not cleaning it up. Further, if it was my duty to make coffee I'd be carrying some napkins if I was handling the whole situation with glass hands. Piss poor analogy but it was a piss poor application of cut & run to the argument I've made.
Regarding my choice to not rebutt, a rebuttal to my own post, which I'm still waiting for, and move on to other things, more important then spinning the letters into coherent sentences with you guys and gals, it's my choice, and I'll make it however I please. I didn't start a war, not even of words, of facts maybe, but I see them few and far between my own posts in this thread, although maybe it's just my perspective.
"Dan: I'd have to ask, have the Imams been charged with a crime? I personally believe that a private air carrier should have the right to toss people off the plane for whatever reason they choose. I think common carriage is ass, frankly, and that business owners should be allowed to serve whoever the please, and omit whoever they please."
I agree, if the airline wants to kick you off for security reasons fine, but they should have some cause, which they did in the first day of the situation. Kicking off people because the color of their skin, sexual orientation, or their religion, things which are protected under civil rights laws, that is just ludicrous. If it is not against the law it should be in my opinion. It probably is unlawful to deny someone flight service purely because of their religious observances I'm not sure. If praying is a behavior that is intolerable in public life, then you can expect a revolution far more dangerous to the lives of the citizens of the country then anything terrorists can muster occasionally. I'm talking about another civil war because this nation was founded on the ideals that the government shall not infringe on your religious expression rights. If anything our country has moved to being more and more free for more and more segments of the population as time goes on. Thus far, it's an inalienable right when it comes to being an employee perhaps not yet, as a customer.
I would expect a Muslim boycott of the airline if they choose to handle this type of thing in this way from now on, again that remains to be seen.
All politics and opinion aside, lets get to the heart of this... do you see that fear, which is the weapon the extremists have used against us allows you to think that it's ok to not accept people's religious expressions as normal and safe, the constitution provides no business or government organization with the ability to discriminate against people based on religion.
Do you see that our country, 10 years ago, or even Sept 10, 2001, some Muslims in an airport praying would have been more tolerated, and not caused alarm, yet the danger was just as real if not much more so then it is now?
Do you not see, that these guys were just false alarms, I mean one of them was blind, not acting blind, blind, walking stick sunglasses lack of sight, the whole bit, they all were middle aged/30's-40's, neither your typical terrorist, young dumb and influence able, nor the physical shape you'd expect (obese or slightly so). The pattern of young, fit, fanatically devoted willing to kill all infidels doesn't really fit these guys unless you are willing to stretch it to a certain degree.
"People who purposely try to frighten airline passengers should fear the passengers more than the FBI in my opinion."
You are correct in the post 9/11 world anybody, Muslim or not, can had better think twice about trying anything on an airplane, then think about it again lol because passengers are out to get you if you make them angry or threaten them.
The Imams have said they haven't tried to frighten the passengers, only say their prayers and take a flight. I believe them, if the passengers and flight attendants are already scared to death then they be damned. These guys were in business suits, shirts ties, dressed clean and the thinking that because they had a political discussion/debate on a plane and were middle eastern they're guilty of holding views "of an extremist nature" is just silly. They're Americans just like you and me are they not?
Look I've chosen to live my life free from the fear of these guys, embrace not just Muslims but anybody in our country that's different, it's helped me realize that what things I knew before 9/11 were just as true as they are now. That there are a lot of people who are in this world just like you and me who want the same things, freedom, a good life, a better one for their kids. There are some nuts out there, and certainly bad apples, certainly also differences, but there are many more things that bind us in the similar then things that divide us in the dissimilar.
"I'm 6'2", 300+ lbs and I've never needed a seatbelt extension. Sorry, I don't buy it."
I'm 6'1" my drivers license says 250 but I'm not exactly 250 either, the seats are smaller then I like, sometimes uncomfortable, if you are trying to support the idea that these guys were going to go offensive with the seat belt extenders, what about the fact that one of them was blind and according to pepper spray manufactures, blindness removes 85% of an attackers ability to persecute an attack.
A. Why would they bring the blind guy along if they were planning some devious aggression? What as a diversion?
Get real.
B. Why would only one of them asked for the extension?
If you are more beefcake then fatass, or vice versa, then being 250-300 lbs, these seats weren't designed for your comfort in mind. They were designed to fit as many passengers inside the fuselage as possible, get you on and off the plane as quickly as possible, and turn that jet around to board and expedite departure ASAP. In manufacturing we call it OEE, Operational equipment effectiveness. It's an ISO standard, and it can be applied to any business, I'm sure the airlines have their own alphabet soup for it but basically for a company to be world class that machine has to be up and running 90% or better, 24/7 365 days a year for it's 20-30 year life expectancy. Getting you on and off the plane fast, and getting a certain number of passengers on average on each flight is a necessary thing for a company to stay in business. Wanna guess which magnitude the average profit margin is for each flight? It's tiny. Large civilian airliners make either several hundred to about a thousand dollars per destination reached. So if a plane is flying all day long, it's made maybe 4-8 thousand dollars profit for that day if the average passenger count was good. If it was a low passenger count flight day, then it wouldn't have made money.
Bottom line, the chairs are designed for efficiency, getting the most amount of people into the smallest amount of space, and not breaking down and needing a repair. Not comfort.
It just doesn't add up in light of the facts. If you bothered to view the video, you can see 4 of these guys. Judge for yourself whether it would seem extraordinary for them to ask for an extension. I'm no detective and I didn't go to college for this, but I think with the delays and commotion, the fact that the plane never i.e. left the tarmac these guys never buckled in along with a lot of other passengers. If memory serves me from flights, you aren't required to do so until just before the plane begins to move. I'm guessing that since 9/11 and the fact that the airlines have had to "go lean" they wouldn't be serving dinner from Minneapolis to Phoenix because of the length of the flight. (2-3 hours?) So these guys probably ate a meal, maybe a dinner before they departed. I'm sure one of you is going to say, oh look "the apologist" is making excuses, but if you can shoot down the argument I've made in this paragraph with some facts, be my guest. I did see the video, and to me, none of these guys were morbidly obese, but to say that they wouldn't fit the definition of obese, i.e. marginally overweight, well I have no way of proving except educated guesses, but I'd say it would not be excessively unreasonable for one of them to ask for a seatbelt extension and to leave it unbuckled. It's an opinion, and you may disagree.
"Dan: I'd have to ask, have the Imams been charged with a crime?"
To this day I believe the answer is no.
Ok time to get some sleep. Look forward to reading your responses to my "cut and run"
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