Picture of the day

Via the Air Force: The Space Shuttle Atlantis towers mightily over the pathetic earth based flight of an Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle.

Of historical note, this was the last flight of the Atlantis and one of the last documented photos of a southern US ocean untainted by billions of gallons of oil.

Click to embiggen.

Video tribute

Peter Graves, star of Stalag 17 and It Conquered the World, is dead at age 83. It is usually our typical fashion to mock the dead while their bodies are still warm, thus proving we are superior for still living. But since Graves himself contributed so much to the field of mockery, particularly filmic mockery, we will instead post a compilation of his greatest work: the captain in the comedy classic Airplane.



He's watching gladiator films with the baby Jesus now.

Picture of the day

Via Popular Science and the Google with the maps comes this look at the world's largest airplane graveyard... from space. And they still didn't get every plane in the shot.

5,000 aerospace vehicles; B-52s, B-1s and F-111s F-14 Tomcats, F-15s, F-16s, C-130s, KC-135 refueling tankers, A-10sF-4 Phantoms, Century Series jets, and numerous paper airplanes made out of notebook and corrasable bond typing paper.

Just think of how many IRS offices we could teach a lesson. How dare they audit me!
/Steve Kingin'

Click to embiggen.

This blog is about to get fatwa'd

I'm not usually one to go out of my way to fear monger against our Muslim brothers and sisters. After all our President is one and I have most of the religious right and GOP to do that for me. But the fact does remain that Muslim men are the leading group of fuckheads that make air travel so difficult and fraught with potentially exploding groins. (Other leading fuckheads: airlines themselves, our nation's traveling moneyed schizophrenics, all babies, and yours truly when yet another gullible stewardess has accidentally "overserved" me)

So count me as among the spiritually unmoved when I hear this in response to new high tech ways to make sure people aren't smuggling C4 in their tighty whiteys.

Saying that body scanners violate Islamic law, Muslim-American groups are supporting a “fatwa” – a religious ruling – that forbids Muslims from going through the scanners at airports.

The Fiqh Council of North America – a body of Islamic scholars that includes some from Michigan – issued a fatwa this week that says going through the airport scanners would violate Islamic rules on modesty.

Yeah, I don't know how to tell you this, but our nation isn't going to be all that broken up by conditions that result in less Muslim men on airplanes and better security. I think we as a society are going to muddle on with the knowledge that unless that whole Catholic/Protestant terrorism thing kicks up again (quitters!) we could someday dream of a future where we were able to keep our shoes on and transport dangerous contraband like Pert Plus and water onto airplanes.

Hey, you can always "Go Greyhound" and sample our nation's terrible commuter rail system. Just a suggestion: maybe you should have gone with a little lobbying or maybe pointed out a few studies that showed the scanners as lacking or gone the whole "these scanners are child porn" route that some chose before jumping right to the religious edict stage. Good luck with getting this country to care about your carefully considered fatwas.

Things that don't sound good

The why's and how's of how a terrorist was able to pack his Jockey's with exploding groin candy and was only stopped through a combination of incompetence and passengers noting that a man trying to light his sack on fire isn't normal already don't look very good. But as we get deeper and deeper into investigations into what was and wasn't done, well, the specifics don't sound any better. Take for instance this USA Today interview with crotchety old National Security Adviser/Dip-set rapper Jim Jones.

White House national security adviser James Jones says Americans will feel "a certain shock" when they read an account being released Thursday of the missed clues that could have prevented the alleged Christmas Day bomber from ever boarding the plane.

President Obama "is legitimately and correctly alarmed that things that were available, bits of information that were available, patterns of behavior that were available, were not acted on," Jones said in an interview Wednesday with USA TODAY.

"That's two strikes,"

Well, unless it involves some revelation about Michael Jackson's death or an additional dozen mistresses for Tiger Woods, I doubt America will even stifle a disinterested yawn, let alone get "shocked". But it is a tad disturbing when your national security adviser looks at all the facts and decides that should be the reaction the American public and would be... if we had an adult country or a functioning political system.

But what would theoretically shock Americans? I don't know, something like this maybe?

U.S. border security officials learned of the alleged extremist links of the suspect in the Christmas Day jetliner bombing attempt as he was airborne from Amsterdam to Detroit and had decided to question him when he landed, officials disclosed Wednesday.
...
"The people in Detroit were prepared to look at him in secondary inspection," a senior law enforcement official said. "The decision had been made. The [database] had picked up the State Department concern about this guy -- that this guy may have been involved with extremist elements in Yemen."

If the intelligence had been detected sooner, it could have resulted in the interrogation and search of Abdulmutallab at the airport in Amsterdam

Ahh, your information told you that this man should not be allowed to board a plane without first going through an interrogation and search, but not only is this database watch list information not work quickly enough, when you do get the word that he's a terrorist super-freak you decide to let the man complete the flight he shouldn't be allowed on in order to question him at the completion of it. But don't worry, security types in the article will assure you that's wasn't where the mistake was made. No, the mistake was made when the father called the government to warn them about his son and, despite having enough evidence to put him on a 'no fly' list, he was allowed to get on a plane. Well, that does make me feel better.

Actually the scary thing is that we still might not be able to address this stuff because our national security and terrorism policies are more focused around exploiting the politics of the situation instead of fixing things. So it's 50/50 on whether or not we can fix things like "not letting the guy on our watch list get on the plane". Let's just put in the work to make our security lapses go from "shocking" to merely "mildly surprising". Baby steps.

Incompetent dogs

What with the whole "Joan Rivers is a terrorist"/"that actual terrorist isn't a terrorist" thing, you might think that it's only the humans at the TSA who are incompetent. You would be wrong.

Several TSA security dogs serving at Philadelphia International Airport have been removed from active service due to issues with their training, officials said Tuesday.

The dogs, which are typically used to detect drugs, bombs and other potential security threats, failed their recertification training. They were unable to distinguish the scents of explosive materials, officials said.
...
The affected dogs have been undergoing an intensive rehab training program since the failure, but they remain on-duty to act as visual deterrents, officials said. Philadelphia Police K-9 units are not affected and still being used at the airport.

Great, now we don't even have the most accomplished ass and crotch sniffers in our security apparatus out there searching for weaponized undergarments and high tech groin explosives. Sadly it seems the dogs were subjected to the Philly school system and sports culture and as such were rendered mentally unfit. Thankfully it is Philadelphia, so right now the best deterrent to would be suicide bombers is that they would actually have to go to Philly to blow part of it up and they obviously wouldn't want to do that. It's too dangerous.

So not only is the TSA leaderless and it's employees seemingly unable to perform their jobs, the animals we've hired aren't even able to correctly use their noses to smell stuff. Surely there is something working correctly at the TSA, right? Perhaps a copier that makes good copies, a coffee machine that is ably letting hot water filter through coffee grounds into a pot, perhaps a Roomba that is keeping the office tidy, or a janitor that has properly mopped the floor and competently put up "wet floor" signs? We'll just trust that there is and that a typical TSA office isn't full of Clouseau-esque bumblers getting their hands bitten by dogs or falling down stairs and destroying suits of armor.

But that's probably an accurate description.

Airport security is serious business

The whole underwear bomber has got people understandably a little rattled and more questioning of their safety and security at an airport, despite the fact that air travel is still quite safe. But it's also got airport security on higher alert for shady figures, not wanting to be the one who lets another guy with Semtex in his shorts or perhaps a cable knit cardigan made out of C4 onto a plane. So what does this mean? It means we can't let obvious national security threat Joan Rivers back into this country because she's too fucking suspicious.

Rivers wasn’t allowed on her Newark-bound flight in Costa Rica this past weekend by a “jittery Continental Airlines gate agent” who thought the two names on her passport, which reads “Joan Rosenberg AKA Joan Rivers,” seemed “fishy.”

Yes, because when you want to avoid any suspicion you pick a Jewish name and write it as your alias on your passport. On the other hand, Rivers has had so much facial surgery that at this point anyone in a wig could be wheeled out in front of us and as long as they talked shit on what celebrities were wearing we'd believe it was her. So clearly this could have been any number of terrorists trying to use the name of a famous comedienne to rage destruction on the American mainland. Thankfully, Costa Rican security was thinking laterally and had foreseen this very chain of events.

So, for those of you playing at home, let's recap here. A Nigerian man whose father had warned intelligence agencies that he was being radicalized in the known terrorist breeding ground of Yemen, who had already made it onto watch lists, and bought a one way ticket, in cash, and checked no bags: not suspicious. Comedy legend: very suspicious. I'm just glad that we seem to have our best and brightest on the front lines defending us from former Tonight Show guest hosts. Someone start tailing Gary Shandling and Jay Leno, they could be planning something big.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 01.05

Serial Catastrophes in Afghanistan threaten Obama Policy
Juan Cole runs down the problems facing the Obama Administration in Afghanistan. They are not limited to killing schoolchildren a few too many times, enraging the Afghan public, provoking a student protest movement, double agents betraying us, the Afghan army not effectively existing/being dependable/not showing up to anything important/taking potshots at US troops, and the fact that the Afghan government barely functions if at all. But on the bright side, the law of averages states that a sometime somewhere something in that country has to go right and if we stick around long enough the chances are that it'll be a big and important thing. So... fingers crossed.

C.I.A. Is Sharing Data With Climate Scientists
That's right, the CIA is using spy satellites and specialized sensors to collect advanced data and assess "hidden complexities" in climate change in collaboration with scientists and universities. In addition they've been waterboarding polar bears three at a time to get them to spill the beans on glacier melting and they've rendered a few arctic foxes to Egypt for some "enhanced interrogation" about temperature data. Finally we're putting some government hardasses on the climate change front. A few targeted assassinations, a few rigged elections and we might finally get this problem licked.

New scanners break child porn laws
In the aftermath of the flight 253 flaming underwear bombing there have been renewed calls for the use of full body optical scanners to ferret out bombs, knives, and average genitalia size of your bog standard air passenger. But instead of merely whining about personal freedoms, police states, encroaching fascism, or civil liberties, opponents in the UK have opted for a different track: they say if you use it on a kid it's legally defined as child pornography. It seems all the civil liberties people have finally learned how to do battle. When it's security vs. civil liberties, civil liberties always gets handcuffed, beat up, and tased. But security vs. child pornography? That's a whole new ballgame. Who says hippies can't learn?

Hell Freezes Over: Rush Limbaugh Loves Union Hospitals and Socialized Medicine
Among the many thing that were hilarious about Rush Limbaugh's heart almost exploding were the fact that his heart nearly exploded, he was treated in the hospital at the center of the Obama birth certificate conspiracy, and that after months of railing against socialism, unions, and health care, he was subjected to all three and liked them without understanding that the hospital was the evil hotbed of socialism, unions, and Kenyan birth certificate fraud that it was. I know, I know "Rush Limbaugh doesn't understand something, gets facts wrong" isn't as much of a headline as it is a fact of daily existence. But it did give the SEIU a nice chance to tee off on him. Plus, as I've previously mentioned: his heart almost exploded. We're getting closer and closer to the day when the rotten fuck finally shuffles off this mortal coil.

Knut Haugland, Sailor on Kon-Tiki, Dies at 92
An obituary worth reading. Know that you will never accomplish anything this great or worthwhile or heroic or manly if you were given two lifetimes. A tip of the cap and raise of the glass to Mr. Knut Haugland.

Broken News: TSA to implement Pervert Screening System

Above: A test run of the new TSA policy at New York's JFK Airport

ARLINGTON--In the wake of the narrowly averted Christmas Day terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound flight, the Transportation Security Administration announced today a planned overhaul of its airport screening procedures.

The revised regulations call for all passengers to be sorted by race, gender, age, and clothing type before being pawed at by an employee possessing whatever paraphilia, or sexual fetish, corresponds roughly with the ticket holder's appearance.

Gale D. Rossides, acting TSA Administrator, cited as inspiration a recent court case in Britain, wherein civil liberties groups argued that the full-body scanners present in many major airports essentially constituted a strip search of each passenger, including children.

"We have been paying close attention to British security procedures and legal challenges and believe that our method will be more effective," said Rossides. "Without spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new technology that fails half the time, the American people get peace of mind while a perverse coterie of fetishists, many of them on parole, will be able to find gainful employment in a harsh economic climate."

As of this writing, the American Journal of Psychiatry has identified 547 distinct sexual fetishes, ranging from the mundane (Sthenolagnia, or a love of muscles) to the more creative (Maiesiophilia, or attraction to pregnant women), to the sincerely fucked up (Ursusagalmatophilia, or a desire to have intercourse with teddy bears).

Continued Rossides, "Granted, the task before us is daunting. While America obviously has no shortage of Symphorophiliacs (witnessing or staging disasters), how many Macrophiliacs (domination by giant women or men) do we have walking around? Two, three?"

In an effort to quickly identify and assign pervert to post, the TSA has requisitioned not only criminal records from all 50 states, but also the rolodexes of John Waters, Roman Polanski, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, and anyone who has ever supervised the Congressional Page Program.

"We need to find a lot of specific freaks, so who better to go to than Hollywood and the GOP?" asked Janet Abasio, the HR director for the TSA who will be heading up the search. "Right now we definitely have the resources to thoroughly check every Asian woman in this country several thousand times over. But what about Polish men with unibrows or one-legged Lithuanian sadists? Areas such as these are where we will be focusing our efforts."

Furthermore, the TSA announced they were giving special hiring preference to any self-identified masochist who wished to work in any job that an airport has to offer. In the job listing posted simultaneously to USAJobs and BondageNet, the TSA describes airport employment as "degradation unlike anyone has known before" and notes that it has positions for both submissives and dominants who specialize in letting any tiny bit of authority go to their heads.

When asked if allowing a subset of perverts to grope passengers as they attempt to enter an airport was really something Americans should have to endure, Abasio seemed dismissive.

"Look, is it the ideal situation? No," she admitted. "But I think this country is used to sacrificing personal freedoms in order to feel more secure."

"Plus," Rossides added. "When was the last time government implemented a security program that made you feel sexy? Not only are you going to be searched by people who find you to be unbelievably desirable, but most of these perverts will actually achieve sexual gratification from confirming you are not smuggling a bomb or weapon on your person. It's not as though this is the first time Americans will be taking it up the ass for a little security."

She then blurted out "That reminds me..." before reminding her assistant to place an ad for people that specialize in "taking it in the ass" for a consult on rectal PETN bomb smuggling, thought to be the next type of attack al Qaeda's will attempt.

The agency hopes to have the program up and running by the beginning of the summer travel season and advises that you dress a little more sexily the next time you visit the airport, to "make it a little bit more fun."

I don't feel that my fear is being exploited enough

What with a terrifying and groin singing attack so recently in our minds, we need the calming voice of authority to sooth our jangled nerves with rash, shortsighted action. Thankfully today it looks like we're getting the start of that as the President has returned from vacation, our security and intelligence heads have been gathered, and we have been deemed to be sufficiently past the New Year and Christmas to be relied upon to pay attention. What are we getting? A big important meeting, promises from both Congress and the White House to look into what happened, and... not a lot in the way of new rules or onerous assaults on our personal freedoms.

The Transportation Security Administration already has directed airlines, effective Monday, to give full-body, pat-down searches to U.S.-bound travelers from Yemen, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and 11 other countries.

White House officials, while eager to portray Obama as aggressive on the issue, also sought to minimize expectations for the president's remarks. He planned no big airline security announcement, officials said.

Since the attempted attack, the government has added dozens of names to its lists of suspected terrorists and those barred from flights bound for the United States.

So... brown people pat down theater and updating a list that should be constantly updated? We're not even going to frisk white people and pull grannies out of line to make it look like security is getting serious? This isn't pseudo fascist police state I was led to believe we lived in. They're barely putting any effort into making air travel more miserable.

If all they want to do is one semi-meaningless thing and one thing they should have been doing all along, I have a few other suggestions for them: mandatory flip-flop wearing for all passengers, airports are officially "going commando" underwear free zones, one-up Lt. General Tom McInerney and not allow any Muslims anywhere to use any flying contraption, and Joan Rivers is not allowed to use any form of transportation. That's just a start, but I think you get the picture.

I'm worried that if we don't take enough petty, reactionary measures and mainly stick to behind the scenes tweaks and inter-agency co-operation we're in danger of damaging our national character. Tell us about vague unspecified threats that may kill us! Marshall our fear into a bad war or two! Do something crazy! Not this "gathering important figures together and have them talk" shit. We're in danger of losing our national governmental identity as a collection of bed wetting, vapors getting reactionaries if this course continues. Invent a color coded system and then raise it arbitrarily! C'mon. Frisking foreigners? That's so 2001. Get creative. The nation is depending on it.

Your new "security"

In a bit of good news, today the US finally lifted it's longstanding travel ban on anyone with HIV or AIDS from entering this country. For those of you counting at home, that's one more list we're off of where our only companions are extremely repressive and regressive regimes. Funny how often we find ourselves on them.

Hey, wouldn't it be hilarious if the day that we were patting ourselves on the back for tolerance on one type of passenger we announced that we were also going to declare anyone darker than an albino Irishman was to be considered suspicious? Funny I should mention that...

Citizens of 14 nations, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, who are flying to the United States will be subjected indefinitely to the intense screening at airports worldwide that was imposed after the Christmas Day bombing plot, Obama administration officials announced Sunday.
...
Passengers holding passports from those nations, or taking flights that originated or passed through any of them, will be required to undergo full-body pat downs and will face extra scrutiny of their carry-on bags before they can board planes to the United States.
...
The changes will mean that any citizen of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia will for the first time be patted down automatically before boarding any flight to the United States.

That's right, if you want to come to the land of milk and honey, we get to cup your balls first. Just to be sure. But only if you're in violation of Homeland Security's new color alert system. Right now it's at 'Eggshell White', meaning everyone gets searching in order to make everyone feel better. Soon it'll be reduced to 'Khaki' and then 'British Tan', so just us white people can feel better when we see pat downs and increased security for those "dangerous types". You know the ones I'm talking about. Ethnics.

Now I know what you're saying: "Aren't passports easy to fake? Aren't terrorists smart enough to get around this? Has any terrorist ever actually hopped on a Saudi Arabia-to-US direct flight with C4 in his boxer briefs? Wouldn't it be better to pump money into getting uniform shared databases so that information can be shared and pieces could be connected, like what didn't happen in the Detroit case? Why don't we take things seriously for once? Isn't this just more of that 'illusion of security' shit we've been going through since 9/11? Stuff that just makes us feel better but doesn't actually protect us?"

Yes, yes it is. I have an interesting response to that: Shut up. Sure, none of this will make a difference. Sure, it's kind of racist and probably harms our relations with Muslims more than it protects us from them. Sure, this is all empty theater. But it looks good and makes us feel good, so we'll take that in lieu of real safety measures. Thankfully our leaders are content to follow our lead and only deal with security and terrorism in terms of empty gestures, rhetoric, politics, and tough guy posturing.

At least they didn't decide to make us all take our underwear off at the scanners as well. There's at least that.

We are a serious country governed by serious people

With all the furor and scrutiny surrounding Homeland Security and the TSA over the failed Detroit bombing, you would think that the heads of both branches would be in for some criticism. Of course DHS head Janet Napolitano has been taking fire over her contention that "the system worked", but why haven't we heard anything from or about the head of the TSA for their failures? Oh, that's right, there is no head of the TSA and there hasn't been for nearly a year. That's probably a good idea, it doesn't seem like an important position.

An attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day would be all-consuming for the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration — if there were one.

The post remains vacant because Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., has held up President Barack Obama's nominee in opposition to the prospect of TSA workers joining a labor union.

Yeah, who needs to worry about airline security and the leadership of the organization behind most of it when there's a cheap political attack to make on the concept of unions? I'm sure complex agencies like the TSA run themselves and it's best that there's no boss type figure there to confuse everyone with uniform goals, policies, implementation, or structure. Hell, if that happens you might get confusion and some nut with C4 in his Jockey's might be able to slip through. No, thankfully Jim DeMint is there to stop the confusion that a properly run organization can cause.

Thankfully these kind of forward thinking and meaningful Seante holds are common practice on Obama Administration nominations. Out of some 200 open nominations only 75 have gotten past delaying tactics in committees to face the delaying tactics of the Senate floor. But you must understand that the reason we didn't have something like a US Trade Rep for a long time (and in this economy who needs one) is for very important reasons of principle.

One of those finally approved was Miriam Sapiro, who had become the Obama administration’s prime example of stalled nominations since being chosen in April to be a deputy United States trade representative. Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, put a hold on the confirmation of Ms. Sapiro, an Internet policy consultant, to try to pressure the trade representative’s office to file a complaint with the World Trade Organization against Canada over a law that bans cigarettes with candy flavors.

See! Candy flavored cigarettes. Whining about unions. Important shit.

I'm just glad we have serious individuals like Jim Bunning and Jim DeMint out there looking out for this country in a serious manner. A properly run government and properly run government agencies aren't important, candy flavored cigarettes are. I'm just glad someone finally had the balls to stand up and say so.

Picture of the day

From Popular Science comes this look at the Dubai Air Show.....FROM SPACE. The GeoEye-1 satellite to be more specific. The Dubai Air Show is the largest airshow in the Middle East, barely beating out a rural shack in Afghanistan where an opium farmer has two beat-up WWI-era Fokker's that he keeps on display. It is the fastest growing airshow and will soon become a centerpiece of Dubai's grand plan to be a home to the largest and gaudiest everything in the world.

As always click to embiggen.

Hudson Crash audio

CBS has got a hold of the black box audio recording of the pilots who safely landed the plane in the Hudson. Right now so many people are trying to listen to it that it kind of crashed the audio player they have, so I've decided to provide a partial transcript.

Pilot 1: Alright tower, we're in the air.
Pilot 2: You're going to want to look out for that huge flock of geese over there, maybe pull up a little.
Pilot 1: Shut the fuck up Johnson, shit like that is why you're a co-pilot and not a pilot.
Pilot 2: But sir, the engines...
Pilot 1: 'But sir'. You sound like a fucking woman. These are jet engines. JET ROCKET FUCKING ENGINES! I'll tear these birds up. Who can fly now, animal kingdom? FUCK THESE GEESE! FUCK THESE GEESE! FUCK THESE GEESE!
Pilot 2: Engine 2 is out and it's also on fire.

Now from right before the water landing.

Pilot 2: Don't you think we should get this plane over to LaGuardia for an emergency landing? It's very close, I think we can make it.
Pilot 1: Johnson, I swear to God if you don't give me all the money in your wallet I will smash this plane into a building!
Pilot 2: What the hell is wrong with you?
Pilot 1: Your mother is half Pakistani, they'll just assume you overpowered me on orders from bin Laden. They'll never suspect me, I'm a white man! Your money! NOW!
Pilot 2: Here you fucking lunatic, now try and make it over to LaGuardia.
Pilot 1: Fuck that shit, it's hero time! WAAAAAAAAAATER LAAAAAAANDING! Put on your hip waders Johnson and call my press agent, it's time for a dip.

The audio cuts out after that. Truly a heroic moment.

Broken In Brief: Passengers report extra layers of condescension in stewardesses’ pre-flight safety demos

NEW YORK—With the recent harrowing yet successful water landing of a US Airways flight 1549 into the Hudson River a new emphasis has been placed on both passenger safety as well as crew preparedness. But passengers now report that with the successful landing and rescue of those 155 passengers, flight crews around the US have taken a new, some would say snottier and condescending tone, to the traditional pre-flight safety awareness demonstrations.

“Yeah, I’m not sure exactly how to describe it,” observed Southwest passenger Harry Edson. “It was sort of a ‘Maybe you dumb motherfuckers ought to pay attention to this since it might have just saved 155 lives.’ combined with an ‘I bet you used to think this was all needless bullshit and that any water landing would no doubt result in a plane smashing into the ocean an 600 miles an hour, killing you instantly. Shows what the fuck you know.’ But it was never verbal, you could just sort of tell from the looks they were giving and the sort of sarcastic and demeaning way they were doing the exit pointing and life vest demo. You should have seen the looks they flashed during the ‘seat back can be used as a flotation device’ part.”

Phone calls to Southwest were not returned. Later the FAA released a statement proclaiming that while airlines “reaaaaaaaaally appreciated” the increased scrutiny on the tone and demeanor of their flight crews and that they wouldn’t have time to answer any questions in person or over the phone seeing as they were “…too fucking busy spending every single goddamn day getting 6,000 88 ton hunks of metal with jets strapped to them to partake in the miracle of human flight.”

They further added that if we had any more concerns on their attempts to save our wretched lives in the event of a accident that we could write it on a piece of paper and stick it up our asses, then noted they hoped we had a nice drive home. Attached to the press release were several pages of statistics on the rate of car accidents and the rate of plane accidents with several of the more eye popping figures underlined and circled.

The cost of a ticket does not include dignity

Think of any way the nation's airlines could be worse? Longer waits? Worse service? More shoe taking off? Perhaps you think they should just start assaulting people as soon as they enter the airport, to mentally prepare you for the flight? Maybe metal dog cages instead of seats? Shock collars?

Well they've heard your cries. Shock collars are here. To be clear, they've heard your cries for more stupidity, not the cries of you being shocked by a stewardess on an airplane. They won't care about those.

A senior government official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has expressed great interest in a so-called safety bracelet that would serve as a stun device, similar to that of a police Taser®. This bracelet would:

• Take the place of an airline boarding pass

• Contain personal information about the traveler

• Be able to monitor the whereabouts of each passenger and his/her luggage

• Shock the wearer on command, completely immobilizing him/her for several minutes

The Electronic ID Bracelet, as it’s referred to, would be worn by every traveler “until they disembark the flight at their destination.” Yes, you read that correctly. Every airline passenger would be tracked by a government-funded GPS, containing personal, private and confidential information, and would shock the customer worse than an electronic dog collar if the passenger got out of line.

Guilty until proven more guilty, upon which you will be shocked like an animal until you comply. And you'll get to pay for the privilege. I'm sure that you're comforted by the fact that taser technology will be entrusted to the people that are baffled by shoe wearing and drink containers.

This is why we let the Wookiee win

Northwest Airlines mechanics have thus far been unable to identify the foreign object that dented a Boeing 757's nose cone during a Sunday flight from Detroit to Tampa. According to Kathleen Bergen, an FAA Spokeswoman, a bird has been ruled out, as the plane was traveling higher than most birds fly. The damaged nose has been sent to Northwest's Minneapolis offices for further study.

They really should have just called us. Thanks to an anonymous tip, These Bastards has uncovered the truth behind this near-catastrophe. We reveal all, after the jump.