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Entries in Beer (17)

Sunday

24Jan2010

We Should Probably Put an End to Drinking on Planes

Sunday, January 24, 2010

I’m all for getting a buzz on. Don’t get me wrong. But, in this day and age of strip searches, security line bummers, and people freaking out about flying, why do we still allow drinking on planes?

A jetliner flying from Washington D.C.to Las Vegas was diverted to Denver International Airport on Saturday after a passenger tried to open a door on the plane while it was in flight.

Federal sources told NBC News that the man allegedly was intoxicated and was subdued by other passengers.

DIA spokesman Jeff Green said that United Flight 223 was diverted to Denver at 4:45 p.m. Saturday, and police who met the plane at the gate took the passenger into custody.

Green said the police were interviewing the passenger Saturday night but did not know if the man would be charged.

Yeah, they’ll probably just give him a Mulligan and the whole thing will be forgotten.

Meanwhile, the idea that drinking on a plane is still accepted practice—is that even viable anymore? Has anyone else posited that there are just some old traditions and practices that have to fall by the wayside if we’re to be a safer, more alert, and more security conscious people?

I have long adopted the belief that, if a terrorist wants to kill you, they’re going to kill you. But you have it as your responsibility to try and stop him if possible. You are the best guarantee of survival you have. You are obligated to help stop these insane people. That goes for everyone else who screws up on a plane, and writes things to the pilot or defecates on the service cart or goes after some poor Jewish kid with prayer boxes hanging on him. You have to help straighten them out.

The government has a responsibility to serve as a common sense gatekeeper. Don’t let the dude with Semtex and a Glock on the plane, please. Don’t let the nervous man with the boombox that no longer works with the red and blue wires hanging out of it and running to the seat of his pants get on the plane. Don’t let gramma and her special pair of stainless steel knitting needles on the plane.

Are we now at a point where we have to end drinking on planes because we have too many stressed and freaked out people who can’t conform to basic travel responsibilities? It is NOT like the old days. This is a new time and era. This is a time when, and I’m surprised it didn’t happen, an air marshal probably could have or should have outright killed the man in question.

Norman Rogers | tagged

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Friday

22Jan2010

Time to Crap Yourself, Dude

Friday, January 22, 2010

Thanks to Brian Ross, I’m now in a tizzy:

American law enforcement officials have been told to be on the lookout for female suicide bombers who may attempt to enter the United States, law enforcement authorities tell ABC News.

One official said at least two of them are believed to be connected to al Qaeda in Yemen, and may have a non-Arab appearance and be traveling on Western passports.

The threat was described as “current” but not imminent, said the official.

“They have trained women,” said former White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, an ABC News consultant.

Separately, Britain raised its terrorism threat level to “severe,” its second-highest level, days before London hosts major international meetings on how to deal with militancy in Afghanistan and Yemen. Britain’s threat level had been labeled “severe” for several years before being lowered last summer to “substantial.”

American officials say a U.S. air strike on Christmas Eve against suspected al Qaeda training camps is believed to have killed many, but not all, of a group of suicide bombers being trained in Yemen.

The man accused of attempting to explode a bomb on Northwest flight 253, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, told FBI agents there were a number of other people who trained with him in Yemen.

“There are others who are still out there who have been trained and who are clean skins — that means people who we do not have a record of, people who may not look like al Qaeda terrorists, who may not be Arabs, and may not be men,” said Clarke.

Everyone knows Brian Ross is clued in! Oh noes! He’s never wrong about anything.

Look, I hate to point this out, but if that Nigerian 419 scammer turned lonelyhearts terrorist says “clean skins,” he means white people. What I want to know is, who is condemning this man for his blatant racism? Wait, that takes me off on a tangent I don’t want to go off on.

Look, if he says that they “may not be men,” then he means virgins. He means dudes who have not lain down with a lady as of yet. Guys who can’t score. He’s not talking about women. Women are too smart to fall for that al Qaeda bullshit. Women can convince men to do just about anything. Men cannot convince women to do anything, unless they’re American college girls, and then they can be convinced to kiss each other and flash their breasts.

Anything beyond that, forget it. I don’t put a lot of stock in this. I think that this fellow was just a plant, a patsy if you will. This is what happens when you are reactive, and when you don’t have a strategy. You can be led down a lot of blind alleys. This is what happens when you tie your military in knots fighting costly wars of occupation when, really, they should be rested and going to wherever you want them to go to disrupt enemy operations and throw the terrorists back on their heels.

We are not going to win a war on these people until they are paralyzed and afraid to make a move. We are not going to accomplish anything unless they are reeling and confused about what our next unpredictable move against them is going to be.

God, I need a greenie right now.

Norman Rogers | tagged

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Saturday

19Dec2009

Bring Out Your Dead

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Bring Out Your Dead “Monty Pythom and the Holy Grail” 1975

It took a while, but it’s time to shame liberals and progressives by bringing out the dead:

My late husband, Ted Kennedy, was passionate about health-care reform. It was the cause of his life. He believed that health care for all our citizens was a fundamental right, not a privilege, and that this year the stars — and competing interests — were finally aligned to allow our nation to move forward with fundamental reform. He believed that health-care reform was essential to the financial stability of our nation’s working families and of our economy as a whole.

Still, Ted knew that accomplishing reform would be difficult. If it were easy, he told me, it would have been done a long time ago. He predicted that as the Senate got closer to a vote, compromises would be necessary, coalitions would falter and many ardent supporters of reform would want to walk away. He hoped that they wouldn’t do so. He knew from experience, he told me, that this kind of opportunity to enact health-care reform wouldn’t arise again for a generation.

In the early 1970s, Ted worked with the Nixon administration to find consensus on health-care reform. Those efforts broke down in part because the compromise wasn’t ideologically pure enough for some constituency groups. More than 20 years passed before there was another real opportunity for reform, years during which human suffering only increased. Even with the committed leadership of then-President Bill Clinton and his wife, reform was thwarted in the 1990s. As Ted wrote in his memoir, he was deeply disappointed that the Clinton health-care bill did not come to a vote in the full Senate. He believed that senators should have gone on the record, up or down.

Ted often said that we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. He also said that it was better to get half a loaf than no loaf at all, especially with so many lives at stake. That’s why, even as he never stopped fighting for comprehensive health-care reform, he also championed incremental but effective reforms such as a Patients’ Bill of Rights, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and COBRA continuation of health coverage.

The reason we are here in the first place is because Senator Kennedy’s belief that we “cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good” became a farce, whereby he would sell his soul to craft phony legislation in order to move the goalposts. His legacy is a pile of compromise, whereby, he had his pockets picked by bigger phonies than himself. Lawmakers don’t even write the laws—lobbyists do. And when lawmakers act as if they’re creating something magical, that’s when I reach for my bullshit detector. And, brothers and sisters, my bullshit detector had a special setting for the senior Senator from Massachusetts.

Bringing out dead politicians is hardly an effective way to force a shit sandwich down the gullet. If Kennedy had been a stalwart who held to his principles, the laws and programs already in place would be doing far more than they currently do for the American people. In point of fact, his staffer now holds his Senate seat. Don’t tell me Kennedy’s staff didn’t write things. Don’t serve me that weak tea. Kennedy had decades where, with a Democratic majority and with two Democrats in the White House (Carter and Clinton), he could have done a great deal more. I believe it was old Gore Vidal who remarked that his legacy was nothing.

Sadly, his decision to try to run against Carter and to go pantsless and drunk while Clinton was in office sort of makes any effort to shame people into accepting incompetent mediocrity an exercise in navel gazing. Do you know what’s different nowadays? People are too goddamned smart to fall for these things. And yet, the establishment tries anyway. Boo hoo. The man is dead. He might have been a swell guy. But he’s nothing to wave around as an example of who to cherish and remember so that people will unclench their fists and give in.

Norman Rogers | tagged

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Monday

16Nov2009

Screw the Treaty, Go Get That Whiskey

Monday, November 16, 2009

I think it’s spelled “Mackinlay’s”

Good God, man—we’re talking about whiskey here! And science! To hell with international treaties and Poindexters looking over our shoulders. Dig that whiskey out of the ground and see if it’s any good:

A beverage company has asked a team to drill through Antarctica’s ice for a lost cache of some vintage Scotch whiskey that has been on the rocks since a century ago.

The drillers will be trying to reach two crates of McKinlay and Co. whiskey that were shipped to the Antarctic by British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton as part of his abandoned 1909 expedition.

Whyte & Mackay, the drinks group that now owns McKinlay and Co., has asked for a sample of the 100-year-old scotch for a series of tests that could decide whether to relaunch the now-defunct Scotch.

Workers from New Zealand’s Antarctic Heritage Trust will use special drills to reach the crates, frozen in Antarctic ice under the Nimrod Expedition hut near Cape Royds.

Al Fastier, who will lead the expedition in January, said restoration workers found the crates of whiskey under the hut’s floorboards in 2006. At the time, the crates and bottles were too deeply embedded in ice to be dislodged.

The New Zealanders have agreed to try to retrieve some bottles, although the rest must stay under conservation guidelines agreed by 12 Antarctic Treaty nations.

Fastier said he did not want to sample the contents.

“It’s better to imagine it than to taste it,” he said. “That way it keeps its mystery.”

Richard Paterson, Whyte & Mackay’s master blender, said the Shackleton expedition’s whiskey could still be drinkable and taste exactly as it did 100 years ago.

Now, President Norman Rogers would easily give orders to secretly break the treaty. I would make certain that the orders were delivered verbally. No paper trail, you see. Plus, I have heavily researched this subject, and this is what I have found:

In 1907, Sir Earnest Schackleton, explorer, asked the Company to supply the official Scotch whisky for his Antarctic expedition to the South Pole. This momentous trip began aboard the S.S. ENDURANCE. Empty bottles of The Original Mackinlay were discovered by a later expedition, still standing on Schackleton’s base-camp desk.

Okay, so that wasn’t much, but it does speak to the necessity of knowing whether or not that Scotch still tastes good. Science has already told us that if you leave beer in the ground, it will taste bad. Scotch? Scotch is better with age. Scotch does not go bad if the bottle stays sealed. If this old scotch tastes good, yes, definitely come out with more of it. If not, so be it. I’m thirsty just thinking about the possibilities. Here’s what I do when I’m confronted with something I need unfrozen: I use a hairdryer on it. I usually wreck the hair dryer, because I get bored and leave it on, but still.

Norman Rogers | tagged

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Thursday

05Nov2009

Nothing Like a Burning Oil Rig to Change the Debate

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Oil Rig Fire, Timor Sea

In case you haven’t heard, there’s an oil rig on fire in the Timor Sea:

An oil spill disaster that could rival the impact of the Exxon Valdez is playing out tonight off the coast of Australia. For 10 weeks, a crippled deep-water oil rig has been leaking millions of gallons into the ocean between Australia’s northwest coast and the islands of Indonesia.

It is bringing to light the possible environmental impact when offshore drilling goes wrong, as CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reports.

With explosive gas spewing into the air and thousands of gallons of oil pouring into the water each day the spill began claiming sea snakes, birds and dolphins.

The blowout is thought to have been caused by a fracture in a pipe 8,000 feet beneath the sea floor. Again and again over two months the Thailand-based company that owns the rig tried and failed to plug the well.

“We remain committed and resolved to achieve our goal,” said Jose Martins, chief financial officer of the company, Pttep Oil. “That may require a few more attempts.”

Just how much has spilled is uncertain. Environmental groups say satellite photos show its spread across more than 9,000 square miles and estimate some 9 million gallons have poured into the ocean - nearly as much as the 11 million gallons that escaped from the Exxon Valdez in Alaska.

While there may be some use of this symbolic image to try to slow down offshore drilling, you have to remember that the defenders of offshore drilling are going to attack this issue in several different ways. First, they may point out that the state of the art technology used by the oil rig is different from the state of the art technology we might be using off the coast of Florida or Texas. Second, they may point to it as an isolated incident, blown up out of proportion to how safe and reliable offshore drilling really is. Third, there is always the fact that oil and natural gas has always leaked into the ocean naturally, through deep fissures in the ocean floor. Even though I’m not a geologist, and I have never had occasion to pretend to be one to get a government loan, I do know that you can certainly fudge the amount of oil that it is possible to extract from a site. That might be another argument against banning or slowing down the expansion of offshore drilling.

Then there is an entirely different angle that I am afraid they might use, and that’s the angle nearly everyone uses to attack anything Australian, and that’s the “drunk Aussie” angle. This is so wrong, I hesitate to bring it up. The image of smash-drunk Aussies, dancing around a neglected bonfire, shooting guns and throwing fat girls into the ocean springs to mind.

Let’s be brutally honest—the Australians are a bunch of drunken louts. They’re not as bad as the Russians, but, bear in mind, a lot of Russians emigrate to Australian because their livers can’t take the vodka anymore, and they move on to that weak Australian beer they serve down there. There’s a term for this type of individual by the way, and it’s “yabbo.” When you think of a drunken Australian, dropping his freshly-trimmed short pants and howling into a rolled up sheet of aluminum like it is a ten dollar megaphone, think of the hateful implications of assuming that a rollicking yabbo party on the main deck of the oil rig, complete with Radio Birdman songs and sex dolls cavorting with wallabies, caused this disaster. Don’t give in to the hate. Incompetence is a disease, and, brother, that disease has taken hold in Australia.

Norman Rogers | tagged

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Guns,

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Monday

26Oct2009

That Good Old Johnny Law Judgement

Monday, October 26, 2009

Barney Fife, Patron Saint of Johnny Law

Johnny Law, why did you bring your service revolver into that haunted house?

A Baltimore city police officer delivered the fright of a lifetime to a haunted house employee, pulling a gun on the chain-saw-wielding man at the end of his act, authorities said Monday.

Sgt. Eric Janik, 37, was charged with assault and reckless endangerment for pointing his service handgun at the worker, who was dressed as Leatherface, the killer from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," Baltimore County police said.

The employee, Mike Morrison, followed Janik and several other people up a staircase Sunday night at the end of the haunted house tour in a bid to get "one last scream" out of them, police said.

When the group exited into a parking lot, Janik pulled his gun and pointed it at Morrison from less than 10 feet away, according to police and Morrison, who said he dropped the chain saw, put his hands up and backed away. The saw had no chain.

Only then did Janik identify himself as a police officer, said Morrison, who retreated into the building.

"I started shaking pretty bad," he told The Associated Press.

Another employee of the House of Screams called police.

According to charging documents, Janik smelled of alcohol and told police two different stories about what he did with the gun. First, he denied drawing the weapon, but later he said he pointed it at the ground.

Drunk. out with his kid (yes, later in the story, they bury the lede and tell us that the officer did this while taking his 9 year-old daughter through the haunted house), pointing his gun at haunted house employees--that's a Johnny Law for you. That's the sort of thing that gives good policemen a bad name. Thanks to his police union, he'll probably get a few weeks of paid leave, lose a stripe for a while, get some counseling, then come back and be right back out there, keeping us safe from haunted house employees who are too good at their job.

Norman Rogers | tagged

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