What I have in mind is giving pilots the authorization to land the plane, & TSA orders to arrest...

…and detain violent and/or threatening passengers.

The airlines may not have control over TSA per se, but Uncle Sam certainly does, and I want to know where all those hysterical rules from 2002 went when I’m still taking off my shoes. Even charges of simple assault (spitting, e.g.) should be taken seriously, and for gods’ sake, felonious assault (female flight attendants have gone to the hospital with broken facial bones and teeth knocked out) should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law — and existing laws cover this.

Moving on. The airlines can designate no fly lists, can’t they? That is in their power. They can also confer with each other about problem-passenger behavior. There is no Constitutional “right” to fly.

Finally, go big and go public. Stop trying to pretend this isn’t happening. Make examples of the worst offenders by publicizing the charges against them, and their trials, and their punishments. Let it be known that the airlines will ban passengers who bring trouble on board. At 30,000 feet…

Do I sound angry? I certainly am. Before COVID I was already a reluctant flyer because of the airlines’ business decision to pack us in like sardines and make the whole experience a misery. (Don’t tell me to drive — the people I want so much to see are not hundreds, but thousands, of miles away. ) Now, thanks to the way the pandemic has been mishandled in so many ways by Trump & his cronies at state level, and because of the GOP / RW coddling and encouragement of those who think even masks are an infringement on the Bill of Rights and a personal insult to them, you can add fear of my fellow passengers to my reluctance to fly.

They live up US 101 in a community where it is normal to want a quiet life for your children...

…. and also normal to be wealthy and well-known. Montecito’s the kind of place where you can go to Starbuck’s or the grocery store and not have tourists bug you. You’re not a freak, in other words. It’s a casual coastal location with access to a nice public beach. I have read that a clutch of Hollywood people have decided the commute is worth it in order to raise their kids away from Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and LA.

Oh, for those who don’t know — it’s not some kind of gated community, but an actual unincorporated town in Santa Barbara County. Lots of trees hiding the houses. In my former politically active life, my work took me there many times for meetings, because some of the residents like to raise money for Democrats and liberal causes. You just have to have a lot of spare cash to by a home there.

Exit Montecito and enter nearby Santa Barbara and there’s a lot more to do in the way of cultural life, but it is far from being Los Angeles and the folks like it that way. There are certainly a lot of tourists, but the locals will leave you alone. There is less privacy.

I don’t think Meghan and Harry are trying to act like a famous couple — they are a famous couple. If they had wanted a glitzy life they would have stayed in Los Angeles and its many ostentatious enclaves.

I don’t read supermarket tabloids, because they are trash and garbage. I don’t think anyone in their right mind wants to be written up by those things.

I have no idea about the “average American” not caring about them. Maybe we all have other things to occupy our minds. When I think about them at all, I wish them well. Last I heard they were still building charitable trusts as a way to do good, and working out how to make a living for themselves. For that — they really do need to give the media access.

The beach snapshots I’ve seen, the Christmas photos and all, they just look like normal Southern Californians in the sunshine. They look as far away from those formal Royal portraits as it is possible to get. If they can repair family relationships, all to the good. But Harry knows all to well what can happen to a woman who doesn’t fit in, and who is being relentlessly attacked by the tabloid press.

That, people, is the Goddess in one of her darkest and most terrible aspects

She has been invoked. You go, Lady.
🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻

One of the more disgusting things about GHW Bush was the way that he, a former donor to PP, ...

… decided to pander to Ronald Reagan’s base by throwing Planned Parenthood under the bus.

1991 — and people who still thought we could make peace with the Republicans would say, “Oh but the women of the family are all pro-choice, and they will moderate their men’s policies,” wink-wink nudge-nudge. This was said of Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, and Dubya’s wife — and they most certainly could not or did not.

Time was, patrician Republicans could support Planned Parenthood as just another charity to help the poor — but that was before the culture wars began, and they saw they needed to play along.

Boys throw stones at frogs in play, but the frogs die in earnest.

But but but I am told by reliable sources that FOX is protected by the 1st Amendment in all their...

…lies and all their propaganda. That no matter what’s going on — like, for instance, an ongoing coup attempt against the US government — they can continue to twist their viewers’ minds with outright lies. Forever.

I have never read a sensible response to my queries about how we make them stop. The responses all seem to come down to the marketplace: boycott sponsors, buy the station and shut it down, just don’t watch. Two of those are ineffective and the other is a pipe dream. The other notion involves suing them, individually or collectively — sure, an operation that has more money than God to devote to its legal defense,

Even in a robust democracy — which we are not — it would be stupid to ignore the impact of a multibillion dollar enterprise like FOX operating 24/7 in the country.

But we did ignore FOX and Murdoch and their ilk in that regard, and you may have noticed we are no longer a robust democracy.

ETA: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216569684
Obama: "I underestimated" disinformation's threat to democracies

That certainly explains a few things: The Russian Military's Culture of Brutality