I think Bill Maher is funny, though he can be a dick sometimes. But when he’s right, he’s right:
Please feel free to discuss GOP ruler foreign policy, so-con dupes for bagmen or any other topic that strikes your fancy as this is an open thread.
by Betty Cracker| 121 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Assholes
Comments are closed.
ice weasel
And then opens his piehole about “the vaccination controversy” and I switch the channel.
Villago Delenda Est
The problem for Rethugs being that their dicks always fail to measure up.
“Shrinkage!”
Also, too, see the previous adorable mobile baby thread below for the latest idiocy from Noisemax about JoeScar.
Villago Delenda Est
One has to love the ads for “El Internet en Español.”
It’s like the French talking about what they’ll be doing over “le weekend”
Cassidy
Another win for the cops! I tell ya, I wouldn’t know what kind of rampant crime were happening if they didn’t take 5 of them to beat on one guy. Why, brown people might be running wild or something or feeling comfortable walking down the street! (Warning: the video may or may not autoplay. I disabled that and may be disturbing.)
scav
@Villago Delenda Est: Utter lack of linguistic entrepreneurs over there, no?
Anoniminous
Good article: We Aren’t the World:
Villago Delenda Est
Netflix’s Reed Hastings has a big idea: Kill elected school boards
I’ve got a better idea. Let’s do that to 1% assholes like Reed Hastings.
Tumbrels for the 1%!
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
To be fair, George Carlin made this observation about Foreign Policy first, and did it funnier.
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est:
On the other hand, “inter” comes from our Italian ancestors and “net” comes from the old folks in Norway — so there’s that.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Cassidy: I can’t even get through reading it, much less watch. Thanks for the warning.
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: Everything George Carlin did was funnier than Maher, and Carlin never publicized dangerous anti-science bullshit. No I don’t plan to forgive him for that, why do you ask?
mack
I see this “tumbrel” remark quite a bit here on BJ. My understanding is that it is (or was) a cart. What you really mean is the guillotine for these people, amirite? Isn’t it like akin to saying (assuming we used a minivan to transport those on the way to their execution) “minivans” for those people? Or am I off here?
Elizabelle
Nutshell Elizabelle with more theorizing on the missing Malaysian jetliner:
Found link to this blogpost in a NYTimes reader comments thread.
Blogger Keith Ledgerwood posits that MH 370 caught up with and tailed a Singapore Airlines 777’s course through the Andaman Sea and escaped detection as it entered Indian and Afghan airspace.
Recall: this happened during a moonless night, and military radar was expecting to see a 777 blip. It saw the Singapore flight, but not the Malaysian plane shadowing it.
Malaysian jet could have travelled on to any of several landing fields.
(And no, I have no idea who Keith Ledgerwood is or if he’s credible or if he’s one of Dick Cheney’s flying monkeys. But it’s an interesting theory, and this is the intertubes, dammit …)
And, James Fallows put up a blogpost with an interactive map of countries with long landing strips within flying distance for a fully fueled 777. As well as some earlier commentary.
What do you guys think?
The Pale Scot
Can I offer some positivity?
A music teacher from Dublin transforms a Bronx elementary school by turning her students on to the joys of Irish dancing.
The Malloy Brothers explain how surfing brings Catholics and Protestants together
The Chieftains and Sinead O’ Conner, The Foggy Dew
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Villago Delenda Est: I like where he’s coming from: “Goddamn nobodies trying to make decisions about how their tax dollars are spent. Pay a rich man to do that for you, stupid fucking plebeians.”
Oh wait, I don’t like it at all. What I would like is to see him run over by a speeding, union-driven firetruck.
deep
@Elizabelle:
I still don’t get these theories that say the plane was abducted and shipped off to Iran. If it’s a hostage situation why have there been no demands?
MikeJ
@Elizabelle: It crashed into the ocean.
Villago Delenda Est
@Anoniminous: Very interesting indeed. It seems that a lot of our rock solid notions about human behavior are about western industrialized behavior, not human behavior at all.
I’m sure this drives the hacks of the Chicago School of economics nuts, but that’s a good thing.
MikeJ
@mack: During the tumbrel ride the condemned is exposed to the mockery and taunting of the crowd. Then there’s the beheading, and the after party.
Betty Cracker
@MikeJ: That’s the most likely scenario, but I can’t blame people for speculating. Has a large passenger jet ever disappeared without a trace for so long in the last, oh, 30-40 years? If it did, I sure don’t remember it. I realize the ocean is a big place, but you’d think SOMETHING would have turned up by now, debris, an oil slick, something.
Elizabelle
@MikeJ:
Yeah, the ocean is the likeliest scenario, and especially if you were forced to bet any serious money or resources.
This is “hope for passengers still alive” meets “Malaysian officials have been more all over the place than the missing jetliner was.”
Villago Delenda Est
@mack: You are correct sir.
The tumbrel was the traditional means during The Terror of transporting the condemned to La Place de La Concorde for their appointment with Madam Lafarge and her knitting needles.
As MikeJ has so kindly pointed out, gave the mob jeer opportunities along the way.
NonyNony
@Villago Delenda Est:
Hands up if you’re surprised by this bit:
Shockingly, a guy who makes money off of schools thinks democracy interferes with his ability to steal money from taxpayers a little too much!
In other news, apparently a dog bit a man somewhere today. Shocking!
And if your hands are up, please forward me your e-mail address. I have some money stuck in Nigeria and I could use a friend to help get it out…
Cervantes
@mack: Yes. Tumbrels were a means of transporting things, especially dung and the like. Sometimes they were themselves instruments of punishment (see “cucking-stool,” “ducking-stool”). And then they were associated with a ride to the guillotine.
Elizabelle
Did the pilots (or a pilot) want to embarrass the Malaysian authorities?
Cervantes
@Elizabelle: The Malaysian authorities have long been incapable of embarrassment or shame.
Villago Delenda Est
@Betty Cracker:
Only if you were looking in the right place at the right time, and they spent most of a week looking in the Gulf of Thailand when the plane apparently could not have crashed anywhere near there.
The Bay of Bengal is significantly larger and deeper.
J.D. Rhoades
@Betty Cracker:
Apparently a lot of oil slicks have been found, just none anywhere near where the plane might have gone down. Think about that for a minute.
mack
Appreciate the responses, though I submit it is entirely possible to be mocked while seated in a minivan. In fact, I have been.
Cassidy
@Villago Delenda Est: Air France in 2009. Took 2 years to find.
Mnemosyne
@Anoniminous:
This is another way you know “evolutionary psychology” is totally bogus: it somehow always manages to determine that ancient cavemen acted exactly like modern Americans and Europeans when modern Americans and Europeans act according to their cultural programming. They rarely examine nearly enough cultures to figure out what they’re actually seeing.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Elizabelle: CT horseshit, to be honest. Dad’s a commercial pilot. I’m private.
Those people have been dead a week and the plane won’t be found for decades, likely never. Too little plane, too much area to search in, and almost all of it ocean, uninhabited rainforest, or uninhabited swamp.
MikeJ
@Betty Cracker:
Planes rarely crash during cruise, as opposed to takeoff or landing. It’s going to be rare to have a plane crash at sea. Even more rare that it happens mid crossing rather than nearer to land. Still, it does happen.
Load this wiki page , hit control-f and search for “disappear”. There’s a 707 from 1979 that’s never been found. The STENDEC wreck from 1947 wasn’t found until 2000.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
The way G saw someone explain it online was like this:
And, as Cassidy said, it took 2 years to find the Air France flight that went down in the ocean, and that was with eyewitnesses who could tell them approximately where to look. Without that, it’s the proverbial needle in the haystack. How long did it take to find the Titanic even though people knew the coordinates where it went down?
Snarki, child of Loki
“Has a large passenger jet ever disappeared without a trace for so long in the last, oh, 30-40 years?”
Yeah, not that many years ago. Between Brazil and Paris. Took years to find the wreckage in the ocean.
Here’s a scenario for your enjoyment: the plane was flown to and ditched just offshore of North Sentinel Island in the Andamans. NASA even has some satellite images of a long smoke plume from there (signal fire for navigation + crash site?)
Now, the Sentinalese Went Galt about 60,000 years ago, so by the Gospel According to Rand, they should be at the level of super-human transcendent technology by now. That whole “run around naked and shoot arrows at helicopers” thing is just for show.
Clearly, Rand Paul needs to be dispatched as an Ambassador PDQ. Those guys mean business!
Betty Cracker
@MikeJ:
Great point. Hadn’t thought of it that way.
Villago Delenda Est
@mack: Especially a minivan down by the river?
Villago Delenda Est
@Elizabelle: This is one theory, which friends of the pilot discount, even though the pilot was a supporter of the political opposition.
At this point just about everything assigning motive is wild speculation, particularly if you happen to be Peter King (R-NY), a known IRA sympathizer.
Elizabelle
Whoa. L’Wren Scott, fashion designer and Mick Jagger’s girlfriend, possibly a suicide.
Hope this turns out to be a hoax, a la Wayne Knight.
How sad.
(And how sad she’s famous and accomplished in her own right and the AP URL says us-jaggers-girlfriend.)
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne:
Air France 447 in the summer of 2009? Bodies (some of them) and wreckage (some of it) were found within a week. It’s only the “black boxes” that took nearly 2 years to find.
Violet
Everyone keeps saying it took two years to find the Air France flight. While it did take two years to retrieve the black boxes, wreckage was found within five days:
The Malaysian Airlines flight is unusual in that nothing has been found and there is evidence is was flown deliberately in a direction not on their flight plan after last communication
scav
I can seriously lose my keys in my own apartment. I lost them for an entire weekend when they were in the pocket of the jacket I was wearing at the time. I’m not letting them anywhere near an ocean and am not necessarily rattled at the idea one can misplace larger things.
Villago Delenda Est
@Snarki, child of Loki: Rand Paul needs to be dispatched, period.
schrodinger's cat
@scav: My orange cat used to hide my keys and watch, when she was a kitten, as a grown-up kitteh she has stopped doing that.
aimai
@mack: The Tumbril’s precede the guillotine. They were indeed open carts but they were used during the Revolution to carry the aristocrats to the guillotine, displaying them along the route.
schrodinger's cat
BTW I am curious to know about the wingnut reaction to Cosmos. Has Steve King or Bachmann weighed in?
Trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
This incident remains one of avation’s big mysteries, but considering it took place in Africa and involved an old passenger jet no longer used by a major airline, the parallels are scant.
http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/the-727-that-vanished-2371187/?page=1
Not knowing precisely who commandeered MH 370 and why, the vast hunk of the globe representing its potential crash/landing site that day means if they did not want to be found it may, indeed never be found. And that’s new territory for us all.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
You’re assuming their views can be challenged by unfavorable facts. In practice, they seem to be especially impervious to any information that might disturb their beautiful theories, so this kind of thing won’t have much effect. At most, they’ll see it as proof that we need to spread Western thought to other places at the same time we spread our economic system.
Trollhattan
@Cervantes:
Right, and unlike this incident the satellite coms functioned up to the moment it crashed, making the hunt vastly easier.
Mnemosyne
@Cervantes:
@Violet:
Right, but that’s part of the point — there were eyewitnesses who were able to say where they saw it go down, so they knew where to look when they were trying to find signs of the crash. That’s a lot different than having thousands of square miles where it could have gone down that you need to try and search.
Until there’s something more to go on, I’m sticking with “the ocean is really big, and things get lost there all the time.”
Cervantes
@Roger Moore:
You sure do have their number!
Howlin Wolfe
@mack: yer point is?
daveNYC
Hastings is talking his book. Shocking.
Though to be honest, I consider school boards to be in the same boat as coop boards. You really need good people doing the job, but the job sucks, takes a chunk of hours, and doesn’t pay for squat, so the pool of people who actually want the position tends to be dubious.
Cacti
Can’t link right now, but ESPN has the story.
Hotshot labor attorney Jeffrey Kessler has filed a class action antitrust suit against the NCAA, Big Ten, SEC, Pac-12, Big 12, and ACC, for illegally capping athlete compensation to the value of an athletic scholarship.
Godspeed Mr. Kessler. The wholly corrupt “amateur” athletic system practiced by the universities should be razed to the ground.
piratedan
well if we can misplace Shrub’s military service records we can certainly lose a plane. Now if this will result in the placement of additional sensory devices on the planes to track them better, well I’m sure that they can be multitasked to spy on the passengers communications while onboard to make it a win-win for all involved.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
Another way to get to the same point is that they make you wear your seatbelt and put up your tray table during takeoff and landing and not generally during other parts of the flight. You’re a lot more likely to crash when you’re already close to the ground, both because you’re already close to the edge of the flight envelope- you’re trying to go about as slow as you can get away with- and because there’s less chance to recover from anything that goes wrong.
Big R
@Villago Delenda Est: Elected school boards are actually one of the better ideas we’ve come up with in America. The problems are a) a lack of interest in SERVING on elected school boards, which lets RWNJs get in, and b) elected school SUPERINTENDENTS, who are just terrifying.
JPL
@Elizabelle: The NY Times updated the article with their own headline which mentions that she a fashion designer.
It also has this sentence.. The official said Scott’s assistant found her hanging from a doorknob at 10 a.m. Monday. The official said no note was found and there was no sign of foul play. I’m not being flippant but how do you hang your self from a doorknob?
StringOnAStick
@Roger Moore: Reminds me of the words of wisdom from a hang glider pilot I knew years ago. His comment was that a 90′ downdraft was scary at 100′, but downright day-ruining if you were at 10′ when it hit.
And speaking about being on a condo association board, that is where the cheap cranks who refuse to spend money to maintain the property like to ‘retire’ to, making anyone who wants to keep the property value up into a very, very frustrated person. This is why we no longer live in a condo, and will never, ever consider doing so again. Life is too short to deal with that shit.
daveNYC
@JPL: With a short rope. If the length of your torso is shorter than the distance between the knob and the floor, you can do it sitting down with your back to the door. Strange way to do it though. If you’re not in jail, there tend to be easier and less painful ways of doing it.
Roger Moore
@StringOnAStick:
Day ruining if you’re at 10′, life ruining if you’re at 80′.
mclaren
Unfortunately Democratic voters are corporate America’s second most useful idiots.
Democratic presidential candidate promises & praises single-payer health care, delivers more unaffordable corporate for-profit health insurance — Democrats applaud.
Democratic presidential candidate runs against unconstitutional surveillance, delivers massive unconstitutional surveillance — Democrats cheer.
Democratic presidential candidate runs against the secrecy of the Bush administration and promises “most transparent administration in history” — delivers more prosecutions of whistleblowers than all previous presidents put together, Democrats clap like trained seals.
Democratic presidential candidate runs against Bush tax cuts, signs into law extension of Bush tax cust — Democrats clap until their palms are raw.
Democratic presidential candidate runs against corruption by Wall Street, next presidential candidate presumptive Hillary Clinton gives $400,000 speech at Goldman Sachs explaining that “bashing the bankers is not productive.”
Democrats start to applaud Hillary in anticipation of four more years of Democratically-sponsored endless unwinnable foreign wars, four more years of massive unconstitutional surveillance, four more years of Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free cards for corrupt Wall Street thieves who wreck the economy and pay themselves hundred-million-dollar bonuses, four more years of secret laws with secret punishments in secret prisons, all set up by Democrats, sponsored by Democrats, defended by Democrats, praised by Democrats.
Amir Khalid
@Villago Delenda Est:
Capt Zaharie went Galt with a 777 and kidnapped 238 people because he was pissed off about Anwar Ibrahim’s conviction? Come on, people. I’ve already said this theory is preposterous.
Betty Cracker
@Roger Moore: I almost never fly anymore now that I no longer have bosses who compel me to do so. I always hated it, particularly takeoffs and landings. You can almost forget that you’re in mortal peril the rest of the time!
SatanicPanic
@mclaren: damn, we only came in second. We’ll have to try harder next time.
karen
I’m making slow cooked corned beef and cabbage for the first time. My apartment now smells like home cooking. I hope it comes out well because I haven’t cooked a lot of meals in my multicooker. But I must say, I love that I can program it and let it cook for 8 hours without having to mess with it the whole time.
luc
@Villago Delenda Est:
I suspect he is right on this one, despite him being a charter school investor etc…
Elected school boards seem to me often an crystallization point of stupidity – perhaps they are not in general; only when I hear about them. They do not exist in Europe. I believe a lot of these things could be handled with much more expertise at the state level.
mclaren
@Roger Moore:
Exactamundo. The Chicago School of Economics came up with gems like “soup kitchens caused the Great Depression.”
No matter what happens, it’s proof that we need to slash taxes for the rich and cut the social safety net. The economy goes up? Only possible because of low taxes on the top 1% but to keep the economy going up, we need to cut taxes on top brackets even more. The economy does down? Proof positive that current high taxes on the rich are a drag on the economy, so we need to cut those taxes for the rich.
It’s like the policies of the corrupt incompetent coward and all around fool General David Petraeus — no matter what happens militarily, it’s proof we need to spend more money on the military and send more troops to third world hellholes like Afghanistan. If fewer American troops are dying in Afghanistan, it’s only because we’re spending money on the Pentagon budget and sending troops to Afghanistan, so we need to spend more and send more troops. If more American troops are dying in Afghanistan, it’s evidence that we need to redouble American’s military spending and crank up another surge of troops in Afghanistan.
To these people, documented facts represent a particularly contemptible form of sophistry which must be ignored as a matter of principle. To these people, ideology always refutes reality.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
I too think this is what most likely happened to MH370.
mattH
@Anoniminous: Huge problem in the social sciences as they became focused on their own society, attempting to “solve” problems all the while letting their own blinders drive things.
mclaren
@luc:
Elected school boards don’t exist in Europe because K-12 schools in Europe get national funding, not local funding from property taxes. America’s weird K-12 school funding system ensures massive disparities twixt poor school districts (no money for pencils or erasers) and wealthy school districts (electron microscopes in the science labs, field trips to the Hayden Planetarium).
Of course, that’s deliberate. America’s so-called “education” system is in reality a combination prison system/economic class sieve. The prison part of American K-12 schools, with sniffer dogs pawing at students’ lockers, zero tolerance policies expelling students for taking an aspirin to school because it’s a “drug” and there’s zero tolerance for drugs, all indoctrinate the students with the realization that they’re inmates in a society-wide prison. No wonder Americans barely react to the revelation of society-wide panopticon surveillance by the NSA — once Americans exit high school, they’ve been conditioned to think of themselves as lifers in a giant open-air prison doing Life Without Parole.
The economic class sieve function of K-12 schools insures that students at poor school districts get the message: that great big glittering society full of nice cars and nice homes and nice jobs you see on TV isn’t for you. The best you can hope for is a part-time minimum wage job at Mickey D’s…but more realistically, your best economic prospects involve selling crack on the streetcorner.
MikeJ
@Amir Khalid: Has anybody seen Leila Khaled lately?
Berial
@Villago Delenda Est: I don’t know that it’s a good idea for the board but I’ve seen what happens when the supervisor is elected and I want none of that. You don’t want the winner of a local popularity contest with no set background in education to set/enforce education standards for the next generation. We have that here in MS. I think we’ve earned our reputation on education down here, and elected school supervisors are part of that.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
I hope you realize that flying on a major carrier is substantially safer than driving the same distance. It’s just easier to forget your mortal peril when driving because you feel in control. There’s a lot to be said for the airline model. You have a highly trained crew, a professionally maintained vehicle, very strict rules requiring the trip to be planned in detail in advance, and controllers on the ground to help the pilots out.
Amir Khalid
@MikeJ:
I think only you and I remember who she is. I haven’t seen her name in the news in 40 years.
Cervantes
@MikeJ: The Palestine National Council has about 700 members: Leila Khaled is one of them. Last I heard, she was back in the Occupied Territories (yes, with “approval” from the state of Israel).
George Habash, on the other hand, is dead.
Amir Khalid
@Elizabelle:
The idea that MH370 hid itself by flying in another 777’s radar shadow seems superficially plausible. But then I ask myself: can a 777 really stay in that other 777’s radar shadow unnoticed? Because the location of the other plane’s radar shadow will depend on where the radar station is relative to it. Also, what about getting in and out of the radar shadow? The pilots on that other plane, SIA68, never reported seeing another 777 hanging around them.
And how did they have the other plane show up at the right time and place for this manoeuvre? That must have taken a good deal of advance planning. (ETA:) And coordination.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
If it happened, yes.
Paul in KY
@mack: That’s sorta VDE’s thing, sending the evil to tumbrel rides.
Davo
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: To be even more fair though, George did everything Bill does first and better…
Paul in KY
@mack: Take the top off & voila, a tumbrelvan!
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid:
Yes.
Although, the flying seems to have been under control, and to stay aloft for so long and then ditch the aircraft? That doesn’t make sense to me, unless you have an accident at the end of a planned diversion. Or, I guess, the pilot was taking the plane out to a depth where it would not be easily found …
RE knowing the other plane’s schedule and pace: that seems doable to me, if you’d studied its recent history and knew when it had taken off that day. It seems MH 370 would have been aloft before the Singapore flight.
Such a strange and sad story.
How is the man or woman on the street taking the twists and turns? MH 370 fatigue setting in yet?
geg6
@mack:
They used the tumbrels to take the aristocrats and their toadies to the guillotine. I’m pining for some people here in the 21st century US to be taking some tumbrel rides. About .01% of the population, for sure. And then, once we’ve lopped off all their heads, the Village. Every single Villager, wannabe Villager and offspring of a Villager. Wipe ’em out.
Elizabelle
@JPL:
That seemed strange to me, too, especially since L’Wren was 6’3″.
NY Daily News has the longest article; they say Ms. Scott used a scarf. Of high quality and design, no doubt.
RIP. She seemed like a nice person, from what little I knew about her …
Betty Cracker
@Roger Moore: I do realize that, but general statistics do not take into account my mad ninja driving skills, so they don’t actually apply to me.
Amir Khalid
@Cervantes:
In fact, I rather think it would have taken a amount of planning and coordination, not just among the pilots but also the people assigning them at two different airlines.
Paul in KY
@MikeJ: Amazing Race whent thru KL last night. Unfortunately the ‘Brenchel’ team was nt eliminated. Dammit!
KL looked very nice. Had a roadblock at a super-trendy club where they had to pour 7 drinks simultaneously, very hard to do.
Paul in KY
@Roger Moore: To me the problem is that when it goes bad on a plane, it really goes bad & if you are in that situation you can have 30 secs or a minute to contemplate your impending squishing, knowing there is absolutely nothing you can do to escape.
Paul in KY
@geg6: If the offspring are kids, we can send them to orphanages or foster parents. No need to execute them.
Roger Moore
@luc:
I think it’s desirable to have overlapping levels of control. Local school districts in all but a handful of the largest districts probably aren’t capable of writing complete curricula and reviewing all the available textbooks, so those things should be handled at the state or even national level. At the same time, a lot of smaller, lower-level decision like school locations, hiring and firing teachers, and fine details of curriculum are probably better left to lower level decision makers like local school boards.
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid:
Oh yeah. Am not wedded to Ledgerwood’s shadow theory; it’s just of interest.
Amir: what are your thoughts on MH 370, besides the very reasonable “plane and passengers are probably in the ocean”?
I wince at hearing the pilot blamed or suspected because he supports the opposition party, as opposed to merely because he was seated in the cockpit, for at least some portion or all of the flight … sounds like “if you support the opposition, you’re likely to do crazy train stuff”, although maybe that’s just me.
catclub
@JPL: ” how do you hang your self from a doorknob? ”
Besides the other comments, drugs or alcohol could be involved in that process. Sit down, Tie the knot, fall asleep forever.
Elie
@Elizabelle:
The only problem that I have about the ocean scenario is why fly the plane way out there if you intent is some sort of suicide?
I sure hope that it did crash, but I have a queasy feeling about this somehow. There seemed to be so much care taken by whoever is piloting– turning off the tracking capability and the possible evasive actions — just to commit suicide ad ditch in the ocean?
I dunno……
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Bill Maher is wrong about Republican foreign policy. It’s not about whose dick is bigger but about who is overcompensating for their micropenis by pretending to be manly.
Elie
@JPL:
Hanging from a doorknob may have been not about suicide but hypoxic sexual pleasure…. some people gradually asphyxiate themselves by gradually increasing the pull and then letting it go just in time to avoid death… hence they don’t hang themselves from a high place but want to control it. Sometimes they pass out though and kill themselves. Not saying that is what happened. I don’t know but in the absence of a note, maybe.
joel hanes
@Betty Cracker:
mortal peril
You’re in a lot greater danger driving to the grocery store.
geg6
@Paul in KY:
All I have to say to that is:
LUKE RUSSERT
I do not want. Ever again.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
General statistics also don’t take into account that you’re in Florida. I think Stand Your Ground brings a new meaning to mortal peril from driving.
Trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
Given what’s known and has been released to the public, I think a commandeering of the flight is the best theory at present. That the captain supported the opposition seems lacking as an explanation or motivator, and a diversion. It’s not impossible the crew was coerced into acting by others on board, but surely whomever disbled the comms was quite sophisticated with their knowledge of the plane’s controls.
Not buying the notion of pursuing, catching and shadowing another plane with a large, loaded passenger plane, in the dark. Seems like a very fringe theory at best..
Elie
@Elie:
Sorry — didn’t mean to say that I hoped that the plane crashed. I surely do not wish that upon those passengers. More, I was saying that I don’t think that the simple suicide theory works for me…
I have a creepy feeling that plane is on the ground somewhere and even though we haven’t heard of ransom demands or whatever, doesn’t mean we won’t or that they don’t have other gruesome plans for the 239 passengers.
This appears to have been very sophisticated and I believe that it aint over and won’t be over without more very unpleasant surprises.
mack
@Howlin Wolfe: Initially, I had a hard time with the usage of the word Tumbrel. I have since been schooled. Waiting patiently for my opportunity to work the word into casual conversation.
Cervantes
@Roger Moore: Are you thinking maybe Florida should attempt to pass a law that extends “Stand Your Ground” into its air-space?
Trollhattan
@mack:
“My 2014 Tumbrel is a hybrid, but I sure wish it were a plug-in.”
“The local nanobrewer has a new Tumbrel triple-IPA that’s to die for.”
[Uttered at the bar at 1:30] “Say, how about you and I go have a Tumbrel?”
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
The GOP base = Ruprecht, a doofus who is smart enough to con someone (particularly themselves) but always end up serving another person’s agenda…useful idiots indeed.
Amir Khalid
@Elizabelle:
The Daily Mail played up the political thing because it had a photo of Capt Zaharie in a T-shirt that said “Democracy is Dead” in big scary red letters. Far nastier things than that get said about Najib and the Barisan Nasional administration in the non-mainstream media here.
If MH370 was hijacked, it would be only the second time in MAS’ history. The first was in 1977, a 737 en route to Singapore. That plane crashed in Tanjung Kupang, Johor, killing all 100 on board. The hijacker’s identity was never established. His bits and pieces had to be buried in a mass grave along with everyone else’s. If we don’t find anyone alive from MH370, we can never know for sure what happened on board.
Now, the Royal Malaysian Police says it is investigating everyone on the plane, as it must; but it’s been careful not to say it sees anyone in particular as a suspect. It hasn’t found a motive for Capt Zaharie or First Officer Fariq to divert the plane, nor has it found anyone else with the means or opportunity to do it.
catclub
@Amir Khalid: Did non-US airlines reinforce cockpit doors as the US airlines did? That _should_ make it tougher to commandeer an airliner.
Sir Galahad, the Pure
@Betty Cracker: “You can almost forget that you’re in mortal peril the rest of the time!”
Please, can’t I have a little bit of peril?
Amir Khalid
@catclub:
I think they all did, since it’s a common-sense thing to do, but I’m not really sure about that.
Suffern ACE
@Amir Khalid: Yeah. I saw that. Look, I know partisans will be upset, and all. But if the pilot was that upset about politics, he probably would have said so. I know I don’t know very many Malaysians. The culture is probably a lot less direct than ours (most cultures are). But I’m doubting that it is so passive agressive that someone would kill a few hundred people as part of a protest and not leave a note. If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you!!!
I also read these “There was an Uighur on board” as if that would mean much. Its great that we know Uighurs have a tortuous history with the Chinese government. But its really going out on a limb to find the existence of one Uighur calligrapher travelling home from Malaysia as part of a group of Chinese calligraphers somehow meaningful. Maybe she used her pens to overpower the crew?
Bill Arnold
@Elie:
Locked cockpit door. copilot (or pilot) goes to bathroom, locked behind them. Put on oxygen max, somehow depressurize aircraft (I think this is possible, not sure), disable communications, bring craft to 45000 ft to gently kill through hypoxia the passengers/rest of crew, reprogram the autopilot to fly SW (destination not reachable with fuel on board), then perp runs out of oxygen after a while, then aircraft is an airborne Mary Celeste for a few hours, then out of fuel and down, never to be found.
I don’t find this completely implausible given the current facts of the day… Certainly it’s been discussed, and I hope preventative workarounds are being planned.
gwangung
One of the more interesting theories I’ve heard about the flight is that an on-board fire took out communications immediately. The pilot turned around to bring the plane to a safer altitude to extinguish the fire, but succumbed to the toxic gases. The plane then went on….
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid: Here is the relevant Malaysian civil aviation rule.
Whether the door was actually locked is an open question.
Amir Khalid
@Suffern ACE:
You know what the media are like, always going on with their wild speculations. Zaharie is politically active in exactly the same way as many Balloon Juice commenters. None of that should make him suspect. I’m not inclined to believe he will turn out to be the guilty party here.
Elie
@Bill Arnold:
They would have had to disable the drop down oxygen in that scenario…Everyone would just have to put their oxygen on including the locked out pilot/or co-pilot.
And again, if this is just for straight ahead suicide, they don’t have to fly into the Indian Ocean –just straight on down near where all the transponders were turned off.
There had to have been some other intent …
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid:
I hope they do find out — and soon — what happened, to give closure (or reunion, implausibly) to the families and to clear the pilots’ names. I feel for the families of all.
Amir Khalid
@Elie:
Why wait even that long? As soon as you had enough altitude, you’d just clock the other guy with a big wrench, point the plane at the ground, and push the throttle all the way up. You wouldn’t even wait to reach the east coast, never mind the South China Sea.
Amir Khalid
A celebrity finds MH370!
Bill Arnold
@Amir Khalid:
Insurance policy with no-payout-for-suicide maybe, or some other reason for disguising a suicide? (Sorry to go down these grisly parts of the scenario tree.)
Amir Khalid
@Bill Arnold:
Absent any evidence, I can only say, “Who the fuck knows?”
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid: Well, she’s got more going for her than Peter King (R – Dumbfuckistan) does.
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid:
I’d take Courtney Love over Jenny McCarthy any day.
Courtney’s got her challenges, but she has some raw intelligence.
Plane-finding ability? Remains to be seen.
ETA: Oh, and is that last line the worst unintentional pun? Gah.
Paul in KY
@geg6: Can’t argue with that!