Former Mississippi Gov. Barbour was arrested with a loaded gun at an airport security checkpoint, TSA spokesperson says https://t.co/yH4otSJtk7
— NBC News (@NBCNews) January 30, 2018
It’s his Emotional Support Firearm https://t.co/GlFLNYiMol
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) January 30, 2018
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ICYMI (In Case You Missed It)…
A woman tried to board a plane with her emotional-support peacock. United wouldn't let it fly. https://t.co/yTjvJoDCmV @washingtonpost pic.twitter.com/3XsmSR7iDg
— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) January 31, 2018
I actually checked Snopes, and it’s true. The peacock’s person — surprise! — is a “conceptual artist working in photography, performative experiences and social practice” while living in Bushwick.
schrodingers_cat
My support kitteh will claw me if I take him to the airport.
cmorenc
Can I bring my emotional support snake on the plane?
Yutsano
I’m a little surprised ol’ Haley didn’t just try to smooth talk his way out of that unfortunate circumstance. Guess his white boy club didn’t extend to the local TSA eh?*
*Disclaimer: can’t view Twitter at work so no idea if this happened in Mississippi or elsewhere.
JPL
So what is the best way to transport a peacock? Just curious.
btw One time my son flew on a plane that was transporting a tiger cub although the cub was in a cage. It did express discomfort on the way though.
Waldo
I’m afraid to leave home without my emotional support badger.
Baud
I should sell an Emotional Support Baud! in the Baud! 2020! store.
NotMax
Graduate of the Jargonist School of Art & Design?
And practicing bushwah.
trollhattan
Let me introduce you to my emotional support porn star, Ms Daniels. She’ll be traveling on my lap, so no extra seat needed.
Yutsano
@trollhattan: I’d like to see you sell your wife on that notion.
NotMax
@JPL
First, apply for the Frequent Fryer program….
BruceFromOhio
There was a solid showing of emotional support scorpion owners in the State of the Dominiom thread yestereve.
Sm*t Cl*de
@JPL:
Trebuchet.
Nasty little fuckers aren’t even good to eat.
cain
What the fuck is she feeding that peacock? It looks like it can eat an ostrich!
Can I bring my emotional support great white shark?
NCSteve
Yeah, for once I was with United on this one. Better to be on a flight with a hundred colicky babies than one of those things–from both a noise and a feces production standpoint.
And congratulations to United for handling this situation without killing anyone, beating anyone into bloody unconsciousness or having them arrested for sassing gate attendants. Way to up your game, guys!
BruceFromOhio
@JPL: “Pinkskin tyrants! You can cage me, but you cannot defeat me! Not even flying coach! Mrrrowwr!”
Ridnik Chrome
Jackie Gleason, Eddie Murphy, Harry Nilsson and Mae West hang their heads in shame.
jharp
“Former Mississippi Gov. Barbour was arrested with a loaded gun”
Why in the fuck would Haley Barbour deem it necessary to carry a fucking gun?
He ought to go to jail for stupidity.
RandyG
I was once in line behind someone who tried to take an (apparently emotional support) cicular saw through security. He seemed genuinely surprised when it wasn’t allowed.
Cermet
@Yutsano: And woman don’t like porn because they are sooo different and sexless creatures who hate sex and …please. Many (if not most) woman enjoy porn and the 50’s (and earlier) social custom of believing otherwise is just as sexist as any.
Mnemosyne
I’m guessing I’m not the only person who suspects that a lot of people claim that their pet is an “emotional support animal” to get around having to pay a fee to transport it properly.
Still, it’s pretty ballsy to claim that a 3-foot-tall bird should be allowed to sit in the main cabin. Does she even have a leash for it?
debbie
The problem with this country is that everyone thinks they should be the exception to every damn rule.
@Yutsano:
The article says he was stopped when boarding a flight from Jackson to Washington.
Mnemosyne
@Cermet:
Uh, I think you misunderstood why a wife might not want her husband to let a porn star sit in his lap on an airline flight.
Think it through.
Ridnik Chrome
@jharp:
If stupidity was a jailable offense the entire Republican party would be doing hard time right now.
trollhattan
@jharp:
I’ve gotta believe it’s step #1 in reviving his political career. “Ah’m packin’ and rarin’ to go!”
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: Prude.
jl
@Mnemosyne: I’m wondering what kind of emotional situation would be ‘helped’ by having a screeching, cawing, ill-tempered peacock follow you around. Maybe it helps by driving other people away to a safe distance?
Cute little ducky maybe, but a peacock?
HeleninEire
Told you all I’m binging “The Crown.”Series 2, ep 7 so as not to spoil anything. Liz is on an African tour. Love the shit out of that. Well right now Liz is doing the fox trot with an “AFRICAN” say her handlers.
Oh holy hell apparently the world is coming to the end!!!
No assholes. The world, the new world is just beginning.
Baud
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, it’s expensive.
Yutsano
@debbie:
You just summed up my daily work life in a nutshell. There is ALWAYS a taxpayer who thinks they meet some kind of exception, even if I have just demonstrated several times over that they’re not. There are times when I just want to tell them to go away because they’re wasting my time but nope!
And for the kicker, almost all the ones who think they’re special snowflakes are white.
jl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: How about if the wife gets a porn star for her lap too? Who would have a problem with that?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl:
Seems like as good a reason as any.
trollhattan
Sleep tight, Hawaii.
Maybe because it’s still the fvcking hardest thing to do that there is. They need sharks with frickin’ lasers.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Good for the goose…
randy khan
@jl:
It occurs to me that, given her vocation, bringing the peacock to the airport might have been part of a performance.
MJS
@trollhattan: I’m picturing the exact same type of gun Rootin’ Tootin’ little girl Pursuin’ Roy Moore brandished at a campaign event.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
Well, well well …
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: Yup, as my pappy used to say…hitting a bullet with a bullet.
debbie
I think that peacock is Photoshopped. Where are its legs? It’s too far forward from that metal thing that’s alongside that monitor/terminal. It can’t be in midair because its wings aren’t extended.
jl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Goose is almost as bad as a peacock.
Anyway, all these airport fun and games are amusing. But the shitshow with the Nunes memo is much weirder, and if luck is with us, end up much funnier in the ‘ha ha’ way. Josh Marshall’s twitter feed explains. No links. Hard to summarize.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Cermet: A) Of course woman like porn, what the heck do you think bodice rippers are?
B) Good gawd, I am confirmed bachelor and even I have to sense to know getting off another woman is a sure way to land yourself in trouble.
debbie
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:
Step back and let them hang themselves with their own rope!
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
If there is a Denver meetup in July (likely target date: 7/17), remind me to tell you the story of the armless woman and her snarly support dog at the public library. It’s a good ‘un.
rikyrah
@HeleninEire:
I love that scene. On the phone to London, describing what’s happening ???
Cacti
Does this mean I’d have to leave my emotional support poison dart frog behind?
I can’t go anywhere without Spotty!
debbie
@Yutsano:
I get a smiliar kind of attitude from co-workers. Departments are supposed to be partners and collaborate to resolve customer complaints. Too many of these clowns think “collaboration” and “partnership” are defined as “you do it for me.” Snowflakes.
bystander
@Waldo: Easily smuggled through security in your trousers.
dmsilev
Me and my emotional support wolverine are set to fly next week.
Sm*t Cl*de
@jl:
That’s why I need my emotional support durian.
ruemara
I hate to do this but my niece (go with me here, my mom’s adopted her), is a straight A student who is going to the National Junior Honor Society Youth Leadership Conference in DC and we could use some help with the $3k it will take. I coughed up a bit because I want all the up & coming generation to have more of a shot at life. If any of you could add in a $5 or so, we’d be awful grateful and I will even send you cookies because I’m trying to get you fat. With happiness. To help little Jenai, just click here.
jl
@debbie: That is part of what I was talking about. I guess the Trumpsters will cook up an even more absurd double dog reverse flip reach-around head fake explanation of this unfair anti-Trump Seep State treachery. Bias against HRC was a just a feint to make Trump lose. Can’t you all see it?
HeleninEire
@rikyrah: The best.
Cacti
@cmorenc:
Wasn’t Samuel L. Jackson in a movie about that? Emotional Support Snakes on a Plane, or something?
GregB
In Barbour’s defense, apparently he dropped the gun while he was on his couch and it just got lost in his stomach folds.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@jl: Distraction from Nancy Pelosi’s teenage girl slavery ring and Hello Kitty Cosplay in the basement of the Sear’s Tower.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yutsano:
Jackson, Mississippi.
Seriously, how honest-to-god fucking stupid do you need to be, when you’re packing for a flight 16-1/2 years after 9/11, to not remove firearms from your fucking carry on bags? I always thought Haley Barbour wasn’t the sharpest piece of elbow macaroni in the tuna casserole. This just confirms it.
jl
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: And there IS a basement to the Sear’s Tower! Ah-ha!
Ridnik Chrome
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
You mean the Wesley Willis Tower…
efgoldman
Tom Cotton never travels without his support cobra
Mulvaney without his support scorpion’
Orange Shitheel without his support slime mold
SiubhanDuinne
@jl:
You forgot “Loosers!” and “Morans!” but otherwise spot on.
Ruckus
@RandyG:
Many years ago an attendant brought on board a hippie looking fellow with a rather large sheath knife, which she handed to the pilot, and then let the fellow go to his seat.
I can not imagine how that would go today.
Yutsano
@SiubhanDuinne:
I think our dear sweet Mrs Cracker is having an influence on you m’dear!
Ruckus
@jl:
Sorry but as indoor pets, any bird runs right up against the need not to have to constantly clean up crap from any and all surfaces. The bigger the bird, only makes the problem worse.
japa21
@Cacti: My California nephew, when he was attending Northwestern, would have his small python snuggle in his jacket on flights. Of course, this was before 9/11. However, in the 80’s we were on our way back from California. My son had gotten one of those martial arts throwing stars (not too fancy) and was looking at it in the airport before we boarded. Airport security came over and very nicely talked to him suggesting he shouldn’t have that out and about and requested one of his parents carry it the rest of the way for him. I was, quite honestly, very impressed with how it was. It was all done in an understandable way for a 10 year old without any shaming or blaming.
NotMax
Le huge sigh.
Backstory: Elderly landlady totaled her ’05 vehicle mid -December, bought a replacement (’11) late December. She gets flustered speaking with her insurance company on the phone, so I call and act as liason for her (am listed on her policy as authorized to do so). She also has a separate ’94 vehicle.
Called them the day after she bought the ’11 (appropraite department on the mainland was already closed on the date of purchase) to request they remove the ’05 from the policy and add the ’11. Received a follow-up confirmation e-mail that the policy had been changed to cover the ’11 and the ’94 and that the ’05 was to be removed from coverage.
This week she received the paperwork and bill for the next year of coverage (renewal date is Feb. 16). Idiots removed the ’94, kept the ’05 and added the ’11. Spent over an hour on the phone with them today to straighten it out. Samples of the conversation (roughly 5 – 6 a.m. Hawaii time):
1) “That can’t happen, sir.”
“That did happen. Look at the policy and the currently listed vehicles covered.”
2)” “Oh look, it did. Must have been a miscommunication.” (‘on your part’ was strongly implied)
“No, it is a mistake on your end, not a miscommunication. No one asked or requested to remove the ’94 and I have an e-mail from your company confirming the changes as requested in December, including an attachment of new insurance cards for the correct vehicles. She has already relinquished ownership of the ’05 to you and sent you the keys and forms the claims department sent her.”
3) “I need to talk to the underwriting and also the claims department. Will you hold?”
“You bet I will.” (Much bad Muzak.)
4) “We can remove the ’05 but can’t reinstate coverage for the ’94.”
“Yes you can, it’s your error.” (Much back and forth.)
5) Repeat #3 above.
6) “Okay I had to do what we call ‘going outside the system’ as our computer can’t accommodate this. [blah blah blah] ’11 and ’94 are the listed vehicles now, ’05 has been removed, everything retroactive to the date you first called. New bill and paperwork will be processed and sent out and you should receive them in 14 – 21 days.”
“That will be after the renewal date. She pays once annually by credit card. Can you provide me with the new total amount due?”
“We’re not supposed to do that.” (After more back and forth and being put on hold was given the figure.)
7) “Will you please send me an e-mail confirming our conversation today, outlining what we discussed and the changes made to the policy? I’ll print it out and give her a copy to set her mind at ease.”
“This computer can’t do that, I’ll have to send it to another department. (More extended back and forth.) Okay, I just sent you the e-mail, which generally takes 24 hours to arrive.”
Kee-rist on a crumbly cracker.
japa21
@NotMax: Obviously was using Clinton’s server.
Barbara
@jl: My sister-in-law has flown with her pet goose as an emotional support animal. Geese are not actually very nice. During one family event, her goose kept going on the attack against my one year old and when I told her she retorted that it was my responsibility to protect my son not hers. There is a reason why many people hate the whole concept of emotional support animals. She is my Exhibit A.
PIGL
@dmsilev: where are my dragons?
Elmo
@ruemara: I’m in for $50. Thanks for putting it out there.
different-church-lady
@cmorenc: Worst pickup line EVER.
Anonymous37
As Bryant Gumbel says, “It’s enough to make a guy fly private!”
MisterForkbeard
@ruemara: Can’t donate a ton, but I’m in for $50. Good luck to Jenai!
MisterForkbeard
@Barbara: I feel like this is a better rason to hate crazy-ass sister-in-laws who won’t watch their pets even if they’re threatening an infant.
different-church-lady
When we’ve reached the point where our emotions can’t handle ordinary things without the support of exotic birds, maybe we need to just die as a species.
Juju
@cmorenc: I’ve had enough with these mother f**king support snakes on this mother f**king plane!
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Fixed.
ruemara
@Elmo: Oh, great! Thanks so much!
Edited to reflect Thanks to all of you so much. What a great jackal pack! And it’s future president Jenai, thanks.
Gravenstone
@Barbara: Punting the goose into next week is an allowed form of protecting your son. Hate geese, have for years. Grandparents had a few and they used to terrorize my sister and I when we were small.
Jager
@Barbara:
There may be a reason why many people hate the concept of your sister in law.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
I have to wait for payday, but that’s tomorrow, so it won’t be a long wait.
WaterGirl
@ruemara: What a nice little blurb at your link! And her photo – she is almost as cute as TaMara’s Scout. Almost.
I hope you will post this again as a reminder tomorrow – I can’t be the only person who has nothing to contribute on the 31st but gets paid on the first.
SFAW
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Montgomery Scott was your pappy?
SFAW
@ruemara:
You’re a good auntie. (Kicked in a bit meself. Cute kid!)
burnspbesq
@Yutsano:
Or assholes like me calling and giving you 17 reasons why you should 53 this poor woman’s account.
Citizen_X
@Ruckus:
His name wasn’t “Dundee,” was it?
father pusbucket
@cain:
I thought the same at first, but I think it’s perched on a cart in the foreground, not standing on the floor.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yutsano:
If I study at all, it is at the feet of the masters!
Mary G
@ruemara: She’s beautiful, kicked in a bit, wish it was more. No cookies needed.
Mnemosyne
@father pusbucket:
I think you’re right — if you look at the Snopes article, there’s a second photo of it perched on the handle of the cart, but that handle kind of disappears against the background in the first photo so it looks like the bird is perching in mid-air.
It’s a huge bird, but swan-sized, not ostrich-sized.
Mnemosyne
@Mary G:
Clearly you’ve never had Ruemara make cookies for you. Don’t turn them down. ?
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: I was just about to write that!
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
Her cookies are ???.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@cmorenc: Don’t bring that mother fucking snake on my mother fucking plane.
SFAW
@burnspbesq:
You meant “86,” and your fingers were one row down on the keypad, yes?
ETA: Unless it’s an Internet Tradition of which I am not aware, of course.
SFAW
@Cacti:
You know who would LOVE to see Spotty? Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. I think Devin Nunes would like to, as well.
dr. luba
@ruemara: Congratulations on having a wonderful niece. I have two, and really appreciate them.
I gave a bit–I know how hard it is to raise funds. No cookies for me, but thanks. FYI–you may wish to consider YouCaring next time–they take much less of your money than GoFundMe does in my experience.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@SFAW: No, pappy was Irish, but an Engineer.
RandyG
@Ruckus: The sheath alone would arouse suspicions in many places.
Just One More Canuck
@Barbara: That’s insane – geese are just assholes (could explain your sister-in-law’s affinity for them
eta – what Gravenstone said
paleotectonics
@jl: i ‘spect she would want the porn star’s lap to sit on.
SFAW
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Outstanding!
Sloegin
Service animals are awesome, support animals are generally bullshit. I wouldn’t even care that much but for the fact that people who have allergies (yours truly) get bounced from a flight when there’s a conflict with commodore whiskers and not the other way around
Anne Laurie
@randy khan:
YA THINK?!?
That’s what pisses me off: There are people who genuinely need support animals, even emotional support animals, and entitled “creatives” like this probable-Jill-Stein-voter are making things more difficult for everybody. And she’s not even honest about playing the snowflake — she called the airline three times to make sure she’d be turned away — this was purely a stunt to score her more monetizable Instagram clicks.
I don’t wanna ill-wish anybody (outside of the Trump administration), but I hope the peacock escapes & goes on to lead a long, happy life with someone who’s not using him as a prop.
Anne Laurie
@Cacti:
Won’t Spotty fit conveniently in your shirt pocket? Or in a proper carry-on container, where he won’t make trouble for the other passengers or flight attendants?
That’s the bullshit marker, for me — anyone decides they need an emotional support animal, there’s a wide variety of fauna that will fit under the seat. On the other hand, a vet with balance issues who uses a support Great Dane (there’s a woman here in MA who has a non-profit devoted, in every sense, to that), the Dane may set off someone’s allergies, but they’ve been trained to stay quiet & out of people’s way.
Go small, or at least go properly trained. Someone who randomly decides they need a pig, or a peacock, or a pangolin within arm’s reach… has problems serious enough they shouldn’t risk being trapped with a hundred strangers in a metal tube hurtling through the air.
Anne Laurie
@Ruckus:
Birds can’t help themselves (as you probably know), no sphincters.
They make diapers for parakeets & cockatiels, though; the one news clip about the emotional-support duck I saw had it outfitted in some kinda onesie. Another clue this “conceptual artist” was more full of guana than her big dirty bird — if it actually spends all its time indoors with her, it would be wearing a poop-catcher.