Oh well.
Better luck next time.

In the immortal words of NTS...that is OLD!

If it turns out that it was just a mentall ill guy (which is likely), then it'll be just one more sad example of the fact that, whether we like it or not, terrorism really has limited our quality of life.

The Air Marshalls did the right thing. But it's a sad world where being mentally ill carries a death sentence. I don't blame the Air Marshalls, I blame the terrorists; this is not the kind of world I want to live in.

Aviation experts postulated that the situation must have been seen as a dangerous one if the air marshal drew his gun.

who writes this stuff, Dick Morris?

Question is: Will he still get the virgins?

Mention the "B" word on a plane?
What, was he crazy?

"He's dead, Jim."

Perhaps that should have been a Doctor "Bones" McCoy update instead of Harry Callahan.

I'm just sayin'...

Terrorists or no terrorists, insane or not, anyone running around on a plane claiming to have a bomb deserves to be shot.

And mentally unbalanced my ass. Mentally unbalanced by a couple of balloons of coke breaking open inside of him, maybe. Mentally unbalanced because his first mule run back into the states was freaking him out, perhaps.

Dude got capped acting like a nutjob on a plane. That doesn't make my quality of life any worse. Hell, it makes me a little more confident about flying.

I don't believe it - go read all of that article.

Dennis Kuchinich actually said something sane and rational.

anyone running around on a plane claiming to have a bomb deserves to be shot.

Have you ever known a schizophrenic person? I have, and it's sad and difficult to deal with.

I'm not claiming that this is what happened in this case, but it seems likely. In which case, you can feel good saying that they deserved it, but I feel like we live in a far worse world for it, and this guy is just one more victim of terrorism. (And lest anybody misconstrue my comments, let me be clear that the Air Marshalls did the right thing, and also that I'm speaking hypothetically because the facts aren't in yet on this incident.)

SJKevin: and this guy is just one more victim of terrorism.

This is a difficult time, because we in the West have to step back, put a portion of our compassion on the shelf, and realize that these are brutal, violent, misguided thugs who we are dealing with. And in dealing with them, we have only a few options.

If it is a question of whether you are going to live to go home to dinner and your family, then the other guy is going to have to go. There is a lot less grey area here than there used to be - terrorism has made everywhere a war zone, every congregation a trap, each act of mercy a show of weakness. They have taken our tenderest and most well-meaning expressions and turned them against us. It is for that that we have to hate them, and to destroy them, else we risk being victims of our own good intentions.

Have I ever known a schizophrenic? What does that have to do with anything? Even hypothetically speaking, knowing or not knowing one has nothing to do with the argument.
That said, I have known one. Sad, sure. Heart-breaking, yes. But I'd also say that a schizophrenic shouldn't be allowed to fly, especially on an international flight, unaccompanied by someone who can control him if he freaks out. Airlines aren't public parks where mentally unstable people should be allowed to roam free. If people can't smoke on the plane, if children can't ride unattended, people who are likely to wig out should be forced to fly with a babysitter.
Either way, I'm not quite sure what today's climate has to do with it. Even before 9/11 I would have suggested shooting a person freaking out and claiming to have a bomb.

Apparently the guy running down the airplane's aisle who was subsequently shot was followed by his wife screaming that he should take his medications.

Schizophrenic.

Not that al Queda would try something so dastardly as getting an innocent to take one for the team in an effort to probe our defenses... Right?

Is nobody else reminded of the guy who ran from the cops in London only days after the London bombings?

And we all know al Queda's not above using mentally handicapped folks as martyrs. Right?

Here is the link to the latest update:

link

Okay, how about this: mentally ill people who refuse to take the medication that keeps them from flipping out because "I feel fine now I don't need it" or "I don't like the way it makes me feel" (as in, not high from the crazy) deserve to get whatever comes to them.

Listen up, sickos: you want to be treated like upright citizens who are Just Like Everyone Else who can be trusted to take on personal responsibility for themselves instead of being locked away in a padded cell? Then fucking take your goddamn medicine. And caretakers? Make sure your crazy loved ones take their sanity pills. If you really care about them that is.

And yes, I've known mentally ill people, and I've had to hear their bullshit about how they can "handle it" or how the medicine takes away all their "feelings" or gives them a stomachache or whatever. And as I've always lived in cities, so I've had to encounter the results of compassion-oozers like SJKevin, whose sympathetic tears resulted in freaks being let wander out into the streets and "choose" to be treated or not, because, yah know, gotta be free to pee on you and me.

We're in a war, people. Stop futzing around.

I think it's pretty weak to call me a "compassion oozer" just because I feel sorry for a guy who got shot, while I also stated that the Air Marshalls did the right thing. Yeah, homelessness is my fault because I feel sad about some mentally ill guy getting shot.

Meh. I didn't mean to sound so snippy. But I think you're jumping to incorrect conclusions about me, Andrea.

Andrea,

You know, the we're in a war really doesn't cut it. Being serious about this cuts both ways - we all have to make some serious decisions nowadays. Some people more than others. As the man says, people make mistakes, people die. But then, everybody else doesn't get to be a prick to get their pet point across.

One of the tenets that we're in this for is to be able to say, seriously, that we value life. Sick, twisted, pathetic, sad - we still value life. We do not let our elderly die, we do not triage the infirm, we do not quarantine the most ill. This notion is paramount, and it deserves to be preotected and cherished. As a group, as a country, we are not making rash generalizations and killing people based on a broad brush.

If we were, Mecca would be rubble. But that's not the way we are. We're trying to be better.

If all of the facts are correct, that poor guy today deserves our compassion, and his wife deserved our respect. But he was in the wrong place and made the wrong choice. That's sad, and maybe even tragic.

But it's not a clarion call to tell people to stop futzing around because it pissed you off. Pretty clearly, the guy didn't get on the plane with the intent to harm anyone. Things took a bad turn, and that's sad. But maybe what is sadder is seeing that you don't get it.

It is a terrible thing what happened, but now I'm worried that the professional cop-haters are going to try and crucify the air marshal for doing his job. A certain portion of society, and the media often joins up with this obtuse little tribe, blame the police in EVERY situation, context be damned.

As a caretaker for a person who's schizophrenic (my mother-in-law), I can understand what happened. And I really feel for the family of this guy. It's tragic.

But the blame rests entirely on this guy and his family. He should have been on his meds if he's going to be in an airplane. Period. End of story.

I'm worried that the professional cop-haters are going to try and crucify the air marshal

That's the balance.

Serious people get it, I think. You can learn how to hunt deer from a young age, be a great shot, and still have a very healthy respect for life. You can be a doctor or a nurse and still see the need to kill people and break things. These are not hypocritical or inconsistent positions.

But you're probably right. Was it in London that they killed the suspicious character 2 weeks after the London Bus bombings? As I recall, the press had a field day with the cops who acted carefully and with great forethought, but who made a tough decision.

There is just not as much room for error any more. I remember after my father came home from Vietnam, my mother wouldn't let me kick cans in the street or pick up toys that were laying out in public, say in a parking lot or some such. The VC were known to trap such common objects with the intent to shock and maim. Killing was not the object, but PR was. History is repeating itself to a degree, or at least let it be said that we are still not serious about what is a very complex and disturbing tendency for our enemies to use our compassion and our innocence against us.