A flight to Mumbai from Amsterdam on Wednesday had its own personal terror alert and was turned around, by the pilot, for an emergency landing — afterward, 12 passengers were held overnight by Dutch police. Why? The NYT has the scoop:

The pilot of Northwest Flight 42 . . . turned back about 20 minutes into the flight . . . after several passengers were observed passing cell phones back and forth and unfastening their seat belts.

Well, was the fasten seat belt light still on?!? If a man unfastens his seat belt, or passes a cell phone to another passenger, that’s one thing — but if a man with an unfastened belt whips out a phone . . . run.

OK, so lets cut to the important part: what did they look like? I turned to the Star Tribune:

Passengers described the men as between 25 and 35 years old and speaking Urdu, the language commonly spoken in Pakistan and by many of India’s Muslims.

Uh-huh, uh-huh. My suspicions are aroused . . .

Some had beards, and some wore a shalwar kameez, a long shirt and baggy pants commonly worn by South Asian Muslims.

Ah-ha! Beards, huh? You’d think those terrorists would learn to shave every once and a while, to sort of lower their profile, but you can’t teach a terrorist new tricks, apparently.

Anything else? You had me at beards, but wait:

Nitin Patel of Boston, who sat behind the men, told the paper: “I don’t know how close we were, but my gut tells me these people wanted to hijack the airplane.”

Thank God Nitin Patel failed the Air Marshall written exam, or bearded, seat-belt-less passengers on flights around the world would be paying the price.

But even with all that evidence, it turned out to be a false alarm:

Prosecutors said Thursday they found no evidence of a terrorist threat . . . and they are releasing all 12 passengers arrested after the emergency landing.

There is nothing funny about terrorism and there is nothing funny about racism or religious prejudice (yet, somehow, this “incident” is funny . . .)

Dick Cheney recently said that “the terrorists” (or, “Al-Qaeda-types,” as he called them) saw a victory in the Connecticut Democratic primary defeat of Joe Lieberman; Bush, on Tuesday, said that withdrawing troops form Iraq “will send the wrong message to the enemy.”

How about panic (terror, even!) aboard airplanes? Fear and suspicion and anger? Travel disruptions? Could these things possibly be seen as “a victory” by terrorist organizations who have specifically targeted air travel?

Finally:

On Tuesday, a flight to New York from Atlanta was diverted to Charlotte, N.C., after a flight attendant found a bottle of water and then smelled something suspicious on the plane. Officials found nothing hazardous.

Now that sends a message.

A couple of days ago, I posted a comment on Gandhi’s attitude towards doctors and nutrition, which surprised me. The quote had come from a book called “Hind Swaraj” (“Indian Home Rule”) which was first compiled in 1909. It contains many rather upsetting and mind-boggling assertions of Gandhi’s, including a tirade against railways for working against natural segregation of people and thus spreading the Bubonic plague. I figured this was a decade or so before Gandhism truly took off, and the, how can I put this delicately, craziness of his words could therefore be attributed to the early unformulated thought of a subsequent wiseman.

Today, in a completely different text, I came across a quote of his from 1929 that has me truly rattled.

Just as it is the duty of the ruler to be the trustee and friend of the people, so that of the latter is not be jealous of the former. The poor man must know that to a great extent poverty is due to his own faults and shortcomings. So, while the poor man must strive to improve his condition, let him not hate the ruler and wish his destruction…He must not want rulership for himself, but remain content by earning his own wants. (Qtd. in Dominance without Hegemony, pg. 37)

Did anybody else know that Gandhi was a neocon?

In Michigan, three Palestinian-American men were arrested last week after being found to be in possession of nearly 1000 disposable cell phones. They are under suspiscion of participating in a scheme to sell the phones to help fund a terrorist cell. In a similar case in Ohio, charges were recently dropped, but Caro, Mich. police are holding firm. From the Star Tribune:

The FBI said Monday that it had no indication that the men had any ties to known terrorist groups. Local prosecutors, however, were standing by the charges.

My advice to the Tuscola County Michigan local authorities: let it go. If the FBI says they aren’t terrorists, then they aren’t terrorists. They know. And they have the illegally wiretapped phone records to prove it.

Did anyone in the Connecticut last week stop to think about how Mr. Schlesinger might feel? From Friday’s NYT:

Republicans have a candidate in the Connecticut race this fall, Alan Schlesinger, but he has struggled to raise money or attract interest amid the Lieberman-Lamont contest.

If you can’t run a nice candidate for the Senate, my mother used to say, then don’t run anybody at all. From the Minneapolis/St. Paul Star-Tribune:

The campaign of Connecticut Republican Senate candidate Alan Schlesinger has been so troubled that Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell urged him to give up.

The Republican candidate for the Senate in Connecticut right now is, unfortunately for everybody involved, Joseph Lieberman. ABC news speculates over a phone call Lieberman received from Karl Rove (offering an evil scheme or two, perhaps?) And we all know about the kiss of death Lieberman received at the State of the Union (OK, I’d missed it, too: George W. kissed him! Literally.)

In a move to distance himself from President Bush’s winnowing popularity, Minnesota-grown Republican senate hopeful Mark Kennedy has endorsed Lieberman over Schlesinger (what Connecticuter, I wonder, gives a damn about what he thinks?). Kennedy’s campaign strategy is to paint himself as more of an independent-minded Republican — from a Kennedy campaign ad, his son says of him:

Dad likes to help people. He’s principled, independent, just not much of a party guy. I meant … he doesn’t always do what the party says to.

And somehow, in Kennedy’s unique thinking, this would make him like Joe Lieberman. Kennedy said:

At times like these, when our country is fighting a global War against radical jihadists, and there is so much at stake for our nation’s security, we must put politics aside… It’s in that spirit that I would like to offer my support for Sen. Joe Lieberman’s bid for the U.S. Senate from Connecticut.

And now, in the same non-partisan spirit of Vice President Cheney’s slur that, somehow, Lamont’s victory sent a positive message to al-Qaeda, the Republican National Senatorial Committee issued press releases to tight senate races including Kennedy’s race against Democratic candidate Amy Klobuchar:

“What happened in Connecticut’s primary clearly demonstrates that the angry left fringe of the Democrat [sic] Party is in charge . . . ” said NRSC Spokesman Brian Walton. “Does Amy Klobuchar support the wishes of the angry left by endorsing Ned Lamont’s candidacy . . ?”

Angry left fringe? Angry, sure. You should be. Left? If you’re intelligent, educated, and informed, you probably are. But fringe? As Mr. Dionne at the Washington Post noted, the latest CNN poll revealed that 60% of Americans are now opposed to the Iraq War. That includes Democrats and Republicans; Minnesotans and Connecticuters.

Just not Joe Lieberman.

Hooray hooray! Lamont won! So happy.

My favorite quote out of the losing Lieberman camp, so far, is the “Team Connecticut” line. I’ve never laughed so hard while retching. Lieberman to supporters as he conceded defeat:

“As I see it, in this campaign, we’ve just finished the first half and the Lamont team is ahead. But in the second half, our team, Team Connecticut, is going to surge forward to victory in November.”

Any predictions about that? I think, after some very vocal bad-loser grumbling for a while, Lieberman will quietly bow out. The Dem establishment has to support the Democratic candidate, and I’m sure they will. If logic prevails, both they and Connecticut voters will shame Lieberman into dropping his ‘independent’ bid. But given how clueless Joementum has been in recent years, that logical step could be a long shot. 

Let’s have fun watching it play out.

Some things have to be shared because your brain, by itself, doesn’t know what to do with the information… I discovered a site called CaddyChicks today, thanks to Wendy at Metroblogging Minneapolis:

The gist? Golfers can hire hot little college girls looking for money to be their golf caddy. When applying to be a caddy, it lets potential golf bag carriers designate how much they charge per round, how comfortable they are with the sport, and whether they prefer to walk or drive a golf cart. Golfers get to check out their height, weight, and eye color before choosing which one they like the best…. Their tagline? “Who’s Your Caddy?”

Hilarious. Cheesy. Depressing. Inevitable. It is really funny though. 

Let’s try to connect CaddyChicks to politics in Connecticut, which must also be discussed today because as we know, today is the Democratic primary in Connecticut. And WE ALL WANT JOE LIEBERMAN to lose. Not only that, we want Ned Lamont to win. 

The reason I want Joe Lieberman to lose, besides the fact that he’s a Republican in denial, votes with conservatives more than his own party, and supported a baseless war, is that he’s a cruel, clueless idiot when it comes to women’s basic rights. I don’t understand why the Lamont supporters endlessly talk about the war when they could hammer the other point home so easily. 

Yep, Lieberman supports hospitals’ rights to deny contraceptives to rape victims. Joementum doesn’t just think it’s ok to deny women contraceptives, he thinks it’s ok for hospitals to keep them from rape victims if they want to. His quote: 

“In Connecticut, it shouldn’t take more than a short ride to get to another hospital.” 

You’ve probably heard that before, but since I don’t hear Lamont supporters (and everyone) saying it over and over and over the way I think they should, I’m saying it again here. Please oh please, get Joe Lieberman out of the Senate and out of the Democratic party. Let today end with a Ned Lamont victory. 

Oh yeah, let’s connect CaddyChicks and Connecticut…. If you can pick a caddy that way, why not a candidate? We could get rid of paid ads, corruption, lobbyists and the entire campaign trail if we nominated and voted for candidates with a Web form. They list their views, you pick the best match. 

But the most American way to adapt the CaddyChicks logic would be the good-looking premium, on everything. Want your dinner served to you by a good-looking waiter? Pay the good-looking tax! Want the good-looking bartender, bank teller, doctor? Pay up. 

Hey, what about a competency tax? I’d pay for that.

Actually, the end times might not be that nigh! Just when you think that Ben Stein might be turning a little blue (see Kris’s post below), he reminds us that:

a) Other people are making more money than the Oil Companies. According to Stein’s logic, this is enough reason to stop complaining about the top brass raking in money while the rest of the country is under the illusion that there’s a global crisis regarding petroleum. It’s the complicated “they did it first/worse” argument that is equally applicable to children’s fights and national economics.

b)The world is easily divisible into two. Part I: the good soldiers and sailors of America fighting for civilization. Part II: “barbaric” chaotic anarchy running amuck. Thank god they’re being kept at bay!

I am so grateful that Ben Stein is able to explain the world to us in such a clear, simple, way.