Deinonychus antirrhopus

You want a conspiracy theory? Try this one:

Everyone THINKS that this is Clinton and Hilary! trying to deep-six Kerry's chances.

Actually, it's the other way around. ONLY Clinton has the ability to incur the kind of loyalty to get people to lie for him and fall on their swords for him.

So, Clinton, KNOWING that Kerry's a horrible candidate, is now engaged in the ultimate "false-flag" operation, keeping the spotlight off Kerry for as long as possible. Clinton's got all his subordinates burning themselves in full-view of the cameras, in order to draw the attention off the next JFK.

Why? Here's the kicker: CLINTON doesn't want Hilary to be President---because if she does, she's likely to outshine him. The spotlight's gotta be on Bill, and Bill knows that w/ Hilary in the WH, he won't have a shot.

[The above is the result of much too little sleep over the last two days.]

O'Leary was known as "Witch Hazel" within DoE while she was Energy secretary. With good reason.

DYKWIA

Years ago, I was on a diverted flight once. Coming back from Hawaii, we were unable to land in Dallas and had to divert to Austin. We sat on the runway while the plane was refueled. It was obvious to everyone on the plane that we were going to miss a lot of connecting flights.

It was an old L1011, and didn't have phones in the passenger compartment. Passengers were not allowed to use their cell phones, because cell phones interfere with the navigation system (which I don't believe anyway, and even if they did, how much navigation is going on when your sitting still on a runway).

Some passengers wanted to get off, but the flight crew assured us that we'd only be on the ground for 30 minutes to refuel. Well, 30 minutes became 90 minutes because no one had realized that it actually took 2 bowsers to refuel the plane.

After an eight hour flight, some of the passengers were a little testy, and were not afraid to express that testiness by standing up and yelling at the flight attendants when they made some asinine announcement (such as "you can't use your cell phone").

We eventually made it to Dallas about 2 hours late. The airline assured us that there would be multiple ticket agents at the gate to help people reschedule any missed connections. The gate was empty, so we had to trudge over to the ticketing counter, where more tempers flared. Several passengers yelled and cursed at the workers behind the counter. (I was polite, and said "I feel really sorry for you; you've got a bunch of irate people in line behind me and it's not your fault." She put me on the next available flight, upgraded to first class).

Of course, all of this was pre- 9/11. With heightened security nowadays, I imagine that several passengers would have been escorted off the plane, and several others would have been detained in the terminal at Dallas.

The point to my tedious story is that I'd like to hear reports from other passengers before I decide. Mrs O'Leary might have been acting like a prima-donna, or she might have been understandably (though not justified in trying to get to the flight deck) frustrated with the bullshit the airline was spinning.

Indeed, while O'Leary was a bad nomination among a whole long list of bad Clinton admin cabinet nominations, the current practice among airlines is to criminalize their customer service failures.

Good point Dave and Robin. Oh and I'll try to remember your strategy Dave...sounds like a winner.