I Knew That Would Happen...
A few days ago I wrote in this space that I had the feeling that I was about to have some trouble when it came to traveling. And I was right.

It all began innocently enough --- buy a ticket for Orlando, show up at the airport and get on a plane, That was the plan at least. Until I ran headlong into federal regulations regarding air travel.

When I reached the Delta Airlines counter at Newark airport, all ready to check in, I was unaware of the potential disaster in the making. Like a lamb to the slaughter, I suspected not thing one about what my day was to bring. It was 5 a.m. (you have to show up at 5 for a 7:30 flight, one of them thar new regs. It gives the TSA time to have the dogs sniff your luggage, apparently), and I cheerfuly walked up to the ticket agent in anticipation of getting my boarding pass and then spending the next two and half hours eating rotten danish and abyssmal airport coffee.

The ticket agent asked me for identification and I obliged, turning over my passport, a trusty document that has not failed me for any reason, from buying liquor to cashing a check, for the last 10 years. Little did I know that I was about to cross paths with the Fed'ral Leviathan.

Apparently my passport had expired three days previously. I had no idea (because I never looked at the expiration date). This is a problem since the Fed'ral regulation requires current identificaton, proven by a document issued by said Fed'ral entity or a similar document issued by a state agency.

I don't drive, therefore I do not have a drivers license, but I do carry an old identification card from my days at Smith-Nazi, and it has my picture on it. Not acceptible, or at least it would have been had I not shown an expired passport first. That expired passport is the the root of all the evils that followed.

I was then asked to present any of the following: Social security card, state identification card, student ID from a state university, Medicare card, and the one that struck me as totally eggregious, a library card.
What did you say? Yes, I thought it strange too. I couldn't get on plane because I presented a passport issued by the Fed'ral Gubmint, but at that very moment, in an airport somewhere in this country, the minions of Osama were merrily getting on flights with a library card. Alas, having none of the above, I was told that I should go home, get new identification and then return for a later flight.

And so I hopped a taxi back home. It cost me $50 to get to newark, and now another $50 to go back. Once home, I furiously tore through my belongings seeking aything that had an official seal with no expiraton date that could be used as identification. I found my borth certificate, which is acceptible, but which seemed thin to me. So, I called Delta's reservation number to see if one of the friendly customer service reps could help me out with regards as to what constituted proper idenitifcation.

Which was my second mistake of the day. If you thought I was aggravated by missing my flight, the prospects of three $50 cab rides and the fact that I'm now functioning with little sleep, you ain't heard nothing yet.

I explained the situation to Disinterested Foreigner #1, or tried to, since he wouldn't shut up. I'm sitting here with an expired passport, a work photo id, a borth certificate and a wallet fullof insurance and credit cards, but apparently none of it is useful. You require two forms of photo id or two forms of non-photo id, all issued by some government body, noneof it expired, or a combination of both. I was getting nowhere in terms of help, and so I hung up on the man.

I called back and got Disinterested Foreigner #2, who spoke better English but who was only of slightly better utility. So, in frustration, I began to think that perhaps I would not be getting on this flight after all. I asked for a refund. No can-do. Then reschedule my flight so that I have an opportunity to get the required ID. Again, no dice, unless I wanted to pay twice what I already had. I lost my temper and went into the whole "I'm an American citizen and have the right to travel in my own damn country, you foreign piece of shit" tirade. At this point, the man figured he'd better let his supervisor handle this.

Except that hs supervisor couldn't be bothered. I ranted some more and cajoled, pleaded and intoned, and eventually a supervisor did come on the line.

Shockingly, this man spoke perfect American English.

I explained the situation to him and the solution was shockingly simple: use the work ID and the birth certificate, deep-six the passport. So, taking a chance, I asked about the use of a library card and he told me, quite frankly, that whoever had told me that such a document was valid ID for getting on a flight was dead wrong. He was surprised that someone would have even suggested it.

So now, I'm back in business. Back to Newark at 10 am to catch a 1:30 flight, another $50 cab ride. Walk up to the Delta ticket counter and present a work ID (for a job I no longer have) and my birth certificate. No problem, here's your ticket, sir. Begin to walk away from the counter and the woman who had me banished earlier that morning is still on duty. She recognizes me and asks if everything is straightened out now. Yes it is, no thanks to you, and did you know that a library card is not considerd valid identification? She does now. I'll bet she's worried sick that she probably let some ill-intentioned Middle Easterners on flights in the past because she was under the impression that a library card carried weight. Let her lose sleep, the idiot.

Anyways, a few things that I noticed hanging around the airport. To begin with, there were an absolutely huge number of people getting on or off flights that required wheelchairs. Not one flight that was announced at the gate area had fewer than four people in wheelchairs on it. The announcement of "Delta airlines flight number so-and-so requires a customer service representative with a wheelchair" merely became part of the background noise. I wonder, what happens in an emergency when a sizable number of passengers cannot get out of their seats or save themselves because they require wheelchairs and why are so many put on the same flight?

I should add that my flight was actually quite good. The plane was operated by a Delta affiliate called Song Airways. I'd never heard of them before, but I can tell you that I would gladly fly them again. The plane was quite clean, the seat the most comfortable I've been on in quite some time. The plane was decorated in a sort of 1970's motif: bright colors reminiscent of the patio furniture in the Brady Bucnh -- tiel, soft pinks, lime green, it was quite unusual. The inflight entertainment was tops --- 24 channels of satellite TV (caught the Cubs-Marlins game on ESPN). The food was quite good, and served in a most unusual way --- the stews came by with a cart and you purchased what you wanted from a rather large selection. I enjoyed the cheese, fruit and cracker selection, with a Diet Coke, for $5. Not bad.

The plane's safety announcement was not the tired, dull pantomime usually performed by stewardesses. Instead, the stews went through the motions to the sounds of an instructional tape (with salsa music), narrated by a man with an outrageous and slightly comic Spanish accent. It was actually something fun. Everything on the airplane was designed or intended to be fun. If this is an indication of the future of air travel, then I'm buying stock in Song Airways. It was a hit with all the passengers.

Let's see how much fun I have on the way back home in 10 days.

What Part of "Military" Did you Not Understand?
I'm getting pretty sick and tired of the liberal penchant these days of portraying American servicemen and women who have given their lives in Iraq as innocent lambs sent to the abbatoir by a conniving, lying, ignorant President.

In the first place, the people who join the military do so voluntarily. There are not press gangs roaming American streets looking for people to shanghai. The military makes it perfectly clear to anyone willing to sign on the dotted line that military service very often means "being shot at and potentially maimed or killed". It's fairly obvious to anyone with half a brain that an organization that teaches people to use firearms, bayonettes, hand grenades and thermonuclear weapons is not an etiquette school. The military has several, minimum qualifications for those seeking employment in it's ranks: you have to be above a certain age, you have to pass a test, you have to have a high-school diploma. It's assumed you can breathe without assistance, tie your own shoes without a government program and can reasonably be expected to know enough not to stick your tonuge into live electrical outlets. After all that, you still have to be able to spell your name.

People who meet these minimum requirements can reasonably be expected to realize that when they put on a uniform that the day might come when they are sent, in the quaint expression, into harm's way. So, as far as I know, no one is being duped, deceived, tricked, flim-flammed, bamboozled or lied to when it comes to the risks inherant in voluntary military service. The argument that people are ignorant of the potential danger is patently false, and is really more of an argument along the lines of "Sheesh, my kid joined for the college money, not to shoot anyone or be shot at."

Too bad. That's the chance you take when you sign up. I'm sure that the same people who grumble about losing their loved ones in defense of the country would have had no problem if the same wind of fortune presented their beloved with a winning lottery ticket.

I do not mean to be unreasonably harsh in criticizing the Cindy Sheehan's of this world. Mrs. Sheehan lost her son, and while she knows damn well why and how it happened, she's still not happy about it (naturally), and she intends that the rest of us should have to share her pain. It's the Oprah moment gone berserk. The media and the criminal elements of the left (can'tMoveOn.org, Michael Moore, etc) merely see Mrs. Sheehan as a useful tool in getting their anti-war message out. Chances are that sans these organizations and the media vultures, no one would have ever heard of Cindy Sheehan. And naturally, without Mrs. Sheehan, chances are we would never, ever have heard of this absurd train of thought that a) full-grown adults are children when their mothers portray them that way and b) people who make voluntary descisions should not be held responsible, and protected from, the consequences.

As to the continuing chorus of "Bush Lied" and the littany of everything that goes wrong daily in Iraq (what goes right is not "sexy", as they say in the news business), I have this to say: when you present only one side of a story, or maybe even only half a side, you are being intellectually and factually dishonest. To pretend you are not is to be absolutely evil. Did the President lie? I don't know, and I don't have any evidence. But then again, neither do the people who accuse him of having done so. The campaign against the war is being fought with the oldest tactics in the book: "throw enough shit against the barn wall, eventually some of it has to stick" and "repeat something often enough and people actually start to believe it."

Neither of course is affected one way or another by factual evidence. To be contrary, even deliberately and ignorantly contrary, is akin to a religion for some people, I guess. A vast sum of federal money should be spent just to find out how these sorts tick so that they will be more easily identifiable to local mental health authorities.

The fact of the matter is that while things are certainly not a bed of roses in Iraq and massive mistakes have been (and continue to be) made, it's by no means certain that the war is a lost cause. I believe it can be turned around, that Iraqis will eventually be able to take responsibility for their own country, that a functioning semi-democratic (best we can hope for, I'm afraid) republic can function in Iraq, and that Iraq will eventually become a becon for hope, justice and social equality in a place that has no concept of any of those things. It will, however, require the present administration to admit mistakes and to be aggressive in correcting them. I see too much PR and not enough action right now. The detractors of the White House have put the president and his folks on the defensive somewhat and it's time he came out of the corner swinging.

The other side of the political spectrum has a vested interest in portraying the war as a lost cause --- they want power in the next round of elections. Of course, they're not so intellectually dishonest as to actually do what they say they will: end the war before America's task is completed. Democrats know just as well as Republicans that cutting and running is inherantly dangerous for the citizens of the United States. Anti-war sentiment, however it's engineered, is merely a political tool for them, not a principled stand.

Iraq can only be "fixed" when certain people, on both sides of the issue, stop engaging in petty politics and media spin and start getting serious about getting the job done.