Short Cuts -- Delay at Gate 54

Hanging out in the Denver airport, waiting for a delayed plane. Here's a few things that I've been mulling over.

Smoking Lounge

Not just for adults anymore. Have you seen those reverse knapsacks that parents wear so they can keep a child strapped to their chest? I just saw another one, and it was in the Denver airport smoking lounge. The place was filled with smoke, the large mama was puffing away, and the infant's head was six inches from mama's mouth. The world is never short of morons.

Tower Envy

Looks like Toronto's CN Tower has come up short. The Burj Dubai Tower is still under construction, but has already reached a height of 555 meters. That beats the CN Tower by 2 meters and counting. The Dubai developers say that this breaks the record for the tallest freestanding structure in the world, a record that the CN Tower had held since 1976.

We'll see what Guinness has to say about it when construction is complete. The Tower looks like a tower, but the Dubai thing looks like a stack of Leggo.

McCanns

Who knows what is going to come out of the Madeleine McCann kidnapping case. I was surprised to see the cops take so long to get around to browbeating the parents. That isn't cynicism on my part, nor do I have any evidence that the cops are just reaching at straws and want to smear the McCanns. Fact is, the stats say that a child is very, very rarely kidnapped and killed by someone who does not know the child. That means relatives and friends. Sounds awful, but it's true, and therefore a natural suspicion. When this whole thing started, I said to a couple of people, "They should take a hard look at the parents."

I was met with scorn for saying that. One guy looked pious and shocked. He said to me, "Why would the parents do that?"

To which you can only answer, "Who knows?" That's the same answer you have to give every time a case of infanticide makes the front pages, which it all too often does.

Petraeus

The General went before Congress, and things played out as I knew they would. The Republicans helped him out a bit, and the Democrats tried to discredit him.

You can say the Republicans are jerks for liking war and what have you, but the Democrats have a lot of explaining to do. One, why they want their country to lose the war and get booted out of Iraq. Two, why they voted for funds to keep the military in Iraq, then continue to scream for a troop withdrawal timetable. Three, how they expect to win elections when their MoveOn.org crowd calls General Patraeus a traitor. Four, how they'll live with the slaughter of Iraqi civilians should the US depart within the next 12 months as the Democrats wish they would.

While we're at it, what's up with the NY Times and CNN asking if we should stop having commemorations on September 11th -- during commemorations of same? I imagine they'd like to erase Veterans Day from the map and take a leak on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but news to them, the American public will stop commemorating 9/11 when they feel like it, not when the NY Times tells them to.