Romney’s wife, Ann, was in attendance, and the candidate spoke of the concern he had for her when her plane had to make an emergency landing Friday en route to Santa Monica because of an electrical malfunction. “I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were,” Romney said. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she’s safe and sound.Of course, Mitt was concerned. And why, why does the FAA permit planes to fly full of passengers with windows that won't open? If Mitt becomes president, he will see to it that all planes are equipped with windows that roll down.
OK, I wasn't first with the news of this egregious lapse on the part of plane manufacturers and the government agencies who regulate flights and flying, but I was not altogether negligent in reporting.
Sure will be fun to have passengers rolling down the windows just for the heck of it (as Mitt would no doubt say) at 30,000 feet
ReplyDeleteObviously Mitt never saw Goldfinger.
ReplyDelete[Fess up: you got this from Rachel Maddow tonight! >;-/ ]
DeleteYeah, if the plane windows don't open, how will you ever see the dog shitting on top of it?
I was just going to say watch the passengers...
ReplyDeleteQuick, install windows in his ivory tower, then watch what happens at that great and glorified height!
ReplyDeleteArchitects know.
Top Guns know.
The cast of Airplane! knows.
It's not the getting sucked out into the clouds that's the problem, but the splat at the end.
I'm inclined to say that, like George W before him, this man should not be allowed to speak extemporaneously. He seems highly inept at making his point, his mouth gets ahead of his brain, and nonsense like this comes out. He needs a coach to tell him when to shut up, like after the comment about how worried they were.
ReplyDeleteWhat about the debates? The coaches can't anticipate every question or twist and turn of the conversation. If Romney is elected, will he never have press conferences? Coaching can take you only so far.
DeleteDon't forget the lump on W's back during that one debate. Maybe Mitt should use wireless coaching for all public appearances. I'll bet the receivers are easier to hide now.
DeleteBill Ghrist
Bill, I remember the lump and Bush's odd behavior...as though he was hearing voices that we could not hear. I doubt that Romney could pull that off. But Bush still won despite the unknown object on his back. We live in strange times, although perhaps the times are always strange.
DeleteI remember hearing that Reagan used wireless radio for his press conferences, a team of back-stage advisors feeding him the answers to difficult or unexpected questions. On one occasion he was fed his lines but didn't hear them properly so stood mute, but he heard the question that one of the advisors then asked another, and without missing a beat repeated to the asssembled world press "Why doesn't the old b@@@@@d say something?"!
DeleteI never heard that one before, AofS. You can write "bastard" here next time. Genial Reagan could probably have pulled it off and made a joke of it. His son Ron said Reagan showed symptoms of Alzheimer's during his second term.
DeleteI actually quite liked Reagan, despite his politics. My favourite line of his was to Nancy after he was shot; "Honey, I forgot to duck!". That, and the time he announced that the U.S. "will begin bombing Russia in five minutes" when he didn't realise his microphone was on.
DeleteI'm not defending the man...in this case like a true Dilbert Upper Management pointy head he ruined his point - my wife was in danger and I was worried - by then trying to explain to all of us how a fire on an airplane is dangerous. Palm/Forehead
ReplyDeleteI completely agree except that we really haven't had debates for years. We have canned questions with sound bite answers and soundbite rebuttals.
"Debate" Coaching in this day and age involves memorizing your sound bite answers and being able to recite them at appropriate moments.
Renz, I know you're not defending Romney. And in the debates there's always the option of not answering the question, which happens fairly often, but there are bound to be a few unscripted moments, and Romney does not think well on his feet
DeletePlease, no windows on aircraft. MacOS or Linux will do fine...
ReplyDeleteJames, please leave the stage. ;-)
DeleteLet's hope he doesn't try to turn the big noisy fan off when he has a helicoter ride :-)
ReplyDeleteWhat was Romney thinking? The workings of his mind are a mystery. He would say anything if it served a political purpose, but this served no purpose but to show that he's what? I truly don't know what.
DeleteIt would appear that he was forgetting the golden rule of public speaking, namely 'engage brain before opening mouth'.
DeleteI hate to admit it, but I've been guilty of statements that appear to have escaped brain filters, but I hope nothing that sounds quite so stupid. What tends to come out of my mouth at those times is the truth of what I think that is not acceptable as conversation in polite society, which is what Mitt did at the fundraiser in his comments about the 47%.
Delete"I've been guilty of statements that appear to have escaped brain filters"
DeleteHaven't we all? I was once at my late mother-in-law's when one of her friends turned up. "Did you know?" she asked my m-i-l, "Ethel buried Arthur yesterday". Without thinking I blurted out "Crikey Joan, that's a bit extreme. What did he do to deserve that?".
I'll have to tell my story sometime.
DeleteI have Snopes on RSS feed ... and LO! this one came in today:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.snopes.com/politics/romney/windows.asp
The remark was delivered tongue-in-cheek
Snopes must be a die-hard Romney admirer. Since when was Romney given to irony?
DeleteI'd guess that he thinks irony is what Mrs. Romney uses to press his shirty.
DeleteThat would be when they're not eating on the ironing board.
DeleteAh, so Mittens was joking about his wife choking. Got it. Considering this is the same man who, a few months ago, said he wasn't going to send his wife out on the campaign trail too early, lest the voters "get tired of her", this seems plausible. Really, it's all of a piece w/ the dog-on-the-roof, and forcibly cutting the gay student's hair. At root, he's a genial little sociopath.
ReplyDeleteSomething's missing in Romney.
DeleteWhat else were his spin doctors going to say?
"Something's missing in Romney"
DeleteHmm, reminds me of a song;
"With the thoughts you'd be thinkin'
You could be another Lincoln
If you only had a brain"
Dorothy to the scarecrow.
Funny, just this morning on another website I noticed a commenter foaming at the mouth about Obama being just "an empty suit with no resume." Excuse me? And Romney offers what instead?
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've seen of him, he offers a (very) blank slate for the 'powers behind the throne' to manipulate at will. George Dubya with a better vocabulary, if you will.
DeleteKa-ching! You gave me a jolt of insight - a wooden-headed dummy is exactly what the puppetmasters want, isn't it? Dubya Redux, indeed.
DeleteLet's hope that, come election time, Americans don't 'misunderestimate' him! ;-)
Delete