FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – A Canadian woman was arrested Tuesday at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport after making what she called a “stupid joke” about a bomb in a suitcase.

Nathalie Tremblay and her boyfriend had boarded an Air Canada flight bound for Montreal when a flight attendant asked whose bag would not allow an overhead bin to close.

According to the arrest report, Tremblay told the flight attendant “There’s a bomb in it” and began laughing.

Woman arrested after ‘stupid joke’ about bomb at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Int’l Airport

Bombs have been a delicate issue with the airline industry for decades now. Wikipedia lists 41 incidents of planes down by bombs starting all the way to 1912, so you just simply do not joke about bombs.

There was friend of mine who witnessed in the 1980s exactly how seriously airlines take event the hint of bomb. I am not sure but I seem to recall it was a Pan Am flight from Caracas to New York and when the plane landed in Kennedy, it was swarmed by cops and the FBI. A team, came in and aimed guns a two gentlemen with a business look and demanded for them to keep their hands up and to say where the bomb was. The two men did not know what the hell was going on and in halting English said so. They got arrested and dragged off the plane. Everybody else was taken outside the plane, but not released till everybody got checked out.

It took forever but the issue was finally cleared: there was no bomb. What had happened was that a flight attendant had head this guys talk in Spanish and say a word very similar to “bomb” plus they were perusing a bunch of what appeared to be diagrams, so she went up front, told the captain who got in touch with authorities. They did use the word “Bomba” innocently because in Spanish not only means bomb but also pump as in water pump, fuel pump, etc. The gentlemen were owners of some sort of agricultural supply business on their way to do some company shopping mixed with some fun times.  By also an innocent mishearing, they were a fly’s ass hair away of getting their head pumped full of bullets.

This dumb woman deserves to get what she has coming to her, mostly for sheer stupidity.

Again another shameless stole it from  Tactical-reviews.com‏ @Tactical_review

Press conference still going on live
It will be empaneled in Broward County but it will cover the whole state.

The executive order specifically mentions the PROMISE program — an acronym for Preventing Recidivism Through Opportunities, Mentoring, Interventions, Support & Education.

Cruz, who had a troubled past with Broward County Public Schools, had been a part of the PROMISE program.

DeSantis has been critical of Superintendent Robert Runcie for how the school district handled Cruz. The governor’s executive order cites the recommendations of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission as a reason for challenging the PROMISE program and others like it.

One of the things he mentioned was that the Grand Jury investigate why the funding for hardening schools was not used and if it was distracted for other things. Reader NYC2AZ gets brownie points for pointing it out about 3 weeks ago.

I could not catch the whole thing. Let me see what I can find and post later.

This is VERY good for our side.

My local taco Bell and Burger King are the only restaurants that I go to because they have passed aced their health inspections. The employees in the BK tend to be older, past their 22 to 25th birthdate while the Taco Bell are mostly under and at 20. To both I treat with the utmost courtesy and other than in one instance at TB where the Drive-Thru guy wanted me to buy what he was recommending rather than what I wanted, I had great service from both places.

I always say Please and Thank You, with a smile both in my face and in my voice.  I have seen that simple formula change the attitude on people who 5 seconds before were upset or mad or bored.  It simply pays to be nice and polite. I have seen people lose their cool and become impolite assholes because their food was not ready in the 10 seconds they allotted themselves in their minds to collect it making themselves miserable, the workers miserable and ticking me off because now I have to deal with the crap they leave behind.

Mistakes happen, delays happen and usually stuff is resolved in 3 minutes which is the average it takes for fries to be cooked at a fast food restaurant. If you cannot afford 3 minutes, maybe you should brown bag and spare yourself and everybody the theatrics of indignation. Plus you save yourself the possibility of having your food spit on prior to wrapping.

It is like the old bumper sticker said: Smile. It is contagious.

From the LA Times:

To do business with L.A., city contractors now must disclose ties with the NRA

The L.A. City Council passed an ordinance Tuesday requiring companies that have contracts with the city to disclose whether they have ties to the National Rifle Assn., already prompting threats of a lawsuit.

The vote was 14 to 0. Councilman Jose Huizar was absent.

What kind of ties?  If the owner of the company is a NRA member, does that count?

Prospective contractors now must disclose under affidavit any contracts or sponsorships they or their subsidiaries have with the NRA. The city has similar policies about companies involved in the construction of President Trump’s proposed border wall and over the historic investment in or profits from slavery.

So the L.A. City Council thinks of the NRA the same way as they do slaveholders.  Nice.

The ordinance on the NRA was sought by Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, who cited several recent mass shootings in the U.S. At Tuesday’s meeting, he said the NRA has “been a road block to gun safety reform at every level of government now for several decades.”

If by “gun safety reform” you mean total gun ban, than yes the NRA has been a road block.  Also, yes gun bans are what Californians think gun safety means.

Several gun safety groups who support the NRA ordinance gathered with O’Farrell outside City Hall before the vote.

“Let’s take a look at who we’re doing businesses with who is doing business with the NRA,” said Margot Bennett, executive director of Women Against Gun Violence.

I am actually fine with this.  Really.

I am a principled person, and since I think states should have the right not to do business with organizations that support BDS, I have to accept this.

I wonder how many business this will really affect.  I want to know how many NRA members are still sticking around in L.A. and why?  What do you do that is worth the taxes, crime, and having your civil rights trampled?

Here is what I don’t think the L.A. City Council thought about when they passed this ordinance.

Every gun and ammo maker I know of has ties to the NRA.  So does every major distributor.

If L.A. doesn’t want to do business with companies that have ties to the NRA, who will provide the Lost Angeles Police and Los Angeles County Sheriff with guns, service and maintenance contracts, and ammo?

I say let the LAPD and LASD run out of ammo, and functioning guns, and maybe body armor (one word: Safariland).  Why should they get an exemption to this ban on NRA friendly business?

Barrett did it, and it didn’t hurt them.  Lets see if the rest of the gun industry does the same thing.

I’m going to pick on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar again today, this time, not for her antisemitism, but because clearly she doesn’t understand how corporations work and she wants to destroy them.

Here are a few Tweets that she sent out.  There are several more in her feed reiterating this idea.

Millions of workers in the U.S. are struggling just to put food on the table, while McDonald’s CEO makes $21.8 million a year. That’s just wrong.

We need to #RaisetheWage so that no one is the richest country on earth lives in poverty. ✊?

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) February 12, 2019

In fact, just *10 percent* of McDonald’s workers in the U.S. make a living wage. https://t.co/kGqUS3h0zM

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) February 12, 2019

I took a look at this last Chicago Tribune article.

The boss makes how much? Illinois companies reveal CEO-to-worker pay ratio

Public companies for the first time this year must disclose how much more they pay their chief executive than their median employee, a rule born in the wake of the financial crisis and amid a social backlash against rising income inequality.

Many of Illinois’ largest companies debuted their CEO-to-worker pay ratios in recent regulatory filings, and the gaps, clearly, are massive.

Lay it on me Chicago Tribune.  How bad is it?

At Northbrook-based Allstate, CEO Tom Wilson’s $18.76 million compensation last year was 230 times higher than the $81,573 earned by the insurance company’s median employee.

Allstate is one of America’s largest insurance companies.  It has roughly 43,000 employees, an annual revenue of $38.5 Billion, and $112 Billion in assets.

At Deerfield-based Mondelez, former CEO Irene Rosenfeld, who stepped down in November, earned 402 times more than the snack-maker’s median worker — $17.11 million versus $42,893.

Mondelez has some 83,000 employees, $26 Billion in revenue, and $63 Billion in assets.  There is a Mondelez plant in Naperville, near where I used to live.  They make cereal there.

And at McDonald’s, CEO Steve Easterbrook’s $21.76 million pay package was 3,101 times the $7,017 paid to the fast-food giant’s median employee, which the company defines as a part-time hourly restaurant crew member in Poland.

McDonald’s has over 37,000 restaurants on six continents, has $22.8 Billion in revenue and $33 Billion in assets.

A good CEO is critical to company function.  A bad CEO can sink a company.

A salary of $81,000 isn’t bad for an insurance agent.  The responsibilities of an insurance agent, managing individual or business policies is not anywhere near that of managing a company with $112 Billion in assets.

There is a Mondelez plant in Naperville, not far from where I used to live in Aurora.  They make cereal there.  The people work on an assembly line and put cereal in boxes.  Again, not the same level of responsibilities of managing a company with $38.5 Billion in annual revenue.

I have eaten at McDonald’s.  I have never been in a McDonald’s that didn’t screw up my order the first time or had a bathroom that inspired confidence.  Taking several chicken nuggets out of a warmer tray and putting them in a box, then forgetting to give me the apple juice that goes along with the Happy Meal takes a little less skill than managing the world’s largest restaurant chain.

At the most benign, this attitude reflects the belief that CEO’s are just privileged fat cats who enjoy three martini lunches while everyone else works.  This is a position based on ignorance and envy.

The salary of the CEO is just like the salary of all the other workers.  It is market driven.  No company wants to pay a penny more than it has to, to get the quality of worker it desires.

When you have a glut of people who need a keyboard with pictures and an automatic change dispenser because asking them to count out change is too much of an intellectual challenge for them, they will depress the market wage for that position, until they are replaced by self serve kiosks.

On the other hand, when you have a small supply of people who can manage a multi-national, multi-billion dollar corporation successfully, they are worth a lot.

The first goal of this is clearly to get companies to raise their wages.  The problem is the woman behind the counter isn’t worth $15 an hour to give me the wrong meal and then be shitty about fixing it.  So she will be replaced with a self serve kiosk and a burger flipping robot.

The next step (you know there will be a next step) is to get companies to lower their CEO salaries.  The effect will be to remove the people from the top who know how to run these kinds of companies effectively and American businesses will suffer or choose to offshore.

Really, what this is, is a war on competency.  Competent people will always earn what the market determines that person is worth.

If you are a talented surgeon who can heal people that few others can, you are going to command a huge salary.

When the goverment starts attacking high salaries, either through taxes or more directly with hearings like these, what they are saying is that income shouldn’t be a function of competency and the most qualified people shouldn’t be allowed to make more than anybody else.

I wrote a post criticizing Rep. Keith Ellison about this same thing almost a year ago.   It seems that Ilhan Omar adopted the same economic idiocy when she took over his Congressional seat.

The difference here is that she is one of these Freshman firebrands who the media love, and could be effective in a war on competency.

First they will come for the CEOs, then they will come for anyone who makes more than the median salary in a particular field.

Just wait until they say it is unfair that the life saving surgeon makes 50 times the salary of the orderly who changes the bed pans.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting, be ready for media onslaught and usual display of Bloody Shirts . David Hogg already appeared out of the nowhere to make a stupid statement. They have been parading Parkland students and parents to do the usual media bits and demand more Gun Control by pushing Assault Weapons Ban both in Florida a and in the US Congress.

And of course, the Gun Control Advocates will lose their shit in Social Media. No need to be polite, hit them back hard. Pull out the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission official report and ask them how come they are not addressing the real issues that led to the shooting. How come they defended former Sheriff Scot Israel, how come they are not asking for the collective heads of the Broward school board in general and Robert Runcie in particular. How come there is not an outcry from them about the Promise program which covered up Nikolas Cruz’s constant and long running violations that could have made him a prohibited person and unable to pass a background check to buy firearms. Ask them how come the Broward Sheriff deputies that failed to intervene the day of the shooting are still on the job.  Ask them how come after 4 years of getting the money to institute a Single Point of Entry in the school, the board had not bothered to implement it in many schools including MSD and Nikolas Cruz was allowed to walk in the school without a challenge.

Remember, you will not convince the hard core member of Moms demand or other groups. Your job is to challenge their narrative so those uninformed/misinformed learn the truth.  Anybody asks, send them the link of the report I posted above.