...am I really going to join this thread? Apparently so.
I tried and tried to like Air America when it first came on. I came of age during the Al Franken Decade, so it should have been easy.
But as it turns out, getting harangued and lectured for hours by people you agree with isn't much more fun than getting harangued and lectured for hours by people you disagree with. At least that was my experience. And as boring and overwrought as Franken was on the radio, Randi Rhodes made him seem positively upbeat. Did the world really ask for the perfect mix of Bob Grant and Lynn Samuels? If so, I wasn't part of that gruesome chorus.
She had a radio career before, she'll find someplace to go next. Hopefully I won't get that station where I live.
As for all the 9/11 stuff: Harold, I live in a part time flight path for Newark, and possibly JFK. Even now, with all the post 9/11 nonsensical "Security Measures" that we've been fed and have lapped up as an idiotic people, I haven't seen a patrolling military plane since before October 1, 2001. How many hundreds of planes were in the skies on the morning of 9/11? What you're envisioning is the Air Force essentially repelling a massive, diffuse air invasion that had already breached the borders and was being carried out by an unknown percentage of a huge number of planes. It can't be done safely and effectively.
Oh, and two more quick points:
1) My wife was a flight attendant for 13 years. Prior to 9/11, the protocol for dealing with hijackers was to do what the hijackers wanted; not to fight. This was so people didn't get hurt. I don't know what changes there have been since.
2) Planes make U-Turns routinely due to mechanical or medical reasons. Would you have had the Air Force shoot down any plane that made a U-Turn? What if they shot down a plane that had a heart attack victim on board? Would that fuel further conspiracy theories?