Former House Majority Whip and current Assistant House Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn has perhaps the strangest take on the recent tragic shooting of several people in Arizona including a Member of Congress, Judge, and young girl. He believes it means that the TSA should give special treatment to Members of Congres at airports. A top House Democrat said the attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) should change how members of Congress are screened at airports. “I really believe that that is the place where we feel the most ill at ease, is going through airports,” Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who serves as assistant minority leader in the House, said on “Fox News Sunday.” .. “We’ve had some incidents where TSA authorities think that congresspeople should be treated like everybody else,” he said. “Well, the fact…
About Gary Leff
Simply Outstanding: Elephant Jumps Thai Restaurant in Falls Church, Virgina
I’m planning to have lunch tomorrow at Lotus of Siam in Las Vegas (not their disappointing New York location). I’ve eaten there before and enjoyed it, but wanted my current favorite Thai restaurant fresh in my mind for the comparison. So I had lunch today at Elephant Jumps Thai in Falls Church. My boss reviewed the restaurant back on August 2nd. I was initially skeptical, as I wrote recently I do find his recommendations for strip mall ethnic food to be 100% spot on though as often as not disagree on fine dining. So while their ‘East Meets West’ menu options of croissant green curry sandwich and drunken spaghetti chicken frightened me, I went anyway back on the 7th of August. And I was blown away. I returned the following weekend, too. I’ve been back…
How Hyatt Undercuts Their Own Web Rates By Selling Stay Certificates for Less
Loyalty Traveler offers an extensive rundown of Hyatt stay certificates. The prices on the three bottom categories have recently gone up a bit, but the thing that’s made them less useful than they used to be is that the categories that hotels are assigned to, and thus the prices of some of the hotel values, have gone up substantially. But there are nonetheless some real values to be had. In the olden days I used to make Hyatt certificate stay reservations, and only buy the certificates once I was certain of my plans. The reservations themselves are cancellable. And if I still needed to cancel the stay after buying the certificate, that’s fine, I could always use the certificate on a future stay within a year. The cost of many of these stay certificates are…
Paging Hyatt Gold Passport…
I’ve already written about Starwood’s first quarter promotion, and of course Marriott and Hilton have theirs, now Loyalty Traveler writes up Best Western’s lucrative offer: one free night after three stays between February 6 and April 11, 2011, plus bonus points for staying in each of their three levels of hotel, Best Western, Best Western Plus, and Best Western Premier. Now you can only earn one free night during the promotion, that’s even a bit more limiting than Marriott. But when Best Western is aggressively on the promotion train you know that everyone is and you’d best not be left behind. Hence titling this post, “Paging Hyatt Gold Passport…” Your promotions are usually ezcellent. Just please don’t keep them a secret!
A Big ‘Thank You’ For All of Your Comments Recently!
I’m not sure the reason. Perhaps it’s because I’ve run some contests and that’s gotten people to sign up to be able to comment — that it’s not worth the hassle just to leave a comment on a blog post, but the possibility of a prize helps overcome the hurdle? But clearly more folks have signed up to be able to comment. And I do apologize about the hassle it may take to be able to comment, I try to keep the blog comments relatively spam free and the system in place does a pretty good job of that, but it also means making commenting for the first time a bit inconvenient. Regardless, I appreciate all of the comments lately, there’s been a nice uptick and I admit I really value the feedback. Sometimes you…
Cancelling Non-refundable Advance Purchase Travel Bookings
TM Travel World offers suggestions of what to do if you book a non-refundable hotel and change your mind. He points out that Marriott will actually let you cancel a non-refundable room if you do so by midnight the following day. Beyond that, call the hotel chain and say you made a mistake and see if they can help. And if they can’t contact the hotel directly, perhaps a hotel manager bill let you cancel the booking to keep a future customer happy. I’d add a few points: If the hotel won’t let you cancel, consider asking them to let you change the dates into the future to another time when you might be able to use the reservation. At least it won’t be a total loss that way, and the hotel may be more…
TSA Cracks Down on Nude-o-Scope Beating Underwear
A long time back I posted that since the Nude-o-Scopes would only see to the first layer of skin, why not wear leather underwear? More recently some firms have been promoting undergarments that are supposed to prevent TSA Pervy Smurfs from seeing you naked. Well, we knew that wouldn’t last. The TSA says that’s not cool, and if you try it they’re going to touch you up. “Some might think this is TSA’s way of getting back at clever passengers,” the blog post continued. “That’s not the case at all. It’s just security.” So now there’s TSA-approved undergarments, and undergarments that the government doesn’t approve of. I wonder how long before we’re all required to go commando?
Earning Miles By Buying Money Orders With a Debit Card
Frugal Travel Guy writes about something of a recent Flyertalk controversy. mrpickles posted his experience successfully using a mileage-earning debit card to purchase money orders, earning miles and depositing the money orders in his account to restore his balance. This wasn’t the first time anyone had posted about this particular bank and this particular merchant, but the group of members who knew about the deal went ballistic demanding that the information be removed. They feared exposure on Flyertalk would ‘kill the deal.’ And they’re probably right. As a moderator of the forum where it was posted, MilesBuzz, I was asked by members to intervene and remove the post. Of course I wouldn’t, as the post was certainly not against the rules. The role of a moderator is not to keep information out of folks’ hands.…
American Airlines New Welcome Aboard Video
American Airlines has just released a new Welcome Aboard video. For most of the world that isn’t news. For folks who fly American every day, that’s huge. Better, worse, or just different and time for a change?
Free American Airlines Miles from Bose Post Quickly
It was just January 3 when I posted the offer of free American Airlines miles from Bose. Checked my American account balance this morning, and the miles from watching the video were already there. There’s a wonderful turnaround time posting miles, and remember if you have any American miles and want to extend their validity (since American miles expire after 18 months of account inactivity) this is a quick, easy and reliable way to do it.
