In another incident, a man was removed from a Delta flight for taking an emergency trip to the restroom  
just before takeoff.

The carrier says Kima Hamilton didn't comply with the crew's instructions.

Mr. Owens,

    I am a US Army veteran (E5, Honorable), a retired business owner, a 71-year old lifelong resident of the Bay Area, relatively famous in my field, with worldwide name recognition.  I have a book in print.  I can go to any country in the world and see my personal influence on modern culture.  And I am a proud liberal, descended from liberal patriots who have defended this country since the 19th Century, and whose parents built Liberty Ships during WW II.

    You, on the other hand, are a right-wing shill masquerading as a "centrist."  I am unable to listen to KGO before noon.  The a.m. hours are given to the right-wingers Armstrong and Getty, and you.  When you fail to defend reality from specious conservative arguments, I switch to KFRC.  I would rather listen to traffic reports in places I don't even go than curse at the unchallenged falsehoods that you so enjoy broadcasting.

    Last week while driving, I gave you a chance.  I lasted less than five minutes.  You took a call regarding the Ann Coulter speech in Berkeley.  You agreed with the caller that "liberals oppose free speech," based on the actions of a few.  You know better than that, e.g. you know that the ACLU has defended the First Amendment rights of Nazis, but you echoed the blanket condemnation of the most patriotic demographic in our country.

    Surely you are aware that Ms. Coulter wants these confrontations and encourages them through her hate speech.  There is a small group of anarchists, for all I know hired by Ms. Coulter, who do not respect the First Amendment, as liberals like myself do.  It is not a secret that Occupy was infiltrated by provocateurs.  These clowns disrupted Occupy protests and the Coulter appearance, and you use them to tar those of us who do not agree with Ms. Coulter but will defend her right to speak.

    The First Amendment is not a guarantee of a pulpit.  The University of California is under no obligation to supply her with one, especially when doing so gives tacit support to unAmerican values.  Ms. Coulter is rich, she can rent an auditorium, speak her mind, and keep the proceeds if she wishes, but she is not here to make money, she is here to make trouble and reap the publicity.  And you want to help her.

    Another example of your failure: You agreed with a caller that Hillary Clinton was a "terrible candidate."  Compared to whom?  Her opponent was Donald Trump, lazy, a liar, an ignoramus, a misogynist, a sexual predator, a racist and a xenophobe who did not have a clue how the government works, while she is smart, hard working and intimately familiar with the federal government.  

    Mr. Trump got a huge boost when the "email" non-scandal was given miles of columns in national papers, and when James Comey implied days before the election and too late for a response, that she may have done something wrong even if he couldn't explain what that might be.  Amazing how all those accusations disappeared once the election was over.  Now we know that Russia was actively engaged in helping Mr. Trump, although we don't know whether he knew it at the time.

    But in your view Ms. Clinton was worse than Mr. Trump?  In what universe?  Trump was being aided by a hostile government.  Hillary Clinton could spot Mr. Trump the first two moves, give him 20 minutes to make them, and still beat him at tic-tac-toe.  It seems to have escaped you that despite the loss, Ms. Clinton had a considerable edge in total votes.

    You are a proponent of the worst development in modern media, "both siderism."  This is the suggestion that in order to balance a negative story about a conservative failure it is necessary to suggest that "both sides do it," that the left is just as bad as the right  This allows you to gloss over the outrageous acts of the right, without ever providing examples from the left equivalent to the racism, misogyny, xenophobia, weapon-brandishing, history of lynching, support for torture, and opposition to science that are the hallmarks of modern conservatism.

    It is not the "leftists" who want "creationism" to be given the same weight as the most profound theory in modern biology.  The far right claims Christianity as its own, then opposes everything Jesus taught, e.g. that it is our moral obligation to feed the hungry and care for the sick.  The far right believes that if a Black person is poor, it is his own fault, but if a white person is poor, it is the fault of the Blacks and Hispanics.

    The overwhelming majority of domestic terrorist attacks in the last decade, the "Obama years," have come from native-born, nominally Christian, American citizens who are right-wing crazies.  The minor contributors to domestic terrorism are American citizens who are fundamentalist Muslims of the sort who embrace right-wing values regarding women, and who cannot possibly be described as "leftist."  Terrorist attacks by the "far left?"  None.  But the far left is just as bad?

    The "far left" wants equal pay and treatment for women, a livable minimum wage, a social safety net for those whose jobs were sent to China, health care for all like they have in EVERY OTHER DEVELOPED COUNTRY, progressive tax rates of the sort that gave us the most prosperity in our history, Social Security, support for science (evolution and climate), bank regulation of the sort that prevented bank failures for nearly 80 years (until dismantled in 2003, leading to economic disaster), and support for education.

    We want citizens to be protected from the huge companies that control so much of our culture.  We want alternative sources of energy developed.  We want to protect the environment.  We want our tax money spent on infrastructure that improves lives and employs Americans, instead of on a military that sucks resources into expensive weapons that are then deployed against people armed with rifles and grenades.  As a veteran, I know that my service inspired my patriotism and liberal values.  I want to see more young people in service to the country, not necessarily in the military but in health care and community service.

    What does the right want that is equivalent to those?  They want poor people to starve, and die without care.  They want to kill people in other countries who have done nothing to us.  They want to blow the budget on aircraft carriers deployed against rowboats.

    I remember 15 years ago when you were all for the invasion of Iraq, despite the fact that it was obvious the casus belli was fabricated.  My then 83 (now 97) y.o. mother marched in the streets along with millions of liberals and "leftists" who were right, while you led the cheers for the liars in Washington.   If you ever apologized on the air for being wrong about that event, which cost $2T and killed 100,000 people for a lie, I didn't hear it because I had already stopped listening.

    I understand that you are successful in your field, but so is Rush Limbaugh, and for the same reasons, whether or not you are comfortable being equated with a drug-addicted liar.  You are not the "product," the listening audience is the product that you are selling to the advertisers, and you have the bulliest pulpit in the Bay Area.

    There are enough people here who would rather hear a comforting lie than an uncomfortable truth, and you are happy to oblige.  It does not hurt you either that there is no liberal on the air during your time slot to give your listeners an alternative.  Liberals seem to have a hard time getting on the radio, even in areas where we are the majority.

    Despite all the evidence to the contrary, you present yourself as a reasonable man.  The first stage of recovery from your condition is the recognition that you have it.  Now you know.