I just watched a story on “The Weather Channel” about the latest tropical weather poised to threaten our little pieces of paradise here on the coast of the Southeastern United States--Hurricane Ivan. Unfortunately, it looks like this year will continue to produce a bumper crop of tropical weather for the pleasure of the weather forecast professionals and the dread of the residents of the Lesser and Greater Antilles, the Caribbean Islands, Florida, and the balance of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the US.
While my home is located on St Simons Island on the Atlantic coast of Georgia, I’ve spent the past week visiting my mother in lower Alabama (also affectionately called LA) just about one hundred miles from the Gulf of Mexico. (I offer this visit as my excuse for my reduced writings on the Blog this week.) We and the other members of my extended family have all become quite aware that this year’s tropical weather is unusually capable of keeping us on our toes, worrying about our homes and possessions situated on both coasts.
Hurricane Charley produced only a little rain and wind on St Simons and nothing here in Alabama, but I learned via E-mail earlier this week that Hurricane Fances managed to remove the roof from our carport on St Simons. Now I get to drive home on Sunday and begin preparations for Ivan--reluctantly leaving behind my seven plus decade old mother to fend for herself should the storm take a more westerly track than that currently predicted. The generator is all gassed up and she’s already done her share of tropical weather in her day, so I hope she'll be O.K.
Situated between the US and Ivan are the countries of Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and Cuba. I’m afraid that my friend Ian, a native of Monteigo Bay, Jamaica, is in for a rough September 11th. If you have never visited Jamaica ( population 2.6 million,) picture a million plus people living in simple tin/cardboard/wooden packing crate huts with no utilities. Even the thin middle class who own real homes and the few wealthy individuals who reside on the island could have their property destroyed and their lives placed at great risk by daylight this morning.
The image that really caught my eye in this evening’s “Weather Channel” story was a picture of Fidel Castro, sitting at a conference table, brandishing a printout of the latest NOAA three day forecast track for Ivan from the 11:00 PM forecast this evening. My mind leapt to attention!
There we go again, us mean old, insensitive, capitalistic, war-mongering, bigoted, ugly, Americans-- providing free technology to third world communist countries. Information, by the way, the free dissemination of which will inevitably save hundreds if not thousands of lives and help to minimize damage to whatever meager property the citizens of Cuba possess.
How can the United Nations‘ Kofi Anon, not to mention the French, the Germans, the Spanish, the Russians, and the Chinese, et. al. sit still for such behavior from a country whom is so obviously dedicated to the ideals of international conquest and nation building?
What will John Kerry and John Edwards say? Would they vote for the funding of NOAA, before they vote against it? Since, according to the Democrats, our president is a known liar, who was AWOL for much of his reserve pilot duty during the Vietnam war thirty years ago, I would expect Jimmy Carter to personally fly to Cuba to warn Senior Fidel of the treachery of anything delivered by the Republican controlled US government.
I understand that newly formed 527 group “Caribbean’s against Bush” are collecting plywood, tarps, bottled water, generators, and vintage IBM electric typewriters for distribution once the storm has passed in an effort to rebuild and document Mr. Bush’s 30 year old culpability in the (un)natural natural disaster.
“If John Kerry had just been in office, Ivan would have been a kinder, more sensitive form of tropical disaster” stated Grenada Governor General Daniel Williams. “It was just like old Ron Reagan came back from the dead and was looking for some medical students to rescue,” stated an unidentified Democratic spokesperson. “The American people deserve better…”
Saturday, September 11, 2004
Friday, September 10, 2004
The Devil's in the Details
Leave it to the AP to bury the story of CBS's forged documents inside an apparent indictment of President Bush's piloting skills.
I wonder if AP writer Matt Kelly or any of the AP's so-called "editors" have ever been near the left seat of a private piston engine aircraft, not to mention either seat in a jet trainer or the single pilot’s seat of a military fighter jet. I suspect that a first class seat in a commercial airliner is as close to the front of the airplane as anyone associated with the story has ever been or ever will be--unless they were standing on the runway under the nose of the airplane at an air show.
As a former private pilot, I have a few things to point out to the non-flying public regarding flying in general and aviation logbook procedures specifically.
First, the standard operating procedure common in civil and military aviation is to do a controlled "go-around" and set up for another approach if you don't like any little detail encountered during final approach. No reason to risk the airplane, let alone your own rear end (and potentially those of your crew and passengers,) trying to finish an approach to a runway that isn’t going well. Cross-winds, fog, other air traffic, problems with the aircraft, having a bad day, or just being human can and will cause problems that require another attempt at the runway. There are a lot of dead pilots out there who’s egos got them killed trying to fix a botched final runway alignment in the last 50 feet of altitude.
My own flight instructors used to love to pull little tricks like killing the throttle in flight to practice emergency landing procedures or suddenly announce "go-around" only 100 feet off of the runway. They did it repeatedly until I could do it perfect every time. We never once made negative log entries relative to executing either a practice or actual go-around. If you were flying solo, without an instructor or co-pilot, you were free to write whatever you thought was relevant about the flight. I usually made little notes for posterity like “beautiful weather”, “crappy visibility”, or “blew second approach to RYY (McCullum Field-Cobb County, GA) Runway 27. It was my choice and the comments weren’t graded like a report card or test paper.
In the last months of his flying career, Lt. Bush flew both the Lockheed T-33 jet trainer and the Convair F102A “Delta Dagger” which as a post-Korean War era single-engine jet fighter interceptor. The AP article seems to want to make some unspoken “ominous” point in that Bush flew the F-102A less and less as he moved toward ending his flight status, instead choosing to spend time in the T-33’s.
Doesn’t that make sense? It has been reported that there was a glut of pilots returning from Vietnam and there were few airplanes to go around. In addition to being more readily available, the T-33 was obviously easier and more fun to fly than a hot front line fighter. Couldn’t Bush have felt that it was better for the pilots who were going to continue flying to have the F-102’s while he got his hours in the T-33’s?
Again, for those that haven’t piloted an aircraft, I would suggest that flying a T-33 is about like driving a factory Corvette, while the F-102A is like driving a Grand Prix race car with guns and missile pods. They both get you to where you are going, but latter requires a lot more work and concentration.
In the military, the way things work is that you go down to the flight line with your wings and your logbook, check out whatever is available that you are qualified to fly (and current on), they gas it up, you do your preflight check, start her up, and you go flying. My dad and his fellow pilots did it all of the time in the Army back in the 1950’s. Two of them would need to log hours, so when their duty would allow it they would grab an airplane and fly cross country to visit their respective parents over the weekend, returning the airplane a few days later with several dozen hours each in the logbook.
Of course you can reserve a given airplane or type of airplane in advance, but if I were President Bush I would not be taking chances in a high performance fighter when a little hot-rod trainer served the purpose of building flight hours at substantially less cost to the government and much less risk to his personal health. Military jets are complex assemblies of millions of parts, all bought from the low-bid contractor--and they are known to break more often than civilian aircraft.
And one last thing, being grounded as a military or commercial pilot is a mater of formality if you fail or miss an annual (or in my case--every three years) medical exam. As long as you are not caught flying without the appropriate medical certification, all you have to do is take and pass the physical to re-attain your flight status.
The media keeps harping on “being grounded” like it’s like being sent to the principal’s office or being expelled from school. I’m grounded right now because I haven’t taken a FAA 3rd Class Medical Exam since 1995. But I could take and exam for $75, get a half dozen hours of refresher training, and be right back in the sky for you all to worry about while I fly over your homes and offices.
Sorry Associated Press, but the devil is in the details, and the Internet Bloggers are checking facts and coming up with LOTS of details.
I wonder if AP writer Matt Kelly or any of the AP's so-called "editors" have ever been near the left seat of a private piston engine aircraft, not to mention either seat in a jet trainer or the single pilot’s seat of a military fighter jet. I suspect that a first class seat in a commercial airliner is as close to the front of the airplane as anyone associated with the story has ever been or ever will be--unless they were standing on the runway under the nose of the airplane at an air show.
As a former private pilot, I have a few things to point out to the non-flying public regarding flying in general and aviation logbook procedures specifically.
First, the standard operating procedure common in civil and military aviation is to do a controlled "go-around" and set up for another approach if you don't like any little detail encountered during final approach. No reason to risk the airplane, let alone your own rear end (and potentially those of your crew and passengers,) trying to finish an approach to a runway that isn’t going well. Cross-winds, fog, other air traffic, problems with the aircraft, having a bad day, or just being human can and will cause problems that require another attempt at the runway. There are a lot of dead pilots out there who’s egos got them killed trying to fix a botched final runway alignment in the last 50 feet of altitude.
My own flight instructors used to love to pull little tricks like killing the throttle in flight to practice emergency landing procedures or suddenly announce "go-around" only 100 feet off of the runway. They did it repeatedly until I could do it perfect every time. We never once made negative log entries relative to executing either a practice or actual go-around. If you were flying solo, without an instructor or co-pilot, you were free to write whatever you thought was relevant about the flight. I usually made little notes for posterity like “beautiful weather”, “crappy visibility”, or “blew second approach to RYY (McCullum Field-Cobb County, GA) Runway 27. It was my choice and the comments weren’t graded like a report card or test paper.
In the last months of his flying career, Lt. Bush flew both the Lockheed T-33 jet trainer and the Convair F102A “Delta Dagger” which as a post-Korean War era single-engine jet fighter interceptor. The AP article seems to want to make some unspoken “ominous” point in that Bush flew the F-102A less and less as he moved toward ending his flight status, instead choosing to spend time in the T-33’s.
Doesn’t that make sense? It has been reported that there was a glut of pilots returning from Vietnam and there were few airplanes to go around. In addition to being more readily available, the T-33 was obviously easier and more fun to fly than a hot front line fighter. Couldn’t Bush have felt that it was better for the pilots who were going to continue flying to have the F-102’s while he got his hours in the T-33’s?
Again, for those that haven’t piloted an aircraft, I would suggest that flying a T-33 is about like driving a factory Corvette, while the F-102A is like driving a Grand Prix race car with guns and missile pods. They both get you to where you are going, but latter requires a lot more work and concentration.
In the military, the way things work is that you go down to the flight line with your wings and your logbook, check out whatever is available that you are qualified to fly (and current on), they gas it up, you do your preflight check, start her up, and you go flying. My dad and his fellow pilots did it all of the time in the Army back in the 1950’s. Two of them would need to log hours, so when their duty would allow it they would grab an airplane and fly cross country to visit their respective parents over the weekend, returning the airplane a few days later with several dozen hours each in the logbook.
Of course you can reserve a given airplane or type of airplane in advance, but if I were President Bush I would not be taking chances in a high performance fighter when a little hot-rod trainer served the purpose of building flight hours at substantially less cost to the government and much less risk to his personal health. Military jets are complex assemblies of millions of parts, all bought from the low-bid contractor--and they are known to break more often than civilian aircraft.
And one last thing, being grounded as a military or commercial pilot is a mater of formality if you fail or miss an annual (or in my case--every three years) medical exam. As long as you are not caught flying without the appropriate medical certification, all you have to do is take and pass the physical to re-attain your flight status.
The media keeps harping on “being grounded” like it’s like being sent to the principal’s office or being expelled from school. I’m grounded right now because I haven’t taken a FAA 3rd Class Medical Exam since 1995. But I could take and exam for $75, get a half dozen hours of refresher training, and be right back in the sky for you all to worry about while I fly over your homes and offices.
Sorry Associated Press, but the devil is in the details, and the Internet Bloggers are checking facts and coming up with LOTS of details.
Monday, September 06, 2004
Mob Rule - Part I
I just read that there is a move afoot, again, to abolish the Electoral College in favor of electing the United States President by popular vote. God help us all if we allow this to happen.
Don't get me wrong here, it’s not that I am in favor of ramming the wishes of the few down the throats of the many regarding everything from toothpaste flavor to the choice of boxers or briefs.
Its just that I and many well-read like-minded people strongly believe that popular voting is better suited to the resolution of issues like where to go for dinner tonight, the election of a team captain in little league baseball, or deciding on the appropriate debutant to fill the role of homecoming queen at the local high school. The election of the leader of the most powerful and influential nation on the earth is quite another matter, however.
I am in some pretty impressive company when it comes to supporting the Electoral College. Guys with last names like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin realized nearly 250 years ago that every single democracy that had preceded our fine country’s existence, with the ensuing concept of popular vote, had ultimately degenerated into a state of MOB RULE. For this and other reasons, the government of the United States of America was intentionally set up as a REPRESENTATIVE REPUBLIC, not a Democracy.
Unfortunately, that little itty bitty distinction has evidently been forgotten by many of the citizens/voters educated in public (government) schools before about 1980 and has been intentionally marginalized or outright omitted from the education of those whom graduated since that era. It is also being intentionally overlooked by an insidious segment of our population like the socialists, the democrats, and the anarchists in an overt effort to gain control of our government.
A very loud, far reaching voice, The New York Times, recently editorialized for the abolition of the Electoral College because, in the writer’s opinion, it "thwarts the will of the majority, distorts presidential campaigning and has the potential to produce a true constitutional crisis." Well boo hoo hoo, where is my hanky?
As Lord Alexander Tyler, an 18th /19th century Scottish historian/professor so eloquently stated:
The Electoral College http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/electoral_college/ is one of the highest forms of checks and balances against mob rule that is found in our government today. They already took the right to appoint US Senators away from the State governments and replaced it with a popular vote--please don’t let this same tragedy befall the office of President of the United States.
Extra Reading to get you ready for Mob Rule - Part II:
Don't get me wrong here, it’s not that I am in favor of ramming the wishes of the few down the throats of the many regarding everything from toothpaste flavor to the choice of boxers or briefs.
Its just that I and many well-read like-minded people strongly believe that popular voting is better suited to the resolution of issues like where to go for dinner tonight, the election of a team captain in little league baseball, or deciding on the appropriate debutant to fill the role of homecoming queen at the local high school. The election of the leader of the most powerful and influential nation on the earth is quite another matter, however.
I am in some pretty impressive company when it comes to supporting the Electoral College. Guys with last names like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin realized nearly 250 years ago that every single democracy that had preceded our fine country’s existence, with the ensuing concept of popular vote, had ultimately degenerated into a state of MOB RULE. For this and other reasons, the government of the United States of America was intentionally set up as a REPRESENTATIVE REPUBLIC, not a Democracy.
Unfortunately, that little itty bitty distinction has evidently been forgotten by many of the citizens/voters educated in public (government) schools before about 1980 and has been intentionally marginalized or outright omitted from the education of those whom graduated since that era. It is also being intentionally overlooked by an insidious segment of our population like the socialists, the democrats, and the anarchists in an overt effort to gain control of our government.
A very loud, far reaching voice, The New York Times, recently editorialized for the abolition of the Electoral College because, in the writer’s opinion, it "thwarts the will of the majority, distorts presidential campaigning and has the potential to produce a true constitutional crisis." Well boo hoo hoo, where is my hanky?
As Lord Alexander Tyler, an 18th /19th century Scottish historian/professor so eloquently stated:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure.
From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith
From spiritual faith to great courage
From courage to liberty
From liberty to abundance
From abundance to selfishness
From selfishness to complacency
From complacency to apathy
From apathy to dependency
From dependency back to bondage."
From spiritual faith to great courage
From courage to liberty
From liberty to abundance
From abundance to selfishness
From selfishness to complacency
From complacency to apathy
From apathy to dependency
From dependency back to bondage."
The Electoral College http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/electoral_college/ is one of the highest forms of checks and balances against mob rule that is found in our government today. They already took the right to appoint US Senators away from the State governments and replaced it with a popular vote--please don’t let this same tragedy befall the office of President of the United States.
Extra Reading to get you ready for Mob Rule - Part II:
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay composed and published The Federalist Papers in the late 1700’s in part as a campaign to rally support for ratification of the US Constitution. I bet you that your kids didn’t see much of these writing in US History class.
