Stupid Reporter Tricks

I’ve about had it with the coverage of the recent Qantas incident.

Qantas flight QF30, with 300 passengers and crew on board, plunged 20,000ft after the faulty door caused an “explosive” depressurisation.

The Boeing 747 had just taken off from a stopover in Hong Kong when the incident happened. As the plane dropped from 30,000ft to 10,000ft, oxygen masks fell from the ceiling.

What’s all this about “dropping”, “plummeting” and “plunging”? And doesn’t 10,000 feet ring a bell with anybody? (Hint: You don’t need supplemental oxygen at that altitude, and it’s easy to read on an altimiter.) Is it too much to ask a reporter or editor somewhere to look up emergency descent? (Took me all of five seconds.) Or phone, you know, a pilot somewhere?

Just remember: Pretty much everything you learn about aviation from the popular press is wrong.

Speaking of Awakenings

Something has stirred McCain from his slumber. He has just whacked Obama upside the head with a bucketload of facts.

Senator Obama told the American people what he thought you wanted to hear. I told you the truth.

Fortunately, Senator Obama failed, not our military. We rejected the audacity of hopelessness, and we were right. Violence in Iraq fell to such low levels for such a long time that Senator Obama, detecting the success he never believed possible, falsely claimed that he had always predicted it. … In Iraq, we are no longer on the doorstep of defeat, but on the road to victory.

Senator Obama said this week that even knowing what he knows today that he still would have opposed the surge. In retrospect, given the opportunity to choose between failure and success, he chooses failure. I cannot conceive of a Commander in Chief making that choice.

Read the whole thing. If McCain keeps this up he may find more of his “lesser of two evils” vote becoming “enthusiastic“.

Sudden Backbone Outbreak in Senate

What’s this? Republicans acting like, well, Republicans?

Harry Reid not only went unstable with a bunch of reporters afterword, he and the democrats have just handed the Republicans a winning issue to run on all summer. Will the Repubs get used to walking erect and using their opposable thumbs long enough to take advantage of it?

If so, the “inevitable” Democratic sweep of Congress in November may not materialize. And once people get a better look at The Chosen One, his down-ticket coattails may shrink a bit.

I think now that November is either a squeaker of a win for the young Marxist, or a decisive one for the old Socialist. But if Congress doesn’t swing as far left as feared it could ameliorate the damage a little.

TSA = Mob

The incompetent, unionized, kabuki theatre operator known as the TSA is acting like the mob.

Jeffrey Denning was originally praised by the Federal Air Marshal Service for his work. He conducted surveillance on a man in an airport who turned out to be on the terrorist watch list. Denning was given an award. “I left FAM Service on good terms,” Denning explained, “but the reason I left was because the agency was grossly mismanaged at the expense of the traveling public. I felt I could better serve elsewhere.”

After leaving the Federal Air Marshal Service, Denning spoke out. Now, more than a year later, he’s the target of a federal investigation. Could the mob be right? Is revenge really best served cold?

Maybe they can’t find a terrorist, but they sure can attack their critics. Michael Chertoff and all of his miserable goons need to be thrown out on their collective, well-padded asses.

Disband the TSA. Before it gets someone killed.

Not Mere Brass

Chief Warrant Officer David Cooper’s are made of titanium.

On the afternoon of 27 November 2006, Chief Warrant Officer 5 David Cooper of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment—the “Night Stalkers” —was leading a formation of six helicopters north of Baghdad. The formation comprised two AH-6 Little Bird attack helicopters (one flown by Cooper), two MH-6 troop-carrying Little Birds, and two MH-60 Black Hawks carrying Special Operations soldiers. When the formation was 50 kilometers from Baghdad, Cooper heard his wingman shout “Mayday!” An insurgent had hit the helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade, severing the tail rotor. Despite the damage, Cooper’s wingman was able to land his helicopter without sustaining major injuries, and the other helicopters in the formation landed to assist.

The Black Hawks soon evacuated the downed pilots, leaving behind 20 special operators and the Little Bird pilots to set up a perimeter around the disabled helicopter. Forty minutes later, eight enemy anti-aircraft gun trucks approached the crash site, and Cooper took off in his Little Bird to investigate. He immediately came under attack by the enemy force but stayed in the air to draw fire away from the exposed U.S. soldiers on the ground. Meanwhile, two more trucks unloaded enemy forces into a house about 800 yards away, where they began to set up mortars and machine guns.

Cooper immediately began attacking the numerically superior force using his Little Bird’s miniguns and rockets. When his helicopter ran out of ammunition, Cooper landed and the men on the ground quickly unloaded the rockets from the downed helicopter and put them on Cooper’s, despite intense enemy fire. Cooper took off and again started to pummel the enemy despite the bullets that were striking the helicopter inches from his face. When low fuel forced Cooper to land again, the soldiers on the ground used a Leatherman tool to remove an auxiliary fuel tank from the disabled helicopter and attach it to Cooper’s Little Bird. Cooper went back into battle a third time, finishing off the trucks and mortar positions once and for all.

For Chief Warrant Officer 5 David Cooper’s “complete disregard for his personal safety and extreme courage under fire,” he became the first Night Stalker to be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. “I just happened to be the guy there that day,” Cooper said. “Any one of the Night Stalkers that’s in this formation would have done the same thing I did.”

Randy Pausch is gone

Sad, but not unexpected news.

(Watch the video if you haven’t yet. It’s on the page linked above.)

“And suddenly, with the men appeared the archangel Gabriel…”

…and the whole host of the heavenly choir, ranks of cherubim and seraphim, all praising God and singing: “Yes, We Can.”

Addendum:

Yea, and when the Child learned that his Tribe of Media would be denied entrance, he chose not to visit the wounded warriors.

Yay, Pete!

Pete Hoekstra wins one for the home team.

Rep. Hoekstra added an amendment to the Intelligence Bill that denies funding to this ill-conceived propaganda campaign (aptly referred to as “McCarthyism in reverse”).  Despite the predictable opposition of Speaker Pelosi and the Democrat leadership, 55 Democrats joined Republicans to pass it by a whopping 249-180 margin.

CAIR, natch, is up in arms — you always know you’re doing the right thing if all the right people are in a snit.

So here, in celebration, is the formerly banned word:

Jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad.

So there, CAIR.

ConSource

Original document fans and constitutional scholars rejoice. Now there is ConSource, an on-line, fully indexed resource for the constitution. You register (easy, free) and can then use radio buttons to turn a page of the constitution into clickable text, linking to founding documents. Really slick and, apparently, used in the recent Heller case.