I was really counting on the stupidity of Florida Democrats, as demonstrated in 2000. But now McBride is up over Reno by two points.
It doesn’t say whether it’s a poll of adults, registered, or likely voters, but I’m still pulling for a surge in the idiotarian vote.
In the most detailed accounting yet of the air defense situation last September 11, there’s an interesting article in Aviation Week. It says that the inadequately-armed pilots of the Air Guard F-16s considered ramming Flight 93.
Hutchison was probably airborne shortly after the alert F-16s from Langley arrived over Washington, although 121st FS pilots admit their timeline-recall “is fuzzy.” But it’s clear that Hutchison, Sasseville and Lucky knew their options were limited for bringing down a hijacked airliner headed for an undetermined target in the capital city. Although reluctant to talk about it, all three acknowledge they were prepared to ram a terrorist-flown aircraft, if necessary. Indeed, Hutchison–who might have been the first to encounter Flight 93 if it had, indeed, been flying low and fast down the Potomac–had no other choice.
Sasseville and Lucky each had 511 rounds of ammo, but that only provided roughly a 5-sec. burst of the 20-mm. gun. And where should they shoot to ensure a hijacked aircraft would be stopped? Sasseville planned to fire from behind and “try to saw off one wing. I needed to disable it as soon as possible– immediately interrupt its aerodynamics and bring it down.”
He admits there was no assurance that a 5-sec. burst of lead slugs could slice an air transport’s wing off, though. His alternative was “to hit it–cut the wing off with my wing. If I played it right, I’d be able to bail out. One hand on the stick and one hand on the ejection handle, trying to ram my airplane into the aft side of the [airliner’s] wing,” he said. “And do it skillfully enough to save the pink body . . . but understanding that it might not go as planned. It was a tough nut; we had no other ordnance.”
While Stacy at Sekimori does great stuff, she’s not the only web designer out there. Anyone looking for an upgrade might want to consider Bill Simon (not the one ineptly running against Gray Davis) at Next Paradigm for site design. As you can see, he just helped me do a little spiff up of the Transterrestrial site.
Those lucky Iraqis get to vote next month whether or not to keep Saddam as their fearless leader. And they say there’s no democracy in the Arab world.
Martin Walker says that America has had enough of European hypocrisy and lousy advice.
“When the Europeans demand some sort of veto over American actions, or want us to subordinate our national interest to a UN mandate, they forget that we do not think their track record is too good,” a senior U.S. diplomat said recently in private. “The Europeans told us they could win the Balkans wars all on their own. Wrong. They told us that the Russians would never accept National Missile Defense. Wrong. They said the Russians would never swallow NATO enlargement. Wrong. They told us 20 years ago that d
Many Democrats are afraid to have him campaign with, or for them.
When you do this search, you don’t get very many hits.
I suspect that in the future the list will grow. Let me add this post to it now.
Scott Ritter appears to be the Benedict Arnold of his generation.
Here’s a column by Dave Barry that (unusually) is not very funny.
It’s, instead, very moving. It also demonstrates once again (as did Mark Twain, and does James Lileks) that you can’t be a great humorist without also being a great writer. If you don’t read anything else today, I recommend this.
On This Week this morning (which was Sam and Cokie’s last show–I don’t know if I’ll be able to stomach an hour of Stephanopolous), a couple questions were asked. One was, what changed on September 11 that suddenly made Iraq more dangerous?
The answer is, of course, nothing. Saddam was just as dangerous on September 10 as he was on September 12.
The difference was not in the actual danger but in our perception of it. We now understand that we are no longer safely cocooned across vast oceans from our enemies–they can come here and attack us on our soil, and they are among us today. We now know that when people say they want to kill us, we should take them at their word.
But something else happened on September 11. While our perception of the danger increased dramatically, the actual danger decreased. I personally felt safer flying on September 12 than on September 10, not because of the Patriot Act, or because we made airline security workers federal employees with spiffy new uniforms, and not because I could fly secure in the knowledge that my seatmate didn’t have breast milk in a bottle, or a nose-hair trimmer.
No, I felt safer because I knew the danger, and I knew that my fellow citizens now knew the danger as well, and the brave, ordinary people on Flight 93 proved that never again would murderous madmen hold innocent lives hostage to evil, wretched goals.
As George Will said this morning, Americans are watching now. Even if the mindless bureaucracy of Norm Mineta refuses to racially profile, Americans are smart enough to know that the danger comes from young men (and perhaps women) from the Middle East, not little old ladies from Fargo.
Someone (perhaps Mark Steyn), said earlier this week that September 11 was like rolling Pearl Harbor and Jimmy Doolittle’s Tokyo raid into a single day. We were attacked without warning, and within an hour, we were fighting back, and struck a blow against the enemy.
The memorial – the word seems grandiose, when you see it – is a gravel parking area, two portable toilets, two flagpoles and a fence. The fence was erected to give people a place to hang things. Many visitors leave behind something – a cross, a hat, a medal, a patch, a T-shirt, an angel, a toy airplane, a plaque – symbols, tokens, gifts for the heroes in the ground. There are messages for the heroes, too, thousands of letters, notes, graffiti scrawls, expressing sorrow, and love, and anger, and, most often, gratitude, sometimes in yearbookish prose:
“Thanx 4 everything to the heroes of Flight 93!!”
Visitors read the messages, look at the stuff on the fence, take pictures. But mostly they stare silently across the field, toward the place where Flight 93 went down. They look like people you see at Gettysburg, staring down the sloping field where Pickett’s charge was stopped, and the tide of war changed, in a few minutes of unthinkable carnage. There is nothing, really, to see on either field now, but you find it hard to pull your eyes away, knowing, imagining, what happened there…
…we need to remember this: The heroes of Flight 93 were people on a plane. Their glory is being paid for, day after day, by grief. Tom Burnett does not belong to the nation. He is, first and foremost, Deena Burnett’s husband, and the father of their three daughters. Any effort we make to claim him as ours is an affront to those who loved him, those he loved.
He is not ours.
And yet …
… and yet he is a hero to us, he and the other people on Flight 93. We want to honor them, just as we want to honor the firefighters, police officers and civilians at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon who risked, and sometimes gave, their lives to try to rescue others. We want to honor them for what they did, and for reminding us that this nation is nowhere near as soft and selfish as we had come to believe.
We want to honor them.
Years will pass, and more people will come here, and more, people who were not yet born when Flight 93 went down, coming to see this famous place.
And so in a few years, when grass grows once again over the place where Flight 93 hit the ground, when the “X”s have faded from the hemlocks, there will be a memorial here, an official, permanent memorial to the heroes of Flight 93. It will be dedicated in a somber and dignified ceremony, and people will make speeches. Somebody – bet on it – will quote the Gettysburg Address, the part about giving the last full measure of devotion. The speeches will be moving, but they will also prove Lincoln’s point, that the words of the living can add nothing to the deeds of the dead.
Christopher Hitchens, (as always) a good read, has some thoughts about the past year from the left. Or perhaps no longer from the left–many of them now disown him. Whatever his other beliefs, he’s clearly not an idiotarian.
I disagree with him on Iran–he seems to confuse support for the government there with support for the aspirations of its people, but he’s definitely a Brit who understands America, and that it is not just a country, but an idea.
Tony Woodlief has some great ones. I particularly like numero dos–it’s my top peeve.
When I’m made Lord Emperor of the Universe, one of my first acts will be to remove all signs that say “Slower Traffic Keep Right,” and replace them with the more accurate “Left Lane For Passing Only.”
No one thinks that they’re slower traffic, so the first version isn’t effective. The second should be the rule, and it should be a hefty fine, perhaps even prison time, if you’re passed on the right by three consecutive cars. I kvetch about the Europeans a lot, but there are a few things they get right, and lane discipline (particularly in Germany) is one of them.
Of course, if you’re poking along down the autobahn at a mere 130 kph or so, you’re likely to get a Lamborghini or M3 rammed up your tailpipe…