Journeys

Blue Angel Pilot Killed

One of the members of the US Navy Blue Angels has been killed when his aircraft crashed during an air show.

Witnesses said the planes were flying in formation during the show at the Marine Corps Air Station and one dropped below the trees and crashed, sending up clouds of smoke. At least one home was on fire.

Raymond Voegeli, a plumber, was backing out of a driveway when the plane ripped through a grove of pine trees, dousing his truck in flames and debris. He said wreckage hit "plenty of houses and mobile homes."

"It was just a big fireball coming at me," said Voegeli, 37. "It was just taking pine trees and just clipping them."

County Coroner Curt Copeland said the pilot was killed, but did not release an identification. Copeland said there was a lot of debris at the crash site and described the scene as horrific.

John Sauls, who lives near the crash site, said the planes were banking back and forth before one disappeared, and a plume of smoke shot up.

"It's one of those surreal moments when you go, 'No, I didn't just see what I saw,'" Sauls said.

A terrible loss. I have had the pleasure of seeing the Blue Angels fly and I have been thrilled by their precision flying. Spare a kind thought or a prayer for the pilot who was killed and for his family.

Where Are The Grown-Ups?

I missed this yesterday. Peggy Noonan hits one right out of the park with her weekly column in the Opinion Journal. She is writing about the Virginia Tech tragedy and wonders where the grown-ups were. She also wonders what is happening to America.

There seems to me a sort of broad national diminution of common sense in our country that we don't notice in the day-to-day but that become obvious after a story like this. Common sense says a person like Cho Seung-hui, who was obviously dangerous and unstable, should have been separated from the college population. Common sense says someone should have stepped in like an adult, like a person in authority, and taken him away. It is only common sense that if a person like Cho leaves a self-aggrandizing, self-celebrating, self-pitying video diary of himself to be played by the mass media, the mass media should not play it and not publicize it, not make it famous. Common sense says that won't help.

And all those big cops, scores of them, hundreds, with the latest, heaviest, most sophisticated gear, all the weapons and helmets and safety vests and belts. It looked like the brute force of the state coming up against uncontrollable human will.

But it also looked muscle bound. And the schools themselves more and more look muscle bound, weighed down with laws and legal assumptions and strange prohibitions.

The school officials I saw, especially the head of the campus psychological services, seemed to me endearing losers. But endearing is too strong. I mean "not obviously and vividly offensive." The school officials who gave all the highly competent, almost smooth and practiced news conferences seemed to me like white, bearded people who were educated in softness. Cho was "troubled"; he clearly had "issues"; it would have been good if someone had "reached out"; it's too bad America doesn't have better "support services." They don't use direct, clear words, because if they're blunt, they're implicated.

The literally white-bearded academic who was head of the campus counseling center was on Paula Zahn Wednesday night suggesting the utter incompetence of officials to stop a man who had stalked two women, set a fire in his room, written morbid and violent plays and poems, been expelled from one class, and been declared by a judge to be "mentally ill" was due to the lack of a government "safety net." In a news conference, he decried inadequate "funding for mental health services in the United States." Way to take responsibility. Way to show the kids how to dodge.

The anxiety of our politicians that there may be an issue that goes unexploited was almost–almost–comic. They mean to seem sensitive, and yet wind up only stroking their supporters. I believe Rep. Jim Moran was first out of the gate with the charge that what Cho did was President Bush's fault. I believe Sen. Barack Obama was second, equating the literal killing of humans with verbal coarseness. Wednesday there was Sen. Barbara Boxer equating the violence of the shootings with the "global warming challenge" and "today's Supreme Court decision" upholding a ban on partial-birth abortion.

One watches all of this and wonders: Where are the grown-ups?

Noonan sees a coldness creeping into American society. A ducking of any real responsibility. All the warning signs were there that Cho was extremely dangerous to himself and to others. But nobody stepped up and got him away from people. The people who should have gotten him off that campus let everyone down. The adults in charge were no more than children. They bemoan the government not taking action; not being there to stop it. No "safety net" to make the decisions for them - because they want someone to make those decisions, just not them.

They could have averted it. They were supposed to be the grown-ups in charge. Instead they shuffled the problem of a violent, unstable person from one decision maker to another. But no decisions were made, other than to avoid making the decisions. When NBC received Cho's package, no grown-up stepped in to say, "We are not going to air this and we will not share it with anyone other than the police." Instead, they plastered the ravings of a madman all over the television. To further numb people. To increase the building coldness in American society. To increase the likelihood of a copycat seeking his 15 minutes of fame, purchased with the blood of other people. The people who should be the grown-ups in charge sanctimoniously declare the campus a "gun-free zone". Which assures a disarmed and vulnerable group of targets for someone to purchase his fame with.

Where are the grown-ups?

Refusing To Be A Victim

Miss America 1944, Venus Ramey is now 82 years old. She is also one tough lady. And she is not going to allow thieves to victimize her.

Venus Ramey has earned lots of fame in her 82 years.

She was Miss America 1944 and later a candidate for Cincinnati City Council and worked to save Over-the-Rhine's historic buildings. She performed on Broadway and in movies.

Now, though, she's in the news for another reason.

After confronting a man she said was stealing from her Kentucky farm, Ramey pulled out a gun and shot out a tire on his truck so he couldn't leave, allowing police to arrest him and two others.

"He was probably wetting his pants," Ramey said Thursday from her home in Waynesburg, about 140 miles south of Cincinnati.

Ramey was on her Lincoln County farm last week - "Friday the 13th, apropos date, isn't it?" she noted Thursday - feeding a horse when she saw her dog run to a nearby building where she stores old steel-shaping machines, lathes and other equipment.

"This stuff is over 100 years old," she said.

For some time, thieves had been breaking into the building to steal the machines to sell for scrap. She hadn't been able to catch anyone in the act until last week.

She drove over to the building and blocked the truck sitting there.

When she asked a man what he was doing, he replied "scrapping," and said he would leave.

"I said, 'Oh, no you won't,' and I shot their tires so they couldn't leave," Ramey said.

She had to balance on her walking stick as she pulled out a snub-nosed .38-caliber handgun.

I showed this story to my wife and she absolutely loves the woman. She speaks her mind and she stands up for herself. Like I said, one tough lady. Read the whole article, it's worth it. You'll love her, too. 

It’s Official! Yale Has Gone Loco.

In what is probably the silliest, most infantile response to serious events that I have heard of recently, Yale's Dean of Student Affairs, Betty Trachtenberg, has responded to the killings at Virginia Tech by banning stage weapons - props - from student theatrical productions.

No, really. She did.

 In the wake of Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech in which a student killed 32 people, Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg has limited the use of stage weapons in theatrical productions.

Students involved in this weekend’s production of “Red Noses” said they first learned of the new rules on Thursday morning, the same day the show was slated to open. They were subsequently forced to alter many of the scenes by swapping more realistic-looking stage swords for wooden ones, a change that many students said was neither a necessary nor a useful response to the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

According to students involved in the production, Trachtenberg has banned the use of some stage weapons in all of the University’s theatrical productions. While shows will be permitted to use obviously fake plastic weapons, students said, those that hoped to stage more realistic scenes of stage violence have had to make changes to their props.

Mind you, it is perfectly acceptable to stage a hanging in a play, according to students quoted in the article. But nothing resembling a real weapon. We recommend the drama students immediately begin using celery, carrots and zucchini in place of the swords. They should call the new prop weapons by an appropriate title before each performance: Trachtenberg night specials.

Remember, when cukes are outlawed, only criminals will have cukes.

My heavens, I've had to reactivate the old "Yale Follies" category.

Mind you, it is perfectly acceptable to stage a hanging in a play, according to students quoted in the article. But nothing resembling a real weapon. We recommend the drama students immediately begin using celery, carrots and zucchini in place of the swords. They should call the new prop weapons by an appropriate title before each performance: Trachtenberg night specials.

Remember, when cukes are outlawed, only outlaws - and Yalies - will have cukes.

My heavens, I've had to reactivate the old "Yale Follies" category.

Slamming Harry

Joe Lieberman slammed the hell out of Harry Reid for his grossly irresponsible statement to the media that the war in Iraq is "lost". (Harry must have seen some really bad polling numbers, because he tried hard to talk his way out of it on the Senate floor.)

WASHINGTON - Senator Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) today made the following statement in response to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's comment that the Iraq War is "lost:"

"This week witnessed horrific terrorist attacks by Islamist extremists in Iraq, killing hundreds of innocent civilians and leading Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to declare that the war is 'lost.'

With all due respect, I strongly disagree. Senator Reid's statement is not based on military facts on the ground in Iraq and does not advance our cause there.

Al Qaeda's strategy for victory in Iraq is clear. They are trying to murder as many innocent civilians as possible in an effort to reignite sectarian fighting and drive us to retreat from Iraq.

The question now before us is whether we respond to these terrorist attacks by running away as Al Qaeda hopes - abandoning the future of Iraq, the Middle East, and ultimately our own security to the very same people responsible for this week's atrocities - or whether we stand united to fight them.

This is exactly the wrong time to conclude that we have lost the war in Iraq, or that our new strategy has failed. Instead, we should provide General Petraeus and his troops with the time and the resources to succeed. We should not surrender in the face of barbarism."

The Crotchety Old Bastard, meanwhile, wants to hold Reid civilly liable for every injury or death that occurs to any soldier if Reid doesn't immediately cut funding. He's calling Reid out on this. (He's mad as hell and isn't going to take it anymore.) (Language warning).

I really am furious with Reid. His comments have been picked up and trumpeted by our enemies in the world. He has enraged many of the troops, probably demoralized many as well. All the while the enemies of this country are further emboldened by Reid's defeatism. Good luck convincing the electorate that Democrats can be trusted with national defense. Playing to the nutroots may well have just damaged Democratic hopes for 2008.

The Vegetating Catastrophe

George Walden writes in today's Times of London about France. He appropriates the term vegetating catastrophe, coined by French author, Louis-Ferdinand Céline to describe the Soviet Union and applies it to what he sees in France. Whoever wins the election there will have a terrible fight to try to change the French economy and political landscape.

As a foreign student at the ENA (Ecole Nationale d’Administration) I learnt how to make policy presentations to prime ministers by giving them three options. But what if there are four, some joker asked. “When you have no more than five minutes,” the instructor replied, “not only will you find that there are always three, but the first and the last will be phony choices, and the middle one will be the only option.”

To me Ségolène Royal and François Bayrou seem non-options, and Nicolas Sarkozy the single choice. Yet what could he do, if elected? The country’s problems can be summed up in one dispiriting phrase: les droits acquis — acquired rights. Handing them out is electorally sweet, taking them back virtually impossible. Think of our own NHS: a Stalinist bureaucracy promising everyone everything free, which many politicians and professionals know can never work, but which popular sentiment makes untouchable. Apply that immobilisme to whole swaths of French life and you can see the new President’s predicament.

With typical chutzpah Jacques Attali, former head of the Bank for Reconstruction and Development, disagrees, claiming that we are all simply jealous of the French quality of life. “A kind of communism that works,” was how a French sociologist once described his country. Anyone who has landed at a stylish, efficient airport, driven on an exquisitely cambered motorway, taken the TGV, or pondered how high taxes, better services and a relatively small income span can go together, knows what he meant. But it was a French author, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, who once described Russia as “a vegetating catastrophe”, and for all its charms and successes vaunted by Attali, that is how France sometimes feels.

Unfortunately for the French people, their "kind of communism that works" doesn't actually work in the real world. Only in the minds of the governing elite is it a workable system. But having voted themselves bread and circuses, it will be very hard to get the French people to give up the daily matinée. Read it all, it's actually depressing, but it is a good analysis of what faces whoever wins the election.

Fakery

Max Schulz has an op-ed in the New York Post that really should be read. It addresses a few of the environmental myths that are being pushed by some groups. These are widely believed, but totally untrue.

Result? According to the Forest Service, we have actually seen a net reforestation since 1985. We aren't losing forestland, we're gaining it.

Greenpeace's call for replacing fossil fuels with cleaner alternatives might make sense, but only if there were any realistic alternatives available. Presently renewable energies like wind power, solar power and ethanol aren't close to being able to substitute for the coal, natural gas and oil that make up the lion's share of our energy sources. Coal provides half our electricity today. Wind and solar provide less than 1 percent.

More, alternative fuels can be as land-hungry as agriculture. The typical 1,000 megawatt coal or nuclear plant might sit on a few acres. To generate the same amount of electricity with renewables would require 60,000 acres for a utility-scale wind farm, or about 11,000 acres of photovoltaic cells capturing the sun's light.

Ethanol, too, can't be produced in the massive quantities required to make a significant dent in our gasoline consumption - and its production depends on vast tracts of farmland, too.

Other myths?

* More than four of every five poll respondents said that our cities are getting dirtier. In fact, pollution has been slashed since 1970, and our cities are far cleaner today.

There is quite a lot more, read it all. I can't find it at the moment, but I know I looked at the EPA's own published figures at one time. Overall emissions of all types of pollution in the US have decreased by about 1/3 since 1970, despite a massive growth in the population and sharp increases in energy demand. Those figures are available right off the EPA website if you want to check it yourself. I have also posted numerous times about the realities of some of the alternative energy generation schemes - as opposed to the pie-in-the-sky claims made by proponents.

Greetings From The Easter Batty

Authorities in Memphis, Tennessee would very much like to talk to anyone who attended an Easter egg hunt at the Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church. It seems one of the Easter eggs some children found had wings. And fur.

And rabies.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. Health officials in Memphis are contacting everyone who attended a church's Easter egg hunt.

That's because a rabid bat was found on its back near a playground at the church during the hunt.

It was taken inside the Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church where several children touched it. Between 150 and 400 people attended the event.

Health officials believe a very small number of people might have been exposed to the bat.

I have no idea how many people in the Memphis area read this blog, but if you know or know of someone who may have attended the event, get word to them to check in with the local health department. Rabies is nothing to mess around with. It is also a good idea to make sure that your kids know that a bat should be left alone if found laying about. If they are on the ground, they are sick, usually with rabies.