Thursday, September 15, 2005

Open Letter to Republicans

Sir;

Why did you vote against forming an impartial, independent commission to find out the truth about what went wrong with Hurricane Katrina? Why do you put your party over your country? Would you rather have America unprepared for a future chemical, biological or nuclear attack from Al Qaeda? If we don't know why we were unprepared today, we will surely be unprepared tomorrow.

An investigation run by the Congress itself, an investigation where the investigating committee will be made up of a majority of Republican congressmen, a partisan investigation of one of the largest disasters in American history will not hunt.

I want the truth, you and your party want a whitewash. Quit playing politics with our lives.

Kenneth M. Hatch

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Impeach Bush Now

Has there ever been a worse Administration than Shrub’s? Will the U.S. recover or is this the end of the American Experiment? I wish I knew the answer to the last question I believe I know the answer to the first.

During the 2000 campaign I was somewhat indifferent as to the out come…I knew the States would be better off if Gore won in the short term but if Bush won it would not be the end of the world. I figured he couldn’t do too much damage and with the expected down turn in the economy maybe the Republicans would for once be blamed for their sins.

When I fuck I fuck up big time…at every turn Shrub has been a disaster. If someone tried to come up with policy decisions to ruin the economy, the armed services, our foreign policy, the environment, or any area of government they could not top this group of goofs. There are only two possible answers to why that is so. Either this is the dumbest most incompetent bunch of idiots ever to have power in the United States or the really scary one is they know what they are doing and they are on a mission to destroy the United States. Whichever answer is correct we must act now to remove them from power before they can do more damage. I join in with Brad DeLong in calling for “Impeach Bush Now”.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

More GIV

Today was good day in class. The more I learn about the Gulfstream the more impressed I am with the capabilities of the airplane. The avionics are most impressive and this package is mid 80’s vintage…it will be interesting to see how the G550 compares.

Pat called from a beach north of Lincoln City…said the sand was warm and everything was beautiful. She and puppy were having a great time. That is the best news this week…she has been wonderful during the move but she has not taken any time to enjoy life for weeks. Last weekend I dumped her and everything we own in McMinnville and left town for 3 weeks. Not fair but it had to be done. And I wonder why pilots suffer from AIDS (aviation induced divorce syndrome).

Click this one

A must see video

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

GIV School

I’ve been in Savannah for two days. Gulfstream GIV initial started Labor Day and will run for 21 or 22 days depending on when my type ride is scheduled. The first day was spent doing paper work and going over an overview of the aircraft. Today we started working on the meat…all day was devoted to getting the FMS (Flight Management System) up and running. The avionics are so tightly integrated with the airplane systems once you know how to program and use the FMS the rest is a piece of cake.

The class has 18 souls, about half are “Netjets”; the rest are US military types with a few of us corporate drivers thrown in to complete the mix. As with every Flight Safety class I’ve attended, with more than two pilots, there is the class "asshole”, he has flown higher, faster, and farther than anyone else in history and always has a story where he is the hero. My question as always is: “If you are so damn good and know so much how in hell did you get in that mess to began with”. I never receive a good answer.

The other thing that always startles me is how reactionary pilots are. Out of any group of pilots 90% will be so right wing they could fit right in with members of the Midland Petroleum Club. Strange…apparently no one has told them they are working class, the boss may pat them on the back and call them by their first name but the bottom line once they are not useful Mr. Big will not even remember what they look like. Times are changing a little, this class has one woman, no blacks, Hispanics, or others. I guess I should be happy that at least we are letting a woman into the club.