Archive for April 21st, 2007
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We’ve Lost a Blue Angel
April 21st, 2007
One of the most spectacular things I have seen was about 3 years ago when I went to visit my father and we went to an Air Force air show, which featured the Thunderbirds.
Both the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds are fantastically talented and brave pilots.
They fly while touching wings of the other planes, one or two planes will fly in the opposite direction of the formation and go between the formation in an awesome move.
Today, something went wrong, and the Navy lost one of its Blue Angels.
BEAUFORT, S.C. — A Navy F-18 Blue Angel plane crashed during an air show Saturday, plunging into a small neighborhood of homes and trailers and killing the pilot.
Witnesses said the planes were flying in formation during the show at the Marine Corps Air Station and one dropped below the trees and apparently crashed, sending up clouds of smoke.
Raymond Voegeli, a plumber, was backing out of a driveway when the plane ripped through a grove of nearby pine trees, dousing his truck in flames and debris.
“It was just a big fireball coming at me,” said Voegeli, 37. “It was just taking pine trees and just clipping them.”
He said wreckage hit “plenty of houses and mobile homes.” Other witnesses said metal and plastic, some of it on fire, peppered the neighborhood and that one mobile home was destroyed. The witnesses were unsure whether that home was occupied.
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.
It sounds as though the plane failed him, but I’m sure an investigation will tell us for sure some day.
In the meantime, a Blue Angel has gone to heaven. May he rest in peace and may his family be comforted.
Saturday Funny!
April 21st, 2007
This is not in any way intended to offend Catholics. I couldn’t think of anything better for the Muslims in ‘Paradise’ than to have a few old-fashioned nuns teach them how to behave.
Hat Tip: Sir Randall <):)
Hillary Stood Up By Rutgers Women’s Basketball Team
April 21st, 2007
Citing finals and Imus fatigue, the women of the Rutgers basketball team refused to meet with Sen. Hillary Clinton yesterday.
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton finally dropped by Rutgers to meet with the school’s women’s basketball coach — but the players themselves skipped the half-hour meeting, citing their studies and Imus fatigue.
Clinton had been scheduled to meet with Scarlet Knight coach C. Vivian Stringer and an assistant, and possibly some of the players, Monday to talk with them about Don Imus’s “nappy-headed ho” comments.
But that sit-down was postponed due to weather and because the story seemed far less significant after the Virginia Tech killings.
“Many of the players were in study hall from eight to noon and some had finals,” explained a Rutgers source who said the players were “tired” of all the attention. “These young women need to do their classes, and wrap their spring semester.”
After meeting with Stringer Friday morning, Clinton addressed about 700 students and faculty on campus later in the day, praising the players and naming them one-by-one while criticizing “bigotry” against women. She never named Imus directly and made a point of saying her criticism wasn’t intended to curtail free speech.
It seems she was a day late and a dollar short.
Not to be deterred, she schlopped off to Manhattan to address Al Sharpton’s National Action Network Convention.
Read the rest here.
President Sees Progress in Iraq While Gates Warns Iraqis to Stick to Guidelines
April 21st, 2007
President Bush yesterday said his strategy to send more troops to Iraq is turning the tide in favor of U.S. and Iraqi forces and rebutted claims by a top Democrat that the war is lost.
“The direction of the fight is beginning to shift,” Mr. Bush said in a speech at East Grand Rapids High School in Michigan. “Day by day, block by block, Iraqi and American forces are making incremental gains in Baghdad.”
The president’s speech, his second in two days on the war on terrorism, came one day after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters, “This war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything.”
The speech also came as Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who was in Baghdad, warned Iraqi political leaders that American patience is wearing thin.
“Our commitment to Iraq is long-term, but it is not a commitment to have our young men and women patrolling Iraq’s streets open-endedly,” Mr. Gates said.
On Thursday, Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat, cited a series of five suicide bombings on Wednesday that killed more than 200 people as an example of why the war is lost.
Mr. Bush acknowledged the violence and said that since he began sending the first of about 30,000 reinforcements in January, “we have seen some of the highest casualty levels of the war.”
“And as the number of troops in Baghdad grows and operations move into even more dangerous neighborhoods, we can expect the pattern to continue,” he said.
But the president said coalition forces have reduced by 50 percent the sectarian murders by militias and death squads in Baghdad. He also said coalition troops are getting an increasing number of tips from the civilian population, which have helped them capture weapons, chemicals, and members of death squads and car-bomb rings.
“This is a difficult period in our nation’s history,” Mr. Bush said. “It’s natural to wish there was an easy way out, that we could just pack up and bring our troops home and be safe. Yet in Iraq, the easy road would be a road to disaster.
“The price of giving up there would be paid in American lives for years to come,” he said, arguing that terrorists in Iraq would attack U.S. targets if troops withdraw prematurely.
Of course politics plays a huge part in this as it has for quite some time. Democrat Senators Reid and Levin strongly disagree with the president.
Read the rest here.
