Although there had been growing tensions between the radicals on both sides of the slavery issue, most Americans in the North had never even seen a slave, and most Southerners were not part of that “peculiar institution”, because only a small fraction actually owned slaves themselves. I you had asked the average American on either side of the Mason-Dixon Line in 1860 whether they thought that within a year there would begin a conflict which would eventually cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of men, and shatter the bodies of many others who survived their wounds, you would have been viewed as a lunatic. Yet, on April 12, 1861, with the firing on Fort Sumter by Confederate forces, such a conflict did begin, and lasted for over four years, laying waste to large sections of the south and mid-west. The unthinkable had happened, and it can happen again.
Monthly Archives: April 2017
Bleeding for a shark?
I never cease to be amazed at the naïveté of some individuals when it comes to world affairs and how they affect this country. Barack Obama, on the surface, appeared to be an intelligent individual. That’s how he got elected to his first term, although his qualifications for the job were virtually nonexistent. People wanted to believe that this young, mixed race man was the future of America, a post racial nirvana where we would all just “get along” together. He took that attitude into his world view as well. If we would only realize that America was nothing special, just one of hundreds of nations represented by that august body, the United Nations, we would finally take our rightful place and “lead from behind”, no better or worse than anyone else. Problem is, we ARE better, and many others ARE indeed worse. Take Iran and North Korea for instance.
Another “Manchurian Candidate”?
Not since Barack Obama arrived on the scene as a “community organizer” turned politician have we seen a major international candidate like French Presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron. Is this, like Obama, a “Manchurian Candidate”, foisted on a gullible population by people behind the scenes like George Soros? Similar to Obama, who only served briefly in the Illinois and U.S. Senate, Macron has had no previous political exposure. An investment banker, he is for retaining, even strengthening ties with the EU and maintaining open borders. Where he got the money to wage his campaign is largely unknown.
The other winner in the primary election is Marine Le Pen. She is an avowed populist, who like Donald Trump, wants to curb “immigration”, maintain the unique French identity, and leave the EU, whose policies she maintains have greatly disadvantaged the French economy and French workers. The mainstream media have already basically proclaimed Macron the presumptive winner in the upcoming French general election, just as they predicted a walkover for Hillary Clinton last November. However, with high unemployment in many sectors of the French economy, and continued violence and threats from Muslim extremists, the media might once again be proven wrong.
A Silent Morning……….
You wake up some morning in the near future and immediately sense something is wrong. For one thing, your alarm clock isn’t working. You must have overslept. You grab your iPhone to check the time, and it’s not operational. When you try to turn on the television, you discover it’s dead too. What’s going on? Of course. It must must be a power failure. You are absolutely right, but THIS power failure is like none our country, or any other for that matter, has ever experienced. We have been successfully attacked by North Korea. One of several North Korean low orbit satellites which pass over the United States multiple times daily had a secret weapon aboard, a nuclear device, which when detonated created an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) strong enough to take out the power grid covering most of the country and everything controlled by computer chips. So, no phone, no TV, no computer, automobile, boat, airplane or anything else which requires a “chip” for operation. The funny looking little fat guy with the bad haircut has just put you back to a time before electricity came into being. You now live in pre-industrial age America and tens of millions of your fellow Americans will die in the ensuing chaos.
Voter ID Laws?
Photo ID’s. You need them to visit a doctor’s office, check into a hospital, get past security at the airport, open a bank account, get a prescription filled at a pharmacy, check into a hotel and many other everyday functions. However, for the second time, U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales-Ramos, shown at left, has ruled the Texas Voter ID law violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because it discriminated against blacks and latinos.
Here we go again. Judge Ramos obviously believes most blacks and latinos don’t drive. They must not use the services of a bank either, or do any of the other things requiring a photo ID as described above. They must all be uneducated as well. Another example of white privilege overwhelming people of color. But wait, maybe there is another reason.
Hitler vs Kim Jong-un.
The country is under the control of an egotistical madman. He is willing to risk his homeland and every citizen in it because of an insane belief that the world which surrounds him is filled with inferior degenerates and cowards. All he has to do is bluster and confront them with his new found military power, and they will fold and bow to his will as his countrymen have done. Am I referring North Korea’s Kim Jong-un? No, I am describing Adolph Hitler, just prior to his annexing the remainder of Czechoslovakia in March of 1939. His bluff at the infamous Munich Conference had witnessed the takeover of a large portion of that country, the German speaking “Sudetenland”, in September of the previous year. Up to that time, a large number of the Wehrmacht Generals were worried about Hitler’s schemes. They feared that the re-militarization of Germany was not complete, and would not be so until 1946 or later. As as result, the beginnings of a coup plot was started, with the purpose of removing the “Fuhrer” before he destroyed the country with his grandiose schemes. The bluff at Munich and the subsequent takeover of all of Czechoslovakia proved them wrong. The German people were behind Hitler, and would witness untold death, destruction and horror in the following six years.
Now, a new madman is on the world stage. His name is Kim Jong-un, the latest in a dynasty of dictators who have ruled that unfortunate country since the takeover by his grandfather, Kim-Il-sung, in 1948. Many of the North Koreans are starving because the primary mission of that communist country has been to build up it’s military and confront it’s nearest non-communist neighbors, South Korea and Japan. Kim Jong-un controls a budding nuclear arsenal, and a formidable ground army with more than 150,000 cannons aimed at his southern neighbor and the 35,000 American troops serving on the so-called “demilitarized zone” south of the 38th parallel. He also is developing a series of ballistic missiles with ever increasing range capabilities. Now, they can reach South Korea and Japan. Soon, they will have intercontinental range to reach the United States.
Was United Airlines Wrong?
The recent incident concerning a United Airlines flight departing Chicago to Louisville, where a passenger was forcibly removed from the flight by security personnel raises some questions which need to be discussed and shared. I am going to insert a Federal Regulation below. Read it, digest it, and then I will continue.
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49 U.S. Code § 46504 – Interference with flight crew members and attendants
An individual on an aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States who, by assaulting or intimidating a flight crew member or flight attendant of the aircraft, interferes with the performance of the duties of the member or attendant or lessens the ability of the member or attendant to perform those duties, or attempts or conspires to do such an act, shall be fined under title 18, imprisoned for not more than 20 years, or both. However, if a dangerous weapon is used in assaulting or intimidating the member or attendant, the individual shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life.
(Pub. L. 103–272, § 1(e), July 5, 1994, 108 Stat. 1244; Pub. L. 107–56, title VIII, § 811(i), Oct. 26, 2001, 115 Stat. 382.)
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Who do you want?
On Palm Sunday, one of the holiest days in the Christian religion, over 40 people were killed and more than 100 injured, in the bombings of 2 Coptic Christian churches in Egypt. This is yet another example of the threat all non-Muslims face from that supposed “Religion of Peace”. Since the inception of Islam in the 7th century, Muslims have been killing each other due to the clash that developed between the Shia and Sunni factions of that faith. When they weren’t slaughtering each other, they were constantly engaged in attempts to force their system of life on others who they refer to as “Infidels”.
From the awful day of September 11, 2001, Americans have waited in vain for the “Moderate” Muslims to speak out against the excesses of the violent Jihadi’s, which we are told comprise only a small fraction of that religion. With the exception of a very, very few brave individuals, the silence has been deafening. In fact, the Quran, their bible, prohibits a Muslim from speaking against another Muslim.
So, while Muslims murder Christians around the Muslim world and elsewhere, we are told that we are racist or xenophobic if we don’t accept large number of Muslim “refugees” from various Middle East cesspools without being able to properly “vet” them due to many factors, including the lack of reliable documentation from failed states in the region.
It would seem more reasonable use our considerable influence to pressure the oil rich countries in the region to fund “safe zones” in the countries where the Muslim “refugees” come from, to be guarded by the armed forces of those of those Muslim nations. Then, we should allow the besieged Christians to enter our country, which still is predominately a Christian nation, regardless of what our previous president seemed to believe. Who do you want in this country?
Negotiating with madmen……..
From the beginning of the Obama administration in 2009, it was apparent that our new president had a very different view of the United States’ responsibilities with regard to world affairs. Obama viewed the U.S. as a quasi imperial power which had oppressed peoples around the world, rather than helped them. It was the view of an individual who felt personally demeaned by the system, when in truth he had been given incredible opportunities because of, not in spite of, his mixed race.
In Obama’s world, in order to correct all this countries’ faults and shortcomings, it would be necessary to “Fundamentally Transform America”, and he immediately set out to do just that. One of the first things he decided to transform was our military, and he was very successful in doing it. He drove out large numbers of very qualified and dedicated “warriors” and replaced them with politically correct individuals who would follow his directives, whether they were wise ones or not. From transsexuals being allowed to openly serve, to the withdrawal, using published timetables, of our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, to the recalling of our naval forces to their ports, the military was systematically weakened. Shocking statistics began to surface. Nearly two thirds of our Marine fighter aircraft are unfit for service. Many surface ships and submarines are desperately in need of routine maintenance and refitting. The size of our military has been reduced to a level smaller than at any time since prior to World War Two. Why should we worry about this? Well in the words of Ronald Reagan: “Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong”. Military weakness emboldens dictators and despots. Those who doubt this should take just a few minutes to study the Munich Accords of 1938. This disastrous agreement allowed sections of Czechoslovakia to be annexed by Germany on promises that would be the last demand by Adolph Hitler for territory. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain waved a copy of the accord before the newsreel cameras proclaiming that it guaranteed “Peace in our time”. Instead, less than a year later, German tanks rolled into Poland, starting the most costly conflict in human history. Weakness in the face of threats never ends well.
TWA 800 – Truth Or Conspiracy?
If you haven’t read my first four posts about the crash of TWA 800, do so now. It will give you the background to understand what is to follow.
Although flying on an airliner is a safe form of travel, perhaps the safest way to go long distances, the crash of an airliner is always front page news. Human nature has a macabre fascination with these tragic events. Although modern aircraft have become more and more automated, in the end it is the skill of the pilot-in-command and his crew which make the flight safe. The greatest fear of any pilot is that his aircraft will fail to perform as designed due to a mechanical failure. That’s why commercial aircraft are so meticulously maintained and inspected prior to each flight.
On that fateful early evening of July 17, 1996, Oliver Krick, the Flight Engineer in training, would have done a complete interior and exterior pre-flight inspection of the aircraft under the watchful eye of Dick Campbell, his Check Engineer. Some weeks later my wife and I had the sad task of representing the Airline Pilots Association at Oliver’s funeral in a suburb of Denver, Colorado.
Being an active TWA 747 pilot myself, I had a burning desire to find out what had happened to TWA 800. Only a few weeks earlier, I had flown that same aircraft on a flight from Athens to New York with my wife and daughter on board. With the exception of Oliver Krick who was new to the company, I knew virtually all of the crew members, cockpit and cabin, on the flight. So to me, it was personal. Because of that fact, I was all the more enraged as I saw the investigation suddenly and inexplicably reverse course and come up with a “Probable Cause” so bizarre as to be almost beyond comprehension. All of this due mainly to the actions of the FBI Agent in Charge, James Kallstrom, shown in a photo above standing in front of the reconstructed wreckage. He instituted a takeover of the accident investigation from the normal National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) protocols due to “suspected criminal activity”, and then intimidated and later made arrests which led to the prosecution of individuals who resisted that takeover, supposedly because they had attempted to interfere with the investigation, even after the crash had been deemed to have occurred due to a suspected but not proven mechanical malfunction! What possibly could have been his motivation to do this?
As explained in previous posts, I was at the time the ALPA Council Chairman for TWA Council 024, which represented all the international pilots at TWA. I made a formal request that I, along with the co-pilot and flight engineer representatives for the council, be allowed to view the wreckage as it was being reassembled in a hangar at Calverton, Long Island. Suddenly, the morning of our scheduled visit, permission was denied, although the families of the crew of USS Grapple, the salvage ship used to recover the wreckage from the sea floor, were being given a tour of the hangar the following afternoon! What possible reason could there be to deny us access? We were even denied the opportunity to talk to the members of the ALPA Accident Investigation Committee who were assisting with the examination of the wreckage, because we might “interfere” with the process. I pressed this issue, and began to discover how twisted the scenario was becoming.
FBI agents were removing items from the barges arriving from the Grapple without their being properly cataloged. When NTSB investigators protested, they were informed that the items were being taken to the FBI laboratories for “testing” and would be returned. There is no record that they ever were of course, because they hadn’t been properly cataloged in the first place. Cameras and film of the wreckage belonging to NTSB investigators were confiscated, and all non-FBI personnel were body searched for any items, even notes taken during the course of the day’s work, prior to leaving the hangar. As a result, ALPA team members had to be “debriefed” at their hotel after long days in the hangar, just to try to reconstruct what they had seen during that day’s work. This was unprecedented in anyone’s memory! Why was this happening?
I have never been a proponent of so-called “conspiracy theories”, but the extremely unusual circumstances surrounding this investigation leave little other solutions. I will give you my conclusions in a final upcoming post. I believe you will find them shocking and disturbing.