Friday Fish Wrap: September 18, 2009

Today, there was an article in Flying magazine that illustrates a terrible lesson. No matter how experienced, how intelligent and how old we are …

Relaxation of Vigilance by Peter Garrison, Flying, October 2009

“It was one of those fine, late-fall, California desert night: velvety-black, moonless and calm. The 182 tood off from the North Las Vegas Airport bound for Rosamond, California, which is in the Mojave Desert about 70 miles north of Los Angeles. The pilots aboard, two ATOPs who had logged between them 53,000 hours in military and civilian flying, possed ratings and qualifications for practically every kind of aerial conveyance. Their airplane was turbocharged, and equipped with an autopilot and a Garmin G1000 panel that could display, among many other things, a terrain map. They had filed a VFR flight plan to cruise at 10,500 feet and contacted Las Vegas Departure control shortly after taking off. Once in radar contact, the pilot left the frequency briefly to open the flight plan with Reno FSS; then returning to the departure control frequency, he exchanged a couple of routine transmissions with the controller.

The last radar return from the flight came about 13 minutes after takeoff. The 182 was at an altitude of 7,000 feet, climing steadily, with a ground-speed of 100 knots.

A police helicopter on patrol that evening observed an explosion near the summit of 8,500-foot Mount Potosi, 20 miles southwest of downtown Las Vegas. On the way to investigate, he saw several more fireballs ignite on the mountainside, and upon arriving at hte scene, he and his partner found that the cause was an airplane crash. The 182 had flown, apparently under control, into a nearly vertical rock face almost 1,000 feet below the summit of the mountain.

A curious aspect of this accident was that both pilots were prominent in the Civil Air Patrol, which searches for down pilots and aircraft. The left-seat pilot had been the CAP Nevada wing commander for several years; the second pilot was director of operations for the CAP Pacific Region. Neither pilot could have been unaware that the terrain around Las Vegas is mountainous.”

I got the call later in the evening, that my dear, dear friend had flown into a mountain, with another pilot who had just flown an aircraft into Las Vegas for, of all things, NASA.

And so, nearly two years and a lot of second guessing and speculation later, the final report from the NTSB is in.

For all the technology in our world today, the human factor is still the one that we can’t quite account for. I sat there and still asking myself “how in the hell…?”. It still hurts. Getting caught up in the gee-wizardry of complex GPS displays, air traffic controllers in the middle of a shift change. Neither man was a reckless or complacent pilot despite their years of experience. But, they were merely human.

This is a cautionary tale that I’ll carry with me always, and when I’m dangerously close to thinking that I’m always right, always smarter than the next person, and perhaps a bit invincible … I think of Dion and Ed. I get the dose of humility that I need.

It’s a hard fucking lesson, but it’s one that we could all reflect on more often.

Okay, now back to our regularly scheduled progamming….

I’ve just entered the Twilight Zone. That’s the only thing that can explain what I’m going to tell you next.

Bill ‘Windbag’ O’Reilly has just declared himself in favor of a ‘public option’. Yes, you read it right, now listen:

WTF?

Have I misjudged this sweet, if misguided, man all these years? This is what I mean by checking on your assumptions occasionally. But, has Bill actually stepped up and beyond the inflammatory rhetoric and ideologue distortions that have characterized this debate over providing fair, affordable health insurance to every American citizen that wants it?

Meanwhile, back at the health care ranch, nobody with half a brain is buying that Baucus bill, especially the Republicans who were locked in the same room with him. That should tell everybody what they need to know. DOA.

Ron Wyden, Democratic Senator from Oregon is proposing a voucher system as an amendment to the DOA Baucus bill. How lame is that? Ron, take a number right behind Sen. Conrad from North Dakota.

Vouchers have done such a great job at reforming education, that we ought to try it with - gasp! - healthcare. Not. Get a clue. The insurance lobby, as Wyden right claims, is responsible for blocking real reform ( now, there’s a brainstorm ) but fixing it with vouchers? Every employer would have to offer - gasp, again! - a choice of two plans? Whoa.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe has rightly discovered that the Republican Party that she joined so many years back has changed, and perhaps not for the better. Hmmmm, where have I heard this “I haven’t changed, my party has” line before? Arlen Specter?

Moving right along, the impotent rage expressed by the wingnut fringe seems to be wearing thin with more Americans than every. Maybe this was the plan all along. Wow. How devious. Think about it, to support Obama and real health care reform - including a public option - by going out in public and acting like a screaming ideologue nutcase.

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Don’t you have to wonder about the kind of business model being expressed by CNN and FOX News where they pander to the extremist nitwits of the nation, expecting those boneheads to have two cents to rub together and buy from their advertisers?

I’d be thinking about dumping any stock in CNN or Fox.

You have to wonder about big networks - CNN and FOX News with a business model that leans waaaaayyyyy over to the nutcase fringe, apparently to the exclusion of normal Americans. Do they think that people who really believe that Obama is not an American citizen have the dollars to buy anything other than ShamWow?

Oh, well, that about it for the week.

I bagged out of the workplace early today and went for a mental health retreat - camera and hiking boots - up in the Mt. Rose meadows. It’s really nice just before sunset. I highly recommend it. It’s way better than grunting and sweating in a stinky gym.

Oh, and I want to wish a very happy birthday to my sweet sister-in-law, Joan. Have a great day!

So sit and relax. Have a glass of wine.

I’ll let myself out.

Round two: Stewart vs. Cramer. Stewart wins on points

One of my esteemed local Nevada bloggers, Ann Onn Everything,suggested the other day that Jon Stewart may have taken advantage of poor old Jim Cramer Thursday night on his Daily Show - worth noting, on Comedy Central. Get that - Comedy Central, not PBS.

I don’t often watch this show,so I had to pull it up on the web, but before I could do that, my darling daughter called to tell me about this funny interview between Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer. Ronda is a graduate of the Reynolds School of Journalism at UNR, and was for a time, one of Reno’s news talking heads, then producer. She’s not naive when it comes to this sort of exchange. She thought it hysterical.

Needless to say, perhaps, I ran right in and pulled it up. Yup. Funny stuff, alright - made even funnier when Cramer went on Martha Stewart earlier in the day to bake a pie. And, she was the one who did jail time?

Here’s where we get into trouble: one network is selling snake oil and tells us so up front, the other doesn’t. I know, when I watch Bill Maher, that he’s going to be snarky and not particularly gracious. That’s why we tune in. Comedians can tell us things about ourselves from behind the clown nose and red shoes - ala the court jester of old - that we would kill other messengers for.

It’s what I’ve been saying for several years now, that the 24/7 news cycle is a enormous sucking black hole that must be filled or fed  ala Jabba the Hutt, and not always with hard hitting factual journalism. Once in a while P. T. Barnum steps in, all filled with authority, intensity and hyperbole- dressed like Jim Cramer and his cohorts.

I thought Stewart was being pretty gracious, considering, and said up front that he wasn’t holding Cramer responsible for what CNBC - and practically every other for profit news and infotainment outlet has been pumping up the investing publics’ backside for several years now - thinly disguised as the straight skinny and the real deal.

I do give Jim Cramer points for having the balls to show up on The Daily Show, but it takes a set of brass ones to do the show that he does every day - perhaps that shouldn’t be seen as anything particularly special in the way of character. But don’t take my word for it. Watch for yourself:

An on-air television feud between “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart and CNBC’s Jim Cramer has sparked debate about media coverage of the current economic crisis. CBS News’ Jeff Greenfield reports.

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Sorry, but I don’t think anybody is buying the ‘poor old Jim Cramer thing’, and rightly so. It’s time somebody called him - and the media- on it.

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