Hazy towing yesterday

Hazy day towing yesterday, but cool sight of Mt Diablo rising above the haze.

Lots of flying though... 21 tows, 22 takeoffs and landings. Each landing being successful. :-) That is always good. Especially since the towplane was out of annual and shouldn't have been flying, legally. We discovered that at the end of the day while doing paperwork. OOPS! No glider flying today. I wish I had noticed it before we started, then I would have spent the day working on the towplane to prep it for the annual. Not that I didn't like flying yesterday but my license being at risk if something had happened wasn't good.

Around the pattern in the plane

Tax and spend Democrats…

This is raw data from the Treasury Department. Ever since Regan, the national debt accelerates whenever a Republican president takes office. And with Bush-2, it really shot up, the 300 to 400 Billion of the war not 10% of the increase. The saying seems to be true. “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” We need balance of power. Accountability. Oversight. Looking forward to it returning on Tuesday!

Notice the Democrat president with Republican congress had the budget balanced at the end of Clinton’s term. The cost of Bush-2 and a Do Nothing congress has been higher than most probably know. $2 Trillion.

Charity Flying today - Saw some whales

Flew 6 loads of strangers in my plane today for the Nintey-Nines. They were having a fundraiser for their scholarship program today at the Watsonville airport. It was WVI's open house also.

• Augustis and his mom - he has a pilot's license and works for UA in SF, wants to return to flying... nice guy.
• Maverik and his grandpa. Little 7 yr old, hard to see over the panel and may have been getting a little sick.
• Dubie and a guy with a kid in a car seat. Kid was sound asleep when we landed and didn't wake up when we hauled him out of the back. A bit young for airplane rides.
• A mom with two girls... remember no names. Girls sat in back and chattered away, I had to turn off their intercom to me. A bit of whining and lost hair in headset. Mom flew for a few minutes, her son had flown with me in Young Eagles a few months ago.
• Patrick and grandma and sis... sis was scared but got over it until I gave the control wheel over to little Patrick. But they had a good time.
• The Three Amigos... three big guys in late teens/early twenties, the load master lady was a little worried about how heavy they were but I was low on fuel and I figured they wouldn't be a problem weight/cg wise... they were fun. Lots of questions and kidding of each other, easy to talk to, interested... best flight of the day

On most of the flights I could see a whale off the coast near the concrete ship near Seacliff beach. I don't know if it was the same one or a pod of them but they were always in the same spot.

Also flew Bram for a quick flight to find the whale and let him fly the plane again. He had helped all day at the open house and then helped me clean and bed down the plane afterward.

Forgot my damn camera, no pictures.

Marketplace: Frozen Assets

Marketplace: Frozen Assets

This is getting scary, the arctic fisheries losing their stock, with it moving more north due to global warming. On top of the over fishing going on. We are doomed!

Letter to a Christian Nation (Book) :: Sam Harris

Letter to a Christian Nation (Book) :: Sam Harris: "Forty-four percent of the American population is convinced that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead sometime in the next fifty years. According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry here on earth. It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen—the return of Christ. It should be blindingly obvious that beliefs of this sort will do little to help us create a durable future for ourselves—socially, economically, environmentally, or geopolitically. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency."

The Blog | Bob Geiger: September War Dead the GOP Wants You to Forget | The Huffington Post

The Blog Bob Geiger: September War Dead the GOP Wants You to Forget The Huffington Post

"With just six weeks until the 2006 midterm elections, one would never know to look at the media -- or by where the White House or Republican Congress direct their focus -- that the United States is still involved in a bloody war that has continued almost as long as our country's entire involvement in World War II. September 20 marked three years and six months since America invaded Iraq under the pretense of weapons of mass destruction and the imminent threat the Bush administration claimed Saddam Hussein posed to us.

All of that and the contrived links between Iraq and Osama bin Laden have since been proven false and yet no oversight or investigations have been performed by the Republican-led, do-nothing Congress and, to watch the news and the actions of the GOP in Washington, one could easily miss how much American and Iraqi blood is still being shed for nothing.

Almost 2,700 Americans troops have been killed in Iraq and 20,000 have been wounded -- many with limbs missing and life-changing brain injuries -- and Iraqi civilians continue to die at a horrifying clip that I guess, at this point, is just too boring for the American media to cover.

It must be nice for Team Bush to be able to start a war for no reason, be responsible for such hideous, ongoing violence and not be held accountable by Congress or an American press that, amazingly, some idiots still have the nerve to say operates with a liberal bias. Do the American people want to be so numb to all of this that they simply forget our troops are in the middle of a civil war, on a mission that does not have -- nor did it ever have -- a damn thing to do with our national security?"

Crooks and Liars » Major General John Batiste opening at the Hearing on Rummy

Crooks and Liars » Major General John Batiste opening at the Hearing on Rummy

I want this guy for President. He says many of the things I have been thinking.

Fog

Fog over Watsonville... 9/11/06 Fog... connecting Iraq with WOT.

Only one Young Eagles flight today for 44D, I killed the battery on the plane taxiing back by not turning off the landing light. Couldn't start the engine for the next flight. Had to tow the plane back to the tiedown with the truck. Very embarrasing. But the boy paid me the greatest compliment you can give a pilot. He said " huh? We landed? We are on the ground? I didn't know we landed!" Very funny, I may have laughed too much at him. But it was a pretty good landing... except I forgot to turn off the landing light. 

Lebanon and Israel

I wrote this on 1 August to some people I mostly don't know about the mess in Lebanon before the fighting ended.

The whole stinking mess is mind boggling to me. Being atheist, the place has no meaning to me, I just see millions of people fighting to the death over some ancient fairy tales that shouldn’t be told to kids beyond kindergarten. Of course Hezbollah hides behind civilian structures, they’d be crazy to go out into the open and get spanked by the Israeli army. Besides, they think anyone dying in the cause will go to heaven, women, children, armed men. At least that’s what their leaders say from the safety of their hideouts. The Israelis on the other hand somehow think that they can defeat them with force. They have been trying for how many years now? I bet they have created many more new Hezbollah recruits than they have killed. When will they learn they have to have some meaningful dialog? But the religious extremists on the Jewish side are as bad as the Muslim extremists, pressuring to get the most they can, compromising as little (if any) as possible.

Bush’s pathetic “sustainable cease fire” policy just drives me nuts. If I were a real cynic, I’d say here are the Christians egging on the Jews and Muslims to fight it out and solve the issue once and for all. But I am not quite ready to believe that. More likely it is just plain and simple incompetence by Bush’s inner circle. The silence from congress is pretty deafening. And the press is just orgasmic over a new war that is nice and safe to cover, unlike Iraq.

There are a lot of reasonable smart people involved in this mess. If only they could get past the past and give the people something to believe in besides religion. Israel is going to be in the same boat we are, rebuilding a country they bombed into the past century and no body thanking them for it. It is going to cost their children much of their future like our children will be paying for Iraq for decades.

Sorry to bring up the big religion taboo. It isn’t polite. It isn’t friendly. And most of you don’t even know who I am. But people are dying in the name of it. In my humble opinion needlessly, stupidly, criminally.

Tom
End faith. Get rid of the old fairy tales, embrace reason, question until you understand, demand evidence. Faith will kill us.

Airplane ride for Anna

Anna and Liz riding in the plane. Good time last Sunday. 

Bloggermann: Feeling morally, intellectually confused? - Bloggermann - MSNBC.com

Bloggermann: Feeling morally, intellectually confused? - Bloggermann - MSNBC.com: "Aug. 30, 2006 8:34 p.m. ET
Feeling morally, intellectually confused?

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.
Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.
Mr. Rumsfeld?s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis?and the sober contemplation?of every American."

Wankers

I had this pair of bumper stickers on my car for about an hour when some old coot in a Caddy passes me on the highway giving me the finger. I pass him a little bit further and he really gives it to me again when he re-passes me. I just laughed at him. And showed him my finger. 

LiveScience.com - U.S. Lags World in Grasp of Genetics and Acceptance of Evolution

LiveScience.com - U.S. Lags World in Grasp of Genetics and Acceptance of Evolution: "U.S. Lags World in Grasp of Genetics and Acceptance of Evolution

By Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 10 August 2006
02:01 pm ET



A comparison of peoples' views in 34 countries finds that the United States ranks near the bottom when it comes to public acceptance of evolution. Only Turkey ranked lower.
Among the factors contributing to America's low score are poor understanding of biology, especially genetics, the politicization of science and the literal interpretation of the Bible by a small but vocal group of American Christians, the researchers say.
?American Protestantism is more fundamentalist than anybody except perhaps the Islamic fundamentalist, which is why Turkey and we are so close,? said study co-author Jon Miller of Michigan State University."

Yep...