Par Avion, American Style

 Special Delivery:  The almost surreal view of a gyrocopter piloted by a postman into Washington during daylight was probably the most captivating air show to hit D.C. since infamous nighttime UFO encounters over the nation's Capitol in the summer of 1952, except this time there was no military pursuit.

Aside from a cacophony from officials about a 61-year-old's criminal act, we also recall a faint memory of a time when Americans were overwhelmingly adventurous, accomplishing feats of daring because action was necessary and somebody had to do the dirty work.  Americans weren't John Wayne then -- they were the very characters portrayed by Wayne and other cinematic heroes of a bygone era.

We still have heroes, but in so many more instances today otherwise able-minded men and women

ignore the dangers, the necessities, and instead live out their days on the sofa, consumed by fast food, belches and endless farts as electronic images of people manipulating balls into holes are championed by drunken and numbed crowds going senselessly wild.

Okay, so postman Doug Hughes of Florida decided to attempt something positive instead of merely "going postal."   And it wasn't as if his Washington visit was a surprise, because his intentions were firm with a newspaper reporter and, allegedly (?), a call to D.C. officials in advance.

Civil disobedience often means doing the wrong thing to accomplish the right thing.  And there are consequences.  But up to four years in prison for this?   Not a day.  Instead, give Hughes congratulations for exposing chinks in our protective armor regarding access to supposedly safe areas in D.C.

Via airmail -- his personal airmail -- his intent was to deliver individual letters to each and every member of the House of Representatives, all about the need for campaign finance reform.  In person in the people's place.

Or what used to be the people's place.  Actually, I saw his little escapade as representing so much more, symptomatic of a government which no longer listens to or follows the will of its constituents, thus necessitating a communication style more in their faces.  Yes, a House, a Senate and a president all doing their own thing, and rarely caring a whit about our concerns.  Did the American people want "Obamacare?"  Did the American people want illegal immigrants, their diseases and terrible costs to our welfare, health, correctional and education systems shoved down their throats?  Did the American people want the EPA dictating everything they can do in their communities, almost right down to a blade of grass on one's own property?  Of course not.  So maybe it takes the intrusion of a one-man gyrocopter into D.C. to shake up the safe-house of a gaggle of some damned worthless and overpaid so-called public servants perpetually dodging the public, yet looking pretty for the news cameras as they hide behind their finest attire adorned with American flag pins intended just to let us bask in the fantasy projecting that they're always on our side.

Yes, I know what Doug Hughes did was wrong by federal air standards -- but even the U.S. Postal Service should agree that mail by air beats first class delivery every time.

More deaths at the hands of police:   To reiterate -- no matter the circumstances, running from, resisting or physically attacking the cops is never wise.  The times they are a raging', and the reasons do not involve race.  Nevertheless, Obama's storm troopers are sure to initiate "official" investigations of several cases around the country, in search of racism rather than guilt among the dead..  In Oklahoma, a 73-year-old volunteer officer fatally shot a man with a gun he thought was his taser -- but say what the mainstream media leaves out.  The suspect ran and had apparently just been involved in selling an illegal gun.  How many lives were saved by stopping an illegal gun sale?  Yes, tragedy all around, but so many incidents could be avoided by following lawful orders and avoiding confrontations or escapes.  Our sympathy for dead suspects increasingly sours because nearly all of the recent lot caused provocation among cops, a reason for instant, albeit unintended disaster through the heat of the moment.  As for the suspect who may have died mysteriously from a cervical injury while secured in a police van -- believe it or not, self-injuries occasionally happen which cause death.  But we await the autopsy.

Climate changes, but the one-track political mind does not:   President Obama and his cackling groupies are out there again, mouthing the words, all the evidence is in and man-made climate change is real.  No, the evidence is based upon computer predictions, like a page out of some futuristic science fiction story written by a robot.  This sly showman can reverberate all he wants about the most this or that in "recorded history," but his version of recorded history doesn't reach back all that far.  Additionally, extreme periods of both cold and hot apparently extend way back before human influence -- and humans -- even existed.  As usual, the length of Obama's reach with executive orders depends upon the ignorance of his followers, of which there is plenty.  Would love to see this fraud and accompanying bunch in prison, but (sigh. . .) looks as though we'll be forced to continue counting the days until his term expires. 

Andrew Cuomo in Cuba:   New York's megalomaniac governor claims he went to Cuba to encourage trade between NY and Cuba, but we suspect he may have journeyed there at taxpayer expense to pick up tricks of the dictator trade from the Castro brothers, as Cuomo already rules NY as his own little empire.  In return, both iron-fist regulated businesses and overtaxed residents continue to flee the state as if running from a bedbug infestation.  Don't believe the slick TV commercials appearing nationally about New York's business-friendly climate.

Ted Cruz will be vilified by the mainstream media and his own party,  because he is genuine and honorable, not the typical career politician who begins to rot from the inside the moment he or she cozies up with D.C. parasites.   Cruz has intelligently argued nine cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, a definite plus as he makes a presidential bid.  If it is true that he is despised by most of his senate colleagues because he doesn't  think  conspire as they  think  conspire, so much the better.

Refugees flee Libya for a better life in Europe, precipitating tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea.  Yeah, and it's now documented that Muslims are throwing Christians overboard to their deaths simply because they are Christians.  As Muslims continue to overrun Europe, I hope our own politicians in the U.S. quickly and decisively put a hold on Muslim refugees coming here, because a significant portion surely have no intention of assimilating, and instead feel compelled to change or kill the rest of us.  Sorry USA, sorry world -- no more Mr. Nice Guy when it comes to the Muslim insurgency.  We can afford it neither strategically, economically, nor by way of common sense.  Do not accommodate an infection whose cure increasingly eludes our reach.

Dr. Oz under attack by medical morons and corporate thugs:   So-o-o-o-o-, now it comes to light that a team of "doctors" attacking Dr. Mehmet Oz and demanding his withdrawal from the board at Columbia University may own a rack of little personal closet skeletons.  Seems they and the corporate (government?) buddies to whom they're apparently joined at the hip were urinated because Oz wants food with GMOs labeled as such, and the public deserves to know.  Said to be non-practicing physicians, among these phonies is a doctor who served prison time for Medicaid fraud -- and a crackpot who claimed the nuclear disaster at Fukushima was beneficial because escaping radiation would cure cancer afflicting Japanese residents.  Oz is listed to explore all of this on his program this week (Thursday?), and if even half of what has gone viral is true, we hope he fries these folks' reputations with verbiage equivalent to hot olive oil.

On a similar note, it's bad enough that the doctor-patient relationship has effectively been crushed with the introduction of  cumbersome "Obamacare" regulations and the need for health care providers to bury their faces in computer screens with their hands attached to keyboards simultaneously, while patients become 10-minute office decorations regarded only for the moment.

Bassett Hounds

As we await The Second Greatest Show on Earth  (the first, of course was also a circus) via the pending public release of two slides allegedly, maybe, might just be showing pictures of UFO aliens photographed somewhere around the 1940s, I started wondering.  I wondered, if May's anticipated sideshow slide show in Mexico somehow turns out to provide little more than another boondoggle around the neck of serious UFO research, what's next?  If a disappointed audience shrugs off the grand unveiling for reasons either valid or not, will public attitude, particularly in the United States, pound another nail in the UFO investigative coffin, supplemented by a laugh or two?

Reluctantly, I've become accepting of observations that an explosion of drones in the sky will further doom that portion of UFO research which lacks funding and extended scientific involvement in the U.S. -- which bodes not well for private UFO organizations.  This, along with an increasingly secretive government, routinely unwilling to part with information, or even to acknowledge the existence of various documents and incidents, certainly won't help.  Sadly, we in America have reached a point where we seem little more than societal anathema to some of those sworn to serve the public interest.

Meanwhile, UFO lobbyist Stephen Bassett and others, long itching for UFO "disclosure," appear, disturbingly, to be pinning their hopes on what some assume will be a hands-down win for Hillary Clinton as president.  Bassett, concluding that election advisor John Podesta's recent UFO comments infer a possibility that Clinton would blow the lid on government UFO files, is quoted in  Mother Jones  of April 3:  ". . .it's already been announced publicly that (Podesta) is going to be a key adviser to the heir apparent to the White House, the de facto candidate. . ."

The  heir apparent?  I hold no ill will toward Bassett, but to prognosticate as the 2016 winner a member of the Clinton dynasty whose accomplishments in government add up to a pretty definite zero is disheartening, to say the least.  I can only speak for myself, but to look upon Clinton with a narrow view, embracing her only because she might influence UFO "disclosure," takes us down a very rocky road.  We can bring up Benghazi, the e-mail controversy, foreign financial donors and her involvement with helping cause chaos in the Middle East with Obama's terribly (criminally?) engineered "Arab Spring," certainly -- but anybody who remembers Hillary Clinton's dismal performance last time she participated in a presidential candidate debate should realize instantly that this failed "public servant" is a disaster for all seasons.  Whether practicing incompetency as Secretary of State or cruising along blandly as a U.S. Senator from New York prior to that, H. Clinton is and was no national heroine.  Stephen Bassett's obvious emotions of shock and awe over the mere possibility that he could commence lip-smacking if a Hillary Clinton presidency emerged  -- based only upon a slim chance that government UFO files would be exposed for all the world to see -- provide, in my humble opinion, a really, really unfortunate reason to drive down the busted and fragmented Clinton highway.

Don't get me wrong, I have always been a proponent for a scientific UFO investigation and public release of relevant government files, but sometimes my mind wanders to places unanticipated.  For instance, hundreds or thousands of years after all the information we foolishly store on electronic media has faded away, wouldn't it be a hoot if whatever critter succeeds humans explores Earth's "ancient" libraries and finds, foremost, remnants of books written by UFO contactees -- those denizens of bonkers land who distorted, yet raised the UFO issue long before science would even begin to dirty its hands with the subject?  Despite the arduous efforts of serious UFO researchers, I could imagine explorers of the future -- whether the hybrid descendants of humans or visitors from elsewhere -- discovering the "works" of George Adamski, Orfeo Angelucci, Buck Nelson and other contactees of the era, and coming to a very puzzling, but apparent and quite erroneous conclusion regarding public knowledge and impressions about the UFO subject.  Fair-haired maidens from Mars?  Travelers from Venus?  Yes, indeed, explorers of the future may assume that our solar system was a busy little social club during earlier times -- though total fiction, thanks purely to the fact that science avoided the UFO issue and allowed the contactees to be first on the planetary block to claim ownership of the phenomenon.

Hillary seeks the zombie vote.   Frankly, we can't imagine anybody else who would vote for Hillary Clinton, knowing what we do about her.  But she, the ossified candidate, made the announcement Sunday, preceded in days past by questions such as, isn't it time for a woman to become president?  Yes, it is, but not you,  H.R.C.  She had her chance last time, she blew it in the debates -- and will likely repeat her incompetence during the next series of debates.   I once admired the Clintons, but a Clinton political dynasty, like a Bush political dynasty, performs no favors for the U.S. voter.  Both Hillary and Jeb need to go away and maybe volunteer at animal shelters or something.  At any rate, Hillary's subdued announcement via the social network signifies one more social disease inside the tent of a faded clown show.

New free UFO books online:   The free online books section at nicap.org (see link) has added two exceptional books of the past from Richard F. Haines, in .pdf format.  I’m very pleased about these additions because Haines is solidly on the side of science, and I respect his work enough to have previously reviewed each volume for  Pursuit,  journal of the now very, very defunct Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained (SITU).  “Free” is an exceptional bargain here, and you should find the other books listed of interest as well.

Tattoo who?   Hey, great news!  The Army will now allow tattoos in places where military folk couldn't have them before, though the face and other minimal areas remain off limits.  Who should have tattoos?  People enamored with the fact that police agencies the world over love tattoos, allowing speedy identification of perps via creative body artwork. 

The Rolling Stone rolls into a lawsuit.   Having dealt with editors as a writer myself, editors who sometimes irritated me simply because they were doing their jobs, it's almost beyond comprehension that  Rolling Stone,  right down the line, failed to fact-check an incredibly horrifying story of campus fraternity rape at the University of Virginia that didn't happen.  Adding to this outrage, various feminists and barnyard chicken cluckers defend the situation, pleased in blissful ignorance that it somehow brings focus to the issue of rape on campus.  Rolling Stone,  a magazine I once subscribed to and read for years, is poised to be sued, and sued its responsible parties should be.  We wonder if a little part of this scandal's birth relates to an attempt to resurrect interest in a magazine industry in rapid decline.

Good cops, bad cops, psycho cops, just cops:   We live in troubled times, while law enforcement personnel on the streets dwell increasingly in a world of public nightmares.  Some of this relates directly to a race-baiting Dept. of Justice exploding out of control under Obama and Holder, an influx of border-jumping criminal trash and a general attitude among those who care nothing about law and order that the time is right to raise hell.  As never before, cops live on the edge, and for a suspect of any variety to fight, run away or cause a disturbance when pulled aside by an officer of the law is a dangerously careless idea.  This is an era when split-second decisions are made by cops and, unfortunately, on rare occasion responses by police turn out to be reprehensible.  Nevertheless, though many believe cameras and other recording equipment will make law enforcement better for suspects, the downside is that cops will have one more object to carry on their uniforms and one more reason to linger over making a hair-trigger decision -- thus putting their own lives in danger -- of  should I or shouldn't I?  Cops, our only neighborhood barriers between the daily good and bad. We hope never to have to ask, why would anybody want to be a cop?  In the meantime, we suspect that those who currently shout the loudest against police in general have a little something of a personal agenda.

He doesn't care how you remember him, as long as you remember him.   President Obama seems ever so rushed to sweep up a legacy, and if he can't do it with Iran he'll try Cuba, hazards notwithstanding.  Iran's ayatollah and its other radical Islamic criminals who brutally keep the Iranian people under their vicious thumb, while obviously determined to destroy Israel and targets of opportunity with nuclear supremacy, have already performed a backstroke on an agreement, certain to make Obama and Kerry look like fools.  Cuba?  Yes, it's time for changes, but I can't get away from watching video of Obama shaking hands with Raoul Castro, pondering how much happier Obama might be if Venezuela's Chavez were still alive and in attendance.  Somehow, the three would look so -- so  natural  standing together, all kissy-face, with so much in common as leaders of three subdued populations.   We sure hope Barack Obama feels comfy with his eventual legacy of horrors, thrills, chills or absurdities because he may be the only one experiencing the warm and fuzzy.  But we'll hope for the best.

Own the Skies, Meet the Alps

I suppose people walk the Earth who assume that just because an egg has no evidence of a crack, it can't be rotten inside.  No, I'm not referencing the Obama bunch -- that floating egg rolled into the White House, replete with an uninterrupted series of cracks and rot on day one.

Andreas Lubitz, Germany's 27-year-old co-pilot for  Lufthansa's  subsidiary,  Germanwings  until introducing himself, his passengers, crew and fuselage to a crash meeting with the French Alps last week, apparently hid the fact that he was one sick puppy.  How many medications, prescribed or not, was he wolfing down (or, again, not) which might have driven him over a perilous edge? 

Or have  new brains  rolled into town?

This, I mention because I've spent some time over the years, casually checking ages on various news reports, where the guilty or the foolish often carry an age of 27 or 28.  Just as some researchers suggest that young brains are being reprogrammed due to frequent interaction with electronic devices and extensive involvement in video games, I wonder whether a new attitude of devil-may-care has taken over some minds.  To elaborate, one's sense of reality may be altered, perhaps causing even a young pilot to sacrifice his exceptional responsibility in the skies for simmering anger, video gaming from his past or a dark intruder conjured from the subconscious.  Maybe existence, death and life themselves, become one and the same for a brief time, and smashing a plane and its occupants into a mountain range just doesn't matter.  Rage?  Psychosis?  An individual's future of doing what he likes at stake?  Just an immature little twit, now alleged to have been a fan of gay and twisted sex and suicide Web sites?    Make 'em pay?

Looks like, make 'em pay.

New brains in a little place, undetectable on any map, called  Crazytown? 

Lubitz's action could be as simple, as is now suggested, as a young man making an ill-advised decision to gain international fame forever as a monster, rather than trying to survive as a master pilot whose dark side and maladies (including depression and visual problems) would eventually be discovered by airline management, probably to his detriment.  Notes from the doctor, telling you no, no, no?  Screw it, that's what shredders are for, to accentuate life's palette with drab hues of yes, yes, yes.  Feeling better?  Go be famous.  Make 'em pay as you go away, far away.

Don't rule out mechanical airplane failure , suggest critics.  Well, failure can cover a lot of ground.

How casual some people have become, insistent upon ending their dreams in the violence of an instant, yet having the presence of mind to depart with unwilling companions, no questions asked.

Funny how instant gratification often goes better than instant disappointment.  Pop some pills or tweak your mind until it falls off the track, and suddenly your brain flips onto automatic pilot.  Maybe.

Flight lessons.  Youth. Computers and hand-held devices and electronic living.  Other people and failed or impossible relationships.  Psychologists and psychiatrists and this-ists and that-ists. 

Which came first, the chicken or the cracked egg?

Yes, brains seem to be changing, and who would dare suggest these evolving alterations will provide a virtue for the era yet to arrive?

Okay, yeah, so make sure other countries do like the USA and have two people in the cockpit at all times, and then if one goes nuts the other can go frantic trying to avoid the hatchet aimed for his or her head.  Then again, what if the pilot and co-pilot are both bonkers and they decide to take the plunge together?  So then you add a third person to keep an eye on the first two, who then kill the third person so they can get on with their mutual suicidal plan, or the third person turns out to be secretly nuts and murders the other two with said hatchet.  Dunno, maybe you just take the cabin door off its hinges and throw it out the emergency exit while in flight so the whole plane full of passengers can attempt to enter and monitor the two pilots, though one doubts emergency oxygen masks will reach that far.  But could the situation be any worse without the protective door, since terrorists now seem the least of everybody's worries in the sky?

Won't you come home Bill Bailey, Bo Bergdahl,  won't you come home?   If you're on the youthful side, you won't know these were lyrics from a popular old -- real old -- song.  I thought it appropriate to make the name change because the U.S. Army deserter is indeed home now, having languished and/or lived it up with the Taliban for four years, following his desertion in the Middle East which ultimately caused the deaths of four servicemen who attempted to locate and save him.  I'm grateful there are still enough judicial gonads left in the stateside Army under Obama's horrifying guidance to speak the truth and call Bergdahl out for what he is, a deserter.  We suspect he will get life or a few years in prison, but we also suspect he'll be back out on the streets sooner than we imagine, whether by trick or treat.  Remember, the Obama bunch's darling, Susan Rice initially referred to Bergdahl as serving his country with "honor and distinction," and if that were true in any way, I guess those standards would make me eligible for the Congressional Medal of Honor, with my statue in the town square just because I served for four years.  Thing is, if Bergdahl ever gets released back into American society -- or deservedly remanded for life to the federal prison system -- he'll have to watch his back because there are always folks out there who believe it their sacred duty to settle up, depending upon the circumstances, and I think those groups or individuals represent both the civilian and undercover government aspects of life.  Far-fetched?  Be sure of one thing:  I'll bet there exists, right now, one hell of a community of soldiers wishing they could give Bergdahl a good old-fashioned party -- that is, a blanket party.  With ice on the rocks.

The pope will crash the United States in September, and then buddy up with Obama to urge more immigration and, obviously, increased taxpayer payoffs to the world's unwashed.  My preference?  Let the pope in, feed him one of those pizzas he craves, have a few laughs, put him up at a Motel 6 for a day, wave goodbye and then send him off to Mexico where they'll love him for everything he said that's destined to cost U.S. taxpayers.  (The best thing the pope can do here and everywhere is to emphasize the ongoing murders by the hundreds of thousands of defenseless Christians by Islamists dedicated to the brutality of Islam the world over.)

As next year's elections draw near, make it a point NOT to donate to either the Democrat or Republican parties.  Instead, contribute to the candidates of your choice, dealing directly with their specific donor Web sites.  Increasingly, Americans are through with political party power, money and influence.  Look where it's taken us.

Back home in Indiana:   Today seems to be mine for quoting old song titles, but this one's suitable because Indiana's  "Religious Freedom Restoration Act"  signed by Governor Mike Pence has all the usual suspects in an uproar.  Based upon laws in several other states -- and reportedly drawn from legislation originally introduced by Lord Obama himself -- a plethora of morons who believe in teaching tolerance until they're the ones who need the learnin' themselves are just peeing their pants over this one.  The Especially Offended seem to be those who care little or nothing about an individual's constitutional rights, and they seem all the more terrified because other states may yet follow with legislation that wouldn't be necessary at all if the voices of morons screaming  discrimination  weren't so prevalent.  The truth is, there is no discrimination involved with the new law and, if anything, it strives to prevent discrimination and assure fairness.

However, for some the issue is whether a bakery owned by folks with legitimate religious beliefs should be forced to sell wedding cakes for gay ceremonies.  If they refuse, as has already happened, the government lawsuits emerge and outrageous fines are levied upon store owners simply for standing up when religious convictions butt heads with courtroom convictions.

All the fuss over what constitutes discrimination became heightened after the gay issue took center stage.  I admit, without reservation, that I myself supported and wrote letters to officials in support of gay people serving in the military.  I did this not because of some crazy notion about destroying the military -- I did it because I've served in the military and realize all too well that (surprise!) gay men and women already serve proudly, effectively and, I've little doubt, in substantial numbers.  Thing is, until military laws were changed, there were few willing to come out of the uniformed closet.  As 2015 breezes on, and last I heard, the openly gay thing has not ruined the U.S. military services.  Nor has it in other countries long welcoming of gay military personnel.

But here's where I differ.  When homosexuals and gay subjects began sprouting all over the country like wildflowers a few years ago, particularly when the gay military matter was settled, the wisest thing gay people could have done was to play it low-key, not instead -- and I know this was only the vocal minority -- throwing the whole gay world into everybody's face and, not to sound obscene, grinding it in as if with sandpaper.  This approach gained little sympathy among heterosexuals, but certainly outraged many among the public who would have been more or less okay with the situation except for the loud, boisterous bunch insisting upon instant acceptance 24/7, dedicated to shotgun pronouncements of equality somehow beyond equality.

Years ago, the morning mail brought some little ad from a group seeking donations, and they sent along a sheet of name & address labels upon which the words,  Teach Tolerance  appeared on the left side of each tiny sticker.  No, I didn't contribute, but I did cut those words off and used the labels, anyway.  I think I trashed the tolerance words because they reminded me too much of  diversity training,  which, to my mind, exists primarily to frighten, intimidate, grow racial divisions and attempt to convince good people that they need to feel inferior and act subservient  in order to get along with people who, truth be told, may not deserve so much as an ounce of respect.  

We hope the new law in Indiana will go a long way toward providing real fairness, and lessen threats from people who have no other function in life but to sue because they feel perpetually wronged by way of fantasy synapses emerging from their own bonkers brain tissue.

Oh, and Iran is not our friend.   (I just wanted to reaffirm an elementary principle apparently still undetected at the White House.)