The Flight 19 Tragedy

On Dec. 5, 1945, only a few months after the end of World War II, the U.S. Navy suffered its worst peacetime aviation disaster, the loss of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers on a routine training mission off the Florida coast as well as a PBM Martin Mariner, which exploded and crashed during the search for the Avengers.

All 14 airmen plus 13 on the search plane were lost.

You can read more about the disaster here and here.

Author Larry Kusche, an Arizona State University professor and a native of Racine, has written a book entitled The Disappearance of Flight 19 explaining his theory of what eventually happened to the flight. Kusche focuses on the flight leader, Lt. Charles Taylor, a WWII hero, who in the process of the routine training mission may have become disoriented as to their location. The conclusion is that the pilots kept flying east with Taylor thinking he was west of Florida until they ran out of fuel and crashed at sea.

Another author, Gian J. Quasar, wrote a book entitled They Flew Into Oblivion in which he argues a different theory, namely that the flight made its way back to land and crashed into the Okefenokee Swamp along the Georgia-Florida border.

Flight 19 has become part of the Bermuda Triangle legend and a reference even made its way into Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which speculates an alien abduction of the flight crews.

Why Aren’t You Hiring?

From Gary Varvel via Townhall.com:

This Type Of SEAL Clubbing Lefty Approved

The three Navy SEALs that are being persecuted prosecuted by the Obama administration for alleged jihadist abuse face stiff punishment.

(CNSNews.com) – The Navy Seals facing court martial for the alleged abuse of a terror suspect arrested for killing four Americans face up to a year in military confinement, discharge for bad conduct, and forfeiture of two-thirds of their pay for a year, if convicted, according to defense attorneys.
 
Further, their attorneys said that the possibilty that they would not be able to cross-examine their clients’ accuser would be grounds for dismissing the case. 

The accuser, Ahmed Hashim Abed, is the alleged architect of the murder of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004. The bodies of the four Americans were burned and hanged from a bridge for display.

The three Navy Seals–Matthew McCabe, Jonathon Keefe, and Julio Huertas–will be arraigned on Monday in Norfolk, Va. They are facing a special court martial–which is equivalent to a misdemeanor charge–and have each denied the allegations of abuse and cover-up.

The show trials are due to begin in January. Once again, I have absolutely no empathy for this jihadist POS whatsoever. What they did to those Americans was indefensible. Killed them, burned them, skinned them and then hung their bodies from a bridge.

And this guy got a bloody lip which may very well have come from the Iraqis?

All this while the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks will get his very own show trial complete with being granted the constitutional rights of a U.S. citizen, many of which could lead to his case being dismissed or an outright acquittal.

F*** you very much, Eric Holder and Barack Hussein Obama. Your aims are clear: put America on trial as much as possible.

Racial Quotas For Doctors

This would seem to fit into the concept of government-run health care.

Racial quotas for doctors.

Our Lord and Savior’s surgeon general doesn’t think there are enough minority doctors in America.

Atlanta (al-AP) – The new U.S. Surgeon General on Thursday called for stepped-up efforts in increasing the number of minority physicians.
 
In what was one of her first speeches to a large crowd since she was sworn in Nov. 3, Dr. Regina Benjamin noted that the proportion of U.S. physicians who are minorities is only 6 percent — the same proportion as a century ago.
 
“There’s something wrong with that,” said Benjamin, speaking at a conference on health disparities at a hotel in downtown Atlanta.

Excuse me but as long as my doctor is competent, I don’t care what his skin color or ethnic background. Right now, my doctor is of Indian descent. My previous doctor was black. Only reason I left him was he was affiliated with WFH-All Saints and I had received such awful care in the emergency room over an injury, I went back to Aurora Health Care and my previous physician.

But … welcome to the world of health care when (notice I didn’t say “if”) the government is running it. They will determine doctors’ rate of pay in addition to what area of specialty they can enter (watch for the limited number of specialists and more GPs).

Now, watch the racial quotas that will come from Washington.

The Global Village Idiot

I Miss W.

How’s that “Hope and Change” thing workin’ out for ya?

Washington Gunman Shot, Killed

Good news: Maurice Clemmons has assumed room temperature. Taken the Eternal Dirt Nap, as a result of a shootout with police. DRT (Dead Right There).

Seattle police shot and killed the fugitive suspected of gunning down four officers in a suburban coffee shop, a sheriff’s spokesman said Tuesday.

Maurice Clemmons was shot to death after a “very alert patrol officer” tracked down a stolen vehicle linked to him, Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County sheriff, told Fox News.

Clemmons, 37, is suspected of murdering the four Lakewood police officers at a cafe Sunday morning in Parkland, a Tacoma suburb about 35 miles south of Seattle.

He was killed in a working-class neighborhood after police found him with the help of information about possible hiding spots, Troyer said.

“Shots were fired,” Troyer told “Fox & Friends” Tuesday. “We’re very happy that the Seattle police officer is OK. … This could have turned out a lot worse.”

Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39, and Officers Ronald Owens, 37, Tina Griswold, 40, and Greg Richards, 42, were the victims of Sunday’s shooting spree.

Troyer told Fox police arrested three people overnight on suspicion of rendering criminal assistance. The suspected getaway driver also was caught early Tuesday morning, about 6:30 a.m., he said at a briefing.

More arrests are coming, Troyer vowed.

“We’re also looking at family members who aided and abetted in his escape,” he told reporters. “They did everything they could to hamper our investigation. We expect to have six to seven people in custody by day’s end.”

Good. At least taxpayers won’t have to support the cop killer the rest of his pathetic life.

Neal Boortz echoes that sentiment here:

Bottom line … this bastard is dead and gone. That’s a good thing.

There’s a fifth victim, by the way. Mike Huckabee’s presidential ambitions.

Michelle Malkin has ongoing coverage here.

Also, via Dan Riehl, is the Seattle Times’ look at just how the criminal justice system broke down to the point that Clemmons was out of prison and able to gun down those four cops. And, no, it isn’t just Huckabee’s fault. There’s plenty of blame in Washington, too.

Over four days in May, Maurice Clemmons’ behavior and mental state deteriorated. Family members worried he had gone crazy, that he was verging on collapse. His conduct became so erratic — punching a sheriff’s deputy, forcing relatives to strip naked, according to police reports — that authorities eventually charged him with eight felonies, including one count of child rape.

Still, at the end of those four days, Clemmons wound up on the loose — a delusional man with a propensity for violence, who had managed to escape the grip of authorities.

What happened in those four days — and in the months that followed — reflects a system governed by formula and misguided incentives.

That legal system, both in Arkansas and Washington, failed to account for the entirety of Clemmons’ violence and his disdain for the law. Individual crimes, viewed in isolation, trumped a long and disturbing pattern of warning signs.

As a result, Clemmons walked out of jail Nov. 23. A week later, he was on the run again — this time accused of shooting and killing four Lakewood police officers in a Parkland coffee shop, in one of the most horrific crimes in Puget Sound history.

Read the whole thing. A lot of heads need to roll to show some some accountability, but it’s not likely to happen. Remember: it’s a government operation.

More also from Robert Stacy McCain, who notes in reference to the string of people who aided and abetted Clemmons while he was on the lam:

That anyone would help a cop-killer is incredible. But Mumia Abu-Jamal is a hero to liberals everywhere, so why not?

Odds on how long it will take for the Justice Brothers — The Reverend Jackson and The Reverend Al Sharpton — to show up to protest the “police brutality” displayed toward Clemmons?