Air Force settles with New Jersey school for accidental strafing

A couple of years ago there was a training accident that could have been devestating had it occurred in daylight hours. An Air Force F-16 strafed the Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School putting 27 rounds of 20mm training ammo into the school. Even though these shells were inert training rounds (meaning, they carry no incendiary charges) then could have been quite deadly had school been in session. According to the report, 8 of those 27 rounds actually made it all the way through the school roof, knocking out ceiling tiles in the halls and classes.

The Air Force investigation blamed both the pilot and “poorly designed controls” in the F-16. As a result, they settled with the school for damages, paying out about $520K. Seems to be the end of the matter.

Kerry’s insult and flubbed “apology” flopping further; Kerry lays low

Shortly after Kerry’s crassness started making the rounds, Kerry pulled the old “Liberal Apology” play out of the book and “apologized” for there being people out there so stupid they can’t figure out what he meant when he told students at a college in California they needed to be smart or “get stuck in Iraq.” You see, he’s not calling the troops stupid or lazy. He’s calling their commander stupid.

Right. Sorry, bub, I’ve seen the video. You pandered to your audience who also, clearly, think of themselves as vastly more intelligent than anyone who would actually serve in the military and that message isn’t playing well for the rest of us who think you and your audience are not.

To launch into a bizarre paranoid screed and follow it up with an announcement that you have nothing to apologize for didn’t help.

Apparently, it didn’t help with the members of his own party, either, as some of them have started to cancel appearances with Kerry in their campaigns. Someone at Kerry HQ apparently is a bit smarter than their boss and they’ve convinced him to cancel all of his campaign appearances because they know Kerry is now radioactively toxic.

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry canceled all appearances Wednesday, hoping to blunt a new Republican campaign strategy that aims to force Democratic candidates into publicly going on record whether they support the senator’s controversial “stuck in Iraq” remark.

“Sen. Cantwell is Sen. Kerry’s host in our state,” reads a press release from Mike McGavick, the Republican challenger to incumbent Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell. “She has evaded comment time and time again in this campaign. Not this time. Sen. Cantwell owes Washington’s veterans and soldiers an explanation. She has taken Sen. Kerry’s money. Does she also accept his comments?”

In Iowa and Pennsylvannia, too, the Democrats are being asked if they have similar views. It’s a reasonable question but I doubt we’ll get much in the way of answers.

The notion that Kerry would never make demeaning comments about the members of our military is one that has already suffered a mortal wound at Kerry’s own hands 30 years ago. To assert that the rest of us should just give him the benefit of the doubt now is the ludicrous position, not that we all think he insulted the troops and meant it. He meant it, all right. He just didn’t mean to get caught at it.

Airliners clip each other’s wings at Newark

You don’t hear this kind of thing much, primarily because most of the industry is way too careful for this. A Continental Airlines aircraft being towed to a maintenance hangar bumped wings with a Luthansa 747 that was pushing back from the gate to begin a flight to Frankfurt, Germany. No one was injured but the flight was, obviously, cancelled.

Looks like it’s been a bad few days for Continental. Also at Newark one of their birds managed to land on a taxiway instead of the runway this past Saturday night. The pilots are on administrative duty for the airline while the FAA investigates. Whatever they find, it’s not going to look good on the pilot’s resume.