Crisis in the Ukraine

First I've heard of this.

 

I wondered that too. Perhaps abbot flew with him.

I've always liked McCain but now his shelf life has expired. He has
the word "feckless" one too many times.

 

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/06/nation/na-aviator6

John McCain was training in his AD-6 Skyraider on an overcast Texas morning in 1960 when he slammed into Corpus Christi Bay and sheared the skin off his plane's wings.

McCain recounted the accident decades later in his autobiography. "The engine quit while I was practicing landings," he wrote. But an investigation board at the Naval Aviation Safety Center found no evidence of engine failure.

The 23-year-old junior lieutenant wasn't paying attention and erred in using "a power setting too low to maintain level flight in a turn," investigators concluded.

The crash was one of three early in McCain's aviation career in which his flying skills and judgment were faulted or questioned by Navy officials.

In his most serious lapse, McCain was "clowning" around in a Skyraider over southern Spain about December 1961 and flew into electrical wires, causing a blackout, according to McCain's own account as well as those of naval officers and enlistees aboard the carrier Intrepid. In another incident, in 1965, McCain crashed a T-2 trainer jet in Virginia.

The Times interviewed men who served with McCain and located once-confidential 1960s-era accident reports and formerly classified evaluations of his squadrons during the Vietnam War. This examination of his record revealed a pilot who early in his career was cocky, occasionally cavalier and prone to testing limits....

In today's military, a lapse in judgment that causes a crash can end a pilot's career. Though standards were looser and crashes more frequent in the 1960s, McCain's record stands out.
"Three mishaps are unusual," said Michael L. Barr, a former Air Force pilot with 137 combat missions in Vietnam and an internationally known aviation safety expert who teaches in USC's Aviation Safety and Security Program. "After the third accident, you would say: Is there a trend here in terms of his flying skills and his judgment?"

Jeremiah Pearson, a Navy officer who flew 400 missions over Vietnam without a mishap and later became the head of human spaceflight at NASA, said: "That's a lot. You don't want any. Maybe he was just unlucky."

Naval aviation experts say the three accidents before McCain's deployment to Vietnam probably triggered a review to determine whether he should be allowed to continue flying. The results of the review would have been confidential.

 

Well, you can't really blame Obama for being unprepared. We were told repeatedly back in 2008 how much the rest of the world would like us if he was elected. I'm sure he didn't think he'd have to worry about trivial matters like foreign relations while he was busy with all that Hope and Change stuff.

 

Is there evidence Obama was unprepared for this Crimean excursion by Russia?

 

He phoned it in after winning The Noble Peace Prize. Figured he could wave in
front of the rest of the world and they all would fall in line.

 

So what should have been done before it got to the crisis level? Again, besides going to war or using worthless slogans.

 

I think a lot of people had ridiculously unrealistic expectations of Obama.

 

I've got two Ukrainian friends -- a brother and sister -- who are just heartbroken over what's going on and they want the U.S. to be involved in protecting their homeland from Putin.

 

Obama should have done what Bush did to prevent the Russians from invading Georgia.

What did Bush do again to prevent tens of thousands of Russian troops from crossing the Georgia border and from the Russian Air Force to start bombing Georgian territory?

 

New York Post just made me laugh.