A Southwest Airlines flight from Phoenix to Sacramento made an emergency landing yesterday after the roof of the passenger cabin ripped open several feet.  The pilots were able to descend and land with only minor injuries to the cabin and crew, so good on them.  I’m betting that taking a 737 from 36,000 feet to 10,000 feet in a few seconds is a roller coaster no-one wants to ride.

Southwest has had some maintenance issues in the past couple of years, so I hope this incident is investigated thoroughly and all of the aircraft in their fleet get a thorough going over.

Southwest likes to mix up their safety speech a bit, and the part that occurs to me is where they talk about a cabin pressure problem:  “If the person next to you is a child, or is acting like a child”.   Count me as one of the people who would probably be acting like a child.  Events like this may give some passengers a reason to pay attention to the flight attendant other than her nice legs in those blue shorts.

Uncle has been talking about Firearms Rule #5 – Do not try to catch a gun.


I’m thinking that the rebels in Libya may have discovered Firearms Rule #6 – Do not shoot your automatic weapons into the sky when there are ground attack aircraft in the area looking for targets.

NATO said Saturday that it was investigating Libyan rebel reports that a coalition warplane had struck a rebel position that was firing into the air near the front line of the battle with Muammar al-Qaddafi’s forces.

Here’s a hint, Abdul:  fighter pilots don’t like heavy caliber tracer fire from the ground.  It makes them nervous, and their bomb release thumb just might twitch a bit.

According to Yahoo News, North Dakota is one of the best places in the United States to live.  Yes, you won’t get a lot of 5 star celebrity sightings, and it’s 8 hours to the nearest pro sports venue.  But the state is in great economic shape, land is cheap, food is plentiful, the women are beautiful, the men are strong, and it’s a sportsman’s paradise.

Growing up, for the most part, in North Dakota was idyllic.  My home town, counting all of the farm families that sent their kids to school in town and used the grain elevator, had a total population of less than 2000 souls.  Everyone grew up together and raised their kids together.  Kids would leave the house at sunset, play outside all day, have lunch and maybe dinner at whichever relative’s house we ended up at, and be home before sundown for a bath and no-one batted an eye.  My 1st grade class was about 20 children, and those kids graduated together 12 years later.  Of that class, there were exactly 3 little girls that would have been in my dating pool if my family had stuck around.  I was closely related to all of the others.  In the spring and summer, we went fishing several times a week.  In the fall, school would let out for a week or two to let the kids help out with the harvest and go hunting with their dads.  In the winter there was sledding and ice fishing.

After a few moves to different places in North Dakota, we followed my step-dad to wander the Mountain West until we eventually settled in the Bay Area, which is about as different from rural North Dakota as you can get.  I’ve spent the last 25 years trying to find a way back.   However, I’ve found the love of my life, and she is definitely not moving to North Dakota if there’s any way we can stay in Louisville.  She’s a wonderful lady, and she’s worth waiting to go home.  Eventually, retirement will come, and I plan on buying myself a nice stretch of prairie where I can lay in the tall grass or the deep snow and watch the clouds race each other across the sky for the rest of my life.  Of course, I’ll be drinking some of the Bluegrass’s finest corn squeezings when I do.  Hey, you can take the Norwegian out of Kentucky, but you’re not gonna get the Kentucky out of the Norwegian.

American air forces are being pulled from attack missions in Libya.  While the air armada that has been taking part in the curb stomping of Qaddafi’s air, artillery, and armor assets will be on standby, other U.S. assets will continue to provide support to NATO forces who will continue that mission.

For once, and I should mark this day on the calendar, I agree with the President’s actions.

My opinion on this should be pretty clear to anyone:  We don’t have a dog in the Libyan fight.  The President has been taking Qaddafi’s press releases at face value, and says that the air campaign prevented a bloodbath in Benghazi.  Since he can’t prove the negative, I’ll have to take his word on that one.  But if I agree, for the sake of the argument, that we needed to get involved in an internal Libyan conflict, then I agree with President Obama that we should be providing support to NATO and that’s it.

There is no plus to the United States in this war.  If Qaddafi wins, he hates us.  If the ‘rebels’ win, they will hate us.   France, Italy, and the rest of Europe will gain after the war when the crude starts flowing northward, but we haven’t used Libyan oil for decades.

So today I agree with President Obama.  Keep our men and women out of harm’s way and let the Europeans shed blood, theirs or that of Libyan soldiers, for their oil.   Heck, maybe he’ll even get the Arab countries to contribute more planes than can be counted on two hands.