Tuesday Mashup (6/9/09)

As a follow up to this post yesterday, I thought this was a great Letter to the Editor that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer today (here)…

I strongly disagree with Michael Smerconish that adding video cameras in aircraft cockpits will provide more data than black boxes ("Flights need 21st century technology in cockpit," Sunday).

I also disagree with his assertion that the video from the cameras can be streamed to airline home bases in real time. Simply because it is possible to stream video over cell phones does not mean it can be done with fast-moving airplanes without ticket prices going through the roof.

The flight data recorder of modern aircraft like the Airbus A330 already records aircraft speed, engine speed, position of control surfaces, and many other critical parameters.

In addition, the cockpit voice recorder provides the conversations of the pilots. While video may show the movements of the pilots, it will not provide any more aircraft performance parameters needed for accident investigations.

If Smerconish wants to improve aircraft safety, he should write to his congressman and demand faster implementation of GPS tracking of aircraft.

If this technology were in place, we would now know the location of Air France Flight 447, and would be working on locating the flight recorders.

Gerry Harris
Garnet Valley, (PA?)

And in a related note, this post tells us about the confirmation hearing for FAA administrator-designate J. Randolph Babbitt and DOT deputy secretary-designate John Porcari on May 19th (interesting stuff, I thought).

This post from April described how important it is that a new Director of the Census be confirmed as expediently as possible.

And if you guessed that that person was bound to be filibustered by “The Party of No,” well then, you get to go hunting with “Deadeye Dick” Cheney (I’d suggest full body armor).

As noted here…

WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans are blocking a vote on the nomination of Robert Groves to be the Census Bureau's director, leaving the agency without a leader less than a year before the 2010 nationwide head count.

Dr. Groves, President Barack Obama's pick to lead the bureau, was approved easily by the Senate homeland-security committee in May, but Republicans blocked a confirmation vote last week. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Republicans weren't yet in agreement on the nominee.

It is unclear why Republicans are blocking the vote. A McConnell spokeswoman, Jennifer Morris, said she had no information on the delay.

Dr. Groves, director of the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center and a former Census Bureau official, has raised concerns among mainly Republican lawmakers because he is an expert in sampling, the use of statistical adjustments to compensate for undercounted populations. Dr. Groves has said he won't use the practice for the 2010 count.

You gotta love the Repugs, boys and girls – they’ll never take “Yes” for an answer (and by the way, here is more "fun" with Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao from today, and here is a prior slap-down of the speaker in question as noted by Think Progress).

As noted in the April post, the Repugs favor the information-gathering method referred to as “straight enumeration,” which, as the post tells us, isn’t “straight” at all; it includes tricks such as double-counting families with two homes or college students with two residences, who trend Republican. The method Dr. Groves favored (which he has said he wouldn’t use), “used survey sampling techniques to validate not just the overall count but the individual demographic sub-groups that the census’s enumeration process would identify” (as noted in the April post, a hat tip goes out to Morley Winograd for this information – he conducted the 2000 census for Al Gore).

The “sample supplemented census” used by Prof. Groves in 2000 thus would do a much better job of capturing population data among individuals who are more prone to “fall through the cracks,” and who, more often than not, vote Democratic (and it would also make the case more thoroughly than any pundit ever could that the incomes and overall standard of living for the majority of the people of this country has slipped substantially during this decade, under primarily Repug “governance”).

Hence the cowardly Senate “hold” put on Dr. Groves’ nomination (and I thought “the world’s greatest deliberative body” got rid of such an adolescent procedure...more fool me, I guess).

This article in the New York Times magazine by pundit-in-psuedo-retirement Bill Safire (a related post is here - check the third item) tells us the following...

Accepting the Democratic nomination in a huge football stadium way back in the presidential campaign of ’08, Senator Barack Obama displayed his oratorical talent by using one of his favorite tried-and-true devices in argument: “Don’t tell me that Democrats won’t defend this country!”

Who was telling him that? To be sure, his opponents were claiming that a Republican administration would be stronger on defense, but nobody was telling him or the voters that Democrats preferred abject surrender.

This is almost too easy, people.

See, Bill, I used that Google thingie to track down some information that proves conclusively that you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

Democrats/liberals/progressives are routinely smeared and ridiculed in that vein. And here are just a few examples…

Turd Blossom himself tells us here that, “liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.”

Lead Petty Officer and Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, author of the book “Lone Survivor,” used the phrase, “a f--ing liberal, a half-assed, no-logic nitwit, all heart, no brain, and the judgment of a jackrabbit” (here – nice guy).

Pundit Ben Smith of Drudgico said here that that Fix Noise can "confirm to its viewers that Democrats are ... cowards" after the leading presidential party contenders at that time ducked one of their debates (oh, but it was tongue-in-cheek and no one would EVER take it seriously…riiiiight).

And Safire also comments on a “straw man” column that I rebutted earlier here, which leads me to believe that, based on this, he should automatically be disqualified from writing about this subject ever again.