– I sometimes, and inexplicably since I’ve never lived in Oregon and have a WA phone number, get random GOTV from the Oregon GOP. Recently they polled me about Greg Walden. I told them that I hoped someone primaries him and that I was born in 1956. Anyway, I’m glad he’s going to have a serious opponent.
– Obviously, the CIA shouldn’t spy on Senators, but it’s too bad that that’s what it took to get Senators to notice problems with the CIA.
– Honor codes at evangelical universities have some really shitty outcomes (the link has some descriptions of sexual violence).
– I hadn’t heard of Portolan Charts, but now I’m fascinated.
Prior to WWII, my Dad attended a Christian college that had a large and successful varsity sports program. He became disgusted with the blatant hypocrisy of all the jocks who’d signed a “morality” pledge when they enrolled and would go to chapel and profess their adherence to it, then boast in the locker room of the babes they banged the night before. As a result, he never affiliated himself with any organized church after that, although throughout his life he practiced a very high standard of personal morality and remained a person of faith, to what degree most of us didn’t know until not long before he died.
Possible Leads To Missing Airliner?
The Chinese government, which is considered more methodical and reliable than those of Malaya or Vietnam, announced today its satellite imagery spotted a possible crash area with three large pieces of floating debris, the smallest of which is 43 feet x 59 feet. (Is there a surface area that large on a 777?)
Of course, this debris could be ordinary oceanic flotsam — the seas are full of garbage — but news commentators argue that China, out of concern for its reputation, wouldn’t make such an announcement unless it was pretty sure it had something.
The location aligns with where the airplane should be if it turned around and flew toward the Strait of Malacca. It’s also consistent with where an oil worker on an offshore platform claims he saw a burning airplane fall into the sea.
However, there have been several false alarms in the search for the missing plane, so until ships get to the site and recover the debris spotted by the Chinese satellite, we won’t know what their satellite actually saw.
@2 Isn’t that also the area in which there was reported to be a sizeable oil slick the day after the flight disappeared?
Was Flight 370 Shot Down?
It can’t be ruled out yet, but it isn’t ruled in, either. We won’t know until the plane is found and the black boxes are analyzed.
If China’s spy satellite has found wreckage off the southern tip of Vietnam, then the plane didn’t turn around and was on its intended flight path when it went down. (This is a correction to my comment above.) A shoot down would explain why there was no distress call. There are tensions and military exercises in the area, heightening the chances that a trigger-happy fighter pilot or SAM battery might fire at an aircraft entering their country’s airspace.
But there are inconsistencies with this theory. If a government’s military forces shot down the plane, it’s almost inconceivable that government wouldn’t know it by now, although a coverup is somewhat more plausible.
The most likely culprit would be Vietnam, and Vietnam’s government did say it was reducing its search efforts because Malaya was providing “confusing” information about the flight’s whereabouts. As most of the passengers were Chinese, the Vietnamese might be afraid of repercussions if they admitted shooting down the plane, even if by mistake.
A bigger inconsistency is that the debris spotted by the Chinese satellite seems too large to be from a plane. The seas are full of man-made flotsam, some of which falls off ships, some of which is terrestrial garbage and debris that floated out to sea.
An even bigger inconsistency is why this stuff wasn’t spotted right away, because it’s in the first place you’d expect searchers to look: under the intended flight path.
So, it doesn’t really add up. And it’s not a given this floating material will be found, because the satellite pictures were taken several days ago, and it’s almost certainly not in the same location now. Currents likely have carried it many miles. And it could have sunk by now.
When you get right down to it, there’s still no actual evidence of what happened to Flight 370 or where the plane is, and speculating about it is nothing more than an armchair guessing game.
And, biggest of all, U.S. satellites should have detected an aircraft shootdown.
@3 They eliminated the oil slicks. They were from marine bunker fuel, not jet fuel.
Mrs. Rabbit has been fucking with my screen name again. She thinks she’s being funny.
U.S. Says Plane Kept Flying After Contact Lost
The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that U.S. investigators and national security officials believe the missing plane continued flying for four hours after its transponder was turned off. That could put it over 2,000 miles away from the search area.
Pursuant to the airline’s maintenance agreement with the engine maker, the engines transmitted live data directly to Rolls Royce. This data revealed the engines kept running another four hours after the plane disappeared from radar.
The WSJ said U.S. counter-terrorism officials “are pursuing the possibility” that a pilot or someone else commandeered the plane and turned off its transponders so it couldn’t be tracked on radar.
According to a WSJ source, U.S. officials were told at a briefing that investigators are “actively pursuing the [theory] that the plane was diverted with the intention of using it later for another purpose.”
Roger Rabbit Commentary: This theory is consistent with earlier comments by Malaysian officials that their military radar indicated the plane turned off its course and flew low to avoid radar.
It’s also consistent with the fact no one has claimed responsibility for hijacking the plane. A terrorist group that intended to “use it later for another purpose” would not want authorities to know they had it.
It occurs to me that an operation like that would be easier to carry out with the complicity of a government, but it conceivably could be done without the knowledge or help of any government.
The fate of the plane and its passengers remains highly speculative, but if the story about the engine data is correct, then we’re probably looking at a hijacking and the plane — whether landed or crashed — is far away from the search area.
Likelihood Of Hijacking Grows
NBC News reports a former U.S. air crash investigator said the search “is likely to turn into a criminal inquiry as mounting evidence points to a deliberate act.”
The expert said, “If the military radar evidence is correct, what we see is not a slow, meandering curve but a deliberate turn followed by a straight line. The plane doesn’t appear to be wallowing in the air, drifting left and right — it is being flown.”
He also said the abrupt end of communications “suggests the aircraft’s transponder was disabled deliberately rather than by a loss of power.”
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Now that we know U.S. security officials believe there’s a high probability the plane was diverted, either by a pilot or hijacker, you can bet they aren’t sharing all they know with the media and public. Conceivably, they may know where the plane is — and organizing an Entebbe-style military operation. If that’s the case, whatever information they have about the plane’s whereabouts and what happened to it would be kept under the tightest of wraps. It also raises the possibility the passengers may still be alive, although no one should get themselves emotionally invested in that hope at this point.
It’s interesting that the U.S. has only a couple of ships in the search area, even though several Americans were aboard the missing plane.
If this is a hijacking, as now seems likely, it would make sense to keep up the pretense of a search to avoid tipping off the hijackers that a rescue operation is being planned.
And the search may be just that — a pretense being maintained by the governments involved while they plot their next move.
If plane was hijacked by HA’s biggest schmucktola Lib NoScientist’s bestus buds, would Obummer use military force to reclaim the passengers?
Puddy think Obummer would! Obumer needs to improve his likability and gravitas after the multiple changes in Obummercare!
Oh GOATSEBOY! You so funny!
Still as dumb as a bucket of wet cement though…
@8 The Fairview Fishwrap carried the WSJ story this morning, but I wonder where the latter got its information. Reuters is still claiming that neither Boeing nor Reuters has had anything to say about engine telemetry.
@11 “Reclaim the passengers”? From where? The bottom of the ocean or strewn in little pieces across some jungle? Tell me if there’s anyplace where a triple-seven could land in one piece that wouldn’t have radar coverage and plenty of public visibility.
@14 Ultimately this will be spun by Fox as Obama is weak or this wouldn’t have happened.
@14 Well, that’s an interesting problem; there are only so many runways off the beaten path, essentially all of them military, where a 777 can land and then you need a big hangar to hide it in. And it would have to be in an unpopulated area of some dirtbag country. That doesn’t leave many choices.
Wow. I haven’t posted much for weeks, and nearly every one of puddibigot’s posts includes an insult directed at me.
I am SO IN HIS HEAD!!!!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!
@17 – The troll idiot is very confused.
There’s not too much between the ears in that one.
schmucktola? Classy!
FartyArt do you ever read anything from Roger Idiot Wabbit?
Puddy guesses you skip right over Idiot Wabbit Pellets… Idiot Wabbit wrote
Sheesh FartyArt, you are the missing link of Shoreline! You are sinking to rujax and the crazed databaze deala’s level… the bottom of the HA DUMMOCRETIN barrel!
Why don’t you ask the Idiot Wabbit the question since the Idiot Wabbit brought it up first? Go on show everyone you possess gravitas!
Sux to be you and your lack of thread reading comprehension!
Hans,
schmucktola… the perfect word for a “special” test tube cleaner!
Lots of people this forum seem to have trouble deciphering this troll’s “babbling”..
Does he mean this by “databaze”?
So far Puddy has counted 97 HA lefty lowlifes!
or this?
Here is the latest PuddyList of HA weasel libtard party hacks.
or this?
Hey headless the racist@4, blow away with your 71 other names!
Crazed? LOL! Could this be honesty from the troll? Maybe if you count projection as “honest”.. Unintentionally revealing most definitely.
Wow, Puddy thought the crazed databaze deala was going to be “MIA” until the November 2014. Puddy predicted crazed databaze deala would be back.
IT’S BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK @22! And still disgusting as evah!
@23
LOL! You mean you were WRONG about something? Pfffft. Back to “thought”. Trolls are incapable. Blinded by hate..
Oh yeah I already mentioned that..
Btw, can I get added to your “crazed databaze”?