PIlot flies perfectly good aircraft into a mountain. Story at ten.

In another life I flew jets for a living.  During those years I would read the details of every aircraft accident, hoping to find a tiny clue or detail that would keep me from making the same mistake that that pilot made.

Some of the reports brought tears to your eyes, when mechanical failure made the accident totally unpreventable.  No matter how good you were--no matter how hard you studied or practiced the emergency procedures--you could be the best pilot in history and you were still gonna die that day.

But sadly, most of the time the cause of crashes was pilot error--often a pilot's failure to recognize some tiny quiver of a needle on an instrument.  But sometimes--fortunately rarely--the crash was due simply to an absolutely stupid mistake by the pilot.

Now, that's a kind of incompetence.  I realize the crew was *technically* competent, in that they all passed checkrides and so on.  But when crunch time came, they failed to take the saving action.

That's tragic, of course, but it also ticked me off:  How dare they kill a bunch of people and crash a perfectly good airplane, when using their heads more could have saved everyone?

That's how I feel about our utterly mendacious, incompetent government.  And sadly, just as the passengers on the ineptly piloted jetliner, we're stuck with the current flight crew, who will be the ones making the decisions all the way to the ground.  Short of devising some magical way to change the crew in-flight, we're fated to ride this baby in with 'em.

Eh, no big deal.  I'm sure something will keep us from crashing.  Surely.  Because everyone loves captain Obama.  Or something like that.