Hi readers. Wil pointed out in a comment that the guy in the White House mightn’t have known yet whether a plane went down when he made his might be a terrible tragedy statement. I’ve been re-thinking the post and I hope Wil is wrong.
Maybe Wossname, the guy in the White House was demonstrating an uncharacteristic, Zen-like wisdom. Maybe he was trying to exert some of the world leadership thing presidents are occasionally accused of, albeit wrongly accused.
Fact is, that airplane actually mightn’t be a terrible tragedy because someone the CIA or such had on a list of suspects of being terrorists. In which case everyone else on the airplane was just part of the price of fighting terrorism. Maybe the prez didn’t want to stick his foot in his mouth and be forever harangued about it until all the authorities went over the passenger list carefully.
It’s an ill wind that blows no good, any way you cut it. While it’s tempting to think Wossname wanted to make certain someone he’d personally like to see dead was on the plane, or that someone he had to make a public display NOT being glad as hell, the crash was certainly a secret blessing to some peoople.
People can accurately be described as a pain in the ass to other people. All of us. If one of the passengers was the guy next door to someone and had a dog that barked all night, he neighbor would consider the prez a fool, or a liar if Wossname proclaimed it a terrible tragedy. And so on 295 times. Plus or minus the airline crew. Lots of people collecting flight insurance, losing troublesome mothers-in-law, competing people on the career trail, it all reduces the equation when attempting to determine whether there was a whiff of good in the ill wind.
And Wossname!, the guy in the White House, might have recognized this!
Maybe.
In any case, we might as well be ecstatic because now we can make up our own minds whether anyone on the airplane needed killing more than the rest of the people aboard needed to keep living.
Old Jules
So Far From Heaven 
I guess I have been reading your blog for too long because sometimes you do make a lot sense, like today. Good blog, keep up the good work.
Hi Dizzy, hell it made sense to me. Ought to make sense to ANYONE if it makes sense to me, because not much does. Gracias, J
Do you suppose it makes any difference that about one-third of the passengers were involved in research to cure AIDS?
Hi Ed: Likely it does to some, either for or against. But whether a third is enough to roll over more personal issues such as the dog barking all night is a larger question. This ain’t a democracy, this terrible tragedy declaring. Gracias, J