America votes today!

It’s crunch time for Americans as they go to their respective polling stations to vote for their next President. After months of vigorous campaigning, Democratic nominee, US Pres. Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Gov. Mitt Romney are in what pollsters say “Statistical dead heat”. Just a few months ago… Pres. Obama was the odds-on favorite to win his re-election… but after their televised debates, Gov. Mitt Romney was able to close the gap with the President. Now whether he would win this Presidential race depends solely in the hands of US voters.

While this maybe the most exciting US elections that Americans have seen in a long time, it is unfortunate that for Americans, Election Day has never been declared a holiday. I was in the US during the November 1972 elections and believe me… it was as if there were no elections at all! That Election Day is not a holiday could be the principal reason why few Americans go to the polls to vote. CNN newscasters even say that if only Americans came out in droves to vote, Obama would be the sure winner. But then the mainstream media like CNN, CBS and NBC are so pro-Obama, it shows in the way they come up with their reports. Sounds like the Philippines?

If you ask me, Pres. Obama has failed to deliver on his campaign promise of change for Americans four years ago. Today, 25 million Americans are out of work. The East Coast is in shambles thanks to Hurricane “Sandy” and in the foreign front, Pres. Obama as Commander-in-Chief failed to protect American lives at the US Libyan Consulate where four people were killed by terrorist groups.

Worse of all, there was a massive media cover-up of that terrorist attack, which the mainstream media did not even care to report. I saw those Internet photographs of Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens carried by terrorists out of the Consulate in Benghazi, Libya where Al-Qaida terrorists tortured and killed him. Yet somehow, this has not caught the American psyche and Obama is still able to count on their votes. But in the end… the decision maker in this US elections are the great undecided who will cast their votes today. I just hope that when they cast their votes… they would remember that old saying, “It’s the economy stupid!”

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As headlined in The Freeman and reported in The Philippine STAR’s front page, “Pilot error, plane defects led to crash,” “A combination of pilot error and a defective engine caused the crash of a Piper Seneca aircraft carrying Interior and Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo off Masbate last Aug.18” as the news report goes. This was taken from the 14-page draft report by a five-man investigating body created by former DOTC Sec. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II.

The report further stated “The pilot lacked proficiency in handling aircraft in abnormal situations.” While I’m not going to dispute the findings of this five-man panel they certainly lack a personal knowledge of Capt. Jessup Bahinting, whom we have known to have been in a couple of “abnormal” situations before. Years back, he was flying former Cebu Governor Emilio “Lito” Osmeña when his single engine plane conked out. But he didn’t panic and glided his powerless aircraft into a safe landing on a beach near Sogod, Cebu. The way this report was presented, Capt. Bahinting sort of panic and because of the loss of his right engine, he crashed.

I fully concur that in a twin engine aircraft, the pilot should never turn on the side of the dead engine, especially when you no long have the luxury of height which you can recover from a stall. But as this report suggests, Capt. Jessup turned right into the dead engine, thus caused his plane to plunge into the sea 800 meters off the Masbate airport.

No doubt that the Seneca was on an emergency situation. A close pilot friend of mine, quietly told me that in a situation like what was happening to his aircraft, Capt. Jessup Bahinting should have deployed his landing gear at the last moment, just as the plane was over the runway as the landing gear causes a huge drag and a sharp decrease on his airspeed. Now as far as the mechanical report goes, like spark plugs with carbon deposits, we’ll never know if this was the principal cause why the right engine failed.

Let me say this, that the report putting the blame on Capt. Jessup Bahinting doesn’t make him a bad pilot. Any car driver who stops focusing on his driving in an instant could end up hitting the car in front of him. Mistakes happen and in this case, it caused the life of Capt. Bahinting, his co-pilot Kshitiz Chand and DILG Sec. Jesse Robredo. But I will never forget a great friend in Capt. Jessup Bahinting. Now all we need is for Congress to enact a law creating the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to vsbobita@mo-pzcom.com or vsbobita@gmail.com. His columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.