Many years ago, a great hitter named Paul Waner was nearing the end of his long career. He entered a ballgame with 2,999 hits -- one hit away from the landmark total of 3,000, which so many hitters want to reach, but which relatively few actually do reach.

Waner hit a ball that the fielder did not handle cleanly but the official scorer called it a hit, making it Waner's 3,000th. Paul Waner then sent word to the official scorer that he did not want that questionable hit to be the one that put him over the top. The official scorer reversed himself and called it an error. Later Paul Waner got a clean hit for number 3,000.
 
What reminded me of this is the great fervor that many seem to feel over the prospect of the first black President of the United States.
 
No doubt it is only a matter of time before there is a black president, just as it was only a matter of time before Paul Waner got his 3,000th hit. The issue is whether we want to reach that landmark so badly that we are willing to overlook how questionably that landmark is reached.
 
Paul Waner had too much pride to accept a scratch hit. Choosing a President of the United States is a lot more momentous than a baseball record. We the voters need to have far more concern about who we put in that office that holds the destiny of a nation and of generations yet unborn.
 
There is no reason why someone as arrogant, foolishly clever and ultimately dangerous as Barack Obama should become president -- especially not at a time when the threat of international terrorists with nuclear weapons looms over 300 million Americans.

Many people seem to regard elections as occasions for venting emotions, like cheering for your favorite team or choosing a Homecoming Queen.
 
The three leading candidates for their party's nomination are being discussed in terms of their demographics -- race, sex and age -- as if that is what the job is about.
 
One of the painful aspects of studying great catastrophes of the past is discovering how many times people were preoccupied with trivialities whenthey were teetering on the edge of doom. The demographics of the presidency are far less important than the momentous weight of responsibility that office carries.

The brand spanking new Airbus 340-600, the largest passenger airplane ever built, sat in its hangar in Toulouse, France without a single hour of airtime.  Enter the Arab flight crew of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies (ADAT) to conduct pre-delivery tests on the ground, such as engine runups, prior to delivery to Etihad Airways in Abu Dhabi.  The date was November 15, 2007.

The ADAT crew taxied the A340-600 to the run-up area. Then they took all four engines to takeoff power with a virtually empty aircraft.  Not having read the run-up manuals, they had no clue just how light an empty A340-600 really is.

The takeoff warning horn was blaring away in the cockpit because they had all 4 engines at full power. The aircraft computers thought they were trying to takeoff but it had not been configured properly (flaps/slats, etc.) Then one of the ADAT crew decided to pull the circuit breaker on the Ground Proximity Sensor to silence the alarm.
This fools the aircraft into thinking it is in the air.

Not one member of the seven-man Arab crew was smart enough to throttle back the engines from their max power setting, so the $80 million brand-new aircraft crashed into a blast barrier, totaling it.

The extent of injuries to the crew is unknown, for there has been a news blackout in the major media in France and elsewhere.  Coverage of the story was deemed insulting to Moslem Arabs.  Finally, the photos are starting to leak out.

Later, police announced that they had arrested a man, and also two controlled explosions took place in the toilets at the restaurant. The man was named as 22-year old Nicky Reilly, who has a history of mental illness. A police statement later in the evening suggested that Reilly, who had become a Muslim convert, had been "preyed upon and radicalized" by Muslim extremists.

The man had detonated his bomb in the toilets, and according to an eyewitness it appeared that chunks of his face were missing. Officially he has facial injuries and a "lacerated eye". Reilly is in hospital under a police guard. After the explosion, the man had refused to leave the toilet, leading to the cubicle door being broken down.

15 other people had been in the restaurant when the explosion took place. One eyewitness said he heard one loud bang followed by two smaller ones. It appears that the bomb that exploded was a nail bomb.

Exeter is a quiet city with low numbers of immigrants, and has a famous cathedral. The university of Exeter does have Muslim students, and it is possible that those who "radicalized" Reilly may have come from the university. This is only a supposition.

Adrian Morgan is the WJ Current Affairs Editor