The List: Obama's Three Hundred and Twenty-Third Week in Office

News and Notes: Obama: 'By Hook or By Crook' I'm Going to Be a Successful President

We Are All Flying on the Germanwings Plane

The pilot was locked out of the cockpit.

That phrase finally revealed the full horror of the crash of
Germanwings flight 9525. Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz waited for
the pilot to leave the cockpit, then locked the door to prevent
his re-entry. After which Lubitz, for reasons unknown and perhaps
unknowable, deliberately steered the jet into a harrowing 8-minute
plunge ending in an explosive 434 mph impact with a rocky mountainside.
150 men, women and children met an immediate, unthinkably violent death.

Lubitz, in his single-minded madness, couldn’t be stopped because anyone
who could change the jet’s disastrous course was locked out.

It’s hard to imagine the growing feelings of fear and helplessness that
the passengers felt as the unforgiving landscape rushed up to meet them.

Hard ... but not impossible.

Because America is in trouble. We feel the descent in the pits of our
stomachs. We hear the shake and rattle of structures stressed beyond
their limits. We don’t know where we’re going anymore, but do know it
isn’t good. And above all, we feel helpless because our president has
locked us out.

He locked the American people out of his decision to seize the national
healthcare system. Locked us out when we wanted to know why the IRS was
attacking his opponents. He locked us out of having a say in his decision
to totally replace our immigration laws, and to give over a trillion dollars in
benefits to those who broke those laws.

He locked out those who advised against premature troop withdrawals.
Locked out the intelligence agencies who issued warnings about the
growing threat of ISIS. He locked out anyone who could have interfered
with his release of five Taliban terror chiefs in return for one U.S.
military deserter.

And, of course, he has now locked out Congress, the American people,
and our allies as he strikes a secret deal with Iran to determine the timeline
(not prevention) of their acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Was Andreas Lubitz depressed, insane, or abysmally evil when he decided to
lock that cockpit door and listen to no voices other than those in his head?
Did he somehow believe himself to be doing the right thing?

The voice recordings from the doomed aircraft reveal that as the jet began its
rapid descent, the passengers were quiet. There was probably some nervous
laughter, confusion, a bit of comforting chatter with seatmates, followed by
a brief period in which anxiety had not yet metastasized into terror.

It was only near the end of the 8-minute plunge that everyone finally understood
what was really happening. Only near the end when they began to scream.

Like those passengers, a growing number of Americans feel a helpless dread as
they come to the inescapable conclusion that our nation’s decline is an act of
choice rather than of chance. The choice of one man who is in full control of
our 8-year plunge.

A man who has locked everyone out.

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