Headwork

Major Mike

In Flight School the last marked item, before comments, on your flight gradesheet is usually…headwork. What you say? Headwork?

In pilot/NFO training circles, and far beyond once inculcated, "headwork" is a lexicon staple. Headwork, according to Webster…"mental labor: especially: cleaver thinking."

Nice for Webster, but for flight students, headwork is vastly more complex.

Headwork…the ability to sort through hundreds of inputs a minute; make dozens of intuitive mathematical calculations a second; assess a multitude of options and select the preeminent choice; always making choices based on sound reasoning, unfailingly displaying good judgment, invariably choosing workable courses of action, and never physically flying/guiding the aircraft in a manner that could get you killed…is a vaporous intangible that can get you your wings if you possess it, or garner you enough of the dreaded “downs” to end your flight career if you don’t.

“Headwork” works its way into every conversation in flight school…even more than “gouge.”

Gouge… the “skinny”, the shortcut to the core knowledge, the needed ingredient to get ahead, the gossip from the O’Club Happy Hour last night…the “gouge.” But I digress.

“Headwork,” or more importantly, lack of headwork is the fastest way out of flight school. A couple of bonehead moves that demonstrate that you can’t walk, chew gum, and fly at the same time…and you are gone. Forgetting to do a descent checklist; not being able to decide what to do when the flight instructor, or the anonymous voice from “Center” (FAA controller) changes your flight plan; seeing a danger and taking no action, simply waiting for events to pull you through…and millions more, are examples of bad headwork. Dozens of flight students a month will hear an assessment of how their “lack of headwork” is the cause for their dismissal from the program.

Don’t worry…lots of good C4I (Comm) jobs left. But I digress.

Don’t despair…many a flight student has received a break from a flight instructor, if they lacked a particular graded skill, but showed “good headwork.” In flight school, you come to understand that headwork is not simply “cleaver thinking,” but rather it is more a nose for the practical; an ability to make really excellent life/death decisions under pressure; and an ingrained skill for always (almost always) displaying common sense.

Once the word “headwork” and the breadth of its meaning takes hold in your lexicon…everything that your brain assesses, is judged by the flight school standard. Does this make sense? Was it based on sound reasoning? Are your actions defensible?

Which leads me to this…what chucklehead thought it was (is) okay for the former President of Iran to come this country to speak. I want to know. I don’t want a Condi Rice taking responsibility for an anonymous knucklehead…I want to know which future government pension earner, made that brilliant decision. Who did it? Because whoever made this bonehead decision needs to be fired, because they have demonstrated, the worst offense in my circles, piss-poor headwork.

It is insane to permit someone who has sworn to eliminate Israel, who has lead a country that has been described by our current President as part of an Axis of Evil, and who still has influence in a country that is refusing to discuss their nuclear intentions with the appropriate, albeit ineffectual, UN agency, to come into our country…on a visa that cleared State…to ramble at will, and as Hugh Hewitt says… ”generate propaganda on our soil.”

But after pondering this while Hugh discussed it on his show today, I realized this idiot is not alone. He has company with a press that can’t figure out what terrorism really is. He has hundreds of comrades in the UN…the gold standard for institutionally propagated poor headwork…always resulting in unworkable solutions. He is flanked by Michael Moore, Ted Kennedy, Harry Bellefonte, Jane Fonda, John Murtha, Cindy Sheehan, and a million other unreasoned and illogical cut-and-runners who refuse to use good headwork in the fighting of the GWOT.

And, without an ounce of conceit, whose judgment would you trust with your life? Someone who has been continuously evaluated for their ability to make excellent life/death decisions, to recognize and head off danger, to intuitively project where various courses of action would lead, and which would produce the best results; or someone whose judgments on such matters are bent by their myopic hatred of our current President?

You pick. My experience and my judgment tell me to vote Republican, for I agree with Hugh…

“Any vote for any House or Senate Democrat is a vote against victory and a vote for vulnerability. Vote for victory. Vote Republican.”

In life or death decisions, and lives will depend on who is running the country, good headwork MUST carry more weight than political myopia…at least I pray so.

Vote against the boneheads...vote Repbulican. Maintain control of the courts, the Senate, the House, but more importantly your life...it IS that serious. There is no longer room for "harmless idiots" in politics...those that govern without good foresight and good judgment are doomed to fail this country. Do not trust the Dems to fight the GWOT...they barely know we are in it. They clearly lack the headwork to govern.

Commit to protecting yourself...Vote Repbulican.