Wow that was dumb. http://www.cnbc.com/id/30436554
mpnoonan Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Wow that was dumb. Dumb is an understatement. I wonder what they thought would happen when you circle a jetliner over NYC being tailed by two fighters…
I saw this happen while I was walking on Park Avenue in Midtown a couple years ago. Idiots had swooped in low above the most densely packed neighborhood in the United States.
WTF were they thinking!!
A year after Sept 11th, I was working in DC (well, Rosslyn, which is technically northern Virginia). So at precisely the time the Pentagon was hit, they decide to do a flyover with some jets to mark the ceremony… of course, this part hasn’t really been publicized widely. So I’m working at 9:20 or so… we’re all jittery about the day, because maybe Al Qaeda is going to try something on the anniversary… and suddenly… screeeeeeeech… about 5 fighter jets fly about 200 feet overhead, loud, and shaking the building. Pretty much everyone in the building thought we were toast.
The one thing I give Obama credit for is owning up to his mistakes as he’s making them, not like Bush who used to either deny making the mistake, or if it was blatantly obvious, pushing it aside and changing the subject. Disclosure: I didn’t vote for Bush or Obama.
I’m not sure I am ready to give him an award on owning mistakes just yet. I’d prefer less of these little missteps actually. That said I try to give people with a job that hard the benefit of the doubt when stuff slips through that wasn’t make or break but in hindsight seemed ill advised. On a side, I liked to believe the idea that we were going to get to work on this monstrous fed budget line by line and I liked that O was going to make random $100 million cuts here and there. Given that, instead of dropping $400k and risking certain panic… couldn’t they just bring in some 25 year old handy with freaking photoshop? I mean they can take 40 pounds off Tyra or smooth Teri Hatcher’s leatherface but we can’t put together a shot of AF1 over NYC for less than half a million?
What’s wrong with using Photoshop? I do it for $150K.
Nothing, that’s my point. This whole ordeal was bad PR and arguably unnecessary. Park the damn plane in front of the green screen, rip off some shots and you are ready to roll. no fuel, no crew, no panic, no joyride of course, but now you can take the $X00k saved and feed some kids or something.
I don’t have a problem with the wasted money as I do with the idiot who decided that this mission needed to be classified just to stroke his own massive ego.
It bothers the sh*t out of me. That is why I object to all this government spending. The vast majority of it will be WASTED.
Down with big brother
All politics aside, unnecessary spending irks me, especially in an economic environment like this. Reasonable people should have common sense. It is so easy to spend OPM that they can justify a $400,000 joy ride in AF1 to snap some new photos for nothing more than PR?? On a smaller scale, school districts in town w/ 800 HS kids still have $100,000,000 budgets, growing at 2x inflation. “Its for the kids man. The children are our future.” Really? cause I thought 50% of that budget is health, pension, misc. benefits for tenured union types? The crossing guard application process is cut-throat. People are knocking each other over for min wage because for the 2 hours a day the position packs health and dental… Anyway, ws could have saved us $350k and taken care of this in a matter of hours. Then they could have spent the savings on something useful to someone like food or medication.
The White House said Friday that President Obama has accepted the resignation of Louis Caldera as Director of the White House Military Office, effective May 22. Mr. Caldera wrote in a letter that the controversy created by the flight of one of the presidential planes over lower Manhattan had made it impossible for him to effectively lead the office.
Spending our money. I really liked it when Obama was “cutting” 17 billion in federal spending, which a lot of that money is border defense, even though he just side swipped 2 trillion.