I decided to drop in at the Commemorative Air Force Museum at Falcon Field in Mesa today and was rewarded by getting there just in time to see their Boeing B-17, Sentimental Journey, starting up prior to taxiing out for a flight. Here’s the video:
I just love the throaty rumble of those radial engines.
Shortly after Sentimental Journey taxied out it was the turn of the museum’s B-25J, Maid in the Shade to start up and taxi out. Here she is:
This is Mark Steyn in his weekly Orange County Register Column:
The cost to taxpayers of flying one man, his wife, two daughters and a dog to Hawaii is estimated at $3,639,622. For purposes of comparison, the total bill for flying the entire Royal Family (Queen, princes, dukes, the works) around the world for a year is £4.7 million – or about enough for two Obama vacations.
According to the USAF, in 2010 Air Force One cost American taxpayers $181,757 per flight hour. According to the Royal Canadian Air Force, in 2011 the CC-150 Polaris military transport that flew William and Kate from Vancouver to Los Angeles cost Her Majesty's Canadian subjects $15,505 per hour – or about 8/100ths of the cost.
[Snip]
As the Daily Mail in London reported, "High Fliers: Prince William and his wife Kate spend an incredible £52,000 on the one-way flight from L.A. to London for themselves and their seven-strong entourage." Incredible! For £52,000, you couldn't take the president from Washington to a state visit to an ice cream parlor in a Maryland suburb. Obama flew Air Force One from Washington to Williamsburg, Va., requiring a wide-bodied transatlantic jet that holds 500 people to ferry him a distance of a little over 100 miles. And, unlike their British and Canadian counterparts, the American media are entirely at ease with it.
Read the whole thing.
Milton Wolf has a must-read column over at The Washington Times in which he asks; “How many times does Lucy have to pull away the football before Charlie Brown finally wises up and quits playing her game?”
The Democrats do this to the Republicans again and again. They sucker them into agreeing to tax increases in exchange for vague assurances of spending cuts at some future date which, of course, never happen and it works. Every. Single. Time. Will the GOP finally wise up this time?
There’s more to the Democrats’ game than just this and this part of the column explains:
The Democrats’ lust for tax increases goes far beyond simple class warfare, as atrocious as that alone is. Democrats are fully aware that the rich already are paying more than their fair share. The wealthy (top 10 percent) may earn 50 percent of the income, but they pay 70 percent of the federal taxes. If that’s not fair, what is? Eighty percent? One hundred percent?
The Democrats’ long game is to push an ever-increasing tax burden onto fewer and fewer taxpayers. This grows a class of Americans who may or may not earn paychecks but certainly become beneficiaries of government largesse while remaining blissfully detached from its enormous cost. (What’s their fair share?) Economists would call this a recipe for disaster. Democrats would call it a voting base. Weak-kneed Republicans are poised to help them build it.
Read the whole thing.
It’s now just shy of a month after the election and I have to say the results left me in stunned disbelief. I am still having a hard time processing how Barack Obama could possibly get reelected with the record of the last four years. I suppose the answer is that he was able to do it because he didn’t have to run on his record. He just had to demonize and distract with phony issues like the supposed “war on women” while the MSM provided cover for him by playing along and studiously avoiding any subject that might make him look bad. That covers a lot of subjects too.
I am also disappointed in the turnout, or lack thereof, on our side. With the stakes for or country and the economy so high how could anyone possibly justify just staying home and not voting? Romney wasn’t your first choice of candidate (he wasn’t mine either) so you just decided not to play? As they say in the military, you go to war with the army you have, not the one you wish you had.
Well, let’s just hope the damage over the next four years isn’t as bad as we fear and that the GOP manages to get its act together in time for the 2014 midterms, though I’m not holding my breath on either count.
