Good point. Now if only the pilots had done something really stupid - say, scraped wings with another plane while taxiing in (probably a couple million to fix) - the economy would be that much better. If we don’t soon snap out of this recession, I think it’s clear where the blame lies.
My point is that what you are saying is in opposition to what the Air Force is saying. Now, it could be that the Air Force is lying about it. But I’d like something more solid to base that assertion on than “Some guy says so”.
If I have to pick between “Some guy” and the Air Force, I might as well go with the Air Force.
I guess you’re right, judging by the Wikipedia page Air transports of heads of state and government. A lot of countries seem to operate VIP aircraft which are not exclusively for the use of the head of the government, but some of them such as Russia do seem to have direct equivalents to Air Force One. I was thinking of the likes of the British PM, who quite often seems to just use British Airways – not regular scheduled BA flights, I imagine, although I did once sit in business class on a BA flight with the Foreign Secretary (Brit. equivalent to the Secretary of State) a few rows away from me.
Saying this AF-1 stunt had training value is like saying Bush’s aircraft carrier photo op had training value – hey! they turned the ship around so it wouldn’t appear to be close to shore! That has training value, right?
What a stupid, stupid thing to do, and I’d be pissed as hell if I lived in NYC.
They’re not lying. The hours “count” but unless we’re attacked by photo op 747’s it was a waste of budgeted training time. The pictures have no relation to the current administration so any of the file photos of AF1 would be more than adequate for the President and crew to sign. For a really personal picture they could use one of the President exiting AF1 (in real time) at every location. I use to take pictures of bands at a bar and get them signed during the event. You can’t get any more personal than that and it costs NOTHING except the ink and the paper.
The pilot flying the plane onto the carrier logged some time and one trap. I’m betting that went toward satisfying minimum flight hour and arrested landing requirements. So it was not a waste of time for the pilot.
But it WAS incredibly stupid as a PR event. Seems to me we have pretty much the same situation here with AF-1.
Almost. if Obama had parachuted from Air Force One into a cheering crowd of investment bankers in a Times Square festooned with “The Stimulus Worked!! The Economy is saved!!” banners, all on live television, with hushed commentary from worshipful anchorfolk… Then, yeah, pretty equivalent.
I don’t think we’ll ever know the real reason for this “stunt”, but it just smacks of stupidity.
And the bullshit coming out of the White House of how they knew nothing about this is insulting to anyone with a brain. Has the media just knuckled under and decided not to ask any probing questions? I know the first 100 days news conference had some real fastballs thrown at him (especially that one by the Jeff Zeleney of the New York Times… enchanted? no wonder the NYT is going under). But c’mon. WTF were they thinking?
I’ll throw Obama a bone and state that he may indeed not have known where AF-1 was (or AF-1 jr), but I have to believe his COS, Rahm Emanuel, knew about this. This wasn’t a 5 minute discussion over coffee. They had to plan for this, and the people in the WH had to know where that plane was… security demands it.
Why is everything that comes out from inside the beltway just crap? Can’t we handle the truth? How cool would it have been if Obama said, “My bad. This was a terrible idea that sounded much better in theory than it played out in practice. And for those of you who are wondering, here’s why we did it in the first place…”
Not so hard, is it? Apparently, it’s impossible. There was no logical reason to do this without at least the NY/NJ state and local governments being well informed, not to mention the media. If they wanted pictures from a jet, I don’t think any cameras on the ground would be a bother, would they?
And are we ever going to see these amazing pics? Christ, it’s not like you are going to see Obama in the plane anyway. Anyone hear of photoshop?
Democrat, Republican… it doesn’t matter. Just ask Arlen Specter.
Now the White House is refusing to release the pictures. It’s just a matter of time before the Freedom of Information Act releases the photos and the details of the flight.
Where this photo-op happened was relatively stupid – buzzing Manhattan with a 747 – but I don’t get all the outrage over the photo-op existing. It’s not like Obama twirled his moustache and wondered where he could piss away half-a-mil.
Shit like this goes on all the time. I bet there’s someone taking a brand new picture of Mount Rushmore right now, just because someone decided we needed an updated photo of it. I wouldn’t be suprised if there was a Department of Photo-Ops reporting to the undersecretary in charge of the Other Countless Menial Shit The Government Does Every Once In A While.
The outrage is that we’re in the middle of a serious economic crisis and it’s a stupid thing to do on top of a being a waste of money.
And if whoever arrange the photo-op had said, “You know what? Fuck Manhattan, lets do it over the Rockies,” it would have cost the same amount of money, and we wouldn’t be pissing and moaning over a $300k expense because we wouldn’t even have known about it.
Good luck getting the Air Force to cut back on public relations. I mean, really.
Go here and see about 2 to 5 in-flight photos of every aircraft in the inventory, including one of a VC-25 over Mount Rushmore. We spend half a trillion dollars on defense every year, and by that measure, $325k (or whatever it cost) doesn’t even show a blip on the radar.
Now, that’s a lot to pay to get some promotional photos, sure, but it is the nature of photographs and publicity stills that they need to be updated every now and then. That’s the cost of dealing with the public.
However, the flight should not have been classified. It should have been announced, not just to calm people’s fears, but to get people out to the streets to see something pretty cool. Air Force One circling the Statue of Liberty could be a damn cool sight, just like people show up to see the Thunderbirds. And if you want to talk about expenses, just how much do we spend on sending the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels to all those air shows? We’re in tough economic times, dammit!
OK, tell me how you know a picture of the same 747 is new or old? What needs to be updated?
guys,
- F-16, statue of liberty, AF-1.
- take gif/jpeg/ or other friendly photo format
- photoshop them together.
done.
Almost 400K for this pic? Assholes.
I don’t care what the budget is. When will you people realize that this is the reason the budget is impossible to cut? If you don’t spend all your allocated money, you get less in the next round of budget meetings. So, every department spends every penny (at least).
Bureaucratic Assholes! This country is going down the toilet. If you take a look up before we all get sucked down, we’ll see the big asshole above, taking its shit on our head.
Can’t wait to see these dynamic photos. I hope there is a cardboard Obama torso stuck to one of the windows, waving… or better yet, flipping the bird.
This entire scenario stinks of rotten fish.
The action itself :eek:
The cost :eek:
The photo op story :rolleyes:
training mission story :rolleyes:
None of it makes sense. The press corp has been castrated - none of them have the balls to ask a probing question anymore. I don’t have a clue what this was really all about, but can guarantee that we never will know the truth.
Meh , it sounds like this administrations version of tailhook.
Declan
There was a FOIA filed by someone (don’t have a cite, sorry… I’ll dig and post later if someone wants a name), to get the pics. I have no idea how long this will take, but more waste of taxpayer dollars. Why not just release the damn things?
And Washington wonders why the general public doesn’t trust them.
When I saw the thread title my first thought was that the “conspiracy” was something to do with desensitising people to planes in the city, or some other similiar “toughening” exercise aimed at making people realise that terrorism just isn’t that prevalent.
On the training front - sounds quite plausible to me to have pilot of AF1 doing low passes round a city as being quite a legitimate expense.