True that. However, just with the info here, it will be years of fun to then point and laugh at that fringe if it comes later with that discredited point.
IMO, the chance they got before of controlling the mainstream media with planted controversies like this one is fading thanks to the MSM finally realizing that the web is here. (“tempest in a teapot” and “Republican partisan bickering” are the lines I’m seeing in the news after the White House defended Pelosi)
And thanks to silenus
Behind a guy who can’t handle his pretzels and another guy who’s had four heart attacks, at that.
Range is a function of payload. If you’re carrying a lot of people and a lot of baggage, you have to reduce fuel load to keep within the max weight limit. Performance specs for the Gulfstream III, which is what this plane really is, quote the stated range with only 8 passengers on board, which is less than half its capacity (dunno how the USAF 89th Airlift Wing has theirs outfitted). Account for the weight communications stuff that it would have to have, and the crewmen/redshirts to take care of it, as well as the staffers and family members Pelosi would have on board, and it may well not be able to carry the fuel to make Andrews-SFO nonstop into the prevailing westerlies.
So this is the usual phenomenon from the usual sources - looking for rationalizations for partisan hatred at best, or perhaps just simple rabble-rousing.
The alliteration in the thread title reminds me of Spiro T. Agnew. For that alone, magellan01, the wrath of the gods should fall on you.
Small “g”? No problem.
This is the type of information I alluded to earlier. But there seems to be an awful large margin of error in range, over 2,200 miles—90%. Now the added payload may well diminish the range to the point where it is an issue. If that is the case, the Reps are indeed the douches and the offenders should have thier faces rubbed in it in an attempt to prevent them from stirring similar shit the next time.
Is there a pilot among us to shed light on both the range/payload issue and to comment on the working range being half the maximum range?
I *am * a pilot, and an aerospace engineer. I thought that’s what I just did.
As Kevin Drum has noted, this makes four (or five, if you count the Edwards blogger story or the Biden story) major news stories in recent weeks that the right wing pushed into the mainstream media that were basically false or no-there-there stories made to sound ominous and yet that rarely got debunked, and got endlessly played up instead.
The right wing sure seems to be having a lot of luck lately, no? How many other completely fabricated or basically dishonest or empty stories have their hitmen worked into mainstream coverage (where it’s for some reason, likely to be amplified instead of fact checked)
-Kerry shunned by troops, I HAVE A PHOTO!
-Biden said no other African American ever has been clean.
-Edwards sold his house, something something, somebody ISN’T THAT SINISTER???
-Pelosi is trying to hurt our military by outrageously asking that a MILITARY jumbo jet fly her around the country!
-Obama isn’t so clean: he’s a filthy Muslim who was raised in a madrassa!
-Hillary something something evil bad men, what? (I don’t even understand why this one was a scandal it’s some nonsensical and obscure)
-Barbara Boxer said Condi was a LESBIAN we think maybe, awwww yeah!
I’m not familiar with all the stories you’re talking about can you specify who exactly in “the right wing pushed” (my emphasis) these stories into the MSM:
The press jumped on those immediately after they happened. What Biden said was stupid, and Hillary tried to make a joke about her husband (apparently) and it backfired with the reporters. No one “pushed” those stories anywhere.
Now, some of the other stories were definitely trumped up by the wing-nuts, but that doesn’t mean every so-called scandal is.
More to the point than any particular airplane capabilities is the fact, already documented, that Rep. Pelosi had nothing to do with the issue. It was the House Sergeant-at-Arms who initiated the request to consider a different aircraft.
Even if the request was for a C5-A Galaxy or a Russian Antonov An-225, it was not something sought by Ms. Pelosi and any attempt to portray her as a greedy villain is nothing but a political smear.
Someone in the audience, not the press, asked her if she was up to the task of dealing with evil men. She started saying: “what in my background gives me experience dealing with evil and bad men” and then realized what she had said and stopped. She and the audience both broke up. It was a very real and funny situation, something that I thought allowed her to loosen up for a moment.
Biden, on the other hand, is a nitwit with bad hairplugs, who doesn’t know when to shutup.
Not how I recall it. Both of those stories were in the blogs first. They might have gotten passing mentions by reporters at first, but the building several day burn offs that put them in the press and pundit jabbering took awhile. You’d have a stronger point to make I think on those two given that the criticism was spread across the spectrum rather than right only.
And I still don’t agree that Biden said something particularly stupid or even particularly remarkable in the first place.
I was wondering about specifics. Namely, the actual tradeoff between payload vs range, and what the common practice is regarding maximum range capability and “working range”. Can you shed light on any of that?
So this afternoon I’m trudging back from the store, got my FM radio on to keep me warm, and I scan across Sean Hannity of Hannity and His Bitch (…hey! its pledge week!..) and he’s all over this story, trumpeting his outrage to the skies, venom sacs all atremble, about how Pelosi and Murtha are threatening to cut off funding for Our Heroes unless they get the “palatial plane” she so cravenly craves.
So yeah, the stories got legs, for those who aren’t burdened by scruple.
I knew I detected a faint odor of slide rule.
I know that when I flew on the corporate jet from Cincinnati to Brussels I noted to the pilot that the published range of the jet (a Falcon 900 EX) was only 150 miles more than the distance between the two airports. The pilot guaranteed that we had enough fuel to reach the crash site.
Slipstick AND slipstream!
swoons
Of course, the Speaker herself is happy to fly on a commercial plane, and said so. So it’s good to know that the public probably would be happy to have her go beyond what she herself would ask for. 
This whole thing stank when it hit the press in the first place. I really, really wish we weren’t living in a society so in need of smears and scandals to keep us interested in “news.”
Get this. Now Republicans are claiming (apparently with a straight face) that they are concerned about the impact on the environment of Ms. Pelosi cavorting about on her palatial plane.
fuel reserve is meaured in time, not distance. distance is only a factor if you don’t have an alternate close by.
So we should ask the SAT what changed with the new speaker.