Political Humor

Air Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi has come under fire recently for traveling around in a Air Force G5 or larger aircraft, on her frequent flights between Washington DC and San Francisco Calif. The truth is that she didn’t actually use those aircraft. Well, she did once in a while, but only because the Air Force didn’t have a smaller plane available. It seems the request were made for the larger ones, she just wasn’t the one who made them. It was her staff.

It’s called plausible denialability. And Obama didn’t know what Geithner was up to either.

Yeah I know. I really liked the idea of her acting like the Wicked Bitch of the West, flying off the broom handle, abusing her power and arrogantly wasting the taxpayer’s dollars. To be fair, she’s only squandering and not outright wasting our money.

She generally flies for free in an Air Force C20, which is a Gulfstream III. This is the same plane Denny Hastert used. It only cost $900 an hour instead of the $22,000 for the larger craft. Makes it seem down right reasonable, doesn’t it?

The Speaker of the House averages 31, 11 hour round trip flights per year. These only cost us about 3.1 million. Not exactly free. This doesn’t cover the currently, unknown cost all those last minute canceled flights.

It seems Nancy likes to block out every weekend just in case she want to take a little plane flight with her family and friends. Then she waits until the last minute to cancel.

It’s really nice of her to be so thoughtful as to cancel. At least the pilots, air and ground crews can salvage some of their weekend.

Then we have all the other Congressional use of free Air Force planes. A few million more here and there. A mere pittance compared to, let’s say, I don’t know… maybe 9.3 trillion dollars!

It’s a start. I mean, if we’re going to go to any expense to retrieve $165 million, then it stands to reason we should be looking into any savings we can. It’s that line by line thing we heard about up until sometime last November.

They All Fall Down

The reason we foot the bill for these frequent flyers, is in response to the incident that happen in New York a few years ago, when some buildings fell down after being very bad indeed and needed to be brought to the ground. It seems a five sided building was naughty too and maybe some white house.

Since we no longer have enemy combatants or a War on Terror, I wasn’t sure if we could still talk about, hush… 9/11. If that term is now verboten and you’re offended, then I’m oh, so very sorry.

The Air Force was asked to keep some public officials safe -from certain, now unspecified people, who might find it necessary to fight for their freedom near these officials- by flying them around for free.

Still, the thought of those of us who can’t afford even a measly G3, fronting the cash so Nancy can go home almost every weekend, doesn’t sit very well. What it all comes down to is propriety.

The now defunct Trans American Airlines, better know as TWA, was hijacked so often by Middle Eastern types, it was widely referred to as Travel With Arabs.

So at some point in time this program was valid. But since the offensive terms have now been dropped by this administration, and with all the overtures made toward that part of the world, I’m sure they’re no longer angry at us.  We don’t need this service any longer.

As many of you know, I spend 20 years in the Army. I was stationed all across the southern portion of our country, Germany, Korea and Alaska. If I wanted to go home, I had to wait for leave and then get myself there on my own dime. That’s fine, I chose that profession and knew what I was getting into.

I’d like to believe the members of Congress, et al, knew that too. I could be wrong.

Now I’m not heartless. I want to see our hardworking civil servants get a chance to go home. I just don’t want them to fly for free.

Ridin’ The Rails

The National Railroad Passenger Corporation is a wholly government owned company. That’s right Big Brother owns an evil, Big Corporation. They operate AMTRAK. Joe Biden loves AMTRAK. He says it’s a “national treasure”.

We have dumped billions of dollars into this “treasure” and haven’t seen a red cent in return. But these railroad guys are smart. They got the system figured out. You see, they really don’t owe anything because they just pay the last “loan” off with the next one. As long as the money keeps coming in for your pockets to theirs, they’re in the clear.

Now Uncle Sam Joe wants another, paltry 1.3 billion for his beloved choo choo trains. Joe has been riding the train home for years. I think that’s wonderful. And if it’s good enough for the Veep to ride, then it’s good enough for Congress.

Now I’m sure we could get a group rate, but a monthly pass currently cost $579 a person. Multiply that by 100 in the Senate and 435 in the House and you get about 3.7 million per year in rail passes. Remember Pelosi spends over 3.1 million a year all on her own. We could save a bundle.

My question for you is, should we ride them out of town on a rail, or tell them to take a flying leap?

Les James has a humor blog, but he hasn’t been posting lately. So don’t waste your time.

Because Fiar asked for it…

Thanks to the guys at South Park for never being Politically Correct.