Here is the photograph of the VC-25A aircrafts' 4/27/2009 flight that cost taxpayers $328,835 and sparked panic and flashbacks of the September 11 attacks in Manhattan. The White House released this single photo today and it was announced that President Obama accepted the resignation of White House Military Office Director, Louis Caldera who took responsibility for the blunder.
NEW YORK (AP) 4/27/2009 - One of the president's official planes and a supersonic fighter jet zoomed past the lower Manhattan skyline in a flash just as the work day was beginning Monday. Within minutes, startled financial workers streamed out of their offices, fearing a nightmarish replay of Sept. 11. ∴ For a half-hour, the Boeing 747 and F-16 jet circled the Statue of Liberty and the lower Manhattan skyline near the World Trade Center site. Offices evacuated. Dispatchers were inundated with calls. Witnesses thought the planes were flying dangerously low. ∴ But the flyover was nothing but a photo op, apparently one of a series of flights to get pictures of the plane in front of national landmarks.
Other Headlines: FOXNews - NYC Mayor Furious After Low-Flying Planes Panic Workers
NYPOST - SCARE FORCE ONE, Air Heads in DC Terrorize City and Fed Wing Nuts' Idiotic Flight Spurs '9/11' Evac
UPDATE: President Obama apologized for the costly and insensitive flyover and said that he knew nothing about it. Later news reports indicated that Obama was "really angry" over the incident. White House Military Officer Louis Caldera has taken the blame for authorizing the flyover and he has apologized to the public. The full cost of the incident spreads well beyond the $328,835 spent by the Air Force when 911 calls, ambulance responses due to panic related injuries, productivity lost as people ran from their office buildings and more. The greatest cost, however, was reigniting the fear that New Yorkers lived through on September 11, 2001.
The point, of course, was to get photos of the VC-25A aircraft at all the great landmarks. I offer one on the cheap...
"There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation." – James Madison
Amazing Chart
Chart of the greatest and most remarkable achievement in human history, and one you probably never heard about… Click image to read about this amazing chart so you'll be prepared to defend capitalism!
"I'm strongly in favor of the progressive income tax. Tax the daylights out of the Progressives." -Gallus
"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." - Ayn Rand
Collective Bargaining Reform
State of Wisconsin Before Reform: $3.6 billion deficit After Reform: $154 million surplus
The Bush Admin and Senator McCain warned repeatedly about Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac and what thus became the 2008 financial crisis -- starting in 2002 (and actually even earlier -- in the Clinton and Carter White Houses. Democrats resisted and kept to their party line, extending loans to people who couldn't afford them.
Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign ad (video) which explains the damage caused by the government's decision to stop tying the dollar to gold. Reagan states firmly that gold-backed currency is the only way to restore price stability and end inflation.
Do you know how much land the federal government owns in the west? If not, be prepared to beshocked! (Map from 2004)
Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America, wrote, "the greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults."
PolitiFact has compiled a list of more than 500 promises that Barack Obama made during his campaign and they are tracking each and every one. Watch the progress and see the current status; No Action, In the Works or Stalled. Once a campaign promise is completed, PolitiFact rates it as Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken. Go check it out!
"I would never invade the United States. There would be a gun behind every blade of grass." --Isoroku Yamamoto
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themelves against tyranny in government." --Thomas Jefferson
CRIMINALS prefer unarmed victims and DICTATORS prefer unarmed citizens! --Unknown
Freedom
"If you think aficionados of a Living Constitution want to bring you flexibility, think again." -- Antonin Scalia
"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." --Thomas Paine, "The Crisis", December 23, 1776
"It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world." --Thomas Jefferson
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." --Plato
“In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security – they wanted a comfortable life and they lost it all…security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society, but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free.” --Historian Edward Gibbon on the fall of Athens
Socialism, Communism, etc.
"Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of EMERGENCY." --Herbert Hoover
"We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism." -- Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev, 1959
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money.” -- Margaret Thatcher
"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread." --Thomas Jefferson
"A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have." -- Thomas Jefferson
When government doesn’t agree with the people, it’s time to change the people -- Bertolt Brecht (obviously a Progressive) “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” -- Sir Winston Churchill
The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed. -- Adolf Hitler
"All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." - Adolf Hitler
“The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses… When one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward – or go back. He who now talks about the “freedom of the press” goes backward, and halts our headlong course towards Socialism.” --Vladimir Lenin
The Media
This year's Global Bad News Awareness week to overlap with International Good News Obliviousness Month --The People's Cube
Civil Rights
In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott decision by a 7-2 vote, that black people were not “legal persons” and were property of the slave owners who were granted basic constitutional “rights” to own those slaves. Abolitionists were told if they disagreed with slavery, they didn’t have to “own a slave” and not to 'impose their morality on slave owners'.
Similarly, in 1973, by a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that unborn humans were not “legal persons” and that they were, in essence, property of the owner (the mother) who had the constitutional right to kill her unborn baby. Pro-lifers who opposed abortion were told, like the early abolitionists, that if they opposed abortion, they 'shouldn’t have one' and shouldn’t 'impose their morality on those who choose to'. --Gregg Jackson, author Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies (2007)