Warning: The following post is a complete rant. I’ll probably piss off quite a few people, but seriously.. The level of stupidity involved in this little exercise rivals even that of the TSA.
It just fucking amazes me how someone at the White House thought it would be a good idea to fly Airforce One over New York City. Seriously, what the fuck were they thinking? I wish I could just write this off as a mild fuck-up, but clearly this required lots of thought and coordination by individuals at every level of government; Federal, State, and City.
Here’s the reality:
Federal: First, someone at the Executive Level decided, “Hey, let’s update our photos of AF-1, wouldn’t it be cool if we could fly it over New York City?” Sadly, there were enough dumb shits in office that agreed this would be a great photo-op. Uhm.. OK.. Maybe they didn’t hear of Sept. 11, 2001. You would think that they would need to notify the FAA for this (and they did), because they needed to clear air traffic (in / around) Manhattan to do this. The geniuses at the FAA (including those wonderful Flight Controllers who get paid 180K per year) didn’t bother to *possibly* raise a flag that New Yorkers might be sensitive to a large commercial jet flying low over NYC. Just fucking brilliant.
State: Well.. They’re just dumb as fuck so there’s really no discussing how stupid NY state politicians are. Let’s just make believe they just thought, “Oh wow! What a great idea!”
City: Bloomberg; The fucker that decided it would be a good idea to change term limits so he could stay in office longer. (Doesn’t this sound like a third world dictatorship?). You’d think he would have enough intelligence to just say, “Hey.. Maybe this isn’t that good an idea.” It’s ok, because Bloomberg’s a fucking hypocrite. The “ordinary guy” who happens to be mayor that “takes the subway” to work. Uhm.. The idiot takes a private car to the subway station. Almost makes you want Giuliani back.. well, maybe not that bad. Any diehard New Yorker would have enough common sense to just recognize that this wouldn’t be a good idea. So either Bloomberg is just incredibly stupid or he’s just kissing the ass of the new administration.
I guess what blows my mind about the whole thing is the simple fact that out of all the people who were involved or notified of this little stunt, not one person decided that maybe flying a very large commercial jet at low altitude over New York City on a Monday morning prompting multiple building evacuations would be a bad idea?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything this blatantly stupid executed by any other government. Seriously.