Ever the problem solver, I have identified a great solution to the entire "Air Pelosi" problem.
If Nancy wants to drop in on the local rotary club or catch her favorite Grateful Dead cover band back in SF, we the tax payers should be more than happy to pay for a first class ticket on the next available "direct flight" from DC to SF and back.
Everyone wins.
No incremental expense for a crew and fuel for a military flight.
The public gets a more useful indicator of the real terror threat level. If Nancy doesn't want to fly, we might not want to either.
Nancy gets more of a chance to meet the public. In the security line for 20 minutes. At the gate waiting an extra fifty minutes for the plane to arrive. On the plane waiting for the jet to sit out a six hour delay after boarding without letting people deplane. Waiting for her bag at baggage claim that will never show up cuz it got shipped to SEA-TAC instead of SF.
Nancy even gets to think she has a direct flight. Until the gate agent provides helpful information to the woman sitting next to her that is boarding the same flight at Reagan International who is getting off at O'Hare because a "direct" flight isn't really a "non-stop" flight. It just means you don't have to switch planes between A and Z.
The whole stink over "Air Pelosi" is a great microcosm of the real problem with government. Our entire system of government was structured to avoid making ANY ONE member indispensable. Politicians, GET OVER YOURSELVES. Though some of you have grown fat enough off shady book deals, speaking engagements and campaign funding shenanigans to produce your own micro-gravity, in the larger social scheme of things, you're just not that important. Especially given how little you accomplish.
Drive your own fat butts to the Hill everyday. Drive to that next campaign appearance in a car or cab and sit in traffic like the rest of us. Book your own flight and suffer through moronic TSA security screenings like the rest of us in steerage and maybe you'd figure out how to do something constructive about energy policy, public transportation and homeland security.
