Vacation to stupidity

Today, the editors of the Oklahoman ran a rather pathetic letter by Ron Sills of Edmond that pushes a tired anti-Obama meme:

Regarding 'Military paying steep price for policy decisions' (Our Views, March 30): Retired U.S. Air Force officer Dick Newton, in reviewing the impact of budget cuts on our national defense, noted that more than a dozen USAF squadrons were grounded last year due to a lack of funds for fuel. It would be interesting to know how many of these squadron planes could have flown training missions if the fuel expended on flying the Obama family on vacation all over the world on Air Force One had been used for military purposes instead!

Before addressing the "merits" (zing!) of this letter, let's look at what the editors titled it:

Obama family's flights of fance

That's cut-and-pasted straight from the on-line edition. Flights of fance? Obviously the editors meant "flights of fancy" which is an idiom that refers to "an idea which shows a lot of imagination but which is not practical or useful in real situations." Given that the letter-writer is talking about literal travel, an idiom like this doesn't make any sense here. However, the editors were trying to use "fancy" as some sort of pejorative to push that whole Democrats-are-elitists thing. But since the editors are so stupid, someone actually imagined that "fancy" was spelled "fance"-- like, I guess, fanc-e? That, or they really imagine that the idiom is actually spelled just "fance" or something. It is absolutely pathetic, and no real newspaper should stand for such ineptitude. But the Oklahoman isn't a real newspaper and so we are left with this propaganda-driven embarrassment.

Anyhow, back to the actual letter. One good thing is that it's actually topical, addressing one of the paper's editorials (even if the paper still refuses to link to such things). Aside from that, though, it's pretty pathetic. 

This isn't the place to question the logic of the editorial, though it pushes a typical jingoistic line that you see from a lot of right wing outlets: that we need to cut government spending on everything but the military, because somehow, even though the US spends more on its military than China and Russia (and the UK, and Germany, and Italy, and Japan, etc., etc.) combined, cuts to our military-- all in the name of crazed economic lunacy (we are passing all this debt to our grandchildren!) that the right wing itself is driving-- will somehow mean that we could be invaded.

So anyway, yes, according to an Air Force PR guy, "over a dozen squadrons were grounded last year because the Air Force lacked the funds to fuel them." There's a lot of context missing in that statement that is causing Mr Sills such stress. For instance, there are about a hundred active squadrons in the USAF. When the Air Force PR guy talks about having a dozen grounded, what does that mean? We can read here-- again, from a pro-Air Force propaganda publication-- about some of the results. It sounds dire on the surface, but it also sounds sort of ridiculous. Like:

Air Force officials had warned that mandatory budget cuts would lead to a reduction of flying hours by 18 percent, with readiness dropping to 'sub-optimal levels,' according to information provided to Congress. The drop in flying hours would mean that it could take up to six months to repair the damage to readiness, the Air Force warned lawmakers in a February presentation.

Oh the humanity!! Obviously the Air Force isn't going to say "cool, we have been over-doing it anyhow, so it's fine if you cut back." So they are naturally going to dramatize cuts as being catastrophic even though everyone knows they won't be.

But more importantly-- and we can get to the crux of Mr Sills' idiocy: what does this have to do with Obama's "vacations" and Air Force One? Well, we can look at this chart and have some idea whether this letter makes any sense or not:

So, uh, yeah. I mean, it's hard to complain about the number of vacation trips that Obama has taken. He's taken far fewer than the previous president, and fewer, even, than St. Reagan! Yet for some reason, it's fashionable for those on the right to attack Obama for his vacations. The reasons for this are hard to know. Some of it probably stems from the basic "I hate Democrats" stance that guys like Sean Hannity will always take. Some also comes from a bit of latent racism: it no doubt draws significant ire from the wealthy power brokers on the right-- who have spent over a generation using the racist dog whistle as part of its "southern strategy" to win elections-- to see a black guy jaunting around to Hawaii on a fancy (or is that fance?) private jet paid for by the American people. If Bush does it to go to his "ranch" in Texas, it's cool-- he's a rich white dude. But Obama? No sir!

And moreover, is it really the case the if Obama took fewer vacations, somehow we'd be able to fund some more Air Force squadrons? I mean, a typical fighter jet costs ca. $35,000 an hour to fly. Air Force One flies as a cost of ca. $180,000 an hour. So that's like 5 fighter jets-- or, perhaps, half of a squadron. But Obama has only taken 15 trips during his presidency. So if one trip would fund half a fighter squadron for a few hours (a trip from DC to Hawaii is about 10 hours), then 15 trips would fund about 7 squadrons for a few hours. But from the article cited above, the Air Force is talking about "spending cuts that have eliminated more than 44,000 flying hours." Uh. OK. Well if one Air Force One hour is about 5 fighter jet hours, and Obama has taken 15 trips of 20 hours (there-and-back) each, that's 300 hours, or 1,500 fighter jet hours (5x300). Which is about 0.03% of the total reduced hours. I'll say that again: 0.03%!!!

So when an idiot like Mr Stills writes "It would be interesting to know how many of these squadron planes could have flown training missions if the fuel expended on flying the Obama family on vacation all over the world on Air Force One had been used for military purposes instead" THE ANSWER IS ABOUT 0.03% MORE, or VIRTUALLY NOTHING.

A real paper would know that this is a totally lame letter just pushing a slightly racist meme for no other reason than to, well, keep that southern strategy working. But the Oklahoman isn't a real newspaper and so we get stupid letters from stupid people like this.