The right-wing blogoshere is all a-twitter about Speaker Pelosi’s request for a military transport plane large enough to cross the country without refueling as she commutes between her home in San Francisco and her job in as Speaker of the House. Of course they are.
Of course, former Speaker Dennis Hastert had a government supplied jet, but it was a smaller jet that only had to fly to Illinois. Even though Pelosi has offered to use a commercial airline, she isn’t allowed. Due to security concerns since 9/11 it has been the practice to provide the person 3rd in line to the presidency military transport.
I guess we could stick Pelosi in a smaller jet and have her add one more take-off/landing cycle to the trip. Or perhaps she could take the train. That is much less of an environmental footprint than a military plane ferrying one passenger.
The devil is in the details. Does any blogger commenting out there know the impact of an added landing cycle in terms of CO2 emissions? I admit I don’t, but I suppose actually getting the facts wouldn’t make nearly as interesting a blog post, now would it? It’s something to think about.
But the military transport due to security concerns is at the White House’s request, and we all know that questioning anything spewing forth from the White House (talk about greenhouse gas) merely emboldens the enemy.
While I realize that we’re all looking for something to criticize our political “enemies” over – see? see? how can they live with themselves? – I respectfully suggest we all have better things to do.
That said. I do hope Nancy keeps her flights to a minimum.