But not in real life.
Instead, in a 737-200 flight simulator at the Delta Flight Museum in Atlanta, Georgia. With a scheduled time and $400 later, you can do it too for about an hour.
What great fun that must have been.
BZ
P.S.
Visit FlightChops.com, plus FlightChops on Twitter.
No, that’s not a reference to the group Genesis when lead singer Peter Gabriel and guitarist Steve Hackett had departed.
It’s a reference to the only three GOP presidential candidates who are still viable.
Thursday’s debate featured Chris Christie, Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, John Kasich, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
Cruz answers the “New York” question with logic whilst Trump conflates conservatives, Manhattan and 9/11. Hubcaps and fruitbats, Mr Trump.
Rand Paul was not present because of his failure to make the varsity squad. He decided to take all his toys and go home. Ho-hum, no loss. The “undercard” debate is here.
The three remaining feasible presidential candidates in the GOP race are Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. I would, however, throw Chris Christie into the mix as a proverbial wild card.
John Kasich is estimably a zero, Jeb Bush continues to disappoint and Ben Carson, though likely a dear man, has proven once and for all that he is nowhere prepared to take the office of president. Frankly, Ben Carson was embarrassing to watch.
People say the GOP is falling apart. Certainly there is tension and discontent between what I term the GOPEE (GOP Establishment Elite) and the conservative, fresher elements of the Republican Party. Fractious, yes, but not moribund just yet.
People are forgetting what’s occurring directly across the street.
Hillary Clinton is fragmenting and beginning to implode herself. Her numbers are plummeting. Some analysts are saying Hillary is back in 2008. Voters don’t trust her and, evidently, she doesn’t trust them either.
Finally, the GOP fog is beginning to clear.
I say: it’s about time.
Time to focus.
BZ
On the heels of Tuesday’s state of the union speech, Obama has this planned:
Imperialism.
An out and out diktat. Mixed liberally with insanity.
From WesternJournalism.com:
Obama’s Chief Of Staff Just Made Horrifying Revelation About Obama’s ‘Audacious’ Final Plans
by Warner Todd Huston
“,,, (isn’t) constrained by law, Congress, or the Constitution.”
While President Obama’s frequent use of executive orders to implement his policies has angered many Republicans, his chief of staff is warning Obama has even bigger plans to enact policies without involving Congress.
White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough had a warning for the nation — in his final year in office, Obama will indulge in “audacious executive action.”
McDonough issued his warning during a breakfast with reporters in Washington D.C., in response to a question about what the president meant when he said he would “go it alone” if Congress wouldn’t back him.
This is bare naked despotism. Obama operates like a dictator because there is no one to oppose him. While people speak words, Obama takes imperial actions via his Executive Orders. He answers words with actions.
Yes, prior presidents have issued executive orders, but not on the massive scale and wide-ranging influence of Obama’s.
“Audacious executive action” indeed.
Meaning: Obama will continue to ignore an entire THIRD of the US government as though it doesn’t exist, simply for his own benefit.
According to National Review, McDonough replied, “We’ll do audacious executive action over the course of the rest of the year, I’m confident of that.” McDonough also said Obama and his team would endeavor to make sure his EOs couldn’t be “undone” by Congress at a later date.
“Couldn’t be undone by Congress.” Because he is stepping over and completely ignoring Congress.
But McDonough hinted that Obama wasn’t going to be constrained by law, Congress, or the Constitution. “McDonough said the White House is considering executive action on any and all issues,” the magazine reported. “And the main question President Obama plans to ask himself is ‘Why not?’”
Yes, why not? Just whom is stepping up to stop Mr Obama? Do we even hear anyone in the GOP stridently excoriating Obama over his past actions and these future plans? It’s not as if Obama is keeping this scheme secret.
This is a raw hijacking, wholesale, of the American government. Mr Obama will not be constrained by LAW or the CONGRESS or the CONSTITUTION.
With Obama his diktats involve all-reaching content.
However, as David Harsanyi notes, it isn’t the number of EOs, but rather what is contained in them, that is cause for concern. Harsanyi says Obama has perpetrated the worst overreach of any executive in history and his EOs have been aimed at far reaching and substantive changes in the American way of life.
Mr Obama knows he’s a lame duck and finds himself totally unopposed. Why wouldn’t he continue as American Dictator?
BZ
P.S.
Even Leftist Bill Maher knows a dictator when he sees one.
Bill Maher said on his blog today that liberals should be pretty wary of President Obama‘s use of executive orders, because one day a president they don’t like will do it and they won’t like the results.
One thing you can count on, though: it won’t be a Republican who repeats Obama’s abuse of EOs. They wouldn’t have the guts or the intelligence.
And it couldn’t have happened to a more traitorous man. Or quickly enough.
The only thing worse than having to hear Obama’s voice, literally, EVERY day for the past seven years would be to hear Hillary’s piercing voice every day. That is not, at this point, an impossible future.
Will Obama mention his traitorous Iranian deal? Will he mention the Iranian missiles fired close to our newest aircraft carrier? Will he mention the ten sailors captured by Iran? As Charles Krauthammer said, Obama has already been serially humiliated by Iran.
Obama canceled sanctions for the missile launches. Obama is kind to our enemies and brutal to our allies.
How long will the speech go? How many times will he say “I” instead of we?
The transcript of his last SOTU is here.
And the lies commenced.
Mr Obama said we have emerged better now than before. Yes ladies and gentlemen, he is delusional from the very beginning.
“We have reformed healthcare and reinvigorated our energy sector.”
“How do we lead the world without becoming its policeman?”
“The people who say our economy is in decline are peddling fiction.”
“We should recruit and support more great teachers for our kids.”
So here has what Leftist policies have yielded for teachers in our current “total lack of discipline” classroom environments.
That wasn’t a movie, a TV show or a bad SNL skit. That’s classroom reality.
“Food Stamp recipients didn’t cause the financial crisis; recklessness on Wall Street did.” Wall Street helped; but the givernment demanded that banks loan to people who couldn’t afford houses.
“Look, if anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it. You’ll be pretty lonely, because you’ll be debating our military, most of America’s business leaders, the majority of the American people, almost the entire scientific community, and 200 nations around the world who agree it’s a problem and intend to solve it.”
Again, more lies. More embracement of The Religious Left — those who so desperately want to believe in Global Warming. It is a religion that demands faith and, like islam, brooks no dissenters.
“No nation dares to attack us or our allies because they know that’s the path to ruin.”
All of the highest-ranking military professionals in the room appeared as though they had had a steaming dog turd stuffed in their mouths when Obama said that. I watched.
“Surveys show our standing around the world is higher than when I was elected to this office.”
Another massive and total lie.
Even the Demorats in the audience who stood to clap did so with tepid vigor and passive and disinterested faces.
THE BIGGEST LIE OF THE EVENING:
“We don’t need to build them (ISIL) up to show that we’re serious, nor do we need to push away vital allies in this fight by echoing the lie that ISIL is representative of one of the world’s largest religions.”
THE BIGGEST OMISSION OF THE EVENING:
NOT ONE WORD about US debt and the massive deficits, CONTINUED and EXPANDED GOVERNMENT SPENDING that he and Demorats and Leftists demand.
“The future we want – opportunity and security for our families; a rising standard of living and a sustainable, peaceful planet for our kids – all that is within our reach. But it will only happen if we work together. It will only happen if we can have rational, constructive debates.”
And those debates, those discussions, are just what you and the Demorats and your fellow Leftists won’t brook in your cabinet meetings, in the public, on the internet, in books and magazines, on television and, mostly now, in our schools and universities.
“As frustration grows, there will be voices urging us to fall back into tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background.”
How odd that you mention that in your very last state of the union speech, because you have been the greatest Divider In Chief.
Obama simultaneously disarms American citizens and arms Iran with the largest, most powerful and deadliest weapons systems on the planet. Mr Obama disarms our citizens, removes equipment from our police forces — who are our First Responders to terrorist and critical incidents, not any single faction of the federal government, in any form. Not the FBI, not the US Marshals, not FEMA. Not any federal agency. Your local law enforcement only.
He also ensures that our law enforcement agencies are diminished, demagogued, belittled.
Obama was the greatest Divider In Chief. He will be proven as the least effective president in recent history, even worse than that of James Earl Carter.
His power depended precisely upon division, the diminishment of American power, greater regulatory and governmental power and money, with the
Just as with his entire administration and tenure, Obama’s final state of the union speech was entirely disconnected from reality. He continues to be physically and mentally separated from the true reality in America and continues his denial of the way the country and the world operates. His speech was disjointed and riddled with major droppings of his ego, arrogance and dismissal of those who would oppose him or his policies in any fashion. He sets aside reality that is inconvenient to him.
Not one word about American hostages in Iran. Not one word about the Iran sanctions or Monday’s ten hostage sailors. He lectures us about civility but not one reference to the fact that Obama is almost singlehandedly responsible for the chaos in Syria via ISIS, his “J.V. team” and that, by extension, Obama will be responsible for the Islamization and decline of the bulk of Europe.
Obama chose to ignore the area where a president can have the most ready influence: foreign policy. He chose to dictate the area foundationally covered by and under the aegis of Congress: domestic policy.
The speech, like Mr Obama, was sophomoric, belittling and pedantic. And not based in any way upon reality.
“This was less about a state of the union than it was a state of denial.”
— Ted Cruz
BZ
Folks, I’m having surgery today so I suspect I’ll be away from blogging for a bit.
It all depends on how the procedure goes, if my meds allow me to care about blogging, and whether I’ll be sufficiently mobile to access the laptop.
Back as soon as I can.
BZ