AERIAL REFUELING TANKER FOR THE TROOPS - HELD UP BY POLITICS, MCCAIN

From March 08, 2008 ON AIR JUDGE WYLD SHOW - Radio Talk

Excerpt from show prep notes. On air content may have been more or less. Not journalistic or debate notes.

Aerial Refueling Tankers… this has become a big big big deal… It hasn’t really hit it big on the presidential campaign yet… but it should…There have been appropriations hearings about it and so now you are wondering what I’m talking about….

Old planes… decades… attempt to replace within funding just like you might do to lease a car. It costs a little bit more. Doesn’t mean you are overpaying but it’s less money now and over time you might pay a little more for the privilege of having the car sooner…

AND the Air force was getting it from a company who can make these things… An Aerial Refueling tanker is like you driving down the street and a big tanker truck drives along side of you and pumps gas in your car tank without you having to stop.. you keep going. They do this in the air!!! With airplanes!!!

Fighter aircraft need fuel… they can get to where they going without having to stop… or look for a ground fuel station… an air tanker is a big plane that flys near them but not over the war area… refuels the fighter and the fighter goes back to fight some more… or bomber…etc…

They are getting old… sooooo the best company who can do it fast and to the need of the Air Force spent their own money to build a plane that is better than what the Air Force already has. As a matter of fact, the Air Force wants a plane that is efficient, can get the job done without costing a lot to operate in doing it.

And then if needed, could also move some cargo as well…. The Airforce already has OTHER aircraft to lift A LOT of cargo…but the Tanker can tanking and then it could also move a few cargo items…. THIS MAKES SENSE…. Let me tell you how… If I had an el camino… two person cab, open air bed behind it… It gets me where I need to go, it has cargo space and it is efficient. It’s light weight…. But it’s old technology. Its getting old..rusting, more repairs, harder to find parts… so I want something different…

I also have a big big pickup truck for moving big things. Helping people move, getting appliances home from the big store, etc…but I don’t use it much because it has a big big engine and burns a lot of fuel….and it’s heavy so it burns a lot of fuel… so I don’t want to use the BIG truck to replace the el camino…

I want a Jeep Cherokee… When I need to haul medium sized things like I did with the el comino…I can. The jeep Cherokee has a smaller engine and it’s lighter weight than the big pickup truck so I get much better gas mileage… AND when I park it in the driveway. It doesn’t take up as much space as a BIG pickup truck. SO WHY DO I WANT ANOTHER BIG PICKUP TRUCK THAT I don’t have room for, can’t get into my garage, costs more to repair, costs more to put on the road, and I don’t need to haul large cargo around as much as I need to haul smaller cargo around.

So that’s what happened. The air force was thinking sort of about a medium sized, correct sized vehicle so they could efficiently use it and operate it, but McCain said you HAVE TO HAVE competition. The only other company to compete said all it had was a huge vehicle and didn’t have a correct sized one.

So the Air force THOUGHT they had to adjust things so the company that would have NO chance to deliver what the Air Force really needed, could still enter their HUGE wasteful vehicle into the competition…. BUT WAIT…they did this AFTER they had already told the expert company that had the correct sized vehicle already underway….. AND the first company not only had the correct sized tanker but had a BIG pickup truck one that is even better than the other companies big pickup truck one!!!!!!

So people…. It wasn’t a competition between two companies to provide the best pickup truck. It wasn’t between two Jeep Cherokees…. The Air Force had to stray away from a jeep Cherokee to allow for a pickup truck without telling the Jeep Cherokee salesman that they now were judging the Cherokee on size!!!!!! Wwwwwhhhhoooaaaaaaaa……

And of course. The Pickup truck is made in France. All the money for the basic pickup truck is going to france and a few extra fog lights and decals are going to be added at the dealer here in the US… If you buy a foreign car from a dealer here in the US…the dealer takes a small fee and sends the rest of the money to the foreign car plant and owners over seas.

That is the story about the Aerial Refueling Tanker. Now you can sort out the rest since you now can understand the basics....