By the way, thoughts on the FAA / Airline / Airport issue

 Must SUCK to try and catch a flight from SEMA to get home (I drive from Vegas to San Diego, 5 hours, and sure would be less risky to fly instead of deal with TIREDNESS for a boring 5 hour steering wheel chokehold.... trying to rely on caffeine and  podcasts to combat being up for over 20 hours on the drive home, since waking up a 3 am to get to SEMA to hit it at about 10 am that morning. 

Also, just my 2 cents, as what is the point of a blog if not to make a place to give your two cents about whatever... right?

Sure seems sunlight bright and clear to me that the US Govt isn't playing by the rules of "pass a damn budget, on time, every time, no delay, and balance the damn thing, and consider not blowing a couple trillion more that just gets added to the 34 trillion dollar deficit / bankruptcy thing no one deals with" that they once did, and wouldn't it be nice if instead of the repercussions and fallout being something only the regular citizens have to cope with (no airline traffic controllers getting paid, and neither are the other airport govt workers, are the soldiers, sailors and Marines getting paid?) 

It sure would be nice to see that by not passing a budget (and I don't mean a month to month spending bill that only delays the inevitable "where's the next annual budget?" problem) the hundreds of millionaires that are supposed to work for the citizens, who aren't millionaires (huge gap of wealth between politicians and voters on that point) the politicians, and their office budgets, and their govt provided vehicles, transportation budget, per diem food allowance, and gas cards are all frozen from the day the govt gets into shut down mode, until they work out the solution and get the govt budget passed for the next annual cycle... and that they have to show up to work, in the big ol voting chamber where the House of Representatives, or Congress members, plus the VP and the Pres, sit at those desks and don't get to do anything but look at each other with hate and discontent, and eat cafeteria food made by unpaid US Capitol Building cafeteria workers, and use the bathrooms that unpaid US Capitol Building janitors clean... while those politicians are on a pay freeze. 

But, more interesting than my notion of how the politicians should have to be burdened by the results of their lack of results on doing the only job they are hired to do - do not vote for a single one of them to get re-elected, they obviously are not capable of doing their job, and only us regular people have to bear that burden -  

is it NOW clear that a high speed rail system around the country would be a great idea, and a way to avoid using the airlines/airports/air traffic controller who are not getting paid, and actually govt ordered to cut 10% of all flights? 

Yes, a high speed rail system is expensive, and so are airline tickets. It would be nice to avoid the monopoly, and instant death of transport when the airports shut down, if we had a high speed rail system. 

We've recently seen just how paralyzing the airlines are when ONE little thing happens, like

the volcano in Iceland diverting all air traffic from that New York to Europe route in April 2010, 

or the covid pandemic cutting 90% of all air travel at it's worst, 

the combo 1-2 punch of 2008 recession and jet fuel price surge, 

the 2019 Boeing 737 Max groundings, 

the 2017 British Airways data center power fail, 

the Feb 2018 and Jan 2021 storms that screwed up Europe's airports

the Jan 2023 Southwest Airlines snafu back to back with the NOTAMS failure

the June 30th 2023 United Airline fiasco in Seattle-Tacoma airport

the March 2025 electrical substation explosion at Heathrow

Fall of 2025 drone intrusion into European airport airspace

Anyway, clearly, airports can be easily shut down by tech fails, uncommonly harsh weather, and paychecks getting cut off. 

Sure would be a good thing to have another fast transportation way to get around the country, instead of driving your own car