Status Update: April 20, 2011

So time is winding down. By this time next month I will be gainfully unemployed. I know, I’ve been saying this for a while now, but this time my last day with this outfit really is in sight. Really.

The boss hired another helicopter pilot (finally!) who starts at the end of April. Then we’ll have two weeks for him to fly around with me, getting used to the landing sites we regularly go to. This is kind of superfluous, as I didn’t have anyone holding my hand when the boss and I started flying together. We’d fly up to one of our places, then we’d look down and he’d ask, “Can you land there?” I’d usually shrug and nonchalantly go, “Yeah.” He may have mistaken my indifference for confidence and/or skill. But truly, IT’S A HELICOPTER; as long as there’s enough clearance for the rotor blades and tail boom, I can fit it in there. Granted, some of our sites are butt-clenchingly small, but it is what it is. The problem is that the boss has developed a lot of confidence in me. That trust will not easily be transferred to a new guy. So before I leave, the boss wants me to give him the Bob Barbanes Seal of Approval, for whatever that’s worth.

Life has been pretty strange lately. And busy. Every day there seemed to be something going on. The boss bought a jet to go along with the helicopter, and getting it integrated into our system has been a chore. You’d think that the simple act of adding an aircraft to an existing one-ship flight department would be easy, but it has not been. There have been a million things to do (okay, a bunch of things), and up until this point I’ve been pretty much the only one to do them.

* * *

Jacob moved out. You remember Jacob. He was the guy who came up and stayed with me after I broke my arm back in October, and sort of...just...stayed. He was a big help. We take for granted having two usable arms. But you’d be amazed at how inconvenient the loss of use of one arm can be. Try it some time! The first two weeks were particularly bad (mostly because of the associated pain). Simple things like buttoning your pants are impossible. Not so bad if you wear pajamas all the time. Not so good if you’re actually expected to keep going on with your life and…you know…do your job. Yeah, I probably should’ve taken some time off. Unfortunately, I don’t have a boss like that. Which is pretty much why I’m leaving the job, to be honest. I’ll tell you about that after I’m not an employee anymore.

Anyway, Jacob enrolled in a school up in Birmingham, Alabama, and found an apartment-share there. With only a motorcycle for transportation, he loaded up most of his worldly belongings and hit the road at the beginning of April. Here’s how it looked. I’m surprised the police didn’t stop him along the way.


Luckily, all the ropes and bungees held and Jacob made it up to Birmingham without incident.

* * *

Then my friend Mikey left to take a flying job up in the Great Northwest. We’d become kind of close, so it was hard saying good-bye to him. My friends are all I’ve got down here, since most of my family is up in New York. (I mean, I know I’ll see Jacob again; he only lives a few hours up the road.) After two weeks Mikey came back, but within a week he’d changed his mind one more time and decided to leave again. And that’s where we’re at right now. He’s sort of in-between, torn between staying and going. And yes, there’s a woman involved, and that complicates matters as you might expect. But mostly it’s his indecisiveness and a reluctance to commit to anything that’s messing him up.

* * *

Me? Although I’ve been saying all along that I will not leave Pensacola, it now looks like I may be taking a part-time flying job for the summer in town in another part of the country. It’s not something that I would normally consider, but I opened my big yap to the wrong person and said it’s something I “might” be interested in. One thing lead to another, wheels were set in motion, a resume was sent. I don’t want to jinx things, so I won’t say more about it. I might get the gig, might not. But if I do and if I’m lucky, the job may entail very little actual flying, which at this stage of the game would be fine by me.

One thing I've learned in my 55 years on this planet is that you cannot expect tomorrow to be exactly like today. It might be, but there is an equal or greater possibility that tomorrow will be a LOT different. It's best to be prepared for the inevitable change.

It's The Ride, Not The Destination

We pilots get up early. It’s in our nature. Most of us are so used to sunrise takeoffs that we just normally wake up well before that magical time. At least, that’s how it is for me and most of the pilots I know.

And it was no different today, Sunday. I thought it was going to be foggy but it wasn’t. (That’s another thing: we pilots are always checking and watching the weather.) It was bright and sunny and warm. As usual, I went out to the living room and began my routine of checking the usual internet websites I monitor.

And then it hit me.

Every Sunday I end up lounging around the house, doing nothing and then getting angry at myself for being so unproductive. Today would be different. I would get on the bike and ride out to the beach for breakfast! At least, that was the plan.

I was on the road shortly after seven. Not terribly early, I know, but I cannot just throw some clothes on and head out the door. I have to shower and shave and get ready. Sometimes I envy friends who can be out the door in ten minutes. I’m not one of them.

The Sportster and I headed down Scenic Highway (U.S. 90) at just above the 45 mph speed limit, passing joggers and bicyclists and feeling a little guilty. That’s what I should be doing, not riding a motorcycle. My reverie was short-lived, as I was immediately aggravated by some asshole in a very big pickup truck who was in a very big hurry and just had to tailgate me. Why do people have to be in such a rush on a Sunday morning fer cryin’ out loud? I pull over and let him pass, only to have him replaced by yet another asshole in another pickup truck in an another big hurry. (Sigh) Sometimes you just can’t win. I try not to let the tailgaters put me in a bad mood, but they do piss me off.

If you check the map above (my house is where the Google marker "A" is), you'll see that while Pensacola is on the water, it is not on the Gulf of Mexico. South of us is the Gulf Breeze peninsula. And further south still is the fragile barrier island of Pensacola Beach.

At the bottom of Scenic Highway where it turns into Cervantes Street, I could see out across the bay. Low, steel-gray clouds filled the sky, and there were areas of rain moving in from the southwest. Great. From the Three-Mile Bridge you can normally see all the way over to Pensacola Naval Air Station, some five miles to the west. Not today. In another fifteen minutes or so, drivers on the causeway would be treated to a morning deluge. I was glad I was early. I had considered turning around, but the plan was to ride out to the beach and dammit, to the beach I would ride!

Gulf Breeze is an overcrowded speed-trap of a town. Apparently the various idiots who have been in our local government since the 1960s never envisioned that traffic might ever increase on U.S. Highway 98, a major east/west corridor that runs through their little peninsula. Whodathunkit?! So development has pretty much been unplanned and unrestricted. A big elementary/middle/high school was built astride the highway! So every weekday morning and afternoon during the school year, traffic slows to 20 mph. This is so typical of the way in which Florida plans for development. Which is to say, it doesn’t. Growth just sort of occurs unfettered, and the inevitable problems always seem to take everyone by surprise. For as long as I’ve been living here (23 years) people have been arguing about what to do about the overdevelopment and traffic in Gulf Breeze.

I pass a Starbucks on the left (not stopping there!) and a Waffle House on my right (nor there either). I turn south across the Bob Sikes Bridge to Pensacola Beach. I can see that the tops of the condos are up in the clouds. And they’re not very tall condos. Visibility underneath is so-so; not flyable in any case with such low ceilings. After paying the $1.00 toll, I find the island dreary and deserted. Then again, the “season” hasn’t really started here yet.

You would think that Pensacola Beach, being our premier tourist destination would have some little breakfast places where a guy could get a cup of coffee and a bagel and sit outside where he could smell the salt air as he read the Sunday paper or something, right? Nope, not here. It strikes me that for a place that relies on tourism, we have so very little to offer visitors. I see a few stalwart touristas out roaming around with their children, looking lost. And I wonder what they’re thinking, spending so much money to come to this dismal, rainy place with so little to do.

I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m pretty sure that the Santa Rosa Island Authority (the local governing body) must make it economically unfeasible to run a small business on Pensacola Beach. I’ve heard the fees are enormous, and they take a cut of the revenue. A business that might survive during the tourist season would never make it during the rest of the year.

I cruise up and down the main thoroughfare. Not only are there no coffee shops or diners, none of the bigger restaurants are even open. Even the Native Café, which says they’re open every day at 7:30, wasn’t. I could, I suppose, drop into one of the major hotels and eat in their restaurant, but what good would that be? Likewise, I pass up the Circle-K gas stations, seemingly the only place to get a cup of coffee anymore.

Ultimately, I turn tail and head back northbound, leaving this shitty little place, leaving it to the dumb out-of-towners who come here and go, “You mean to tell me there isn’t even a place to get breakfast around here?! Kids, next time we’re going to Panama City Beach!” Back across the bridge, up in Gulf Breeze I pass the Starbucks again (still not stopping there!), I think about how grouchy I am. I wanted this to be an enjoyable, restorative ride. Instead, it’s made me depressed and angry. Fortunately, the bike has been running superbly. I love that.

The low clouds have pushed further north. I get rained on a little as I go back up Scenic Highway. It stings my face. Oddly, it doesn't even bother me; I know it's temporary. Sure enough, as I cross I-10 the sky is suddenly filled with small, puffy, white clouds and I’m bathed in warm sunshine. My mood brightens and I marvel at how the weather can change so much in such a short distance. Before turning into my subdivision, I head up to a nearby Circle-K convenience store to get the paper. Back in the house, my own eggs and coffee taste just as good as any I might’ve gotten down on the beach.

I shouldn't really have been surprised that there's so very little down on Pensacola Beach. I just figured that there's be someplace to grab a quick cup of coffee. Heh. My “Sunday morning ride out to the beach to get breakfast?” I won’t make that mistake again. Nevertheless, even though the destination was disappointing, the ride was still awesome. And that's the most important thing.

Aviation and the Mafia...Whaaaat?

Busy? Oh Lord, I’ve been busy. Between shepherding this stupid helicopter through a particularly difficult Annual Inspection, and trying to hire a replacement for myself, and bringing the boss’s new (to him) business jet online, and helping another friend get the Annual Inspection on his helicopter done, and helping two friends move – why yes, I’ve been very busy, thank you very much. There hasn’t even been much time to ride the damn motorcycle. And the weather’s been gorgeous. So I'm kind of frustrated.

And no, I haven’t quite terminated my employment with this company. I had planned on leaving at the end of February. But as I’ve reported, I agreed to stick around while we get some things sorted out. The end of March passed, and now we’re getting way into April. My real, real, I’m-serious-this-time final day will be April 30th…but!...I did agree to be the aerial coordinator for my boss’s wedding in mid-May…which will be held on some property about 110 miles away from our home base.

There will be guests arriving in their own airplanes. Those guests will need to be shuttled by helicopter to the wedding site, and the pilots of said planes will need to be taken care of (fed, etc.) while they’re on the ground waiting. There will be aerial photographs of the wedding site to be made. And of course the boss and his new bride will be whisked away in the helicopter after the ceremony. (I will paint "Just Married" on the side in shoe polish, but had to draw the line at attaching strings of tin cans to the landing skids.) It’s not a huge logistical challenge, but it is one my boss would rather not worry about himself, and he’d rather not trust it to a new pilot who’s been on the job for about a month. If we even hire one, that is. Sometimes I wonder…

The helicopter is back “up” and flying well. I’ve flown with two prospective pilots, both of whom could easily step in and replace me without the boss missing a beat. But flying the helicopter is a relatively small part of the job. The bigger part will be getting along with the boss. Rich guys can be a little, um, demanding. Learning to put up with their idiosyncrasies can be fun. And of course it goes without saying that the boss must trust and be comfortable with the pilot.

We hired-gun pilots like to think we’re the final authority in our aircraft. And in certain respects we are. But we also have to remember that we don’t own the aircraft; the boss does. And sometimes aircraft owners want to do specific things that we lowly pilots might not want to do. For instance, my boss prefers to fly low. He is uneasy flying higher than about 1,000 feet. His brother (who is a fixed-wing pilot/airplane owner) regularly berates me for acquiescing to my boss’s demand to stay low. (I chalk it up to sibling rivalry.) I say, as long as I can accomplish the job safely at the altitudes my boss wants to fly, then I’ll do it even though it makes me uncomfortable and I’d certainly prefer to fly higher. I know that if it bothers me too much I always have the option of quitting and finding another job. Oh wait...

With any luck, we’ll have another pilot hired by the time you read this. Getting him trained and up to speed will take some time. Still, I’m looking at the end of April as my last day on the payroll (with the aforementioned “special guest appearance” in May).

I’ve been thinking about taking a trip on the bike. Summer’s almost here, I need to get out on the highway, and I’ve got some friends I’d like to see again. But another friend wants me to ferry his aircraft from Point A to a very distant Point B, which could definitely eat into my “me time.”

Aviation is a lot like being in the Mafia. Once you're in, you just can't seem to quit.

The Most Interesting Man In The World - Part Dos (Equis)

His words carry weight that would break a less-interesting man's jaw...
He's won trophies for his game face alone...
He bowls overhand...
He is...
The most interesting man in the world.

They're silly, really, these commercials for Dos Equis beer. Maybe it's the absurdity of them that is so appealing. Sitting in a kayak and being pushed out of the back of an airplane at low level with a paddle but no parachute? Absurd! (I love how the ad agency felt the need to insert the "Do Not Attempt" caption on that particular scene. As if!)

He is the life of parties he's never attended.

Getting a puma to obey and get down off the kitchen counter? Absurd! (And why would you have a puma running loose in your house in the first place??)

If he were to punch you in the face,
You would have to fight off the strong desire to thank him.

Hoisted on a chair at a wedding and being carried around by the bride and groom? Absurd!

Bulls flat-out refuse to fight him.

I love how the actor who portrays TMIMITW (Jonathan Goldsmith) does so with such gusto. He really gets into the part. But I also love the fact that the commercial is mainly not about the beer but rather leading an interesting life, with the beer only being mentioned at the end, almost as an afterthought.

His business card simply says
"I'll call you."

By comparison I am TLIMITW (The Least Interesting Man In The World), so I envy the life TMIMITW leads. Which is exactly what the ad agency responsible for the spots is going for. They describe the campaign this way:

"He is a man rich in stories and experiences, much the way the audience hopes to be in the future. Rather than an embodiment of the brand, The Most Interesting Man is a voluntary brand spokesperson: he and Dos Equis share a point of view on life that it should be lived interestingly."

Here's the new commercial (below). It's short, with quick-paced shots. But watch the very beginning. I love the way that even the dogs in the scene are sitting there, staring at TMIMITW with rapt attention as he serenades the beautiful women. I love the way the producers create those (fake) archival scenes of him as a younger man. Such creativity and effort put into a little 30-second commercial! Too funny.



Maybe I'll grow a beard...

Back In The Saddle - Part Two

Frankly, I’ve been itching to get back on the motorcycle. After a long, cold winter, the weather here in Florida is finally becoming nice enough to ride. On Saturday morning I changed out the last few bits that got bent or damaged in the accident I had back in October. By noon, she was ready to run and ride. So that’s what Jacob and I did.

We rode up to the airport, of course. It’s my home-away-from-home. Plus, it’s an easy one-hour ride through some nice, back-country roads. Jacob has been riding his bike pretty much non-stop through the winter since it is his only form of transportation. Cosmetically, it was in dire need of attention. My garage is sufficient, but at the airport we have all kinds of neat stuff. Like a special motorcycle lift, which makes cleaning and servicing the drive chain soooooo much easier.

To be honest, before the ride I was a little…let’s not say “nervous,” let’s say anxious. Would I be hopelessly paranoid, to the point where the fun was taken out of riding? I hoped not. Then again, it has been five months. Right after the accident I was a really nervous car driver…always watching cars at intersections and wondering if they were going to pull out on me like that lady did…flinching at the slightest unanticipated move by another car. But as time has passed, most of my paranoia has diminished. …In my car. …In my car with seatbelts and airbags and structure around me. But what would riding be like?

I sat on the Harley, enjoying its familiar and peculiar lumpy, uneven idle. I strapped on my full-face helmet, zipped up my leather jacket, and then pulled on my gloves (full gloves too, not the fingerless kind I usually wear). And I wondered how it was going to be. I got the answer as soon as I let out the clutch and began working my way out of the subdivision: Not a problem. I needn’t have worried. See, I am a motorcyclist. I love to ride. That has not changed.

We got gas at the BP station, then turned north on Scenic Highway, accelerating up through the gears to stay ahead of traffic. It felt normal and natural to be back on the bike. It felt good being “in the wind” again. It had been too long.

It was a gorgeous day – a little cool – but I don’t mind that. It was “NACITS,” as I like to call it: Not A Cloud In The Sky. It’s not an official designation from the National Weather Service but it ought to be.

We merged onto Highway 90 east over to the town of Pace, across the swampy area where the Escambia River enters the bay, then turned north again on Woodbine Road. Soon we were on our own, out in farmland with the strong, gusty wind at our backs. There is no direct route from Pensacola to Brewton. You have to zigzag your way along various back roads. And here is where the Sportster really shines. At 60 to 65 mph, the bike is in its element. It just loves these gently curving two-lanes. It’s not a pseudo-racebike that lives to go around corners fast, and it’s not an Interstate-hauler like a big Electra Glide or Honda Gold Wing. For me it’s the perfect bike.

Up at the airport Freddy and Darlene McCall (the couple who runs the place) had their matching Harleys out. They’re both avid riders. She has a gorgeous black-and-chrome Sportster (newer than mine) and he has a beautiful black-and-chrome Super Glide. They’re both really nicely decked out and flawless. They make mine look like the beat-up road warrior it is. We set Jacob up, far enough away so as not to get any overspray from the hose on our bikes, and then while he worked, Freddy, Darlene and I commenced to do some serious airplane/motorcycle talking.

Finally it was getting late, so Jacob and I mounted up for home. The sky was still absolutely cloudless (all day long!). The air had grown chilly but not uncomfortably so. On our westerly zigs the setting sun was quite blinding.

The ol’ Sporty ran flawlessly, almost happily, as if it was telling me, “Yeah, I’m glad to be back out here running the roads, too.” There is something quite odd about the connection between man and machine that we motorcyclists experience. We know the bikes are inanimate objects, but still…many of us feel a fond “oneness” with the machine, very much like the oneness we pilots feel with our aircraft. I know, it’s silly.

We pulled into my driveway right about the time it became too dark to ride with our sunglasses. I was cold (my legs) and sore (my butt) and stiff (every joint in my body) when we got home. Getting old, I guess. I parked the bike in the garage, switched off the ignition and, as always, gave it one last look before going into the house. There are few things in life that I enjoy more than riding that damn Sportster. Despite the sore butt, it felt really good to get back in that saddle again.

There would be more pictures - and better pictures - but the stupid Nikon camera, that I bought on the strength of its brand name and those Ashton Kutcher commercials, died after only one year of service. So much for "quality" products...

The Art of Quitting

It seems that I cannot even quit a job properly. You might find this odd, since as everyone knows (and Matt will gladly testify), I’m a pretty good quitter. In fact, I can be a hell of a quitter!

There comes a time when you get to the end of the road at every job. I’m there now. My original plan was to be done with this one at the end of January. But then…you know how plans can change: 1) My boss announced that he’d be gone pretty much all the month of February; 2) My mechanic announced that we had some major maintenance to do on the ship and asked for my help. So I agreed to stay until the end of February. That was the date I told the boss he could take me off the payroll. I did allow that I’d help find my replacement, as well as help with flights on a “contract” or daily basis until someone could be hired.

It’s funny, but sometimes life really doesn’t care what you want. Best line I've ever heard: You want to hear God laugh? Tell him your plans.

Of course the work on the helicopter is taking longer than we expected. This means that I can’t fly with any of the prospective replacements. And I need to fly with them. For one thing, I want to make sure that whoever takes my place is a halfway decent pilot. Aside from that, when we do fly we go into some pretty…umm…strange places and there’s no guarantee that every helicopter pilot will think it’s cool.

So I was sitting in the boss’s office the other day, talking about the trip he just took in his new jet. (I should say here that the market for used business jets is horrible right now. Many are trading at 50% of what they were worth just two years ago. My boss got himself an awesome deal on one.) We were comfortable with each other - something that hasn't been true lately, especially in the days leading up to my "resignation." But it was like old times. Hey, I like the guy - I just don't want to work for him anymore.

However, in the course of our conversation, he asked if I’d stick around for a bit, since we have a couple of important flights in the helicopter planned in the next month or so, and he would prefer that I do the flying rather than some new guy who he hasn’t had a chance to get to know and trust. Like I dummy I said yes. And he asked if I would fly on the weekend of his wedding, which is in the middle of May. Again I said yes. Like a dummy. I’m trying to delicately extricate myself from this job, and it’s not working.

Typically it’s not like this. Typically, you put in your two-week notice and then - Thanks, it’s been great! - you leave. Or you go in, throw your ID card and keys down on the boss’s desk and say, “I quit!” and walk out. But that’s not how it’s working out for me. I’ve enjoyed this job, no doubt, but there are also very real reasons that I want to leave. But I cannot just say, “See ya!” and walk out. I’ve worked pretty closely with this guy for three and a half years. Nearly every time that helicopter has flown, he’s been in it, right there in the seat next to me. We may not be close friends (we are still boss and employee after all), but we’ve become close nonetheless. I feel a responsibility to leave him in good hands.

My mistake was in telling the boss that I wasn’t going to another job – only that I just wanted to stop doing this one. He’s not making it easy. He’s been offering alternative arrangements, most of which involve me not flying the helicopter so much. I tell him they are “worth thinking about” but honestly I’m just being polite. The reality is that psychologically I’ve already moved on.

Hopefully we’ll get the helicopter up and running either by the end of this week or the beginning of next. I’ll fly with some of the guys who’ve sent their resumes, and the boss will select one of them. For a short time, the new guy will have the benefit(?) of flying with me and seeing the way I do things. Hey, we all fly a little differently. There are a million right ways to fly.

I'm a competent enough pilot, I'll admit that, but I’m not saying my way is perfect or even the only way. It’s just the way my boss is used to. I am his first helicopter pilot. And believe me, I've worked very hard to convince the boss (in my own subtle way) that I am the best helicopter pilot in the world - past, present or future. I feel sorry for the poor bastard that takes my place, having to sit there while the boss glowers at him from the “copilot” seat, saying, “That’s not how BOB does it! Why aren’t you doing it the way BOB does it?” I mean, can you imagine? I can. In fact, if I were that guy, I imagine that I'd get to the point where I'd turn to the boss and say, "F@#% Bob! He's not your pilot anymore!"

So there you have it, I’m kind of stuck. In a way, I wish I did have something definite to go to. It would make things a lot easier. Quitting is an art, and it turns out I'm not much of an artist.

The TSA: Nazi America

The TSA ought to be dissolved, no doubt about it. They are not keeping us "safe" from "terrorists." They abuse their power, subject ordinary citizens to intrusive searches and, more importantly, generate a gnawing, uncomfortable feeling of paranoia among the people. We see "terrorists" hiding behind every lamp post.

One recent example of this idiocy happened just before Valentines Day. A group of people who had traveled to Savannah, Georgia BY TRAIN were corralled by the TSA and forced to undergo their famous "enhanced" screening. Women, children...everyone got the special pat-down. Oh yeah, this was AFTER THEY HAD GOTTEN OFF the train. That's right, not before boarding as you might expect. After the train had arrived at the destination. Passengers getting off the train would normally not even be required to enter the station building if they chose not to, but the TSA wasn't having that! Nope, everyone was forced to come inside for a search. Papers? Vear are your papers? Vee must zee your papers.

Free country? Not anymore.

Fortunately, in this day of digital recording and instant posting to Facebook and YouTube, the event was captured for posterity. Take a look...



And you can read the AOL NEWS story about this travesty HERE.

The TSA says it was a "VIPR" operation, whatever that is. Let's go to the TSA website!

Visible Intermodal Protection and Response (VIPR) teams consist of a combination of STSIs, Federal Air Marshals, explosive-detection canine teams, Aviation Security Inspectors, and Transportation Security Officers. The teams provide a random, announced, high-visibility surge into a transit agency, in addition to enhancing agency resources during special events.

In other words, a show of force. Just letting the American public know that the TSA is on the job! You know, keeping us safe! from the bad guys.

The really disturbing thing about all this mess is how easily the American public acquiesce to being treated like criminals. Oh yes, all in the name of safety and security. We should keep in mind that the first word in TSA is "transportation." They've already taken control of air travel and trains; how long until the TSA expands its reach and starts limiting, monitoring or otherwise controlling automobile travel? How long until we have TSA checkpoints on Interstate highways at the state lines? The Interstates are part of a federally-funded transportation system, you know. Oh, you think it couldn't happen? Think again.

Look, we supposedly live in a free society. The government cannot hope to prevent all or even any "terrorist" attacks. Crazy people are going to do crazy things. And sometimes innocent citizens are going to get hurt or killed. That's just life. I don't walk around worried that some nut is going to suicide-bomb my ass into oblivion. It might happen, yes. That's the price we pay for that free society. And I don't want to live in a country where everyone is suspected of being a terrorist until proven otherwise. That's not the America envisioned by our Founding Fathers. That's the Germany of a certain guy named A. Hitler. You remember wacky, ol' Adolph, dontcha? No? Ask your parents or grandparents. I'll bet they do.

If we expect or task the government with protecting every citizen from every possible threat, then we might as well give up our rights and call this place Nazi America. It seems like we're awfully close to being there right now.