TGIF RedStaters, and welcome to Friday’s Water Cooler, always an Open Thread!

Tailwind – Can’t we all use a little more of this?

Seeing a Daily Star headline on Drudge about a “Supersonic” transatlantic flight I thought back to my last return from Singapore and how awesome a good tailwind is.  The whole roundtrip was special.  At the beginning of the week I had taken the inaugural Singapore Airlines SFO-SIN flight amidst all sorts of fan fare (the aircraft also celebrated being the 10,000 aircraft).  Now after a great week of work I was on my way home.  At some point I looked at the flight status info on the monitor and was very surprised to see that we had a 707 MPH groundspeed, with a 139 MPH tailwind. I generally estimate that an airliner can go 500 MPH, so this was a good kick in the pants.  The flight out was LONG, and I was excited to be getting some help.  I kept returning to the status page.  710.  715.  718.  721… 728.  731.   The last entry I put in my notes: 743MPH ground (water?) speed, 565MPH airspeed, 177MPH tailwind.  The flight was supposed to be over 14 hours long, I think we were in the air for about 12 hours.  Nice.

The Mosquito is surprised?

The mosquito, taking a nice long (in mosquito time) drink from someone’s vein looks up and sees a glacial change in the air above him, starting on the horizon and slowly moving toward his position, like an incoming storm.  What?  What is this!??  It’s an arm and hand – attached to the same body that the mosquito has punctured and is now thieving from.  Whoaaaah, dude – hey, I’m just getting a drink – chill out!

I’m talking about California:

Democratic state lawmakers are worried because California relies so heavily on the income taxes it collects from high earners to fund government services. The state’s wealthiest 1 percent, for instance, pay 48 percent of its income tax, and the departure of just a few families could lead to a noticeable hit to state general fund revenue.

This has played out before in New York, France, etc.  Why is it surprising that it works out like this?

New California

As I’ve written about previously (here, here, here), California harbors a huge population of rational people that are trapped behind progressive lines in the overall blue state.  We are constantly trying to solve the problem, which usually feels like yelling into a tornado.  I was surprised to see this in the last week:

A press release noted, “After years of over taxation, regulation, and mono party politics the state of California and many of its 58 counties have become ungovernable. The nature of the state becoming ungovernable has caused a decline in essential basic services such as education, law enforcement, fire protection, transportation, housing, health care, taxation, voter rights, banking, state pension systems, prisons, state parks, water resource management, home ownership, infrastructure and many more.”

It also cites several studies and reports that track the departure of Californians for other states from the Census Bureau to US News. It also cites reports of California’s unfriendly approach to business.

You can find the rest of the article here.  God speed gentlemen!

Those are to prime the pump – what’s on your mind?