Self actuating Air Force joke‏

This is just not worthy of a Representative Republic. Roman Empire - maybe.

Sycophants and lick-spittles are the only ones who can defend this. The worst part of it is how it was funded --- and the fact our C-5, C-17 and C-130 have more important things to do. If you must ride - grab some webbing or the jump seat; square footage is needed for mail.

Top U.S. Air Force officials sought to spend millions of dollars in counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" for military planes used by senior officers and civilian leaders, The Washington Post reported on Friday.
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Over the past three years, the service asked to divert $16.2 million in counterterrorism funds to the project, but was twice rebuffed by Congress, the Post reported, citing internal e-mails and budget documents.
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Air Force officials say the government needs the new capsules to ensure that leaders can talk, work and rest comfortably in the air. But the top brass's preoccupation with creating new luxury in wartime has alienated lower-ranking Air Force officers familiar with the effort, as well as congressional staff members and a nonprofit group that calls the program a waste of money.

Air Force documents spell out how each of the capsules is to be "aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule," with beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror.
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Air Force documents about the SLICC, dated June 8, 2006, emphasize the need to install "aesthetically pleasing wall treatments/coverings" -- in addition to the monitor, footrests and a DVD player. The beds, according to one document, must be able to support a man with "no more than 50% compression of the mattress material." The seats are to swivel such that "the longitudinal axis of the seat is parallel to the longitudinal axis of the aircraft" regardless of where the capsules are facing, the document specified.
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The effort has been slowed, however, by congressional resistance to using counterterrorism funds for the project and by lengthy internal deliberations about a series of demands for modifications by Air Force generals. One request was that the color of the leather for the seats and seat belts in the mobile pallets be changed from brown to Air Force blue and that seat pockets be added; another was that the color of the table's wood be darkened.

Changing the seat color and pockets alone was estimated in a March 12 internal document to cost at least $68,240.
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It initially planned to build 10 of the capsules, he said, for use by four-star generals, fleet admirals and federal officials at the level of assistant secretary and above.

This is lame.

Explaining his instructions to subordinates, McMahon said he used the term world class "in just about everything I discuss. . . . That represents an attitude." He said he wanted to "create an environment that whoever was riding in that would be proud of," the government would be proud of and "the people of the United States" would be proud of.

An Air Force at war.