Hey Government, Meet Photoshop

So today, the White House ran a "mission" with one of the airplanes that become Air Force One when President O gets on it for a ride. This "mission" was to fly low over New York City near the Statue of Liberty with 2 fighter jets trailing taking pictures to "update their file photo" of Air Force One. They wanted to get the Statue of Liberty in the background of Air Force One in flight. The mission was kept secret, with the FAA and New York authorities knowing on a "need to know" basis, which didn't include the mayor of the city.

To anyone with half a brain, it should have been apparent very quickly that this exercise would be construed as another potential attack. Understandably, they are still quite skittish in New York City when it comes to planes flying low near the buildings.

So, to recap, the White House, in this economy, decided to spend hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars to run a flight that scared the crap out of people just to capture a photograph that could have easily been done by some high school kid with mediocre photoshop skills.

Here is my first attempt using MS Paint, the crappiest of all crappy drawing programs:

Now just imagine what you could do with a real graphic program like Photoshop and some really good stock photography of Air Force One and the Statue of Liberty. I'm sure the government has access to all three of those things. But no, it's much better to just go take a picture of the real deal, not tell anyone, and put Lower Manhattan into a panic.

Way to go!