The Blue Angels are about to be grounded

Blue Angels

Long-time readers know that Fleet Week is a BIG DEAL in the Bookworm household.  Thanks to our membership in the Navy League, we’ve seen the Blue Angels from the deck of the USS Carl Vinson, as well as from the middle of the Bay on a Coast Guard cutter.  We even had the pleasure of attending a reception at which we got to meet members of the Blue Angels team.

The Blue Angels don’t just fly for my, and my family’s, pleasure.  They are a good will ambassador for the Navy and, for those cities that host Fleet Week, they draw tens of thousands of people who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Fleet Week is one of the most profitable weeks of the year for San Francisco’s hotels and stores, and that’s because the Blue Angels are an incredible draw.
Sadly, though, while the oxymoronically publicly funded “private” Corporation for Public Broadcasting seems untouchable, and keeps grinding out Leftist pap, the military is facing spending cuts, whether from sequestering or from Obama’s knife.  So, bye-bye Blues:

As the sequester cuts Obama signed into law in August 2011 draw closer to implementation, the Navy is making plans to ground the Blue Angels during the latter half of 2013.

This was revealed by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert last week, when he sent out a memo showing the Navy’s plan for complying with the cuts.

Grounding the Blue Angels for half a year will entail canceling 30 shows and will save approximately $20 million.

Greenert says the Navy is already making cuts “because of Congress’s failures to pass…spending bills last year,” and if sequester hits it will cost them an additional $4 billion for 2013 alone.

Given inevitable budget cuts, it’s reasonable to ground the Blues, which aren’t directly related to America’s defense.  I suspect, though, that the military is also making a point.  After all, as Sen. Coburn revealed, the military spends a lot of money on touchy-feely or green programs that have nothing to do with military preparedness or with connecting ordinary Americans to their military, and everything to do with PC pandering to satisfying Beltway Progressive sensibilities.  While the general public won’t care if those programs stay or go, they’ll care a great deal if the Blue Angels vanish from the scene.