Cunningham is a pariah in the fighter community. I talk to these people
every day. He's toast!

Echo that - we have one of his aircraft on display and essentially, no
one wants to mention him when a tour goes past it. If visitors bring
him up, it is universally for the same reason, to deride and insult
him. My history with him is negative but most of our former military
pilots on staff were quite stout supporters of him, until his great "I
have sinned against yooooouuuuu!" speech. Now, its impossible to find
someone that isn't disgusted with him.

As for the honest politicians; there are indeed a few honest politicians who
run for office. Unfortunately, the instant they arrive to take that office,
they learn immediately that the system itself is so corrupt that no honest
politician can function there and survive.

I agree. From the moment a person gets elected, he has to begin the
process of getting RE-elected, with all the ass-kissing and kow-towing
that such an accomplishment requires. End result is that instead of
following their own principles, a freshman representative ends up
having to adopt whatever positions and views their new benefactors can
coerce them to accept. Its sad. I watched an idealistic young family
man rise up from the masses to become a representative here in San
Diego and within a couple years, his votes could be accurately
predicted by following which companies had donated money to his
reelection campaign. Worse, he is now righteously indignant when such
conduct gets pointed out by the media. Our system is broken. The
people who benefit from it being broken are the only ones that are in a
position to fix it, so its going to STAY broken. Duke was simply the
post child for the whole system.

v/r
Gordon