wow. talk about the one that got away.

The joke is on us.

US taxpayers paid $500,000 to have that artwork done.

We must be sitting pretty phat if there's money in the budget to paint $500,000 fish on airplanes.

Now if only we could videotape that painted salmon in a death match against, say, a giant painted sea horse, we would really have something!

LOL Dave!

Shaking with laughter here.

Ever since the ValuJet crash in the Everglades in 1996, I believe it is a bad idea to decorate an airliner with silly or cutesie logos.

Really, that fish on the fuselage is cool now, but it will look awfully disgusting if it seen floating around the Alleutian Islands.

Ooh, Dick Cheney could be their spokesman, he likes to .............fly fish.

Ya gotta wonder what that thing smells like!

Wow. I haven't seen a fish that big since I walked inside that four-story fiberglass Muskie at the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame in lovely & scenic Hayward, Wisconsin.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

I'm proud that some of my money went into this project! Woo, it excites me! No, really.

Yeah, whattaya want, safe roads and a bridge or a dam or sumfin'?

Aaah

Whoa! That's pretty freaky, man!

For a split second I felt what Dennis Hopper must feel everytime he sees an airplane.

Looks like an Atlantic salmon, not a king.

There is something ....uh, fishey...about this story.
Someone had taken the hook, line, and sinker on this. There may be a whale of a story here but I am sea on what it is.

Neil Boortz opines on this thusly:

A $500,000 ALASKAN KING SALMON -- AND GUESS WHO PAID FOR IT?

You've heard about this one, haven't you? The taxpayers of the United States have forked over $500,000 to paint a giant Alaskan King Salmon on the side of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737. This money came from a $20 million grant of taxpayer's money to a marketing board in Alaska to promote Alaskan fish. The money was requested by Alaska's Republican Senator Ted Stephens. You might be interested in knowing that Ted Stephen's son is the chairman of the board of the marketing board that got the money and spent it on this fish painting.

If the average tax burden in this country is $5000 per household (and that's just a guess) then this is the total federal tax payments of about 100 American households. Every one of these households has needs. Every one of these households has dreams. Senator Ted Stephens has essentially told these households -- every one of them -- that he believes that it was more important for the federal government to seize their $5000 and spend it painting a fish on an airplane than it was for them to use it for medical expenses, education, job training, to pay off bills, to pay the down payment on a new home, or just to enjoy a nice family vacation. This is totally and completely unconscionable. It should be punishable as a crime. Remember, please, that embattled House Majority Leader Tom Delay said that there is no fat in the federal budget. So ... he doesn't think that money appropriated to paint a fish on an airplane is fat?

Just how long are we going to let these people in congress get away with these outrages? How many similar spending measures don't we know about?

Great comment MTW.

That baby runs upstream to spawn, get the hell outta the way.

We have paid a lot more than $500,000 for a lot less "art"

I suppose this at least looks kinda like art -- unlike a lot of it that looks like a random pick of demolition debris out of a construction site dumpster.

The SUNY Potsdam campus is literally littered with that kind of art.

If the average tax burden in this country is $5000 per household (and that's just a guess) then this is the total federal tax payments of about 100 American households.

Look at it another way, there are close to 300,000,000 people in this country. If only one out of three actually pay taxes, that fish cost the average taxpayer .005, or 1/2 a penny.

I say, raise my taxes $1 a year and paint all planes to look like Dorismar.

1/2 penny is 1/2 penny too much.

If you can't get the pols to eliminate the most egregious and flagrantly wasteful stuff, what chance do you have of them eliminating the marginally useful but still not really necessary stuff?

Nada, zippola.

On a lighter note, the Brits have genetically engineered mosquitos with glow in the dark testicles.

You know, this might not be such a bad thing. I would not mind seeing a lot of airplanes painted to look like fish, birds, dogs, whatever. On one condition - that we deduct the costs from the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts. I would much rather spend money on that kind of art, (if we have to spend taxpayer dollars at all on art, and I guess we do since NO one has ever succeeded in getting rid of the NEA) then at least let's get some real art for our money instead of pictures of crucifixes in urine or whatever artists do these days.

Of course, I would also like to see an artist do something really brave and make art criticizing Islam - but I guess artists don't like posthumerous recognition too much anymore.

Yeah, BotP, when is the NEA going to cough up a few bucks and commission Serrano to do "Piss Mohammed"?

Do they serve fish on their menu will we call it SMELT AIRLINES?

Flying fish, huh?