God bless the United States of America, Costa Europe and landing at stall speed

The greatest nation on earth is setting us quite an example. Those who want to bomb the rest of the world to democracy has again shown us their democracy actually... does not function all that properly. Their politicians couldn't agree on the annual budget, one of their basic responsibilities, and so the government shut down. It closed, no one works (except NSA, CIA, FBI, ...).
And it's not that the USA doesn't have some problems to sort out. Allow me to give you some numbers:

• With 716 prisoners/100000 habitants, they are worlds number 1. For reference, Greenland is the first European country on 25th place with 340, Iran is 39th with 284, and Belgium 146th with 100 (data from wiki)
• 15% of the population is on food stamps (see here)
• With an infant mortality rate of 5,9/1000 births, the US stands at a 51st place (Nr 1 is Monaco with 1,81 and number 2 Japan with 2,17, see here)
• Possesses 7700 nuclear warheads (see http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/nuclearweapons/nukestatus.html)
• Still has 3150 tonnes of chemical weapons (wiki and also here)
• Government debt about to reach 16,7 trillion $ (remember those zero's?), that's 1 trillion$ more than its GDP...

Talking about that debt, in about 2 weeks it is crunch time again between Democrats and Republicans because the US will hit that 16,7 trillion $ ceiling and the politicians thus have to agree to raise it or do some drastic cuts. Maybe that's why they shut the government down? So they can't spend any more!

In any case the CEO's of America's biggest banks are worried, because half a dozen of them paid Obama a visit on Wednesday. And Treasury Secretary Jack Lew wrote a letter to Congress saying if the debt ceiling is not raised by the 17th of October the government will not be able to meet all its financial commitments, such as making payments to US debt holders, government contractors and social security recipients: “If we have insufficient cash on hand, it would be impossible for the United States of America to meet all of its obligations for the first time in our history.”. (see http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/debt-ceiling-treasury-final-extraordinary-measures-97690.html). In other words: please let me continue my money printing.

But let's not be cocky about it. Our politicians are not a lot better either. Italy went through its regular political turmoil, the Portuguese government lost heavily in local elections, the anti-eurocrats won 31% of the votes in Austrian elections, in Greece - the cradle of democracy - government is jailing opposition leaders, the Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy was grilled by Bloomberg during an interview in NY about his party’s alleged role in the Bárcenas campaign funding scandal and its destruction of vital evidence relating to the criminal case (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBgCpnlHBSE#t=169) and Mutti is still struggling to form a government after her big win. So sssssh, give Merkel some time. Once she has her own government sorted, cruise ship Costa Europe will have its captain back. After all the Costa Concordia was winched upright recently as well.


If you think US politics are up for a challenge, what about landing at Yrausquin Airport in the Dutch Antilles! There's a challenge for you. Watch this video of a Twin Otter doing a perfect landing (stall warning goes off at touch down), at the 1300 ft (396 m) long runway: