Americans For Prosperity’s hot air balloon tour grounded in Nashville

On Tuesday, the Americans for Prosperty group launched the second leg of its hot air balloon tour on June 17th (the full schedule is here). According to the website, the tour is designed to, “expose the ballooning costs of global warming hysteria.”

There was tour stop in Nashville today, planned specifically so the group could fly their balloon directly over The Goracle’s energy-guzzling estate. Unfortunately, it looks like Team Gore’s efforts at preventing that from happening were successful. AFP’s Ed Franks writes:

Sure enough, just a few hours before our event was scheduled to kick off, the Nashville Parks and Recreation Department has been in touch, claiming that the permit they approved doesn’t allow us to launch our balloon from the city park where we’re holding our event — even though we told them repeatedly exactly what we planned to do.

Roy Wilson, the director of the Board of Parks and Recreation, has even reportedly told one of our staffers on the ground that Nashville police officers will be on hand and will physically restrain members of our crew if they attempt to launch the balloon. Glad to see that the police in Nashville have solved all the murders, rapes, assaults and robberies and can now concentrate on the real scourge facing the city: unpermitted hot-air balloon launches over Al Gore’s estate.

[…]

UPDATE 3:00 pm Eastern time: Roy Wilson at the Nashville Parks Department must not have liked our earlier post, since he just completely revoked our permit — even though his department’s own rules state that he can’t do that unless we break a law or one of the department’s rules, which we haven’t done and have no intention of doing. Then he hung up on our legal counsel.

In the meantime, good news to report — we’ve secured a private location for this afternoon’s event. We’ll be in a field at the corner of Sneed and Vaughn Roads — just about a mile and a half from the original event location.

Franks noted in a later update that popular TN blogger Bill Hobbs did some research and found out that contra what AFP were told by The Powers That Be, hot air balloon launching is permitted under Metro Parks rules and regs, provided the launchers are issued a permit and have “adequate liability insurance.”

Franks also posted this hilarious photo that mega-talented political cartoonist Chris Muir drew of an inflated Goracle:

Inflated Goracle

:))

Too bad in the end they couldn’t fly the balloon, whether it be over the Goracle’s mansion or nearby. If you live in the area and are outraged out how the Nashville Parks and Rec handled this event, email Roy Wilson himself at roy.wilson@nashville.gov.

Via a ST reader steveegg.

Update: Here’s video from their stop in Lafayette, LA last month:

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