Good news: Early signs are Trump White House is so grossly incompetent that much of what they try will fail.
Bad news: Much of what we need them to do they can’t do.— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) January 30, 2025 at 5:51 PM
And when the news conference ended after 36 minutes, the reporters, some with dazed expressions, filed out of the briefing room
As I navigated the crowd, I caught a glimpse of a fellow journalist’s phone and the text message he had just sent:
“WTF” www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc…— Jonathan Lemire (@jonlemire.bsky.social) January 30, 2025 at 6:54 PM
When Murphy the Trickster God loses interest in a former favorite… [Gift link]
… The sight was reminiscent of the COVID briefings of 2020: President Donald Trump gripping the sides of the lectern in the White House briefing room, pursing his lips as he looked out at the journalists yelling and jockeying for his attention.
And just like in 2020, Trump used a national calamity to try to score political points and denigrate his foes. Fourteen hours after a midair collision between an American Airlines jet and a military helicopter outside Washington last night—the first crisis of the young administration, a moment to console a stunned and grieving nation—Trump repeatedly implied that the crash was the fault of his Democratic predecessors and of DEI policies.
Trump offered no evidence to support his claims but repeatedly cast the blame on others, even as bodies were still being pulled from the frigid waters of the Potomac River just a few miles away.
“Because I have common sense, okay?” Trump said, when asked how he had concluded that diversity programs—programs that Trump claimed were put in place by the Biden and Obama administrations—were to blame. “Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t.”…
When pressed today, he snapped at reporters (“I think that’s not a very smart question—I’m surprised, coming from you”) and called on friendlier faces from conservative-leaning outlets, who tossed him softballs. He admitted that the crash was still under investigation and that the cause was not yet known. But he was quick to claim that the Federal Aviation Administration had lowered its standards under President Barack Obama (“They actually came out with a directive: ‘too white’”) and that his administration was restoring them, despite the hiring and spending freezes his team has aimed to put in place.
But summarizing Trump’s remarks on air-traffic controllers doesn’t quite capture the experience of sitting through them:
Can you imagine, these are people that are, I mean, actually, their lives are shortened because of the stress that they have. Brilliant people have to be in those positions, and their lives are actually shortened, very substantially shortened, because of the stress when you have many, many planes coming into one target, and you need a very special talent and a very special genius to be able to do it.
… Trump’s eyes darted around the room. His hand, with its index figure outstretched, would move in little circles as he considered which reporter to call on. Then it would steady, and he would point deliberately, selecting one person in a sea of outstretched hands, gesturing that he or she was being granted the privilege of asking the president the next question…
And when the news conference ended after 36 minutes, the reporters, some with dazed expressions, filed out of the briefing room. As I navigated the crowd, I caught a glimpse of a fellow journalist’s phone and the text message he had just sent:
“WTF.”
I can see the fear.
He is afraid, with good reason, that he’ll be blamed.
Trump is actually very easily spooked. And when he reacts this bizarrely, and falls back on the low-hanging fruit of racism as cover, it’s because he’s scared.— Sherrilyn Ifill (@sifill.bsky.social) January 30, 2025 at 8:08 PM
Donald Trump’s Second Term Begins With a Crash – The American Prospect prospect.org/infrastructu…
— Sue Stone (@knittingknots.bsky.social) January 30, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Ryan Cooper, at the American Prospect, “If the president wanted to cause airline disasters, it’s hard to imagine what he would have done differently”:
… Let’s review a few events from Trump’s first days in office. On January 20, the day Trump was inaugurated, the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Michael Whitaker, resigned. Since then, the agency has been run by acting administrator Chris Rocheleau.
This was unusual. With a few exceptions, like during President Reagan’s vindictive mass firing of unionized air traffic controllers, the FAA has been a relatively uncontroversial agency. Administrators commonly serve out their five-year terms even if the presidency changes hands—President Obama’s FAA chief served into 2018 under Trump. Indeed, ensuring agency stability was one reason Congress made the position longer than a presidential term.
But shadow president Elon Musk—who, let me emphasize, is a foreign-born billionaire who has not been elected or appointed to any post—had been demanding Whitaker be sacked for months, because the FAA had been attempting to regulate his company SpaceX. The agency had conducted investigations (when, for instance, a SpaceX rocket blew up near the ground), delayed launches, and imposed some fines—though the amounts were pitiful, just $633,009 when the company allegedly broke two promises about safety protocols and fuel use.
“I think safety is in the public interest and that’s our primary focus,” Whitaker told members of Congress in a hearing about SpaceX last September. Fines are “the only tool we have to get compliance on safety matters.” Musk responded with sneering contempt on Twitter/X: “America is being smothered by legions of regulators, often inept & politically-driven.” Wouldn’t you know it, a few months later a SpaceX Starship module exploded and broke up in the atmosphere, spreading 100 metric tons of debris across the Caribbean, forcing the diversion of numerous flights, and reportedly causing some property damage in the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Also on January 20, Trump imposed a hiring freeze across the entire federal government, and air traffic controllers (ATCs) are federal employees. The FAA has been struggling for years to make up for an ATC shortage caused by the pandemic; though it finally met its hiring goal in 2024, controllers are still reportedly stretched thin. As Reps. Rick Larsen (D-WA) and Steve Cohen (D-TN) pointed out in a joint press release, Trump’s move was both illegal, as the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 requires maximum staffing of ATCs, and dangerous. “Hiring air traffic controllers is the number one safety issue according to the entire aviation industry,” they wrote.
Some important context here is that the airspace over Reagan National Airport is some of the most congested in the world, in part because members of Congress, who are flying constantly, don’t like to use the much less convenient Dulles Airport. Allowing planes at DCA to land and take off safely every couple of minutes, all day, every day, requires a highly elaborate set of controls and procedures to prevent collisions.
Then on January 22, Trump fired the head of the Transportation Security Administration (who was first appointed by Trump himself, by the way), as well as every member of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, an institution created by Congress to improve airline safety after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. As aviation expert James Fallows points out, this committee was a major reason why American commercial flights have become so safe, and a model of responsible government. “It was collaborative; it combined public, private, military, civilian, academic, and other institutions to pool knowledge; it avoided blame; but it focused relentlessly on lessons learned,” he writes…
As Fallows argues, gutting the ASAC by itself would probably not cause a crash in a week, though it would have sooner or later. But doing so and driving out the head of the FAA for getting in the way of Elon Musk’s reckless rocket explosions, and abruptly introducing unprecedented instability and chaos among all ATCs, including threatening the jobs of many … that leading to a crash wouldn’t exactly come as a surprise. The government is a complex and delicate system. Letting Elon Musk thrash around inside it like some silage-drunk bull in a red-cape factory will cause untold damage…
i posted this last night and it turns out that it was even worse, they spent the overnight period synchronizing talking points about how DEI was responsible for the deaths of dozens of americans without once even expressing sympathy for the families of the dead
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) January 30, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Lee Atwater had a pungent and famous quote about how once conservatives could no longer use the n-word they used things like “states’ rights” to invoke the same spirit.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration any more — if it ever was — to say they use DEI as the n-word.— Domestic Enemy Hat (@kenwhite.bsky.social) January 30, 2025 at 4:21 PM
J. Arthur Crank
Christ, what an asshole!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
And to think, the Beltway Press Corpse always felt ‘dissed’ when Biden and Obama simply ignored them or worked around them, never felt that way when directly insulted time after time.
dmsilev
Can’t he use his magic Sharpie to outline a new set of flight paths that will prevent all chance of collisions?
ssdd
Somewhere, the ghost of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is chuckling. “Events, dear boy, events.”
Quinerly
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Woman reporter. I saw it in real time.
Ruckus
@J. Arthur Crank:
He’s not good enough to be an asshole.
He’s what comes out of assholes. Pure, unadulterated, shit.
There is a reason I call him what I do…… SFB
Figure it out if you don’t know.
Shalimar
I worry that we’re led by people who were too dumb to qualify for “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?”
Jay
@Shalimar:
Well, they are meaner than a 5th Grader.
Shalimar
That suggests that our problem is too many unqualified people. Except everyone knows the problem with Air Traffic Controllers is we don’t have enough of them. Idiot is going to make this worse. It will happen again.
Jay
@Shalimar:
99% of US Airport Towers are understaffed,
Yes it will happen again.
cain
@Shalimar:
He’ll just keep going after people because of ‘DEI’. It’s the new Devil.
and I think ‘DEI’ means a lot more, it means transgender, liberals, jews, gays, blacks, hispanics, and illegal brown people immigrants from everywhere.
Shalimar
From Golikehellmachine:
Hard to emphasize enough, they are so fucked up now they can’t even be bothered with “thoughts and prayers” anymore.
cain
Trump is going to but accelerant on everything and everyone is going to lose even the oligarchs.
Shalimar
@cain: Also women. From what I have seen, it seems like they started screaming DEI as soon as they saw that the helicopter pilot was female.
sentient ai from the future
over on reddit r/fednews they are posting new emails from HR (two links) about the “buyout” program and seem to have confirmed that if people take the bait, those positions will be eliminated entirely. at least at DoD. they are speculating that the goal is to reduce the total number of positions so that they can reduce the number overall and thereby show some kind of savings.
yes, there is a pig in this poke, trust me.
sentient ai from the future
@cain: the phrase i noticed was “DEI, woke, green new deal” all in a string and i immediately translated it as “n****s, queers, and hippies”
same as it ever was.
sentient ai from the future
@Ruckus: counterpoint: shit can be used for fertilizer to do something good. this is like PCBs they dig out of military bases and riverbeds, but also radioactive.
aint gonna do nothin good for anyone for a long ass time. shit would be a massive improvement.
Chetan Murthy
@Shalimar: Was the helo pilot female? I had read that there were three white males in the chopper, and nobody else ?
sentient ai from the future
@Shalimar: journalists and congresspersons REALLY like being able to fly without serious imminent risk of death. when the flight attendants union went on strike things changed immediately, and that was far more about the comfort and logistics of flights than bedrock safety issues.
this is gonna leave a mark.
Shalimar
@Chetan Murthy: I don’t know. Quinerly was saying this morning that the pilot was female. I never saw it confirmed anywhere
edit: I would prefer 3 white males just for simplicity of messaging against the DEI bullshit, but I don’t know a definitive source for that either.
Jay
@sentient ai from the future:
And there is no legal, financial or Congressional Authority for the “severance” payments for the people who take it.
They will get a last paycheck and then nada.
Hopefully a bunch of the MAGgot’s that infest the Federal Payroll take it.
They will find that they are as screwed over as every contractor Dolt 47 ever hired.
John S.
@Chetan Murthy:
Link
trnc
Hell, he’ll draw the airplane and chopper and claim there was no crash.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
@Shalimar:
Shalimar
@John S.: @Jay: thanks
geg6
@cain:
Left out one of the big ones: women. IMHO, that’s the DEI target that motivates them the most, whether they realize it or not. Women, of all colors, shapes, sizes and ethnicities. Every other target is secondary and easier to hit with the least blowback.
MobiusKlein
@Jay: in SF Bay, the San Carlos airport will have zero controllers on Saturday
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.alternet.org/amp/air-traffic-controllers-resign-2671037333
John S.
@Shalimar:
It sucks that Trump is going to use this as a hammer to keep beating up on anyone who isn’t a white Christian cisgender man.
I recently saw an episode of The Ed Sullivan Show with Jim Henson and his muppets where a girl meets a “perfectly awful” monster who she compliments for working so hard at being terrible. “You’re a perfect example of beautiful awfulness.”
Trump is a perfectly awful monster.
Happy Girl Meets a Monster (1969)
KatKapCC
Good Lord. I do my best to avoid ever seeing his face, but in the thumbnail of the video from Aaron Rupar, dude literally looks like Oompa Loompa cosplay.
KatKapCC
@Shalimar: Of course. Because in their minds, women aren’t qualified to do anything other than being bandmaids and maybe also selling makeup through an MLM or something.
frog
This guy has a YouTube video with his opinion (air traffic controller’s fault):
https://youtu.be/HLkF-C6NPL0
“Who Caused This? FAA Caused This. 67 Dead.”
Pete Downunder
@MobiusKlein: This could be really serious. San Carlos is right under the approach to runways 28 at SFO and is very busy on the weekend. Pilots are trained to deal with non tower airports but most are not right against a busy airline airport.
TBone
@MobiusKlein: um, whut? How do you fly anything with no controllers?
Sister Golden Bear
@MobiusKlein: Not good at all, but it’s worth noting that the San Carlos Airport only had a part-time tower, not a 24-hour tower, as is common with smaller airports. The airport won’t close, since it’ll revert to the same procedures used as when the tower goes home at night. But that means pilots have to coordinate take offs and landings among themselves, using a shared radio channel.
But as the news story mentioned, it’s only a mile away from the approach to ones of the busiest airports in the country, in one of the busiest airspaces in the country (the San Jose and Oakland airports aren’t far away and there’s other smaller airports, like Palo Alto, there are right nearby. It’s another accident waiting to happen.
Marc
I used to fly small planes out of San Carlos (and Palo Alto, a few miles to the south), which is a busy general aviation airport underneath the approach paths into SFO, OAK, and/or SJC, depending on the weather. That’s going to be a real shit show.
MobiusKlein
@Pete Downunder: I know San Carlos, been to the nearby Pez Museum. Ok, that is Burlingame.
But yeah, it’s a shit show, and would not happen this way with Kamala
Quinerly
@Chetan Murthy: MSNBC and NPR reported female helicopter pilot once this AM. Then I never heard it again. Friend heard it on NPR. Also didn’t hear it again.
Seems Hegseth and DOD broke rules. Supposed to wait 24 hrs to release any info about military casualties. I hope to see more reporting/clarification on this.
TBone
@Quinerly: Rachel Maddow expounded upon Hegseth’s immediate breach of strict military conduct tonight. He ran his mouth like a Fux News host.
Captain C
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I suspect at least some of them have a sublimated sub fetish, and most of them don’t like to actually work which is what they need to do under a competent administration.
Ohio Mom
@Shalimar: And disabled. Trump complained that there was a “dwarves” air controller (I am pretty sure that the polite term is little person/peroe but not sure.)
hitchhiker
@Quinerly: It was a straight white dude named Andrew Eaves. His wife posted on Facebook asking for prayers
https://bsky.app/profile/rpsagainsttrump.bsky.social/post/3lgz57fhcfk2t
Quinerly
@Shalimar:
It was strange this AM when I heard it. Fairly early. Just dropped in a report on MSNBC right after Trump’s rant in that press conference. I was watching that presser closely while waiting for my cabinet guy. Within a short time after that presser, a reporter mentioned female pilot. Then heard it once on NPR. Never heard it again the rest of the day.
I assume what went down was DOD shared that info early on with news outlets. Then the outlets realized/learned that per DOD rules, DOD must wait 24 hrs before sharing info on casualties.
I have been in all week….between snow, weather, kitchen project….truly questioned my sanity when I never heard it again and found nothing when I Googled early afternoon. My NPR addicted friend confirmed she heard it also rather early this AM. I felt somewhat relieved that I wasn’t truly losing my mind.
To be honest….Trump’s news conference rattled me watching it in real time. Truly bizarre. Crazy.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
also, teachers, union members, doctors, scientists, model raid roads enthusiast, low flow toilets, windmills, badly done steaks and above all midgets.
Yes midgets are on the threats to us White Men going by Trump today. I suppose it fits, midgets are low to the ground so we don’t see them coming.
Sister Golden Bear
@frog: The YouTuber doesn’t appear to be a pilot and pretty much all the analyses by pilots I’ve seen disagree. While there were many holes in the Swiss cheese, the fault was ultimately the helo pilot — he’d accepted responsibility for “visual separation” and it was up to him to avoid the passenger jet.
What happened, based on best available evidence at the moment:
The passenger jet originally was supposed to land on a different runway, but air traffic control changed them to an adjacent runway (shorter, so regional jets often get sent there). This meant the jet rerouted closer to the designated helicopter route through the airspace. However, normally this wouldn’t be a problem since the helos are required to stay below 200 feet during that part of the route, below the landing approach.
The helo pilots were using night-vision goggles, which not only limits peripheral vision, but flattens depth perception.
As you’ve probably heard on the news, the tower was short an ATC. Normally one handles helicopter traffic and another handles approach traffic. But that night the ATC was doing double duty.
Another issue was that helicopters and airplanes used different frequencies to talk to the tower. While all communications is pilot-tower (pilots don’t talk directly to each other), pilots do monitor the radio traffic between the tower and other aircraft. The separate frequencies meant both the helo and the jet had half the normal situational awareness. (That said, the jet had been given right of way and the pilots were busy landing the plane.)
Before making the final turn to runway 33, the jet was moving head-on towards the helo — so it effectively appeared motionless to the helo, and thus harder to spot. Other helo pilots have said the surrounding city lights in the area make it harder to spot other aircraft.
The helo pilot confirmed to ATC several times that they had a visual on the passenger jet — and were ordered to pass behind it — but what appears most likely is that they actually were looking at another flight just that was on approach behind the PSA jet. The helo pilots probably never saw the PSA jet, except maybe at the very last minute.
Despite all that, the collision would’ve been avoided, except that (for reasons currently unknown) at the last minute the helo increased it’s altitude from 300 feet and then 400 feet, where it hit the jet. Again, they were required to fly at no more than 200 feet.
FWIW, I’ve listened to the ATC recording from after the crash. Despite an obviously chaotic situation, the controllers were incredibly competent and professional, despite the emotional shock. They rapidly closed the airport, rerouted planes in the air, stopped all planes on the ground so that emergency crews could get to the crash site ASAP. Or why you need experienced professionals, not ass lickers.
Quinerly
@hitchhiker:
See ABC News report tonight. One pilot was female per that report.
Marc
Two pilots onboard, one was an instructor-pilot, the other was pilot in command.
Sister Golden Bear
@sentient ai from the future: Going forward, Trump is always gonna be: noun, verb, DEI.
Quinerly
@TBone:
I caught her tonight when her show ran the second time in the evening. Good show.
Quinerly
Crew chief
https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/ryan-ohara-black-hawk-crew-chief-dc-midair-crash-was-georgia-high-school-grad
Sister Golden Bear
@Pete Downunder: The other complication is a lot of rich people living nearby fly in/out of San Carlos Airport — Larry Ellison was notorious for violating noise regulations with late night landings.
That leads to “VIP syndrome” where pilots are pressured to do unsafe things by impatient clients — this was a major factor in the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant.
As you said, it’s a shit show in the making. Not just the busy airspace but the airport is right next to the 101 freeway and densely populated cities.
YY_Sima Qian
Signs of hegemonic decline are rushing forth fast & furious, aren’t they? Or are we past that & well into hegemonic collapse?
Not sure if anyone has posted about Trump posturing on putting 100% tariff on semiconductors manufactured by Taiwan, ostensibly to reshore fabrication of chips. At the same time Trump’s natsec über-hawks have long pushed Taiwan to raise its defense spending to > 5% & militarize its society, & right wing think tankers have started raising the possibility that the U.S. should abandon TW if the ladder “refuses to defend itself”.
At some point, I suspect even the ideologically pro-independence DPP government, hitherto tightly aligned w/ the U.S.’ (probably too tight an embrace for TW’s benefit) Great Power Competition w/ the PRC, might start to reevaluate its stance toward the PRC, or is forced to do so by popular opinion.
frog
@Sister Golden Bear: As usual, I spout off too quickly. Another YouTuber has matched up ATC communication with radar positioning and altitude. I have not seen any videos that have the ATC-helicopter communication, so only half of the ATC story is out.
Sister Golden Bear
@TBone: Lots of small, low traffic airports don’t have air traffic controllers, and a number of small airports that do have towers don’t have 24/7 ATC.
But there’s procedures for flying in/out of these airports without ATC. For starters, each airport has a defined approach/take-off pattern for each runway — although these sorts of airports typically only have just one. These are documented in the chart supplement info to aeronautical charts, and pilots are required to follow them. So it’s not a free for all.
The airport also have CTAF (Common Traffic Advisory Frequency) radio channel that pilots use to communicate with each other. Typically pilots don’t talk directly to each other, instead it’s used to announce where you are and what you’re doing. E.g. you’re 10 miles from the airport, you’re entering the approach pattern, you’re on final approach, you’ve landed and have cleared the runway, etc. Although surprisingly, the FAA only recommends pilots do this and doesn’t require it.
It normally works well, although there have been some accidents over the years.
Marc
That was actually San Jose, they have a curfew for jets at night which Ellison would routinely violate. The runway at San Carlos is too short for all except the tiniest jets (they have 4 seat single engine jets these days if you have a few million to waste). The truly rich now keep their planes at Moffatt Federal Airfield between San Jose and Palo Alto (former Naval Air Station, now used by NASA). Why the rich can obtain exclusive access to a government-owned airfield is a question for another day.
NotMax
Good night to catch up on subtitled programming.
Rain and winds outside so loud that cannot hear the TV from across the room.
Frankly, am somewhat astonished the power hasn’t gone out.
;)
Phylllis
CBS News had a decent analysis of the overall situation at National, and I thought the fellow they interviewed made some good points:
Sister Golden Bear
@frog: This video has the full ATC recordings, as well as a good description of the airspace. blancolirio is a pilot and has done good analysis of a number of aircraft accidents.
Full ATC recordings also in this video by a commercial passenger pilot, which were also maps them flight tracking data and maps. He also reviews the post-crash ATC recording.
Sister Golden Bear
@Marc: Doh! Yeah, you’re right. Although Ellison did fly out of San Carlos at some point — that’s why he
boughtgot the airport code changed to SQLNot sure how large the jets were, but awhile back a company was running a quasi-legal air taxi service out of San Carlos. Airport tried to shut them down, but they exploited a loophole. Lot of my neighbors were pissed, since we’re under the approach pattern.
Marc
Now that’s something I never knew…
NotMax
@NotMax
Settled on trying out curling up with the Taiwanese show The Leaking Bookstore on MHz Choice.
;)
KatKapCC
@Phylllis:
Ain’t that the truth.
Quinerly
Looking like CBS is going to cave to Trump on that 60 Minutes/editing suit he filed.
https://deadline.com/2025/01/trump-paramount-cbs-60-minutes-settlement-1236273890/
JoyceH
@Quinerly: Filing frivolous lawsuits and receiving hefty payouts from corporations who don’t want the feds mucking up their mergers, license renewals and other business transactions is going to turn out to be a lucrative profit center for Trump Inc.
Marc
Those are actually 12 seat single engine turboprops, not quite as noisy as a regular jet, but still more annoying than the smaller planes that normally fly out of there.
Lily
@Quinerly: wow
eta So the ‘changing media landscape’ — the giant mergers, and the need for regulatory approval that T can stall and kill by choosing appointees who work for him — brings a world where freedom of the press is not a priority.
Citizen Alan
@cain: DEI means anyone who is more successful than the lowest. most inadequate straight white Christian male.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@JoyceH: Sounds an awful lot like bribery. It’s too bad that you’ll never get sixteen 21st-century Republican senators to agree to that definition, because bribery is explicit grounds for impeachment under Article 2, Section 4 of the Constitution…
Lily
Nicole Shanahan’s threat to use her money to oust any senator who votes against Kennedy … feels like blackmail. Awfully anti-democratic of her.
Lily
NPR story tonight :
Lily
@Lily: Related, NPR on 1/21/25
Gloria DryGarden
@Quinerly: JFC
SO, to stand up to him, say he doesn’t meet the standards, exclude him, tell the truth, refuse to lie, costs $1m to $25 m.
and to back down means when FFOTUS says oh your news is biased, you let that stand. Agreement by not fighting it. Allowing lies.
The man is the big liar, he’s the bias. Hell do anything, it looks like, to crush the truth and remove fairness.
This is very uncomfortable.
catclub
@sentient ai from the future:
Hollow out expertise within the Federal government and replace it (badly) with contractors – politically connected contractors.
The savings usually turn out to be negative.
Baud
@catclub:
Baud
Via Blue Sky
prostratedragon
For Schubert on his birthday, because he didn’t get many. Some of his last music.
String quintet, 2nd movement “Adagio”
Jackie
@TBone:
10:1 he was shitfaced or hungover.
MagdaInBlack
@Jackie: Both.
TBone
@prostratedragon: your little lighted candles bring me such joy. Thank you for banishing the darkness.
BretH
I don’t for a moment believe that they are really shocked. This is what they pushed for: easy coverage guaranteed to generate titillating stories.
TBone
@Jackie:
@MagdaInBlack:
Truer words have not been spoken.
All I can think is “better him than us” with regard to the hangovers and resultant, egregious errors. What a dumbfuck.
Glory b
Also killed in the crash was Kiah Duggins, a former member of Michelle Obama’s staff and Civil Rights attorney who was to become a professor at Harvard law school this fall
A beauty pageant winner and expert on bail reform.
Barbara
If you attribute cause to the wrong thing you won’t fix the actual problem. I will be flying out of IAD for the foreseeable future. Of course I have already cut back flying to any destination that I can drive or take the train in 5 hours or less. There are few cross country and international flights that fly out of DCA.
And here, I suspect that the actual issue is just the need for too many high wire logistics. You can never rely on perfection.
Matt McIrvin
@Barbara:
And it looks like the narrative going forward is going to be “gotta purge the military and government agencies of women and minorities”, no matter what, which is going to be a huge boon to incompetents who know how to pull the right strings. Which is the story in authoritarian governments the world over.
lowtechcyclist
@Jay:
Speaking from ancient personal experience, I’m not so sure about that. Fifth graders can be pretty damn mean.
What can be said is that they have far less excuse for it. Fifth graders are still somewhere on the learning curve of realizing that other people are real.
lowtechcyclist
@Jay:
No severance is being offered. They are being offered their regular paychecks through September 30. That is the offer, in the plain English of the resignation letter.
So yes, they will get a last paycheck and then nada, but nobody is saying otherwise, except the lazy MSM who just assumed this would be a standard buyout without bothering to read it until enough people shouted at them that this is not a buyout.
MomSense
My mom is watching GMA and they are saying a bunch of senior officials at FBI were fired overnight.
Betty
@Shalimar: They are also including persons with disabilities in their list. Miles O’Brien posted his objections explaining that he is a qualified pilot despite being missing an arm.
lowtechcyclist
@Lily:
Well, fuck.
I’m not a big fan of Santos, but whoever
TrumpVought replaces him with will be far, far worse.My former colleagues at Census must be going crazy right now. If I were still working there, I’d probably start keeping a bottle in my desk drawer.
prostratedragon
@TBone: 🙂
Theflippsyd
@TBone: I miss having a network to watch. But I won’t watch MSNBC after the whole Morning Joe thing, the debate response, etc. Not going to give them higher ratings now after the run up to the election and how it was handled.
I used to really like Maddow, but the time for her to have had an every night show was before the election, not for the first 100 days. I do admit I miss watching, but I just can’t watch and increase their ratings.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I suspect it’s fill it with these other wise unemployable wingnuts who went threw the Christian Madras schools.
lowtechcyclist
@prostratedragon:
Beethoven’s Wig, “Schubert’s Trout”
Which is how I know that my washer and dryer play the theme from the Trout Quintet at the end of their cycles.
prostratedragon
@lowtechcyclist: Delightful! I’ll be checking out more of these.
Starfish (she/her)
@hitchhiker: People were out here misgendering the pilot of the helicopter so they can blame DEI?!
Starfish (she/her)
@Quinerly: I would like to point out that your cabinet guy is more qualified than any of Trump’s cabinet guys.
As they were workshopping the DEI line all night, I bet they asked someone to leak the rumor of the gender of the pilot to the journalists, and the journalists just went with it because “a government official” or “someone in the executive branch” or someone who SHOULD have been qualified gave them some juicy gossip.
Starfish (she/her)
@YY_Sima Qian: I can’t tell if we are just in decline or in collapse yet. Yesterday was super embarrassing though.
We don’t have the capacity to make our own chips anymore. That was being farmed out when I was a young electrical engineer. And everyone has TSM making their chips because they can make the smallest ones.
lowtechcyclist
@prostratedragon:
Glad you enjoyed it! If I had to pick one as my favorite, it would be “Please Don’t Play Your Violin At Night,” which is a duet to the music of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
Papa Boyle
Trump will always try to fix the blame, instead of fixing the problem. To him that’s much much easier.
Geminid
@Starfish (she/her): I think there are several computer chip manufacturing facilities being built in the U.S. now. They were subsidized by the CHIPS+ Act passed in July of 2023. Locations include Phoenix, Arizona and Clay, New York just north of Syracuse.
Miss Bianca
@BretH: Yeah, really? They’re trying to act like this is their first Trump rodeo?
stinger
@MobiusKlein:
I’m gonna steal that. I’m all in on Harris/Walz ’28, and “This wouldn’t have happened under Kamala”, repeated over and over, might not take too long to gather momentum.
YY_Sima Qian
@Starfish (she/her): As Geminid mentioned above, TSMC has built & is expanding fabs in AZ making 5 & 3 nm chips. I have seen reporting that the fabs have exceeded expectations in matching the yields of TSMC’s TW fabs, although the cost structure remains considerably worse. However, supposedly the high yield was only achieved w/ TWese expats making up half of the technical staff, which is probably unsustainable.
In anticipation of the incoming transactional & extortionist Trump Administration, the DPP government of TW has already indicated a willingness to relax its current regulations & allow TSMC to build fabs of equally leading edge nodes in the US at the same time as it is doing so in TW. Not sure TSMC will want to execute its tech. & capex roadmap in this way, as it would greatly increase capital expenditures, complicate roll out of new nodes, & make staffing extremely challenging. Not sure the pre-compromise will satisfy Trump, either. It appears that he & his team are determined to force TSMC to prioritize the US over TW, by leveraging potential tariffs on TWese made chips, TSMC’s heavy dependence on US domiciled customers (Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, etc.), & TSMC’s dependence on equipment from US vendors (Applied Materials, LAM Research, KLA) & vendors dependent on US tech. (ASML). If the brouhaha wrt Greenland, Canada, Mexico, Panama & Columbia are any indication, Trump will twist TW’s arm, hard. If history is any guide, the DPP government will likely fold, quickly.
However, there will definitely be a backlash in TW against such coercion, & the opposition parties will definitely make hay. A lot of TWese have not forgotten how US presidents from Nixon to Carter to Reagan mostly hung the ROC out to dry in order to bring the PRC onside in the Cold War w/ the USSR.
Quinerly
@Starfish (she/her):
Cabinet guy pretty smart. Not your typical Midwest, ex Marine, White guy on his 4th career at age 66. Anti gun. Collects guitars. His mother worked with the Chicago 7. Fascinating family stories.
Alce _e_ardillo
@prostratedragon: Heavenly. I adore Schubert’s music.
Nettoyeur
@catclub: I have seen RIFs hollow out organizations, after which they fail globally. In the private sphere, companies then are bought or go under. When a country does it on a large scale, revolutions and violence happen.
Nettoyeur
@YY_Sima Qian: And guess what, in the end TW will cuddle up with PRC for financial reasons.
Glory b
@Geminid: Thanks Joe Biden!
Colette South
@cain: DEI also means women
Gloria DryGarden
@BretH: well, it’s fucking titillating , that’s for sure.
no lack of clickable stories with catchy emotion grabbing headlines.
instead a lack of safety, stability, kindness. Leaving that for others to recreate.