This dovetails nicely with Mistermix’s post on the FAA:
Obviously, women and minorities need not apply. Regardless, who the fuck in their right mind would apply to become a flight controller, one of the most stressful and underpaid jobs out there, after Republicans have spent the last 40 years demonizing federal workers and Elon and Trump have spent the last month terrorizing them?
These people are fucking imbeciles. No disrespect to imbeciles.
Who’s Up for Alternative Search Engines?
trollhattan
Hey, dudes I chased off. Come back, I have cookies. But I still killed your parents.
Just fucking great.
Elizabelle
President Musk speaks.
When I heard that a helicopter had collided with a “small plane” at DCA a few weeks ago, I so hoped it would be Musk’s or Zuckerberg’s aircraft.
Less oligarchs, more ice skaters. Fuck DOGE.
Jeannie Hill
I’m sure Reagan is resting peacefully, knowing “job well done”.
dc
See what drugs do to your short term memory!
J. Arthur Crank
Also too: is the implication there that many of the current air traffic controllers are not “top notch”?
Old Man Shadow
Honestly do not know why anyone would ever choose to work for Musk. He is as toxic a boss as a boss can get. I don’t think I would take a job with him for 10x what I make now.
Maybe a 100x what I make now, then I quit in two or three months.
sentient ai from the future
Nobody could have predicted the breach of the levees
matt
it’s funny that for a significant portion of the population, chaos monkey Elon Musk is the greatest leader imaginable.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Elizabelle:
Well, MM’s post did mention that the business jets (which I think are the same as private jets?) that these guys zip around on have often gotten less than stellar pilots in recent years
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@matt:
Until their ox gets gored by him
TONYG
@J. Arthur Crank: Non-white skin and/or lack of a penis means “inferior”.
Geo Wilcox
FFS talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. The damned billionaires use the same air traffic control system the airlines use. The first one of them crashes and dies, you can bet the system will be fully funded and staffed.
Peale
My uncle is 78 and was one of the fired patco members. He went out and worked in engineering and architecture after that. But I’m sure he’d be up for the ATC role if he didn’t need cataract surgery.
TONYG
Aside from everything else … bringing back retired people to a highly skilled, highly stressful job is pretty risky. These people left for a reason, they might have health problems and, if nothing else, they will be rusty. Elon has no understanding of human beings or of anything else.
Elizabelle
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): saw that, and that’s accurate. Could be gracious and say “less experienced” in addition to less stellar. I am glad airlines have tightened up requirements and flight hours. That Colgan captain was a nightmare. Nice guy, but he killed himself and a bunch of more accomplished people. All those failed check rides.
Elizabelle
@Geo Wilcox: depending on which billionaire, depends on when we stop cheering and demand action.
matt
Their ‘whites only’ workforce requirement is really going to limit what they can do going forward.
Steve LaBonne
My Reagan-fired former ATC friend is 77 and not in the greatest health, but hey, I guess Skum will have to take what he can get. Can’t wait until it’s his private jet that crashes.
Betty Cracker
I hope this is true (no reason to doubt it but haven’t personally verified):
trollhattan
@Geo Wilcox:
Can’t imagine how happy EU is to have created Galileo and not have to rely on GPS and GLONASS.
Trump would be extorting them over disabling GPS right now.
Steve LaBonne
@matt:
Be serious, it will insure that they only hire the best people!@heymistermix.com
Notice he gives no incentives to come back to work. “Serfs, your King requires your service.”
trollhattan
@Steve LaBonne: IDK what a typical ATC career is but the stress must catch up with most of them pretty fast. 20-30 years?
TONYG
@Geo Wilcox: Maybe the next step will be special private airports with private air traffic controllers for billionaires. Why not?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Betty Cracker:
If that’s true, I hope Slim can sue Musk for libel
Jeffg166
@Jeannie Hill:
I think President Nancy would have thought a lot of what the felon and GQP are doing a bad idea.
Peale
@@heymistermix.com: Yep. Look, if we’re going to be living in the dark enlightenment where we openly scoff at things like charity and altruism…why the hell should anyone do anything unless there is something in it for them.
trollhattan
@Jeffg166: Her psychic would have warned her to “stay away from the orange ones.”
WTFGhost
I notice the word is “retired” not “laid off” or “have recently resigned.”
That said: the failure here is not in words, but in the ultimate dick boss and his dickbro.
Baud
I’m not 100% confident about how this will turn out of it happens. Via Reddit.
RevRick
@trollhattan: DOGE is both stupid and nefarious. Efficiency is not the best goal for government. We want it to be both effective and resilient, able to both deliver services consistently and rise to meet emergencies. But efficiency is clearly bullshit, given that they are constantly having to rehire the workers they fired.
No, DOGE’s real purpose is to vandalize and loot the government. They want to give cover to shitty politicians who will say, “See, government doesn’t work,” and to enable them to shovel a ton of money into the laps of millionaires and billionaires.
Ksmiami
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): there was a recent Bloomberg article about the lax codes and standards governing private air travel.
even if I had billions, no way would I fly in one of those mobile death machines.
Baud
@Ksmiami:
I assume private air covers everything from corporate jets to prop planes in Alaska.
Steve LaBonne
@trollhattan: I think retirement is mandatory at age 56, so that gives some idea.
sentient ai from the future
@Baud: the roganification of jon stewart
Nerd
@trollhattan: ATC controllers have to retire at age 56.
patrick II
Robert Vought, the new head of the OMB, has publicly said he wants to keep federal employees in a state of constant trauma.
I understand why he believes a smaller government is better, but feeling satisfaction from traumatizing people requires mental illness.
WereBear
@Steve LaBonne: Coders can get burnout from the sustained concentration, and I know ATC are under even more stress. With worse consequences.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: Does this mean the NYT will become a must-read? I guess WaPo is totally down the tubes.
Steve LaBonne
@RevRick: And yet it IS efficient. Replacing public employees with private contractors is always significantly more expensive and often results in lower quality work. Programs like Social Security have administrative overhead that is ridiculously low by private sector standards.
Jeffro
sooo close to fitting on a bumper sticker! ;)
maybe just symbols?
RevRick
Sad to report that Gene Hackman, his wife, and his dog were found dead in their home. Police had been asked to perform a wellness check. No foul play. Probably carbon monoxide poisoning.
Steve LaBonne
@patrick II: @patrick II: Technically personality disorder, I would say.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: My guess is Musk will chicken out. I don’t trust Stewart not to go all slobbering fanboy, but who knows?
Jeffro
much like trumpov, Musk and Musk alone will determine who is worthy and who is
non-whitenon-malenon-worthysentient ai from the future
@patrick II: the cruelty is the point. Fucking Joffrey baratheons, the lot of them
sentient ai from the future
@Betty Cracker: they will bond over their shared love of legalizing comedy
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Stewart and Musk will bond over bashing the Ds. I fear a rehash of the Yoo and Rumsfeld interviews.
Jeffro
@patrick II: Russell Vought ;)
and yes, he is completely nuts…he’s been drinking the fundie, far-right, white supremacist kool-aid ever since he was a kid.
Keith P.
@RevRick: It’s kind of crazy, but my last memory of Gene Hackman was Baby Billy’s New Years Eve party story from The Righteous Gemstones. “Gene Hackman – the actor??!?” “Well, it was either him or some poor sonofabitch who looked just like him.”
matt
@patrick II: there are things that happen to persistent abusers.
RevRick
@Steve LaBonne: And that’s probably due to two factors. First, government employees trade lower wages for job security. Second, managers are promoted from within and understand exactly what their subordinates have to do, meaning they are less likely to be asshole bosses.
JaneE
I thought air traffic controllers were a group that had an early mandatory retirement age. That may have changed since I heard that, I am woefully out of date on most everything. I am pretty sure they have a strict physical exam to pass.
I can’t wait for one of these retiree re-hires to have a heart attack in the tower where they are the only controller. /s
Eolirin
@Geo Wilcox: It won’t, because they’re making sure the necessary infrastructure to get to that doesn’t exist.
These things have consequences. You can’t build up these systems over night, and throwing money at problems only works in the long run, not the short.
They’re not capable of the kind of long term planning necessary and they’re driving away all of the people who are.
kindness
Didn’t DOGE just fire everyone on probation at the FAA? We’ll be lucky to survive as a country with Elon running this show
@sentient ai from the future:
Jon has been shredding Elon.
jonas
My guess is that this is leading up to Musk just privatizing the FAA and forcing Space X engineers to moonlight as ATCs if they want to prove they’re truly “hardcore.”
I haven’t come across any specific reporting on it, but I assume that airline executives are quietly expressing Susan Collins levels of “serious concern” about this situation to the administration.
Eolirin
@patrick II: No. It requires psycopathy, which is a personality disorder, not a mental health condition.
Hoodie
@JaneE: ?They do, it’s actually statutory. ATC is the type of job you do mostly because you want to be able to retire at 56 with a pension and still be young enough to do something else.
Emily B.
One of the things I learned as a writer for a magazine on entrepreneurship was that people who start successful companies do not necessarily know how to run successful companies. In many, many cases, innovative, high-energy, rule-breaking entrepreneurs don’t have the skill set or aptitude to manage a larger, more established business. Either the company suffers or the VCs bring in a CEO with operational experience.
I think about this a lot in thinking about Elon Musk.
Eolirin
@Emily B.: Elon Musk didn’t even start any of the companies he’s famous for. He’s entirely a fraud.
trollhattan
@Nerd:
Interesting. Bet we can guess what happens to that particular rule.
Musk was recently spewing something about “working weekends is our superpower” and wants to impose that on all. “Quality of life” can only be attained by having power over others.
Belafon
@kindness: They didn’t fire a lot of air traffic controllers, because we’d be shutting down airports otherwise.
Betty Cracker
Jen Bendery on Bsky (Hill reporter): “Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) will deliver the Democratic response to Trump’s Joint Session to Congress next week, say Schumer and Jeffries.”
Eolirin
@trollhattan: Yeah, cause it’s not like there is a bunch of high quality research showing that productivity and outcome quality for most kinds of office work go up with shorter work weeks or anything.
DarbysMom
@Betty Cracker: Looks like the post was removed. What did it say?
trollhattan
@JaneE: Found out our nearby general aviation airport (nearby like, less than five miles) HAS NO tower controller. Can’t adequately say how happy that makes me, considering its history.
TBone
NOT music
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XOvdkXAg-yg
Gin & Tonic
@Eolirin: Precisely. Moved in and evicted the founders, then took all the credit.
Marc
They already exist. Check out this sweet deal.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: Ugh. Now there I’ll criticize the Democrats.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@DarbysMom:
It was a screenshot of Musk retweeting someone who was saying that Mexican billionaire, Carlos Slim, was connected to Mexican drug cartels. Slim supposedly canceled all of his contracts with Starlink, immediately costing Musk billions
WaterGirl
@RevRick: That’s awful.
Betty Cracker
Never mind.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker:
I might go with a shorter version of that sentence.
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: Who would you rather see get the gig? I don’t care who does it as long as they repeat the words “oligarchy” and “lawless” and “corrupt” and “illegal” and “economy-destroying” and “where’s my fucking eggs, Trump” a lot. ;-)
narya
Several SCROTUS justices love them some private jet travel. Wonder how they feel about it now?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@zhena gogolia:
I was pretty mad that Gerry Connelly, when asked by an interviewer on CNN what he would tell federal workers to do in response to Musk’s email demanding to know what they did the previous week, he said, “I guess if you can, cover yourself and do the five things you did last week.”
I thought it was incredibly cowardly. Not happy with Slotkin either for voting for so many of Trump’s nominees or the Laikan Riley Act
DarbysMom
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Thanks!
WTFGhost
@RevRick: “Efficiency” is an extraordinary goal for government. It means we’re doing what we need to do, with minimal effort/outlay.
DOGE’s real purpose is not efficiency, but elimination.
@sentient ai from the future: Stewart’s always been “willing to tell it like pop culture believes it to be,” but he probably thinks he tells it like it is. That said: in a war of wits, Musk vs. Stewart, one of them is entirely unarmed, thinks he’s much, much, much cooler than he ever will be, and puts his hand over his heart, before throwing a Nazi salute, so he has a cheap excuse that “he’s got Aspergers, he didn’t realize that would look like a Nazi salute, he was SHARING HIS HEART with everyone!” and… um… you figured out which one I was talking about, didn’t you?
oldgold
@Betty Cracker:
This needs to be a speech for the ages. God knows, there is sufficient material available for it to be.
I hope the speech and setting meet the gravity of the moment.
The old kitchen table setting with a speech full of bromides will not cut it. It never has. We need something new and bold.
How about in front of the Supreme Court with a large candle waving crowd? Or, from Independence Hall in Philly? Monticello? Something to draw people and add to the gravity of the speech.
This simply cannot be the same old same old.
Planetjanet
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Would you rather have him tell federal employees to refuse, risk their jobs and families so they could stick it to the fascists? Seriously?
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker:
Great time to recommend some alternate programming for The Felon’s SOTU.
Dr. Timothy Snyder will join Red, Wine, and Blue for a free Zoom on March 4 (!!) from 7:30 to 8:30. If you miss it, they will send a video link to you later (or it will be on their website.) Free.
The Real State of the Union
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Planetjanet:
I’m not sure what the right answer would be, but that was obviously not it
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: Well, if she does that, I’ll be okay with it! I’d like to see Jasmine Crockett or Maxwell Frost. But I guess they thought that would be too in-your-face.
zhena gogolia
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’m not mad at her for doing what will help her keep her seat in a red area, but I wouldn’t have chosen someone from a red area for this role. But I’m not in charge of that!
Betty Cracker
@oldgold: Agreed. It’s a house on fire situation, and the speech should reflect that.
TONYG
@Marc: Well, that’s cute. Unfortunately I can foresee this type of thing proliferating. Privatize everything, including private armies for the billionaires. (Of course, these guys are too dumb to know what to do when their private armies rebel against them.)
brantl
@TONYG: Elon has no understanding of human beings or of anything else.
Yeah, see, typically animals have no understanding of types of animals they have no contact with; nobody should have done that great white shark to human brain transplant that they did on Musk.
Betty Cracker
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Maybe something like, “I’d advise them to ask their agency leader for guidance. I’m sorry they’re receiving threat emails from a coked-up, skipping dipshit who bought the presidency for a quarter of a billion dollars, but here we are.”
Geminid
@zhena gogolia: Kay spoke pretty highly of Senate candidate Elissa Slotkin. Kay allowed that Slotkin was not as liberal as she was, but was impressed by Slotkin’s campaign presence.
Elissa Slotkin was a member of the taklented House Class of 2018, and was one of the forty who flipped Republican seats. Another one, Andy Kim also just won election to the Senate.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: OMG. Pilot cannot get a retired Canadian Sabre fighter jet into the air; it crashes through a fence, crosses a busy road, hits a car and plows into a Farrell’s Ice Cream parlor. 22 dead. Not the pilot though — he had a broken leg and arm. He had logged less than four hours in the Sabre jet. Not even four full hours.
28 people injured.
Fighter jet’s owner (different guy) dies the following year in the crash of yet another surplus military plane.
Good times.
I do remember Farrell’s. The Zoo! The birthdays.
Baud
Full context FWIW
Elizabelle
@Baud: Thank you.
Tiny social media posts are going to be the death of us.
HopefullyNotcassandra
Does that mean these screwy folks rehired the 400 probationary ATC employees Mr. Duffy fired?
How about the freeze on hiring imposed by the dear leader? Has that been rescinded?
Will any returning hires face abrupt termination despite glowing performance reviews next month? This summer? By Christmas?
I think perhaps the screw-it-up folks need a reset. I propose firing for cause the new “probationary” employees and advisers who keep screwing up our national security. I doubt that will occur, however.
With each passing day it becomes clearer that screwing up our national security is precisely the point.
Baud
@Geminid:
I would not mind if Slotkin’s rebuttal was a video of a leopard eating people’s faces.
She won’t do it. And it wouldn’t be a wise thing to do. But I wouldn’t mind it one bit.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
@Elizabelle:
Even with the extra context, I still think he shouldn’t have said to do it to cover yourself. He should’ve left it at ” I hesitate to give personal advice”, and then went on to attack Musk’s actions as illegal, dangerous, and indeed cruel
lou
My 63-year-old cousin retired from her ATC gig 10ish years ago, did some freelance training of new ATCs for a couple of years, and I don’t think you could drag her back to the job, given how stressful it was.
But Elon probably wouldn’t want her anyway because she’s a girl,
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Peale: Because kindness is healthier for everyone and being a gawping hole of need is pathetic?
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Fair enough.
Baud
I wonder if Elon Musk will sit behind Trump at the SOTU along with the Veep and Speaker.
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
Fuck both those guys.
Eolirin
@oldgold: I have a prediction; no matter how the speech is done, it will not move the needle in either direction.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@patrick II:
Why is smaller better?
The once grand old party has been saying that all my life without telling anybody why “drowning the government in the bathtub like a
baby”* helps anybody.
Meanwhile, in practice, the GOP has destroyed nearly everything it has touched from USAID, our international reputation, savings & loans, bank stability with deregulation (looks like we are going to do that again up to & including ending the SEC, FDIC, CFPB and the Federal Reserve). The MAGA version even wants to end FEMA.
On the other hand, the “smaller government” party wants to keep national records of pregnancies, check under the doors of bathroom stalls for our genitals and ban every book that makes anybody think.
* I believe that was Grover Norquist.
Soprano2
@@heymistermix.com: Isn’t there a mandatory retirement age for air traffic controllers? I seem to remember something about that when we toured the airport here for CAMP.
Geminid
Ankara-based Clash Report posted this 6 hours ago:
There was also a very big story for Turkiye:
Abdullah Ocalan founded the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) in 1978 and declared war on the Turkish state in 1984. The war has cost over 40,000 lives since then.
Evidently, Ocalan has chosen to pursue the goal of upholding Kurdish rights through the political process. Today a delegation from the Kurdish-based DEM party made the latest of several visits to Imrali Island in the Marmara Sea, where Ocalan has been imprisoned since 1999. DEM and the other major political parties have been negotiating new constitutional.provisions regarding Kurdish rights since last December, when Ocalan opened the door to a settlement of the 40 year conflict.
Baud
@Geminid:
Everything is coming up Turkiye.
Eolirin
@Geminid: I am very concerned about assassination risks for Zelensky coming here.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@RevRick: Police have ruled carbon monoxide poisoning out.
https://mynewsla.com/hollywood/2025/02/27/two-time-oscar-winner-gene-hackman-dies-at-95-3/
May they all rest in peace.
Doug R
@TONYG:
(chef’s kiss gif)
laura
@Elizabelle: I had a coworker who was working at the gas station across the street from Farrell’s that day. It wrecked him.
Geminid
@Baud: The Turkish government really is on a roll. First the Syrian rebels it had supported and protected since 2011 toppled the Assad government last December. Now they appear to be resolving another longsrmtanding conflict, with the PKK.
That leaves the war in Ukraine as their biggest concern. Erdogan and his formidable Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan are taking an active role in shaping the prospective ceasefire there. Turkiye is a major Black Sea power and has a lot riding on the outcome of that war, and substantial influence on the settlement.
Doug R
@RevRick:
Gentle reminder that I got a plug-in CO detector bundled with a battery powered portable detector (backup and road trip) at Costco for a decent price.
$40-80 and it could save your life.
Baud
@Geminid:
With the fall of the U.S., Turkiye is our best hope for the region.
RevRick
@HopefullyNotcassandra: Yeah, I saw the following report that suggested instead suicide by overdose of prescription medication.
Ken B
@DarbysMom: I found an article in an English language version of a Mexican newspaper that seemed to be the source of the original post. Couldn’t get the link to paste.
Search terms were “Musk Slim”.
DarbysMom
@Ken B: Thanks Ken.
Gretchen
@TONYG: ATCs have mandatory retirement at 56 because it’s a high stress job that requires quick reflexes. Let’s bring back those guys 10 years later and hope they haven’t gotten rusty.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Jeffro: Seems to me, this crew is actively seeking the least competent, Northern European descended, straight, Republican, white men for nearly every position.
This crew has accepted a few straight Republican women and men who are not descended from Northern Europeans, but only when said are woefully incompetent for their positions.
Note carefully the fact that nearly none of them has the expertise, training or experience needed to perform their duty competently. Ergo, incompetence appears to be the defining characteristic.
One could assume this crew intends to convince the world Northern Europe can only produce incompetent, sycophantic men.
Ukraine is an excellent example of a country working daily to dispel this assumption, while one of its larger neighbors appears to be where the incompetent, dangerously insecure, paranoid, white male stereotype was born.
Many people are saying this.
Sister Golden Bear
@trollhattan: FWIW, 90% of the 5,100-ish airports don’t have ATC, usually smaller and less busy ones. There are processes and procedures pilots are recommended — but not required — to follow (yes, that shocked me too when I learned about that for my drone pilot license). tl;dr there’s a designated radio channel pilots use to announce where they’re at, and what they’re planning to do, and what they’re actually in the process of doing.
Usually it works. Except when it doesn’t, like the mid-air collision in Arizona. NTSB will issue the final report, but it appears one of the planes was a bit reckless and lost track of the plane in front of it. Thankfully, the occupants of the other plane survived.
Aziz, light!
You couldn’t pay me enough to make me watch that both sides douchebag Stewart yukking it up with Elmo.
Bill Arnold
@Old Man Shadow:
I’d consider it for $400M, paid in full in advance, with the contractual right to publicly insult him in perpetuity.
Gretchen
@Steve LaBonne: Medicare also has ridiculously low overhead compared to private health insurance. There’s a large pot of money to loot there if the grifters can get hold of it.
Elizabelle
@laura: That would.
FAA mandated some changes after, as they always do. Once there is a body count. Safety regulations written in blood.
catclub
@TONYG:
There are mandatory retirement ages for commercial pilots. I would not be surprised if there are similar for air traffic controllers.
Baud
Via Reddit, interesting politics.
Elizabelle
@HopefullyNotcassandra: And one dog dead, but two survived.
RIP to all, no matter how it happened.
catclub
I never know which one is dear leader any more.
catclub
Geminid
@zhena gogolia: I wouldn’t want a Senator from a red state making this rebuttal either, but Elissa Slotkin won her Senate seat in a purple state, Michigan. Before that she represented a purple district after she knocked out the Republican incumbent in 2018.
This SOTU rebuttal aside, these are the kinds of districts and states Democrats need to win in order to gain majorities in the House and Senate, and to win the White House in 2028.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
Luckily didn’t live here then so missed the horror from close up. Was here when the B52 crashed departing Mather AFB on a training mission. Big. Black. Cloud.
Was wrong about a thing, am not 5 miles from Executive am 2 miles, per the Googlemap measuring thingie. One action after Farrell’s was closing Runway 12. I think they did; it’s still present and points where the crash occurred.
catclub
@Gretchen:
beat me to it. thanks
catclub
I remember last summer listening to a discussion of senate races. Slotkin was described as someone who just wins.
catclub
really? wow! Or have they just killed them all?
Seriously, Turkey may have lost its designation as ‘worst possible ally to the US that is a NATO member’.
That would be good news.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: What’s weird to me is that I don’t recall hearing much about this incident at the time. I lived in Virginia; did hear that something terrible had happened in a Farrell’s, but maybe it was not even that accident.
The internet (and cable 24/7) brings news of disasters like that one to us now, much quicker. National news, with the ease of local news.
catclub
@HopefullyNotcassandra:
Also note that per capita, the US government
has fewer workers than 30 years ago. Lots fewer.
Ohio Mom
@patrick II: Sorry, it’s not mental illness that is behind Vought’s desire to see suffering. It’s evil.
I know we educated liberals lean towards compassionately labeling these people as mentally ill because we don’t want to believe in evil. But evil exists, even if we can’t quite wrap our heads around it.
It’s something we may have to take on faith because it’s beyond our comprehension.
Vought is a bad person, an evil person.
Geminid
@catclub: Turkiye did not kill all the PKK’s fighters, but Turkiye has pretty much pushed them out of Turkiye since the 2013-2015 ceasefire broke down. That was not easy, as the PKK had many well-trained and highly motivated fighters in its ranks.
Turkiye has Nato’s 2nd largest army and second largest force. It has always fulfilled its obligations under the Nato alliance, which Turkiye regards as a cornerstone of its national security.
Ohio Mom
@Gretchen: Yes, traditional Medicare is efficient in that it provides quality health care without much overhead, compared to the privatized Medicare Advantage program, which costs the government much more, often costs patients more, and provides overall lower quality medical care.
I will be surprised if we get through the Trump/Musk/Vought years without all of Medicare being privatized. Sigh.
Gretchen
@Geminid: Slotkin went into detail during a hearing that when she goes to the reddest part of her states all she hears is how scared people are that these bozos are going to cut their Social Security, VA benefits, Medicare and Medicaid. So I’m sure that will be a theme of her speech.
Gretchen
@Ohio Mom: yes, that’s their goal. We can’t have something that works well for seniors when we can rip them off. I had Advantage – didn’t realize the problems with it when I chose it. I lucked out when Blue Cross advantage pulled out of my area, so I was able to change to traditional Medicare with a supplemental without underwriting.
zhena gogolia
@Aziz, light!: For me it would have to be a kind of Clockwork Orange setup.
zhena gogolia
@Geminid: Well, she’s intelligent and articulate, no Katie Britt, so I’ll give her a chance.
Planetjanet
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): He told workers to protect themselves. He did not dodge the question by saying he should not give personal advice. Can we please focus on the villians and not microanalyze the ones who are trying to help?
Ohio Mom
@Gretchen: You *were* lucky. I think a lot of people don’t understand the underwriting trap, when we were researching Medicare options, most of the materials we read did not make that clear.
Bokonon
I dunno … if you are a former air traffic controller that happens to be white and right-wing, you might look at this situation and say “BONANZA!” and rush to submit an application. Because THIS IS YOUR TIME TO SHINE! And make some serious money too. Probably with very permissive office conduct standards.
ironcity
@Baud: There is no such thing as “private air”. Back in the before times aviation in this country was governed by laws and regulations that started in 1926 with the Air Commerce Act. Today airlines that haul you, the family and Aunt Edna to wherever are operated under Part 121 of the federal air regulations and these are pretty stiff. There is another similar Part 125 for cargo airlines like Fed Ex, DHL and the like. There are non scheduled carriers that operate under Part 135. The business jets and such that Elmo and his like use operate under Part 91, the same part that a Piper Cub or Cessna does. Some of the jets you see are operated like flying Ubers or taxis, so they operate under Part 135 as do some corporate flight departments. If it is a jet there are some more stringent requirements for pilots than the ones for a Cub. See why you shouldn’t assume?
Elizabelle
@Planetjanet: Thank you.
PIGL
@TONYG: as I am sure someone has pointed out by now, these already exist. “General Aviation”
Citizen Alan
@Eolirin: I am too. For all practical purposes, Zelensky might as well be flying into Moscow.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Planetjanet:
He told them to cooperate with an illegal and dangerous request.
IMO, you couldn’t actually answer that question as asked. If you answer it like he actually did, you get called out for being cowardly/weak. The only actual response is to attack Musk and his demands as illegal and dangerous; as a way to terroize federal workers and a pretext for more mass firings at important agencies that will hurt everyday Americans. It’s not that hard
HopefullyNotcassandra
@trollhattan: The 5 day work week is so yesterday.
Geminid
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Connolly might get called out as cowardly and weak, and there are plenty of folks pushing this line against Democratic electeds in general.
But that doesn’t mean Connolly is in act cowardly and weak. I don’t think he is; it’s just that some Democrats want people like Connolly to satisfy their emotional needs. That’s not a Connolly problem in my opinion.
Planetjanet
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): What law is broken by OPM asking workers what they did last week? Please cite the statute. Connolly gave a long and compassionate response, avknowledging the burden, the stress and futility of it. You are right that there is nothing he could say that would prevent you from calling him a coward. Connelly has always had the backs of federal workers, for years and years.
Planetjanet
@Geminid: Truth.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Planetjanet:
If it wasn’t illegal or otherwise violated some kind of federal policy, then why did virtually every department and agency head, even the ones appointed by Trump, order their employees to not reply to Musk’s email? I imagine answering Musk’s email by CIA workers could be problematic because of the nature of some of their work. In the end, Musk’s bluff was called
Even if OPM’s actions aren’t in direct violation of federal law, they can still be called out as dangerous. Connelly’s response made it too easy for folks to call him out
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Aziz, light!: Come sit by me.
Lochnessmom
My best friend’s husband was an ATC. Mandatory retirement age is 55, which he hit in 2019. He was joking a few weeks ago that he could probably get his job back … Guess it’s not a joke now. Also, his advice is DO NOT FLY right now unless completely unavoidable. The system is borked for the foreseeable future.
Pete Downunder
@Elizabelle: I was a new lawyer in those days and my new boss had that case and we were in it for years. A huge tragedy.
glory b
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Look, people might have political concerns but have mouths to feed and bills to pay.
I have 2 relatives who work for the federal government, one for the SEC, the other is an air traffic controller.
At the moment, THEY WANT TO DO THE THINGS THAT WILL ALOOW THEM TO REMAIN EMPLOYED.
TomV
@Elizabelle: He over-rotated too early and got behind the lift curve. Bob Hoover toured air bases during the Korean War teaching the Air Force pilots not to do that.
Ksmiami
@glory b: tumbrels, scaffolding and Elon… that could take care of the problem
Manyakitty
@Baud: he might even deliver opening remarks.
sab
@J. Arthur Crank: That’s most of what is left.
Across the board, everyone really competent who chose public service over money has learned a lesson. They will go for the bucks, and our future public servants will be the folks who couldn’t get jobs in rhe private sector.
sab
@glory b: I have a niece who is very good at her important Federal job and wants to go back to work, but they rented out her office building and now say she cannot work from home. She doesn’t know where to report to. She knows if she finds wherever there will not be space enough to actually work.