Flotsam and Jetsam - Trains, Boats and Planes

Though not trains, as far as I've seen, yet. Yesterday was not a good day for transportation. First, an oil tanker t-boned a river cruiser tied up at the dock and disembarking passengers in New Orleans, causing it to sink and role on its side. Just as that story started to make become clearer, the US government shut down the nations entire air travel control system, grounding all planes, citing, initially, unknown problems with the communications between controllers and pilots. TheBlaze @theblaze, "WATCH: The moment an oil tanker CRASHED into a cruise ship in New Orleans this afternoon." At Insty, Driscoll had a long tweety post. Fox reports New Orleans boat crash called ‘miracle on the Mississippi’ as everyone is accounted for, officials say. "The Coast Guard confirmed all passengers and crew were rescued after the docked vessel capsized near the Port of New Orleans." I wonder if the river pilot was on his cell phone during the accident, like the guy who missed the turn leaving the Port of Baltimore, and drove a ship requiring 20 ft of water into a 12 ft shoal. But more likely, an equipment failure, like the one that took out the Key Bridge. The oil tanker was totally pointed crossways to river traffic, awfully close to a big bridge.

Secretary Sean Duffy @SecDuffy, "The @FAAnews issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers. FAA technicians are investigating the issue. We will provide immediate updates as we have them." Brian Krassenstein @krassenstein, "We are 2 hours into the FAA ground stop and still have no clue what’s going on. I miss Pete Buttigieg." Spence @CurryAlert, "The last major ground stop was in 2023 when Pete was the transportation secretary." Insty, says I’VE BEEN HEARING THAT IT’S OUTDATED FOR SEVERAL DECADES: Duffy Blames Outdated System After Nationwide Flight Ground Stop.
"Even Ari Emanuel (Rahm’s brother) is throwing shade at Pete Buttigieg for blowing a chance at reform. Though to be fair, Buttigieg was on paternity leave for a lot of that time." At Althouse, "This isn’t another 9/11. This is a telecommunication outage." "Said Markwayne Mullin, the secretary of homeland security, quoted in "Live Updates: F.A.A. Declares a Rare Nationwide Ground Stop Markwayne Mullin, the secretary of homeland security, says Trump administration officials do not suspect foul play. He added that officials did not know the cause and said it would 'take some time' to restart airport operations" (NYT). "There was no indication as of yet that this was a nefarious attack against us. It’s just a telecommunication outage as of right now." At CBS, FAA lifts nationwide ground stop that disrupted thousands of flights; "White House says no indication of "nefarious act"" Late reports suggest the servers running the ATC system became overloaded, and started doing bad shit. Almost like a DNS type attack, although, as of yet, there is no hint of outside involvement. The ATC system is a classic hard problem. The current system, though extremely safe, is very antiquated, and hard on people. It desperately needs to be modernized, just how do you do that, and keep the damn planes flying? Who wants to be up in the air when they make the switch? 

wretchardthecat @wretchardthecat, "If we assume that some of the unusual events of the last few days are related: 1. China naval drill off Taiwan; 2. Iranian spy roundup in the UK; 3. Uptick in hacking of European targets, esp France; 4. Sinking of Russian warship in the Gulf of Finland; 5. Evacuation of US bases in the UK; 6. FAA nationwide grounding order; 7. Revelation of NVIDIA spying; 8. Microsoft outage then we are possibly witnessing the results of unsustainable complexity or a grim clandestine fencing match that is being played down by officialdom. The challenge for the analyst is never to get ahead of the data, but not to fall behind it either." Eric S. Raymond @esrtweet, "I'm about to propose a term for a dangerous failure mode that every software engineer should be thinking about today. And another for its consequences. Hot-state dependency: A condition in which a system's ability to function depends on organizational relationships, accumulated state, or operational knowledge that exists only in its current running configuration and cannot be reliably reconstructed following interruption..."

At WaPoo, Marc Thiessen opines The midterms won’t define Trump’s legacy. "Iran will.
Reagan lost the Senate and won the Cold War. The president can follow his lead." At PJM, How JD Vance Charlie Sheen’ed His Career — and Why the 2028 GOP Race Is Now Wide Open. I don't see it as quite that bad, but I think he's opened the lanes for Marco Rubio and Ron DeSantis considerably. Stephen Miller at PJM, What If JD Vance Doesn’t Run? Buck Throckmorton at Ace's THE MORNING RANT: Ron DeSantis Separates Himself from Legacy GOP with Attack on “Corporatism.” Matt Margolis a PJM hears Sen. Kennedy Warns the GOP to Stop ‘Urinating on Our Hands’ Before the Dems Take Over. I think he meant that rhetorically... And Stephen Kruiser's Balkanization Plans Are Much Clearer After Last Week and What's One More? Maybe We Can Give Thune to The Democrats. EducatëdHillbilly™ @RobProvince, "Just a reminder that most of the campaign staff for Romney & Bush & the rest of the old guard now write for Bulwark & Lincoln Project electing DSA Democrats… so were they ever really republicans? Or conservatives at all? Because they’ve gone 180 on every core value they pretended to have in the last 10 years." Hat Hair's John Sexton hears Sarah Longwell State the Obvious: Western Lensman @WesternLensman, "The Bulwark's Sarah Longwell at Democrat conference: "You may know us, we're the Never Trumpers. At least we were ten years ago. Now we're just kind of libs just like the rest of you." Yes, we know." Quote Heath Mayo @HeathMayo, "When you see the immediate ridicule that people like Mitt Romney and Nikki Haley still evoke from the base voters of the Republican Party today, it’s easy to see why the GOP is quickly becoming unserious and uncompetitive nationally with no clear path to grow itself back. When..." At Hat Hair Capt. Ed asks Are You Ready for ... Pence 2028? Seriously? PJM's Cathy Salgado finds one bright spot, a Maine Republican Flips House Seat Red.

Matt Margolis says Nobody Roasts a Scandal Like John Kennedy, and Nvidia’s Spy Mess Proves It Again. "I mean, I'm not — I'm not naive. I'm not Bambi's baby brother. I know people have affairs. I don't recommend it, but if you do, if you do, you ought to make sure it's not with a Chinese spy," Kennedy said. "I mean, check their LinkedIn page, for God's sakes." GayPenguins @GayPenguins1, "Nvidia is really, really fucked if they make their new interim CEO permanent. Not because she is a woman but because it would be such a strategic downgrade to go from an electrical engineer who actually understands the technology behind what he's selling at a fundamental level to an MBA. ..." Killa Runa X @Killa_RunaX, "textbook semiconductor history: finance executives are great at stabilizing a crisis, terrible at deciding which 5-year chip architecture to bet $20b http://on.intel proved what happens when spreadsheets replace silicon intuition at the top.spreadsheets love cutting r&d for quick gain; only engineers keep innovation in the lane." Tim Worstall at It’s all obvious or trivial except.... notes AI May, Or May Not, Be Improving Productivity, depending on how you define productivity. From WaEx, I’m sure it’s a coincidence that Howard Lutnick’s sons have $362 million in Nvidia. 

Ace listened to MAHA Consultant Calley Means: Susie Wiles Was Running a Buckraking Operation Out of the White House and Letting Big Pharma and Big Ag Write Policy If They Just Hired Her Lobbyist Daughter, "There may be reasons Susie Wiles was fired. Apparently her old lobbying firm, Ballard Partners, racked up $186 million since she was installed as chief of staff."

Texas Monthly reports on How Texas’s New Leaders Could Ground SpaceX "Elon Musk’s company relies on an exemption to the state constitution to send its rockets aloft—a measure that the incoming attorney general will be asked to rule on."

Matt Margoli, I Totally Voted for This: Trump Moves to Make Federal Agencies English-Only. Peter St Onge, Ph.D. @profstonge, "Monthly deficit hits $400 billion - monthly, not annual. At this pace the deficit will be more than the entire pre-Covid federal *budget*" Quote "E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. @RealEJAntoni, "Fiscal year is off to a rough start as Oct deficit jumps to $404 billion, up 42.1% from Oct last year 52 cents of every dollar the federal gov't spent last month was borrowed - yikes!" Deep Leaks @DeepLeaksHQ, "Stephen Miller says the scale of welfare fraud is SO MASSIVE that eliminating it alone could balance the ENTIRE federal budget "The amount that has been fleeced from us is in the HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars." "We could balance the federal budget if the only dollars that went out of the treasury went to individuals who were properly, lawfully, correctly eligible to receive them." This should infuriate EVERY taxpayer." At Twitchy, MN Department of Human Services Learns the Hilarious HARD Way X AGREES With Trump on 'Somali-fraud.'

Capt. Ed, Bessent to IRGC: 'F the Iranian Leadership,' and the WSJ Too. From Ace, Scott Bessent: I Had to Move to a Military Base Because the IRGC Is Sending Assassins to Kill Me At My Home Because Treasonous "Journalists" at the Wall Street Journal Showed Them Exactly Where I Live. "It's time to start publishing "journalists'" home addresses, and the bars they get drunk at, and the homes of the men and women they cheat on their wives with. Oh wait we can't do that -- "journalists'" lives are too precious to risk, unlike normal Americans' lives."

Open Source Intel @Osint613, "Report: Finland out of NATO. No NATO bases in the Baltics. All of Donbas handed to Russia. Those are among Moscow's demands at informal peace talks in Abu Dhabi, per a leaked proposal obtained by Bild. In return, Russia would pull its nuclear weapons from Belarus." Classic Trump negotiation strategy. Ask for the moon and stars, and hope they settle for the moon.

Amy Curtis at TownHall says Hakeem Jeffries' Plan for Affordability Includes Returning DACA Recipients to the US and Paying Them. Hat Hair's Dave Strom hears Traitor! Jeffries Gets Blasted by Leftists at Democrat 'What's Next' Conference and predicts The Filibuster Is Toast If Van Hollen Is Leader. Well, it's toast anyway. At Althouse, "Why would you fire the manager when you just won the World Series?" "Said Angus King, the independent Senator from Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats, quoted in "Van Hollen Says He Will Challenge Schumer for Senate Majority Leader/Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has emerged as a favorite of Democrats seeking an alternative to Senator Chuck Schumer, who says he has the votes to win" (NYT)." Ace doesn't approve of the New Democrat Plan to Solve the "Housing Crisis:" Let's Inflate the Housing Market By Pouring Government Cash Into It and Letting People Who Can't Afford a Mortgage Buy Homes Until They Default "Say.... wait a minute... Isn't this how they created the 2008 housing market collapse the crashed the world economy? And then blamed on Republicans? Well, since they got away with it once, I guess it's time to crash the world economy again. For Great Justice. And... "Affordability.""

At RedState Rusty Weiss says Dems Aren't Even Sworn in, and AOC Already Has SCOTUS in Her Sights — But She Has a Big Math Problem and hears Democrats Are Panicking Over the 2030 Census, and the Explanation Gives the Game Away. "Gov. Ned Lamont, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (CT-3) appeared with advocacy groups to warn that the administration’s new counting rules would leave roughly 250,000 state residents out of the tally used to divvy up U.S. House seats and federal funding. "The 250,000 estimate appears to reflect the state’s non-citizen population that would fall outside the new apportionment base," the Connecticut Centinal writes." Deep Background explains The Quiet Coup on the Constitution - Inside the Popular Vote Compact. "Would Arizona Really Hand Its Electoral Votes Over to California?" Matt Vespa at TownHall finds a Dem Top Pollster Isn't a Fan of the Electoral College, but Finds This Alternative to Be Intolerable. Matthew Zeitlin @MattZeitlin, "i know i'm supposed to be pro popular vote and pro national popular vote compact but, like, really? are we really going to see states award their electoral votes to a candidate who didn't win that state? can you imagine this actually happening?" Nate Silver @NateSilver538, "While I'd support a constitutional amendment to replace the Electoral College with the popular vote, the interstate compact thing is an unforgivably terrible idea, one of the worst ideas that otherwise smart people think is a good idea, absolute Pandora's Box among other things." Newsweek reports Idaho Election Officials Find 2,675 Ballots Left Out of Results. Tim Meisburger at Da Chronic explains Why I Deny Elections "From my perspective as an election assessor, the Democrats’ promotion and implementation of these insecure election processes looks like a comprehensive strategy to enable election manipulation. Their use in our elections makes the process unverifiable, and the candidates elected last week who promoted these processes or opposed reform should probably be considered illegitimate until new, verifiable elections can be held." Rick Moran at PJM celebrates The Jumping Corpse of Calaveras County: Dead for Months, He's Winning a Race for County Supervisor "The situation became very weird when the Giudici campaign workers decided to make the argument that voting for a dead guy was better than voting for his opponent."

At Althouse, Why is Talarico saying this and what does it mean — especially the comparison to LBJ?, ""The American people cannot wait two years for change so we must work with President Trump. If President Trump wants the same plaques, and portraits, and busts as LBJ, we can help make that a reality. We should make the final two years of his presidency the most productive of any presidency in American history." I hear that as: We should humor Trump where we can.... and that is where it has to do with his screwy ego. We did it with Lyndon Baines Johnson, and we can do it here."

Matt Vespa hears Joe Biden Reveals the Moment When He Knew His Presidency Was Over. When Nancy Pelosi shivved him in the back.

Ace cites Paul Sperry: Security Experts Warn That Islamists Pilots Present an "Insider Threat" to Air Safety, "This is one of those "duh no shit really" reports, but bear in mind that the entire Islamocommunist-captured establishment denies this obvious fact, so it's critical that the obvious be reported and documented. At Real Clear Investigations."

BA's Cam Edwards reports SCOTUS Asked to Resolve Bizarre Verdict in YouTube Prankster Shooting.

At the ChiTrib, Supreme Court to consider President Trump's asylum executive order. Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson, "Secretary of State Marco Rubio just delivered the most brutal indictment of Third World Mass Immigration and Open Borders I've ever heard. “They tell us that we are compelled by a sacred legal obligation to give up our power, to surrender our sovereignty, to submit to the whims of our enemies, to allow our cities to descend into violent anarchy, to welcome in any foreigner from anywhere in the world who arrives at our doorstep without permission, to transform our towns into refugee camps for the entire planet.” “And beyond our borders, too, they would have us believe that we must allow our rivals to act against us with impunity, that those who flood our country with drugs and crime and death should be met with little more than the occasional and polite complaint.” “There is nothing, there is nothing in our history or the history of any other great nation that requires us to recognize the authority or legitimacy of any of these ridiculous ideas.”" John Sexton hears Trump Threatens Mexico With More Tariffs Over Migrant Caravans.
PoIiMath @politicalmath, "You will not hear a single objection from the "buy banned books" crowd about how France is going to jail an acclaimed author for saying words." Matt Vespa wonders Is Sunny Hostin Serious With These Remarks About Lincoln and the Slaves? Some people are so addicted to blathering they don't even hear what comes out of their mouths. 

The Free Bacon advocates Send ICE to Harvard "If university administrators won't restore order on campus, dispatch ICE to disperse the foreigners disrupting undergraduate education."

And still more from the Wombat at In The Mailbox: 11.13.26.