Posted on 02/01/2025 12:19:22 AM PST by John Semmens
On Wednesday, January 29 an Army Helicopter collided with an American Airlines plane trying land at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Within a few hours of the crash, Rep. Norma Torres (D-Calif) was able to determine that "President Trump bears the full weight of responsibility for this tragedy. The fact that this crash came so quickly following the Senate's confirmation of the appointment of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense is a telling sign that Trump's cabinet nominees are dreadfully unqualified for the jobs to which they are being appointed."
"I am sorry to say that this tragedy is part of a long-term pattern," Torres observed. "The last major air disaster occurred in Buffalo on February 12, 2009. This was after eight years of misrule by President Bush. There was also an airline crash into a bridge over the Potomac River near the airport on January 13, 1982 when Reagan was president. Am I the only one who sees a disturbing series of tragedies here? Clearly, Republican presidents seem to cause air disasters. It's too late for us to take any action against Reagan or Bush, but we can still impeach Trump before he can trigger another disaster by his merciless trimming of the federal workforce."
Former Department of Transportation Inspector General Mary Schiavo pointed out that "Trump's order trimming the federal bureaucracy explicitly exempted the air traffic controllers. More plausible explanations include the early departure from work by one of the two-person team responsible for controlling the airport's traffic and the fact that the collision occurred much higher than the altitude the helicopter was told to maintain."
Schiavo's explanations were rebutted by Rev. Al Sharpton who insisted that "Trump is not capable of human feeling. His insistence that only the most capable of people should serve in positions affecting public safety is highly insensitive to the Biden Administrations efforts to implement DEI across all federal agencies. Without DEI virtually every member of the air-traffic control workforce would be a white male with extensive experience in the aviation field."
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) pooh-poohed the idea that DEI might negatively affect the performance of air-traffic control, saying "the job is highly automated. Anyone who can see the monitors displaying the traffic should be able to do a decent job under most circumstances. Besides, the air-traffic controllers aren't the only ones involved in making the decisions that could have caused the crash. There were pilots on the airliner and in the helicopter whose actions could have caused the crash."
Presidential Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pointed out that "both the Army and American Airlines have been following the DEI policies mandated by the Biden Administration. Perhaps passing over the individuals most capable of doing these very demanding jobs in order to achieve a greater diversity of racial, sexual, and disability among the workforce has some negative consequences."
ping
My daughter and her ex-husband were both USAF air traffic controllers. He now drives a truck and she is a medical care/benefits advocate to Veterans. Neither chose to enter the ATC field after leaving the service. Reason was stress and politics. At the moment my daughter is baffled by what happened. She’s waiting to see. At the time we discussed this she didn’t know the tower was short staffed. There’s a root cause for this disaster and I believe if the investigation is done properly, it will lead back to Obama. Then Biden for pushing harder on the DEI hiring process. IMO.
In its 0bama-era archives, the FAA bloviates about:
<><>”On-the-spot special appointment authority”
<><>to hire individuals via a “non-competitive hiring method,”
<><>which specified hiring air traffic controllers “with severe physical disabilities,”
<><>”and those with psychiatric disabilities, and intellectual disabilities.”
The FAA initiative was last updated by Obama accomplice, Joe Biden, according to Fox News.
The cover-up is at Mack one speed———liberals pretending
St Obama never lowered the standards for air-traffic controllers.
This we know. Lame brain Obama scrapped 1000 qualified FAA candidates.
<><>stoopnagel Obama’s justification?
<><>the pool of applicants was not “diverse enough,”
<><>so the color-coded moron purged them from consideration.
<><>no more hiring candidates with the “most competency” by Dei-blinded Obama,
<><>key FAA jobs were sanctified by St Obama for hiring based solely on their race.
Couple that with who’s flying the aircraft and whatcha got? I gotta fly next month. Because of where I live and where I’m going, there’s a layover. So 2 take offs and 3 landing with 3 control towers involved. The idea didn’t bother last week. It does now.
Prayers
Many, many, many years ago...
a friend of mine in my church was in the Air Force.
His assignment was similar to an Air Traffic Control person,
but basically the exact opposite...
The job of the Air Traffic Control people
is to keep aircraft separated.
His job involved guiding aircraft to converge with enemy aircraft.
He said most of the people in his job classification
would fulfill their obligation,
and then move on to be Air Traffic Controllers.
I can not remember what he said his Air Force Specialty was called.
Thanks. I’ve always hated flying. Actually I don’t like riding with someone unless I’m driving. The flying was always about the hassle of getting on and off and the boredom. I flew in the service back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean 4 times I hated it. Now I got another reason. Maybe Trump and a real transportation secretary can fix this stuff but it won’t be fast. Regards.
An aspiring air traffic controller says he was
denied the job because of Obama’s diversity quirks.
“The FAA’s obsession with inclusion under Obama made
an accident like that at Reagan more likely to happen.”
Andrew Brigida, 35, scored 100 per cent in his training exam but was denied a position in the control tower because Obama’s FAA had a skewed recruitment process favoring “diverse” candidates who were of a certain color.
Brigida is part of a class action lawsuit filed against the federal agency.
Oh, he will be blamed.
He is only in office for two weeks and that liar, Elizabeth Warren, is already blaming him for the economy that her party created.
This is their MO and they need to be stopped from continuing to destroy the fabric of our country with their lies.
” 2 take offs and 3 landings ..” ?
I”m not ready to completely blame the ATC’s in this case. The video makes it very hard to rule out an intentional intercept by the helo.
This looks like terrorism to me.
Why are they withholding the name of the co-pilot?
Why are they withholding the name of the co-pilot?
The cover story is that her family “requested” it be with-held.
Does Norma really think that the American people are as stupid as she is? If so she needs better staff than what she’s getting.
So was I, but since I was in the USAF for 20 years, I was already over 31, so not eligible to work for the FAA, and didn’t want to anyway. My son is an active duty USAF pilot. Both of us shake our heads, and marvel at how many people think they are experts in the field of aviation, when in reality, unlike us, they know next to nothing about it.
It might have been called Aircraft Control and Warning, but not positive.
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