It is only day eleven of the Administration From Hell and people all over the country and in government, in particular, are letting their angst be known. There are alarming stories hitting the news today, which if you piece them together, show a disturbing pattern. First, for starters, all of the air traffic controllers in a key Bay Area airport have resigned. Every one of them. And the Mango Moron plays a key part in this. Tammy Duckworth believes that this is a reaction to the memorandum Trump sent out asking federal employees to quit their jobs. She usually calls the shots right.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported Thursday that beginning this weekend, the San Carlos Airport, which lies along the final approach to San Francisco International Airport (SFO), will no longer have anyone manning its control tower. The resignations came after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reassigned controllers’ contracts to a firm that pays less.
Airport manager Gretchen Kelly said “understandably, all current controllers have declined [the firm’s new] offers.” The proposed compensation packages for air traffic controllers reportedly did not account for the Bay Area having the highest cost of living in the nation, which is roughly 18% higher than the national average. The region has had the highest cost of living in the U.S. for six consecutive years, with the San Jose and Napa areas close behind.
San Carlos Flight Center owner Alessandro Franco said air traffic control at the airport is “hugely important” due to its proximity to SFO and its typically busy airspace. Aircraft approaching the San Carlos Airport alternates between communicating with air traffic controllers at San Carlos and those at SFO. Now, he’s worried the resignation of controllers will mean there is “another layer of safety that’s not going to be present.”
“We’re a mile or two off the final approaches to SFO — it’s a complex space,” Franco told the Chronicle. “This is a situation that puts us in limbo next to these busy airports.”
Kelly has asked the FAA for additional staffing help for the San Carlos control tower, but her request was refused. Other airports in California are dealing with chronic shortages of air traffic controllers, which has become a worsening problem over the years. The Chico Airport, which the Chronicle noted was a “hub” for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, now has just one controller.
And into this already volatile situation, Trump tosses a match. Brilliant idea. One of many briliant ideas he has had that are blowing up right and left in his face.
And it goes without saying that the crash at Reagan National Airport, which Trump has used to demonize DEI hires and play political games has a part in this. Tammy Duckworth, who used to pilot Black Hawk helicopters as a combat veteran in Iraq, opined that letters Trump had sent to federal workers this week asking them to quit their jobs could be partially to blame for the crash.
And we move on to the next catastrophe. This is very bad. The New York Times is reporting that the “Treasury Department official who oversees the government’s vast payment system abruptly retired on Friday, according to an email viewed by The New York Times, after Elon Musk deployed engineers to the agency to find a way to shut off funds to various projects.”
David Lebryk was the top career official at the Treasury Department, and served as the acting secretary for a few days before Scott Bessent’s confirmation. He led a team responsible for making more than one billion payments on behalf of the federal government each year, cutting checks to Social Security recipients, government employees, contractors and others. Colleagues at the Treasury Department had not been expecting him to retire soon.
The typically routine process of sending and receiving government funds has become a focus for Mr. Musk and his team of aides at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. They have spoken to others about their desire to find dramatic ways to cut costs, including ways that don’t require congressional authority.
Influential people working on Mr. Musk’s behalf on these economic matters have included Baris Akis, a venture capitalist who during the transition has focused on the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service but is not in a full-time government role, and Tom Krause, a software chief executive. Mr. Krause has also led interviews of current U.S. Digital Service employees, many of whom are expecting to be laid off after the technology unit was renamed the U.S. DOGE Service.
A spokesman for the Treasury Department declined to comment.
A clear pattern is already beginning to form here. And we’ll get to that in a minute but here’s the latest sign of rebellion, which just hit the airwaves in the past hour.Â
Among the three military staff on the helicopter that crashed into the American Airlines flight Wednesday night was a female U.S. Army captain. Her family is asking that her name be not be released publicly.
Both MSNBC and Reuters reported Friday that the Army made the “highly unusual decision” not to disclose the soldier’s name.
“At the request of the family, the name of the third soldier will not be released at this time,” an Army statement said.
President Donald Trump claimed on Thursday, without providing evidence, that diversity hiring was to blame for the crash that killed 67 people. When pressed on how he knew that, Trump said “common sense.”
The family gave “no reason” for their request, MSNBC reported.
The Blackhawk helicopter was part of a training mission in which one soldier, with 500 hours of flight time, was being certified by another soldier with over 1,000 hours of flight time, according to reports.
You know as well as I do why the family made the decision. They don’t want their relative demonized as a DEI hire and made the object of Trump’s scorn and abuse. And make no mistake: MAGA has been combing the ranks looking for somebody to blame this tragedy on. They found a trans woman, Jo Ellis, who is a Black Hawk helicopter pilot and tried to pin it on her. Unfortunately (for them) she’s alive. Whoever caused the mid-air collision on Wednesday it was not this gal.
Statement from Jo Ellis: pic.twitter.com/7KmvMh2pzq
— John Rich🇺🇸 (@johnrich) January 31, 2025
Now let’s get to the clear and obvious pattern: The air traffic controllers want their fair share of money, which they deserve, and they don’t want the scrutiny of the Trump administration demonizing them and questioning whether they’re fit to serve. Trump’s propaganda machine portrays the FAA as actively recruiting people with disabilities, including psychiatric, to be air traffic controllers. That is patently false.
All air traffic controllers have to pass a physical and rigorous testing, including their mental acuity and temperament. The language on the website — which has been there since 2013, and was there all through Trump’s first term — encourages people to apply for a number of positions. It does not state, nor even imply, that anybody with a physical or mental handicap of some sort can automatically become an air traffic controller. Those are tough jobs to get. The same person with a disability who might be able to get a file clerk job at the FAA is not going to get an air traffic controller job. This is Trumpian propaganda.
Now on to the Treasury Department official. Certainly we were not there, but most probably what happened is the man didn’t want to be pushed around by Elon Musk, and that’s understandable. I have seen this exact same dynamic in law firms, where some new partner comes in and thinks s/he’s going to retool the entire assembly line and key people will simply not buy into it and leave.
Then on to the deceased Army Captain. That’s also a no brainer. As a woman she’s set up to be demonized. She might be an incredibly competent pilot, like Tammy Duckworth was. No matter. She’s a female, so she was “given” the job “to fill a quota.” Trust me, I have been a part of this scene myself. When I was a radio announcer in the 1970’s, I was a very capable one, but people accused me of being “given” the job. What people? Men who weren’t exactly burning up the employment landscape, those people. That’s what all this is about, white people and white men, in particular, being at the top of the food chain like they used to be.
Now look at the common threads: people are saying fuck you to Donald Trump, Elon Musk and all this insanity. This is the sign we have been waiting for. Trump and his cronies believe that they’ll push everybody around and people will comply. Well, friends, you see here before you people resisting like hell.
And this may be the way of things going forward. When — not if, when — Pete Hegseth gives an illegal order, he may simply be ignored. Elon Musk is already finding out that people aren’t going to just roll over and give him what he wants. The Army Captain’s family and the transgender pilot are making it clear that they’re not doormats.
This is how it begins. Rebellion. I commend the courage of everybody who has refused to be run over by Trump and his band of goons and are standing up for themselves. Good for them. And I am encouraged that maybe my country is still what I believed it to be, a nation with courageous people in it. And we haven’t all degenerated into a pack of MAGA mongrels. Trump may soon find out that he’s not on the merry-go-round he thought he was, but on a roller coaster ride instead, heading straight into a deep downward plunge.
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So, why exactly did Trump name Pam Bondi (a WOMAN!!!!) to be his Attorney General? Sure, she wasn’t the first choice but why aren’t the same folks so eager to attack a female member of the military as some kind of DEI beneficiary out there frothing at the mouth over the suggestion that the country’s top law enforcement officer will be a woman?
Or Kash Patel to be head of the FBI? He’s one of those “brown-skinned” freaks with a “furrin-sounding name.” Why didn’t Lord Donald name a “real” American (and, of course, “white” is unspoken but it’s obviously implied) to the job?
Just these two nominations show that “DEI” is NOT a real problem. It’s just applied to people that Trump and his cronies can use as convenient scapegoats when it suits their purposes. And when some of Trump’s “friends” would just happen to resemble a “DEI hire,” well, they “got where they are through their own merits” (i.e., sucking up to the right white people in power and remembering their place).
But…but…but she’s a Republican woman like Amy Coney Barrett, who that makes her just fine.
I am.waiting for the first Crispus Attucks, the first one to.be arrested, jailed, tried for treason, and executed. Probably female or transgender or gay who refuses an illegal.order.