DL Open Thread: Thursday, January 30, 2025
I rarely (perhaps never) talk about how many people read the blog, and what they read when they read it. However, the Guest Post on the State IT Office has, as of the time I’m writing this, garnered over 2000 unique page views in about 48 hours. We know that a lot of Dover decision-makers read this blog (granted, some ‘hate-read’ it, but thanks for reading anyway). My point: The post has already influenced decision-makers. I think it will ultimately change policy for the better. While our blog can (I hope) entertain from time to time, I believe that effecting positive change must be one of our key goals. Whether it’s helping to elect better public officials and/or helping to change policy, it’s something we strive for. Our Anonymous IT Poster has contributed mightily to that effort. One of my remaining goals in life is to find out who wrote it.
But, I digress.
Yikes! Fatal Plane Crash Near DC. Jet collided with Army helicopter. Over 60 killed:
Officials believe that all passengers and crew onboard American Eagle Flight 5342, which collided midair Wednesday evening with an Army Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan National Airport, were killed, and are pivoting search-and-rescue teams to recovery operations. “At this point, we don’t believe there are any survivors from this accident,” D.C. Fire Chief John Donnelly said Thursday at a news conference, adding that rescue teams have recovered 27 bodies from the plane and one body from the helicopter. The PSA Airlines-operated American Airlines aircraft was flying from Wichita to National Airport with 60 passengers and four crew members, and the helicopter was on a training flight with three service members on board.
Don’t bother to ask–it’s Biden’s fault. BTW, it appears that several figure skaters were onboard:
“These athletes, coaches, and family members were returning home from the National Development Camp held in conjunction with the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas,” the governing body added.
“We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims’ families closely in our hearts. We will continue to monitor the situation and will release more information as it becomes available,” the statement concluded.
Trump Proposes Imprisoning 30,000 Migrants At Guantanamo:
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he will order the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security to prepare a migrant detention facility at Guantanamo Bay for as many as 30,000 migrants.The U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, already houses a migrant facility – separate from the high-security U.S. prison for foreign terrorism suspects – that has been used on occasion for decades, including to hold Haitians and Cubans picked up at sea.He said the facility would be used to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back, so we’re going to send them out to Guantanamo. This will double our capacity immediately, right? And, tough.”
DOI (Department Of Injustice) To Drop Cases Against Mar-A-Lago Crooks. The details are unimportant. What’s important is that we no longer have a legitimate Department Of Justice.
Billionaires Bearing G(r)ifts. Trump: “Pay Me $25 Mill.” Zuckerberg: “Sure”:
Meta will pay President Donald Trump $25 million to settle a lawsuit after the tech giant banned him from Facebook and Instagram following the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol.
The payment will include $22 million toward a fund for Trump’s presidential library, while the remaining $3 million will go to legal fees and several other plaintiffs who were also part of the case.
Zuckerberg has made major overtures to the Trump administration since the November election. The Journal notes the pair began discussing a way to end the suit in November after Zuckerberg flew to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club for dinner following his electoral victory. Trump reportedly told the Facebook co-founder the case needed to be handled before he could be “brought into the tent,” a source told the paper.
Can self-flagellation be far behind?
Ron DeSantis A Lame Flamingo? Seems like everybody in Florida hates him:
Ron DeSantis is in the unenviable position of watching as two politicians he despises, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson and Rep. Byron Donalds, emerge as the most likely candidates to succeed him as governor in next year’s Republican primary.
The already poor relationship between Simpson and the termed-out DeSantis, whom the Tampa Bay Times’ Romy Ellenbogen writes have been locked in a “long-simmering feud,” grew still worse this week when the legislature passed a bill to transfer many of the governor’s immigration enforcement powers to the commissioner’s office.
A furious DeSantis, who has promised to veto the “Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy” act (enjoy the unsubtle abbreviation), has responded by savaging his would-be successor.
The governor fired off a tweet Tuesday blasting GOP legislative leaders for empowering Simpson, whom he accused of having once “voted to give drivers licenses and in-state tuition to illegals.” Simpson fired back, “I’m not the one who opposed and ran against President Trump.”
Think this sums it up:
“It’s a new day in Tallahassee, and I think the Legislature is going to step up,” said state Sen. Randy Fine, who is the GOP nominee for the April 1 special election in the deep red 6th Congressional District. Fine—yet another former DeSantis ally turned detractor—further summed up the governor with just four words: “Flailing guy losing relevance.”
Oops–Gotta run. Big news breaking in the General Assembly.
What do you want to talk about?
Anyone else noting a “connection problem” on the Senate stream this morning? No prying eyes from the Governor?
I am getting the stream without issue.
Someone posted the guest post article to the Delaware subreddit, which is where I assume most of the new traffic came from.
Listen, i dont know where alby is now but i need to know what actual people around the world are saying about trump and our country. i feel like the one sober member of the family as the drunks with you at the bar and acting like aholes. thats what watching him is like. i know people in nova scotia find him and the mass of americans to be pathetic and stupid.
You can look at the front pages, which is all I can do. Usually one Trump story, mostly cabinet nominations. Nothing about executive orders that I’ve seen. Nothing at all like the American media freak-out.
Europeans are less focused on the U.S. than Americans think. Just as few Americans would read about political challenges to the French constitution, I don’t think there’s much audience here for Trump’s norm-breaking.
From your perspective, then, Rachel Maddow is full of shit when she opines that the rest of the world is laughing at us over whatever Trump has been bloviating about in the past 24 hours.
For context, I have no idea what he’s been bloviating about for the past 24 hours.
Absolutely anecdotal: I have a co-worker in the Czech Republic who has a Grandfather that is in his late 90’s that has lived his whole life in a small mountain village in Romania (I think). My co-worker reported that his grandfather has been fascinated by the whole thing, even watching some of the inauguration.
For his part, my co-worker thinks that the checks and balances of American government will prevent Trump’s worst excesses.
I also have a close friend that is German. He has been urging me to move there for the past 6 months. That’s some irony there.
To be clear, I don’t ask anybody what they think of any of it, and they don’t bring it up.
Anyone know why Meyer hasn’t listed his staff on his website yet?
Like clockwork:
“President Trump blamed diversity requirements at the Federal Aviation Administration and his two Democratic predecessors for the midair collision over the Potomac River on Wednesday night, saying that standards for air traffic controllers had been too lax.
Mr. Trump cited no evidence, and even admitted when pressed that the investigation had only just begun.
Moments later, he blamed the pilots of the Army helicopter that appeared to fly into a passenger jet that was on final approach to Reagan National Airport, across the river from the capital.
Mr. Trump went back and forth between blaming diversity goals that he said were created by President Barack Obama and President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and then saying that an investigation was necessary.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/us/politics/trump-plane-crash-dei-faa-diversity.html
Of course, if I read the article correctly, there was one air traffic controller doing the work of what should have been two controllers. Hopefully, no controllers take the Early Retirement.