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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Clues emerging from the moments before an Army helicopter collided with a passenger jet suggest breakdowns in the system meant to help aircraft land safely at the busy Reagan National Airport.
Understaffing and poor working conditions for air traffic controllers, and outdated technology have for years strained the systems that keep planes from colliding or crashing. Three more fatal accidents occurred in the following 12 days – in Philadelphia, Nome, and Scottsdale – with an aggregate death toll of 85.
Inadequate numbers of personnel in the flight towers of busy airports across the country is a chronic problem: more than 90 percent of the country’s air traffic control facilities operate below the F.A.A.’s recommended staffing levels.
There have been at least 10 close calls at Reagan National in recent years. Anti-union sentiment among the oligarchs and a drive for profit combine to kill Americans while driving up prices.
The ultimate irony is that the airport was renamed from National to ‘honor’ the president that broke the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization’s 1981 strike. He also initiated the country’s economic downward spiral by caving to the corporate cronyism of Washington and Wall Street, and gutting the counterbalancing strength of the American working class.
Other examples of corporate greed flaunting safety regulations at the expense of the American people include Deepwater Horizon, multiple mine tragedies, oil spills and explosions, tenement fires, and holding workers’ noses to the grindstone in warehouses even as tornadoes barrel towards them.
The policies being promoted by the Turnip and his entourage dismantling safety regulations and espousing policies that will allow industrial accidents to burgeon, fast-track climate change and promulgate more environmental disasters.
Those “disasters” will increasingly be green-washed by his government as “natural” events but that are fueled by the fossil fuel industry and the depraved desire of the people now in power to line the pockets of billionaires at the expense of everyday Joes and Jills.
Can Presidents Survive Their Own Misdeeds?
This started out to be a piece extolling the virtues of two of the most esteemed presidents in the 250-year history of the United States.
George Washington led the colonial forces that forged a new country, free from the English King to ensure no taxation without representation.
Abraham Lincoln, in addition to bringing the country through the Civil War intact, played a decisive role in abolishing slavery, modernizing the American economy, and expanding the federal government to be of the people, for the people, by the people.
Washington’s birthday was on February 22 and Lincoln's on February 12. In 1970 the Uniform Monday Holiday Act moved the celebration of Washington’s birthday to the third Monday in February to give employees a three-day weekend. States commemorating Lincoln’s birth combined the two holidays, and now it’s most commonly known as Presidents' Day.
The monetization of this day of respect by the crassness of sales promotions devalues their legacy. This endless pursuit of profit – as opposed to the American dream – is symbolic of the fragmenting times in which we live.
Epitomized by the elevation of Musk to DOGE-King and the adulation of the billionaire at the Monarch-Manqué’s coronation.
Shakespeare’s immortal lines that “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interrèd with their bones” tolls true.
The NeoCon cabal envisioned by Kissinger and fronted by Reagan, is now blossoming under his Egotistical Eminence, has tearing America’s image to tatters.
Neither kings nor presidents, nor their countries, are well served if surrounded by sycophants and rent-seekers.
Truth-Not? He talks with puffed-up pomposity as befits a consummate marketeer – not a president for the people, and his acolytes reflect back to him only what he wants to see.
Musk is the curtain in front of the wizard of Awwz, the all-powerful protecting the weak character and bleak soul of a spoiled child destroying anything challenging his self-entitlement.
Having bought his proximity to the Pope-of-Poop by funding his presidential campaign, and cemented it with a $10 million obeisance fee for the temerity of suspending the Wanna-be from X back in 2021.
Now generously reimbursed by the State Department which has committed to buying $400 million-worth of Tesla armored vehicles from the Musk-owned multinational.
At all costs, the Desperate One wants to avoid looking weak which could cost him many sycophants drawn like moths to his illusory flame of power. He dreads humiliation and is desperate to deliver on all fronts, no matter the legality.
If the Federal Emergency Management Agency can unilaterally abscond with funds from the New York City comptroller’s accounts, what will stop digital theft and fraud on a grander scale in the future?
Why empty individuals’ savings or municipal coffers when the Criminal Crazies can, with impunity, pickpocket the wealth of any bank that falls out of favor with the Kangaroo’s courtiers to subsidize tax cuts for their cronies?
Formally dropping corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams after at least seven federal prosecutors resigned, has raised Attorney General Pam Bondi to one of the most willing enablers of that excrescence the White House, signifying that the rule of law in this country will be subordinated to the His Pomposity's personal priorities so long as he’s in office. And needs favors.
Lawlessness at the top simply encourages other acts of anarchy. How far will America have fallen in a year from now? In four?
How many others in the chaos-court, let alone the elected and appointed officials now spinning in the tornado of executive orders, will choose to break the laws of the land and human decency, risking the wrath of the judiciary and the rest of the American people?
Many will remain in orbit just as long as it takes them to realize that their so-called king is a buffoon with no clothes.
Drama Kings’ Power Ploys
During his first week in office, the sTrumpet commenced the process of officially erasing the truth, not only about January 6, 2021, but about the last four years.
He is now searching for ways to ram through tax cuts for the uber-wealthy funders of his campaigns and the changes in American courts that have allowed his rise to Lord of the Land.
In recent decades frustration has mounted among conservative factions over the ballooning federal budget. Congress tried to give the president a line-item veto to cancel specific programs out of a bill, but the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional.
Now the Ego-in-Chief appointed counsel for the White House budget office has assured him that presidents have the power to do whatever they want to save money and deep-six reviled programs.
Pausing loans and grants for California presages further political motivation behind future disaster recovery.
A T-Boned Legacy
Defacing the Stonewall memorial by removing all reference to the T and Q communities?
Pulling up the iconic Rose Garden’s grass to install a Mar-a Lago patio? Like Joni Mitchell sang: how dare he “pave paradise to put up a parking lot”
The disgusting dismantling of PEPFAR and USAID, two of the programs by which America was actually regaining respect around the world, will forever cement Sir Self-Centered as a short-sighted marvel-in-his-own-mind.
Really reining in spending would mean remaking the American myth of galloping to the rescue, guns blazing.
It means stopping pretending to be the world’s peacemaker by fomenting more wars. It means shifting the bloated Pentagon budget to where it can be of use, helping Americans here at home and accelerating diplomacy abroad.
Dipshit’s diplomacy-by-threat reveals him as a dickless wonder, all bully, no brain.
Not even a Bush, let alone a Lincoln or a Washington.
He may not be a Bibi Netanyahu or a Muḥammad bin Salmān or a Putin (although some think he aspires to such status).
He may not be a Saddam Hussein or a Bashar al-Assad.
A Hitler or a Mussolini, a Pol Pot or a Pinochet.
But Donald Trump, Jr. will forever bear the ignominy of multiple impeachments and being the first, and hopefully the last, felon to be elected president of the United States.
With his sickening attempts to reinvent Jan. 6 as “a day of love” and the pardoning of the criminally convicted rioters, he may be trying to rewrite history, but history has a habit of ferreting out the truth and laying bare the crimes and misdemeanors of the powerful, president or not.
Jimmy Carter’s farewell address to the nation started off: “In a few days, I will lay down my official responsibilities in this office -- to take up once more the only title in our democracy superior to that of president, the title of citizen.”
A real president, like a Washington or a Lincoln, would not take from the poor to feather-bed the rich. They would give the power back to the people.
(Liz Amsden resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
