Timothy Birdnow

I caught Meet the Press this morning and host Kristen Welker asked the same question of both Republican guests on her show - Kristi Noem and Mo. Senator Eric Schmidt. That question was an attack on Trump's claim that DEI may have had something to do with the Blackhawk disaster in D.C. She demanded to know HOW that was possible, and stated the FAA claims to hire only the best and brightest and to do regular testing to ensure quality.

Noem didn't answer very well; she seemed stilted and a bit confused. Schmidt did much better, pointing out that this is about staffing or lack thereof.

Were I on the hot seat I would have answered this quite easily "exactly". The FAA is trying to have it's cake and eat it too. They want to hire good people but they want to hire a particular kind of good person and they can't find them. So these positions go unfilled and controllers (or pilots) wind up doing double duty.

And that is assuming they ARE the best people. The testing and training is "race normed" I am sure (sex normed and every other normed too) meaning they give breaks to those who they want.

For example, I learned recently that in colleges across the country you can claim some sort of disability and get UNLIMITED time to take tests. That requires a simple note to authorize it. The result is those who know this and employ it get a huge leg up on those who play by the rules and take timed tests. I strongly suspect they are doing this in government hiring as well, including by the FAA and their "standards".

The Americans with Disabilities Act provides for extra testing time in most circumstances. I was unable to open the FAA document on the matter, but I suspect they adhere to it.

Extra time is fine if you are going for a job as janitor or Congressman but air traffic control, or pilot, requires split-second action.

Anyway Schidt pointed out that time spent on DEI training was time not spent on actual job training - or on actually doing the job. And he pointed out, rightly, that DEI had driven a lot of career people out, as did the Covid protocols put in place by Biden.

A purely skills-based hiring standard had been scrapped by the Obama Administration in favor of a questionnaire over background, and sadly Trump didn't have time to reverse this (he had other fish to fry while himself being in the frying pan over his four years with baseless accusations made against him and two impeachments). Still, Trump chucked the DEI program in 2018, but Biden immediately revived it.

Democrats and the media are furious at Trump for pointing this out. They know they are vulnerable over it and do not want anyone talking about it.

I watched Hancock and Kelly, a local "Left wing/right wing" show on a local station and Hancock, the supposed conservative and former Speaker of the Missouri house, showed why the GOP keeps losing. He invoked Reagan and spoke of Reagan's rhetoric after the Challenger disaster and sneered at Trump for being "divisive" over this. Reagan is dead Republicans; get over him! He was also one of a kind. But if anyone thinks Reagan would not have blamed DEI had it been in force then they are kidding themselves. You cannot fix a problem if you won't admit what it is.

You can always tell how effective you are being by how angry you make these people. If Trump weren't angering them now we would know we were losing.

At any rate Noem didn't do so well with this or with the other questions. She was wooden and gave formulaic answers. Schmidt looked pretty good but even he missed the mark quite a bit. Our leaders simply need to read The Aviary and learn how it's done! Especially Schmidt,who is from St. Louis. Hell; I'll go have a beer with him if he wants. Many of the solutions to the world's problems are first elucidated on barstools...

I rarely watch paleomedia and this morning reminded me why I do not.

Oh, Welker also recycled the old canard of "no evidence" over this issue, you know, the one they repeated like parrots when Trump complained of vote fraud after 2020. What evidence would be satisfactory to this woman? In cases like this crash there is little in the way of actual physical evidence to prove the point anyway. What is Trump supposed to do? Get a signed affidavit from the Blackhawk pilot?

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:30 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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