So we took turns a-clicking in the browser at the tabbies, 'til boredom overtook us and he began to link ...

Ed: This was so incredibly frustrating because this fragility has existed for decades and could have been resolved almost 40 years ago. The FAA system is safe but incredibly antiquated in critical areas, which makes it far less fault-tolerant than it should be. The problem turned out to be...

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Yahoo News: The Federal Aviation Administration lifted the ground stop at 8:15 p.m. ET Friday. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a press conference Friday night that the airspace had reopened, but warned that “it’ll be slow.”

“It’s going to take us some time to unwind what happened this afternoon,” he said.

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Duffy said that “instability” in the radar communications at air traffic control centers began at 3:36 p.m. ET. More than 3,500 planes were in the air when the ground stop was issued. He blamed it on an “incredibly old air traffic system.”

“We have old switches, old routers, we use 1980s little copper lines,” Duffy said. “It’s an old system that went down. It went down everywhere. It got overloaded.”

Citing multiple sources, CBS News reported that “an update to the private communications network that connects America’s air traffic control system caused the system to reboot, leading to a crash and a communications outage.” It reported that the system is operated by L3Harris Technologies. L3Harris did not immediately respond to Yahoo News’ request for comment.

Ed: Copper lines aren't from the 1980s. They're from the 1950s. By the 1980s, telecoms had already begun upgrading their infrastructure, and the FAA had planned to upgrade its own infrastructure. I know because I was there when they had the opportunity. 

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Ed: It's been 38 years, and I'm still furious over the missed opportunities, both for myself on this project and for the US flight system. I didn't work directly on the AAS bid project, but Hughes was ready to scale up, and I had a good chance of getting a position on the project. Instead, I got cut loose in the downsizing that followed. By now, that system would have needed modernization too, but the FAA would be able to build off of a previously modernized platform. Now the FAA will have to spend much more money to build out in today's dollars rather than build off of a $3.6 billion investment in 1988 dollars, which would be ~$11 billion today. Compare that to the new modernization plan's cost. 

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WashEx: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin called on Congress Friday night to provide $50 billion to overhaul the nation's decades-old air traffic control system after a nationwide outage grounded flights for nearly five hours.

The two Trump administration officials used an emergency press conference to argue that the disruption demonstrated the need for additional federal funding, warning that similar failures could occur without a complete replacement of decades-old technology.

"Give us the money to fix it," Duffy said. "Let's not do a patchwork, a fix to a system that's critical for every single family." ...

Duffy attributed the outage to overloaded switches and routers operating on outdated analog telecommunications infrastructure. He said recently installed digital equipment remained operational, strengthening his argument for replacing older systems.

Ed: One point to note: Duffy has actually worked on a comprehensive modernization plan and is ready for funding by Congress. For some reason, the White House and Republicans in Congress didn't push this over the last two years, probably because they didn't want to be seen as free-spenders ... or freer-spenders, more accurately. I'd bet that they don't push it now and opt for the "patchwork" approach that every administration and Congress has adopted since the corrupt 1988 AAS contract award to IBM. 


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Ed: Hochul is attempting to score political points for a vast, bipartisan failure that stretches back decades, leaving a fragile and fault-sensitive system for Duffy to run. That's not his fault, and Duffy actually developed a solution. It's long past time for Washington, D.C. to stop playing games and get this fixed, not look for scapegoats while ignoring the necessity of emergency investment in modernization. Speaking of scapegoating, here's Duffy's predecessor attempting to shift blame away from himself for the patchwork policies of his administration.

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He secured $12.5 BILLION in initial funding.

He repeatedly requested more.

Those actions deserve to be part of any serious discussion about aviation safety.

Ed: Don't put "serious" and "Hochul" in the same sentence. Or paragraph. 

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Ed: It's not just Buttigieg, either. It's every Transportation Secretary, every administration, and every Congress going back to 1988. At least. (Via Twitchy.)

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Jonathan Turley: It appears that Hasan Piker is not alone in saying that the United States deserved the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack. As the New York Post reported, a new poll shows that one in five college students say the U.S. deserved the attack that killed nearly 3000 fellow Americans. Forty-two percent said they would prefer to live under socialism, while only 28 percent favor capitalism.

The Buckley Institute poll also found that 38% of students favored Palestine as an ally to 25 percent for Israel.

Roughly half of the students — 47 percent — agreed with this extraordinary statement, “While socialist countries like Cuba and the Soviet Union have not been perfect, they offer a better economic model than capitalist countries like the United States.”

These students have been educated in an ideological echo chamber of higher education where conservative and libertarian professors have been gradually eliminated from faculties. They have been taught by faculty who run from the left to the far left. This is the entirety of what they know of socialism. They have no memory or experience with the collapse of such systems in the last century. They hear figures such as Zohran Mamdani offering the “warmth of collectivism” and believe that socialism offers free stuff that the wealthy will have to pay for.

Ed: In case anyone wonders why the midterms turned out so badly, the obvious answer is, well ... obvious. It's why I have argued for the last three years to get federal funds out of higher education and to break the monopolies of public education via school choice. 

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Ed: Fetterman does not actually commit to leaving the caucus in this clip, but he's clearly giving it more consideration than before. Fetterman no longer has the kind of leverage he had before the midterm. Senate Dems will have at least 55 seats in the upper chamber and maybe 56 if Mary Peltola wins in Alaska and doesn't get prosecuted for fraud. They can lose Fetterman without it impacting their strategies in 2027-28. However, a Fetterman flip may cost them in the next election cycle, in Pennsylvania and in other areas. 

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Politico: Progressives are spoiling for a party-defining fight next year with President Donald Trump, using the same hardball tactic Republicans used last year to skirt the filibuster and muscle tax cuts through Congress.

As they prepare to take control of the House and Senate next year, some lawmakers on the left are pushing their colleagues to send Trump sweeping legislation chock full of Democratic priorities by way of the budget reconciliation process. They’re floating the idea even though they know there’s no chance it will become law, but that’s not the point. Rather, the purpose is to pick a big, showy fight with the president, and put a spotlight on the Democratic platform ahead of the 2028 presidential election.

“It’s important that we show the American people what we stand for, that we fight for an agenda that the American people want,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who plans to chair the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in the new Congress.

Ed: Is there any better indicator that progressives plan to do nothing for the next two years except performative stunts? What's the point of the reconciliation process when Trump will simply veto anything Democrats pass with it? It's just as stupid and futile as getting rid of the filibuster, which Chris Van Hollen is already pledging to do. The progressive caucus has no intention of legislating seriously. They just want to raise the rabble. 

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Ed: Chuck Schumer will do it if he manages to hang on as caucus leader, too. Bank on it. It's stupidly performative, but it's about the only deliverable either man can provide to the stupidly performative radicals. 

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Ed: I hope everyone managed to make it to their planned events. 

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Ed: Hey, now ... 

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Last night's lyric: "Centerfield" by John Fogerty.