Wednesday's Woeful Absurdities: All Flights Grounded For the First Time Since 9/11 [UPDATED]
[UPDATE: The FAA lifted the ground stop at 9:00 a.m. ET. Whew.]
As I write this, the FAA has implemented the grounding of all flights due to a computer system outage. This is the first time a full grounding of all U.S. flights has been implemented since the days following the 9/11 attacks.
If that sounds more than a little ominous to you, well, welcome to the party, pals.
Could be nothing, could be a really big deal, but it was just announced and that’s all I know at the moment.
Moving right along…
This bit of news broke on Tuesday:
Excerpt from the story:
A team of researchers from the New York University Center for Social Media and Politics spent the last few years analyzing the impact of Russian messaging on social media during the 2016 election. The paper, which was published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications, found the activities of the feared “Internet Research Agency,” thirteen of whose members were indicted due to the efforts of the addled Andrew Weissmann sock-puppet, Robert Mueller (see If Mueller’s Indictment Isn’t a Nothingburger You Could Be Forgiven For Making That Mistake), had no impact on the 2016 election. None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. The social media effort neither brought more voters to Trump nor did it discourage Hillary! voters and depress turnout for her.
[End]
Oh. Say, is that really “news”? I mean, haven’t we all known that the allegation of Russia having some major impact on the 2016 elections was just one of the never-ending series of Democrat/media hoaxes on the American public? I’ve personally been absolutely certain that was the case since around September of 2016.
Did we really need to spend millions on a “major study” to confirm what we already knew?
But wait: It turns out the study did produce one bit of information that could prove useful. Check this out:
Finally, while our evidence points to the absence of a relationship between exposure to social media posts from Russian foreign influence accounts and individual-level outcomes, foreign influence campaigns may also succeed through second-order effects: those effects that are achieved by provoking a domestic reaction to the intervention itself.
Indeed, debate about the 2016 US election continues to raise questions about the legitimacy of the Trump presidency and to engender mistrust in the electoral system, which in turn may be related to American’s willingness to accept claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Such beliefs appear to stem in large part from speculation that Russian interference—whether on social media or through other channels—influenced the election outcome.
In a word, Russia’s foreign influence campaign on social media may have had its largest effects by convincing Americans that its campaign was successful.
Our results thus provide a corrective to the view that the foreign influence campaign and those like it can easily manipulate the attitudes and voting behavior of ordinary social media users.
Foreign actors may nevertheless adapt their behavior on social media to have meaningful effects, and political contexts may become more conducive to foreign influence campaigns. This warrants that our results be taken with caution when assessing future foreign influence campaigns on social media.
[End]
You get that? It turns out that the major finding from this study at the very leftwing New York University is that, while the Russian troll farms had no real impact at all on the 2016 elections, the media/Democrat hoax amplification of their paltry efforts has had a very significant impact on U.S. voter attitudes.
In other words, the major finding is that the hoax mounted by the Democrat/media Axis of Propaganda has had its intended effect. What a tragedy for our country.
This seems a good time to repeat my axiom that the death of any semblance of journalistic integrity represents the most clear and present existential threat to the survival of the American Republic. No country can survive this level of coordinated mendacity between its media establishment and one major political party for long.
Our country can either find some way to hold the corrupt media accountable for these mass efforts at public brainwashing, or our country will collapse. There is no middle ground here.
And now, a word from Dr. Anthony Fauci…ok, make that two words:
Speaking of people who need to be held accountable for their actions, how about this creepy Little Menace to our Society?
Ok, here’s an update on the flight grounding story from the AP:
NEW YORK (AP) — Flights are being delayed at multiple locations across the United States after a computer outage at the Federal Aviation Administration.
At around 6:30 Eastern, there were 760 delays within, into or out of the United States, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.
The agency said in a tweet that it was working on restoring its Notice to Air Missions System.
“We are performing final validation checks and reloading the system now,” the FAA said. “Operations across the National Airspace System are affected.”
The FAA is working to restore what is known as the Notice to Air Missions System.
NOTAMs used to be available through a hotline but that was phased out with the internet. The alerts span from mundane information about construction at airports to urgent flight restrictions or broken equipment.
The agency said that it would provide frequent updates as it made progress.
[End]
So there you have it. On the other hand, it is the AP, so who knows what the truth really is?
That is all.
Not to worry. I’m sure Pete Buttigieg is on top of this problem. Fauci? Well, there’s no nice words for that little communist garden gnome.
Buttigieg has no time for the nation's welfare, what with tending to his 'husband' and jetting around the world at citizen's expense. Pete Buttigieg's utter incompetence is the only qualification for his service as a Soros lackey. But then, our entire government is one of gross utter uselessness.