Wondering on Wednesday (v167)

Here we go again!

The president today decided to follow the path taken by many other countries and ground Boeing 737 Max 8 and Max 9 airplanes after a second deadly crash killed everyone aboard, and after Canada declared that none of the planes would be allowed to land in or fly out of Canadian airspace based on new information.

Trump's statement noted

The safety of the American people, all people, is our paramount concern. Any plane currently in the air will go to its destination and thereafter be grounded until further notice. Planes that are in the air will be grounded upon landing at their destination, Pilots will be notified. Airlines have been notified and have agreed with us. 

This comes on the heels of a couple of tweets he sent yesterday which suggested that technology was making a mess of things.

Pilots are no longer needed? Who are those people in the cockpit, I wonder, and what are they doing?

"Older and simpler far are better," he said? I wonder if he's thinking about presidents, maybe? Or how that fits in with his big push for STEM and Space Force and all that? And border protection - what about that technology? Older and simpler would have us visually inspecting every truck crossing the border, grinding crossings (and the economy) to a complete halt.

How, I wonder, can he request $750 billion for the military,

...not funding for endless wars, this is for research and development and procurement to fund the most awe-inspiring military the world has ever known.

I just wonder about him, I do.

We also have to wonder about Kellyanne Conway and comments she made about Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, who were both arrested in the Operation Varsity Blues college admission cheating mess.

Here's Conway's firestorm-starting tweet:

Now, I don't know about you, but I wonder how the woman who introduced us to #alternativefacts and who reminded everyone that children are off limits (at least, Barron Trump is), and who works for a guy who paid a $25M settlement to end lawsuits about his fake university and had his 'fixer' threaten educational institutions he attended to ensure that his records were never released, and who, by the way, is the mother of four children herself, thinks this could possibly be appropriate?

Comically, Donald Trump Jr. chimed in on the "silence" of Hollywood after the announcement of Loughlin's and Huffman's involvement. He must have forgotten about the charitable donations his father made at the time that both Junior and Ivanka were admitted to the Wharton School at Penn, or the 'special favor' that got Daddy into Wharton,  or the charitable donation that accompanied his brother-in-law Jared's admission to Harvard. He's really not good at this stuff; I wonder if anyone's told him that - you know, his media girlfriend?

And, of course, I'm wondering how it got to the point where someone would pay half a million bucks to cheat their children into college. I mean, how much tutoring can you buy with that amount of money? That wasn't money donated to the school in the standard quid pro quo process that happens all the time - it was money to a 'fixer'.

So much to wonder about in this mess, not the least of which is whether the children should get to stay in school, since they're effectively fruit of the poisoned tree, and maybe they really couldn't have gotten in on their own. Another thing I'm wondering is how hard would it be for the colleges and institutions to identify the people who should have been admitted, and find out if there's still any interest in attending? I'd think not, since the schools are complicit in this scam, but you never know.

Someone on social media suggested that the appropriate punishment would be to have each of the folks arrested in the scam pick up the full, four-year cost attending the school they cheated their kids into for an underprivileged student. I kind of like that idea, how about you?