Beet L. Jooz

Gov education continues indoctrinating America's youth.

Update 2:  According to Albuquerque's KOAT-TV, the woman who was sucked out of the window of flight 1380 has been identified as Jennifer Riordan, 43, of Albuquerque. Riordan, a married mother of two, was vice president for community relations at Wells Fargo, and served on the Annunciation Catholic School advisory council.

She was on her way home from a business trip in New York - tweeting restaurant reviews and other photos along the way.

Great business stay (@ DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Metropolitan - New York City) #Yelp #Yelfie https://t.co/7KVHapM7fG pic.twitter.com/r1Yg2EjXw7

— Jennifer L. Riordan (@jrior89) April 17, 2018

Amali on #Yelp: Another lovely local experience with homemade pasta, farm to table freshness and terrific service! … https://t.co/HxH8QUo0n9

— Jennifer L. Riordan (@jrior89) April 17, 2018

In her role as VP of Community Relations at Wells Fargo, Riordan's Linkedin describes her as "responsible for public relations, internal communications, community involvement and supporting local non-profits though Wells Fargo's generous corporate giving program of nearly $1 million."

Wells Fargo issued the following statement via email:

"The Wells Fargo family is saddened to learn of the death of our friend and colleague Jennifer Riordan -- a community relations leader in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was a well-known leader who was loved and respected. We extend our deepest sympathies to her family and friends. Out of respect for the family and their privacy, we’ve nothing more to share at this time."

Prior to joining Wells Fargo, Riordan was VP of Community and Public Relations for Citigroup.

* * *

Update 1: the women who was partially sucked out of the Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 has died, according to the NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt, sending the stock of LUV sliding:

• NTSB SAYS ONE PASSENGER ON SOUTHWEST FLIGHT HAS DIED
• NTSB: DEATH IS FIRST FATALITY ON U.S. AIRLINE IN 9 YEARS
• NTSB CHAIRMAN ROBERT SUMWALT SPEAKS AT NEWS CONFERENCE

According to Sumwalt's press conference, an NTSB go team is sending specialists with expertise in power plants, air worthiness, survival factors and operations to begin an immediate investigation. At that point the engine will be shipped offsite to do detailed "teardown" examination.

.@NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt holds a briefing on the @southwestair incident. https://t.co/sCirEfSvm6 https://t.co/FuPfBh2CvU

— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 17, 2018

* * *

Earlier

A woman was partially sucked out of a Dallas-bound Southwest Airlines flight after a piece of the jet's engine flew into and broke a window, according to the father of a passenger, who told NBC10 of the incident.

The Boeing 737 was then forced to make an emergency landing at Philadelphia's airport Tuesday with part of the covering from its left engine ripped off and a window damaged. Neither the airline nor the Federal Aviation Administration explained what went wrong.

Passenger Marty Martinez told CBSN from the plane that a woman was injured and was taken off the plane.  "There was blood everywhere," Martinez told CBSN's Anne-Marie Green.

Southwest said there were 143 passengers and five crew members onboard the Boeing 737, which was headed from New York's LaGuardia Airport to Dallas' Love Field. Passengers were seen walking off the plane onto the tarmac at the airport after landing around 11:20 a.m.

“One passenger, a woman, was partially … was drawn out towards the out of the plane … was pulled back in by other passengers," he said in a phone interview with NBC10. The woman is said to have been rushed to a Philadelphia hospital. 

Southwest plane from LaGuardia to Dallas was diverted in Philadelphia. The engine blew out in flight. (Picture from @joeasaprap) pic.twitter.com/NUv3PrcvLg

— Kevin Rincon (@KevRincon) April 17, 2018

Flight 1380 made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport at around 11:00 a.m. Tuesday after taking off from LaGuardia Airport in New York City. A large amount of fluid, possibly jet fuel, could be seen under and trailing behind the left side of the plane.

Firefighters could be seen outside a Southwest Airlines plane on the airport tarmac. Some passengers were led off with crutches by firefighters.

Passengers shared photos of an engine with major damage. The engine inlet appears to be shredded with metal bent outward.

One terrified passenger posted a live video to his Facebook page during the ordeal. The grainy footage shows a man attempting to secure his yellow oxygen mask while updating loved ones following his feed. -NBC

"Something is wrong with our plane! It appears we are going down! Emergency landing!! Southwest flight from NYC to Dallas!!" Facebook user Marty Martinez wrote. He then added, "We are bracing for landing!!"

Martinez told CBSN that he thought he was recording his "last moments." After the plane landed, he posted photos of a damaged window near the engine

Philadelphia International Airport issued a statement over Twitter that passengers are being brought into the terminal. 

.@SouthwestAir flight #1380 update: Flight from LGA to Dallas Love Field landed safely at PHL and passengers are being brought into the terminal. Flights are departing and arriving but passengers should expect delays. Check flight status with your airline.

— PHLAirport (@PHLAirport) April 17, 2018

The airport then said flights were continuing to depart from Philadelphia and that the FAA had lifted a ground stop for planes at other airports waiting to depart for Philadelphia.

UPDATE PHL 1:45 PM: FAA has lifted ground stop for flights waiting on the ground at other airports to depart for PHL. Planes are departing from PHL. Passengers should expect delays. Check flight status with your airline.

— PHLAirport (@PHLAirport) April 17, 2018

News helicopter footage showed damage to the left engine and the tarmac covered with firefighting foam, although there were no signs of flames or smoke. Tracking data from FlightAware.com shows the flight was heading west over New York's southern tier when it abruptly turned toward Philadelphia, according to CBS.

Southwest has about 700 planes, all of them 737s, including more than 500 737-700s like the one involved in Tuesday's emergency landing. It is the world's largest operator of the 737. The Boeing 737 is the best-selling jetliner in the world and has a good safety record.

Investigators are likely to take apart the failed engine from Tuesday's plane and examine maintenance records as they try to piece together the cause of the explosion. The flight was powered by CFM engines. An official told CBS News that CFM has sent representatives to the scene to support the investigation.

The engine failure was reminiscent of a similar event on a Southwest Boeing 737-700 jet in August 2016 as it flew from New Orleans to Orlando, Florida.  Shrapnel from the engine left a 5-by-16-inch hole just above the wing. Passenger oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling. Pilots landed the plane safely in Pensacola, Florida.

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board said one of the engine's fan blades broke off from the hub during the flight. The broken edge of the blade showed crack lines consistent with metal fatigue.

The NTSB was sending a go-team to the airport in Philadelphia to investigate and planned a 3 p.m. news conference.

“A number” of systems used by the Internal Revenue Service that allow taxpayers to file required forms and payments crashed – on the day that those documents were due.

A Fox affiliate in Denver, KDVR, reported the IRS said in a statement, “Currently, certain IRS systems are experiencing technical difficulties. Taxpayers should continue filing their tax returns as they normally would.”

The Washington Post quoted IRS Acting Commissioner David Kautter, who was talking with lawmakers at an IRS oversight hearing Tuesday, “On my way over here this morning, I was told a number of systems are down at the moment. We are working to resolve the issue…”

CNBC reported that one of the operations that was out of order was the “Direct Pay” process, which lets Americans pay their taxes with funds in a checking or savings account.

The deadline for filing – and paying – taxes is midnight.

It normally is midnight on April 15, but with that day on a weekend, and the following Monday a holiday in Washington, the deadline was extended until the 17th.

The Post reported Kautter wasn’t able to confirm it would be fixed right away.

“If we can’t solve it today we’ll figure out a solution. Taxpayers would not be penalized because of a technical problem the IRS is having,” he said.

Kautter said, according to the Post, the agency was struggling to accept returns from a variety of commercial programs like TurboTax, as well as from tax preparers like H&R Block.

He confirmed some returns were not making it through to the IRS.

The feds now have Weiner's laptop.

A man robbed an Adult Video store in New Orleans East, but not before an employee hit in him with the safe as he struggled to open the security door.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court justices on Tuesday appeared uncertain whether to let states force out-of-state online retailers to collect sales taxes on purchases in a fight potentially worth billions of dollars pitting South Dakota against e-commerce businesses.

The U.S. District judge who ordered Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen to identify Sean Hannity as one of his clients, previously officiated glob...

Authored by Richard Eskow via CommonDreams.org,

The national security establishment and the corporate media have been promoting a confrontational approach, but they’ve been unable to explain how that would lead to a better outcome for the US or the world...

“Mission accomplished,” says the President. What, exactly, was the mission? And what exactly was accomplished?

Donald Trump is being mocked for using this phrase in a tweet to praise what he claims was a “perfectly executed” airstrike against chemical weapons facilities in Syria. This recalls George W. Bush’s egregious evocation of the phrase in 2003 to claim an early end to the U.S. entanglement in Iraq, which is still ongoing fifteen years later.

History made a fool of Bush for that proclamation, which was printed on a banner behind the President as he delivered his speech proclaiming an end to the Iraqi conflict on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

But Bush’s foolish and lethal incursion to Iraq had the backing of virtually the entire national-security establishment. So did Donald Trump’s bombing attack on Syria, as did the bombing attack he ordered last year.

The Costs of Intervention

U.S. media, for the most part, reinforce the idea that intervention by our military is the preferred solution to global conflicts. Some of the same reporters who now mock Trump for saying “Mission Accomplished” cheered on Bush’s invasion of Iraq. They remember Bush’s errors, but not their own.

The media’s job, we are told, is to ask skeptical questions about the people in power. That didn’t happen much in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, and it’s not happening now. Here are the questions that should be asked – not just on the eve of a bombing attack, but every day we continue our disastrous and drifting military intervention in the Middle East.

1. Why couldn’t the military wait for inspectors to do their jobs?

Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international non-proliferation organization, were scheduled to arrive in Douma, Syria on Saturday, April 15 to begin investigating the reported chemical attack on civilians there. The airstrikes took place on Friday, April 14.

This is a disturbing echo of the 2003 Iraq invasion. There, too, the United States was unwilling to wait for international inspectors to discover the facts before beginning the attack. Fifteen years on, we know that didn’t work out very well. Why couldn’t the bombing of Syria wait for inspectors to do their work?

2. How do we know we’re being told the truth?

“We are confident that we have crippled Syria’s chemical weapons program,” said U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. That statement was echoed by military leaders. But a report from Agence France Presse suggests that one destroyed building, described by attacking forces as a chemical-weapons facility, was actually a pharmaceutical and research facility specializing in food testing and antivenoms for scorpion and snake bites.

“If there were chemical weapons, we would not be able to stand here,” said someone who identified himself as an engineer who worked at the facility.

Given our country’s long history of public deception from military and civilian officials, why aren’t we demanding independent confirmation of the airstrikes’ effectiveness?

3. Have strikes like these ever really “punished” a country’s leader – or “sent them a message,” for that matter?

We keep hearing the cliché that airstrikes like these are meant to “punish” leaders like Assad. This time was no different. And yet, it’s unlikely that Assad personally suffered as a result of this attack.

So who, really, are we punishing?

Then there’s this comment, from Defense Secretary James Mattis: “Together we have sent a clear message to Assad and his murderous lieutenants that they should not perpetrate another chemical weapons attack.”

That was also the presumed purpose of Trump’s last missile attack on Syria, less than a year ago. Trump supporters claimed that attack sent a forceful “message,” too – to Assad, to Putin, the Chinese, and others. “With just one strike that message was sent to all these people,” claimed former Trump advisor Sebastian Gorka.

The situation in Syria did not perceptibly change after that attack. And the day after this latest airstrike, Assad launched a new round of airstrikes of his own.

These airstrikes seem more performative than tactical – warfare as theater, but with real lives at stake. There must be better ways to send a message.

4. Why isn’t the full range of U.S. activity in Syria getting more coverage?

Thanks to widespread under-reporting of U.S. involvement in Syria, commentators can complain about “years of unmasterly inactivity by the democracies” with a straight face, wrongly blaming that nation’s disasters on a failure to intervene.

In a paragraph that was subsequently deleted from its website, the Washington Postwrote that the latest airstrikes “capped nearly a week of debate in which Pentagon leaders voiced concerns that an attack could pull the United States into Syria’s civil war.” As of this writing, that language can still be found in syndicated versions of the article.

We were pulled into that civil war a long time ago.  The United States has more than 2,000 troops in Syria, a fact that was not immediately revealed to the American people. That figure is understated, although the Pentagon will not say by how much, since it excludes troops on classified missions and some Special Forces personnel.

Before Trump raised the troop count, the CIA was spending $1 billion per yearsupporting anti-government militias under President Obama.  That hasn’t prevented a rash of commentary complaining about U.S. “inaction” in Syria before Trump took office. It didn’t prevent additional chaos and death, either – and probably made the situation worse.

5. Where are the advocates for a smarter national security policy?

There’s been very little real debate inside the national security establishment about the wisdom of these strikes, and what debate there has been has focused on the margins. Anne-Marie Slaughter, a senior State Department official under Secretary Hillary Clinton in the Obama administration, tweeted:

I believe that the U.S., U.K, & France did the right thing by striking Syria over chemical weapons. It will not stop the war nor save the Syrian people from many other horrors. It is illegal under international law. But it at least draws a line somewhere & says enough.

In other words: This attack will not achieve any tactical goals or save any lives. And it is illegal – just as chemical weapons attacks are illegal – under international law. It’s illegal under U.S. law, too, which is the primary focus of Democratic criticism.

But, says Slaughter, the amorphous goals of “drawing a line” and “saying enough” make it worthwhile, for reasons that are never articulated.

Michèle Flournoy, who served as Under Secretary of Defense under President Obama and was considered a leading Defense Secretary prospect in a Hillary Clinton Administration, said:

• What Trump got right: upheld the international norm against [chemical weapon] use, built international support for and participation in the strikes, sought to minimize collateral damage — Syrian, Russian, Iranian.
• What Trump got wrong: continuing to use taunting, name-calling tweets as his primary form of (un)presidential communication; failing to seriously consult Congress before deciding to launch the strikes; after more than a year in office, still no coherent Syria strategy.

6. How can a country uphold international norms by violating international law?

If Trump lacks a coherent Syria policy, he has company. Obama’s policy toward Syria shifted and drifted. Hillary Clinton backed Trump’s last round of airstrikes and proposed a “no-fly” policy for Syria that could have quickly escalated into open confrontation with Russia.

The country deserves a rational alternative to Trump’s impulsivity and John Bolton’s extreme bellicosity and bigotry. When it comes to foreign policy, we need a real opposition party. What will it take to develop one?

Commentators have been pushing Trump to take aggressive military action in Syria, despite the potential for military conflict with nuclear-armed Russia. MSNBC’s Dana Bash accused Trump of “an inexplicable lack of resolve regarding Russia” – leaving the audience to make its own inferences – adding, “We have not been willing to take them on.”

In the same segment, reported by FAIR’s Adam Johnson, Bash complained that “the U.S. hasn’t done “a very good job pushing Russia out of the way,” adding that “we’ve let Russia have too free a hand, in my view, in the skies over Syria.”  Her colleague Andrea Mitchell responded that “the criticism is that the president is reluctant to go after Russia.”

The Drum Beats On

“Mission accomplished.”

This drumbeat of political pressure has forced Trump’s hand. He has now directed missiles against Syria, twice. Both attacks carried the risk of military confrontation with the world’s other nuclear superpower.

That risk is greater than most people realize, as historian and military strategist Maj. Danny Sjursen explained in our recent conversation.

Trump has now adopted a more aggressive military posture against Russia than Barack Obama. Whatever his personal involvement with the Russian government turns out to have been, it is in nobody’s best interests to heighten tensions between two nuclear superpowers.

The national security establishment has been promoting a confrontational approach, but they’ve been unable to explain how that would lead to a better outcome for the US or the world – just as they’ve been unable to explain how unilateral military intervention can lead to a good outcome in Syria.

7. Did the airstrikes make Trump “presidential”?

“Amid distraction and dysfunction,” wrote Mike Allen and Jonathan Swan for Axios, “Trump looked and acted like a traditional commander-in-chief last night.”

The constitutional phrase, “Commander in Chief,” was originally understood to underscore the fact that the military is under civilian control. It has devolved into a title that confers a quasi-military rank on the president.  That’s getting it backwards. The fetishization of all things military is one of the reasons we can’t have a balanced debate about military intervention.

Besides, saying that an act of war makes Trump “presidential” – that’s so 2017!

Here’s a suggestion: In 1963, John F. Kennedy rejected his generals’ advice to strike Soviet installations during the Cuban missile crisis.

Rejecting reckless calls to military action: Now that’s a “presidential” act worth bringing back.

He was nabbed with 18 others but found not guilty. Now he wants to get back to work.

‘He illustrates what the endless pursuit of excellence looks like’

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that an immigration statute requiring the deportation of noncitizens who commit felonies is unlawfully vague in a decision that could limit the Trump administration's ability to step up the removal of immigrants with criminal records.

He looks like a kid again

Newspapers awarded for literally making up stories

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is arguing his move to shrink Utah’s Bears Ears national monument with isn’t really based on oil and gas because, in his words, “I’m a geologist.”

“I can assure you that oil and gas in Bears Ears was not part of my decision matrix,” he told lawmakers just days ago. “A geologist will tell you there is little, if any, oil and gas.”

Zinke has called himself a geologist 40 times while in public, and has even made the claim while speaking under oath to Congress, CNN reported.

The label, which appears to be cleverly chosen, resurfacing when he defends his choice on the monument, is troubling because Zinke has never actually held any position as a geologist. He majored in geology during his time at the University of Oregon more than three decades ago, but that wasn’t even a planned decision. In his autobiography, American Commander, Zinke writes, “I studied geology as a result of closing my eyes and randomly pointing to a major from the academic catalog, and I never looked back. I am just glad I did not find electronics.”

The shrinking of Bears Ears includes a redrawn boundary that reduces the monument’s land by 85 percent. While Zinke has implied the new boundary wasn’t motivated by the potential to find oil and gas in the freed up area, emails obtained by The New York Times show that is indeed the case. A map draft emailed on March 15 from Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) to Zinke noted that it would “resolve all known mineral conflicts.”

The decision is part of President Donald Trump‘s review of federal lands, specifically national monuments, which he began last spring.

[Image via screengrab]

Follow Amy Russo on Twitter: @amymrusso

Rachel Maddow, one of many anti-Trump hosts at MSNBC, recently revealed one of the latest hot takes on the Trump administration’s airstrikes in Syria. She wondered whether the U.S. airstrikes on the Syrian government were to distract the news media and the American public from President Donald Trump’s domestic scandals: “Even if you give the president […]

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