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For several hours on Wednesday, all domestic flights in the US were canceled. Officially, takeoffs were to begin as of 9 a.m. Eastern. This is the first grounding of aircraft in the US since 9/11, and it will affect thousands of flights and tens of thousands of passengers. RedState managing editor Jen van Laar covered the scale of the disaster earlier today; see UPDATED: Flights Grounded Nationwide Due to FAA Computer System Failure.

Joe Biden was on the job, though. He called up his Transportation Secretary (he of the unfortunate last name) Pete Buttigieg to find out just what in the hell was going on.

I just spoke to Buttigieg. They don’t know what the cause is. But I was on the phone with him about 10 minutes. I told him to report directly to me when they find out. Air traffic can still land safely, just not take off right now. We don’t know what the cause of it is.

A lot is going on in this failed effort to make Joey SoftServe look like a take-charge leader. It doesn’t because it can’t.

How can the Department of Transportation ground all flights and say they “don’t know what the cause is.” They have to have a reason to ground flights. That reason has to emanate from somewhere. “We haven’t fixed it yet,” is perhaps understandable. “WTF? Beats me. We don’t have a f***ing clue,” should not be an acceptable response. Ever. I don’t care if you are a second lieutenant or just coming off p/maternity leave, telling your boss you don’t know what is causing a major fiasco shouldn’t be followed by your boss relaying that factoid in a press conference.

Lmao: “POTUS directed DOT/FAA to restore the system…”

“I’ve been thinking about this fellas, let’s go ahead and turn it back on!”

Brilliant! https://t.co/7FpaLpnRdf

— Josh Holmes (@HolmesJosh) January 11, 2023

The FAA quickly ruled out a cyberattack as the source of the problem.

The airline national stoppage may or may not be a cyber attack, but even if it is not, it certainly shows us what one could look like. Good wake up call. pic.twitter.com/MEKaNwe0BT

— Admiral James Stavridis, USN, Ret. (@stavridisj) January 11, 2023

Except it isn’t a wake-up call. The cyberattack did not happen, so the Transportation Department under Peter Buttigieg will hit “snooze” and go back to sleep. Now that it knows a “system outage” caused the shutdown, it will also hit the “snooze” button.

The Transportation Department under Buttigieg has been one massive suppurating chancre on the fat, pimply butt of the dismal failure of the Biden presidency.

Buttigieg has staggered from one massive instance of incompetence to another.

Don’t be surprised FAA’s systems went down this morning grounding all domestic flights.

Below are DOT and FAA’s approps focus in the 2023 budget:

“Racial equity,” “inclusion,” “income inequality,” “environmental justice, and “climate change.” #racialjustice #equity #inclusion pic.twitter.com/xHFXG7Ou1h

— Angie Wong (@angiewong) January 11, 2023

Let's check in on what Buttigieg's FAA has been focused on lately… pic.twitter.com/pO1AaBk4Mp

— Kyle Martinsen (@KyleMartinsen_) January 11, 2023

Transportation Secretary @PeteButtigieg has not met a crisis he can't dodge.

But the small town mayor is all about identifying racist roads and bridges. https://t.co/FVxnCbzzaS

— The Rule 5 Texan (@Rule5Tweets) January 7, 2023

This rank incompetence is not new. It was part of Buttigieg’s brand when he was selected for the job by Biden.

When Pete Buttigieg was Mayor of South Bend, Dominos had to fill South Bend’s potholes due to Mayor Pete’s incompetence. How was Pete Buttigieg qualified to be Transportation Secretary in the first place? After today's FAA computer failure, Joe Biden has some explaining to do. pic.twitter.com/3OEyEremcH

— Charles R Downs (@TheCharlesDowns) January 11, 2023

My colleague Bonchie has more thoughts on this subject at FAA System Failure Is Everything Wrong With Government and Who Leads It.

Naturally, this brought out Buttigieg’s white knights.

Oh yes — @PeteButtigieg is absolutely sitting behind the screens and running the computer systems for the FAA.

What a moronic comment. Especially when we don’t even know what or why it happened.

One of America’s dumbest, if not the dumbest, Representatives. https://t.co/pZVDdovRmx

— Gavin J. Smith (@iamgavinjames) January 11, 2023

I don’t know if this will get Smith a date with Buttigieg, but it’s a good try.

No one expects the Transportation Secretary to fix the problem personally. What we do have a right to expect is that he knows what the problem is when he talks to the president, and that he anticipated the problem could happen and took action to ensure it didn’t. We also have a right to expect that he does not take “beats me” for an answer, when a core area in his department melts down. In this case, we can reasonably ask why the FAA has not discovered the concept of “backup system”? How can one “system outage” bring national airline traffic to a stop? How can a cabinet secretary have such a monomaniacal focus on race and sexual predilection, and total disregard for all transportation problems, from the traffic jam at some US ports to the shortage of diesel stocks to this?

Let’s be clear. Buttigieg’s agenda has nothing to do with Transporation and everything to do with him promoting a social agenda. He was hired to fill a vital “first” slot in the Biden cabinet. He survives because he’s serving an addled, old man who has long since lost the ability to reason, and no one else would fire the first gaily married cabinet secretary to take p/maternity leave.