Ground Stop!

I suppose the America-wide ground stop is more important than SpaceX exploding another rocket into the Gulf of Mexico. 

Dean Blundell has a few things to say about today's Ground Stop. 

BREAKING: Every Plane In America Grounded, 5,000 Flights Dead, And The Clowns In Charge Have No Idea Why

The third nationwide ground stop in US history, delivered by a reality TV star and his $875 million toy.

DEAN BLUNDELL NOV 13 November 13, 2026 At 3:54 this afternoon, the self-declared greatest country in the history of the world ordered every airplane inside its borders to stay put, because the geniuses in charge had lost the ability to talk to their own air traffic control centers. There were 4,042 flights already in the air and pointed at American airports when it happened. The official reason was “extraordinary circumstances and reasons of safety,” which is government for “we have no clue, please stop calling.” And while the Trump regime wandered around looking for whichever cord got kicked out of the wall, the country they’ve spent a year threatening to annex calmly offered up its runways.

Three Times In History. This Crew Owns One Of Them.

A full nationwide ground stop has now happened three times. The first was September 11, 2001. The second was a database failure in January 2023 that lasted 90 minutes. The third was today; it ran more than four hours, and it happened on the watch of a Transportation Secretary whose big career break was getting cast on The Real World.

By the time the FAA lifted it tonight:

• Close to 5,000 flights were cancelled

• JetBlue gave up and scrapped the rest of its domestic schedule for the night

• Airports ran out of places to park planes

• NBA, NHL and college teams were stranded wherever they were standing

  
  

• Federal crash investigators couldn’t get to New Orleans, where a cruise ship and a tanker collided on the Mississippi today, because the federal government had grounded the federal government

“Just A Telecommunications Outage”

Sean Duffy went on X to call it “a communication issue.” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a man best known for trying to fight a union boss in the middle of a Senate hearing, told reporters outside the White House it was “just a telecommunications outage.” That’s a hell of a word, “just,” when you’re describing the system that stops aluminum tubes full of people from meeting each other at 500 miles an hour. 

The White House said Trump was “being updated.” I assume someone drew him a plane. 

Nobody on the record will say what caused it. What we’ve got are leaks. CBS sources say an update to the private communications network linking the control centers, run by defence contractor L3Harris, forced a reboot and the whole thing fell over. A CNN airline source says a router failure cascaded across the country. So somebody pushed an update on a Friday afternoon, took down the airspace of a nuclear superpower, and the regime’s official position is a shrug and a shut mouth. But that didn’t stop Duffy and Mullin from blaming you and BIDEN for it all.

Now Let’s Talk About Duffy’s $875 Million Robot

On Tuesday, three days before the sky closed, the FAA expanded a brand new AI system called SMART to all 22 of those same control centers. 

SMART is Duffy’s pride and joy. A Boston startup called Air Space Intelligence built it under a 12-year contract worth up to $875.9 million. It was switched on around Washington on September 21. Seven weeks later, they rolled it out to the entire country, because apparently air traffic control is the one place in life where you move fast and break things.

I’ll be straight with you because these people never will. Nobody has proven SMART caused today’s disaster, and the leaks so far point at the comms network. The company is desperate for you to know that. They were on social media denying everything within hours, before a single investigator had finished a single sentence. Mullin has reportedly said investigators will look at whether there’s a link.

And Duffy, who stood at a podium in September and swore “we are not outsourcing aviation to AI,” has not named the system and has not cleared it. When the only question anyone is asking is the only question you refuse to answer, people are going to fill in the blank themselves, and you’ve earned every word of it.

You rolled out an $875 million AI to every control center in America on Tuesday. The sky shut down on Friday. You don’t get to act insulted when people ask.

They Were Warned. In Writing. A Month Ago.

On October 9, more than two dozen members of Congress sent Duffy and FAA boss Bryan Bedford a letter asking them to pause SMART until somebody explained:

• How it was tested

• What AI models it actually runs on

• How it plugs into the existing air traffic systems

• Whether controllers were trained on it

The FAA’s answer was to take it nationwide 32 days later.

Follow The Money, Because Of Course There’s Money

In October, Politico got its hands on an internal FAA document showing the agency had drawn up a term sheet to buy an ownership stake in Air Space Intelligence. The regulator wanted a piece of the company it hired and is supposed to be policing. That same month, the company raised $325 million at a $3 billion valuation.

Raw Story is reporting tonight that the same company donated $12,500 this year to the congressional campaign of Michael Alfonso, Sean Duffy’s son-in-law.

I’m sure it’s all above board. These are famously ethical people.

The Humans They Threw Away

While the regime was shopping for software, the people who actually keep planes apart were being treated like an expense line.

• About 11,000 certified controllers are on the job

• The FAA and the controllers’ union agreed in 2023 that the system needs 14,633

• In May, the regime “fixed” the shortage by lowering the target by roughly 2,000 and not inviting the union to the meeting

• Controllers are working six-day weeks on forced overtime

• A raise Congress funded in the spring still hadn’t hit their paycheques by late August

So the plan was to burn out the humans, buy the robot, grab a slice of the robot company, and call it modernization. You saw the results on every departure board in America today.

Meanwhile, In The Adult Country

Nav Canada’s systems ran normally the whole time. It said it was ready for any diverted aircraft and put traffic measures in place at our four biggest airports. Just before 7 p.m., Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon said Canada had offered the FAA its full assistance, including taking US-bound planes as needed. Ottawa’s airports said they were bracing for diversions. 

Dean Blundell 2h When you have the dumbest MF’s in North America running your National Security apparatus and air travel, you can predict this shit from miles away. In Canada, not a single flight is grounded. Not one, unless it’s supposed to be going into the US. Worth noting. Maybe don’t elect an 80-year-old rapist next time.  https://substack.com/@steveschmidt/note/c-386767331 357 25 78

This cost us too. Pearson, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver all froze flights to the States, and hundreds were cancelled in Toronto alone.

We have done this before. On 9/11, when the US closed its skies, Canada took in more than 200 planes at 17 airports, and towns like Gander fed and housed thousands of strangers for days. That was for a friend. Today it was for a government that has spent a year slapping tariffs on us and giggling about a 51st state, and the answer was still yes. Nobody in Ottawa asked for a term sheet first.

What We Still Don’t Know

• The real cause, on the record, from anyone with a title

• Whether the FAA’s eventual report names SMART or clears it

• Why one update could knock out every control center in the country at once

• Whether that equity deal with the AI contractor ever closed

• How many days it takes to dig out of 5,000 cancellations

What we do know is that the people who promised to make flying great again just delivered the third national ground stop in American history, and the first country to pick up the phone was the one they keep insulting.

Cash Flow Collective 2h You can’t bolt AI onto a broken foundation Friday’s ground stop was not an attack. It was a warning. On Friday, the FAA stopped every departure in the United States. A communication failure hit all 22 Centers that handle traffic above 18,000 feet, with about 3,100 aircraft in the air and bound for US airports. It was not a kinetic attack, and the FBI reportedly does not suspect a cyberattack. It was not a glitch…

9 2 3

Dean Blundell on Substack

Electoral College

Abolishing the Electoral College can apparently be done without a constitutional amendment, but it would have to clear legal hurdles and opposition from the less-populated states. 

The Electoral College could finally be on its way out. Democrats now have a path to effectively replace it with a national popular vote before 2028, ensuring that the presidential candidate who receives the most votes across the country actually takes office.

The math is looking remarkably encouraging.

Axios and The New York Times report that Democratic victories in five crucial states have brought the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact closer to implementation than ever before. (See also National Popular Vote.com)

The agreement already includes 18 states and Washington, D.C., which together account for 222 electoral votes. It needs 270 to take effect.

Democrats now control the state governments in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona. Those states hold a combined 61 electoral votes, which would bring the compact’s total to 283 if all five joined.

That would comfortably clear the threshold and transform presidential elections without requiring a constitutional amendment.

Reform is long overdue.

For decades, Americans have watched candidates reach the White House after losing the national popular vote. George W. Bush did so in 2000. Donald Trump followed in 2016, securing the presidency despite receiving nearly three million fewer votes than his opponent.

The Electoral College has also turned presidential campaigns into a relentless battle over a small collection of competitive states. Candidates spend billions pursuing voters in places such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, while millions of Americans in reliably Republican or Democratic states receive comparatively little attention.

Under the compact, every ballot would feed into the same national total and carry equal weight, whether it was cast in rural Alabama, downtown Los Angeles or suburban Philadelphia.

That is the fundamental principle behind the reform: every voter should count equally.

Opponents are already preparing for a fight. The Washington Examiner reports that conservative election advocates are raising constitutional objections and warning of lawsuits and a potentially chaotic legal battle before 2028.

Those legal questions are genuine. Additional state legislatures still need to approve the agreement, and courts could ultimately decide whether it can take effect.

But the basic argument for a national popular vote remains straightforward. The candidate who earns the most votes should win the presidency.

Democrats now have a rare opportunity to reshape how Americans choose their president, replacing the disproportionate influence of a handful of swing states with a system that treats every voter equally.

If they can get the compact across the finish line before 2028, it could become one of the most consequential electoral reforms in generations.

The Other 98%

SpaceX launch

The next "test" flight is scheduled to occur this coming Friday from Boca Chica (aka Starbase) in Texas. This will be the first time they try to catch the returning booster and "Ship." Musk is such an asshole, I just hope one or both of them explode in the air and fall into the ocean. 

Flight 15 of Starship is preparing to launch as soon as Friday, November 13, pending regulatory approval. The 75-minute launch window will open at 4:45 p.m. CT.

A live webcast of the flight will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. Coverage is planned to continue through ship catch, with the potential for hours of live views from Starship as it orbits Earth, powered by Starlink. As is the case with all launches, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to check in here and stay tuned to our X account for updates.

The upcoming flight is planned to be the first to return both Starship and Super Heavy to the launch site for catch. If successful, this will mark the first full recovery of an orbital launch system and a breakthrough moment in making Starship a reliable, rapidly reusable rocket. 

Starship’s initial return to launch site mission is expected to orbit the Earth at an altitude of ~275 km and complete approximately 14 orbits around the planet over the course of a more than 22-hour flight. Similar to Starship’s first orbital mission, the flight profile has been designed with the opportunity to insert into a passively safe suborbital trajectory or safely deorbit at multiple pre-determined areas over the ocean after raising to an orbital altitude. Read more about the testing, mission design, and safety measures for first planned Starship catch. 

Starship’s previous mission was the culmination of more than a dozen flight tests and years of development, sending Starship to orbit and deploying meaningful payloads to space for the first time. Watch “Go For Orbit”, the latest episode in the ongoing Starship series experience the moments behind flying the most ambitious Starship mission yet.

The booster’s primary objective on Flight 15 will be executing a successful launch, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and return to the launch site for catch. This will be the first return and catch attempt for a Super Heavy V3 booster. Three V1 boosters were successfully caught on earlier flight tests with two demonstrating successful reflights.

The Starship upper stage’s primary objectives include the deployment of 26 Starlink V3 satellites and the first return to launch site and catch at Starbase. Starship will only execute a return to launch site if the flight control team has ensured that the vehicle systems critical for reentry maneuvers and final landing burn and tower approach are healthy. 

Starship will deliver 26 Starlink V3 satellites to orbit, which aim to greatly expand the network's capacity and user speeds. Each Starlink V3 satellite will add 1 Terabit of capacity to the constellation, with all 26 satellites equaling ~10 Starlink V2 Mini launches on Falcon 9. 

After deploying from Starship, the Starlink V3 satellites will unfold their antennas and deploy their solar arrays and make initial contact with the ground and the rest of the Starlink constellation via radio frequency and laser links. The satellites will then begin raising their orbits with their onboard thrusters. Following their on-orbit checkouts, the satellites should begin serving customers as soon as a few weeks after launch. 

Three of the satellites have been modified with a suite of cameras to scan Starship’s heatshield and transmit imagery down to operators. This method of analyzing Starship’s heatshield has been tested on previous flights and is one of several data sources to help inform Starship’s readiness to return to the launch site on Flight 15.

Starship’s heatshield will incorporate the improvements made on Flight 14 including additional retention mechanisms on tiles in areas deemed to be at highest risk of falling off during ascent and addressing areas with a flow path for plasma to get behind the tiles. The vehicle will also have a large portion of the heatshield equipped with a curved tile design that has shown the ability to reduce heating in the gaps between tiles.

from SpaceX

Epstein shadow

One way or another, we have to get ALL of the Epstein files into the public, unredacted. This crap has gone on far too long. 

The Shadow Donald Trump Can’t Outrun

Epstein Epstein Epstein

Donald Trump has spent the better part of a decade trying to convince America that Jeffrey Epstein was little more than an acquaintance who drifted through the periphery of his glamorous life. It is the political equivalent of watching someone frantically shovel dirt onto a fire while smoke continues to billow into the sky for everyone to see. Every time Trump insists there is nothing to see, another photograph resurfaces. Another interview is rediscovered. Another document is released. Another promise of transparency dissolves into another cloud of grievance, outrage, and self-pity. If there is one thing Donald Trump has mastered over the course of his life, it is not accountability. It is convincing millions of people that what they saw with their own eyes never actually happened.

The documented relationship between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein is not a matter of opinion. They knew each other. They socialized together. They attended parties together. They were photographed together repeatedly over many years. Trump publicly praised Epstein before the world knew the full extent of his crimes, calling him a “terrific guy” and remarking that he liked beautiful women “on the younger side.” Those words belong to Donald Trump. No journalist put them in his mouth. No political opponent manufactured them. They were his own.

That fact alone does not establish criminal wrongdoing, and anyone interested in truth should be careful not to claim otherwise. But it does establish something equally important. Donald Trump has spent years attempting to recast a documented relationship into something so insignificant that Americans should simply stop asking questions. That is not transparency. That is reputation management.

What has always fascinated me is not merely Trump’s connection to Epstein. It is the machinery built around protecting Trump from the consequences of uncomfortable facts. Every reporter becomes corrupt. Every investigation becomes a witch hunt. Every prosecutor becomes politically motivated. Every judge is biased. Every witness is lying. Every document is suspect. Every story is “fake news.” The pattern is so predictable that it has become muscle memory. Reality itself is placed on trial while Trump casts himself as the perpetual victim.

It is a remarkable trick.

Not because it is clever.

Because it has worked.

Millions of Americans have been conditioned to distrust virtually every institution capable of holding power accountable. If investigative journalists uncover damaging information, they are enemies. If law enforcement investigates, it is corruption. If courts weigh evidence, the system is rigged. The only acceptable source of truth becomes the man with the most to lose from the truth being told.

The Jeffrey Epstein story should never have been about protecting Republicans or embarrassing Democrats. It should never have been about scoring political points. It should have been about justice for the countless young women whose lives were exploited by a predator who surrounded himself with extraordinary wealth, influence, and power. Those victims deserved an investigation that followed every lead, examined every relationship, and asked difficult questions of every powerful person whose name surfaced, whether that person lived in Manhattan, Palm Beach, Buckingham Palace, Silicon Valley, or the White House.

Instead, we continue to watch political tribalism consume basic moral judgment.

If the names belonged exclusively to Democrats, Republicans would demand every page be released immediately. If the names belonged exclusively to Republicans, Democrats would demand precisely the same thing. Principles that evaporate the moment they become politically inconvenient are not principles at all. They are marketing slogans.

Today, the questions surrounding Donald Trump’s association with Jeffrey Epstein remain part of the public conversation because they have never been fully eclipsed by the next manufactured outrage. Trump has denied wrongdoing. He has denied specific allegations made in recent reporting. Those denials deserve to be reported. They also do not erase the documented history that preceded them. In a democracy, both things can be true at the same time: a public figure is entitled to deny allegations, and the public is entitled to scrutinize the historical record.

That is how accountability works.

Or at least how it is supposed to work.

What troubles me most is watching otherwise intelligent people pretend that documented history somehow expires the moment it becomes inconvenient to defend their political hero. Photographs are dismissed. Interviews are forgotten. Public statements are ignored. Investigative reporting is reflexively branded a conspiracy before a single page is read. Loyalty has become more valuable than evidence.

That is not skepticism.

It is surrender.

The shadow following Donald Trump is not Jeffrey Epstein himself. The shadow is something much larger. It is the growing expectation that Americans should abandon their own eyes, their own judgment, and their own commitment to evidence whenever those things become uncomfortable for a man who has spent his entire public life insisting that accountability is something that happens only to other people.

History is stubborn that way.

It does not disappear because a politician demands it.

It does not vanish because a lawsuit is filed.

It does not cease to exist because millions of people decide they would rather look away.

Donald Trump has outrun countless scandals by exhausting the American public with an endless cycle of chaos, distraction, and grievance. But some stories are simply too consequential to bury beneath the next headline. Jeffrey Epstein is one of them, not because speculation should replace evidence, but because evidence should never be buried beneath loyalty.

The victims deserve better than selective outrage.

The American people deserve better than selective transparency.

And the presidency deserves better than a man who has spent years asking us to believe that documented history should simply disappear if it becomes inconvenient enough.

-Michael Jochum

Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Music, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition.