“I don’t think people understand just how complicated this is. It sounds simple when you say it, but obviously, you heard that it’s just more complicated than we would have liked. I don’t know if it’s — if we’re ready to give it up. I’m going to leave that to the military.”

Slotkin: Gaza Pier ‘More Complicated Than We Would Have Liked’, People Don’t Get ‘How Complicated This Is’
Breitbart | 06/19/2024 | Ian Hanchett

On Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) responded to a question on whether the Gaza aid pier constructed by the Biden administration has failed due to numerous setbacks …

Host Wolf Blitzer asked, “I want to get, first, to this story we’ve just been reporting, this U.S. pier off the coast of Gaza has suffered setback after setback and has only delivered a tiny fraction of aid to the Palestinians. Is it time to call this a failed mission?”

Slotkin responded, “I don’t think people understand just how complicated this is. It sounds simple when you say it, but obviously, you heard that it’s just more complicated than we would have liked. I don’t know if it’s — if we’re ready to give it up. I’m going to leave that to the military.”

Hertz Nightmare: Customer Fined $436 Before They Even Rented The Car
View From The Wing | 06/16/2024 | Gary Leff

A Hertz customer accomplished a new feat in the annals of rental car company disservice, actually being charged for a red light ticket before even renting the vehicle.

They rented the vehicle on May 15th at the Calgary Airport for a period of six days, starting at 10:30 p.m. However the agent at the airport logged the rental as starting at 10:30 a.m.

They were hit with an extra day’s charge, beyond the period they actually had the car for And the previous renter “ran a red light at 2:33pm.” But since the system now saw them as having the car at the time, their credit card was hit with $436.50 for the bill.

It would have been impossible for the customer to have had the car at 2:33 p.m. because they were inflight on American Airlines. They provided copies of their boarding passes. Hertz agreed with them about the rental start time – they removed the extra day’s charge – but they still refused to budge on the red light ticket (or the extra fees associated the with the extra day – Hertz removed only the base rental charge). And now Hertz has refused to communicate further, it seems.

How to turn a simple clerical error into a public relations fiasco.

Aw, go sell off some of your EVs, willya?

Guess How Many High-Speed Internet Connections Biden Built With $42.45 billion provided by The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act
PJ Media | 06/18/2024 | Stephen Green

You’ve read more than once right here at PJ Media about the $7.5 billion that Presidentish Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act put on the table as an inducement to build a network of 500,000 EV charging stations up and down the nation’s interstate highways. And you’ve read about how few have been built — eight, at last count.

Well, that was a bargain compared to today’s boondoggle.

Otter, Flounder, and Boondoggle.

The same law also set aside $42.45 billion — that’s three Ford-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers — to deploy high-speed internet to millions of Americans who currently lack access. That mostly means rural folks, who are usually the last to get anything new, like drug-resistant herpes or imaginary personal pronouns.

This is the part of the column where I’d ask you to guess how many Americans had been wired for high-speed internet after 2.5 years and all of those billions, and then you’d say, “Zero?” and then we’d both say we need a drink.

Because the answer truly is a big, fat zero.

FCC commissioner Brendan Carr posted to X a few days ago, “Mostly, the $42.45B is just sitting there. Not even one shovel’s worth of dirt has been turned.”

And — the Observation Chair constantly gets challenged. (Photo of Walrus on Bizarre End Table.)