“Southwest Airlines crews are walking out and so are FAA air traffic controllers,” Buzz Patterson tweeted on Sunday. “This is just the beginning.”
Buzz’s running for a House seat in California’s Seventh District. But I saw the tweet as quoted on Facebook by Erin Leigh, who wrote “Exactly what needs to happen. Over 1800 Southwest flights have been canceled in the last 48 hrs … employees from other airlines are joining as well as Amtrak.” And she concluded with “Mandates have consequences!!”
But what really caught my attention was Facebook’s warning: “Independent fact-checkers say this information has no basis in fact.”
Really? None?
You see, much of what was tweeted and Facebooked was definitely true: Southwest Airline pilots and other workers have walked out. And though the airline and the union provide the silliest rationales for the mass cancellations as cover — including blaming non-existent bad weather — it seems pretty obvious this is tied to the vaccine mandates. Tucker Carlson is nearly alone in covering this angle of the story — bemoans The Guardian — while the rest of corporate media relays the “nothing to see here” official spin (or “media blackout”).
Meanwhile, Facebook promotes its guardian of truth, “Lead Stories” — but its “fact-check” was entirely about the Amtrak shutdowns!!
Candidate Patterson didn’t mention Amtrak. And Ms. Leigh noted Amtrak almost as an afterthought.
And then, up on my screen, came Facebook’s altered image of the initial tweet, with “Regular Delay” super-imposed.
The Facebook post was mostly about airline business.
And while Amtrak officials and mouthpieces for the Transport Workers Union of America assure us that it’s all very regular . . . the jab mandate is in place, and labor . . . dislocations . . . are one consequence.
Our regularly scheduled re-scheduling will be re-explained by history.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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