No themes, no defined threads, no suggestions really, it’s sort of a blank slate to post what you’re thinking about and what you’re interested in today. I’ll throw the spaghetti against the wall as usual, but you can ignore it.
What about this Aircraft? Can you Identify it?
“Be brave and upright that God may love thee. Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless and do no wrong. That is your oath.”
DIE
The military services are in a pickle with the failure of its Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DIE) programs, drag queens, and transgender recruiting attempts. They are failing to meet recruiting targets. As the NY Post reported, “Last fiscal year, the Navy barely achieved its 33,400 recruitment target for new sailors, according to the Navy Times, but came up short of its 2,507 targets for active duty officer promotions and missed its goal of 1,360 reserve officers by almost 400, per the report.” As reported by the Center for Military Readiness, “The Army’s identity-based advertising has proved to be a failure in recruiting,” The Army missed its recruiting goal last year and, according to Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, is expected to miss again this year, despite claims to the contrary by the Army’s senior enlisted man. With the exception of the Marines, all branches are experiencing recruiting problems.
Meanwhile, companies such as mine find that the flood of mid-career, highly trained, patriots leaving the special operations forces are a significant benefit. They come to the game with operational experience, foreign language skills, problem-solving skills, integrity, and a solid work ethic. It’s a loss to the taxpayers who have pumped untold millions into them, but it’s a good thing for me. Thanks, Pedo Joe and Heels-Up Harris!
Erica Marsh tweeted this:
Today’s Supreme Court decision is a direct attack on Black people. No Black person will be able to succeed in a merit-based system which is exactly why affirmative-action based programs were needed. Today’s decision is a TRAVESTY!!!
A number of people believed her to be engaging in some sort of snark, but she wasn’t and she’s a Biden person. This is precisely how she thinks.
Erica Marsh
@ericareport
Proud Democrat: Former Field Organizer to elect President Biden. Volunteer for the Obama Foundation. (She/Her)
What about this Aircraft:
Vickers Wellesley
Precisely
The Wellesley looked fairly ridiculous, but it was a pretty good plane, for it’s time.
-Kle.
Compared to the old biplane bombers, it was space age.
K, ridiculous is perhaps not strong enough for this straight up ugly plane.
The Brits designed a few beautiful planes, but for the most part from the start of British aircraft development their planes are ugly as sin.
Not as ugly as French airplanes, at least….
Erica Marsh: Virtue signaling since …… well, college. (Ass/Hole)
Who? Am I supposed to know who she is?
No no, that’s a true believer. She, and many on the left like her, Know blacks are incapable of successful lives in western societies and Must be “protected” by those of virtue like themselves.
She’s just so much better than you, Ed and Rupert Smedley that, well she’s off the scale, dripping with virtue and understanding the victimhood of the poor dumb colored races.
I’m sure that God comes to her for advice the way that he also does with Greta Thunberg.
Well! I guess I should get to know her!
The ending of the Affirmative Action program is a good thing. Maybe – just maybe – the woke educators in the K thru 12 and high school will realize the the harm they’ve caused to our nation’s children and our society in general. That’s probably a big nope – but we can hope and work to get those assholes out of our education system. Also, the ending of Affirmative Action opens the door to Asian Americans… how many of those are going to have ties to the CCP?
One Federal job that I applied for required that a negro female lesbian score a 40 to pass the big hurdle (aggregate score). A straight, white, male needed to score 95. I scored 98, but that was due to my white privilege and membership in the patriarchy.
CCP? Probably not a lot to be honest, if you’re talking American-born. Chinese generally don’t dream of “making ariyah” (the Chinese equivalent of the Jewish making Aliyah) and the Koreans and Japanese have no love for China or the Chinese. That’s at the undergraduate level.
US grads schools (engineering, hard sciences) are ALREADY shot through with grad students from the PRC. Many are clearly here to steal the latest research and techniques. But AA doesn’t affect them because they (ie the CCP) pay full tuition, and in grad school places Can Be Made if you’re paying full fare. The full tuition is why universities are so willing to admit them.
America today is like flying in a private plane where you watch the pilot have a health issue and you realize you are just along for the ride. As you watch the ground approach.
Very much like.
I’m not sure Erica Marsh is an actual human being, but it’d be amusing if that tweet was sincere and from a prog.
Ron Unz did some interesting analyses I think about a decade back. He used PSAT scores as a proxy for (potential) academic achievement. (Fully recognizing the limitations of this approach.) He then looked at admissions by race/ethnicity at elite colleges (Ivy and “Public Ivy” as well as CalTech and MIT). Relative to PSAT scores, Asians were indeed under-admitted, but non-Jewish whites were even more heinously under-admitted, by around 3-fold. (In other words, white goys were given only a third of the spots predicted by their PSAT score.) Hispanics and Blacks were “infinitely over-represented” [actual quote] because none had high enough PSAT scores.
I personally know some Black people who wouldn’t have needed affirmative action, but unfortunately in general “Erica Marsh” might not be far off the mark. (Assuming that PSATs or IQ tests are indeed predictors of academic or later life achievement.)
” No Black person will be able to succeed in a merit-based system ”
“No” is an incredibly absolute number.
But at least those that make it will not be suspect.
Actually, many accepted under affirmative action have crashed and burned because they were ill-prepared, doing much more harm to their psyche and wallet than if they had not been.
Apparently, Erica Marsh is an actual prog.
I’ve often said that nothing can be quite as insulting as being a black person who is qualified in a world of those who are not and you’re only viewed by the color of your skin rather than the content of your character.
The numbers have been remarkably steady over the past 50 years wherein 75% of black children were born without a father in the home. It’s a national tragedy but nobody including the half-blood prince (who was also born without a father in the home) did not encourage a change.
The education system in the inner cities continues to barf children onto the street with high school diplomas who neither read nor write at an acceptable level. They usually learn math so that they can weigh and account for narcotics sales. The whores can count so that the tricks and the pimps don’t short change them.
“Apparently, Erica Marsh is an actual prog.”
Wow. I thought it was a parody account.
As Rocky the Flying Squirrel says, Hokey Smokes.
h/t Lara Logan
Early reports (unconfirmed) from sources in San Antonio: 500lb IED found in apartment – FBI/ATF called to the scene. Law enforcement officer allegedly went to the address to serve papers and suspect reportedly opened fire. Further investigation allegedly revealed the bomb. No media on scene. Has not broken.
https://twitter.com/laralogan/status/1674623308619235328
Lara Logan is a hero.
Zilch on the local news.
Confirm zilch on the local news. Lara is rarely wrong…
Somebody spiked it for a reason. The suspects are part of the wrong demographic.
Maybe the worst aspect of “affirmative action” is that a “Person of Color”, who succeeds on merit, will always be seen by many as having been favored by affirmative action. Same for many females, IMO.
x2
You’re a more generous person than I am. I feel worst about the whites (and East Asians) who got screwed out of a shot at prestigious college, job, promotion, or loan (yes, those too) or whatever, because of AA.
Sure maybe My’kuhl (actual name of a male student giving tours at my college) might have to live with whispers and covert looks, but he GOT that Wharton MBA or that Yale degree. (What is taught may or may not be important, but those names open doors in this world of credentialism over ability or work ethic.)
I’ve never worked in a field where a degree from an elite school mattered. You could argue that ring knockers in the Navy enjoyed advantages, but that didn’t apply to SPECWAR.
I have resumes/CVs on my desk. I want to know what they’ve done and “who they are”. They need to perform in tough environments (boardrooms are tough too, I understand that), and hiring decisions are predicated on whether or not they can be dropped anywhere and be stellar in all respects. If they’re turds, the insurance will pay out to their next of kin. So whether or not you have a degree in grievance studies from the Ivy League is unimportant. It’s just a different world from the classic corporate grind.
There weren’t many black families in the neighborhood where I grew up, but their kids were all in honors classes. On the other hand, the black kids bussed in from across town “to achieve racial integration” were not. It has a lot to do with role models and how kids are raised, and that’s a multi-generational effort.
Clarence Thomas
Walter Williams. Poor guy didn’t have the chops to make it without the help of that dumb blond.
Where would the world be without dumb blondes?
Watching stuff like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9MOI2ZELDw
Damn shes hot!
Half of the men in America were in love with Susanna Hoffs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv6tuzHUuuk
There’s another video of her singing that song, doing some real athletic moves behind the microphone stand. As I was preparing to take a nap (thunderstorms here, so a lazy day inside) I did NOT want to get all stirred up and miss my nap…and I’d prefer watching that version while fully awake. So here It is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rOEf9vF1kc
I want my MTV. The mid-80’s one, not this crap they have now.
To my shame, I used to give money to NPR. In my defense that was over 20y ago and they were then not what they are now. (And same goes for me.) Anyway, I still get mail from them. Today it was about the wake of SCOTUS on AA. (Trimmed for length):
“In the wake of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision striking down affirmative action, Massachusetts elected officials and college leaders were quick to reaffirm their commitment to promoting diversity in higher education. But how? As WBUR’s Max Larkin reported this week, colleges do have a few other options — some of which they’re already using.
1. Targeted recruitment: It’s more resource-intensive, but many local colleges say it’s worth it to travel to and recruit from historically underrepresented communities. […]*
2. End legacy admissions: Many colleges, like Harvard, give preference to applicants with at least one parent who is an alum — a practice that favors affluent, white students. […]**
3. Drop the test: A growing wave of universities, including Harvard, have — at least temporarily — stopped requiring SAT or ACT scores from applicants, amid criticism the tests favor wealthier families. Research also suggests ditching SAT and ACT requirements can lead to a more diverse student population.” ***
* yeah but. You find AA admissions going not to Treytavious from Camden, NJ, but rather Isiah from Georgetown, DC. Or to Charlotte from Birmingham, MI (rich) rather than Shaniqua from the poor parts of Birmingham, AL (not rich). It’s clearly about skin color (self identified race, really) than the “diversity of the student body”. If you REALLY wanted “different perspectives” then they should be recruiting Holocaust-denying flat Earthers. THERE’s “diversity of thought and belief” for you. Hateful and dumb maybe, but truly diverse.
** Actually I don’t have too much objection to this, but the new legacies are not non-Jewish whites in the majority. Harvard’s new power class order is Jewish followed by South Asian, followed by East Asian. (SAs are not necessarily more numerous, but they are way better at politicking, rising to C-level positions in corporations, and plain nepotism than East Asians who are only decent at nepotism but are for the most part practically autistic when it comes to PR, spin, and tooting their own horns.) Also, it’s interesting to me that a “new race” is being created. Just as the Aztlan assholes call themselves the “Race of Bronze” the Ivies are seeing unions of white or Jewish males with East Asian females. I know many couples like this. AMWF or AMJF is considerably more rare. Emma Sulkowitz (mattress girl) is one of the products of such a union.
*** I personally despise the SATs and other standardized tests, but they do have some value. Clearly the only reason they’re getting rid of them is because some groups can’t make the cut. (For the record, I’m GREAT at them. My disdain is not sour grapes. Also for the record, for example PKG got 800 — maximum marks — on the math portion of her GRE (SAT equivalent for grad school) and 580 on English despite English being her third language. But you have persons born here whose only language is (nominally) English, and they can’t rise to even her standard.)
About my first comment, yes, I know that many colleges are going to a ZIP code based system as a proxy for race, but I stand by my observation that rich connected people’s kids tend to get ahead over poor ones. Be those rich people white, Jewish, Asian, or Black.
If Harvard wants a diverse student body, they should recruit Cooter and his brother from the ranks of the KKK at Sand Mountain, Alabama.
It’s the Golden Rule, Mike. The man with the gold rules.
Was listening to talk radio yesterday while in my truck. WBAP, Rick Roberts. Go to the 6/29 podcast, caller Jim at the 30:20 mark. He attended his niece’s 2022 graduation from Harvard Law School in 2022.
https://www.wbap.com/rick-roberts/
Sure enough. Now admittedly the visual absence of white males and East Asians of either sex doesn’t mean they didn’t graduate from HLS. It’s possible they decided not to attend the ceremony. (Why bother to rent a gown and mortarboard when you can see diversity behaving badly for free at the airport?)
That said, I noticed something similar at the Harvard School of Public Health this year. (I didn’t attend, but one of “my girls” got her second masters there and I saw the graduating class photo.) Few palefaces (white or Jewish), lots of brown and Black people. The interesting thing was that a nontrivial percentage of the Blacks were non-American, but rather actually from Africa, or the Caribbean. That makes sense, because HSPS (and public health programs in general—the one at Johns Hopkins is The Bloomberg School, yeah, that guy) are about policy and politics at least as much as about the medical stuff. It’s an international network and indoctrination* system.
* so a former colleague is currently undergoing treatment for lymphoma (which I underwent a couple of years ago). We were never close, but she called me for some reason. (I think because she wanted a “survivor buddy” and had heard through the grapevine that I had had it. There was obvious fear in her voice, which was grievous to hear. But I digress.) Anyway, at some point she was burbling along about attending some graduation ceremony in the Midwest (you could hear the amused condescension) and horror of horrors, Clarence Thomas was the speaker. Worse, their hosts spoke approvingly of Thomas (oh the horror!). She paused to let me pitch in on what dreadful barbarians populate the heartland. I didn’t say anything. “But they like Clarence Thomas! They thought he was GREAT! Can you imagine?” I couldn’t help it. I laughed out loud at that. “Oh, you have no idea,” I said ambiguously.
The point of that is that the overwhelming proportion of coastal “academic” medicine people are lefty progs and are shocked and disgusted to find a knuckle dragger such as me in their midst. There really is almost no diversity (of thought) at these elite schools.
I just re-read my last sentence. Redundancy much? Sheesh.
OK! Open Forum? Anything goes, huh? as long as it’s sagacious, not salacious.
Awrighty!
We currently have three women occupying a hard bench in Washington who are in a position to determine the course of our country, as long as we take a sharp 180° turn to the left.
Each one of these women would happily take my grandson’s shoes (purchased with his parent’s hard-earned money) and give them gratis to a POC (who’s come across the river without applying for permission to do so)’s child; my sister-in-law (who went to great lengths to keep her sons out of the Armed Services) happily jumping up-and-down, cheering them on from the sidelines.
My concern is that these women, along with the Fourth Branch, now determine the course of the country in which I was born (now apparently no longer in existence), and for which I would have at one time happily given my life.
True.
What’s your point? (haha)
I’d just like to go to my final rest knowing that our (my!!) country has been returned (steered back) to its original (I was going to say pre-Wilson, but I’ll change that to Founders’ instead) course (with all due apologies to current technologies, I’m not a Luddite).
It’s a lot easier to break an egg than it is to repair one that has been smashed.
The interesting design of the Vickers Wellesley is one of the last without a ‘faired’ engine cowling. The Bristol Pegasus required a LOT of cooling, and the 1930s design was a single cowl ring as most acft back then were slow enough that they could barely keep the engine cool with flow through ventilation. The downside of that was water intrusion/shorting out of cylinders when water got into the sensitive mags, etc.
There were some later ones built with a NACA cowl:
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.t7i-sQ4OhwAZ-2yKKzHqvQHaD8%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=bdbba4e3e1da3fe68548d8b804bf428da8540626722cd311dffcb9ebff9ded37&ipo=images
This picture is probably one of the ones modified for the long-endurance flight record; IDK if any of the service models had the NACA cowl or not.
-Kle.
With the Fourth coming up, I can’t help but repeat: we had a country where many were willing to die for freedom, but next to none were willing to kill for it in the land of its birth. Freedom here was lost, while we sent the best of our youth to kill and die for the freedom of barbarians who neither asked for nor wanted it.
Very true. But my take is that bringing the Miracle of Democracy to the barbarians was the public cover for the true reasons.
1. Bankers’ wars
2. Brother wars are a wonderful trick that weakens cohesiveness of nation-states and divides those that should be allies (see #1 above)
3. (Mis)Use of the economic power and armed might of the US for private grudges and cross-generational vendettas
Also, keeping fighting men and equipment abroad and occupied. Public attention diverted. And no matter how degraded the homeland has become, it is still vastly better than the hell holes they were deployed to. And by the time they get reoriented and notice the degradation, they’ve mustered out and are separated and no longer in the loop.
What’s amazing is the obvious (in hindsight) planning that went into all this, when the puppets and public puppeteers don’t appear to have the brains to organize a one pony horse show. The question then becomes are schwab, soros, gates and the rest, only money men with a boss(es) dictating where the money goes or are they truly in charge and are managers of competent underlings, who do the planning and execution.
They do understand domestic politics – up, down, inside, outside, and upside down. However, this leaves them with a serious lack of understanding of other things.
As they are busy replacing fighting men with soy boys, it looks like they are gearing up for a massive defeat at some point in the future. Anyone’s guess what they think this will accomplish.
http://www.mit.edu/people/fuller/peace/war_goering.html
“Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”
“There is one difference,” I pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”
“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
— Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
“War is the Health of the State.”
— Randolph Bourne
War is the biggest of big government programs.
There are about 3,000 counties in the US, so how about you voters give the libertarians 10 of them to run as they see fit? Then we can erect great trading hubs modeled after Hong Kong, Venice, and New York, all powered by nuclear fission from breeding Thorium. Buy Nickle now for all that reactor piping. (Wait, libertarians can’t build reactors, because they can’t even figure out how to serve lunch to the crew driving the road paving machines [and private road-building is banned because otherwise people would be doing it])
Taxation is merely the bad people keeping the good people down, and like East Germany libertarians can’t be allowed to speak or produce or escape because they’ll make government look bad. The other side of this codependency is that libertarians are far too liberal/progressive/Christian, and refuse to admit they have to stop tolerating thieves.
France has fallen. Macron clueless. Police no longer trying to stop the anarchy. Military still in hiding. No martial law declared. Savages are out in full view with weapons. They’re killing white French people. Cities are burning with no fire brigades willing to risk their lives. Unfarkinbelievable.
Sort of inevitable really, you could see it coming when the police started refusing to go to parts of the cities.
Seems like they never get tired of trying appeasement, in Europe.
-Kle.
The Summer of Louvre
aka SOL
Yeah, I’m thinking this is an example of what I was saying the other day about how mass importation of violent, unassimilable people leads to destruction of the host country’s folk and culture. But third generation Algerian youth are not the root of the problem. Remember those who did the most to create the conditions that made this tragic mess possible. When it’s over, remember. Never forget.
Oh, they’ll forget. Never fear.
No Black person will be able to succeed in a merit-based system
From the mouths of babes. And she sure looks like a babe. Batshit crazy, but very pretty.
I’ve seen this in person, where incompetent people were not only hired, but paid more, and got faster promotions and larger raises.
I learned about Affirmative Action early in life. I had 2 years of college and ran out of money so I joined the USAF with a guaranteed job in Crypto Maintenance. I got orders for Teletype Maintenance. I knew electronics as dad was a basic electronics instructor at the Signal School at Ft Gordon. I missed one question on all the tests in Basic Electronics and was an honor grad for Teletype. Two weeks before graduation we found out that the class would have a follow on school of Crypto Maintenance as the fields had been merged. I was re-motivated and made honor grad in Crypto school which landed me a cherry assignment for CENTCOM in Tampa.
After 56 months there I had enough and got out but joined the Air Guard. I also got a job with a construction company building a low security Federal prison. I had a hand in installing all of the electronic controls and monitoring systems over a two year period. There were two positions as Electronic Mechanics where one was a senior position GS-12 that was being filled by a guy transferring from Atlanta. The GS-11 position was open. I had 2 years experience installing the prison systems, had a TS/SBI/SCI clearance with an enlistment working on the most current Crypto equipment in military inventory, a recent USAF Computer Maintenance tech school (another honor grad) and I thought I was a shoe in for the GS-11 slot.
The local town’s Democrat Mayor’s daughter, of African decent, was a recent 14-month electronic tech school graduate. She got the GS-11 slot. I found out latter that her duties included reloading the Mr. Coffee machine as she was not allowed to touch anything else. She lasted 6 month after her father lost re-election. I fully understood Affirmative Action.
I saw similar scenarios play out three more time over my career due to diversity. I got a BS and eventually a MBA. It got to where I left the MBA off my resume to get a job in communications. My last manager was a guy that I gave him the choice of quitting before I fired him as I was his supervisor. Three years latter I was still a supervisor and he was my manager where he held a grudge. He set me up on a no win job where I had a career ending injury due to his direction.
BTW: I am 1/16 Ute Indian and the rest is a mixture of Scottish. French. English, Irish, and a small dappling of Sicilian. Those were in descending ratios.
Sadly, your experiences are not unique. And the GS-11 story is an example of the misapplication of AA. My understanding is that the (claimed) intent of AA was that if there were (roughly) equally qualified candidates for a job, then the negro should be selected, so as to redress past inequalities. (Which screws present-day non-Negro individuals who personally never made no one pick no cotton or put anyone into ovens or whatever, but that’s Equity I guess.) Of course in practice there often was no chance of “roughly equally qualified” and the Black candidate got promoted anyway. (And often ended up “managing” the white candidate, who ended up having to do the work of his “manager”.)
The flip side of your unfortunate experiences is how to handle the negro so hired or promoted who turned out to be incompetent. Because it’s hard to fire such people. Of course I have a story about that. So my mother’s childhood best friend, Gloria, was a high-level person at the Library of Congress (somehow). Gloria was this tiny 5-foot-zero Chinese woman. She was entirely competence/results driven, and had no reservations about firing nonhackers, and damn the consequences. She had some protection as a woman and an ethnic Chinese, but not as much as one would think, since usually the person she was firing was a Black female. She got death threats from the kin of some of the women she fired. She reported those, and I believe also noted the grammatical errors in those notes (she was hard core). But the point I’m slowly getting to is that other (white) managers would transfer problem Blacks to Gloria’s group, because they were afraid to fire incompetent Blacks. (Or didn’t want the bad “optics” of firing Blacks because they were politically progs.) My mother was pretty hardcore about competence also* but I remember her asking Gloria if it was worth the time she spent in court, not to mention the death threats. Gloria got all worked up. “Of course it’s worth it! My job is to see to it that my group does good work and doesn’t waste taxpayer money. And I know what the other managers are doing putting their problems in my group. Cowards! But fine, I’ll throw out their trash!” At any given time Gloria was the target of at least three suits for wrongful dismissal. She never lost a case, but it was like a second full time job preparing her own defense against them.
One day we went to visit Gloria at her home in Bethesda, MD. She had a black eye and a broken nose. Mom was horrified. “Did someone finally beat you up?” Gloria laughed. “No! I decided I wasn’t getting enough exercise so I bought this treadmill (points to a big shiny object in the corner of her living room). Well, I was using it, got distracted, and the belt dragged my feet from under me and I hit my head on the control panel!”
* I think the emphasis on competence was a big reason Mom and Gloria were friends. But she was not a “tiger mom”. Left me alone. When I told her in seventh grade that I was enrolled in all AP classes I had to explain what that meant. When everyone had taken SATs of course all the Chinese moms were comparing scores (I hated the constant gossip and internecine oneupmanship). My mother infuriated the others when she replied (honestly), “I have no idea what he got, but I think he did pretty well. Why, is it important?”