Come on in, have a drink, and let’s talk. I’m back, not typing as fast as I usually do because my middle finger is still swathed in enough bandages to hit three keys at once, but it’s healing.
As per usual, let me take a week off of this little soap box, and I’m drowning in topics. So on some of this, I’m going to just skim lightly… Ready? Let’s go!
My original title for this piece, before so many other things cropped up that needed a comment and a sneer was going to be DEI Must DIE. And I mean it. We are destroying ourselves and our institutions:
Not just “institutions of higher learning” To which my favorite comment yet was from a college president who will remain nameless (for his protection and my own): “Higher than WHAT?”
No, we’re damaging everything that DEI touches. From industrial manufacturing, to .EDU with stops for the “military-industrial complex” and even medical practice. Some examples follow.
In Canada, Dr. Jordan Peterson is not only a famous Clinical psychologist, he’s also one of their most well-known “public intellectuals.”
“The College of Psychologists of Ontario has told Peterson that if he doesn’t go to therapy—sorry, a board-mandated “Coaching Program” with a board-issued therapist—it may revoke his license to practice psychology.” Source.
and This quote from Dr. Peterson himself, which has a picture of the demands by CPOntario. Source.
So, what horrible deed did the good doctor do to warrant decertifying? Three tweets and a comment in a podcast.
I know, these tweets must have been some pretty horrible shit, right?
Let’s see: He called Prime Minister Trudeau a “prik” (his spelling) (I guess it’s a damn good thing I’m retired, or I would get decertified as an instructor once an hour for what I say about our politicians!)
OK, but surely there’s more?
He snarked that environmentalists are promoting energy policies that hurt children in developing nations. Oh, and he used female pronouns on a transgender actor, Elliot Page, whoever she is. Finally, he called a “plus-sized model” that Sports Illustrated used for a cover photo “not beautiful.” For these high crimes and misdemeanors, these sins against the Body of Faith DEI, he has been sentenced to having his license removed, or attending “re-education camp” and making the statement formally: “I may have lacked professionalism in public statements and during a January 25, 2022 podcast appearance.”
This is the sort of shit the PRC and the USSR communist party used to pull. You will tout the party line, or we will bury you! He’s not the only one to get this treatment either. From the University of Sussex to MIT there’s a whole hit list of professors, including my favorite:
UC Irvine fired Aaron Kheriaty, a professor of psychiatry and its director of medical ethics, for refusing the Covid vaccine on ethical grounds. Source.
Read that again, slowly. He’s the DIRECTOR of Medical ethics, they fired him for claiming an ethics issue.
Nor are Profs the only damaged parties in this. Gordon Klein, who teaches “Accounting” for Gods’ sake at UCLA was directed to grade black students easier than he graded white and Asian students, because “Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd.” What any of those motha-fuckas have to do with accounting is not clear. He refused, and now the EDI office at UCLA requires that all faculty members express how they will advance their mentoring, and advising helps for those “from underrepresented and underserved populations.” In short, how you will give them special attention and easier grades. That damages not just the people who DON’T get that special attention, but the poor fools that hire a graduate thinking they have a competent individual, only to find that they got a graduate that was passed on the “you’re black” program. The subtle damage of reduced expectations, in the end, harms the person given a pass and taints everyone from the school.
It’s not just the coastal liberal bastions either. A college free speech advocacy organization is suing Oklahoma State University (OSU) over policies that they argue deter, suppress, and punish students for constitutionally protected speech regarding political and social issues.
Speech First filed a lawsuit Tuesday against OSU challenging three of its speech policies they claim are designed to chill and silence student speech, which is in turn a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of students, according to the lawsuit. Source.
UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering declared that “excellence in advancing equity and inclusion must be considered on par with excellence in research and teaching.” Likewise, in an article describing their “cultural change initiative,” several deans at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine declared: “There is no priority in medical education that is more important than addressing and eliminating racism and bias.”
This is another “read it again, slowly” moment. Engineering and MEDICINE instruction done based on the color of your skin, rather than the content of your character.
And it’s become big business. Princeton has more than 70 administrators devoted to DEI; Ohio State has 132. They now take part in dictating things like hiring, promotion, tenure, and research funding. There are as many people running DEI programs as there are actually TEACHING.
The message is clear, YOU WILL sing the approved lyrics, you will pretend to believe it, or you will be ruined, no one is too big to be made to comply.
Remember when Universities were supposed to be the front lines of “the marketplace of ideas” where truth was to be determined, not decreed? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
But that’s not the only place this shit is damaging the nation and the world. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the largest sponsor of the physical science grants, recently announced that all new research proposals must include its Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research (PIER) Plan. To get a grant, scientists must describe how equity and inclusion are “an intrinsic element to advancing scientific excellence in the research project.” Source.
In 2020, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) began a $241 million cluster hiring grant program—specifying that the faculty hired must have “a demonstrated commitment to promoting diversity and inclusive excellence.” So far, it has awarded grants for hires at twelve institutions, including the University of South Carolina, Cornell University, and Florida State University.
And the thing about it, is this, as even my old punching bag the NYT admits: “D.E.I. trainings are designed to help organizations become more welcoming to members of traditionally marginalized groups. Advocates make bold promises: Diversity workshops can foster better intergroup relations, improve the retention of minority employees, close recruitment gaps and so on. The only problem? There’s little evidence that many of these initiatives work.” Source.
The author points out that in the two largest studies ever of DEI there is ZERO evidence that it makes a positive difference in output, throughput, or relations (internal or external) and there’s some significant evidence that it is really doing more harm than good, in spite of being a 3.4-BILLION-dollar industry as of 2020, and expected to grow to 17.2 billion by 2027.
So we’re spending all of this money on some group of con men selling “Dr. Feelgood’s elixir of Critical Race Theory, which will make sure you make better decisions, get wiser recommendations, be smarter, and more productive, and it will cure halitosis and E-D!” with no proof, after more than 50 years of doing this program and variations on it, that it actually works.
And the thing is this. It’s become “the emperor’s new program.” No one dares question the reviled wisdom that hiring and promoting based not on expertise, or proven performance, but on melanin content, sexual proclivity, and what you “Identify As” will do all of the things claimed.
People are being walked out of the Naval Shipyard (means fired) for not singing the right song. People with decades of experience are being fired from their jobs fixing ships, at a time when we literally can not hire enough people who know what they are doing, to fix the ships!
All of this while the big brains are predicting that we will be in a shooting war with the PRC no later than 2026! Sometimes I don’t think we deserve to win that war.
OK, on to other things!
I’m just going to give “document gate” a sneer, and a flip of the impudent digit, and move on. Seriously, if anyone who didn’t have a first name of “president” “VP” “Secretary of State” or “Congressman” had pulled any of the crap that, in order of appearance: Hillary, Donny, Joe, or Mike (Pence) had pulled, even inadvertently, as regards to classified information, they would be sitting in a holding cell awaiting trial, with bail set at “don’t make me laugh, you don’t get BAIL.” Hang them. All together, or separately, makes no difference to me.
On the intersection of “Security Clearance Street” and “Needs to be Hung Way” we also have Retired Senior Special Agent in Charge Charles McGonigal. Charley was arrested on Saturday, trying to flee the country, along with his coconspirator, Sergey Shestakov, a former Soviet and Russian diplomat who “defected,” became a U.S. citizen and a Russian interpreter for the government, through a five-count indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court Monday.
It seems that these two were working for Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch, and one of Putin’s favorite butt-boys. Now that much is available from almost any media outlet. What everyone except Fox (and yours surly, Source) seems to have forgotten though is that this dirtbag was the SAIC for operation “Crossfire Hurricane” the attempt by Hillary and Barack to tie Donny to the Russian Government. Yeah, you read that right, the little apparatchik who was trying to tie Trump to the Russians, was himself, working for the RUSSIANS. Oh, it’s worth mentioning that he was also the SAIC for the NYC office of Counterintelligence. The man deserves a fair trial, followed by a fine hanging. Of course, the Fearless Band of Idiots is using this to say “see, we’re trustworthy, we follow the leads where ever they take us, and we’re the good guys!” And all I can hear is Ka’s voice, saying “trust in me, just in me…”
While we are on the subject of massive doses of hypocrisy, let’s talk about Davos, the site of the annual “World Economic Forum” where, once a year the Rich and Shameless, the Self-anointed movers and shakers meet to plan how to rule over all us peons. Well, of course, they don’t have the authority to rule over us, but boy they pretend to. It’s been a couple of years since they met in person, fears of “The COVIDS” kept them virtual for the last two years, so they tried to make up for it this year. And of course, how can you have a meeting of the Hoi Paoli, without whores? The UK’s Daily Mail reports that the “demand for sex workers skyrockets each year at the meeting of world leaders and business tycoons who jet in from all around the world to rub shoulders with each other. Escorts are booked into the same hotels as high-powered bosses and their employees during the five-day summit, which started on January 16.” I wonder if Gretta was “on tap?”
But of course, when it comes to whores, there is no one that jumps more immediately to mind than the Dynamic duo of John “I’m a war hero” Kerry, and Al “I invented the internet” Gore.
I’m just going to share a couple of the rants those two fired off while they were there:
Kerry on the existence of the WEF “It’s pretty extraordinary,” he said, “that we, a select group of human beings … are able to sit in a room and come together and actually talk about saving the planet.” See this is at least honest, he really believes that they are the anointed ones, and should be dictating to the rest of us, they are the chosen ones who inform us: You can’t just hop in your car and hit the road. You can’t grill a savory steak when there are perfectly good bugs to be eaten. And you can’t complain when a dude walks into the girls’ locker room at the local Y while your teenage daughter is taking a shower. Indeed, you aren’t even allowed so much as a spit-take when someone tells you, in all seriousness, that men can get pregnant.” In the words of the Patriot Post.
Not to be outdone, Al the Orator (Here comes the orator with his flood of words and his drop of reason. Benjamin Franklin) on the inevitable death of everything if we don’t do what he says like good little children:
“People are familiar with that thin blue line that the astronauts bring back in their pictures from space,” he began over there in Davos, next to the world’s largest parking lot of private jets. “That’s the part of the atmosphere that has oxygen, the troposphere, and it’s only five to seven kilometers thick. That’s what we’re using as an open sewer.”
Our modern Oracle of Delphi continued: “We’re still putting 162 million tons [of greenhouse gas] into it every single day, and the accumulated amount is now trapping as much extra heat as would be released by 600,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every single day on the earth.”
He blamed our wanton disregard of his repeated warnings for a host of problems currently confronting humanity.
Raising his voice, he thundered: “That’s what’s boiling the oceans, creating these atmospheric rivers and the rain bombs and sucking the moisture out of the land and creating the droughts and melting the ice and raising the sea level and causing these waves of climate refugees!”
Well Al, since you have made hundreds of predictions of the imminent demise of the: glaciers on Kilimanjaro by 2010, the glaciers of Glacier National Park by 2013, The polar icecap by 2015, The coastlines, because the oceans will rise 20 feet by 2012, and so many other bullshit predictions, I think I’ll continue to “wantonly disregard your warnings,” you two-bit huckster.
My biggest problem with these self-anointed “saviors of the world” Is their continued press, push, Nay, DEMAND that world globalism is the only way forward.
Much like “just in time Shipping,” the lessons of COVID SHOULD be engraved on the insides of the eyeballs of everyone who produces, or distributes vital equipment and material. (And if it’s vital to your business, it’s vital, whether or not “people will die” if your business dies, people will go hungry, therefore it’s vital.) If you don’t make it, or you can’t get it by driving, you can’t count on it getting here in time. “Just in time” is a lie meant to convince you that “offshoring” is economically smart. And it is, but only as long as wars, plagues, storms, pirates, or supply issues for your suppliers don’t kick over your apple cart. That’s not something to rely on. COVID should have proven that. Ukraine’s invasion by Russia just doubled down on it. Wars and rumors of wars in the middle east, ships blocking the world while stuck in the Suez Canal, a longshoreman strike in Europe, China getting pissy because you all won’t sing the songs of the great PRC, all of these things can screw you over if you buy into “globalism.”
Get your supply chain under control, and either on US soil or at least somewhere you can drive to from the US if at all possible, if not, make sure you have enough on hand to get through at least 4 months. Ask yourself, which is more expensive, the warehousing of material, or shutting down your plant for months, because you can’t get the materials you need. The SLOC (Sea Lines Of Communication) are as fragile right now as they have been in the last 75 years, don’t rely on them.
There’s lots more I could talk about but I’ve already rambled on far longer than I should.
I hate it when the oceans boil. Sea and anchor detail seems to drag on forever.
I know, right?