THANK YOU, CHUCK! I AM VERY TIRED OF HEARING THE DISGUSTING CURSZE WORD "OBAMA" ATTACHED TO ANYTHING, IT IS A RECIPE FOR HORRIFIC DISASTER. IS HE STILL ALIVE?
"Equal opportunity." Has such a nice ring to it, doesn't it? It did when it first came into vogue, as well, back in Thee Olden Tymes of the '60's. When well meaning white PIP's (People In Power) decided that all 'Merica needed to do in order to rectify all those years of evil racism was put black people at the head of every line in which they stood because their great-great-grandparents might have been brough here as slaves. (To digress, to be brought to North America from Africa as a slave was a distinct level up from such person's lot in life back in The Dark Continent, and their progeny should have been grateful for the luck of having been born on these shores. Maybe not so much if you were shipped to the Caribbean of worse luck, Brazil, but that's another story.) Talk about unintended consequences! On second thought, were those consequences perhaps intended? You be the judge.
"Affirmative Action" soon expanded exponentially to include women (not a minority, but hey, that's beside the point) as well as other non-slave-descendant ethnicities and sexual perverts, to the point that now, all those "disadvantaged minorities" compose a large majority of citizens! The only group not given this unfair benefit was, need I say, heterosexual men of European ancestry. You know, the ones who really (sorry, all you descendants-of-slaves seeking to claim this distinction) built this country with the sweat of their brows, backs and brains. We saw a mad scramble to claim "disadvantaged minority status" once it became clear that the road to success was paved for those fortunate enough to gain that status by the success of the so-called "civil rights movement" on behalf of blacks. Next it was females, then the queers, followed by every non-white heterosexual group known to man. Check out any legislatively defined "protected class." Here in The Keystone State, it includes groups defined by "Color, Religious creed, Ancestry, Age (40 and over), Sex, National origin, Familial status (only in housing), Handicap or disability and the use, handling, or training of support or guide animals for disability and Retaliation for filing a complaint, opposing unlawful behavior, or assisting investigations" all of which are precluded from being a basis upon which one may choose to act. N.B., it has never, to my knowledge, been used to punish discrimination against white men or Christians of any color. To make my intended point, however: if you think that a return to "equal opportunity" means a colorblind (and everything else but merit) based society, you are in for a rude awakening. That's where this present imbroglio began, my friend. Words mean only what those using them intend for them to mean, so "equal opportunity" can and will be used to disfavor the same group of people that DEI more openly discriminates against. Ironically, white PIP's use it to maintain their favored position against all comers, including other white people (excluding females and sexual perverts, of course). We have come to the end of the road for our once glorious constitutional republic; we are reduced to the proverbial elemental state so nicely defined by Hobbes: a state of war in which life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” because individuals are in a “war of all against all”. So buckle up, buckaroos, we are in for a bumpy flight from here on out.
You'd be surprised. During WWII, the 13th Armored Division built pontoon bridges they then drove tanks and Halftracks over. Bragging on the Greatest Gen. I guess you had to be there.
I don't know that, but my dear departed drove to Knoxville for a Veterans' Day program our grandson was in, there he spoke to the assembly about that pontoon bridge, and all the 8 to 10 year old boys thronged him afterward for Q&A. (Hubby and I were 18 years apart, but he'd use phrases like "kids our age.") I went to two more 13th reunions after his death in 2016, and it was just too sad to continue, given the age of most of his Army buddies. With X number of deaths per day, now, not just per year. On the ship back to the US, they were told they'd get 30 days leave and then go Honolulu. By then Japan had surrendered. He served stateside during the Korean "Police Action."
You'd wipe out the world-wide surplus of Lego sets. And the MD legislature would mandate a $100/hour minimum wage for the rebuild. Imagine how many Hunter Biden oil portraits of his mother-in-law that he'd have to paint to pay for all of it!
If they had to be brought here to do it why are South Africa and Zimbabwe such a mess. Of course it was thriving when it was called Rhodesia. Hmmm. What do you suppose happened?
" . . . if you think that a return to "equal opportunity" means a colorblind (and everything else but merit) based society, you are in for a rude awakening."
Your legal perspective is spot-on. I am not a well read and experienced attorney, but have worked with several in my career. My experience is from trying to implement these promulgated "concepts" from our Feds.
I suffered - but survived - two OFCCP audits many years ago. Their summary decision about our hiring practices had nothing to do with equal opportunity. Our company spent tens of thousands of dollars running expensive display ads in newspapers 25 - and even 40 - miles away trying to recruit qualified minorities because our factory was in a small farming town that had a very low minority population. We never got a successful response to the job ads. There either weren't any qualified applicants or they didn't want to drive the 30 to 60 minute commute for a factory job. We provided the opportunity, but were smacked aside the head from the Feds because the OUTCOME wasn't equal.
Then, there is the problem of the Feds can write any law they want, but the operational application of the law isn't known until the courts have enough case law to define the "how-to". That can take years - and expensive legal costs - to know. How long did it take for companies to get an operational definition of "reasonable accommodation" to the ADA? HR managers lived in fear for years waiting to be sued in the case that would finally define the term. No HR manager wanted their company to be that case.
04/18/24: Good show, sir. Now. Contemplate what a vast pool of spilled ink looks like facing a reader on a (desk) computer screen. When the Exxon-Hobbes-Valdez hit the rocks in Alaska, what a mess, right? Fortunately, the people tasked with cleaning it up knew that if they could segregate all that gunk into what the environmentalists called "separate, easy-to read, succinct paragraphs," they'd get the ink moped up in no time. And so they did. A lesson to us all, greatly appreciated.
You and I are thinking alike this morning. I thought most all the choices were good and I was going to go with doing their homework. Then you have to ask why, what's the root of that motivation, then you realize it's the Tiger Mom.
I cannot imagine what my parents would have said, and then done, to me, or where they would have sent me for mental, and educational, as well as Christian Therapy, if I had wanted to attend a school that would hand out "Artificial IQ Enhancers" of any kind as an educational improvement. Home Confinement, in complete Silence, would have been doled out immediately, with serious punishments to follow, which would be silently accepted with great remorse and embarrassment. I am grateful that my parents are not here to experience such shameful behaviors as we are now witnessing. The effects on children are surely devastating and long lasting.
oh no, they graduate them. They just cant read, cant add, and usually cant speak so they need govnmt assistance because woo is mee, I cant get a job and have no money
that s thing .... that if we mention we get tracked even though not by Don.
tj, you are so right about this. So many of my neighbors do not work, drive new cars, sleep in daily, order food to be delivered... I am as old as Dirt, and still work every day! And want to work! Totally different mind set. WE WILL MAKE IT THROUGH THE INSANITY.... HAVE A WONDERFUL AND ENJOYABLE DAY! STAY BLESSED AND SAFE!
In Oregon you dont have to do homework or even pass a test to graduate any more. In another state, a 12 yr olds mom sued because *gasp 'homework is too hard, she had to spend 30 minutes doing it'. Never heard the outcome, I need to go digging.
YOU ARE PROBABLY ONTO SOMETHING HERE. MY 40ish YEAR OLD NEIGHBOR HAD A TUPPERWARE BOWL FILLED BITH "WEED" AS HE CALLED IT.... HE CAME OVER TO' BORROW' A LID FOR IT, IF I HAVE ONE THAT FITS. AS AN ELDERLY WHITE WOMAN, SURELY I HAVE A COLLECTION OF TUPPERWARE LIDS ON HAND... FOR MORONS.
There were always too many extremely well qualified Asian and white candidates for admission. They could fill the class with 4.8GPA and 1600 SAT candidates each year. Legacys and big donors got probably 20% of spots. 10% probably were for diversity candidates who did not have similar GPA/SATs/ACTs. You were favored if you went to HS in the northeast or California. Prep schools vs Public. It was quite impossible to select. Therefore personal statements and interviews were critical. Academic coaches gamed the system. 1500/1700 slos per year. About 10-15 years ago things changed with merit less and less important, diversity (other than politics) more critical. If your sob story was profound or if your melanin correct you were elevated to the top of the list, if you were Trans or in transition better. The Tests were abandoned to partially hide the stats. They are appalling. The admitted are generally dumber and more entitled/ arrogant than their professors. Funny how the Asian Community supports the Democratic Party, yet are upset when the “Jim Crow”admission laws they set up for colleges then affect them. Not all Asians are bright..just look at representative Ted Lieu. FJB
The whole DIE Project is also a great racket to give cover to the failure of the lower school systems to actually give kids any kind of real education. They just can’t cut it anymore because our high schools and grammar schools don’t teach anymore, and it’s only gotten progressively worse over the last decades. Kids can’t even graduate high school, if they don’t drop just out before that, so forget getting into a “good college”.
Math scores, reading scores all below sub-par. It’s a miracle ANY of them even graduate!
They had to cook up a way to “justify” stupid to keep greasing their wheel of endless tax dollars for teachers unions, schools systems, Govt. college loans.
It’s all about the money - certainly not the kids, or the consequences.
QUOTE: "it’s only gotten progressively worse". In more ways than one. And you are right in that the high schools don't teach anything, compared to the time when an elementary school education was considered quite enough for most people. Then came the push for everyone in high school, and next everyone to go to college. And guess what: the whole thing turned into a racket, and a boondoggle for the insiders.
I was shocked to learn that my granddaughter, age 15, is taking Latin in high school. Her county surprised me that she could sign up for ROTC to be exempt from PE. When I went to high school, I flunked Freshman Latin twice. I'd have gladly swapped it for ROTC if such was available to me in the mid 1950's. I'd have stayed in and been a General by now! LOL
Susie, it is so true. Unfortunately, the schools are out of control, and the teachers just pass kids along rather than having any expectations. If they try to intercede, they get the crazy parents who come down and threaten them or they get lawyers up their ass. It even gets worse because schools and training programs for medicine are just passing people along with no experience, they may stand there and be physically present, but their ability to think cognitively or have the hand eye coordination or experience necessary to take care of complex problems is severely limited. Extends to every field from Aerospace to law to medicine. Education has always been the key. Unfortunately, when you teach to the middle of the class, and you continually see the middle of the class dropping year after year after year eventually you’re teaching to the caveman level. The good news is somebody will be able to reinvent the wheel.
Affirmative Action was a great concept but failed because it was engineered by our federal government who never had to make it work.
It was a common practice in the '60s and '70s to use validated testing to measure an individual's basic abilities. If the scores were good, it was a good bet the applicant could be hired and do well on the job. These were similar to the tests the US Army used to quickly place recruited solders to the correct job during wartimes. However, when these tests began showing large numbers of minorities couldn't attain minimal scores, they came down hard on companies that used them.
Thus was born the notion that it was not the fault of the applicant's lack of intrinsic ability. It was the company's fault for being discriminatory in their hiring. Company's needed to figure out how to employ unskilled and incapable people into skilled positions.
Sounds a little like the workers at Boeing or the air traffic controllers hired today.
The Feds write hundreds of "noble" laws that sound great, but it falls to the courts to define what the laws mean and how they are applied. Until some company gets sued by a job applicant who didn't get hired, the courts may NEVER provide these operational definitions.
The Feds make up rules they don't have to figure out how to apply to make them workable but boy-o-boy they are noble ideas. Equal outcome can't be legislated.
EXCELLENT point. They are allowed to conduct insider trading of securities. They were exempted from the clotshot.
NONE of them pay into social security or Medicare. They have better retirement and healthcare benefits. Why is it we never hear that the Federal pension plan is teetering on bankruptcy and they have to raise the retirement age?
Today Don had me reading a New Yorker article, an event less frequent than a total solar eclipse. I will say that a "sidebar" in a bench trial is more rare than floods in Dubai and may literally be unique.
I had a subscription to WaPo mainly to have some fun trolling the comments section. Also important to keep up with the enemy. Can be quite amusing too. The vile was amazing. Me, I never threatened anyone with bodily harm. What I did do was make fun of them and point out all the hypocrisy. Within a month or two I was banned for life. LOL.
Did you get a subscription refund? Oh, speaking of which, ten percent of the WaPo staff recently got banned for life. Their crime? Creating a money-losing newspaper (once in a while, justice is served)
04/18/24: I went through the trouble of getting a Telegraph (UK) sub once, about seven years ago. Had some trouble setting it up and their conscientious tech people worked like stevedores to straighten out the problem.
No Good Reader Goes Unpunished:
About ten minutes after everything got straightened out, the Telegraph launched the by-now notorious scam "Telegraph-Plus" (ESPN+, CNN+, UpYours+), whereby you had to cough up more $$$ to be able to read what YOU HAD ALREADY PAID FOR.
"NIAGARA FALLS!" Slowly I turned and demanded a refund. "We don't issue them."
Going to rock things a bit here and say I don’t see DEI dying at all. It’s just changing names and tactics and going stealthy. It isn’t going to die because without racism, the left has nothing to scream about or raise money on today. DEI is going to radically damage or end many college’s and universities. That’s because parents will eventually “just say no” and stop sending their kids there. As with most things, changes in where the money goes are what matters. Just ask Sears Roebuck. Harvard and others like it are about to face the grim reaper and they are clueless and largely defenseless because elitists no longer understand what makes America “America”.
At the current pace of things, and with this particular Federal government, it ain’t going away anytime soon. You’re absolutely correct that they just change the words and euphemisms, and put it in a different dress, but they won’t stop until they’re forced to stop. And that requires they suffer swift, severe and painful consequences.
Good column. DEI, alas, has done a good job of fracturing America. The Progressive movement is behind that of course. It is refreshing to see the pendulum move back towards the center where it belongs.
Had a hard time choosing between “Tiger Moms” and “doing their homework”, because, in large part it’s the Moms who enforce the homework doing.
But I went with “doing their homework” because, in the end, that’s what gets anyone anywhere, affording the most equal of opportunities for all who do likewise.
I’d add, if you need to have brain surgery, (or get your car fixed, or build a house, or someone to defend you in court), do you want the person who excels in the actual performance of that task, or the one who got the title by simply “checking the right boxes”?
Good point, but the problem is we never know that about those we receive care from. In addition, post COVID, I know of some highly qualified physicians who supported the BIG LIE and will never admit they administered the wrong medical care.
Maybe not quite obvious yet at this juncture as the real-life results of this DIE project are only now beginning to surface. But over the next few years, the results will be much more apparent and devastating, though they will most likely never be attributed to the true underlying cause: DIE, or rather, FAFO.
Yup. I don't want to be operated on by a doctor who was hired for being a "Target of Opportunity" as they called it when I was working for big fat liberal university. Nor would i like to be cut on by someone who cheated on their exams.
I lost a bet with myself. I thought Don would be commenting about this: In a 2-1 ruling Tuesday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Becky Pepper-Jackson, 13, a transgender girl who argued that the law prevented her from running on the girls’ cross-country and track teams at her middle school.
“Offering B.P.J. a ‘choice’ between not participating in sports and participating only on boys teams is no real choice at all,” Judge Toby Heytens wrote, using the plaintiff’s initials. “The defendants cannot expect that B.P.J. will countermand her social transition, her medical treatment, and all the work she has done with her schools, teachers, and coaches for nearly half her life by introducing herself to teammates, coaches, and even opponents as a boy.”
The sad part is it could be easily fixed if sports created a category for trans folks but they would first have to concede there are only two sexes, and that is why they will not do so. So they will destroy sports as we know it instead.
Also because it would reveal that the real numbers of these loud, pushy, and twisted nut cases, attempting to upend civilization - and reality! - as we know it, “transgenders” actually only makeup about .000000001% of the total population, thus never enough to constitute any kind of team.
Who could forget those traits! I try my best not to think of lefty's too much because it raises my blood pressure and gives me the sudden desire to kick something across the yard.
Actually, high school sports are ridiculously overvalued in this country; their main purpose seems to be to get the parents and taxpayers to shout rah-rah at the games so they will continue to financially support public institutions that have become less and less productive with regard to real learning.
There is an argument to that for sure but as one of the millions of guys who played HS sports I want them to stay honest and not become yet another nail in the country's coffin. I was a good athlete but had no chance to get a scholarship and it was okay because like many, I played because I loved the sport. Liberals had better start reconciling their actions before it's liberals themselves who will become extinct when Americans finally say "enough".
Discrimination originally was “invidious discrimination” that is harmful discrimination based on immutable characteristics. Race, national origin, and sex are immutable characteristics. Transsexuality is not immutable in its early stages it is treatable.
"immutable /ĭ-myoo͞′tə-bəl/
adjective
Not subject or susceptible to change.
Not mutable; not capable or susceptible of change; unchangeable; unalterable.
This a comment on the courts opinion. Discrimination itself is nor inherently bad and is content neutral. When we make choices that fits the original meaning of discrimination. For example judging people by the content of their character is discrimination. In Brown v Board of Education the US Supreme ruled that invidious discrimination by the government based on immutable characteristics was a denial of Equal Protection under the law. Now common discourse conflates invidious discrimination with discrimination. Allowing women to compete against other women doesn’t harm men and there is a valid justification so while it is discrimination it is not invidious. Discrimination against men who claim to be women in athletics is not based on an immutable characteristic and doesn’t deserve protection of the law.
Let's pump the brakes, here - let's remember that today's DEI is simply the "natural" result of what is recognized as government-mandated equal opportunity, courtesy of the CRA of 1964.
The fourteenth amendement had been clear re: equal opportunity, and all that follows from it, for nearly a hundred years before the introduction of Affirmative Action, race and gender quotas because enforcing the constitution was too much bother.
Who ever would have thought that a return to the 70s would be yearned for in the twenty-first century?
Americans of Asian descent are so much smarter than any of their peers because of Tiger Moms.
Don’t want to start a new thread that may be too far off topic, but well conceived research has provided strong evidence that the Asian difference in cognitive ability is largely genetic. Add a tiger mom, and it goes off the charts.
In absolutely equal family upbringing, socio-economic status, school quality, and other environmental variables that may affect academic performance and IQ, the Asian sample - as a group - would out perform every other race/national origin. There are always exception at the individual level so this only applies to large samples - which is the standard for published research.
When this is brought up in any discussion, people are horrified by this statement yet published research by well-known people have the data to show it.
If humans can vary by the skin color, eye color, height, physical structure, why can't we all vary on the things we can't see with our eyes? The researchers on this topic have vanished - given up - because it is so hard for society to accept.
Always room for cello goes with doing not just the assigned homework problems but all of them in the text chapter. There was once a time when, upon the first class meeting for math or physics courses, you looked around and saw a bunch of Asian faces, you'd think about dropping the course because the grading curve would be insurmountable.
And cello - and all music instruction - supports math skills. Our not Asian grandchildren are homeschooled math whizzes who take piano lessons. And wrestle. And ballet for the girls. They spray dye their hair for wrestling tournaments to match the team color and do a mean ballet bun for dance.
I loved it when there were football players in required classes. They got slotted to easier Profs. My chemistry class was going over covalent bonds and similar, whereas my roommate was studying benzene rings and organic compounds…
While you disagree, I'm all in favor of separate spaces for the lgbtqiaxyz crowd. I really, Really, REALLY don't want to have my grand children exposed to two guys making out in the restaurant, or the backless leather pants they seem to think are cool
Am I the only one who is way beyond tired of hearing ‘an Obama Appointee’ attached to every ‘F’ up in America today?
I didn’t think so…
Biden's will soon get their chance
Half our problems are ObamAA- appointees, the other half are ObamAA- anointees. Think Xiden and his crew of incompetence.
Double-A battery duds.
LOL. The ObammAA- is in reference to what he did to our national credit rating. Stole it from Grouchy Old Cripple.
BEST POST! AND WHY ARE THESE MORONS STILL ALLOWED TO LIVE IN OUR COUNTRY?
THANK YOU, CHUCK! I AM VERY TIRED OF HEARING THE DISGUSTING CURSZE WORD "OBAMA" ATTACHED TO ANYTHING, IT IS A RECIPE FOR HORRIFIC DISASTER. IS HE STILL ALIVE?
It's a Port Authority bus schedule. One comes along every twenty minutes.
Chuck, you hit the nail on the head with that one.
"Equal opportunity." Has such a nice ring to it, doesn't it? It did when it first came into vogue, as well, back in Thee Olden Tymes of the '60's. When well meaning white PIP's (People In Power) decided that all 'Merica needed to do in order to rectify all those years of evil racism was put black people at the head of every line in which they stood because their great-great-grandparents might have been brough here as slaves. (To digress, to be brought to North America from Africa as a slave was a distinct level up from such person's lot in life back in The Dark Continent, and their progeny should have been grateful for the luck of having been born on these shores. Maybe not so much if you were shipped to the Caribbean of worse luck, Brazil, but that's another story.) Talk about unintended consequences! On second thought, were those consequences perhaps intended? You be the judge.
"Affirmative Action" soon expanded exponentially to include women (not a minority, but hey, that's beside the point) as well as other non-slave-descendant ethnicities and sexual perverts, to the point that now, all those "disadvantaged minorities" compose a large majority of citizens! The only group not given this unfair benefit was, need I say, heterosexual men of European ancestry. You know, the ones who really (sorry, all you descendants-of-slaves seeking to claim this distinction) built this country with the sweat of their brows, backs and brains. We saw a mad scramble to claim "disadvantaged minority status" once it became clear that the road to success was paved for those fortunate enough to gain that status by the success of the so-called "civil rights movement" on behalf of blacks. Next it was females, then the queers, followed by every non-white heterosexual group known to man. Check out any legislatively defined "protected class." Here in The Keystone State, it includes groups defined by "Color, Religious creed, Ancestry, Age (40 and over), Sex, National origin, Familial status (only in housing), Handicap or disability and the use, handling, or training of support or guide animals for disability and Retaliation for filing a complaint, opposing unlawful behavior, or assisting investigations" all of which are precluded from being a basis upon which one may choose to act. N.B., it has never, to my knowledge, been used to punish discrimination against white men or Christians of any color. To make my intended point, however: if you think that a return to "equal opportunity" means a colorblind (and everything else but merit) based society, you are in for a rude awakening. That's where this present imbroglio began, my friend. Words mean only what those using them intend for them to mean, so "equal opportunity" can and will be used to disfavor the same group of people that DEI more openly discriminates against. Ironically, white PIP's use it to maintain their favored position against all comers, including other white people (excluding females and sexual perverts, of course). We have come to the end of the road for our once glorious constitutional republic; we are reduced to the proverbial elemental state so nicely defined by Hobbes: a state of war in which life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” because individuals are in a “war of all against all”. So buckle up, buckaroos, we are in for a bumpy flight from here on out.
Blacks: We built America.
Me: Great, now do Africa.
Me: With Baltimore being 61% African American, let’s see you start by rebuilding the bridge!
I don’t think cars can drive over floating logs that are tied together.
You'd be surprised. During WWII, the 13th Armored Division built pontoon bridges they then drove tanks and Halftracks over. Bragging on the Greatest Gen. I guess you had to be there.
I believe you. Who designed and installed that pontoon bridge?
I don't know that, but my dear departed drove to Knoxville for a Veterans' Day program our grandson was in, there he spoke to the assembly about that pontoon bridge, and all the 8 to 10 year old boys thronged him afterward for Q&A. (Hubby and I were 18 years apart, but he'd use phrases like "kids our age.") I went to two more 13th reunions after his death in 2016, and it was just too sad to continue, given the age of most of his Army buddies. With X number of deaths per day, now, not just per year. On the ship back to the US, they were told they'd get 30 days leave and then go Honolulu. By then Japan had surrendered. He served stateside during the Korean "Police Action."
Depends on if they are tied together with rope, cable, or the African favorite, a vine.
Finally, the answer is in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJCTasxO9Bk
You'd wipe out the world-wide surplus of Lego sets. And the MD legislature would mandate a $100/hour minimum wage for the rebuild. Imagine how many Hunter Biden oil portraits of his mother-in-law that he'd have to paint to pay for all of it!
Hunter's paintings may be as pretty as Jane Goodall's Koko's are, but they most certainly will not be as well-loved.
As long as it translates into more Chinese hookers for Hunter, we'll live happily ever after...
If they had to be brought here to do it why are South Africa and Zimbabwe such a mess. Of course it was thriving when it was called Rhodesia. Hmmm. What do you suppose happened?
" . . . if you think that a return to "equal opportunity" means a colorblind (and everything else but merit) based society, you are in for a rude awakening."
Your legal perspective is spot-on. I am not a well read and experienced attorney, but have worked with several in my career. My experience is from trying to implement these promulgated "concepts" from our Feds.
I suffered - but survived - two OFCCP audits many years ago. Their summary decision about our hiring practices had nothing to do with equal opportunity. Our company spent tens of thousands of dollars running expensive display ads in newspapers 25 - and even 40 - miles away trying to recruit qualified minorities because our factory was in a small farming town that had a very low minority population. We never got a successful response to the job ads. There either weren't any qualified applicants or they didn't want to drive the 30 to 60 minute commute for a factory job. We provided the opportunity, but were smacked aside the head from the Feds because the OUTCOME wasn't equal.
Then, there is the problem of the Feds can write any law they want, but the operational application of the law isn't known until the courts have enough case law to define the "how-to". That can take years - and expensive legal costs - to know. How long did it take for companies to get an operational definition of "reasonable accommodation" to the ADA? HR managers lived in fear for years waiting to be sued in the case that would finally define the term. No HR manager wanted their company to be that case.
04/18/24: Good show, sir. Now. Contemplate what a vast pool of spilled ink looks like facing a reader on a (desk) computer screen. When the Exxon-Hobbes-Valdez hit the rocks in Alaska, what a mess, right? Fortunately, the people tasked with cleaning it up knew that if they could segregate all that gunk into what the environmentalists called "separate, easy-to read, succinct paragraphs," they'd get the ink moped up in no time. And so they did. A lesson to us all, greatly appreciated.
Asian Americans are smart because their tiger moms make them do their homework. And then take cello lessons.
You and I are thinking alike this morning. I thought most all the choices were good and I was going to go with doing their homework. Then you have to ask why, what's the root of that motivation, then you realize it's the Tiger Mom.
Actually it's Tiger dads. They still have fathers in the house.
I think its the catnip sprinkled on the homework.
UMMM. I THINK THEY USE POT SPRINKLE NOW, THEREFORE, NON-GRADUATING MORONS!
Given a DEI head start with artificial IQ-enhancers, they'd still be also-rans.
I cannot imagine what my parents would have said, and then done, to me, or where they would have sent me for mental, and educational, as well as Christian Therapy, if I had wanted to attend a school that would hand out "Artificial IQ Enhancers" of any kind as an educational improvement. Home Confinement, in complete Silence, would have been doled out immediately, with serious punishments to follow, which would be silently accepted with great remorse and embarrassment. I am grateful that my parents are not here to experience such shameful behaviors as we are now witnessing. The effects on children are surely devastating and long lasting.
oh no, they graduate them. They just cant read, cant add, and usually cant speak so they need govnmt assistance because woo is mee, I cant get a job and have no money
that s thing .... that if we mention we get tracked even though not by Don.
tj, you are so right about this. So many of my neighbors do not work, drive new cars, sleep in daily, order food to be delivered... I am as old as Dirt, and still work every day! And want to work! Totally different mind set. WE WILL MAKE IT THROUGH THE INSANITY.... HAVE A WONDERFUL AND ENJOYABLE DAY! STAY BLESSED AND SAFE!
In Oregon you dont have to do homework or even pass a test to graduate any more. In another state, a 12 yr olds mom sued because *gasp 'homework is too hard, she had to spend 30 minutes doing it'. Never heard the outcome, I need to go digging.
Would love to know if mom passed sixth grade on the second go around.
04/18/24: In Oregon, she'd be TEACHING the class (no wonder Harvard brought back those raycist/misogynist/Hitlerian SAT exams!).
NO, SHE MOVED TO GEORGIA AND IS NOW A D.A. FOR A LARGE COUNTY. ANOTHER HAWVAHD SUCCESS STORY FA SHURE....'JUS AX HER.
TAKE A TYLENOL FIRST, YOU WILL GET A HEADACHE FROM THIS PAINFUL DIG.
I believe software (culture) is more important than hardware (genetics).
Tupperware gets them over the hurdles.
YOU ARE PROBABLY ONTO SOMETHING HERE. MY 40ish YEAR OLD NEIGHBOR HAD A TUPPERWARE BOWL FILLED BITH "WEED" AS HE CALLED IT.... HE CAME OVER TO' BORROW' A LID FOR IT, IF I HAVE ONE THAT FITS. AS AN ELDERLY WHITE WOMAN, SURELY I HAVE A COLLECTION OF TUPPERWARE LIDS ON HAND... FOR MORONS.
We are going to have a serious problem trying to donate his brain to science.
There were always too many extremely well qualified Asian and white candidates for admission. They could fill the class with 4.8GPA and 1600 SAT candidates each year. Legacys and big donors got probably 20% of spots. 10% probably were for diversity candidates who did not have similar GPA/SATs/ACTs. You were favored if you went to HS in the northeast or California. Prep schools vs Public. It was quite impossible to select. Therefore personal statements and interviews were critical. Academic coaches gamed the system. 1500/1700 slos per year. About 10-15 years ago things changed with merit less and less important, diversity (other than politics) more critical. If your sob story was profound or if your melanin correct you were elevated to the top of the list, if you were Trans or in transition better. The Tests were abandoned to partially hide the stats. They are appalling. The admitted are generally dumber and more entitled/ arrogant than their professors. Funny how the Asian Community supports the Democratic Party, yet are upset when the “Jim Crow”admission laws they set up for colleges then affect them. Not all Asians are bright..just look at representative Ted Lieu. FJB
The whole DIE Project is also a great racket to give cover to the failure of the lower school systems to actually give kids any kind of real education. They just can’t cut it anymore because our high schools and grammar schools don’t teach anymore, and it’s only gotten progressively worse over the last decades. Kids can’t even graduate high school, if they don’t drop just out before that, so forget getting into a “good college”.
Math scores, reading scores all below sub-par. It’s a miracle ANY of them even graduate!
They had to cook up a way to “justify” stupid to keep greasing their wheel of endless tax dollars for teachers unions, schools systems, Govt. college loans.
It’s all about the money - certainly not the kids, or the consequences.
QUOTE: "it’s only gotten progressively worse". In more ways than one. And you are right in that the high schools don't teach anything, compared to the time when an elementary school education was considered quite enough for most people. Then came the push for everyone in high school, and next everyone to go to college. And guess what: the whole thing turned into a racket, and a boondoggle for the insiders.
I was shocked to learn that my granddaughter, age 15, is taking Latin in high school. Her county surprised me that she could sign up for ROTC to be exempt from PE. When I went to high school, I flunked Freshman Latin twice. I'd have gladly swapped it for ROTC if such was available to me in the mid 1950's. I'd have stayed in and been a General by now! LOL
Susie, it is so true. Unfortunately, the schools are out of control, and the teachers just pass kids along rather than having any expectations. If they try to intercede, they get the crazy parents who come down and threaten them or they get lawyers up their ass. It even gets worse because schools and training programs for medicine are just passing people along with no experience, they may stand there and be physically present, but their ability to think cognitively or have the hand eye coordination or experience necessary to take care of complex problems is severely limited. Extends to every field from Aerospace to law to medicine. Education has always been the key. Unfortunately, when you teach to the middle of the class, and you continually see the middle of the class dropping year after year after year eventually you’re teaching to the caveman level. The good news is somebody will be able to reinvent the wheel.
I have read a couple articles recently where the colleges are going back to the SATs again. Should be interesting.
TJ, the present class is so dumb it made Obama look like Einstein. They want to get back to the days when Al Gore was considered smart (lol).
Don't be dissing Gore on the internet he invented.
Da nerve!
Affirmative Action was a great concept but failed because it was engineered by our federal government who never had to make it work.
It was a common practice in the '60s and '70s to use validated testing to measure an individual's basic abilities. If the scores were good, it was a good bet the applicant could be hired and do well on the job. These were similar to the tests the US Army used to quickly place recruited solders to the correct job during wartimes. However, when these tests began showing large numbers of minorities couldn't attain minimal scores, they came down hard on companies that used them.
Thus was born the notion that it was not the fault of the applicant's lack of intrinsic ability. It was the company's fault for being discriminatory in their hiring. Company's needed to figure out how to employ unskilled and incapable people into skilled positions.
Sounds a little like the workers at Boeing or the air traffic controllers hired today.
The Feds write hundreds of "noble" laws that sound great, but it falls to the courts to define what the laws mean and how they are applied. Until some company gets sued by a job applicant who didn't get hired, the courts may NEVER provide these operational definitions.
The Feds make up rules they don't have to figure out how to apply to make them workable but boy-o-boy they are noble ideas. Equal outcome can't be legislated.
The feds also make up rules that don’t apply to themselves.
EXCELLENT point. They are allowed to conduct insider trading of securities. They were exempted from the clotshot.
NONE of them pay into social security or Medicare. They have better retirement and healthcare benefits. Why is it we never hear that the Federal pension plan is teetering on bankruptcy and they have to raise the retirement age?
The list goes on.
BEST AND MOST ANGER PRODUCING POST TODAY! THANKS, SHRUGGED!!!! I am back to normal anger levels again.
Hah! It really does irk BIGLY!
All the time.
I've never met a black person who could not learn, but I've sure met a bunch who refuse to.
Today Don had me reading a New Yorker article, an event less frequent than a total solar eclipse. I will say that a "sidebar" in a bench trial is more rare than floods in Dubai and may literally be unique.
I had a subscription to WaPo mainly to have some fun trolling the comments section. Also important to keep up with the enemy. Can be quite amusing too. The vile was amazing. Me, I never threatened anyone with bodily harm. What I did do was make fun of them and point out all the hypocrisy. Within a month or two I was banned for life. LOL.
Good job. Well played!
Did you get a subscription refund? Oh, speaking of which, ten percent of the WaPo staff recently got banned for life. Their crime? Creating a money-losing newspaper (once in a while, justice is served)
Didn't pursue the refund. Yes, where would these rags be without the socialists like Bezos...
04/18/24: I went through the trouble of getting a Telegraph (UK) sub once, about seven years ago. Had some trouble setting it up and their conscientious tech people worked like stevedores to straighten out the problem.
No Good Reader Goes Unpunished:
About ten minutes after everything got straightened out, the Telegraph launched the by-now notorious scam "Telegraph-Plus" (ESPN+, CNN+, UpYours+), whereby you had to cough up more $$$ to be able to read what YOU HAD ALREADY PAID FOR.
"NIAGARA FALLS!" Slowly I turned and demanded a refund. "We don't issue them."
Was it the "vile" or the "bile" that was amazing?
LOL. Indeed, it was both...and then some. Love how they call US a cult. The lack of self-awareness is stunning. And the TDS!
A reference in a Don Surber column to a TNY article, written by someone who isn't insane, is a rare event.
Going to rock things a bit here and say I don’t see DEI dying at all. It’s just changing names and tactics and going stealthy. It isn’t going to die because without racism, the left has nothing to scream about or raise money on today. DEI is going to radically damage or end many college’s and universities. That’s because parents will eventually “just say no” and stop sending their kids there. As with most things, changes in where the money goes are what matters. Just ask Sears Roebuck. Harvard and others like it are about to face the grim reaper and they are clueless and largely defenseless because elitists no longer understand what makes America “America”.
At the current pace of things, and with this particular Federal government, it ain’t going away anytime soon. You’re absolutely correct that they just change the words and euphemisms, and put it in a different dress, but they won’t stop until they’re forced to stop. And that requires they suffer swift, severe and painful consequences.
Not holding my breath.
Good column. DEI, alas, has done a good job of fracturing America. The Progressive movement is behind that of course. It is refreshing to see the pendulum move back towards the center where it belongs.
Had a hard time choosing between “Tiger Moms” and “doing their homework”, because, in large part it’s the Moms who enforce the homework doing.
But I went with “doing their homework” because, in the end, that’s what gets anyone anywhere, affording the most equal of opportunities for all who do likewise.
I’d add, if you need to have brain surgery, (or get your car fixed, or build a house, or someone to defend you in court), do you want the person who excels in the actual performance of that task, or the one who got the title by simply “checking the right boxes”?
It’s just so damned obvious.
Didnt earn it.
Precisely!
Good point, but the problem is we never know that about those we receive care from. In addition, post COVID, I know of some highly qualified physicians who supported the BIG LIE and will never admit they administered the wrong medical care.
Maybe not quite obvious yet at this juncture as the real-life results of this DIE project are only now beginning to surface. But over the next few years, the results will be much more apparent and devastating, though they will most likely never be attributed to the true underlying cause: DIE, or rather, FAFO.
Yup. I don't want to be operated on by a doctor who was hired for being a "Target of Opportunity" as they called it when I was working for big fat liberal university. Nor would i like to be cut on by someone who cheated on their exams.
I did the homework answer also.
I lost a bet with myself. I thought Don would be commenting about this: In a 2-1 ruling Tuesday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Becky Pepper-Jackson, 13, a transgender girl who argued that the law prevented her from running on the girls’ cross-country and track teams at her middle school.
“Offering B.P.J. a ‘choice’ between not participating in sports and participating only on boys teams is no real choice at all,” Judge Toby Heytens wrote, using the plaintiff’s initials. “The defendants cannot expect that B.P.J. will countermand her social transition, her medical treatment, and all the work she has done with her schools, teachers, and coaches for nearly half her life by introducing herself to teammates, coaches, and even opponents as a boy.”
The sad part is it could be easily fixed if sports created a category for trans folks but they would first have to concede there are only two sexes, and that is why they will not do so. So they will destroy sports as we know it instead.
Also because it would reveal that the real numbers of these loud, pushy, and twisted nut cases, attempting to upend civilization - and reality! - as we know it, “transgenders” actually only makeup about .000000001% of the total population, thus never enough to constitute any kind of team.
The tyranny of the super minority.
Loud pushy and twisted. That is about the best description of them I have heard.
Don't forget repulsive-looking and mentally unstable.
Who could forget those traits! I try my best not to think of lefty's too much because it raises my blood pressure and gives me the sudden desire to kick something across the yard.
Actually, high school sports are ridiculously overvalued in this country; their main purpose seems to be to get the parents and taxpayers to shout rah-rah at the games so they will continue to financially support public institutions that have become less and less productive with regard to real learning.
There is an argument to that for sure but as one of the millions of guys who played HS sports I want them to stay honest and not become yet another nail in the country's coffin. I was a good athlete but had no chance to get a scholarship and it was okay because like many, I played because I loved the sport. Liberals had better start reconciling their actions before it's liberals themselves who will become extinct when Americans finally say "enough".
This would be the best solution but as you say they wont, so they will continue to erase girls and women.
Discrimination originally was “invidious discrimination” that is harmful discrimination based on immutable characteristics. Race, national origin, and sex are immutable characteristics. Transsexuality is not immutable in its early stages it is treatable.
"immutable /ĭ-myoo͞′tə-bəl/
adjective
Not subject or susceptible to change.
Not mutable; not capable or susceptible of change; unchangeable; unalterable.
…
Unable to be changed without exception."
I normally like your comments but have no idea what you are saying here. Please explain the relevancy to my comment. Thanks.
This a comment on the courts opinion. Discrimination itself is nor inherently bad and is content neutral. When we make choices that fits the original meaning of discrimination. For example judging people by the content of their character is discrimination. In Brown v Board of Education the US Supreme ruled that invidious discrimination by the government based on immutable characteristics was a denial of Equal Protection under the law. Now common discourse conflates invidious discrimination with discrimination. Allowing women to compete against other women doesn’t harm men and there is a valid justification so while it is discrimination it is not invidious. Discrimination against men who claim to be women in athletics is not based on an immutable characteristic and doesn’t deserve protection of the law.
Got it. Not sure if you were a professor or not but I know I would have likely flunked you cpurse😂
I would fall in the “not” category, I just an old crank on the internet, so you are safe
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/federal-appeals-court-overturns-west-virginias-transgender-sports-ban-rcna148032
This won't be the last word about it.
FJB appointed judge
Also, the BHO appointed ones.
…50 years ago when Nixon was president and hot pants were in style…
…There were many things wrong about the 1970’s. …
Don, Bubbaleh, I hope you’re not suggesting there was something wrong with Hot Pants. Worn by the right woman, they were… Magical!
who remembers the Southwest Airlines flight attendants in their hot pants and boots? no one would confuse them with lizzo
OK, now transfer that image to Lizzo…
Do you mind, I’m trying to enjoy a morning coffee… besides, not exactly ‘the right woman’…
Didn’t she just quit or something?
Just doin’ my part to keep “body positivity” alive. LOL
No she quit, no one complained so she went oppies really I didnt mean all of music. So she is back.
gah, eye bleach, eye bleach
"Not bad but where’s the black applicant joke?" Coffee spit :-D
"There were many things wrong about the 1970s.
Equal opportunity was not among them."
Let's pump the brakes, here - let's remember that today's DEI is simply the "natural" result of what is recognized as government-mandated equal opportunity, courtesy of the CRA of 1964.
The fourteenth amendement had been clear re: equal opportunity, and all that follows from it, for nearly a hundred years before the introduction of Affirmative Action, race and gender quotas because enforcing the constitution was too much bother.
Who ever would have thought that a return to the 70s would be yearned for in the twenty-first century?
Americans of Asian descent are so much smarter than any of their peers because of Tiger Moms.
Don’t want to start a new thread that may be too far off topic, but well conceived research has provided strong evidence that the Asian difference in cognitive ability is largely genetic. Add a tiger mom, and it goes off the charts.
In absolutely equal family upbringing, socio-economic status, school quality, and other environmental variables that may affect academic performance and IQ, the Asian sample - as a group - would out perform every other race/national origin. There are always exception at the individual level so this only applies to large samples - which is the standard for published research.
When this is brought up in any discussion, people are horrified by this statement yet published research by well-known people have the data to show it.
If humans can vary by the skin color, eye color, height, physical structure, why can't we all vary on the things we can't see with our eyes? The researchers on this topic have vanished - given up - because it is so hard for society to accept.
Here in the homeland, I had a rolling pin mom. (Geez, do they even make rolling pins any more?)
Always room for cello goes with doing not just the assigned homework problems but all of them in the text chapter. There was once a time when, upon the first class meeting for math or physics courses, you looked around and saw a bunch of Asian faces, you'd think about dropping the course because the grading curve would be insurmountable.
And cello - and all music instruction - supports math skills. Our not Asian grandchildren are homeschooled math whizzes who take piano lessons. And wrestle. And ballet for the girls. They spray dye their hair for wrestling tournaments to match the team color and do a mean ballet bun for dance.
I loved it when there were football players in required classes. They got slotted to easier Profs. My chemistry class was going over covalent bonds and similar, whereas my roommate was studying benzene rings and organic compounds…
Tempted to choose "They're secretly Jewish', but that would be racist.
Jeannie Suk Gersen…the first 3 words in one of DS’s most well done pieces.
😊
While you disagree, I'm all in favor of separate spaces for the lgbtqiaxyz crowd. I really, Really, REALLY don't want to have my grand children exposed to two guys making out in the restaurant, or the backless leather pants they seem to think are cool
Not to mention how you have to pry them apart in a men's room stall.