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The time has come for my annual short Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind The Black. I must do this every year in order to make sure I have earned enough money to pay my bills.

 

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As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

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Boeing replaces the head of its defense/space/security division

Ted Colbert
Ted Colbert

Boeing today announced that the head of its defense/space/security division, Ted Colbert, has been removed, effective immediately.

New Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg in his first significant move since taking over in August, said Ted Colbert would be leaving and Steve Parker, the unit’s chief operating officer, would assume Colbert’s responsibilities until a replacement is named at a later date.

One project that Colbert was in charge of was Starliner, a program that has cost the company at least $1.6 billion in overruns because of numerous faulty engineering problems.

Colbert might not be to blame for the endless problems at Starliner, but the fish stinks from the head. He also might be very qualified, but sadly, as his picture shows, he is a minority, and since Boeing went all in on DEI racist hiring quotas a few years ago, which makes the skin color and gender of an applicant a major qualification in hiring, one can’t help wondering if he was a DEI (Didn’t Earn It) hire. At Boeing that policy created a goal to increase black staffing by 20%. Its full report [pdf] makes it very clear it no longer made talent, experience, or skill the primary qualification for getting hired, but skin color and sex took precedence.

As I said, one cannot help wondering if Colbert was hired not because of his great management and engineering knowledge, but because he happened to born with a dark skin color. If so, that might help explain the failures in this paricular division.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

10 comments

  • Directly related:

    TWO FACED “BADASSED” FRUAD: POLITICAL TREASON

    “I very specifically remember this event and I was thinking at the time: This was Kamala Harris’s Ronald Reagan “I am paying for this microphone” moment and would have been revealed as a true badass. A rare and valuable missed opportunity.”

    https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/two-faced-badassed-fruad-political-treason

  • This is a textbook example of how demographic-based hiring practices devalue real achievement. For anyone not a Straight White Male (The Oppressors), there will always be doubt as to the person’s actual ability; often, unjustified. But, still there. It’s reverse prejudice, and like the regular kind, harms the same people, but for State-approved reasons. By the same token, any Oppressor in a major role is viewed as having ‘gotten over’ on some exploited minority. Yeah, the Progressive Vision codified the last several decades, ain’t exactly as advertised. Remember that, when you vote Democrat.

  • Judd Clark

    Blair Ivey: “…there will always be doubt…” exactly. This is one of the worst evils of DEI.

  • Robert Pratt

    Non leftist minorities have been pointing to this very real phenomena for decades, it was on affirmative action before DEI, but Democrats don’t care because at root the pushers of this stuff are often the authentic bigots.

  • M. Murcek

    There used to be this thing in Corporate Land called a “performance review.” You either performed at or above the expectations, or you didn’t.

    Peter Drucker posited that an organization can have only one mission. As soon as it has two or more it will fail at all of them.

  • GaryMike

    My Chemistry degree and years of employed Astronomy instruction is not enough to pretend to be an engineer.

    White males need not apply.

    That’s the point.

    Illusions, delusions.

    In a generation or two, will white males be owed reparations?

  • Agree with all the DEI comments. One other thing is going on here: This is a complete disaster for the competent black engineer hire. Cheers –

  • BLSinSC

    WOW – I thought I’d be the voice of “reason” here with my comment “This is the problem with the Leftists’ “didn’t earn it” policies! Does the person REALLY have the abilities or just the “qualifications”? But, it looks like many others see the same issues of having PREFERENTIAL HIRING!! Sure there should be PREFERENTIAL HIRING, but it should be We PREFER SOMEONE WHO CAN DO THE JOB and HAS THE JOB EXPERIENCE and PROVEN RESULTS!!
    It is a shame that now people look upon a minority in a position and the first thought is “probably AA or DEI”! That’s not fair to people who have worked hard and succeeded on their own merit! The DEMOcrats don’t care – it’s the VOTES that they crave!
    Now, having said all that, did the guy REALLY have the experience and knowledge? If so then he surely had incompetent people below him!

  • pawn

    “Agree with all the DEI comments. One other thing is going on here: This is a complete disaster for the competent black engineer hire.”

    I know this to be true. I worked with and became friends with a black engineer who grew up in the Cherry Hill area of Baltimore.

    You should here him rant about the “racist honkies” he’s had to deal with over the years.

    Pretty funny actually and he takes in all in pretty good humor.

  • Craig Austin

    The feminists said everything will be better by eliminating males, the racists said that everything will be better when we eliminate whites. They are both habitual liars.

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