Our Titanic

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Can’t hire qualified operators because they are 50 year old white guys. Check Don’t test your sub for the depths that it will operate at. Check Don’t have a plan in place in case something goes wrong. Check

What if the proposed "sustainable" technologies can't replace the oil and gas that we are phasing out? We'll worry about that later. First, the phase out. Must get oil and gas out of the way to make way for the new. It'll be fine.

I've heard some commentators say that this accident shouldn't deter further exploration of the sea floor. Sorry but this submersible and company were NOT about exploring the sea floor but visiting the remains of the Titanic for well paying Titanic tourists.

You don't want a 50 year old white male, that's what you get. Submersible or a Supreme Court Justice!

FTA: “the core issue is that changing political mores have established the systematic promotion of the unqualified and sidelining of the competent. This has continually weakened our society’s ability to manage modern systems.” Affirmative action is destroying the country, literally. I used to work for a major government contractor for almost 40 years building THE most complex and unforgiving weapons systems that we have. Failure of any kind was absolutely unacceptable. One of the reasons I stayed was that I worked with a very large number of almost 100% extremely skilled, competent and hard working people. We handled immensely difficult design, manufacturing and development processes, and built electronic and mechanical devices to make the weapons safe, durable for decades, and able to function in extreme conditions from a 140F aircraft parking area, to literally outer space during portions of the launch profile of some of them. As I was nearing retirement, affirmative action began to raise it's ugly, destructive head. We had individual engineers who were "affirmative action". Sometimes, they were so spectacularly incompetent and lazy that they only lasted a year or so, thank goodness. One handsome, well spoken young black engineer we hired was the valedictorian of Prairie View A&M a historically black college. A pleasant young man, I never was able to discover if he was actually stupid or not because he essentially refused to do any work. When assigned basic engineering project work, he endlessly sought to "assign" others to do the work he was supposed to do, going around asking experienced engineers to 'help him' by doing this or that. Since my job was to be a technical specialist consultant to any and all engineering departments, when asked to "help", I agreed, but after listening to his proposal, I told him, "That isn't what I do, that is your work, and I only do my kind of specialty engineering. You need to go back and do that. If you run into a difficult design issue or failure, I'll be ready to help you solve that problem." He was fired after about a year. We dodged a bullet. BUT - today, incompetent minority engineers not only survived as entry level, but were fast tracked very quickly to engineering managment positions, where their mediocrity to incompetence was 'papered over' because they were minorities or women, often both. And now they are at second level or higher in engineering management of critical weapons systems. During my career a single "quality escape" (problem that was actually built and made it to the final assembly division, elsewhere) could be counted on the fingers of one hand over 35+ years, with fingers left over. They were extremely rare. A friend who works at the same place today tells me that 'quality escapes' happen multiple times a month now, causing huge delays, huge wasting of time and money to redo work that wasn't done properly the first time. Incompetent people shot through the organization also drives away the competent. Why bother working hard if it is clear that affirmative action candidates, which everyone can see are somewhere between mediocre and truly incompetent will get the promotions and their failures will be endlessly ignored and covered up. Even calling them incompetent will get you fired, after a suitable time to 'discover' your reasons for being fired, of course. This is going on all over the country, and the system can compensate for small amounts of incompetence, but it is now reaching a crisis level and the country and industies struggle to function because of all the incompetents put in place because "white males" are endlessly discriminated against, in favor of minorities and women. Are there no competent minorities and women? Of course there are. But there is a shortage, compared to the "woke" desires to have their faces showing up everywhere, so in addition to competent minorities and females, we have to suffer with incompetent ones - who are protected from the consequences of their failures. In some ways, the people hurt the most are the truly competent minorities and females, who get lumped in with their incompetent 'look alikes'.

Captain Edward Smith was told that Icebergs were in the area, yet instead of altering course, he made the decision, 'Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead.' The White Star Line had no intention of having their new, "unsinkable" flagship be late to port, or have anything less than "Brilliant!" printed in American newspapers. One hundred and eleven years later and we're still debating what caused the wreck. Was it metallurgical malfeasance in one batch among the millions of rivets used to assemble the vessel? Was it poor manufacture of the steel itself? Was it due to navigational equipment error? Was it purposefully sunk by nefarious foes? None of the above. The reason it sunk was poor seamanship by a Captain who, as their most senior officer, knew better, but who buckled to "political pressure" applied by ruthless entities in power.

#5's story is very familiar to me as I went through a similar situation. My industry was IT controlling the manufacture of medical equipment. My first (and only) affirmative action hire came with an impressive resume, was neat and articulate (remember that word) and he had a talent for avoiding work. He was very friendly and polite. When upper management asked me how he was doing, I told them I honestly didn't know because he hasn't finished a project yet. This prompted a closer look at his work in detail and the keeping of careful records of his attendance and use of time. I was able to fire him and avoid any legal problems because his work was horrible and he spent more time on his cell phone than on his computer.

#7, sounds like 0bama, who spent all those years at that prestigious Chicago law firm with his feet up on his desk. Just like he did in the Oval Office.

Don’t hire white guys! BOOM! Next target for EIWhatever!!!