[The Federalist] According to an anonymous whistleblower letter posted by Air Force Times, Pentagon policy makers are promoting "diversity and inclusion" at the expense of high, uncompromised standards in an elite Special Operations Forces command. The letter focuses an unnamed female captain who began training with the Special Tactics Training Squadron (STTS) in 2018, hoping to become the first woman to join a combat controller team (CCT).
The female captain dropped out of physically demanding combat controller course exercises several times, but unlike male trainees with similar difficulties, Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) officials kept extending special concessions to keep her in the program.
The detailed anonymous letter reported 11 examples of unusual concessions that AFSOC extended to retain the female captain, even though she had not met longstanding standards and repeatedly dropped out of essential training events, such as rigorous diving exercises and solo land navigation. Air Force Times, which confirmed details with a second source, obtained performance forms and score charts that appeared to support the whistleblower’s letter, and submitted them for comment to AFSOC Commander Lt. Gen. Jim Slife.
Slife did not refute specific allegations, citing privacy considerations, but he vehemently denied that AFSOC standards had changed: "While the standards remain the same, the norms have not." This is an equivocation, based on a half-truth.
"Norms" did change last year when U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) Commander General Richard Clarke released his Diversity & Inclusion Strategic Plan. The Center for Military Readiness analyzed the SOCOM diversity mandate, noting that 12 times on 20 pages, the document asserted without evidence that "Diversity and inclusion are operational imperatives." These vacuous, unsupported words have triggered turbulence in one of the nation’s most elite fighting forces, and probably more we don’t know about.
#2
When two or three of you ladies figure out how to replace a winch cable, service or change a tire on this SOB let me know. I won't be calling you sojurs until I sees it.
#3
"Diversity and inclusion are operational imperatives."
"The Chairman is in power and the situation is excellent."
"We are building Communism."
"The Party is always right."
#4
...A lot of the info I've seen indicates that the Captain made the call at least twice that she was in over her head - but the AFSOC leadership was apparently terrified that they'd be held to account.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
02/14/2022 9:19 Comments ||
Top||
#5
There are tasks women do as well or better than men (on average) but carrying standard infantry loads is not one of them - they will break down the backs and knees of most men over time, never mind women.
#6
Actually Besoker, we had a couple of Female mechanics who could do that, they could even break track and the other nasty work that nobody ever talks about when crewing a tracked vehicle - thing is, they were few and far between, and there was no special Diversity Equity slack given back then. Either they could do the job or they were moved out to become the unofficial 71L for the motorpool. Same for the guys - they'd move them from heavies to doing simple -20 stuff, or loaned out to being a driver for HQ. Some place where they wouldnt be in the way.
Thanks for your insightful comment CC. Please do not relay my comment to either of them. :-(
#7
This Captain knew her limits, but the brass is too concerned with proving DIE (Diversity Inclusion Equity) dogma to worry about things like putting her in a situation where she would not only get killed due to physical limitations but take her troops with her.
This is sickening, and completely ignores the first job of the military: Win Wars.
[ZERO] On Friday we observed that something odd was happening in the market: while stocks were tumbling, pushing most tech names into a deep bear market amid the worst turmoil for risk assets in years, inflows into stocks - both institutional and retail - have been soaring, and according to EPFR data compiled by Bank of America, cumulative equity flows YTD in 2021 have hit a record $153bn, exceeding the pace of early-2021 (when the year started with $151bn in inflows, ahead of a record year of more than $1tn inflows).
"How can this be", we asked and answered that the catalyst behind this unprecedented scramble for risk "is that despite falling prices, investors are bailing on other even more impacted securities, and with a record outflows from money markets/cash as well as huge capital flight out of bond funds, this money has to go somewhere, and that "somewhere" is stocks for now, even though if the Fed is indeed set to hike 7 times this year and drain $2+ trillion from its balance sheet, the pain for stocks is only just starting."
Over the weekend, Goldman desk trader Scott Rubner picked up on this peculiar flow dynamic, and roughly around the time that Goldman's chief (retail client facing) equity strategist David Kostin was cutting the bank's year-end S&P price target to 4,900 from 5,100 (while warning that much more downside could be in place if a recession hits), Rubner wrote that "with money flowing into global equities "at extreme levels", this would need to change before a larger correction can take place: I would turn bearish if the money slows or reverses" he said, adding that "portfolio rebalances of this size typically last for the full quarter (Q1 2022)." Rubner also reminds that the "headlines will continue to be robust through March (i.e., advisor quarter-end rebalancing) March 4th NFP, March 10th Feb CPI, March 16th FOMC Meeting, etc."
Here are the key observations from a still bullish Rubner, as the market continues to crack and remains unable sustain even a modest bounce:
#4
The Buy side is dumping tech stocks and buying gold, oil, palladium, and now Russian and other emerging market stocks. Biggest winner of the last two months is S Africa's incredibly undervalued gem, Sibanye Stillwater
Smart money is probably also betting on an end to COVIDian idiocy in time for the midterm election campaign = a rebound in hotel and airline stocks
#6
All those trillions of printed dollars have to go somewhere. The S&P target price is simply indicating that the stock market will absorb enough to compensate for a 10% inflation rate... which is a conservative estimate, IMO, and in real value the market will go down.
#7
"Recently printed money" heading into stocks at a record rate. The solution is to print more money and drive up inflation? I don't think so. How about getting rid of the Build Back Broke economy and the corruptocrats who are touting this. Term limits, energy independence, limits on spending in DC and bring back manufacturing to the U.S.. Otherwise, we are headed towards 1929 rapidly.
#8
In days gone by there was a term for this, albeit today we are seeing it on a far grander scale, "pumping". Bring the rubes in and all the pension/investment fund money managed by people whose jobs depend on showing a short term profit. Zero interest rates and commission/fees expenses on both sides of hard assets make the little guy see the markets as the only place to keep up and get ahead. Then, news and advice that doesn't mirror the actual world conditions, and as the rube money flows in, selling incrementally out the backside until the
actual reality bites. Bulls make money and bears make money and pigs get slaughtered... or my favorite, "How do you become a millionaire with Merrill Lynch, start with two million"?
Or, How To Create Serial Fraud-Bubbles Out of Thin Air
1. Shut down the economy and send millions of Americans home with zip to do for months
2. Send every American checks totaling $5 trillion in play-money
3. Keep the casin0s closed (but the Mary Jane dispens@ries open)
4. Tell the SEC to go away while armies of fraudsters and stock touts rage to social media & pump shit-stocks and bankrupt joke companies
5. Watch as over 8 million little retail gamblers lose 75% or more of the nearly $1 trillion in stupid money thrown away on ARKK-style garbage stocks, shitcoins, "NFT" tulip bulbs etc
[The Last Refuge] Against the latest court filings by John Durham, highlighting the tip of the political surveillance iceberg, I have been asked to re-post the deep dive into the totality of the scale of the iceberg. I will add some of the latest information into the outline to show how it all connects.
Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; instead, what they did was take the preexisting system and retool it, so the weapons only targeted one side of the political continuum.
Together they recalibrated the domestic surveillance capabilities, the internal spying systems, so that only their political opposition would be targeted. This point is where many people understandably get confused.
In the era shortly after 9/11, the DC national security apparatus was constructed to preserve continuity of government and simultaneously view all Americans as potential threats. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were created specifically for this purpose.
What Barack Obama and Eric Holder did with that new construct was refine the internal targeting mechanisms so that only their ideological opposition became the target of the new national security system. This is a very important nuance to understand as you dig deeper into this research outline.
Washington DC created the modern national security apparatus immediately and hurriedly after 9/11/01. DHS came along in 2002 and within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 the ODNI was formed. When Barack Obama and Eric Holder arrived a few years later, those newly formed institutions were viewed as opportunities to create a very specific national security apparatus that would focus almost exclusively against their political opposition.
The preexisting Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Dept of Justice (DOJ) were then repurposed to become two of the four pillars of the domestic national security apparatus. However, this new construct would have a targeting mechanism based on political ideology. The DHS, ODNI, DOJ and FBI became the four pillars of this new institution. Atop these pillars is where you will find the Fourth Branch of Government.
#2
Spying on Trump is one thing, and bad enough, but if they had people placed such that they had access inside the Trump computers they could even have planted 'evidence' of improper conduct.
#4
Wow! 66% of Dems think Hilda should be investigated. They probably mean investigations like the previous phony rigged investigations where Hilda and others were exonnerated. On the other hand, maybe there are some Dems left who are fed up with the corruption, rigging and wholesale sell out of our country to our enemies.
#5
It all sounds exciting, but I'm going out on a stout limb and predict that nothing will come of this. Too many important people (hah!) would be embarrassed and inconvenienced if any of this actually goes to trial. *pushes his chips on "Lack of Standing"*
#6
I'm splitting my chips between "Ongoing FBI investigation, years 5-8" and the sacrosanct Lawyer-Client privilege and 5th amendment recording...plus Julian Assange committing some form of Arkaniside shortly.
#7
Between this revelation and the tantalizing tease of release of names associated with Epstein, there’s enough material for an entire season of “Kabuki Theater”, brought to you by Coca-Cola….
#8
#4: they are not 'democrat' they are 'left'. I grew up in mass. in the 50's and all my family were democrats. None of them acted like this. They call themselves democrats for political coverage. they are seditionists not democrats.
#9
Many family and friends have have voted Dem. Most are good well-intentioned people. The problem is that the Deepstate is made up of Dems, Rinos and some independents. Somewhere in time, things changed. As things changed, freedom got eroded.
#10
Local state rep primary between an outsider and an insider (both new to our district due to re-districting). Insiders run the party, so they canceled the forum between candidates because of 'too much covid' but then rescheduled at the last minute, so only their candidate could appear. (Reminds me of a lawsuit I had to file some years ago after an out-of-state car wreck - the other party's lawyer's office was next door to the courthouse, and he would get a last minute continuance if we showed up (from 1200 miles away), and would have won if we failed to appear.) Lawfare in action.
[American Thinker] President Job Biden is beginning his second year in office. Just over a year ago when he was elected, or selected, tears of joy flowed in blue cities. Political experts, like Taylor Swift expressed, "Quiet, cautious elation and relief." ABC News, a major player in the Biden campaign, proclaimed through their own tears of joy, "A new day of hope for America."
Is the rest of America thrilled that Biden is in the White House? Was such optimism due Biden’s election, or was this just a sense of relief that the tweeting orange man was on his way out the door?
Joe Biden was never a force of intellect, statesmanship, or wisdom, during his decades in the U.S. Senate, eight years as vice president, or his first year in the Oval Office. A recent example is how Biden, who now wants a black female on the U.S. Supreme Court, blocked the first black woman nominee to the court, Janice Rogers Brown in 2003, an inconvenient fact the corporate media and Biden’s dwindling supporters choose to gloss over.
Even his predecessor and teammate for eight years, President Barack Obama, famously noted, "Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up." As we look at the landscape today, Obama’s words are prophetic.
Domestically we have inflation hitting a 40-year high, which along with rising unemployment, is reminding older Americans of a blast from the past called the misery index, a relic of the Jimmy Carter presidency. Our southern border is wide open to anyone and everyone from around the world, along with rising crime, homelessness, and squalor in American cities.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[The Federalist] According to an anonymous whistleblower letter posted by Air Force Times, Pentagon policy makers are promoting "diversity and inclusion" at the expense of high, uncompromised standards in an elite Special Operations Forces command. The letter focuses an unnamed female captain who began training with the Special Tactics Training Squadron (STTS) in 2018, hoping to become the first woman to join a combat controller team (CCT).
[American Thinker] President Job Biden is beginning his second year in office. Just over a year ago when he was elected, or selected, tears of joy flowed in blue cities. Political experts, like Taylor Swift expressed, "Quiet, cautious elation and relief." ABC News, a major player in the Biden campaign, proclaimed through their own tears of joy, "A new day of hope for America."
