Time travel

There is an amazing site of facebook called "Absolutely Free Photos".  If you post a picture and ask them to clean it up, or get rid of wrinkles, you get back the most gorgeous photos of your new (fake) self!  Here are a few examples: 

My fav.

 

Nice look.

Me, but not me.

Pretty cool!

I guess I actually looked like this many years ago.  Sigh..........the runway's getting shorter..........sigh

Remember the "Merit Principle"?

During the end of my "illustrious" career, I found myself working at the Public Service Commission.  Remember that bunch?  Guardians of the sacred "Merit Principle", at the time headed by Chairman Edgar Gallant, a wanna-be buddy of every deputy minister in the federal government.  That meant he had to hire whoever they proposed, rendering his sacred principle a hollow, laughable hoax.  

The Commission had been created to put an end to cronyism and inside hiring by the politicians.  It may have worked for a while, but not when I was there.  They tossed that guiding moral light overboard when someone looked around and decided they needed to start hiring more women, lots of francophones and smatterings of ethnics here and there -- the best candidate would have been a female francophone from Sierra Leone, for instance.

Let's hope that candidate is an ethnic francophone, or she won't get the job.

So, I wrote a memo destined for Gallant, stating that he should declare that the Merit Principle was being set aside to redress historical wrongs in hiring practices.  

Well, the roof came off!  My direct boss, Chuck Jeffrey, came rushing down the hall, hair on fire and launched himself into my office in a complete panic.  "You didn't send that up, did you!" he raved.  "No, I wanted your approval."  Needless to say, that memo was quickly buried, never to see the light of day, or find itself on His Lordship Gallant's desk.

Well, that never went away and the venerable Merit Principle is but a fond, faded memory.  The following is from the 'Aristotle Foundation'.  Turns out I was right 40 years ago:

____________________

"The Canadian government almost universally turns to DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) policies before hiring anyone in the public service today. 

"But is this a good thing for the country? 

"This morning, we released a new study, led by Conrad Eder, which finds that the Canadian government’s DEI policies are, in fact, eroding merit-based hiring (that old bugaboo) in the federal public service—with potentially serious consequences for the country. 

• DEI language was virtually ubiquitous, appearing in 95 per cent of job postings. More significantly, 42 per cent of postings explicitly or potentially prioritized applicants based on race, ethnicity, or other group-identity characteristics. Four per cent of postings restricted eligibility to certain groups. 

• These practices continue despite the expressed preferences of most Canadians who, in polling, support inclusion in principle but reject identity-based hiring. 

• Although Canada’s Employment Act prohibits hiring quotas, these federal employment-equity initiatives operate like a quota system.  

• Empirical evidence challenges the rationale and need for such preferential DEI job postings. Treasury Board data show most designated groups already meet or exceed workforce availability benchmarks, including at the executive level."

___________________

So, folks, DEI continues to ruin the quality of the federal workforce and it shows no sign of letting up. 

Cultural appropriation

Carney accused the U.S. of "Throwing shade".  Last time I heard that was on 'The Real Housewives of Atlanta' when the girls were drunk and slamming each other over wine.  That's a very Southern Black expression; it's not foreign policy diplomacy speak.  Why would he use that phrase?  Why is he channeling these women?  Usually I get this stuff, but this one has me stumped? 

Carney's new "Hood".

He also talked about "memes".  What's that about?!  

So, what is our uptight, button-downed PM doing?  Whatever it is, it doesn't work.  

A few home truths

So, Zelensky's popping into Toronto to continue stealing more millions from hard-working, struggling Canadians.  Why is this continuing?  Oh ya, Chrystia Freeland is over there overseeing "re-construction".  Re-construction?  There's still an active and expanding war going on!  There's no re-construction possible.  

Face it.  She's over there to make sure money gets laundered and deposited into the right bank accounts.  (Just my opinion.) 

_____________________

Gloria Steinem in the later years, still trying to look 25 -- a mistake a lot of women make.  AI is one thing for a laugh, but she was serious in her fruitless quest.

A word about Gloria Steinem.  She has died at 92, apparently still a card-carrying feminist icon for the ages.  I found her a complete hypocrite.  She always had millionaire boyfriends who bank-rolled her many liberation projects.  'Ms.' magazine, for example, was funded by one of them, Clay Felker, and when he pulled out, it went bust.

Her big "breakthrough" came when she went undercover as a Playboy Bunny and discovered there was blatant sexism in the Playboy Mansion.  Wow!  What a scoop!  Who would ever have guessed that women dressed in skimpy costumes, boobs hanging out, could possibly be sexist!  Shocking.  

From then on, she was always on a harangue about equality in a marriage and child rearing and other such matters.  Funnily enough, she never had children of her own.  

My cohort invented "feminism" in the late sixties and we didn't need Ms. Steinem to motivate us with marches, magazines and protests like burning our bras.  We did it in our own backyards, righting our own injustices in our own workplaces.  

In my case, I was interviewed for a job at 'Canada Mortgage and Housing' when I was pregnant.  I had to hide it with loose clothing and lo-and-behold, landed the job.  However, when they found out I was pregnant, they cancelled the competition.  

After a few months, when I was on my measly maternity leave of six-months on EI, they re-opened it and guess who won?  Yep, the guy who had come second.  I sent a letter of protest to the then Minister of Labour, who sent a weak slap on the wrist letter to the president of CMHC, Bill Teron, who did nothing.  

Yep, that's how it was.  That blip set me back a couple of years, but I got back in the saddle and kept moving up.  So, no, Gloria's antics didn't help me and I think actually weakened her cause.  Over the years, her tired schtick got annoying.  In fact, it actually sidelined her, as reason and logic prevailed in the real world.

_______________________

Speaking of 'Women's Lib', people are up-in-arms because Pete Hegseth criticized a female army recruit for being so overweight.  They called it "body shaming", but I call it unfit for combat.  Sorry, but if you're that overweight, you probably can't get the complete job done.

Take the average fire department.  To get in there, you have to pass a number of rigorous physical tests, involving scrambling up ladders while wearing and carrying heavy equipment, crawling around burning buildings and carrying heavy people down ladders.  If you're able to do it within the prescribed time, even while overweight, you're in; if you can't, you're not.  It's a simple as that.  Nothing to do with gender.  Nothing to do about body size or image.  It's all about being physically able to meet rigorous standards.

So, it's rich for George Clooney to rant on about how he was ashamed of Hegseth's "body shaming".  Here's a question:  George, would you refuse to marry a women just because she was fat, or would that be "body shaming"?  Have you seen his wife?  Rhetorical.  

As I said, the hypocrisy in Hollywood is breathtaking.  Nevertheless, Rest in Peace Ms. Steinem.  You certainly made your mark.   

 

Conrad Black weighs in on the CBC

This was written by Conrad, Lord Black of Cross Harbour.  It is brilliant, as usual with his musings:

Black and his gorgeous wife Barbara Amiel.

"Regrettably, an exchange on social media between two former CBC journalists, Keith Boag and Travis Dhanraj, was inflicted upon me today and it perfectly captures the invasive rot afflicting and spreading forth from the CBC's newsroom and college campuses into the collective consciousness of our society.

"For reference, Mr. Dhanraj was given the high jump from the CBC last year when he attempted to gently nudge that organization in the direction of diversity of opinion. Mr. Boag, on the other hand, was a CBC lifer, retiring after 35 years of blissful ignorance to any opinion outside the CBC's ideological monoculture. The exchange comes within the context of a recent revelation (by Warren Kinsella) that the CBC’s senior director of journalistic standards was demanding avoidance of the t-word in describing the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"Mr. Boag seems to be defending this position by categorizing 9/11 as a run-of-the-mill "attack on civilians for political purposes,” giving several other examples to imply there is no clear distinction between any instance of civilians being killed in pursuit of some political purpose. By implication, Osama bin Laden and Nelson Mandela (an implication Boag made explicitly in a subsequent exchange with Ezra Levant) are morally equivalent; they are either both terrorists or neither are. It is not a serious position. It is moral illiteracy formatted into the CBC's perverse style guide. Sadly, the idea is not original, or unique. In fact, it is the pervasive view on campuses and among large swathes of the Canadian media landscape. It is also very dangerous, and it needs to be answered.

"Mr. Boag's position is bunk. If the “political purpose” in question is to kill and terrorize civilians in the service of global jihad or the extermination of a people, it belongs in a distinct category. That was 9/11. That was October 7. That was the Holocaust. These acts were genocidally motivated and carried out by groups that would never accept any peaceful resolution.

"On the other hand, using decisive force to destroy war criminals who will never make peace, belongs in a completely different category. It is not terrorism. Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas is a righteous cause. Israel is not only within its rights, but morally obligated to uproot the terrorist apparatus that hides behind its own population. And Israel should be lauded for the strategically disadvantageous lengths it has gone to limit Palestinian casualties, even while Hamas has tried to maximize them. Accusing Israel of genocide is either credulous stupidity or intellectually flaccid anti-Semitism attempting to disguise itself in a threadbare cloak of righteousness.

"The atomic bomb was developed by the Allies and used to save lives and compel a surrender that would not otherwise have come. One may argue, and I would agree, that a demonstration on a remote island, a sort of nuclear warning shot, might have been preferable. Likewise, using another of Boag's examples, one could argue the ANC should have continued with their Gandhi-inspired peaceful protest movement even after the Sharpeville massacre. The fact is, no act of violence toward civilians, whether in pursuit of a greater good or not, should be whitewashed. But nor should they all be grouped lazily together, as Boag attempts to do, as if genocide and global domination were indistinguishable from self-defense or peace-through-strength. As if they can all be neatly filed away as 'political reasons'.

"After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States did not proceed to conquer the world, though it could have with a four-year monopoly on nuclear weapons. It used it geostrategic leverage to rebuild Europe and Japan, establish the United Nations — which, believe it or not, was once a righteous and laudable organization — and strive for peace. Had the Nazis or Imperial Japan developed nuclear weapons first, no sane person believes they would have pursued the same strategy.

"I should not unfairly single out Mr. Boag, as his perspective is plagiarized from an intellectually and historically illiterate world view that has been building up steam for 30 years. It is a view that dispenses with the indispensable distinction between good and evil. It is not moral seriousness. It is relativism, and it is contemptible. This mass amnesia about who the forces of good in the world are, and who the forces of evil are, is a serious problem. That this worldview has captured the CBC and so many North American campuses is not surprising, but it is a genuine cause for concern. The West has ceded too much of, and must reclaim, the moral high ground."

Makes sense to a small C conservative like me

 

Why Are Liberals Prone To Groupthink? Bill Donohue August 28, 2026   In the early 1970s, Pauline Kael, film critic for the New Yorker, was stunned when Richard Nixon won the presidential election. She was famously quoted saying, “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.” That was odd. Nixon won 49 states. Kael claimed she was misquoted. But she admits to saying something similar, “I live in a rather special world.” That’s putting it mildly—she lived in an intellectual ghetto where groupthink is commonplace. So do most liberals today. Just walk into the faculty lounge on any college campus to validate this verity. In that same year, 1972, psychologist Irving Janis coined the term “groupthink.” He meant by that the uniformity of thought that occurs when members of a group fail to consider alternative views. The gist of what he said was picked up by writers in the late 1940s. That is when Orwell wrote about “doublethink” in his novel 1984. Harold Rosenberg, a Marxist art critic who moved to the center after the war, wrote an influential essay, “The Herd of the Independent Minds,” that accurately described the same phenomenon; he said the herd mentality was especially true of New York intellectuals. Why intellectuals, most of whom are on the left? Rosenberg seized on the tendency of intellectuals to deal with abstract constructions, and not real-world experiences; this accounts for their lack of independent thinking. Writing at the same time was Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek. Author of many powerful books, he wrote an essay that sought to explain the same worldview. He found that the utopian bent that so many of these writers shared explained their propensity to think in terms of grand ideas, dismissing practical concerns. Why does any of this matter? Consider the findings of a recent study on the occupations of those who give to Republicans and Democrats, published by InstaPundit. It makes it unmistakably clear that in occupations that favor the Democrats, almost all of those who work in these jobs donate to their favorite party; but the level of agreement is considerably smaller among those who work in jobs where members favor Republicans. This gives a decisive advantage to Democrats. Commentators are correct to say this finding shows that Democrats are much more likely to live in a bubble than Republicans. Yes, they are  guilty of groupthink. But what is most troubling is the nature of the occupations that mark members of the two parties. Democrats are found in high numbers among those who work in higher education, publishing, the arts, executives in the non-profit sector, psychotherapists and television. Republicans are found in high numbers among those who work in insurance, landscaping, the trucking industry, farming, construction, and the health field. In other words, Democrats not only exemplify the herd mentality, they are in a position to affect the thinking of the public; this is not true of Republicans. Professors shape the minds of young people; landscapers do not. Utopian visions, and a proclivity to abstract thinking, are hallmarks of liberals, most of whom are Democrats. Their lack of interest in practical, real-world, experiences is not a virtue. Indeed, it is a vice.

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$112

In the late eighteen hundreds, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie gave more than $50 million ($3 billion today) to build 2,509 libraries worldwide.  His goal was to give free access to public information for all citizens -- regardless of wealth.

The great Carnegie

Yesterday, B and I went in to Calgary and thought we'd get a membership in the Crowfoot library because we're in there quite often and they have a wider selection than the Cochrane library.  What I learned was shocking!  

To get a card, it would have cost us $112 because we live in Cochrane.  Just because we no longer live around the corner doesn't mean it's costing the library $112 more to deal with us.  What's the $112 for?  That's ludicrous!  Naturally Indigenous people don't have to pay that fee.  (Funny, didn't seen many of those folks there when I lived in the area.)  I thought libraries were created so kids with little money could check out books and improve their education, no?  Apparently, it's a profit business and I was very surprised.  What am I missing here?  

I think libraries have gotten over their skis, with a myriad of programs, staff and weird stuff disconnected to their basic mission.  So, I guess we'll stick with our local library and just wait longer for the remote, esoteric books B orders.

The other thing that surprises me is that you have to fork over $50 to get into the zoo.  So, for a family of four, that's $200 to stroll around to look at a few monkeys.

Either I am out of it, or the rest of the world is.