Opinion
By Jeff Childers
08-12-24
Good morning, C&C, it’s Monday! Are you ready for another wild and wacky 2024 week? Scratch that, it doesn’t matter whether you’re ready, it’s coming anyway. Today’s essential news roundup includes: FAA/NTSB blurs Boeing’s problems in an effort to hide the truth, but we discover it regardless, and wait till you see what it added up to; Middle East headlines take a sudden and unexpected turn for the worse over the weekend, after a glorious week of market-repairing optimism; Olympics close with another ridiculous ‘ceremony’ of irreligious imagery; WHO prepares for emergency-use monkeypox jabs; policy-stealer Kamala Harris explains her no-tax-on-tips plan is totally different from President Trump’s popular proposal; and a sudden and unexpected reversal in National Anthem patriotism policy pops up in the NBA where you’d least expect it.
🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞
🔥🔥 Yesterday, the Washington Post ran a lamentable story about our distressed top airplane maker headlined, “Boeing’s manufacturing woes long preceded door-panel blowout.” The NTSB has issued its first report. Despite diligent efforts to obfuscate, the real problem got smuggled in there, like a treasure hidden under a matted raft of thin excuses knitted together with ropey explanations.
We can’t blame the Washington Post this time. The confusion was created by the FAA’s report, which laboriously listed its lengthy diagnosis of Boeing’s ‘woes’ without actually concluding anything useful. The FAA’s insights were often internally inconsistent. For instance, one highlighted problem was workers who won’t follow procedures. But then it identified an equally and opposite problem, management’s over-punishment of rule-breaking workers.
Well, which is it? Too much discipline or not enough? Maybe Boeing managers are using the wrong kind of discipline, but the FAA’s report never suggested that.
In sum, WaPo labeled the manufacturer’s myriad alleged mistakes as “systemic,” which was just a fancy dodge, claiming in other words there is no one single problem. But a theme emerged anyway, rising from the article like the goddess Venus rising from the foam, standing on a Boeing door-plug.
The theme was: Employees.
For whatever reason, the article (citing the NTSB report) focused on a standing 50-page manual for safely removing parts from airplanes. The manual is at least twenty years old, maybe older. I don’t know how many pages you think a manual for safely removing airplane parts should have, what with the pictures and diagrams and all.
I’m not bragging, but I’ve more or less successfully assembled a child’s tricycle using over fifty pages of instructions. Badly translated from Chinese. After midnight on Christmas Eve. After a certain amount of cheer. I’m not saying it was easy, or quick, but I did it. And I’m only a lawyer, not a tricycle mechanic.
But, according to WaPo, the current generation of Boeing workers finds the 50-page disassembly manual to be too long and confusing.
So what do you expect? The workers just ignore the long, confusing, and unstreamlined manual:
That second sentence about training was meant to lessen the sting, but actually made it worse. The not-reading problem is now in its second generation, with older employees training new workers in the wrong procedures. Which also proved that new Boeing workers aren’t required to read the instructions.
They’re waiting for someone else to explain it to them.
Maybe I’m being too critical. After all, it’s fifty pages. Apparently reading fifty pages is a lot to ask of an aircraft engineer, these days, especially when there are so many 15-second TikTok clips to watch.
Undaunted, WaPo again tried to soften the blow. It reported that even Boeing’s senior vice president Elizabeth Lund, who testified at the NTSB hearing, complained about the 50-page procedure manual, saying she had to go into a “quiet room and read it to myself several times.”
Had she not read it before? Oh well. This is where we are now, folks. Reading a key procedure manual on safely removing airplane parts takes concentration, if you can believe that, which is just too hard.
I bet Boeing’s current crop of employees would prefer to get re-assigned to the “cage” (a punishment mentioned in the article) rather than read this stupid manual.
Here’s a radical idea: How about give them a test on the procedure manual? A test that employees must pass, before working on the disassembly line? Is that really so hard? For airplane mechanics?
WaPo’s article never mooted that simple idea, merely waving off the written instructions as “burdensome.” The FAA reported Boeing employees mean well, but they just lack the ability to understand the instructions. Read between the lines:
The article didn’t admit that pandemic mandates led to critical worker shortages, but I think it’s fair to infer that. Regardless of the cause, Boeing —now well into its D.E.I. ‘transformation’— has hired lots of new workers over the last few years. And Boeing, for some reason, hired inexperienced workers who are likely to struggle with a technical, 50-page instruction manual:
Why would Boeing be searching for workers outside of candidates with previous aviation experience? The article didn’t say, but I bet it has something to do with a three-letter acronym.
Boeing isn’t stupid. Boeing knows. Older, experienced workers have been complaining about the new generation of unskilled, non-aviation employees:
But it’s the manual’s fault. Too long. Too complicated. Too burdensome. Too technical.
Some folks think Boeing is being sabotaged, under controlled demolition, slowly prepared for replacement by Chinese competitors. If so, Boeing is helping them. To get your aircraft company out of a hole, stop digging.
Oh well. The good thing is the newest generation of illiterate Boeing employees is the most diverse group in history. So.
🚀🚀 After several days of hopeful, market-encouraging corporate media headlines, including from Iranian sources, the Middle East war situation is warming back up. Yesterday, the New York Post reported that Hamas threw a monkey wrench into the Biden Administration’s ‘urgent’ efforts to schedule a new peace conference this Thursday. The headline explained, “Hamas will not participate in upcoming cease-fire talks with Israel without a promise to stop fighting, new leader claims.”
Hamas’s new peace negotiator is a very hard man. ‘Hardliner’ Yahya Sinwar replaced Hamas’s previous peace negotiator, Ismail Hamiyeh (R.I.P.), a much more conciliatory fellow who Israel killed in Tehran on July 31st.
Sinwar’s stinky new demand for a permanent cease-fire is almost certainly a non-starter.
After a week of mostly hopeful headlines, the headlines from the last 24 hours painted a gloomy picture. Last night, Axios reported, “New Israeli intelligence suggests Iran prepares to attack Israel within days: sources.” An anonymous leaker said Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in a not-so-private call that “Iran is getting ready for a large-scale attack.”
Austin apparently believed Defense Minister Gallant. This morning, NBC ran a story headlined, “U.S. rushes firepower to the Middle East as Israel braces for retaliation from Iran.” According to the story, Secretary Austin ordered a guided missile submarine to the region and told the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, already en route, to step on the gas.
The story noted, but didn’t explain, how unusual it was for the military to announce exactly where it was deploying submarines, which after all are designed to be stealthy. Presumably, the rare disclosure was meant to send a message, presumably to Iran.
Finally, yesterday Reuters reported that China —still smarting from recent US sanctions and threats— has thrown in with Iran. Headline: “China supports Iran in defending security, says foreign minister.” Specifically, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi said in a public statement, “China supports Iran in defending its sovereignty, security and national dignity in accordance with the law, and in its efforts to maintain regional peace and stability, and stands ready to maintain close communication with Iran.”
I can’t recall China publicly supporting Iran against Israel before this year. Thanks again, Joe Biden.
🔥🔥 The 2024 Olympics wrapped up yesterday. The UK Guardian ran its story headlined, “Paris says goodbye to the Olympics with golden closing ceremony.” Goodbye is right. So long, and no thanks for the memories.
The closing ceremonies began with a mysterious, golden, intergalactic traveler wandering through a gloomy, barren, futuristic landscape, tasked with ‘resurrecting the Olympic spirit.’ Ghostly, alien-like dancers and acrobats descended from a giant golden mother ship, while black-robed Swiss musician Alain Roche performed Hymn to Apollo in midair, playing a flaming, upside-down piano suspended on wires.
Totally normal?
But this time, to avoid awkward misunderstandings, the producers provided their sci-fi-based explanation for the nightmarish ceremony’s elements. The show focused on a descending, skeletal, golden warrior who looked like a cross between a Power Ranger and Edward Scissorhands. Officially, the disturbing, alien-like imagery was meant to evoke Greek gods married to French space-exploration contributions, or something.
As you might imagine, the skeptical online community found plenty of material with which to work. Applying their own interpretations, they highlighted what could be seen as more demonic references and even Satan himself (the aforementioned razor-finger guy) descending to Earth along with all his fallen angels.
The Guardian reported the closing ceremony was a ‘heavily revised’ version following the backlash from the opening ceremonies, which infamously included a disgraceful drag-queen parody of Da Vinci’s Last Supper.
What can I tell you? It was art. Allegedly. But as we’ve often been reminded, artistic interpretation is up to the viewer. So we’re free to hold our own view.
The ceremonies concluded with a much less suggestive and much more dramatic stunt: Tom Cruise, in normal clothes, leaped in from a great height and, riding around on a motorcycle, accepted the Olympic flag on behalf of Los Angeles, the location of the next scheduled games in 2028.
Thank goodness that’s over.
💉💉 Oops, they did it again! On Friday, the World Health Organization requested proposals for EUL (emergency use authorization) Monkeypox vaccines. A Reuters article from the day before was headlined, “Africa CDC likely to declare mpox public health emergency next week.”
The article pointed out that “most cases are mild.” So. It’s not for me, but I say good luck to them.
🔥 NPR ran a sneaky story this morning headlined, “No tax on tips: Why politicians love it, and economists don’t.” The article was a response to Kamala Harris’ weekend heist of President Trump’s proposal to end income taxes on tips, which I’ve called a good start.
NPR explained that the two candidates’ proposals are totally different. Cackle’s plan, said NPR, would exclude billionaires and hedge fund managers who might try to structure their pay as all tips, to escape paying their fair share. See? Totally different. Kamala’s not a cackling copycat bereft of her own ideas; don’t be cynical.
Some critics pointed out that Harris has infested her office for nearly four years, and is still the vice-president* (* allegedly), so if tip exemptions are such a great idea, why doesn’t she just do it now?
NPR didn’t say. But we know.
🔥🔥 Sometimes, God uses unexpected means to change people’s hearts. Over the weekend, recently repatriated celebrity basketball inmate and deep-talker Britney Griner —jailed in a Russian gulag on a drug charge and rescued by the Biden Administration— stood for the National Anthem.
CLIP: Britney Griner finds something to like about America after all (0:30).
It might not seem like news, but race activist Griner famously always used to kneel for the Anthem, right up until the wily Russians put the unpatriotic player in prison, for trying to sneak some pot through customs (purely for medicinal purposes).
Not only did Britney stand this time, she placed her hand over her heart, and cried.
The cynical take is that Griner is faking it. Maybe, but the reason why she would fake this sentiment is unclear. For me, I’ll take the W. May Griner’s rediscovery of a tiny spark of patriotism inflame a whole new generation of love and affection for our Great Country.
Public school might not have taught Britney much about the benefits of Constitutional due process, but the Russians sure did. Progress.
Have a marvelous Monday! We’ll be back like clockwork tomorrow morning, and I promise not to show any more Olympic images that might give anybody bad dreams. Just the slightly snarky essential news and commentary to get you through the day. See you then.
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The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida
