whose to say what is enough?...after centuries of discrimination, less than one century is enough? The best job ever had said AA applicant on it at the interview. It was a job to go all over the world tracking missiles on a ship,mainly Russia. And contrary to what racists like to believe that AA is for lesser candidates, it is really an opportunity a black wouldn't have gotten otherwise despite the qualifications. I was 26, had been an EE in a federal lab after working internship with Houston Lighting and Power during school 3 times. I also had around 80% of my Masters finished. So to those who think AA is for the lesser qualified, ask yourselves what were your qualifications at 26. worked my ass off and people want to act like it is a lie. my interviewers told me I was really highly qualified and basically offered me the job based out of Cape Canaveral because that microprocessor I designed with was the same CPU that ran the ships systems. Condi Rice was a professor at Stanford Univ at 26 because of AA and she damn sure wasn't a slouch. racists would have told her black ass to go cook or pour coffee back in the pre-AA days. Black men with Ph.D.'s were working as busboys and waiters and to some of you that is just fine. Same with Colin, a four or five star general. When I went on the ship, my white counterpart had radar experience in the military but no degree. Others told me he always had offhand comments about me but I didn't give a shit...........I knocked heads with him because if he was there I deserved to be also. You people never had to fight for equality. I been on interviews where they didn't even talk about the job...they wanted to know what I learned in classes and looked at me and then my resume and then me as if it was a lie. I even had a white male grad student ask me "what qualifies you to teach this course?" I been to OPP twenty + years ago............

American monarchies

By Mark Oppenheimer
WHEN I vote for Hillary Clinton in a week, I will be voting for a smart, competent woman and the only candidate this year who has not bragged about sexual assault, blanked on where Aleppo is, or endorsed pseudoscience about the dangers of wireless Internet. In a field that includes Donald Trump, Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, my choice is as clear as a glass of Trump Natural Spring Water (available at his golf clubs worldwide).
Nevertheless, I will cast that vote with a mutter of discontent, or maybe a Trump-like sniff. In a hemisphere where having the right relatives seems to be getting more, rather than less, important, Clinton makes the United States look like a monarchy.
If she wins, four of the last five American presidents will have belonged to either the Clinton or Bush families. And that’s not unusual on this continent. Look up or look down: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is the son of a former prime minister, and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is the nephew of former governors on both sides of his family.
Put another way, if Clinton wins, all three heads of state of the NAFTA countries, parties to a treaty that many believe has benefited the wealthy at the expense of the common people, are members of an undemocratic elite, one that depends on blood ties rather than brains.
We can keep going: Sen. Tim Kaine, who would be next in line for the presidency, won his first elective office with the help of his father-in-law, a former Virginia governor. The last Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, was the son of a former governor of Michigan. Evan Bayh, who may well win back his old Senate seat in Indiana, is the son of a former senator. The governor of California is the son of a governor of California. The governor of New York is the son of a governor of New York.
Of course, some people with the right relations are exceptionally qualified in their own right. Clinton, as a former senator and secretary of State, has unmatched qualifications for the presidency. Trudeau seems to be a decent person and a deft politician.
Still, it’s troubling that a woman of Clinton’s gifts needed the right husband to ascend the political ranks. Her trajectory is reminiscent of female leaders from less developed countries, where women’s rights are still contested, like India’s Indira Gandhi and Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto, both daughters of prime ministers. In more advanced economies, women have led governments without being related to famous men: England’s Margaret Thatcher, for example, or Germany’s Angela Merkel, daughters of a grocer and a pastor, respectively.
How many qualified or simply decent men and women languish in obscurity, excluded from the upper echelons of public life, because the well-related suck up all the oxygen?
If Clinton had never run for Senate, maybe her job would have gone to Rep. Nita M. Lowey, a gifted graduate of Bronx Science and Mount Holyoke College, rival women’s college to Clinton’s alma mater, Wellesley. Or maybe another effective longtime New York legislator, like Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, would have won the seat.
We’ll never know, because nobody ran against Clinton in the Democratic primary. All possible opponents knew that Clinton’s advantages of fame — and fortune, in the form of fundraising dollars — were nearly insurmountable.
Throughout American history, voters have had conflicting impulses. We cherish the story of the self-made man, the Andrew Jackson or the Abe Lincoln, the Harry Truman or the Barack Obama. But we also have a romance with aristocracy, with famous names like Adams and Roosevelt and Kennedy. In recent years, our notion of aristocracy has expanded to include movie actors, like Ronald Reagan, self-funded billionaires, like Ross Perot, and now actor/ billionaire chimera, Donald Trump.
This pseudo-monarchical tendency is thoroughly bipartisan. There is a photograph going around on social media (I saw it shared from a Facebook page called Occupy Democrats), with the title “Republicans’ Worst Nightmare,” that shows a banner reading, “Hillary 2016 — Michelle 2024 — Chelsea 2032 — Malia 2040 — Sasha 2048.”
I get why my fellow Democrats relish the thought of all those women, black and white, like mothers like daughters, ruling our country. I am sure we could do worse (“Melania 2024 — Ivanka 2032 …”). But didn’t we fight a war to be free of hereditary leadership?
Today, it’s the British who can teach us that, for the daily work of government, bloodlines are no way to go. Their current prime minister, Theresa May, is the daughter of a hospital chaplain. Her family was useless in winning votes, and unlike the Bushes and Clintons, they didn’t raise money. They just raised her.
MARK OPPENHEIMER, a contributing writer to Opinion, is the author of three books, most recently “Wisenheimer:
A Childhood Subject to Debate.” He is the host of the podcast

when I present technical material, all you do is run and hide and them re-surface with ignorance...since you claim you are a PE, you should know plenty of EE's who could debunk what I say but you run from that also...everyone knows it easier to steal a business card as opposed to knowing the field professionally.....so if you really want to shut me up on a non-ignorant basis...let's talk engineering and see what you are made of......we can even talk about the basic curriculum in real time with no time for cut and paste.....don't bitch out like ao and then re-surface with monkey pictures to hide the fact you bitched out....and then reward yourself on some foolish ass bullshit basis, like shutting me up...bring out your experience in detail and I'll do the same. Starting with Houston Lighting and Power as an intern, Naval Air Warfare Center, Cape Canaveral/Patrick AFB-Missile Tracking Ship and then Rockwell-Shuttle. Let's see what you are made of since you like to talk ignorant hillbilly shit and not much else......with all those letters on that business card, you should be able to make what I did look like child's play because you worked as a PE....I have 10 years as a EE and the rest is all managerial and academic. So there you go AO-Jr. See if you are up to the Pepsi challenge...I'm not calling names are talking BS..let’s go forward for real with real issues...not bullshit smack talk or political commentary.........technical only since you are the PE and not me………….