Archive for November, 2019

At Sea – Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer, right, speaks with Carrier Strike Group 8 Command Master Chief Petty Officer Michael Bates in the in-port cabin during Spencer’s visit aboard the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, Feb. 25, 2018. Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Kaysee Lohmann

Now that Secretary Spencer is officially no longer the Navy Secretary, I’m able to openly ask the question: why is everyone up in arms about him being fired? People (military and non-military) were hot and bothered by it on Facebook. Perhaps I’m a cynic, but I’ll ask what should be the most important question: what, exactly, did Secretary Spencer do as SECNAV for two years?

If we judge his tenure by the shape of the Navy, it isn’t pretty. US Ship Force levels have been relatively flat. This is made worse by the continued deployment of ships to respond to, basically, everything around the world. The Joint Staff uses a process called “Global Force Management,” where each Combatant Commander requests presence of different forces. Aircraft Carriers in particular are the subject of much discussion, and when one breaks (like the Harry S. Truman), you have people arguing over how to surge another carrier out, rather than discussing whether a carrier is even needed in the first place. This causes our carriers and other ships to wear out, and given we can’t build them fast enough, we are left with a Navy full of worn out ships and crews.

Secretary Spencer had to have seen this, and yet in two years, we haven’t had any change. His long range ship building plan put us at 355 ships, maybe, in 2030. We’re building 10 ships a year…maybe. While it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, China is set to overtake the US in ships by 2020. Numbers don’t account for crew readiness and weapon systems, but here again, the US is using relatively expensive weapons while China and Russia crank out increasingly cheaper missiles. Quantity becomes its own quality, and bankrupting the country to win the future fight isn’t a good option.

We could tackle this problem in a lot of ways. Building different ships, for example smaller carriers, would help get more ships to meet global requirements while saving higher-end ships for the big fight. Building a better shipyard infrastructure (getting away from having only a few places we can build Navy ships) could help lower the cost. Sharing ship designs with allies, similar to the F-35 program, could lower cost and make overseas repairs easier. Or perhaps we add in diesel submarines to help bring more submarines to the fight. Or we could build some smaller vessels, like the PCs of old, but with advanced striking power, to get a cheaper vessel that can fight in the littorals (the Littoral Combat Ship is anything but small or cheap).

But we have no innovation. The Long Range Shipbuilding plan sticks to traditional platforms, just calling for more of them. The one different platform, SSGN (converted ballistic submarines that shoot Tomahawk missiles and deploy SEAL teams) are going away, to be replaced by smaller Virginia submarines with specialized modules. Slightly innovative, but not enough to deal with China and Russia, who are designing very different Navies to fight very different wars in the future.

And how is that new carrier catapult working out? Even Bob Work was able to get LCS module price back on track.

We didn’t get much with Secretary Spencer. Our Navy isn’t in great shape, and ground wasn’t laid to make it much better. When the Secretary then decides to openly disagree with his boss, what did he expect would happen? If your boss is telling you to do something, and its not illegal, you get to disagree in private, but if he insists, then you get to resign.

For everyone mad about Secretary Spencer, I have to ask why. Is it because it was Trump that fired him? Did you really think Spencer was doing a good job? Because while I have some issues with Secretary Mattis leaving (I would prefer he stay on), I don’t see how Secretary Spencer was making our Navy great again.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Chicago on the Thames

Posted: November 30, 2019 by datechguy in Uncategorized

We’ve written in the past about Chicago belonging to the gangs and pols protecting them because they provide votes.

Apparently things aren’t all that different in London:

Judah encountered a Grenadian, now a successful cocaine dealer, who recalled moving to the White City estate in West London with his mother when he was 12.
‘We pitched up for a better life, but found ourselves right in the middle of a war zone,’ he recalled.
He said the estate ‘was way more corrupt . . . way more dangerous, more full of disillusion than anywhere in Grenada. Within six months of being here, I had lost 75 per cent of my morals.’
After a few years here, and now a heavy cocaine-user, he woke up to his mother screaming. She’d found his gun in the fridge and bullets on the sofa.
She was crying: ‘Please, please, the police will kill you, the gangsters will kill you! My baby, why, why did I ever bring you to this country?’
The sex industry is another area where our flawed immigration policy has had a malign effect. Now, 96 per cent of prostitutes are migrants. In the main, Albanians have taken over.
Typically, they lure girls from Moldova with promises of modelling jobs, but then rape and traffic them.
I saw the results of this myself when a brothel opened in a house on a quiet, residential street near my son’s primary school in Hampstead. 
The mother of one of my son’s friends lived opposite. She was intimidated by the sinister men in leather jackets who sat in the nearby coffee shop all day.
She reported to the police that the girls on the top floor looked underage and never went out. In due course, her car was smashed up. 
She suspected this was done as a warning to keep her nose out of it. The police did nothing and she never raised the matter again.

If only they had been tweeting that men didn’t have vaginas, then the London police would have been all over it.

The latest terror attack might get more headlines but this is the real threat to England and it’s being ignored.

But Pam Geller and Robert Spencer are too much of a threat to let in.

Well at least it’s not happening here is it?

How Serious is the left/media

Posted: November 29, 2019 by datechguy in Uncategorized

So serious that they are more concerned about a Rocky Poster meme as a real story.

As Don Surber put it:

The next day he posted his Rocky Balboa picture. CNN and others in the media were horrified. They called it a doctored photo.

Normal people laughed.

So serious that they get “triggered” by “misgendering” a dog:

As comforting as it is that people are acknowledging the biological reality of the presence of certain sex organs and how that correlates to gender, the amount of digital ink and time spent on this rather simple mistake seems excessive.

I wonder if some of the left are angry at reporters for presuming that “Conan” identities as a “dog”.

This is in fact why they are not being taken seriously by actual serious people as opposed to those who play serious people on TV.

new polls show Trump maintaining or strengthening his edge in the six key battleground states that swung the election in the Republican’s favor, particularly among white working-class voters who flipped to Trump after eight years of backing President Barack Obama while Democrats continue to fall behind this critical voting bloc.
“The poll offers little evidence that any Democrat, including Mr. Biden, has made substantial progress toward winning back the white working-class voters who defected to the president in 2016, at least so far,” the Times noted. “All the leading Democratic candidates trail in the precincts or counties that voted for Barack Obama and then flipped to Mr. Trump.”

I wonder why?

On Thanksgiving Americans should be most thankful for…

Posted: November 28, 2019 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized

What separates the United States the most from all other nations is our Constitution.  That most remarkable document created the freest and most prosperous country that ever existed.  Our Constitution accomplished this by creating a limited federal government that could not interfere with the God-given Natural Rights of any individual.  Unfortunately, thanks to the silly notion of a living constitution the federal government has all but abandoned the constitution.   This Calvin Coolidge quote perfectly sums up the greatness of our Constitution and why we should be thankful for it.

The Constitution of the United States is the final refuge of every right that is enjoyed by any American. So long as it is observed, those rights will be secure. Whenever it falls into disrespect or disrepute, the end of orderly organized government, as we have known it for more than one hundred and twenty-five years, will be at hand. The Constitution represents a government of law. There is only one other form of authority, and that is a government of force. Americans must make their choice between these two. One signifies justice and liberty; the other tyranny and oppression. To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.

Most Americans celebrate Thanksgiving with a bountiful feast.  The food for the feast is quite easily purchased in supermarkets where massive amounts of food await the customers, unlike socialist nations where massive amounts of people wait in line for small amounts of food.  This Milton Friedman quote explains the true power unleashed by our free market economy.

The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system.

All Americans should be thankful that our Bill of Rights includes the free exercise of religion clause.  That clause guarantees the rights of every American to worship as we please.  That right is central to our Thanksgiving because the Pilgrims came here escaping religious persecution.

We should be thankful that we live in a country that has a freedom of speech clause in our Bill of Rights.  That right protects our freedom to speak our minds however we want too.  It is an absolute shame that so many college students and young people have been brainwashed into believing that freedom of speech is a bad thing.

We should all be extremely thankful for our military, currently serving, and all that have ever served.  They have all sacrificed to protect our freedom.