Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

The FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago can be an effective rallying cry if we’re intelligent about it

Posted: August 11, 2022 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Like most of us who aren’t radical leftists, I am outraged by the shameful and outrageous raid by the FBI under the Biden regime on President Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago.  Like the vast majority of my Conservative and Libertarian friends, I immediately took to social media to vent my extreme displeasure at that contemptible display of government corruption and overreach.

I have never seen such an instantaneous outpouring of rage.  Most of what I saw was extremely helpful when viewed through the perspective of trying to win converts among the great many moderates and fence sitters. Too much of what I saw, however, was not helpful at all.  No matter how despicable the actions of the Biden regime are, calls for revolution and violence are counterproductive in the extreme.

This eloquent and powerful Tweet by Ben Carson is a perfect example ot a social media post the will win the battle of ideas.

This Tweet by Rand Paul works because it effectively illustrates the corruption and double standards of the Biden regime.

A measured amount of emotion and mockery can also create an effective political weapon.

I found this article from The Federalist to be extremely thought provoking and informative.   

In 2016, Donald Trump’s election doomed Merrick Garland’s shot at a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land. Four years later, Garland oversaw a raid on the former president’s personal home.

The Department of Justice refused to confirm that Attorney General Garland had personally signed off on Monday’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach home, but it seems impossible that such an outrageous move could be made without approval from the top. Since Garland hasn’t fired every agent involved and proclaimed their disgrace from the rooftops, it’s safe to assume the raid had Garland’s blessing — in which case, it was one of the most glaring acts of political revenge in recent memory. How can anyone be expected to believe Garland is acting as a neutral arbiter of justice here?

So many on social media are trying to puzzle out the real motives behind this unsettling raid.  I was until I came across this article, Russia Hoaxer Spills the Beans, Reveals What the FBI Raid Is Really All About (townhall.com)

Marc Elias, architect of the Russia collusion hoax — who hired Fusion GPS to produce the fake dossier about President Trump, which led to illegal FISA warrants against Trump campaign officials and a lengthy Special Counsel investigation — and noted attempter of election rigging, claimed that the “media is missing the really, really big reason why the raid today is a potential blockbuster in American politics.” And then he spilled the beans on what was really the motivation behind the raid:

Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.

The constitutionally challenged Biden regime does not grasp the fact that a law cannot override Article II of the Constitution, which alone sets the requirements for president.

A very high percentage of the moderates and fence sitters have become uneasy about the corruption and overreach they have witnessed ever since Joe Biden was installed in the White House.  Sharing articles such as this will win converts, Criminalizing Opposition To The Regime Is How The Republic Ends (thefederalist.com)

An indictment of former President Donald Trump would be a breathtakingly authoritarian turn. It would amount to the U.S. security state refusing to accept “no” from America’s voters yet again. An indictment would be an unelected and unaccountable federal agency overruling voters’ two-time rejection of impeachment through their elected representatives.

This is the core danger of the administrative state: Its now open propensity to go rogue. It is apparently hellbent now on turning the United States into a banana republic.

Five More Under the Fedora Thoughts on the Raid on Donald Trump’s House: More Norms, Trump as Mr. Clean, In Your Face on Purpose, Silence and Consent, The Left’s Fear of Exposure

Posted: August 10, 2022 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, Blame Trump, politics, Uncategorized
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The degree of shock at the Raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago confuses me. Once you have people willing to destroy the norms on stealing an election what makes you think they’re going to respect any other norms?

You know I’ve said this once and I’ll say it again, Donald Trump must be one of the cleanest businessmen who ever ran a business and one of the most honest pols who ever held office.

With the degree of scrutiny given to him and the enthusiastic desire to find something ANYTHING criminal about him from both the government and the press the fact that over six years they have come up with nothing solidifies this opinion.

The funny thing of course is that people likely would not have had that opinion before he ran.

There is one other aspect of what was done that should be addressed. One of the reasons people were shocked is how “in your face” this actually is.

That’s deliberate, they WANT people to understand that they will come after you and you can’t do anything about it, they want you to know who is in charge, who is the master and who is the slave.

It’s meant to be psychological terrorism.

There are a few people who are shocked at how few leftists are speaking out against this. I’m not shocked for three reasons:

  1. The violent wing of the left is still ready to go after anyone who speaks out of turn and particularly anyone they consider “traitors”
  2. The left didn’t see the possibility of Harry Reid’s filibuster reform being used against them, why would they see the consequences for them here?
  3. In a party that is post Christian, ends and means are what matters , why would you expect a moral stand?

Finally we talked about how clean Trump must be now let’s look at the other side of the coin.

For decades Republicans and Democrats have traded power, each side has been in charge for a while then the other. Other than that long run from the 50’s to the 80’s when the dems owned the house the back and forth was normal and both sides understood that sooner or later the pendulum swings back.

The sheer panic on the left concerning a 2nd Trump term suggest to me something different.

Could it be that the left is even more corrupt than we think? Could it be that the stuff that they’ve been doing, enabling and coordinating is even more horrific than that worst conspiracy theorists have imagined? Could it be that the Epstein’s of the world are the norm for the left and not the exception and that they’ve only caught the one?

That would explain the left’s Trump panic. Not being part of the normal system won’t turn a blind eye to things that have been done in the past and continue to be done, more than that he would be motivated to expose what the left has done for decades simply out of revenge over what’s been done to him without cause.

This is simply a theory, I don’t know if that’s true, but it certainly fits the current facts on the ground.

Report from Louisiana: Random Thoughts in a Transitional Week

Posted: August 8, 2022 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By: Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – Some random thoughts today.

Shreveport Mayoral Race:  At my house we are preparing to head down South this week for the Fete Dieu du Teche and I could not be happier to get out of town for the week. Shreveport keeps on getting crazier every single day. The latest? Our ineffective, bumbling, inept mayor has been disqualified from running for another term because he put a false address on his paperwork. Louisiana law requires you to list your address as the same address where you file homestead exemption. Our fine mayor did not do this. He listed another address. His excuse for this error? The media lights and cameras when he filed his paperwork distracted him.

I kid you not.

He has appealed the ruling but it doesn’t look like the court will favor him.

He probably was going to lose anyway; people of both parties are sick to death of him and his self-serving photo ops and lack of meaningful governance.

School is Back!  Teachers and students start school today and I could not be happier to not be in that club! I’m looking at my teacher friends posting their classrooms, posting their wish lists, and now their excitement and anxiety about returning to school. I do not miss it in the least. I miss my friends, but they’re still my friends and so it’s all good. I don’t have to deal with the politics and the dog-and-pony shows and I’m thrilled. But good luck to them all and I do wish all of them a good year. Loved my kids, hated the BS.

And besides, if I was still teaching, I wouldn’t be headed to my beloved Cajun country this week where the oysters are fresh and the beer is cold and the Cajun music sings to my heart. Life is good.

Lisa Graas: Our friend Stacy McCain is asking for help for Lisa Graas, a longtime blogger buddy who is now fighting cancer. A devout Catholic, Lisa is now facing expensive chemo treatments and needs help. When Stacy posted his plea for Lisa, her name resonated with me because I remember his trip to Louisiana when he got stopped in the infamous Livonia speed trap and Lisa came and picked him up. On that day, I had Stacy’s Donkey Cons book in my bag; he was going to try to come through Shreveport on his way back home and I wanted to get him to sign my book. And then he gets pulled over in Livonia and that was the end of that. Anyway, hit the link and help if you can.

Next week I’ll be posting from Arnaudville, La and the Fete Dieu du Teche. Peace out!

The Navy’s poor poker face on manpower

Posted: August 6, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
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It’s not often I get immediate verification of something I blog about. For example, I wrote about how we’re going to have to accept that Russia will in fact win in Ukraine, and at first that prediction looked incorrect, but as the conflict grinds on, its becoming more obvious that Russia can’t afford to lose, even at a terrible cost. I could be wrong, maybe Ukraine will pull out a big “W” in the end, but I still think its unlikely.

But the Navy’s manpower crisis…wow. That’s a gift that keeps on giving. Since the last article, Navy has released three more NAVADMIN messages that prove the Navy is in a middle-management manpower crunch.

The first is NAVADMIN 176/22, which seems like a mundane update to retirement policy. The second paragraph is most interesting:

2.  Reference (c) modified the service-in-grade (SIG) (also known as time-in-grade) requirements for O-4s.  Specifically, reference (c) modified reference (d) to require 3-years SIG for voluntary regular retirement eligibility.
NAVADMIN 176/22

Normally you can retire as an O-4 after only two years. This isn’t a huge change, however, it might push more people to stay an extra year.

But then NAVADMIN 177/22 came out, talking about incentive pay for submarine commanding officer special mission billets. There is plenty of competition to become a submarine CO, so many good people don’t select for submarine command. They can select for CO Special Mission, which is basically a way of saying “we need you to stay in the Navy to fill billets at higher levels” because so many submarine O-5’s retire at 20 years. It’s a problem that has waxed and waned over the years, but is now becoming increasingly difficult to manage.

The NAVADMIN allocates a bonus of $20,000 annually for members that sign a 3-5 year commitment. That is an awful lot of money, especially considering an O-5 submariner is likely making over $150K a year anyway. The eligibility requirements make it very obvious what problem they are solving:

    b.  Have completed at least 19 years of Active Duty Commissioned Service (ADCS) and not more than 25 years of ADCS at the start of the period of additional obligated service.
NAVADMIN 177/22

Which really means “prevent people from retiring right at 20 years and keep them in a bit longer by throwing $20K a year at them.”

Essentially, these two officer-related NAVADMINs are trying to stem the departure of mid-grade Naval Officers. Gee, I wonder why mid-grade Naval Officers would be leaving in the first place? I’ll let you debate that in the comments.

So are there applicable actions on the enlisted Sailor side? You betcha! The most interesting is NAVADMIN 178/22. The first two paragraphs lay it out pretty well:

1.  This NAVADMIN announces a pilot program for Senior Enlisted Advance to Position (SEA2P) designed to keep deploying units mission-ready by aggressively filling critical at-sea leadership billets.  The pilot program will convene a billet selection board consisting of senior representatives from Fleet and participating type commander (TYCOM) staffs to select those Sailors who are best and fully qualified to advance and fill specific priority sea billets.  The pilot includes the Nimitz Strike Group on the West Coast and the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group on the East Coast. Additionally, the pilot will include USS GEORGE WASHINGTON (CVN 73). Factors for consideration in determining best and fully qualified applicants include sustained superior performance, documented qualifications, platform experience, and potential to succeed in the billet.  Sailors selected must obligate service (OBLISERV) to complete 36 months in the SEA2P billet and will be permanently advanced upon reporting to their ultimate duty station.  This pilot will be limited to critical E8 and E9 sea billets and is 
separate from reference (a). 
 
2.  To be eligible for SEA2P, Sailors must have been selected or screened as a non-select for advancement to E8 or E9 by the respective fiscal year (FY) 2023 selection boards, or be advancement-eligible for the respective FY-24 boards in line with reference (b).  Time-in-rate (TIR) waivers will be approved for FY-24 advancement-eligible Sailors who are selected for SEA2P.  All Sailors selected for SEA2P billets should expect to receive permanent change of station (PCS) orders with a transfer date as early as  30-45 days after selection.
NAVADMIN 178/22

In one long sentence this says: “We are critically undermanned at sea in senior enlisted positions, yet somehow we have lots of people that haven’t selected for advancement to these senior enlisted positions, so now they can apply to fill this position and get permanently promoted when they finish the tour.”

Now, my first question is: if we don’t have enough senior people to fill these jobs, but we have people that aren’t selecting for senior positions, why don’t we just select more people? Enlisted management sits almost entirely in the Department of the Navy’s purview, unlike Naval Officers that face considerable Congressional oversight as to their selection and promotion. The DoN doesn’t appear to be upping the selection rate, and is instead opting for a tightly controlled board that meets in relative secrecy to pick people for specific jobs. There are advantages to this, since you can force someone to take sea-duty orders, but you could do that anyway (to an extent), so I’m not sure why they are opting for this method.

These NAVADMINs, coming on the heels of the messages I previously talked about, are just another indicator that the Navy is experiencing a massive flight of talent that is really getting senior leadership concerned. I think they would be far better off addressing the real concerns of junior officers and junior enlisted, and to be fair, Navy Sailors get plenty of surveys about the health of the force, but then the Navy doesn’t appear to act on any of these issues. Just like the suicide crisis on the USS GEORGE WASHINGTON, Navy has all the data, but isn’t choosing to solve the correct problem.

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. If you enjoyed this article, please like it, share it on social media, and send a tip to Peter in DaTipJar. You can also buy one of my books for yourself or a friend to help me out.

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