Archive for the ‘Uncomfortable Truths’ Category

Firewood and Breast Milk

Posted: May 14, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in culture, opinion/news, Uncomfortable Truths
Tags: , , ,
Because if I put in a real picture, well, you’d all call it click bait ;)

I sell firewood at my house. I cut down trees on my property (or cut up trees blown over by a storm), saw them into 16 inch pieces, split them with a hydraulic log splitter, and then dry them on a rack in the sun for almost a year. After that, I put them out in a nice, lighted stand at the end of my driveway. Most people pay me with cash, although quite a few are now paying me with Zelle. I give them more firewood then the 7-11 does for the same price, and everyone walks away happy.

Recently on the NextDoor App, some lady made the mistake of complaining that she couldn’t find any nice, split firewood for free. I and many others reminded her that properly split and dried firewood takes time and effort, and as such people like to be compensated for that time and effort. She scoffed at that notion.

I was going to ask if she stayed warm at night under a blanket in the form of the flag of the People’s Republic of China…but I decided against that.

Plenty of people want something for free. Americans are generous people, and while the pandemic drove down charitable donations, a majority of Americans still donate in some way. But donations are gifts, and you shouldn’t fault people for wanting compensation for their time and talent.

That brings us to breast milk. The expectation from quite a few people is that breast milk should be donated to a breast milk bank. That’s all well and good, but as I noted in my book (which you should absolutely read!), when my wife attempted to donate to our local bank, the number of rules and restrictions were outrageous. For example, if you take any supplement outside of prenatal vitamins, it precludes you from donating. I find it absurd that taking glucosamine sulfate means that you should dump perfectly good breast milk down the drain because the milk bank won’t take it.

Then there is the fact that breast milk donations get sold. At non-profit milk banks, this is touted as a way to cover freezers, employee pay and other expenses. Most milk banks sell breast milk at around five dollars an ounce.

To help defray the costs of screening donors and managing donated breast milk, nonprofit milk banks typically charge recipients a fee of about $5 per ounce of milk. “Although the milk is donated, there are expenses, such as milk processing, milk distribution, and buying of pasteurizers, freezers, and bottles,” Noble said

Healthline.com

Insurance coverage is hit or miss, and you’re stuck with the bill if your insurance says no.

Now, you can always buy formula…oh wait, not right now. Hence the increased interest in breast milk banks. And, hence the increased interest in purchasing breast milk through websites like Only The Breast (yup, that’s a real, non-pornographic website). Which has sparked lots of debate on whether people are justified to sell their breast milk.

To which I say, if you want to sell it, you’re 100% justified in doing so.

It is a pain to hook up to a breast pump, put everthing in a nice bag, freeze the milk and then store it. To make substantial milk, you’re eating more calories then normal, which costs more money. All this work, and yet some people think its unethical to pay people for their time and effort. The fake science studies people have even “questioned” the safety of purchasing breast milk, but can’t point to any significant cases where someone sold dangerous breast milk. While, on the contrary, there are plenty of cases of bad formula, but that hasn’t stopped hospitals from pushing it on mothers.

If I was a conspiracy theorist, linking this push of formula on mothers, and then a shortage of formula spiking the price which brings more money to formula companies, would be pretty easy. Did we create this crisis to further some other agenda? It doesn’t look good.

Selling breast milk undercuts milk banks and makes it easier to get milk locally. It compensates women for their time, effort and calories, and it encourages money to stay locally instead of fueling some big corporations that have every incentive to profit from formula shortages and breast milk donations that they can markup on their own.

Which is exactly why many interested people want you to believe its unethical. People that, just like my firewood example, don’t place any value on your time or effort.

Moms, if you’ve got extra milk, check out OnlyTheBreast, or talk in your mom groups about selling or donating your milk on your own terms. Don’t feel bad asking for some compensation, if nothing else for the time it took you to bag everything and stay hooked up to an uncomfortable machine. You could help solve the formula crisis, since its not like the US government is going to anytime soon.

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. While you’re getting ready for Memorial Day, why don‘t you buy one of my books on Amazon and help me out?

Denying our inner self

Posted: March 26, 2022 by ng36b in Uncomfortable Truths

Unherd had a rather interesting article about young men and war, making the claim that as war (at least, large scale conflict) has become more infrequent due to the threat of nuclear weapons, men are increasingly struggling to find ways to prove their manliness. The military was always an outlet for manliness and a way to prove that one was no longer a boy. It’s a good read, albeit a bit long and heady. I particularly liked this part:

And while that has many upsides, it has also, paradoxically, created disaffected young men. For when national identity is infra dig, and open warfare is discouraged lest it set off nuclear Armageddon, what’s left for young men who thirst for danger and intensity?

Unherd

The author isn’t in the military, so there’s actually two additional points that she could make to even further strengthen her argument. First, when the military has responded to conflicts, we purposely ratchet back what we’re doing. Look at Afghanistan or Iraq as an example: rather than go all out and push hard to win, we were content to conduct “policing actions,” or use drones, or do a variety of other things that don’t look like real battles in World War 2. If you’re a young man fighting in a war like this, after the initial invasion, it simply feels like you’re never making progress. It makes the conflict feel pretty hopeless, not dissimilar to how men felt in World War 1 simply holding the lines day after day.

The other point is that the military spends most of its time in non-war oriented industry. Your chief of staff probably cares more about whether medical records are updated and mandatory transgender, human trafficking and suicide awareness training is completed than if you’re actually ready to fight your next conflict. This sad state of admin comes from a giant defense bureaucracy that is larger than any other nations defense budget, yet can’t seem to stay ahead of its adversaries despite all the money foisted on it. Worse still, the same bureaucracy can’t audit itself and can’t seem to trim any fat when called to do so.

But I think Ms. Harrington has hit on a much larger, much more important point, perhaps without even realizing so, and that is that our society seems hellbent on putting young men in a box where they can’t use their manliness. Some quick examples:

  • The trades (electricians, plumbers, HVAC, etc.) are all “manly” jobs, and they make really good money and require a lot of technical expertise…and yet they are viewed as lesser jobs compared to an office worker.
  • All male organizations barely exist. Remember when the YMCA was only open to men? Yeah, me neither. Having a fraternal organization is deemed sexist, but “safe spaces” for women are still open.
  • Speaking of male organizations, remember Boy Scouts? Nope, its Scouting BSA.
  • Remember all the shooting, hunting and boxing clubs we used to have?

These are just a few points, and I bet you could find more. Traditionally male activities have been pushed away as second tier. It even trickles down to schools, where boys don’t get enough outside, running around and being wild time, and then we are shocked when they have behavior issues. We’re then totally surprised when many of them don’t want to sit in a college classroom, so they can get a safe office job.

If it sounds like the plot to “Fight Club,” well, that might be why that movie became a cult classic.

Western society is wasting male talent. Society takes male energy and tells men it is bad. Surprisingly, many men rebel against that, putting that energy into everything from crime to underground boxing. Many take that to the military, only to find a bureaucracy more focused on sustaining itself than on fighting our nations wars. In a sick sort of way, the military bureaucracy seems quite happy to destroy young men in the meatgrinder of endless conflict as a way of keeping them out of the higher ranks either due to dissatisfaction or death.

Instead of continuing to denigrate men, we ought to help focus them. Bring back the shooting clubs and fraternal organizations, where older men passed on skills and wisdom to younger men in a non-judging way. Stop denigrating the hard working men in tough industries like construction, mining and forestry, which are the bedrock that a polite society rests on. Rethink how we fight, and capture that imaginative energy from young men to dream up better plans and technology so that our wars can quickly come to an end.

Most importantly, stop telling men that their desires, passions and anger are evil. One of the best books I read was Make Anger Your Ally by Neil Clark Warren (yes, the dude that built eHarmony). In his book, he doesn’t tell the reader to deny his anger. Instead, he talks about how anger gives us additional strength when we need it most, and how to channel this strength towards good. Rather than denying our emotions as some sort of remnant of poor evolution, Dr. Warren teaches that these emotions are put their by God for a good reason, and we should be using them to the maximum extent possible.

Society works best when it embraces all the strengths of its population, especially its young men.

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 like this article, please support the author by purchasing one of his books on Amazon or Audible.

The United States of Mid-Life Crisis

Posted: March 19, 2022 by ng36b in Uncomfortable Truths, war
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When my dad retired from the Marine Corps after 20 years of service, I don’t think he knew what to do with himself. He legitimately had a mid-life crisis, flipping back and forth a bit until he settled into a job as a program manager for the government. For him, going from a 20 year career that had everything laid out for him to being his own person was a bit of a jarring change.

The United States is having that same jarring change right now. In the past, the US was the world’s only true superpower, and it sought to insert itself into…well, everything. From running banana republics in Central and South America to putting troops in darn near every country in the Middle East and Africa, the US had decided it would be in all places at all times. This was pretty costly and required a lot of defense spending, but it gave the US the ability to respond to any crisis whatsoever.

It also gave every nation aligned with the US the excuse to not have a military. Countries around the world spent their money on universal health care and various forms of social security. Why not? They didn’t need a big defense budget, because the US covered that. These countries tolerated the US essentially running the financial and technology sectors because it allowed them to get rich with little risk. For a while, this worked well, especially as the Soviet Union fell apart, China continued to kill its own people and terrorism remained a local issue.

That’s all changing. The US has embraced a multi-polar world with China as a major player and Russia, the EU, UK, Japan and India as minor players. I say embraced because if the US truly wanted to be a superpower, we’d have built a hypersonic nuclear missile base on the moon and threatened to wipe China off the map if they step too far. Seriously. You can’t tell me that we watched China research weaponry for years that would defeat our defense system and were surprised when it worked? We had to know, and multiple people at high levels of government simply shrugged and said “oh well.”

This multi-polar world runs on different rules though. One rule is that superpowers get a sphere of influence and other superpowers have to stay out of it. China and Russia both consider themselves superpowers, so they take authoritarian actions in what they consider their sphere of influence. They will tolerate some minor transgressions (like US Navy Freedom of Navigation patrols), but ultimately they will do what they want without regard for anyone else.

Why is Putin willing to invade Ukraine and shell cities with no regards for civilian casualties? Because he’s a superpower and he gets to make the rules in his sphere. If you don’t like it, well, too bad.

Most Americans, including most liberals, are operating on rules fit for one superpower. In the past, if we, the US, told two nations to knock it off, they would. With one superpower, you can basically stare down an opponent and make them stop with limited military action. Think Korea and Vietnam, where we stopped Communist governments from expanding without declaring war or using nuclear weapons.

But using this set of rules on Ukraine doesn’t work. We can literally cut Russia off from everything and they will continue to do what they want, because we’re treating them as equals.

This isn’t to say we should send troops to Ukraine. There are good reasons to stay out. I was strongly supportive of President Trump’s decision to stay out of Syria, since we had no real interests there, and far better to let the Russians get bogged down then us. Ukraine might be different, and maybe we have good reasons to go there. If so, we need to be very open about them and understand it will put us in direct conflict with a nation that has nuclear weapons. That’s OK, by the way, if we’re open and honest about it and understand the potential consequences.

We can’t play by unilateral rules in a multilateral world, and we’re suffering consequences for it. Everyone applauded the crippling sanctions, but already nations are finding alternatives to the US Dollar and the SWIFT system of banking. They see whats happening to Russia and they know it could happen to them. Watch how more countries, including non-authoritarian countries, discover how to build their own industries, financial institutions and economies in order to beat future sanctions.

The US forgot that it grew up into a superpower, and now its having a mid-life identity crisis.

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 support the author by purchasing one of his books for you or a friend.

Five Putin, Biden Admin & Trudeau Thoughts Under the Fedora

Posted: February 25, 2022 by datechguy in Uncomfortable Truths, war
Tags: , , , , ,

I must confess I didn’t think Putin was going to be going beyond the moves into the two breakaway regions but then again given both Biden’s feckless response and the knowledge that the polling in the US is looking bad for the Democrats who enable him I guess he figured he better grab what he can now before the leadership in the US changes.

And you thought stealing a US election was going to bring back normalcy.

A lot of people are thinking Taiwan is next on the menu figuring that China might see things the same way as Putin, move while America is still weak. Of course it’s a lot harder. You’re talking a D-Day like invasion against a well armed foe that realizes it has nothing to lose by going all out. Additionally such a move is going to have an electric effect on Japan and I suspect China is not all that anxious for either a rearmed or a nuclear armed Japan deciding to calculate if a first strike is necessary.

And please don’t insult me with the “Japan doesn’t have nukes” stuff. Japan has all the technology and expertise to have nukes any time they want them. If they decide on Ash Wednesday (Mar 2nd) that they need nukes they’ll have them before Easter Sunday (April 17th). Of course they would be likely to go the Israel route of not admitting they have the bomb but rest assured if China scares them they will.

There have been a lot of dumb takes on Ukraine from their government asking people to send Russia mean tweets (yeah like Russia cares) to John Kerry worrying about the effect of climate change of this war to worries about the vaccine status of people escaping bombs, however if you had to pick the single most ironic it was Justin Trudeau grandstanding on how Canada would stand firm against Authoritarianism.

Given his actions of the last month this broke irony meters everywhere but I suspect Justin was delighted to have the eyes of the world someplace other than Canada.

Apparently Trudeau’s had picked Senate (70% Trudeau appointed) was going to reject his emergency extension that every member of his party voted for just a few days ago. Additionally the harm to Canadian banks by the freezing of assets of those who dared expressed dissent put a bad taste in people’s mouths.

I think Canada, Truedau and the Banks that backed him up will discover it’s a lot easier to throw away trust and faith then it is to get it back once you’ve tossed it out the window.

Personally I think Any person who keeps money in a Canadian bank is a fool.

Finally let’s point out something that any person should know. Biden provided the funds for Putin’s invasion. As Walter Olsen (via Insty) put it:

Because fuel exports are the basis of the Russian economy, Putin’s war-making capability depends critically on energy prices being high, as they are now. The most effective step countries like the U.S. can take in response does not require sanctions, let alone military action. It’s simply to remove artificial constraints on energy production, especially on relatively clean natural gas. That means removing roadblocks to fracking, pipelines and LNG export facilities that could supply Europe.

The Biden’s Administration’s reaction to this invasion is basically a paraphrase of the episode Yes Prime Minister where the Israeli ambassador tells Jim Hacker that his foreign office in response to an invention by east Yemen: will “make strong diplomatic representations but do nothing” except our diplomatic representations will be weak.

I’ll give the last word to Glenn Reynolds:

 there’s more reason to think that environmentalists and other energy-deniers are on the Russian payroll than there ever was for Trump.

I’m sure Joe & Company got their cut.

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