Archive for the ‘Uncomfortable Truths’ Category

I’m tired of polishing turds in the Navy

Posted: September 23, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncomfortable Truths, war
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When I first joined the Navy, I served onboard the USS HAMPTON, a nuclear fast-attack submarine. You would think that would be super cool. My non-Navy friends were certainly impressed. But the sad reality was that being on a submarine sucked.

I started in the shipyard, which was an absolute hell-hole of a place to work. Our submarine was torn apart, and we had to always be ready for the shipyard workers to stop by to begin working. Instead of scheduling a time, they would often come down early, and if we weren’t ready, would then tell their boss it was our fault they couldn’t work. They did this to score overtime work on the weekends or after hours, while making us stay late. My days started at around 5:30 am and didn’t end until 6 pm. That didn’t include the drive time either.

At least I wasn’t a woman…some of my fellow female officers would get constantly cat-called and risked sexual assault walking into some shipyard environments. We’re talking legitimate, in-your-face sexism, not the made-up stuff of college students at Harvard. On top of that, if you didn’t leave before the sun went down, you risked your car’s windshield getting smashed in. Good-ole’ Portsmouth, Virginia! Thieves would smash in your windshield just for fun and not even steal anything, and the shipyard and Portsmouth police did nothing.

If you wonder why I wasn’t surprised that Sailors committed suicide in Newport News shipyard…well, now you know.

That whole time, I was told to suck it up and make the best of it. The situation is a big, fat turd, and my job was to polish it and make it shine. The smart people above me, the Captains and Admirals of the world, assured me they were doing their best to make it better. I couldn’t possibly question them!

Image generated by Bing AI

So polish I did! And I made it work.

During my flying tour, I spent 10-11 hours in a plane that had no working toilet. They had a toilet, but the Navy wouldn’t send the equipment to pump it out, so we pooped in a bag and pissed in a tall cylinder that we hand-carried out and dumped in the grass. Even the ladies peed in the tall cylinder (and I have no idea how they did it). The Navy HAD pumping equipment, but the powers that be said we didn’t need it, so we never got any. Now, next to us was an Air Force plane that had pumping equipment and didn’t hand carry out their piss in a giant cylinder after every flight. We were flying out of Greece, so it’s not like the plane landed in a hard-to-resupply area.

Polish that turd, I was told, by the supposedly smarter Captains and Admirals. So polish I did!

At a large staff, I put up with a tyrant Captain who seemed to simply enjoy screaming at us over nothing. He played favorites with the staff and pitted people against each other until he was finally fired. You would think that would make it better, but it didn’t, because then I had to help restructure and fix everything he broke.

Polish that turd, I was told, and I did, a bit begrudgingly this time.

Later in my career, I ran a small detachment of Sailors and worked to fix their aging building. The basement ceiling would literally shake when we operated machinery, and the base’s engineering team simply added some scaffolding to hold up the ceiling.

Yup, scaffolding. “It’s a bad situation, that’s the best we can do. You’ll just have to polish that turd.”

Well, I challenged that notion. I worked an engineering study and eventually secured the $6.6 million to fix the building, despite the obstinate objections of the base engineering team. That’s when I realized I’d been polishing turds for no reason. The Navy HAD most of the resources to fix these issues, but they spent them on fancy Admiral events, attended by the smartest Captains, who smoozed up to Senators and Representatives to get their pet projects funded. Whether it was the Littoral Combat Ship, the F-35, or a host of poorly designed boxes whose primary job was to send money into the pockets of Lockheed Martin while claiming Sailors were too stupid to operate them, it was all the same: wasted money that would be better spent elsewhere. This is the same Navy that was happy to use command travel money to pay for travel expenses for Sailors to get an abortion, but couldn’t find the money to fix barracks room issues at the shipyard.

So now I’m at my last command. My hope was to do something useful on my way out the door. Instead I found myself being stuck with all the crappy jobs nobody wants to do, then getting told I’m an idiot by a Captain that definitely acts like he’s smarter than everyone in the room. “You’ll need to polish that turd” he told me the other day.

I didn’t join the Navy to polish turds. I’ve been constantly told to make other, stupid ideas work while the “smart” people get fancy offices and plenty of resources. I’m not alone in this either. All of the officers I looked up to, the one’s I would willingly go into battle with, are all leaving in droves. They tell me they are tired of putting up with mediocre leadership that won’t put in the time to build real solutions, but instead look for “quick wins” (oh how I hate that term!).

Nobody joins the Navy to polish turds. We should stop asking our Sailors to polish poop and actually put resources where they belong.

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.

The Feast of The Passion of John the Baptist Playing Out Daily in America Against an Army of Woke Herodians

Posted: August 29, 2023 by datechguy in catholic, catholic devotions, culture, Uncomfortable Truths
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Today is the feast day of the passion of St. John the Baptist.

As a rule the Catholic Church celebrates the feast day of saints on the day they die. John the Baptist is the only saint where this is not the case, like Mary and Christ himself both his birth day and the day of his death (or in Mary’s case the Feast of the Assumption) are feast days of the Church. We celebrate St. John the Baptist’s birth in June and his death today.

It’s very fitting to ponder the feast of the beheading of John the Baptist because he was slaughtered for the same crime that many in America are now being punished for: Telling the truth.

You see John called out Herod for marrying his brother’s wife while he was still alive. This was a pretty good deal for Herodias as it gave her power and position and she never forgave John for publicly calling Herod out. Meanwhile even though Herod imprisoned John he not only didn’t kill him, but would go to the dungeons and listen to him. He didn’t have the courage to release him, nor did he have the courage to repent and give up his elicit marriage but he understood John was right.

So when Herod in front of his entire court made a injudicious promise to give Herodias’ daughter anything she the daughter at her mother’s prompting demanded on a platter the head of John the Baptist and Herod knowing it was wrong but not having the wisdom of Abe Lincoln who said: “Bad promises are better broken than kept.”, promptly had him executed and the head delivered to the girl who gave it to her mother.

Put simply John was executed for publicly saying aloud the truth that threatened the power of Herodias and Herod went along because he feared for his public reputation more than he honored truth.

This is America today.

We have not reach the “promptly executed” point in the US but if things don’t change it’s only a matter of time.

You see when we say basic truths like:

  • No amount of surgery can make a man a woman
  • A child is not competent to make life altering decisions about themselves
  • It’s a good idea to jail people who rob and loot and support police when they enforce the law
  • People should enter the country legally and the federal government should enforce the law
  • Children should not be sexualized
  • If you make it easier to cheat in elections they can’t be trusted
  • The government should not be used to jail their political enemies
  • If you’re going to give billions of dollars to someone they should be accountable
  • Drugs that have already been approved for people are safe to use vs COVID

We find an army of woke Herodias’ outraged not because those statements are false but because those statements challenge their delusions or their profits or their power bases and that army of woke Herodians put pressure on an army of Herod who they have granted their political, financial or even in some cases sexual favors to in their quest to get what they want.

Thus many institutions or pols, or business knowing that those making those statements are right but fearful of the wrath of the army of woke Herodians buckle. but not all.

There are still some who either because they still retain some backbone or fear the masses of the people more than the army of woke Herodians (who are actually much smaller then they appear) decide to reject them and side with the people and each time they it strikes fear in the hearts of the woke Herodians because they know their power is dependent on the fear of their Herods and the indifference of the masses.

There are John the Baptists out there. Tucker Carlson who faced the wrath of the woke Herodians but thrived despite it, Riley Gaines who refuses to bend the knee to Transgender Inc. Joe Rogan who talked openly about ivermectin to be used in Covid cases, Ron DeSantis who didn’t give in to either the COVID hysteria or the Disney/woke crowd on sexualizing children and yes Donald Trump as well who refused to bend the knee even as he is treated like an enemy of the state for being an enemy of dishonest elections.

I’m sure when the tyranny falls as all eventually do, first slowly and then all at once, millions will suddenly declare that they were with us just as many Frenchmen declared they were with the resistance as soon as the Germans were gone but till then who do you wish emulate? John the Baptist who spoke truth aloud and is remembered by two feasts of the church or Herodians who would with Herod would eventually die in exile?

Choose wisely.

Update: Tucker Carlson nails it:

But nobody was fired…

Posted: August 26, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncomfortable Truths, war
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If you’re not already familiar with it, the US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship is…a floating pile of garbage.

Not literally…or maybe, littorally? The Littoral Combat Ship was seen as a new, sleek, fast ship to replace the old minesweepers and patrol crafts. It could drive super fast and would be able to change out mission modules, meaning one day it could be oriented towards minesweeping, and the next day it could hunt down submarines. Even better, it would have a small crew, so the Navy would save on manpower.

If that all sounds too good to be true…it was. Many people pointed this out at the time, but were called naysayers for doing so. Yet here we are today watching the Navy retire a Littoral Combat Ship after only five years of service (compared to the 20+ years we get from Destroyers, Cruisers, and basically any other ship).

USS SIOUX CITY, decommissioned after only 5 years.

Crying about this fact gets us nowhere. What I want to do is point out the hypocrisy in the Navy in how it treats it’s flag officers. With the LCS as a raging dumpster fire, at least one of the manufacturers, Austal USA, had the good sense to make its CEO resign. Would the Navy do this? Let’s look at some of the LCS programs past leadership:

  • Rear Admiral John Neagley took over the program around 2016. He apparently wrote many of the requirements for LCS back in the day, so you’d think he could turn it around. Nope! He wasn’t fired either, instead, he retired and now works at ICI Services.
  • In 2012, Rear Admiral John Murdoch said “I am not concerned at all about any of the deficiencies…in terms of my ability to correct them before the ship leaves the Great Lakes,” concerning serious problems onboard USS FORT WORTH while it was in Lake Michigan. The FORT WORTH commissioned in 2012 and was retired in 2022 after only 10 years in service. John Murdoch retired without issue and now works at Lockheed Martin.
  • Rear Admiral Robert Nowakowski took over in 2020, and after two years…the Navy cancelled the anti-submarine mission package on LCS due to overspending. Rear Admiral Nowakowski is still in the Navy and hasn’t had anything negative happen to his career.

So the Navy has a massively failing program that wastes millions of taxpayer dollars on ships that cannot fight or even stay afloat after only a few years. Its leadership gets punished…nope. It’s leaders, because they wear stars on their shoulders, get to retire to fat pensions with no repercussions whatsoever.

None. Zip. Zilch.

Meanwhile, Sailors work themselves to death trying to maintain vessels they can’t get training on and aren’t properly sourced.

These Admirals should be ashamed of themselves and the pain they caused these Sailors, their families and the impact to our Naval Power.

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, because those agencies want you to keep thinking that everything is fine and you should just keep handing over your tax dollars like the good little sheep you are without asking hard questions.

Public Schools align with Satan

Posted: August 19, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in local issues, local stuff, Uncomfortable Truths
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Satan has two interesting strategies to spread his influence among humanity. The first involves pretending that he doesn’t exist. There are many people that laugh at the idea of Satan existing at all, and who instead argue that its “bad humans” that account for the evil in the world. These people don’t even like using the word “evil” because it implies there is a “good,” and they instead argue that actions are judged based on human standards at the time, instead of any sort of absolute judgement.

While this strategy works well, it pushes Satan to stay hidden and out of site. It’s far better to operate in the open, and that seems to be the current strategy. But why would rational human beings allow the literal Prince of Darkness, who promises to enslave men and women, to openly influence them?

Easy. Satan becomes cool. He stands for libertarian ideals of free and open speech. Heck, he even has an “X” account. He even manages to get applause in Chesapeake, VA, where school board members voted to continue to allow the club to meet on school grounds. From our parish’s FlockNote:

Unfortunately, the school board voted 7-1 (with one member absent) to allow all non-exempt clubs to include the After School Satan Club to use Chesapeake Public Schools facilities. There were 40 speakers that were signed up to speak, and only five spoke against the After School Satan Club and prohibiting facility use. Most of the speakers and the attendees represented the Good News Club (the Bible club), a wrestling club, and other various clubs such as a soccer club and the girl scouts. There were also about 10 Satanists present, with several of them speaking. There were only four Catholics present by my count, and all spoke out against the After School Satan Club and non-exempt clubs using school facilities. At the end of the meeting, the room was full of applause for the board’s decision to allow non-exempt clubs to meet.

The rosary rally had good attendance, despite the heat, with around 30 people showing up to pray. Four Satanists showed up as a counter-protest at the end of our rally, and there was no interaction between the groups. Thank you to everyone who showed up and those who were unable to make it that were praying from afar. Even thought the vote did not go as we had hoped, I know our prayers are not wasted.

On a positive note, I asked Rose Bastet (the leader of the After School Satan Club and a Satanic minister) if the After School Satan Club planned to meet on the third Thursday of the month as they did during the last school year. I said that we wanted to continue praying the rosary. She said that the school district was giving them a lot of trouble, and she wasn’t sure if they were going to meet at this time. She didn’t go into detail as to what that meant exactly. The attitude of the Satanists was completely reversed from the last time the school board allowed them to meet several months ago. Several months ago they were overjoyed and cheerful at the decision. After this meeting, they did not seem happy.

The only board member who voted to get rid of all non-exempt clubs to include the After School Satan Club was Samuel Boone. The member who was absent was Brittany Walker. The members who voted to allow the clubs to meet with no changes in the policy were: Angela Swygert, Thomas Mercer, Amanda Dean, Michael Lamonea, John McCormick, Norman Pool, and Kim Scott. 

Amanda Dean tried to get a reclassification of what a non-exempt club was as she seemed to be surprised that the wrestling club would be impacted. She and Samuel Boone were the only two members who voted to reclassify, with the other members voting to not reclassify as they were wary of legal repercussions. Amanda Dean has been the most outspoken board member about getting the After School Satan Club out of schools so her vote to ultimately allow the clubs was surprising. Perhaps she voted the way she did due to the hostile crowd or realizing that the only option on the table would get rid of more clubs than she had previously realized.

Stay tuned for further details on this situation. We will plan to have rosary rallies in the future should we determine when the After School Satan Club is meeting. It is especially disheartening that the people of this city erupted into applause when all the clubs were able to meet. We need to continue to pray, do penance, and acts of reparation as it seems clear that things like wrestling are more important to the residents of this city than keeping Satan out of the public sphere.

Interestingly enough, if you go to the Facility Use rules for Chesapeake Public School, you can find this restriction:

The described use would conflict with a policy, procedure, or the mission of Chesapeake Public Schools.

Not sure when the mission of public schools aligned with Satan, but apparently they aren’t in “conflict” with the school? That doesn’t bode well for any of us going forward.

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. Pray for America and for Chesapeake today, we certainly need it.

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