Archive for the ‘Uncomfortable Truths’ Category

Sowing Meet Reaping Under the Fedora Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis and Portland

Posted: May 17, 2023 by datechguy in crime, Uncomfortable Truths, under the fedora
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Thus the word of the LORD came to me: Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel. When you hear a word from my mouth, you shall warn them for me. If I say to the wicked man, You shall surely die; and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his wicked conduct so that he may live: that wicked man shall die for his sin, but I will hold you responsible for his death. If, on the other hand, you have warned the wicked man, yet he has not turned away from his evil nor from his wicked conduct, then he shall die for his sin, but you shall save your life.

If a virtuous man turns away from virtue and does wrong when I place a stumbling block before him, he shall die. He shall die for his sin, and his virtuous deeds shall not be remembered; but I will hold you responsible for his death if you did not warn him. When, on the other hand, you have warned a virtuous man not to sin, and he has in fact not sinned, he shall surely live because of the warning, and you shall save your own life.

Ezekiel 3:17-21

Jay Nordlinger once said that sooner or later you have to just accept that people who vote for Democrat rule that destroys their cities actually would rather have their cities go to hell than have a conservative be in charge.

Black Residents of Chicago’s south side have apparently decided that allowing mostly Hispanic border crossers come into their neighborhoods is a bridge too far.

How DARE those horrible republicans in Texas not allow themselves to be stuck with the problems that woke Democrats fostered on them!

Oddly enough I suspect nobody is going to call them racists

In San Francisco Yet another business has decided to take a hike:

In October 2022, after completing a multimillion-dollar renovation, Australian furniture and lifestyle retailer Coco Republic opened its flagship San Francisco location at 55 Stockton St. in Union Square.

Seven months later, a Coco Republic spokesperson told SFGATE that its flagship San Francisco location is set to close in the next few months, citing a familiar reason: lack of customer foot traffic, which the company pinned in part on unsafe conditions — or at least people’s perception of unsafe conditions — in the surrounding area.

Of course the real story is they actually thought opening their 8 months ago was a good idea. I mean look at the train system:

The day after the report was released, as if to emphasize the heart pounding intensity of possible encounters with fellow BART passengers, there was this guy with a meat cleaver…

A man wearing a balaclava and pacing up and down a BART train this afternoon slashed a fellow passenger across the back with a meat cleaver, and caused more than a dozen other riders to scurry away in fear, according to a witness to the scene.

I love the verbiage, “scurried.” OMG, you know they were running for their frickin’ lives to whatever end or car they could crawl over the person in front of them to get to first.

There’s a reason why only 17% of riders feel safe on their system.

The old saying “neither rain nor snow nor dark of night shall keep the postman from his appointed rounds” apparently doesn’t apply in Seattle

Some south Seattle residents are claiming a significant ‘mail fail’ is occurring as the United States Postal Service (USPS) has halted mail delivery due to a rise in recent vandalism and theft.

A sign at a nearby U.S. Postal Service office in Columbia City is telling residents in the “98118” zip code to pick up their mail in person at an annex office, located at 5920 Martin Luther King Jr Way South. The zip code covers around 49,000 people — but it’s unclear how many of them are not getting their mail delivered.

Well who needs the US mail anyways? After all if you’re worried about crime or walking the streets the lack of mail isn’t going to phase you at all.

Kim Gardner’s resignation is due to go in effect on June 1st. but she’s going out as she came in.

Saturday May 6th, there was a Cinco de Mayo parade held in St. Louis. Lots of people, lots of drinking and at one point some people in the street got into a fight. Two people watching the fight from the sidewalk pulled out guns and started shooting.

As the party on Cherokee street was winding down, gunfire broke out at about 7:30 p.m. on Saturday.

According to police, a man was grazed in his upper thigh and a woman was shot in the leg. Both victims were taken to a nearby hospital and are in stable condition.

An investigation found the victims were watching some men fight from an intersection when one of the suspects started waiving a handgun.

The two shooters, a man and a woman, were quickly identified because there was video showing them pulling out their guns and opening fire.

The shooters on camera drawing their guns, can’t get more open and shut then that, except Gardner has released them and refused to press charges. The obvious question is asked:

The piece concludes, “Gardner could end her time in office better than she conducted most of it by publicly explaining this.” That was published yesterday but so far no explanation has been offered.

I’m struggling to think of an explanation for allowing this woman to walk. Maybe there is a good explanation for this, but given that it was all caught on video it’s hard to imagine how lack of evidence could be a problem here.

Oh there is a good explanation, just not a just one.

Finally in Portland the place where I had my honnymoon 35 years ago and almost moved to because of how beautiful the country was, things continue to go downhill as the drugs take over this whitest of white towns.

Last year they set a record for deaths by Fentanyl overdoses.

This year said: Hold my beer:

According to new data, overdose deaths are up nearly 50% so far this year compared to last year.

Last year, there were a record 158 overdose deaths in Portland. This year will almost certainly surpass that peak. There have already been 85, a 46% increase from this time last year, PPB spokesman Nathan Shephard tells WW.

“Keep in mind that the numbers for this year are actually only preliminary because the Medical Examiner will continue to process toxicology reports that will only increase the number of deaths considered overdoses,” he added.

The new data was released today after a deadly weekend in which 8 people in various parts of the city died from suspected fentanyl overdoses. Two of the deaths happened last Friday. There were five more deaths Saturday and one on Sunday. Police believe the victims bought street drugs which they believed was cocaine but which was actually fentanyl.

Anyone want to make bets on next year?

Quick closing thought. All of these results in all of these cities were a choice, these cities CHOOSE to put in people that advanced these results. They have been warned repeatedly that this has been the case and we have been ignored. Thus have they reaped what they have sowed, but as Daniel cried when they were leading Susanna to be stoned for a crime she did not commit:

 “I am innocent of this woman’s blood.”

Daniel 13:46 (New American Bible)

I and those of us who have warned of this result are innocent of what has gone down

How about the military stay out of housing?

Posted: May 13, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncomfortable Truths, war
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I have never been a fan of military housing, especially in the continental United States. Military housing started out as decent idea, given that many military bases didn’t have large communities around them when they were built. Now its an old concept that needs to die.

I lived in base housing a few times, and each time was a pain. First, you have to register to get housing, and your housing choices are completely based on your rank. I was selected for a higher rank once and had to send in my selection paperwork to the housing office so I could get into a bit nicer house. Granted, being a higher rank gets you more pay and thus you can afford more house, but why is my square footage based on my rank? I have a large family, but people of the same rank as me with no kids got the same size house. I mean, if we’re going to provide equitable housing, maybe it should be based on the number of people occupying it?

Once you get selected for housing, then you have to fill out paperwork. The housing offices love to make you sign away your rights to sue them. That’s how we get the mold, bugs and genuine issues that any other landlord would have to solve or face an ugly civil lawsuit. Then they want you to register all your guns, and man do they get angry if you happen to own more than a few. When I asked the lady for two more sheets to fill out, she looked at me and questioned why I owned so many weapons. My first thought was “None of your damn business,” but I replied in a more nice fashion.

Why is it a big deal that a military member owns a bunch of guns? I’m normally paid to have weapons in a combat zone. Why every single military housing office turns up its nose at me when I have weapons is just weird.

Then once you’re in, you often get treated like a second class citizen. Want to walk into the local exchange in a tank top and shorts to purchase something? Don’t try it, military police will tell you about a dress code. Have an issue with water, or bugs, or mold? Take a number and get in line. Don’t expect the housing office to fix it any time soon either.

BTW, WiFi isn’t free either…listen to Congresswoman Kiggans at the 3:40 mark.

Don’t worry though, the base commander’s house and all the flag and general officer’s homes will be picture perfect. That way, when you make a complaint that gets routed to them, they will look at their beautiful row of homes and go “Gee, I don’t see any problems with housing.”

The military needs to get out of the business of housing. It’s far cheaper and more predictable to simply pay the Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) for all members once they are out of basic training. I could be persuaded to keep housing near big school houses where it would be hard to find housing quickly when you’re going to school, and perhaps at overseas locations where you may need to house people on base for protection. The military is already distracted enough that it can’t execute its wartime missions well, so it shouldn’t be trying to play landlord when it needs to focus on beating China in the next war.

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.

What’s worse than the military recruiting crisis?

Posted: May 6, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncomfortable Truths, war
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What if the best people in the military start asking “Who is John Galt?

Anyone who has read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” or like me used the audiobook because its too damn long to read on paper, knows what I’m talking about.

Spoilers ahead for those that haven’t read it.

The book is set in a future world, where American industry is slowly crumbling. Trains are a preferred method of transportation, but its becoming harder and harder to run the trains on time because of a crushing bureaucracy in government that is making it more painful for businesses to operate. Eventually one of the characters, John Galt, decides to destroy the bureaucracy by removing all the smart people from the system in what he calls a strike. He approaches the engineers, business owners and other hard workers and offers them a chance to leave to a hidden place where their efforts are appreciated instead of demonized. This causes the United States to delve into dictatorship, and eventually collapses, with John leading the strikers to now rejoin the world.

By HKDP – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6617195

It was a hit book. The first movie was good (although it wasn’t well received, go figure!), but movies 2 and 3 kinda sucked. The book teases out the interesting point that a small number of people tend to make the biggest impact on industry, and if they quit, the systems they run tend to collapse.

I’ve seen this hold true in the Navy. I’ve watched some leaders take difficult commands and turn them around, only to watch another lesser leader destroy the well-functioning command right after. It’s incredibly infuriating to spend two years building a team of people, only to watch a new person come in and squander your efforts.

When I think about military recruiting, I’m not as worried about the young people coming in. Every young generation gets looked down upon by the older ones. Every older generation thinks they were so much better at that age. Young people tend to do OK long term.

But what happens if the talented people decide the military isn’t worth joining? What happens if the budding young Nimitz, Marshall, or Billy Mitchell decides to leave, or never join in the first place? What happens if after they join and are greeted with an oppressive bureaucracy of our own making, they vote with their feet?

What happens if John Galt gets to them first?

Our military relies on a perilous few smart people to drive the strategic thinking of the organization. Not everyone is going to be a Nimitz. That’s fine if and only if we actually HAVE the Nimitz in our midst. But if the Nimitz decided he or she had enough beratement by lesser individuals, then we’re going to be left with more Richmond Turners, who might win in the short term through brute force, but lack the operational and tactical genius to win our long term conflicts.

Military recruitment scares me, but the ongoing brain drain as people ask “Who is John Galt” gives me nightmares.

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, drop some coin in DaTechGuy’s wallet!

Remember when we cared about classified information?

Posted: April 22, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncomfortable Truths, war
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Not that long ago, I punished a Sailor for disclosing classified information. He was a pretty nice guy with a nice family. Unfortunately for him, he liked to brag, and so he bragged to more than a few people about some of the cool things he did while he was deployed. Had it been one or two innocuous items, it might have resulted in a severe a$% chewing, some signed papers and “never do this again” speech, but his material was high enough that these actions weren’t sufficient for NCIS. After busting him down a rank, he was separated from the military, and although he avoided jail time, he did have to pay back significant bonus money.

Flash forward only a year and Hillary Clinton gets away with gross violations of compartmentalized information. Not just something that is Top Secret, but items that are secured in such a fashion that maybe only hundreds or even tens of people are read-in to see it. No punishment. None. Not even a red-shirted staffer offered to appease the FBI-gods (and they like to think of themselves as gods, hence cracking down on good Catholics that don’t worship them). That case made me pause and wonder if I had booted a good Sailor by mistake.

And here we are today, with the rapid arrest of a National Guardsman for spilling what I’m guessing is the Chairman’s Daily Brief, which for anyone familiar with it, is posted daily on a website on a classified system. At other commands I’ve sent intelligence items for inclusion on that brief. It’s a pretty good daily laydown of big issues, and like most intelligence products produced by real intelligence people (i.e. not the FBI in Richmond) it should be accurate, even if that accuracy isn’t popular.

After all the leaks by political hacks and all the bad storage practices by people from both parties, I don’t know whether to care anymore. In bureaucratic fashion the Navy put out ALNAV 032/23, reminding. everyone of their responsibilities to protect classified data. I personally wouldn’t disclose anything because I care about my country. But if a young Sailor asked me today about the disparity between the “important” people in power, who get away leaking whatever information they want, and the little people, who get swiftly arrested and punished, I wouldn’t know what to say in response. How do you answer that question?

Nothing is going to change until we start protecting classified materials like they actually matter. Until that happens, its just an opinion subject to the whims of the people in 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. To the FBI and NCIS people reading this, NO, the author doesn’t condone disclosing classified information, and has never disclosed classified information, because unlike the FBI and NCIS, the author actually cares about this country. If you’d like to get an understanding of the author’s character, why don’t you go to Amazon and purchase his book?

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