A Navy desperate to keep…everybody!

Posted: January 6, 2024 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Afghanistan war, Blame Biden Administration, opinion/news
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Over the holiday period I didn’t bother checking the latest NAVADMINs, because spending time with my family was for more important. So when I looked this week, I saw I missed a doozy: the Navy’s message concerning retention boards.

In December the Navy announces its promotion boards, which are in January (for Captains), Feb-March (for Commanders), and April-May (for Lieutenant Commanders). Some years ago the Navy began convening the retention board immediately after these boards to decide the fates of anyone not selected for promotion. The overarching policy of retention boards is a direct measure of the health of the service, and well, the Naval Service is not healthy.

Take a look at NAVADMIN 291/23. I’ll break it down below:

Paragraph 2 states that any Captain (O-6) that has certain AQDs (basically, special training or expertise in a specific area) that relate to Acquistion can stay until 33 years of service. Normally Captains have to retire at 30 years of service. This isn’t a huge surprise, the Navy is in dire need of Acquisition Workforce personnel, so it’ll keep anyone that it can.

LCDRs (O-4s) that twice failed to select for CDR (O-5) will simply be kept until 20 years, when they can retire. They won’t even be considered for retention…it’s assumed. In the past the retention board could be used to shape manpower by removing the bottom performing LCDRs. That is not happening at all now, essentially if you have a pulse and made O-4, you can stay till 20 years.

Let’s say you’re a LCDR that is a flight instructor, chaplain, cyber warfare engineer, foreign area officer, information professional, maritime space officer, medical corps, nurse corps or supply corps. What if you want to stay past 20 years? Well, you can!

URL 1310 aviators with primary AQDs of DIP or DA5/DA7/DB2/DB5/DB6/DD1/DH3/DL3/DS2 (TACAIR), CWE, FAO, IP, and SC officers selected for continuation will be continued for a period of 3 years to 23 YOAS.  CHC, MSO, MC, and NC officers selected for continuation will be continued until the last day of the month in which the officer 
completes 24 YOAS.

That right there is a bad sign. That means we are significantly short in all those areas, and we’re willing to keep people for an additional 3-4 years to cover the gaps.

What about Lieutenants (O-3s)? Typically LTs that are passed over twice for O-4 are sent home at the end of the next fiscal year. The only LTs I’ve seen the Navy hold onto are people that were prior enlisted and needed another year to reach mandatory officer retirement criteria. But now: 

Lieutenant (LT)  Aerospace Engineering Duty Officer (AEDO), CHC, CWE, Cryptologic Warfare (CW), Dental Corps (DC), FAO, Intelligence Officer (INTEL), IP, Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAGC), MC, Medical Service Corps (MSC), MSO, NC, and SC will follow the below as applicable:
    a.  2XFOS LTs covered in paragraph 4 with less than 18 YOAS and selected 
for continuation will be continued for a period of three years, but not 
beyond retirement eligibility at 20 YOAS.

FOS stands for “Failure of Selection.”

So now LTs can stay for 20 years until they can retire. I never thought I’d see that, but here we are. Granted, it’s not every officer, but it won’t surprise me if the retention board eligibility expands to include more officer specialties.

I want to remind everyone that this crisis was generated 100% by our own government:

  • We changed the retirement system way back in 2016-2018, which was the number one thing that kept good people in past 5-10 years of service. I predicted this would end badly, by the way.
  • Then we started losing wars, specifically Afghanistan. We drew out of Afghanistan in a horrible way, so everyone that lost limbs or part of their sanity fighting in that war felt betrayed. This in turn made them tell their kids to never join the military.
  • Oh, and we stayed around in Syria so more of our people could die needlessly. Because nothing says we love our Special Forces more than allowing them to die needlessly in a crappy country where we don’t have an exit strategy.
  • THEN, we kicked people out over the COVID vaccine. Instead of handling that crisis with care, we booted people with general discharges. But don’t worry, we’ll invite them back, I’m sure they’ll come in droves!
  • THEN, the Navy played politics and openly told Congress to go f*#! themselves and used OPTAR money to pay for abortion.

NOW, we are SHOCKED! SHOCKED! that we are in a huge recruiting. crisis. I made a prediction back in February that the Navy would use its “BINGO card” to keep people in:

  1. Not kicking people out for physical fitness test failures
  2. Waiving darn near everything, from age to non-violent felonies
  3. Asking people to pretty-please stay around a few more years
  4. Opening OCS and other admissions
  5. Raising bonuses
  6. Make life better for officers
  7. Reduce opportunities to leave early
  8. Op-Hold people

The Navy has in fact done all the things in bold. The only missing one is making life better. Maybe that’s a draw, since if you wanted free time and per diem off to go murder your unborn baby, you can now get it. The only prediction that hasn’t held was that the Navy would remove marijuana from its drug test, although it was totally an option in Congress.

My prediction for 2024: it only gets worse!

  • We’ll relax rules on marijuana, opioids and other drugs
  • Mental health rules will relax
  • Bonuses will be handed out just to get on the bus
  • We’ll create some new ribbon candy to congratulate people on passing boot camp
  • We’ll see Navy advertisements EVERYWHERE, especially on Reddit, YouTube, Amazon Prime and other streaming platforms

None of it will work. When we spend more time focused on renaming the John C Stennis aircraft carrier, continue to allow flag officers to violate rules and get away with it (remember, you can sexually assault people and not go to jail, so long as you’re a 3-star in the Air Force), and continue to allow a broke acquisition system to churn out expensive weapons, we can’t recruit the best people. The best men and women want to join the Navy to fight for their country, with people and leaders they trust and on equipment that works. They want people held accountable for their actions, and they want others to hold them accountable because that’s how they become better.

We’re doing all the wrong things, and I expect 2024 to be another terrible year for military manning.

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.

Raise Your Hand if Trump Turned You Into a Newt During His First Term

Posted: January 6, 2024 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, Blame Trump, election 2024, politics
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  • Sir Bedevere: What makes you think she’s a witch?
  • Peasant: Well, she turned me into a newt!
  • Sir Bedevere: A newt?
  • Peasant: [meekly after a long pause] Got better.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail 1975

The Jack Smith “Trump is going to have his enemies killed if elected” story brought back memories of a young lady I once knew.

About 7 years or so ago, just before my temp job became a full time one I used to work with a particular young lady.

She was 30 years younger than me, very intelligent and a hard worker. Her older sister had gone to school with my youngest son and also worked at the place but as a full timer. 

We got along like a house on fire although we were about as politically and religiously different as we could be. I was a straight devout Catholic who after Ted Cruz had lost in the primaries was all in on Trump and while she was a lesbian or perhaps bi who was all in or Bernie and had walked away from the Church, though devoted to her still devout French Canadian grandmother.

While as I said we got along well one of the things about her that regularly dove me nuts was her INSISTANCE that Donald Trump was going to put her in a gulag for being a lesbian.

No argument or evidence could convince her otherwise and even after Trump’s election she remained convinced that any day now a Trumpian gestapo would come for her to her final day at the company back in January of 2018 she clung to this belief. I ran into her older sister who left the company a year or so ago (a great loss to the place) last week and inquired about her. She told me her sister was doing well and apart from the COVID isolation that everyone had gone through had not in fact ended up in a gulag during the entire span of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Which brings us to election 2024.

I’ve already noted the invincible irrational hatred that some have for Trump which I think will be a real problem come election day, but the only thing more irrational than that hatred (particularly from some conservatives) is the abject fear of some liberals of a 2nd Trump term in terms of their personal freedom.

To put it simply. If there is one thing that was perfectly clear during the Trump years is that while he had harsh words and abrasive and even insulting tweets for those who opposed him Trump did not censor nor imprison those who opposed him loudly.

You’d think that if Trump was a wanna be dictator he might have, you know, acted like a dictator, imprisoned a few folks on “Trumped” up charges, used the power of the FBI or the IRS against them or even gone after those burning cities and thrown the book at them for their terroristic actions.

Or to put it another way: If you ask people to raise their hand if Donald Trump imprisoned or even censored you for speaking out against him during his first term the number of hands that will go up will be equal to the number of Camels this person has spotted.

On the contrary it was In fact it was Trump himself who was often censored and/or misrepresented particularly when he suggested that there were treatments for COVID out there that were effective and the Biden administration who has used all of these tactics on those who might dare suggest that the previous election was not clean and the government’s statements on COVID might not be all that accurate.

Put simply Trump has a record of not imprisoning’s or harming his foes, so what makes anybody think that he’s going to be doing so if re-elected, particularly since he will go into office as an instant lame duck who can’t run for a 3rd term?

Of course this kind of logic is lost on the Jack Smiths of the world and on those who think looting and burning cities is fine but walking through the capital while police hold doors open for you is high treason and can’t tell the difference between barbarians who rape murder and kidnap women and children and those who retaliate against the folks who do so.

No amount of argument will apply here. This is a matter of faith for them and if we are blessed with a 2nd Trump term they will insist that their lack of imprisonment was simply because he either didn’t get around to it or that the brave democrats of the house prevented him from doing so.

Unexpectedly of course.

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Question: How Do You Know People From MIT are Smarter than People From Harvard and Penn?

Posted: January 5, 2024 by datechguy in culture, education, Israel vs Hamas, middle east
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Answer: Because their president knew when to shut up.

It’s been a month or so since the presidents of Penn, Harvard and MIT made fools of themselves in their congressional testimony. The President of Penn resigned that week, the President of Harvard, being a woman of color, needed a month and massive evidence of plagiarism to get her out the door. 

Now as we near the end of the Christmas Season only Sally Kornbluth the President of MIT remains and although Bill Ackman has turned his attention to her and a lecturer has resigned this week over their response to antisemitism on campus Kornbluth still stands.

Why because after her disastrous performance before congress she did the one thing that neither Gay of Harvard nor Magill of Penn did, she managed to keep her mouth shut and her head down.

Both Gay and Magill put out videos declaring loudly once they were not under oath what they should have said under oath. Kornbluth remained silent. In fact if you do a google search for news stories with the word “Kornbluth” and sort by date you will note very few stories concerning her during the period from the time between Magill’s resignation and Gay’s. In fact the most significant story in play was this from the Times of Israel:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology president Sally Kornbluth, who came under fire after her testimony on the university’s response to antisemitism, attended a screening of a compilation film showing Hamas atrocities carried out on October 7, Prof. Retsef Levi says on X, formerly Twitter.

Levi, a critic of Kornbluth, says he also attended the screening, as did chairman of the MIT board Mark Gorenberg and other faculty.

The screening of the tightly controlled film, which was put together by the IDF, was hosted by the MIT Chabad house

This silence clearly paid dividends. A full month has passed since the base hearing, she can point to her attendance of the screening above while still staying married to the narrativeTM as demonstrated by this memo which came out yesterday:

We will soon announce a new Vice President for Equity and Inclusion (VPEI). With this new role, we have an important opportunity to reflect on and comprehensively assess the structures and programs intended to support our community and create a welcoming environment.

While we address the pressing challenge of how best to combat antisemitism, Islamophobia and hatred based on national origin or ethnicity in our community, we need to talk candidly about practical ways to make our community a place where we all feel that we belong.

While she doesn’t have the advantages of Gay’s racial bona fides she also doesn’t apparently have any of the plagiarism issues to worry about.  Combine that with her pushing of DEI along with repeating the canard that “Islamaphobia” as an issue that needs to be combated on campus and she has put the left on notice that she is on board and no amount of Hamas atrocities are going to derail her from the cause.

Given her history at Duke university this is no surprise.

So while the focus might turn to MIT and some may put some effort in bringing heat toward MIT in general and Kornbluth in particular I’m predicting that Kornbluth will still be president of MIT when this year’s class graduates and the next semester’s class enters.

After all there is nothing that draws those arab billions to a US college like a Jewish president willing to play ball and smart enough to dodge the consequences of same.

Unexpectedly of course.

Bonus Thought: Harvard and Penn are both known for their Law Schools, You would think people who run law schools would know the first rule of law, particularly if you know you’re guilty is to SHUT UP! MIT may not do law but as a school known for more practical skills and thus figured this out.

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Could you imagine the media outrage if Trump supporters behaved this badly?

Posted: January 4, 2024 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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For the past several decades there has only been one true privilege in the United States, that is progressive privilege.  Leftist mobs, whether they be Black Lives Matter or ANTIFA, riot with impunity.  They are media darlings.  The Media, including Fox News, incorrectly labels them protesters.  Little mention is made of the carnage they have caused.

Crowds of peaceful MAGA supporters, numbering tens of thousands, gather regularly.  No violence takes place.  There was not a single violent incident reported at a Tea Party rally, yet the media harps on right wing extremism, and labels our side of the political spectrum domestic terrorists.

Blocking roads and highways is one of the favorite tactics used by the true domestic terrorists, BLM and ANTIFA.  They engage in that behavior regularly.  Pro Palestinian mobs have embraced that disruptive tactic with gusto since the Hamas massacre in Israel.  Just the other day the pro Palestine mob upped the ante with a truly dangerous new tactic:  Pro-Palestinian Car Caravan, Balloons Create ‘Nightmare’ at JFK Airport (breitbart.com)

A caravan of pro-Palestinian demonstrators driving around John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport in New York City on New Year’s Day and releasing balloons, caused 60 flights to be delayed and created chaos on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

Vehicles festooned with radical slogans such as “One solution: revolution,” “Long live the resistance,” and “F*ck Israel,” circled the roadways leading to the airport, preventing passengers as well as airline crews from reaching their terminals on time.

Sending up large balloons in the path of passenger planes in the process of landing and taking off is exceedingly dangerous.  Did the corporate media cover this outrageous incident?  Hell no.  Could you imagine the media outrage if Trump supporters had behaved this badly?

The media insists on labeling these progressive darlings as protestors or demonstrators. Sending up balloons in the path of airplanes is not a valid form of protesting. Blocking roads is not a valid form of protesting either, because it interferes with the rights of everyone trying to use those roads.

I believe that Thomas Jefferson would agree that blocking roads is not a valid form of protesting.

No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him: every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him: and, no man having a natural right to be the judge between himself and another, it is his natural duty to submit to the umpirage of an impartial third. when the laws have declared and enforced all this, they have fulfilled their functions, and the idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural right. the trial of every law by one of these texts would lessen much the labors of our legislators, & lighten equally our municipal codes

This additional quote by Jefferson reinforces my conclusion: Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 4 April 1819 (archives.gov)

rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’; because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.

The media often overlooks the word peaceably in the text of the First Amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

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