Best shape in decades

Posted: August 5, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Afghanistan war
Tags: , , ,

Would you consider the title describes the U.S. Military right now?

No? Maybe the U.S. Army?

No?

Well, don’t tell Forbes that.

Now, I don’t have any beef with General McConville. He seems like a nice enough person. And according to RAND studies, while the military has been struggling to recruit new members, its actually doing well overall on retention numbers, meeting around 100% of its retention goals.

But best shape in decades? The military is a young person’s game, and the Army more so than most. Retention spiked during the COVID pandemic because the military basically suspended all the rules to desperately keep people in, and people that were getting out were looking at a terrible job market, so it was a win-win for everyone. Then the military went on the COVID vaccine witch-hunt, lost Afghanistan and in general lost its way.

The high retention you see now is not going to last. If you had 18 years in and fell under the old “20 or nothing” retirement, of course you’re going to stay in. But the retirement changed in 2018, so we’re now at the 5-year mark, and retention for servicemembers that enlisted under the new retirement is going to become a problem. The Army has made up the overall numbers by lowering physical fitness standards and failing less people in boot camp, but that won’t make a difference when there simply aren’t enough people in boot camp.

People will continue to blast Senator Tuberville for “depriving” the Army of Senate-confirmed leadership, but insisting that the Army and all the other services focus on killing our enemies instead of innocent babies is the only long-term fix. Maybe we’ll get lucky and more of the generals and admirals that lost our last wars will retire instead of hanging around. One could only hope.

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 Least Popular but most Necessary Song for 2023: “Suck it Up”

Posted: August 5, 2023 by datechguy in culture, fun
Tags: , ,

If you want to understand the difference between the traditional culture of the American right and the culture of grievance that rules today of the left consider this song:

♫ I went to my Grandfather and told him I was mad
My parents make up stupid rules and they don't understand
The man from the old country said "Son don't you be a chump"
If things aren't just the way you want you've gotta suck it up!" ♫

♫ Suck it up!  Suck it up!
You do not realize your own good luck ♫

♫ So when things aren't how you want em, and you think your young life sucks
Don't whine and complain or act insane you just go suck it up
Don't whine and complain or act insane you just go suck it up ♫

♫ I was talking to my Father, said work is kinda sad
My boss constantly leans on me and the money it is bad ♫

♫ My father he just grinned at me said: "Welcome to the club.  
until the day you're filthy rich you gotta suck it up" ♫

♫ Suck it up, suck it up
Your work is how your family gets their grub ♫

♫ So if when work is not the greatest and you fell like you're just  fucked
Don't whine and complain or act insane you just go suck it up
Don't whine and complain or act insane you just go suck it up ♫

♫I sat down with my brothers and said" I'm all depressed
My wife won't lay a hand on me and all my kids are pests" ♫

♫ My brothers they all grinned at me like men who heard enough. 
"All families have their problems so a man must suck it up."
Suck it up, Suck it up
You're not the only guy who is hard up" ♫

 ♫ So when family becomes a burden that's when you must man up
Don't whine and complain or act insane you just go suck it up
Don't whine and complain or act insane you just go suck it up ♫

♫ I said to Fr. Robert "I want some sympathy"
"When bad stuff happens to me no one ever shows pity" ♫

♫ My pastor with a kindly look said "Remember well my son
When Christ was hanged upon the cross he choose to suck it up" ♫

♫ Suck it up, Suck it up
The world it is designed to trip you up ♫

 ♫ ”When suffering when you should not you're are like the holy one
Don't whine and complain do it Christ's way you just go suck it up
Don't whine and complain or act insane you just.. go.. suck... it... up ♫

♫ Suck it up. ♫

I suspect this song would be very popular with my parents and grandparents generation but the very concept of it would cause the college students of today to reach for emotional support stuffed animals.

If you need to know how the tune is paced and have a strong stomach here is how it is supposed to sound.

WARNING!: Taylor Swift I’m not.

My Answer to Ed Kilgore’s Question: Chain of Custody, Open Verifiable Counts

Posted: August 4, 2023 by datechguy in election 2020, election 2024, elections

At NY Mag Ed Kilgore asks: What Would a ‘Legitimate’ Biden Victory Look Like to Republicans? and attacks the very notion that an election might be questioned as bigotry:

There’s a sort of ancestral white Anglo-Saxon Protestant belief that “big-city machines” controlled by Democrats use chicanery to get their voters to the polls and then to put heavy thumbs on the scales to change the results. This mythology — which goes back to lurid tales of “bosses” buying votes from Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century — is hard to shake, closely connected as it is to racial and ethnic prejudices. And speaking of prejudices, today’s conservatives continue to embrace the idea that minority voters — including immigrants — “vote themselves government benefits” in a way that creates a corrupt bargain between liberal elites and their inner-city clientele. It was exactly what Mitt Romney was talking about when he was caught on tape in 2012 warning Republicans that “47 percent” of voters are non-taxpaying parasites in the bag for the opposition. If you feel that way, then you don’t need evidence of specific irregularities to feel that any Democratic presidency is in some respects “illegitimate.”

For all his bluster the answer is quite simple:

  1. A Clear chain of custody for the ballots to ensure they are actually being cast by the voters in question.
  2. An open, transparent and verifiable count of the ballots accepted, preferably streamed so there can be no question that it is honest.

An election under those condition would be no more questionable than the score of yesterday’s Jets Vs Browns game. Everyone who watched saw the players play, everyone who watched saw the calls made and the points being scored and everyone who didn’t watch can access both the video and the audio calls of the game that were made at the time.

Why we would insist on such openness in determining the results of sporting contests and not do so for the election of our leaders is odd.

So Ed if you want me to trust the count on election night, that’s all I need.

Closing thought: Glenn Reynolds posted this at 7:42 PM tonight:

IT CAN’T BE A FRINGE BELIEF IT THAT MANY PEOPLE BELIEVE IT: 69% of Republicans now believe Biden’s 2020 win was illegitimate: New poll released before Trump’s January 6 arraignment shows GOP supporters believe there WAS widespread fraud.

And, regardless of actual fraud, if your electoral system is that untrusted, it’s time to make it more clearly trustworthy. The failure — more like refusal — to do that is producing a constitutional crisis in this country.

emphasis mine

I left the following comment:

If the charges of fraud were specious the media and government agencies in charges of the specific counts would have happily and enthusiastically demonstrated the fact with the evidence of same.

That they never did speaks volumes

When people aren’t transparent it’s for a reason.

License Plate Scanners plus AI Tracking Software equals an all powerful police state plus travel restrictions

Posted: August 3, 2023 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

License plate scanners have been used by police departments across the United States for more than a decade.  I know the police department in the town I live in uses them constantly.   I here them using them on my police scanner.  They routinely stop a vehicle because the registered owner’s license is suspended, or something similar. 

License plate scanners, on their own, are a grave threat to the right to privacy of each and every American.  They are a gross violation of our most cherished constitutional rights.  Every single American has a God-given Natural Right to move as we wish, completely free of any government snooping or surveillance.  .

Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, this gross violation of privacy has become much worse, as you can see from this Breitbart article: Breitbart – Police Use AI-Powered License Plate Recognition to Track ‘Suspicious’ Travel Patterns

American law enforcement are now using AI-powered license plate recognition systems to identify “suspicious” patterns of movement by analyzing billions of license plate records. However, this new technology raises significant concerns about privacy and potential misuse.

Forbes reports that by examining billions of license plate records, AI is now assisting American law enforcement in locating “suspicious” movement patterns. This new technology raises serious concerns about privacy and potential abuse. 

When you combine the gross violation of license plate scanners and AI with this article, Breitbart – Climate of Fear: U.N. Chief Guterres Warns ‘Era of Global Boiling’ Is Here, all of the recent hysteria over the supposed hottest temperatures ever becomes more ominous.

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. United Nations chief Antonio Guterres on Thursday night rolled out some of his most apocalyptic climate rhetoric to date declaring “the era of global warming has ended, the era of global boiling has arrived.”

He went on to lament how “terrifying” it is seeing children “swept away by monsoon rains, families running from the flames, workers collapsing in scorching heat.”  He said “short of a mini ice age” over coming days, some scientists estimate July 2023 would shatter records across the board.

Could it be possible that license plate scanners and AI could be used to curtail the movement of Americans to fight a made up dire climate change emergency?  Absolutely.  The hysteria over climate change is already beig used to curtail air travel in a very back handed manner: In the Name of Climate Change: Travel Restrictions and the Great Reset – American Thinker

In 2022, the 193-member nation International Civil Aviation Organizations (ICAO), a U.N.  agency, agreed to a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.  Ironically, the call to reduce the use of aviation fuel is accompanied by a boom in private air travel, as airline travel becomes more difficult.  Private jets constitute 25% of U.S.  flights and increased by 17% in the first half of 2022.  Clearly, despite purported concerns about greenhouse gas emissions, the Great Reset does not restrict travel for the elite.  The agenda obviously has more to do with politics and control than science.

This year, summer air travel was subjected to massive delays.  More than 11,000 flights were delayed or cancelled on June 25; some 8,000 on June 26; and there were 35,000 flight delays and 7,000 cancellations on July 4.  Candid airline employees confessed this had nothing to do with the weather, and that pilot and ATC understaffing was responsible for the chaos.  In late June, I found myself stuck in New York for three days with no available flight options to the West Coast.  I was also trapped in Reykjavik for four nights because of the cancellation of flights to Ilulissat, Greenland.  An Icelandair captain revealed the reason: a tower at an adjacent airport, required for potential flight diversions, was unmanned because of an ATC shortage.

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