Donald Trump is either Getting Bad Advice or Ignoring Good Advice in DeSantis Attacks

Posted: February 19, 2023 by datechguy in election 2024, elections, elections, politics, primaries
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The first primaries and caucus’ for the 2024 presidential election are just under a year away but Donald Trump is wasting no time going after who would be his strongest potential rival for the GOP nomination, the very popular and successful governor of Florida Ron DeSantis.

For the last couple of week’s both Donald Trump himself and Team Trump have thrown mud everything from claiming DeSantis was a big fan of lockdowns (he wasn’t) to claiming George Soros endorsed him (he didn’t). None of this is a surprise, Donald Trump has always fought like a Democrat against potential rivals/ You might recall he used similar tactics against Ted Cruz in the primaries and frankly went so far that I had to think long and hard before endorsing him before the GOP primary. You might also recall that there was a big fuss concerning Ted Cruz’s speech at the convention because of these tactics.

In the end Cruz ended up supporting him and when Trump, to a lot of people’s surprise and delight, turned into not only the most conservative but the most successful president of the 21st century we all cheered. It was however his failure to address the issue of voter fraud (something I warned him about five days after the 2016 election) that cost him him re-election in 2020.

Now comes another GOP primary and the Democrats who were happy to promote him in 2016 are again convinced that Trump is their best shot in 2024 to keep power after putting the country through two of the hardest years it’s faced when not fighting a world war (I don’t count Ukraine as US troops are not actively fighting on the ground). Furthermore as Demonstrated by their love affair with Mitt Romney they will never fail to promote the message of any member of the GOP who targets his own party.

So Trump has turned to attacking DeSantis and the Trump hating press/left have been happy to repeat these attacks (What? You thought Meta/Facebook/Instagram let Trump back in because they were scared of the GOP congress? Please!) and will continue to give him such a free reign as long as DeSantis who they fear, is in the crosshairs. Th consistant with DaTechGuy’s 1st Law of Media Outrag with states:

The level of Outrage or interest of the media and their allies on the left concerning any insult or prevarication concerning a person or thing will routinely be equal to the inverse of the degree of the political distance between said media / leftists and and the target of said insult or prevarication at the time it is made.

The question is however: “Does this help or hinder Donald Trump to get the GOP nomination?” In My Opinion it does not for several reasons:

  • DeSantis has been visibly fighting the media/left since the day he was elected
  • He has been public enemy #1 for the left, the woke and the groomers in the press
  • He has managed very public victories such as the one over Disney advancing conservative cause.
  • People keep pouring into his state fleeing from the blue states
  • DeSantis who had won his first election by a squeaker won re-election by a landslide in a year when the rest of the GOP fizzled

and last but not least:

  • Not only are these charges demonstrably false GOP partisans, even those who prefer Trump KNOW they are false

Even worse for Trump DeSantis has taken the exact right tactic to counter said attacks.

  • Pointing to his work
  • Hitting Joe Biden
  • Declining to attack other republicans

Or to put it simply he’s not giving Trump’s attacks the time of day.

Now Donald Trump, despite his vigor is an old man and one thing that’s almost axiomatic is you aren’t going to get a man over 70 to change his nature. If in his gut he thinks this is the way to go it will take a lot of convincing to get him to change course.

All this adds up to a tactic that is not going anywhere nor is likely to go anywhere and even worse makes Trump vulnerable to a simple counter-attack that DeSantas hasn’t used yet, but that’s another post.

The Navy’s Health of the Force survey says we are…

Posted: February 18, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in war
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Unhealthy.

I know you wouldn’t guess it by the cover pictured above. If you didn’t see “NAVY” plastered in the center, you could be forgiven for thinking this was referring to firefighters or some other group of people. More on that point later…

The Navy conducted a survey called the “Health of the Force” to gauge how well it was doing in the areas of Sailor retention, healthy behaviors, and other longevity areas that concern the “people” side of things. You can read the survey here. Full disclosure, I took this survey. If you’ve been following this blog for sometime, you can guess that the results of the survey reveal a Navy in trouble, especially in terms of recruiting, and well, the first major graphic of the survey sure seems to indicate just that.

Sailors increasingly think that the Navy isn’t committed to them? Even the surveyors agreed that “The negative trend for all four of these protective factors is statistically significant.” But wait, it gets worse. When Sailors were directly asked if they would stay in or get out of the Navy, we get these numbers…

Ouch.

In the course of five years, we went from over 60% of young men intending to stay to retirement to just under 40%. This is really bad considering that men make up about 80% of the Navy. Female retention is always difficult, because the Navy is not family friendly (no matter how often they lie to themselves about it), so women are often stuck between “Have a family” and “Have a Navy career.” Seems like many are increasingly picking the former.

So I wonder what happened in 2018 that caused this dip? The top reason people cited for staying in was “benefits.” Hmmm…didn’t we change the retirement in 2018? Didn’t someone blog about that and said it was a bad idea? Who could have seen that coming?

Nahh, I bet cutting retirement benefits had nothing to do with the young people deciding that the military wasn’t a good long term fit for them.

But at least we’re doing well in the DEI arena, with all our mandatory training, right?

Ouch. Now, these graphs look bad, but I noticed an interesting paragraph above them:

I’m wondering how much of the high number in the graph an aggregate of many smaller numbers. Like, if sexism is a “problem” in the Navy, is it a big or small problem? Is it better now than before? The survey text and the graphs shows very different results, so I think too much is aggregated to get the finer details. The reality is though that for all the focus on racism and sexism training, we don’t seem to be getting better, or at least we aren’t perceived as any better.

Same goes for suicide. For all the money spent on prevention, its not making a difference. Normally people are fired for this, but instead we’ll keep pouring money down a drain while young people continue to kill themselves.

Apparently Navy Sailors like using drugs that aren’t just alcohol…who knew! The rise in cannabis use will impact recruiting in two ways. First, you’ll have to issue more marijuana waivers to get otherwise qualified people to join. Second, if anyone wants an easy ticket out of the Navy, they can just smoke a few joints and pop positive on a drug test.

Long time readers will remember when I predicted that to make numbers, Navy would turn off all the “early out” taps, extend contracts, lower standards and throw money at the problem? Well, this survey confirmed all of that. Here’s a section from the “enlisted retention” portion:

Remember when the Navy made headlines saying they “made their recruitment numbers!” this past year, and I said that was a prop to hide a big problem? Well, I was right. The Navy drained its DEP numbers (essentially a reserve of Sailors signed up but waiting for boot camp) to make that short term goal. Now future Sailors “are shipped to boot camp withing weeks or even days of contracting to serve.” See below.

The officers are no better. Here’s a few snippets from various fields:

The last graphic sums it up the best.

If you can’t fully man, or overman, the billets that we have at sea, then you’re not doing your job. Has anyone been held accountable for this mess? It’s obviously been going on for a long time. Why was nobody fired?

Here’s the sad truth: Health of the Force told us that despite all the efforts of our “manpower heroes,” we still perceive ourselves as racist and sexist (and remember that perception doesn’t have to match reality), we emptied our coffers to keep people in, nobody wants to stay to retirement age, and we can’t man the most critical jobs we have.

It’s going to be a bad few years for the Navy until they figure themselves out.

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 liked this post, why not donate to DaTechGuy or purchase one of my books on Amazon?

Update (DTG) Instalanche: Thanks Glenn. Take a look around. If you like this piece you can find Ryan here and at Datechguyblog.org every Saturday. Catch you then

A “Biden Peak Miracle”, One Palestine the Left Doesn’t Care About, Haley, unjustly attacked but still “Meh”, Oh Put a sock in it Andrew it’s Your fault and still great after 24 years under the fedora

Posted: February 18, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized

At my job the “Biden Peak” which had led to layoffs since the middle of December took an odd turn. It was apparent that we weren’t going to have enough work for Thursday so people were given the option to take it off rather than come in for what would be a partial day. Several folks, particularly those who have long drives took them up on the offer and that combined with some unexpected orders gave us enough work to keep us to our normal midnight quitting time.

In the warehouse biz it’s not unusual to have a short week or two after the 1st of the year when the Christmas order rush and the Christmas returns rush ends but in the seven years I’ve been here as a temp and then a full time employee this was the las=test the first 40 hour week ever came.

We’ve got at least two more years of this thanks to the cowards who decided to let things ride rather than deal with a stolen election. We’ll pay for it more if it’s stolen again.

The more we’re hearing about the environmental disaster out of Palestine Ohio the worse it sounds, which is why the media/left is doing all it can to keep it quiet. Senator Vance’s challenge to the EPA to drive the water they insist is safe should frankly be enshrined in law. This is the price of selling your credibility.

There is a reason why Pipelines are a better choice for some things, but we can’t have choices that hurt donors of the left and we certainly can’t report on stories that reflect poorly on the Biden Administration.

So much for the greens actually caring, of course this is a red state so maybe environmentalists consider this just deserts.

Nikki Haley’s run for president brings up mixed feelings. It’s normal for a 2nd tier candidate to jump in to get some practice for the time when they might be a 1st tier candidate four years later and/or to lobby for a cabinet post or the VP slot if they do good enough but I agree with Kurt Schlichter that she really isn’t the right candidate for this environment.

That’s being said the attacks against her by the left and by folks like Ann Coulter have been SO over the top and so racist and sexist that once can’t help feel some sympathy for her and hope she puts up at least a credible campaign.

She’s not “evil” or “incompetent’s” she’s just to willing to play ball with the establishment who might eat her alive. She would likely make a competent president and certainly better than what we have now, of course that’s about as low a bar as you get.

It’s not often that I get angry with someone when they are agreeing with me and arguing a true and important moral point but that was my reaction when I saw that Andrew Sullivan is outraged that the press is trying to suppress reporting on the “Child Transition” calling it “The greatest scandal in gay rights history”.

While he is absolutely right about the scandal and the damage it causes journalism as he is one of the founders of this feast that is damaging children for a lifetime I don’t want to hear a word from him about it.

It was he who, contrary to his professed Christian/Catholic belief pushed to redefine marriage, in fact he was one of the earliest pushing for it not caring that the left who so celebrated his fight would not stop redefining words with “marriage” and would continue with “boy”, “girl”, “recession” and even “vaccine”.

Now the useful idiot is shocked SHOCKED that the avalanche that he helped start is not going where it should? I’d say more but it would not be possible for me to express the depth of my distain in a way consistent with decorum or Christianity so we’ll stop here.

I was going to talk about a podcast problem but then I saw Glenn Reynolds summery of how he would structure a course on the history of “White Supremacy”.

It’s not only exactly right but would likely be interesting and informative, If he considered actually teaching it and making it available online I’d consider taking it for the sheer pleasure of it (I find learning history fun and have since I was five).

I know that a lot of insty isn’t Glenn anymore but the day he stops writing will be a loss for a lot of people.

The Wuhan Flu pandemic nonsense has polarized the American people in a rather loathsome manner

Posted: February 16, 2023 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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It is far more difficult now, after three years of the Wuhan Flu Pandemic, for me to have a normal conversation with family, friends, and especially strangers.  During just about every conversation the Wuhan Flu pandemic comes up.  About 95 percent of the time the person I’m chatting with reiterates the standard progressive talking points.  I am faced with three choices; I pretend to agree, I remain silent, or I set them straight with the truth. 

I am not the type of person who pretends to go along with a lie, especially a dangerous lie.  I am also not one who remains silent.  Engaging in polite, yet passionate debate is something I excel at, having learned this skill from my dad, who is an absolute master.  I never lose my cool.

The moment I begin educating my conversation partners about the truth concerning the Wuhan Flu pandemic, I am greeted with anger and hostility.  Very seldom does the conversation turn into a peaceful and respectful exchange of ideas.  Science denier is an epithet that is most often hurled at me.  The others are far less polite. 

The media, social media companies, school indoctrination, and progressive politicians are to blame. 

The vast majority of media coverage is based on the progressive junk science that is crammed down our throats by the CDC. 

Social media censors the truth and places those who spread it end up in their version of jail. 

School indoctrination has brainwashed most of the last generation into believing anyone who questions the progressive orthodoxy are evil and must be shouted down and silenced. 

Progressive politicians are milking this pandemic for everything its worth.  They have ratcheted up the fear to such an unconscionable level in order to convince the American people to give up their most sacred God-given natural rights.  They want power and absolute control over each and every individual.

We must all keep up the good fight. We must keep spreading the truth even though we are greeted with hostility and lose friends.  The stakes are too high.

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