I mean seriously, Navy manpower woes are the gift that keeps on giving. There are three (!!!) more NAVADMINs that show the Navy is really struggling to keep its people, especially its technical people, from leaving.

The first is NAVADMIN 186/22, which concerns Special Duty Assignment Pay (SDAP). SDAP is an additional monthly pay for Sailors that are in hard-to-fill jobs or qualify in difficult assignments. The Navy uses SDAP to help incentivize Sailors taking the hard duty assignments, because a few hundred dollars extra a month might motivate someone to fill that position.SDAP has been changed for nuclear-qualified Sailors in the following manner:

Billet / NEC            Level    Pay              Change  RDMC/EDMC/CVN DLCPO     7        525.00           +75.00  N33Z NEC                6        450.00           New  NPTU W/SUPERVISOR NEC   6        450.00           No change  SEA W/SUPERVISOR NEC    5        375.00           No change  SHORE W/SUPERVISOR NEC  3        225.00           -75.00  SEA W/OPERATOR NEC      2        150.00           No change  SHORE W/OPERATOR NEC    1         75.00           -75.00 
NAVADMIN 186/22

So what does that mean? In a nutshell, shore assignment SDAP was lowered, while at-sea SDAP was either added or increased. The N33Z NEC refers to an at-sea Sailor that qualifies as an Engineering Watch Supervisor (EWS), which is the senior most enlisted watchstander on a nuclear power plant.Since SDAP is an incentive pay, this is yet more proof that the Navy is trying to push Sailors towards at-sea assignment and to qualify as an EWS at-sea. They wouldn’t bother increasing SDAP if Sailors were already filling those roles without issue.What about technically-savvy officers? Well, NAVADMIN 188/22 changes the accession rules for the Baccalaureate Degree Completion Program (BDCP), which is a program where civilians or enlisted Sailors that have at least 60 credit hours can apply to get a commission, where they get paid while they finish their degree. It’s not as great a deal because it doesn’t pay for tuition, however it does land you a job as an officer afterwards, with the catch of requiring an 8 year commitment. If that sounds a bit long, it is, because a normal ROTC commitment used to be only 4 years…which was increased to 5 years, and for aviators, to 5 years AFTER you qualified to fly (which ends up becoming 8-10 years).BDCP eligibility was extended to…you guessed it…the technical fields of cryptology, cyber, intelligence, networks and oceanography. The only reason to extend this program to those fields is because the normal methods of obtaining officers are not working.The last odd NAVADMIN is 184/22, which simply says that the O-6 continuation board will immediately follow the O-7 selection board. For those not in the know, an O-6 in the Navy is a Captain and an O-7 is a Rear Admiral.Now, normally this board is one of many that are on a routine schedule without any real attention paid to it. Remember that Captains eligible to be reviewed for selection to admiral are well past the 20 years needed to retire, and are allowed to hang out until 30 years of service. They can hang out longer if a continuation board allows it. Since the board already meets on a schedule, why would someone need a NAVADMIN to change when the board meets, and inform the rest of the Navy?Simply put, there was a significant uptick in O-6 retirements after the last O-7 selection board. I asked a few people in the know (who asked to remain nameless) and the word was that the Navy Personnel Office apparently didn’t bother to communicate with a lot of O-6s that were not selected for O-7, and a lot of them submitted retirement requests in response to this poor treatment. While nobody is entitled to be selected for O-7, its not hard to communicate with officers to let them know they weren’t picked. Especially for someone that has given over 20 years to the Navy, you would think the Navy could reciprocate and treat them with respect. The number of retirements stung Navy manpower, hence the short NAVADMIN to try and prevent this from happening again this year.Now, that’s all speculation, but given all the other things happening…is anyone surprised? I sure wasn’t. I am surprised at just how bad recruitment and retention are getting. I had predicted that 2023 would be the breaking point, but that was before the vaccine mandate and terrible withdrawal from Afghanistan. I think those events have accelerated a process that was underway long before this year. I see more and more servicemembers that would otherwise happily stay on a few extra years because they enjoyed the job instead decide to leave for greener pastures. When you go all out to make the Navy a miserable place to work, why would anyone be surprised that you have to increasingly bribe people to stay in?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.

DaTechGuy Blog March 9th 2022:

The magnificent Debra Henie has penned a must read piece on the COVID vaccines and information that has come from studies and FOIA requests that prompts me to make a prediction.

Sometime over the next four years that media is going to pivot and start calling the COVID vaccines the Trump vaccines. When this happens that’s when you know the most damming information and/or side effects from the current crop of vaccines will be so apparent that it can’t be hidden from the public.

Via the Gateway Pundit Politico yesterday:

The Trump administration pressured the Food and Drug Administration, including former FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn,to authorize unproven treatments for Covid-19 and the first Covid-19 vaccines on an accelerated timeline, according to a report released Wednesdayby Democrats on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

The Democrats have little to campaign on and their latest debacle at Mar-a-Lago has not ended well for this, so it’s time to pivot on the Vaccine and blame Trump.

The Politico piece is the first shot, the sudden pivot on YouTube and the vaccines is the 2nd:

It is my opinion that these two things happening almost at once means that the Democrat’s need a new narrative and “The Trump Vaccine is a failure” is where they are heading. This is an easy sell because the number of stories of healthy people suddenly dying have become so ubiquitous that it’s not possible to hide them .

Watch the VAERS chart suddenly become newsworthy (see DatechGuy’s laws of media outrage) and the questions start being asked publicly and watch the media do it’s best to point to Donald Trump as the source of it all.

Given the left’s love of Vaccine Mandates it will be quite a trick for them to pull it off, but if the communists from 39-41 can go from being anti-nazi, to pro-nazi anti intervention (after the non aggression pact), to all in on WW 2 (once Hitler invaded the USSR) I don’t see any problem for today’s communists going from Not taking the Trump vaccine, to mandating the vaccine, to going back to the dangers of the “Trump vaccine” in the same period of time.

For the past several decades the political left here in the United States has been waging a guerilla style war on individualism.  That side of the political spectrum believes in collectivism, which is a belief system where individual humans have no true value.  Collectivism is the defining issue of the political left.

Individual identity, individual rights, and individual liberty have all been the very bedrock the United States was built upon.  Ever since the 1960s, the Democrat party has veered further and further to the left. Most Democrats today embrace collectivism, rather that individualism. 

Unfortunately, the most rabid collectivists infected American colleges and Universities back in the 1960s, turning them into centers of indoctrination, rather than centers of learning.  From these indoctrination centers, collectivism has spread like a cancer across the United States.

Collectivists here in the United States worked particularly hard to infect the education departments of colleges and Universities, turning them into mills that produce collectivist high school and grade school teachers.  Particular emphasis was placed on creating collectivist school administrators and principles.  Teacher unions also became institutions of collectivist indoctrination.

Collectivist educators worked tirelessly to create clever sounding collectivist indoctrination schemes in order to stealthily indoctrinate American children, right under the noses of their parents.  Two of the most common schemes are Critical Race Theory and Social and Emotional Learning.

Until I read this article, UN Program Teaching Kids ‘SEL’ Really Seeks To Kill Individualism (thefederalist.com), I was unaware that one of these schemes originated with the United Nations.

School districts around the world are racing to implement Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) programs in the name of improving their students’ social and emotional skills. In fact, according to the global purveyor of SEL standards, 27 states so far have adopted K-12 SEL competencies, and all 50 states have adopted SEL competencies for pre-K students. But where is this massive push for SEL coming from, and what are the motives behind it?

The answer to this question is becoming clear: The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is a primary force behind the SEL movement worldwide. A major way UNESCO advocates for SEL is through UNESCO’S Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development. The Gandhi Institute produces an online publication called The Blue Dot, which features articles from SEL experts and others around the globe that highlight “the relationship between education, peace, sustainable development and global citizenship.” Invoking Gandhi’s name in the title of this United Nations entity is meant to pull at the heartstrings of anyone who hears it. But should our heartstrings be pulled?

But why? What is it UNESCO wants to instill in children? UNESCO’s materials make it clear that SEL is intended to foster not only kindness between students, but cooperation with a global agenda rooted in the doctrine of collectivism. Nandini Chatterjee Singh, a program specialist for the Gandhi Institute, says “SEL skills are powerful competencies” that have been shown to “instill pluralistic thinking.” The institute’s website further says it is seeking to teach children to “exhibit prosocial behavior for … a peaceful and sustainable planet.”

In short, proponents of the sustainable development goals and SEL want to instill “pluralistic thinking” in your child in the name of global peace. They want children to be taught to value the “collective good” over individual liberties, rights, and property despite the fact that the freest, most prosperous nations in the world are founded on individual liberties, rights, and property.

The United Nations has long been an international institution devoted transforming the globe into a Socialist one world government.  As you can see from the following quotes from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization website, Social and Emotional Learning is a key to making this collectivist hell happen.

At UNESCO MGIEP, we recognize the urgent need for Social Emotional Learning (SEL) to be mainstreamed into education systems to transform education and shape a future that is geared towards providing peace and human flourishing. SEL can be described as learning that allows all learners to identify and navigate emotions, practice mindful engagement and exhibit prosocial behaviour for human flourishing towards a peaceful and sustainable planet

Central to envisioning and shaping a more sustainable and peaceful future is youth. The mass mobilisation of youth towards sustainable development requires empowering youth with information and involving them in policy’s development, promotion and implementation. At UNESCO MGIEP, we work with youth organisations and young people worldwide by supporting their initiatives and curating youth action towards kindness and transforming education.

UNESCO MGIEP’s efforts in prevention of violent extremism include the development of an entirely youth led guide that puts forth youth-centred actionable recommendations for a wide range of stakeholders as well as capacity building for youth in SEL.

UNESCO MGIEP aims to mobilize the world’s youth to achieve the 17 SDGs through transformative acts of kindness. This campaign attempts to create a positive culture of kindness, in which every young person’s selfless act matters!

The Global Collective for SEL and Digital Learning is a multi-stakeholder alliance mobilized to promote Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and digital learning as critical new dimensions in achieving the Sustainable Development

To steal a meme from the good folks at Instapundit:

How it started:

So it doesn’t matter that Politifact crowned “death panel” its Lie of the Year in 2009 – the phrase has staying power. It’s easy to see why: “death panel” evokes an image of faceless bureaucrats rationing health care and sentencing the elderly and the infirm to death.

Ben Cosman The Atlantic: ‘Death Panels’ Will Be Sarah Palin’s Greatest Legacy 5/30/14

How it’s going

In a recently reported horror story from The Associated Press, Alan Nichols, 61, was successfully killed after a quick one month waiting period as he was suffering from hearing loss. Nichols was an otherwise decently healthy guy, but his brother claimed he was railroaded into killing himself. Nichols’ family said that hospital staff helped him request euthanasia and pushed him to do it, a story that has been repeated many times by other disabled or sick Canadians

…Canadian federal data shows that 10,064 people died in 2021 by medically-assisted suicide, a massive 32% jump from the year before. 

Douglas Blair: The Daily Signal Canada Is Euthanizing Its Sick and Poor. Welcome to World of Government Health Care. 8/24/22

I’m old enough to remember when the motto of “Do no harm” from the medical profession referred to the patient, not to the Hospital or the government’s bottom line.

I’d like to think that the folks who decided to edit the Hippocratic oath last century didn’t realize what it would do to the practice of medicine, after all you don’t lose a lot of money presuming human foolishness, but the longer I’ve lived the more I’m coming to the conclusion that this was the desired endgame, because the reality is there are only two sides in the fight vs right and wrong and I know who is in charge of the other side and there are and always have been plenty of folks who at best are his dupes or at worst are his allies.

Palin was never either.