Posts Tagged ‘covid’

The military never cared about your religion

Posted: December 4, 2021 by ng36b in Uncategorized
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While I don’t have a print subscription to the Military Times newspapers, I still get their morning email, and today’s headline featured the US Navy not accepting any religious exemptions for the COVID vaccine:

As the deadline for active-duty sailors to get the mandatory COVID-19 vaccine passed Monday, the sea service has yet to grant any vaccine exemptions on the basis of religious accommodation, according to figures released Tuesday.

As of Tuesday, 2,531 requests for exemption from the vaccine mandate had been filed by sailors on religious grounds, though officials could not say how many of those requests had been ruled upon.

Navy Times

I’m not surprised, because in my experience, the Navy (and most services) don’t really care about your religious beliefs. Never have, never will, because in today’s service, the service is the religion.

I noticed this trend when I first joined the Navy. I remember having to beg the Commanding Officer on my submarine to get a mere 45 minutes off on Sunday to hold Catholic services. Mind you, we weren’t on mission, at war, or even strapped for time, but he couldn’t be bothered, and it wasn’t until I talked with the squadron chaplain that I was grudgingly granted the time. This was despite the fact that there are plenty of instructions stating that time and space will be provided unless a submarine is on mission or executing critical duties. My Commanding Officer viewed my request as a nuisance, and he told me as much to my face.

It wasn’t just one CO though. At multiple duty stations, there would be this unwillingness to grant military members the time off to celebrate their faith, be it Christian, Jewish or anything else. In Bahrain, where Sunday is considered a workday, I essentially caused a small office revolt by going to noon Mass on Sunday and telling my boss I simply wasn’t going to work yet another 12 hour work day when we weren’t in crisis mode. I distinctly remember the Admiral there telling us at an all-hands call that he was expecting 6 day work weeks, and even most Saturday mornings, despite no apparent need to do so. It was like the Navy was his “god,” and he couldn’t pray enough while slogging through the mass of self-induced paperwork at his desk.

If the Navy can’t provide a simple hour for Mass once a week, its no surprise they won’t approve vaccine exemptions. Now, to be fair, I encourage people to vaccinate because I think its far better than catching COVID, but I also don’t really think its a hill worth dying on or kicking people out over, similar to why I don’t think we should be stopping everything to chase the extremely tiny number of extremists that might exist in the ranks.

Kicking people out over a COVID vaccine is just one more reason the Navy is going to be hurting for recruitment come 2024-2025. The lip service paid to everything from ship maintenance and strategy to human resources and bonuses is becoming more obvious every day. People are catching on that the Navy views itself as its own religion, and if you’re not willing to worship, then you’ll be shown the door.

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 article, consider supporting the author by purchasing his book for either yourself or as a Christmas gift.

Coddling college students

Posted: November 2, 2021 by chrisharper in education
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By Christopher Harper

The pandemic may have a devastating impact on education that few people could have predicted.

Instead of focusing on making up for losses in educational attainment, students and faculty are concentrating on how to exacerbate the problems the pandemic created.

During the pandemic, Temple University, like many other institutions of higher learning, encouraged faculty to be more lenient about deadlines and grading policies. In fact, Temple gave students the option to change to a pass-no pass grading system rather than the typical A-through-F standards.

As a result, returning students seem more interested in complaining about the past months of the pandemic than buckling down to determine what they didn’t learn and needed to.

I am teaching courses on ethics and media law during the fall semester. As I did during the pandemic, I am teaching the courses online, and the students have opted to choose this form of learning even though in-person sections exist.

I have never had more requests for extensions on assignments! It is as though many students have lost the ability to organize their time.

In the past, I have allowed students to hand in materials up to a week late for 70 percent credit. Now students—many of whom have obtained waivers under disability arrangements for attention-deficit disorder and similar ailments—are demanding full credit up to a month after an assignment is due.

As a professor of journalism, I demand that students understand grammar, punctuation, and style. Three mistakes, I advise, will result in a deduction of 10 percent. I suggest that students pay $20 a month for an excellent program at grammarly.com.

The adherence to such standards has become almost irrelevant this semester since many students could care less about such requirements. Instead, the students simply take the deductions rather than learn how to write appropriately and effectively. One student responded “lol,” or laughing out loud, to my suggestions.

But the administration does not tell students that they need to hunker down. Instead, Temple and other institutions coddle the students.

Only last week, my college encouraged students to “take a break to prioritize self-care.”

During the event, students had the opportunity to participate in:

  • Mini massages with a licensed massage therapist
  • Paws N’ Play session with a therapy dog
  • Hot chocolate bar with all the fixings
  • Pumpkin painting contest
  • Volleyball and cornhole
  • Wellness Resource Center table
  • Prize wheel, Plinko board, and more!

Simply put, I cannot tolerate the notion that feeling good rather than working hard has become the dominant underpinning of a college education. Moreover, I think the current climate will leave many students poorly prepared for what they’ll find in the workplace.

There will be no Biden reset

Posted: September 19, 2021 by John Ruberry in crime, economy, immigration, media, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

After a summer of failures, including the resurgence of COVID-19, horrid job numbers, the crisis at the southern border, rampant urban crime, and our humiliating exit from Afghanistan, there was hope within the Biden White House, cheered on by the compliant media, that a reset was due with the new season.

But over this weekend, which isn’t over yet as of this writing, things got worse. In a flashback to the Obama years, the Pentagon chose Friday afternoon–a Friday news dump–to reveal not only that the August drone strike in Afghanistan didn’t slay any ISIS-K terrorists, but the bombing killed an aid worker and nine members of his family, including seven children. Also that afternoon France recalled its ambassador to the USA after the Biden administration, behind France’s back, announced a deal with Great Britain to sell nuclear submarines to Australia. But France already had a deal, now cancelled, with the Aussies. If you ever worked as a salesperson and saw a sleazy co-worker swipe a lucrative sale from you, then you know that feeling of betrayal.

Also on Friday, in a story that is largely being ignored by the national media except for Fox News, a Third World-style shanty town, with thousands of illegal immigrant inhabitants, was discovered on the Rio Grande in Del Rio, Texas.

There will be no reset for Joe Biden and his administration. That’s because, as I’ve written at DTG over these last few weeks, it is very likely that the president is suffering from cognitive decline. There are people in their seventies and eighties who still have nimble minds. Biden, who turns 79 later this year, is not one of them. Age-related cognitive decline is not reversible. And with crisis after crisis emerging, it’s becoming clear that no one is in charge at the White House, even though, as John Kass remarked, Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, is openly referred to as “President Klain.”

I get it. Sometimes calamity after calamity happens. Lyndon B. Johnson suffered an entire year, 1968, like that. And LBJ of course decided not to run for a second full-term as president that year.

But some of Biden’s debacles were preventable, such as his abandoning Donald J. Trump’s remain-in-Mexico policy regarding migrants, which led to the crisis at the southern border. No one, outside of military contractors, wanted our military involvement in Afghanistan to indefinitely continue. But Biden promised our withdrawal from Afghanistan wouldn’t look like our departure from South Vietnam. Well, Biden was right on that vow–our exit from Afghanistan was worse than that.

The administration’s response to COVID-19, once seen as a strong point for Biden, is also a problem for him. Last week a poll revealed that for the first time a majority of Americans don’t approve of the way Biden is handling fighting the virus. 

So far Biden has gotten a pass for gasoline prices being 40-percent more than they were one year ago when that mean Tweeter with the orange hair was president. Escaping blame for Americans paying more at the pump can’t last forever. for Biden. As temperatures cool urban crime will decline but it will bounce back, as it always does, in the spring. That will give Biden and the Democrats another headache in 2022. Look for Republicans running for House and Senate seats to use crime fears as a central theme in their television commercials, as they did with great success last year. Despite denials the Democrats are the party of “Defund the Police.” Biden has gotten a pass for inflation for now. But his reckless policy of printing money will likely create even more inflation.

What else?

I’ve mentioned this quote before but it needs to be repeated.

Barack Obama reportedly once said of his vice president, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up.” And that was before Biden’s cognitive decline set in.

I don’t like quoting myself, but I really think my Tweet of mine from last month hit the nail on Biden’s head.

“If I just awakened from a 10-year long coma and I saw what a mess America finds itself in now I would come to one quick conclusion. Somehow Joe Biden became president.”

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Unfiltered Afghan Trips, Moderates vs Progressives, Masks in MA, Goose and Ganders at SCOTUS & Harris shows the side she’s on Under the Fedora

Posted: August 26, 2021 by datechguy in culture, media, News/opinion, politics, Uncomfortable Truths, under the fedora
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Rep Seth Moulton (D-MA) and Rep Peter Meijer (R-MI) took a secret trip to Afghanistan to see for themselves the situation on the ground. This has gotten the Army, the Administration and the State Department’s knickers in an uproar. I can see why. Given the degree of the failure of the Biden Administration the last thing they want is for congress to have a clear idea of what is going out unfiltered by the administration.

There is a lot of talk about the clash between “moderates’ and “progressives” in the House over the hold up on the infrastructure and budget bills that the Biden Administration has been desperate to get passed.

The clash is not so much between “moderates” and progressives as it is between Democrats who don’t have to worry about being re-elected and Democrats who do and with the Biden Administration debacle in Afghanistan it’s going to be a lot harder to press those Democrats who aren’t anxious to be identified with the administration.

Charlie Baker through his education commissioner has reinstated a Mask mandate for schools at least until October. Charlie has made a few wrong turns on this but has generally been sane, but with an election coming up next year in a state that’s as blue as it comes I guess he’s not willing to make any fights that he doesn’t have to.

It was be nice if we had a Redder and more Trump like governor, but until we focus on educating the public in this state Mr. Baker is likely the best we can do.

The Supreme Court rejected the Biden Administration attempt to block a lower court can not block a lower court ruling re-instating the Trump “Return to Mexico” policy.

This is ironically the same method that was used to force the DACA policy on the Trump administration.

I think that the former ruling was a bad precedent as it makes laws without lawmaking however that’s not going to change until the left starts getting burned by it.

Finally Kamala Harris in Vietnam on the anniversary of John McCain’s death put down a wreath at a war memorial celebrating the shooting down of his airplane.

Reportedly she was warned that this was not a Memorial TO McCain but celebrating him being shot down but she reportedly overruled her advisers who warned her thus. Apparently she wanted to photo op.

I’d object but as she’s owned by people who are America’s enemies and is in fact on their side I’d just as soon she not pretend otherwise.

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