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.
“Hi, it’s Carole King. I’ve known Joe Biden since he was a senator. I was proud to support him in 2020, and I’m asking you to join me early in the battle to reelect him in 2024.”
It took me a while to remember who Carole King was. I finally recalled a singer who released an album in the 1970s that mainly appealed to young women. “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman” wasn’t exactly my kind of tune.
It took me even longer to determine why Ms. King and the Democrats thought I wanted to contribute to the Biden campaign.
I haven’t voted for a Democrat since 1980. Yes, I made the youthful mistake of thinking Jimmy Carter would be better than Ronald Reagan.
But Ms. King’s email and a subsequent one from the Biden regime made me happy because they showed how out of touch the Democrats were.
Ms. King offers the following: –President Biden has been effective in leading the American people out of chaos and confusion to greater stability and confidence. –No other presidential candidate has President Biden’s ability to bring responsible world leaders together. –President Biden stands up for rights and freedoms that allow people we know and love to thrive without fear.
I guess Ms. King and I have entirely different views of Biden’s “leadership.” I don’t feel particularly stable or confident these days. Neither do I accept that Biden has done much to unite the country. The email from Team Joe makes me cringe. “The Biden-Harris administration has made the largest investment in climate resilience in our nation’s history,” the report states.
“Climate resilience” is one of those contrived policies of word salads. Kamala Harris or one of her crew must have created that one.
Not surprisingly, she touts “the Native-led climate-resilient infrastructure projects…to ensure reliable access to water.” I think that’s a water pipeline.
For $32, I could buy a T-shirt to “unleash” my dark side and “fight malarkey.”
If Saturday Night Live were on the air, I’m convinced the T-shirts would make a good parody of what’s wrong with Joe and Kamala.
I hope I don’t have to make a contribution to support this dynamic duo to keep getting this “informative” inside stuff! I must admit that the emails made me smile because I’m probably not the only Republican that Joe’s Team is wasting money on trying to get me to contribute and vote for the Democrats.
“There it is, dear,” I whispered to Mrs. Marathon Pundit last Sunday during the seemingly endless parade of movie trailers as we awaited Oppenheimer (great film, by the way), at AMC Village Crossing in Skokie, Illinois last Sunday, “that is Disney’s next flop.”
“That” was Haunted Mansion, which is yet another movie based on a Disney theme park attraction. Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and Tokyo Disneyland all have Haunted Mansions. The last time I was visited Disney World, Little Marathon Pundit and I went on the Haunted Mansion ride, way back in 2001, neither of us were impressed.
And do you know what? Barring an unexpected flocking to the Haunted Mansion movie turnstiles, I have already been proven right about the film, which stars LaKeith Stanfield Tiffany Haddish, and Owen Wilson, and it includes appearances by Jamie Lee Curtis and Danny DeVito.
Disclosure: Other than the below trailer, I haven’t seen Haunted Mansion, nor the 2003 Disney film,The Haunted Mansion, which starred Eddie Murphy. Nor do I ever intend to see either. However, I might take a look at Muppets Haunted Mansion, a Disney Halloween television special which first aired in 2021.
You know when a movie is in trouble when a two-minute-long trailer can’t make it look appealing.
The Murphy vehicle made money, but it was critically panned. The new Haunted Mansion is currently receiving a 41 percent Tomatometer at Rotten Tomatoes.
Disney’s woke remake of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, which featured an African American Ariel, at best will make a modest profit for the studio. Other recent House of Mouse family-oriented flops include Elemental, Strange World, and Lightyear. The latter includes a same-sex kissing scene.
Back to the new Haunted Mansion: Its director, Justin Simien, who is African American makes note of the setting of the movie, New Orleans. “I felt it was really important for the lead to be Black, because this is set in New Orleans and it’s an 85% Black town,” Simien told Yahoo Entertainment. Adding, “I wanted to make [the movie] as Black as I can because that’s New Orleans.” Oh, while New Orleans has been a majority African American town for decades, it is currently has roughly a sixty-percent Black population.
Okay, Simien and Disney can make any kind of movie it wants. But instead of focusing on a movie that is “as Black as I can,” why not, instead produce a movie with a compelling storyline and great performances from actors, regardless of their race? While it’s impossible for any entertainment endeavor to please everyone, even with family-oriented projects, why not try to attract as many people as possible?
In defense of New Orleans, it is widely considered to be the most haunted city in America–again, regardless of race, so it is a good choice for the setting of Haunted Mansion.
Does Disney want to keep making bombs? It appears that it does.
Next year, in yet another remake, a live action version of Snow White will hit theaters. In the Grimm Brothers tale, the authors make it clear that Snow White had “skin white as snow, lips red as blood, and hair black as ebony.” A Hispanic woman will play the lead in the 2024 film. As for her seven dwarves, they’ve been recast with a multi-racial group of six men of average height–with just one dwarf to aid her in her struggles, which presumably will include battling the patriarchy, represented by the Huntsman, and maybe every once in a while, the Evil Queen. And in the new Snow White, will we learn why the Queen turned evil? I’m predicting the patriarchy will be at fault. Oh, don’t forget that Huntsman.
Walt Disney had many gifts, and a crucial one that made his studio a success is that he knew time-tested stories were also solid material for movies, which is why Walt made animated versions of classic fairy tales, including Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and of course, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. And Walt didn’t rehash the same movies.
Contemporary Disney movies are diverse in casting, but not diverse in regard to imagination.
What’s next, besides a new Snow White, for Disney’s movie wing?
She looked back to NY Times critic Elvis Mitchell’s rundown of the Murphy Haunted Mansion, where he wrote that it was “only a matter of time before Parking Lot: The Movie and People-Mover: The Motion Picture” would hit the local cineplex. Well, that hasn’t happened. Yet.
On the other hand, there are over 150 Grimm Brothers tales, most of which haven’t been made into feature films.
Oh, one more idiotic thing about the new Haunted Mansion. Why was it released in July, instead of October? You know, when Halloween is? I know what stupid looks like–it has big mouse ears.
Your lawn requires maintenance. If you don’t put time and effort into filling your lawn with nice grass, it will eventually fill up with undesirable weeds. Nature abhors a vacuum, so its going to fill the lawn if you don’t. Similarly, the Navy is going to fill its manpower requirements one way or another. Between draining its DEP rolls, slow-rolling retirements, suspending body fat and physical fitness failures, and even suspending high year tenure, you’d think for just a minute that it all might work, that this nibbling around the edges of the problem (instead of addressing it directly) would bring in enough recruits.
Nope.
The Navy, still circling the drain, has now decided to start draining the reserves. Reservists are folks who typically served an initial enlistment and then decided to leave the military but retain a connection to the service. They muster one weekend a month and typically serve a two-week period during the year on active duty. In return they remain eligible for health care and get a cut-down retirement. It’s not a bad gig, but in the past most reservists were barely meeting standards and were thought of as a “break glass in case of emergency” manpower solution. The terrorist attacks on 9-11 changed that and resulted in a bit of a change so that reservists were more available for extended deployments.
Not surprisingly, the Navy is making it easier to tap into reserves and making it harder for people to fail out of the reserves. Let’s look at the following NAVADMINs:
NAVADMIN 158/23: POLICY FOR ACTIVATION AND EMPLOYMENT OF RESERVE COMPONENT FORCES IN FY24 AND BEYOND
NAVADMIN 160/23: SELECTED RESERVE ADVANCEMENT TO WARFIGHTING POSITIONS PROGRAM PHASE I
NAVADMIN 167/23: SEPTEMBER 2023 (CYCLE 260) ACTIVE-DUTY AND TRAINING AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE RESERVE (TAR) E-4 THROUGH E-6 ADVANCEMENT AND MODIFICATION TO SELECTED RESERVE E-4 ADVANCEMENT ANNOUNCEMENT (CYCLE 113)
NAVADMIN 158 references the a memo that basically says Navy Individual Augmentees (IAs) are eating the force alive, and lays out a plan to have Navy Reservists fill more of these billets, even if they are involuntarily activated…meaning they get told “Drop your civilian job and take this crappy military job.”
I am NOT a fan of IAs. These were initially brought out during the invasion of Afghanistan because the Army was short people, and the Navy said “We can send some people to Afghanistan to fill slots!” Seems like a good idea, until 20 years later we were STILL filling IAs. Meanwhile, Navy manpower went missing at key places like shipyards, support facilities and the like, so our Navy platforms suffered, our shore facilities rotted, and Sailor morale went into the toilet. Somehow in 20 years the Army couldn’t staff its own war? Color me skeptical…
So even after we lost Afghanistan, we’re STILL using IAs…and why this is true still boggles my mind. Naturally, it kills morale to go to one job then get yanked to go to another, especially one shore duty when you were promised some time with your family. So instead of killing active duty Sailors morale, we’ll kill Reservist Sailor morale.
NAVADMIN 160 tells us that if you’re an E-4 or E-5, you can take a Selected Reserve (SELRES) job one paygrade above, and after completion you get a permanent paygrade bump. Not bad, you might think. But lets be honest…why would a Sailor not make the next rank? Perhaps he just had bad timing. But more often, he or she was probably not all that great of a Sailor. So now, performance be damned, you get promoted if you take the right job.
NAVADMIN 167 basically makes it even easier to promote. If you’re an E-3 wanting to make E-4, all requirements have been removed, so long as your Commanding Officer says OK, you’ll make rank. High year tenure (where you get booted from the military if you haven’t made a certain rank by a certain number of years in the military) is suspended through 2024…and my guess is they’ll suspend it again. This NAVADMIN is basically making it easier than ever to stay in the Navy no matter how dumb or bad at your job you are.
The sad part is…this won’t work. The Navy continues to not address the morale issues brought on by a restrictive COVID-19 “vaccine” requirement, white supremacist training and the inability to do basic things like fix ships, have decent berthing and fight naval wars. Even Navy veterans like myself are telling our kids not to join. Until the Navy addresses the fundamental issues at hand, these short-sighted efforts will fail.
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.
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