Posts Tagged ‘datechguy's magnificent seven’

Republicans find their spinal cord when it comes to DoD abortion

Posted: July 15, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncomfortable Truths, war
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I never thought I’d see the day. In fact, I waited till this morning to write this post, because I thought for sure someone would cave in.

But it happened:

And even better:

Lose talent??

Wait wait wait wait a second.

DoD thought it would simply bypass the Hyde Amendment without any consequences? Remember when I wrote that the Department of the Navy basically threatened anyone that challenged spending command funds on elective abortions? Re-read that again and think about how condescending that last paragraph is. Apparently at least a few people called their Senators and Representatives, because now we have some action on it.

I find it insulting that the military’s free health care won’t pay for orthodontic work or specialized contacts to prevent myopia in my children, but they will bend over backwards for abortions and transgender surgery. I’ve had Tricare for quite some time now, and yet I continue to spend money on my kids medical care, often in cases where the doctor says “This is necessary care,” but Tricare refuses to cover the bill.

And in case anyone is wondering, I had one kid with two teeth that came in at an angle that would have had them punching out her lip. I had to pay over $2,000 for specialized braces with chains to pull them into place. Somehow Tricare said that wasn’t “medically necessary.”

So yeah, I’m totally fine with the DoD taking it in the shorts and being slapped around by Congress and told to enforce the Hyde Amendment. Even better, the first person that violates it (and you know that is going to happen) needs to be investigated and blackballed from promotion, because if you don’t take enforcement actions, it’s just a hollow threat.

As to losing DoD talent, spare me. The same generals and admirals that lost in Afghanistan, lied to President Trump about putting troops in Syria (tell me again how good that’s going), can’t fix our ships, can’t roll out advanced weapon systems to deal with China, and have now presided over a huge drop in morale and can’t recruit enough warm bodies for the coming slaughter new young people to be Sailors, Soldiers, Airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsman and Guardians….that’s the “talent” we want to recruit?

If I got to say anything Senator Tuberville, I would simply ask: can you run off more of that so-called talent?

If anything is going to make a difference quickly, it would be finding the O-7, O-6 and O-5 talented warfighters that are somehow still in the service and to begin cultivating them for high level jobs. Getting the right leaders into place can make a huge difference. Just ask Admiral Rickover, who single-handedly drove the development of the Navy’s nuclear submarine and carrier program.

If you have Republican Senators or Representatives, tell them to keep it up AND to start searching for the talented O-6s and O-7s, because its only by promoting these people that we can hope to save the military. They need to search now because you can trust the current promotion boards to find talented warfighters for tomorrow’s conflicts.

Overall, I’m happy House and Senate Republicans found their spinal cord. Let’s hope they continue to stay resolved on these matters.

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. That’s because it represents actual views from warfighters, and as we’ve already seen, our existing government agencies don’t want to actually win any wars.

The hysteria over the hottest day on record BS proves just how far to the left Boston News Channels are

Posted: July 13, 2023 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Overwhelming biased news stations is the number one reason why New Englanders lean so far to the left.  The news coverage is so incredibly infected with Democrat propaganda and talking points.  No other point of view is given.  There are few other sources of news available.  Most are unaware that they are being indoctrinated and brainwashed.

The nonstop coverage of the deeply flawed pronouncement that we are experiencing the hottest days ever is proof of how far these stations are willing to push climate change hysteria.

This article is one of two that Channel Five has featured on their local weather webpage for a week: MIT climate scientist urges action after hottest days on record (wcvb.com)

A climate expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is urging action after a new report shows the earth just experienced the hottest days on record.

“I’ve seen a lot of messages that this is yet another wake-up call,” said Dr. Sergey Paltsev. “I’m afraid something is wrong with either us that we don’t hear the alarm clock or something is wrong with the alarm.

Paltsev is the deputy director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

“I’m afraid the worst is yet to come,” he said. “So hopefully, this is going to bring attention from policymakers and the general public who will push policymakers to do something more to prevent these extreme events in the future.”

As you can see from the article, the main purpose of this diatribe is to stir up the populace so much we demand our politicians enact something akin to the Green New Deal.

Here are the absurd claim made by supposed scientists.

Earth’s average temperature on Wednesday remained at an unofficial record high set the day before, the latest grim milestone in a week that has seen a series of climate-change-driven extremes.

The average global temperature was 17.18 Celsius (62.9 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations to measure the world’s condition. That matched a record set Tuesday and came after a previous record of 17.01 Celsius (62.6 degrees Fahrenheit) was set Monday.

This next article has also been featured on the Channel Five local forecast page: Museum of Science expert weighs in on Earth’s record heat (wcvb.com)

“It is an opportunity for us to think about how we can reduce our emissions right now and the tools that we have at hand. There are good pieces of understanding that some of the things we can do can make us both resilient to extreme weather like heat waves and flooding and also reduce our emissions at the same time,” said David Sittenfeld, the director of the Center for the Environment at the Museum of Science.

I am absolutely certain that no Boston News Channel dared to share the truth that is contained in this article: About those “hottest days ever” – HotAir

One obvious problem with the updated narrative is that there are no satellite data from 125,000 years ago. Calculated estimates of current temperatures can’t be fairly compared with guesses of global temperature from thousands of years ago.

A more likely alternative to the 62.6-degree estimate is something around 57.5 degrees. The latter is an average of actual surface temperature measurements taken around the world and processed on a minute-by-minute basis by a website called temperature.global. The numbers have been steady this year, with no spike in July.

Moreover, the notion of “average global temperature” is meaningless. Average global temperature is a concept invented by and for the global-warming hypothesis. It is more a political concept than a scientific one. The Earth and its atmosphere is large and diverse, and no place is meaningfully average.

Nor this article: Data Shows We’re NOT Seeing Record Heat – CO2 Coalition

Paulo Ceppi, a climate scientist at London’s Grantham Institute stated: “It hasn’t been this warm since at least 125,000 years ago, which was the previous interglacial.” And, of course, it was reported that it was our fault due to our “sins of emission.”

This didn’t meet the smell test for the scientists at the CO2 Coalition. We know that previous warm periods were warmer than our modern temperatures. For example, during the Roman Warm Period there was citrus being grown in the north of England and barley was grown by Vikings on Greenland 1,000 years ago. Why aren’t they grown there now? It’s quite simple: Lower modern temperatures.

As Michigan’s “pronouns” bill advances, free speech is threatened

Posted: July 9, 2023 by John Ruberry in culture, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

“Most times you can’t hear ’em talk, other times you can
 All the same old clichés, is it woman, is it man?
 And you always seem outnumbered, so you don’t dare make a stand.”
 Bob Seger, “Turn the Page.” 

Those lyrics, from legendary Michigan rocker Bob Seger, may turn out to be prescient, because the Michigan House of Representatives, which has a Democrat majority, passed a bill in June that, among other things, will impose a hefty fine or imprisonment, if a person maliciously refuses to use another person’s preferred pronoun. 

The bill, HB 4474, expands on a Michigan law that covers religion, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

Newsweek noted that Dylan Mulvaney, a man who claims to be woman, said in a video a while back about people like me who misgender him, “I feel like that should be illegal, I don’t know. That’s just bad journalism.”

No, it’s not. Mulaney, an internet influencer who has done to Bud Light what Eric Idle’s S. Frog character did to Monty Python’s fictional Conquistador Coffee, is wrong, as he is on so many things, What I wrote in the previous paragraph is good journalism because it’s the truth. Sorry, wokesters, but men who “transition” into women do not have ovaries, do not have menstrual periods, and do not undergo menopause. Women who do the opposite do not have testicles, a prostate gland, or Y chromosomes. I could go on, but I don’t have to.

Some people need to simply follow the science. 

Except, maybe soon in Michigan, if its Senate passes HB 4474 and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, signs it into law, following the science and speaking out about it might get someone like me fined or worse. 

In her Senate confirmation hearing, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson could not–or in my opinion, would not–define what a woman is. But according to HealthyChildren.org, at around age two, toddlers know the difference between the two genders. Again, follow the science.

The headline of this blog post is colored red. How do I know? Because when I was at the age when I figured out what males and females are, my mother probably said something along these lines to me, “That color is red.” And that information was confirmed to me when I attended kindergarten.

Some things are that simple.

Well, it should be that simple. Transgendered people complain about being bullied. Well, bullying is wrong. I suppose Mulvaney considers it bullying when internet trolls visit his Instagram page and comments, “You’re a man.” Oh, a word for you trolls. Don’t you have anything better to do? Surely there is trash on a roadside near your home that needs to be collected.

On the flip side, in regard to gender, we are at a stage in America when someone says, “Dylan Mulvaney is a man” in mixed company–especially at work–it has to be spoken in whispered tones, sotto voce as the French say. 

Being labeled a transphobe–phobe, by the way means irrational fear–can get many people in trouble on the job. Or maybe soon in Michigan, getting fined or being imprisoned. And it’s not an irrational fear to lose out on a promotion or getting fired for being deemed a transphobe.

I call that bullying. 

As regular readers know, my wife was born in the Soviet Union, in Latvia. At school a number of decades ago, repeatedly, her teachers told her that Latvia, along with Estonia and Lithuania, voluntarily joined the USSR in 1940. Of course, that was a lie. Her parents knew it–and so did every adult in the Baltic States at that time. Yes, that includes the teachers. But my wife didn’t discover what really happened in 1940, beginning with learning of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, until she reached adulthood.

During my wife’s childhood, adults in the Soviet Union were afraid of the repercussions of telling the truth. So my wife’s parents never discussed the USSR seizing the Baltic States with her until Mikhael Gorbachev was the Soviet leader.

In the New York Sun, Dean Karayanis, reminded me that Soviet citizens faced prison if they were caught spilling coffee on a picture of Joseph Stalin. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the author of the Gulag Archipelago, spent eight years in the Gulags for criticizing Stalin in private letters, even though he took the precaution of using a codename for the dictator.

American society isn’t at that more frightening point yet. But Michigan just took a baby step in that direction. 

Or maybe we are there. Remember that Seger song? “And you always seem outnumbered, so you don’t dare make a stand.” Well, I’m making one. Is anyone else with me?

Fortunately, the new Michigan “pronouns” bill will almost certainly be challenged in court on First Amendment grounds. 

Which is another reason why I’m grateful for the 6-3 conservative majority on the US Supreme Court.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Health of the Force Survey 2023…sucks

Posted: July 8, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncomfortable Truths, war
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A few years ago, a young lady knocked on my door in Hawaii. She happened to be a volunteer from the Census Bureau, and I spent about 30 minutes answering Census Bureau questions. Unlike most of the other door to door surveys that I promptly ignore, I actually wanted my voice heard by the Census Bureau. About halfway through the survey, I was asked by the surveyor “Do you approve of smoking in the home?”

Me: “Uhm, in my home or other people’s homes?”
Surveyor: “The question doesn’t specify.”
Me: “Well, that’s kind of important. I don’t smoke, and I don’t let people smoke in my home, but I really don’t care if they smoke in their homes.”
Surveyor: “The question only has a Yes or No answers.”
Me: “Then my answer is Yes, I’m OK with smoking in the home.”

Not surprisingly, the overall results showed something like 85% of people disapproved of smoking in the home, which was then used as proof that we should conduct more smoking cessation programs.

I’m willing to bet that more than a few people felt the same way I did but chose “No.” When you design a survey question without allowing for nuance or more than a binary answer, you skew the results. That’s not good from a simple truth perspective, but its really not good if you intend to base financial and policy decisions on the results. With that in mind, flash forward a few years and I receive an email asking me to take the Health of the Force survey for the Navy. I wrote about this survey before and how it showed that the Navy is VERY unhealthy in so many ways, so I was hopeful the survey would dig further to identify the areas where the Navy can improve.

Yeah….not so much. I took screen shots as I completed the survey so you can see just how bad it was.

Let’s start with the question “What factors are or would most likely influence you to get out of the Navy?” That’s a legitimately good question, and you get to select your top five options. Maybe the Navy should put something in the survey about readiness and shipyard issues, given the massive amount of news coverage on ship schedules slipping and Sailors committing suicide in Newport News. Or what about wokeness? Or the COVID “vaccine”? Maybe people are particularly incensed about it, or maybe they aren’t, so listing it as a choice would help shed some light on it.

Nope. All the answers are super generic responses that don’t ask any hard questions. They have responses for “Leadership at current command,” but nothing about shipyards, logistics, medical, or other support services that Sailors constantly complain about.

The best option I had was “Senior Navy leaders.” I selected that, and I expounded in the comments, but again, super generic, and not going to result in anything actionable.

Another set of questions asked about Command leadership, still focused on the local command. They did bring in enlisted leaders, which is good, because in the past they often only focused on the Command Triad (the Commanding Officer, Executive Officer and Command Master Chief). But there are no support questions. Plenty of Sailors are frustrated with Navy’s Mandatory Crappy Internet (NMCI), or the lack of investment in our shore facilities, but neither of those issues are the command’s fault. Those decisions are made by top brass, who are never held accountable for how miserable they make Sailors.

What about “How I feel in the Navy” questions? Again, touchy-feely stuff, but nothing that gets at the hard issues we have going on.

And then the DIE questions. That’s like a full 30% of the survey, but I’ll spare you the agony of reading the questions. All of these ask about sexual harrasment and racism and such, which are important…but aren’t the reasons Sailors commit suicide in their baracks room.

This survey was frustrating. I wrote paragraphs in the free-form section, which I am sure will be promptly ignored by the non-warfighter HR officer bent on using the survey to justify more white supremacy training in the fleet. This survey will provide no useful results and will continue to ignore the actual problems in the fleet. It will be used by the Department of the Navy to justify more money in DIE and other stupid programs when we need more efforts towards fixing ships and training our Sailors to be ready for combat. As a taxpayer, you should be angry over this survey and demand better from your elected representatives.

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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