Posts Tagged ‘datechguy's magnificent seven’

Starry perks and suicide

Posted: May 7, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
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Easy to miss in the midst of the Ukraine Conflict and Supreme Court leaks is the fact that the Navy is dealing, poorly, with a suicide epidemic (at the time of this article we’re up to 7 Sailors) onboard the USS George Washington (CVN-73). Now, you might think “Is the George Washington underway on another long, stressful deployment?” That would be an intelligent question to ask, and sadly the answer is “no.” George Washington is in the shipyard in Newport News, VA.

Now, why would Navy Sailors be so stressed out that they would end their lives if they are home and not deployed underway? Well, because shipyard life is pretty tough, according to the dad of one of the Sailors:

“He loved his job. He did his 12-hour shifts. And how do you sleep on an aircraft carrier with jackhammering and smoke and smells during the day? So, he would sleep in his car,” John Sandor said about his son, who was 19. “It is just awful. No sailor should even have been living on that ship in those conditions.”

-John Sandor

You might be wondering if these poor conditions are something new, to which I will sadly tell you…nope. I had the same issues at the same shipyard 16 years ago. The 45 minute walks to get to work…that’s a thing, because the Navy never built enough parking or bus options. The article didn’t mention many other stressors, such as the rampant car break-ins, since most of the parking lots are located off the secure facility and aren’t patrolled. For female Sailors, I’ve had more than a few tell me shipyard workers regularly get away with overt catcalling during the day.

Shipyard life, with its long days and crappy working conditions, sucks.

Instead of trying to fix the housing situation, or the driving situation, or the working conditions, Big Navy’s response is…suck it up!

“What you’re not doing is sleeping in a foxhole like a Marine might be doing,” he said, adding that much of the crew goes home each night, something that can’t be said for a deployed carrier.

-Master Chief Russell Smith

I can’t make that up, go listen to the audio at the link. I give Master Chief credit, he’s not yelling at the crew, but as a senior leader, you have to know that trying to minimize the issue isn’t ever going to look good.

The Commanding Officer seems to have taken matters into his own hands, and moved 200 Sailors off the ship. Keep in mind, there are still 2,700 Sailors onboard, and if you move off, you still have the long walk and long drive to get to work. So its a catch-22: move off the ship and you add a long drive and walk to work, stay on and your sleep and off-time is horrible.

It’s also not the Commanding Officer’s job to build sufficient rooms at the shipyard. A better advocate for that would be the admiral in charge of Naval Aviation, in this case Vice Admiral Kenneth Whitesell. So where has he been?

Watching Top Gun.

VADM Whitesell with Tom Cruise

Yup, can’t make that up either. While the George Washington is suffering, VADM Whitesell spent this weekend watching the premiere of the new Top Gun movie with Tom Cruise. Now, I’m not knocking on Tom Cruise, because he spent part of the time talking with Sailors onboard the carrier Carl Vinson. But for VADM Whitesell, its not the best look.

Tom Cruise onboard the USS Carl Vinson

OK, so the immediate response doesn’t look very good, but maybe Big Navy put together a more comprehensive response?

The Navy plans to host a day of team-building activities and has asked each department to submit ideas for how crew members could interact off the ship, according to Lt. Cmdr. Robert Myers, a Navy spokesman. “It could be anything,” Myers said. A Super Smash Bros. video game competition and a soccer tournament are some of the suggestions that have been floated, according to one George Washington sailor, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation.

– NBC News

Super Smash Brothers! That’ll cheer them up! They’ll stop killing themselves if they just get to play video games!

However, that sailor doubted whether such events would fix what appears to be a mental health crisis on the ship. The sailors spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press and feared retaliation.

– NBC News

Ya think?

This whole thing makes me cry. We have Sailors in the United States that should be working in decent conditions and building themselves into warriors, and instead the conditions are so bad that they are taking their own lives. Then we have leaders that care more about the perks they get with the stars on their shoulders then about the young men and women entrusted in their care. But to top it all off, we have a Navy bureaucracy that is focused on running some morale events to patch the problem.

Nobody in this entire situation is giving us answers on how to build more housing, build a better transit service or fix the onboard sleeping conditions.

Since you’ve made it this far, do me a favor and email your Congressman. Tell him or her that if Congress can make millions of dollars go to Ukraine, it could spend a bit of money to fix glaring errors at our nations shipyards.

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, because those agencies would have you believe video games and soccer tournaments will suddenly fix years of neglect to our Sailors and the infrastructure they work on. If you enjoyed this article, please consider purchasing a book by the author or donating to this blog, and remember to share this with your friends on social media.

Roe v. Wade should have been overturned decades ago

Posted: May 5, 2022 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Roe v. Wade was not only a constitutionally dubious ruling, it was morally reprehensible, and rather barbaric.  Like most of us on the political right, I am optimistic that it will be soon overturned.  Like the vast majority of Americans, I was caught completely off guard by the leak of Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in the case Dobbs v. Mississippi.

Here are the two most important paragraphs from Alito’s opinion, as quoted from this article, Leak: Supreme Court to Overrule Roe, Returns Abortion to Voters (breitbart.com).

We hold that Roe v. Wade must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”

The right to abortion does not fall into this category. Until the latter part of the 20th century, such a right was entirely unknown to American law. Indeed, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, three quarters of the States made abortion a crime at all stages of pregnancy. The abortion right is also critically different from any other right that this Court has held to fall within the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of “liberty.” Roe’s defenders characterize the abortion right as similar to the rights recognized in past decisions involving matters such as intimate sexual relations, contraception, and marriage, but abortion is fundamentally different, as both Roe and Casey acknowledged, because it destroys what those decisions called “fetal life” and what the law now before us describes as an “unborn human being.”

I have studied the Constitution in great detail,  all from the original source documentation, rather than through Supreme Court Precedence. Up until the 1890s original documentation, such as the debates from the drafting of the Constitution, Ratification Debates in the States, The Federalist Papers, and The Anti-Federalist Papers were the primary tools used to interpret the Constitution,  The dramatic shift to using Supreme Court Precedence, which are just the opinions of the justices, as the only tool to interpret the Constitution did not begin until over 100 years after the ratification of the Constitution.

Samuel Alito, who is absolutely correct in his opinion overturning of Roe v.Wade, used a combination of Supreme Court Precedence and original documentation.  If he relied just on the original understanding of the Constitution, his opinion would have been much shorter,

Abortion is murder.  That is a truth understood by founding fathers of the United States, and those that wrote and ratified the Constitution. Murder is not a crime defined by the United States Constitution. Only a handful of crimes are defined in US Constitution. Those crimes are treason, counterfeiting, and piracy. Those are the only true federal crimes, the only crimes that fall under the purview of the federal government. All other crimes are left in the hands of the States.  Murder is not mentioned in US Constitution therefore it is left up to the States to define murder and prescribe punishment for those who commit that crime.  Because abortion is murder it is an issue left in the hands of the States, not the federal government.

Abortion is not a right because no one has a right to commit murder.  Hypothetically, if there  really was a right to an abortion,  the issue would still remain in the hands of the States, if we still followed the original interpretation.  Because abortion is not listed specifically in the Bill Rights,  it would be covered by the 9th Amendment which states:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

If abortion was a right covered by the 9th Amendment, it would still be left in the hands of the States because the Bill of Rights is a hands off for the federal government. The rights protected by the Bill of Rights are far too important for the federal government to touch them in any way, not even the Supreme Court.  Decisions involving are most important rights were left in the hands of the States exclusively.  This is documented in great detail in this lengthy discourse, which took place at the beginning of the drafting of the Bill of Rights in the House of Representatives. 

It was not until the 1920s that the Supreme Court declared that it had the authority to rule on cases involving the Bill of Rights.  The Supreme Court granted itself that authority in direct opposition to the plain meaning of the Constitution using what is called the Incorporation Doctrine.  I will cover the Incorporation Doctrine in great detail in a future article.

All this talk of abortion being a right covered by the 9th Amendment is mute because abortion is murder, and no one has a right to commit murder.

Report from Louisiana: Senseless Violence

Posted: May 2, 2022 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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Landry Anglin

By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – Less than twenty-four hours ago, a thirteen-year-old girl was at her grandparent’s home in an affluent neighborhood in Shreveport. She was texting with friends about the LEAP test at school today and perhaps thinking about Mother’s Day next week. She was likely looking forward to summer just a few weeks away and perhaps had plans for a family vacation.

This morning her parents are planning her funeral.

At some point yesterday afternoon, a group of thugs decided to have a rolling gun battle down one of the main thoroughfares of town, shooting hundreds of bullets as they raced through neighborhoods. Home security cameras captured the sounds and hopefully the cars.

One of the bullets hit Landry Anglin as she stood in her grandparent’s house. She did not survive.

I didn’t know this child, but it doesn’t matter; this kind of violence simply must stop. It is happening all over the country. Shreveport now has twenty-one homicides this year; for a city our size, that’s far above average and just one is too many. We have a shooting every single day in this city. Every. Day. Some survive; some don’t.

What is the answer to this violence?

There are a lot of opinions about that. Personally, I’m looking at the District Attorney’s office who can’t seem to keep these criminals in jail. People joke about our catch and release judicial system here, but it’s no joke. Last week five criminals walked out of the courtroom, walked away from murder charges, because the Soros-backed District Attorney couldn’t close the deal. “No bill,” the grand jury said.

The rap sheets for these people who get arrested are ridiculous; repeat offenders times ten. Charge after charge after charge. The charges are reduced, dropped, or not enough evidence to convict. This is happening all over the country where Soros proteges are in place:

Since at least 2015, Mr. Soros has plowed millions of dollars each election cycle to support progressive district attorneys across the country. All of his candidates support reducing the prison population and directing criminals to diversion/rehabilitation programs outside of the criminal justice system.

Mr. Soros’s political donations have largely propelled his candidates to victory – as there’s no major donor on the Republican side to counter his massive local cash infusions. For example, in 2015, Mr. Soros gave more than $930,000 to James Stewart, the current Caddo Parish District Attorney in Shreveport, Louisiana, a donation more than 22 times the local median household income. Republican candidates simply haven’t been able to compete.

And an innocent teenager loses her life.

Her classmates at the middle school are showing up for classes today, testing set aside for now, and teachers are trying to find answers for them. Her parents are planning her funeral and how will her grandparents ever get over this? Ever be able to walk through the room where their granddaughter fell to the floor?

The suspects are still at large.

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and at Medium; she is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

Democrats’ attacks on what they call “disinformation” have their roots in Barack Obama’s Truth Squad

Posted: May 1, 2022 by John Ruberry in culture, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

While calling public figures “Orwellian” goes back decades, usually it’s an exaggeration. 

Not so with the new Misinformation and Disinformation Governance Board, whose existence was revealed by the soulless hack Alejandro Mayorkas, Joe Biden’s secretary of Homeland Security. The board’s executive director is Nina Jankowicz, a misinformationist. 

Among other things, Jankowicz in 2020 called into question the veracity of the Hunter Biden laptop revelations.

George Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” in 1984 of course propagandized lies. 

The Democrats’ Orwellian attacks on their opponents began during Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, when he created groups such as “The Truth Squad.” 

This morning on Twitter, former Democratic member of Congress and 2020 presidential candidate, Tulsi Gabbard, pointed her finger at the instigator on the Dems’ obsession with “disinformation,” Joe Biden’s former ticket-mate.

“Biden is just a front man,” Gabbard Tweeted. “Obama, April 21: social media censors ‘don’t go far enough,’ so the government needs to step in to do the job. Six days later, Homeland Security rolls out the ‘Ministry of Truth’ (aka Disinformation Governance Board).”

Obama’s “Truth Squad” made its first appearance in during the 2008 Democratic primaries. It was ramped up for the general election. A KMOV-TV St. Louis anchor reported that fall, “Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading TV ad during the presidential campaign.”

“Prosecutors and sheriffs from across Missouri are joining ‘The Barack Obama Truth Squad,'” reporter John Mills added, he then named Jennifer Joyce, St. Louis circuit attorney, and Bob McCulloch, the prosecutor for St. Louis County, as members.

Mills continued, “They will be reminding voters that Barack Obama is a Christian who wants to cut taxes for anyone making less than $250,000 a year.” 

What about those prosecutors?

“If they’re not going to tell the truth,” McCulloch told KMOV, “somebody’s got to step up and say, ‘That’s not true. This is the truth.'”

Jim Geraghty of National Review summed up the Missouri threat concisely at the time, “While the report never quite comes out and says that anyone running an ad saying those things would be subject to prosecution, that certainly is the message implied.” 

Truth, like knowledge, is nearly never a settled construct, especially in the political arena. 

Leftists, like Barack Obama, undoubtedly disagree with me. Rather, under the cloak of “truth,” they now label criticism of their policies, as well as reports that harm their side, such as the revelations from the Hunter Biden laptop, as “misinformation” and “disinformation.” The Obama quote referenced earlier comes from a Stanford University conference about “misinformation” held in April. Earlier that month, longtime top Obama campaign aide, David Axelrod, was a co-host of the “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy” conference at the University of Chicago.

Obama, ironically, was the recipient of PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” award in 2013. That’s the truth.

Informers are an integral part of any un-free society. In 2009, an Obama administration media flack, Macon Phillips, under the guise of–wait for it–fighting “disinformation,” asked Americans to rat out any who disparaged ObamaCare. “If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy,” he said, “send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

In 2012, the Obama-Biden campaign launched “the Truth Team.”

Never forget, the Democrats war on what they call “disinformation” began with Obama.

John Ruberry, and this is certainly the truth, regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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