Posts Tagged ‘Navy Grade 36’

Democrats have been weaponizing the abortion debate and successfully turned it into a choice of either supporting women’s rights or stripping women of those rights. Having been subjected to the advertising onslaught in Virginia, the idiots that the Republican Party put in charge of campaigning have zero response to this.

Zero.

I saw NO effective counter ads, and the ads I did see were bland, “vote for me because I’m a veteran/good person” style ads. These are fluff and filler ads that don’t sway people.

Since Republican leadership can’t figure this out, I will humbly suggest the following ads that might help reframe the abortion debate:

  1. Play a nice slow song, showing a mother cradling her baby. Now overlay a dark figure of (insert politician here) saying “If the baby is born after an attempted abortion, we’ll place it in a bucket and consult with the mother about what to do next.” Cue to a frame saying “We can all get behind protecting mothers and stop politicians from murdering babies.”
  2. Show a black mother with two kids looking a little frazzled. A white lady in a suit walks up and asks if she needs help. She says yes, and the white lady recommends she abort her children in the future. Cue to a frame showing “40% of abortions are from black women. Let’s stop this racist practice. Make our politicians care about taking care of kids, not killing them.”
  3. In the background show a woman and a man crying in a doctor’s office. Have the speaker voice say “Some couples want babies but just can’t have them. Instead of making adoption easy, politician (insert name) wants to kill off healthy babies.” Add a split screen showing another woman on a operating table crying. “Abortion creates two broken couples. We can all get behind expedited adoption laws to make them both whole again.”

This was just me daydreaming for an hour on actual, useful ads, plus a bit of time using these three scenarios when my pro-abortion friends bring up “women’s health” issues. I dated a young lady that had an abortion before I met her, and even 4 years later, she was still bothered by it.

Republican leaders lose on abortion because they refuse to roll up their sleeves and talk about the evils of abortion. Get off your stupid high horse and fight back. Talk about the genocide abortion is causing in the Black community. Push for expedited adoption rules and break the stranglehold the state bureaucracy has on adoption. Highlight the politicians that are totally cool murdering kids after birth. Yeah, its ugly, but Democrats are doing the same to you, and if you fail, millions of innocent children die, and part of that blood is on your hands.

BTW, the cute picture at the top: that’s the best Bing AI would generate. I tried to show a donkey holding a uterus, or put Planned Parenthood on the clinic, and the AI wouldn’t let me. One more sign that Satan is deeply entrenched in this debate.

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.

Side note: The overwhelming majority of abortions (86%) are by single women, and a large chunk (nearly 40%) were from Black Americans.

Someone else’s kid

Posted: November 11, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Afghanistan war
Tags: , ,

Newsweek took a stab at writing an article about the recruiting crisis, titled “Americans Don’t Want To Fight For Their Country Anymore.” Like most of these articles, it hits the typical, overblown points (culture, war, economy, etc.) and missed some very important points (we lost Afghanistan, the eroded benefits, and the lack of job satisfaction because we promote morons as flag officers). It was another “blah” article I would normally skip, except when I breezed through it I found one gold nugget.

Eustice said that these sorts of culture war debates were unlikely to deter the military’s target generation who were “very open…to all sorts of different lifestyles.” But he added: “Some parents will be turned off by those things and maybe not endorse military service as much.”

“It’s usually a little bit of a challenge to get parents to be for it anyway,” he said. “They’re supportive of their military but would prefer it to be someone else’s child.”

Someone else’s kid.

Someone else paying the price for deciding to not win wars decisively. Someone else doing the dirty work. Someone else having the nightmares after traumatic experiences overseas. Someone else having the aches and pains from years of combat. Someone else having a difficult time connecting with their kids because they were deployed for so long. Someone else not being able to share stories because they are either classified or too raw.

Someone else should pay the price so I don’t have to. Someone else should get their kid to volunteer so I can vote for politicians that needlessly break these people in unnecessary wars. Someone else should be a Gold Star parent so that I can feel good about admirals and generals that prioritize killing babies over terrorists.

Veterans Day becomes a harder and harder day to truly celebrate every year. I know that people mean well when they thank me for my service, and I always reply “Just doing my job.” I know most people do care at least a little when they offer to pay for a meal, or offer me a discount at their business.

But it increasingly feels cheap because the American people continue to tolerate politicians and senior military leaders that put our military personnel in losing situations. Time and again we go somewhere with a half-baked plan because a politician won’t accept the realities of war, we get shot at, and then in the end, we spent a lot of money to make the CEOs of the military industrial complex wealthy, while too many parents grieved over their child being laid to rest. I understand the sacrifice when we go somewhere to win and stop the advance of evil. Are we really doing that in Syria? How did we not do that in Afghanistan?

This Veteran’s Day, I’d invite you to do something far more important than buying a meal. Start questioning our senior leaders in government about the overseas voyeurism. This is a problem on all sides of the political aisle. We wouldn’t have the recruiting problem we have now if we had actually won our nation’s wars. We wouldn’t be shelling out so much money in VA benefits if we didn’t break those veterans in the first place. And perhaps more than anything else, that would be the best gift you could give next year on November 11th.

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.

The incessant whining about Senator Tuberville is just non-stop these days, but a recent article in the Marine Corps Times absolutely takes the cake for the sheer hypocrisy shown concerning the Senate approval process.

First, we start with good news: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer decided to…wait for it…bring a vote on Lt Gen Christopher Mahoney to the Senate to confirm him as the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps.

But wait! Didn’t that dirty, mean, America-hating Senator Tuberville have a hold on all nominations? Of course, the answer is no, and as I pointed out many times in the past, all Senator Tuberville has done is make the Senate follow its own rules and not shortcut the nomination approval process, since the DoD decided to focus on killing innocent American babies instead of protecting the country from foreign threats. He even voted in favor of General Mahoney, and the heads of the Air Force and Navy. The Marine Corps Times, after a few paragraphs, finally admits the truth:

That’s because since February Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama, has refused to confirm senior military nominees through unanimous consent, in protest of a Pentagon policy covering time off and travel expenses for service members who travel out of state for abortions. Tuberville has argued that the military’s leadership gaps aren’t his fault and that it’s on the Pentagon to reverse its abortion policy or the Senate Democrats to hold individual roll-call votes on nominees. Democratic leaders estimated in September it would take 100 days of nothing but holding votes 8 hours a day to confirm what were then 273 nominees.

-Marine Corps Times

Reverse your illegal policy or else I’ll make you vote in accordance with existing rules?

Just a thought…if your rules make it hard to do work, you might want to fix the rules. Even better, maybe you reduce the vast number of generals and admirals, most of whom are totally worthless anyway and don’t contribute to the success of the military.

But the Marine Corps Times just can’t let it go, they have to come out against the evil Senator, so they fixate on an interview with the Commandant in September where he complained that his schedule was not sustainable, and he was only getting five hours of sleep a night.

From Bing AI image generator

5 hours of sleep!! The horror!!!

My brother in Christ, I have 5 children at home, and my wife and I are lucky if we get five hours of sleep a night. More importantly, generals and admirals have been telling junior Marines, soldiers, Sailors and airmen to pull long hours since…well, at least since I’ve been in, and probably before that. Anytime someone brings up sleep studies or the negative effects of not getting enough sleep, that person is chastised as a whiner. Will anyone do that to Smith?

Probably not, since he’s in the hospital. While Senator Tuberville did say he was praying for Smith’s recovery, he also, correctly, called out the nonsense remark on X:

“This guy is going to work 18-20 hours a day no matter what. That’s what we do. I did that for years.”

Marine Corps Times

And right there…that’s the unvarnished truth. We’ve created a two-tier system where it’s OK for junior military members to be deprived of sleep and ridiculed if they speak up, yet top leadership won’t do anything to change it, but then wants sympathy when they suffer too?

Or, more likely, they still don’t care, and they just want to score some cheap political points, because mean Senator Tuberville is asking hard questions about abortion that these so-called leaders don’t like answering.

If you’re not willing to answer hard questions, or (gasp) maybe rescind your illegal policy that murders innocent babies with taxpayer dollars, then perhaps you shouldn’t be in a leadership position.

Don’t whine about the systems you built. Generals Mahoney and Smith created the Marine Corps they now lead, and it apparently promotes a terrible sleep schedule. Well fellas, you own it. You made it over the past 20 or so years. You don’t get to complain about it. Same goes for the Senate…you made nominations hard, and you created hundreds of flag officer positions, so don’t whine when you have to actually review these people and follow your own rules.

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.

Stay at home babies? Not so fast…

Posted: October 28, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in charity
Tags: , ,

It’s no surprise that many American kids are part of the “boomerang” generation, moving back in with their parents in their mid to late 20s. Rising housing costs and student debt load, coupled with a low inventory of cheap starter homes makes it hard to make it on your own. Even 18 years ago when I had to find housing on my own for the first time, I purchased a house and had to rent two of the three bedrooms to friends to make it economically feasible.

Generated by Bing AI

It’s tempting to say the current generation of 20-somethings is lazy and just doesn’t want to leave, and even more tempting to say it’s an American thing. Too many people just assume that Americans, on average, are lazier and fatter than your average European, Indian, Chinese, or other ethnic population. But I’ve traveled the world quite a bit, and I’ve found that is often not the case.

Let’s look at Italy, where a 75-year-old mother just won a court battle to evict her 40- and 42-year-old sons:

The 75-year-old mother, whose name has not been publicly released, made several unsuccessful attempts to persuade her sons, also unnamed, to move out of her home in Pavia in northern Italy, the news agency reported. Despite having jobs, the men —aged 40 and 42 — refused to find alternative accommodation of their own, ANSA said. They also refused to contribute to household expenses despite having their own incomes and failed to help out with household chores, per ANSA.

Insider.com

I mean, dang…42 years old and has a job? Talk about a freeloader! This article sparked my curiosity on what the average age of moving out in Europe is, which apparently varies widely by country:

Image from EuroStat

The EU average is around 26, and the US average is….24-27, with 78% of kids 27 and older not living in their parents house. The only weird outliers in Europe is Sweden, where it appears to be strongly encouraged to leave the house at 18 no matter what.

Interestingly enough, even when kids in America move back into their parent’s house, it’s not for long, as almost 40% of them moved back and then out again before the age of 27. My guess is for every loser son or daughter that is staying at home and not contributing, there are 10-20 kids simply saving money with the plan to move out, and are grateful for their parents help, and compared to Europe, they are doing slightly better than the European average.

Let’s not jump onto the “American 20-somethings are adult babies” bandwagon…the kids might be alright after all.