Posts Tagged ‘NG36B’

Another setback for military mental health

Posted: December 3, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

We have been pushing more and more people to seek mental health resources. That is a good thing, and will hopefully reduce the number of suicides and other mental health problems. But there is a stigma associated with seeking mental health services. People are afraid that they will be judged by others for seeking help, and it will have consequences.

Well, they aren’t wrong. And Hawaii recently proved it will absolutely treat you like a second-class citizen if you seek help for depression:

Michael Santucci, a cryptologic warfare officer from Fort Myers, Florida, saw a medical provider at a military hospital for feelings of depression and homesickness a few months after arriving in Hawaii last year, according to his lawsuit, filed in April. He wasn’t diagnosed with any disqualifying behavioral, emotional or mental disorder, the lawsuit said.

He later filled out forms to register his firearms with the Honolulu Police Department and indicated that he had been treated for depression, but noted it was “not serious.” Hawaii law requires registration of all firearms. Prior to acquiring a gun, an applicant must apply for a permit. Santucci needed such a permit even though he legally owned his firearms before arriving Hawaii.

Because Santucci answered “yes” on a form indicating he had sought counseling, the permit process was halted and his firearms were seized, his lawyers said.

Navy Times

Not just halted, but the corrupt police took his weapons.

For those who have never had to deal with the losers that do gun registration in Honolulu, let me illustrate the process. You bring 16 dollars and 50 cents in exact change to the police office. If you bring a 20 dollar bill, the lady behind the counter yells at you like Roz from the Monsters Inc movie. You get fingerprinted. You have a background check run. You get treated better at the DMV.

So, what did LT Santucci learn out of this? Probably to never be honest with the Honolulu PD ever again. That’s what everyone else reading this learned too. Even though Santucci never said he was going to kill himself or hurt anyone else, he was denied his rights. Any gun owner is now incentivized to not seek mental health for exactly this reason, putting them at higher risk of mental health issues.

Maybe that’s the point. Maybe the people that run the system want more gun owners committing suicide. Maybe its a feature, not a bug. We’ve seen a shift where homosexuality and transgenderism are no longer considered mental health problems, and we’ll encourage life-altering treatment when we should be encouraging people to better come to grips with the reality they live in. On the other side, telling a mental health practitioner that you struggle being deployed away from home is immediate grounds to remove your rights as a citizen. This is made all the worse by the fact that LT Santucci is raising his right hand every day to defend these people.

If that doesn’t make you mad, well, maybe you should seek treatment for that.

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 enjoy these articles, why not donate to Da Tech Guy and purchase a book from the author!

So why did Jen Kiggans not make the news?

Posted: November 19, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,
A much younger Jen Kiggans, from Bearing Drift

Now, I get it. I’m not the center of the universe. That stopped happening when I was 4 years old. Or maybe 3, I don’t remember if I was a terrible child growing up or not. Despite that fact, I happen to live in the state of Virginia and in a competitive Congressional district, and in a time when elections are swinging back and forth, I get to see everything from the ground level.

So lets talk about the portion of the midterms the media is ignoring, and that’s the ousting of Elaine Luria by Jen Kiggans. Now, you’re probably asking, who the heck is Jen Kiggans? I’m not surprised by that question, because even if you lived in the area, you likely heard NOTHING about Jen Kiggans.

Did you know she’s a former Navy helicopter pilot? That’s she’s a Catholic mom with 4 kids? That she’s an adult geriatric nurse? I doubt it. Because over the past few months, the ONLY thing I heard about Jen Kiggans on the radio, on my Pandora feed, on TV commercials, and on YouTube commercials, was that Jen Kiggans is an election denier and hates women because she won’t kill innocent babies.

It was overwhelming. I work in an open office space, and one of my co-workers has a TV on constantly, spewing some damn MSNBC nonsense all day. Elaine Luria ads were on there constantly. I mean, every time I looked up, there was Elaine Luria, talking about how she voted against Biden, or made our Navy stronger, or stood up for the right to kill innocent babies, or…something. It was nauseating. I wanted the election to end just so I could stop hearing about Elaine Luria.

So when Jen Kiggans won, it felt like a miracle. But nobody gave her any credit. The local news said it was largely due to redistricting. Considering that Virginia’s districts were totally out of whack until this year, I’m not buying it. Jen won because she was tough, ran a good campaign and got the word out, despite a Democrat war machine that outraised and outspent her two to one.

But so far, the news is talking about DeSantis, Florida, and Trump (who is also in Florida). Virginia, which was being written off as a permanently blue state, is now slowly turning red again. Not quite as crazy as Florida, but getting there.

We should learn a few things from this. First, running solid candidates helps a lot. People don’t want the milk-toast Bush candidates anymore. Winsome Sears, Glenn Youngkin and Jen Kiggans actually stand up and hold our values. They won’t be portrayed as such by the dishonest media, but that was going to happen anyway. Having watched all three of them speak, its exciting. You actually feel good when you see them in person. You need that passion to stem the tide of constant negative media.

Second, we need to get real about raising money for candidates. I wrote about this before, but it bears repeating: if you aren’t out knocking on doors, or donating money, or doing something small for your candidate, then you just don’t care, and you deserve all the scorn in the world. You certainly get no sympathy from me. I remember all the damn annoying Obama kids that kept knocking on my door. Every day I wanted to just punch them so they would go away. But you have to hand it to them, that strategy worked. It got people pumped up and out to vote. That strategy works both ways, but we need energized people that care.

Please pray for Jen Kiggans as she attempts to deal with a broken country and a broken state. She needs all the help she can get.

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 enjoyed this post, consider purchasing a book or audiobook from the author as a Christmas gift.

Inflation finally cuts deep

Posted: October 22, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
Tags: , ,

We have a family tradition of visiting a local restaurant every Sunday after church. It’s all around fun: a nice family outing while supporting a local business that treats us well. The fact that we’ve enjoyed it so much made it extra hard when we chose to cut it, along with many other things, out of our budget.

Despite shopping at Walmart, Sams and Aldi and not changing our lifestyle, its now increasingly more difficult to pay the credit card every month. After this last month, I dug through the last years worth of bills and noticed an ugly trend: the food bills steadily going up. What used to be a 40 or 50 dollar Walmart visit has turned into 100 dollars. Between that and gas, any sort of buffer we normally had is now gone.

So we’re cutting. Biden-flation is now responsible for screwing over our local restaurant because we simply can’t afford to eat there anymore. Most of our friends are simply racking up credit card debt. Long term, I know that’s not going to work, so I move money around and find ways to pay it off, but its becoming harder and harder each month. Forget about planning a vacation, we’re just trying to make each day work. At some point, if it doesn’t stop, we’ll simply be slaves to ever increasing debt.

So yeah, inflation isn’t just some interesting news story to me. Its very real, and I’m watching it gut the hard working middle class, especially those that have large families and can’t just stop expenditures like buying groceries.

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. Please consider donating to DaTech Guy or buying the author’s book, especially with Christmas coming up.

We won’t have quotas in the Navy…oh wait…

Posted: October 15, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,
From Dilbert.

It’s no secret that the Navy, like the other military services, has paid attention to race and gender when it comes to promotions. This is captured through a variety of fields in an officer’s official record, as well as through an official photograph of the officer that is presented at any selection board. The picture requirement was originally removed in 2016 but reinstated in 2018 by NAVADMIN 265/18: 

This NAVADMIN cancels reference (a) and reinstates the requirement 
to display the Official Photograph for all Officer Selection Boards.  This 
policy change is the result of board feedback received since the removal of 
the photograph requirement that the photographs aid the board’s ability to 
assess the Title 10 requirements of an officer’s ability to perform the 
duties of the next higher grade.
NAVADMIN 265/18

If you are skeptical how a photo helps a board member assess whether Naval Officers can execute Title 10 requirements, you’re not alone. Maybe Navy Officers need to double as Instagram models? Maybe Public Affairs got tired of submitting photos of ugly officers that couldn’t measure up to Taylor Kitsch and Rhianna? Or maybe it was a way of weeding out people that checked “Other” on the ethnicity list? I’ll let you decide.

At least the Navy did this in the background. Truth be told, evaluating your selection results to ensure nobody is discriminated against isn’t a bad thing. But its a slippery slope to quotas, and given the number of people lobbying for such a setup, its no surprise that it finally happened.

Courtesy of MyNavyHR, here are the statistics from the O-6 (Captain) promotion board conducted this year:

I’ve only copied the first page here, which covers 1110 (Surface Warfare), 1120 (Submarines), 1130 (SEAL), 1140 (Explosive Ordnance Disposal), and 13XX series (Aviation). Follow the link to get the rest of the 17 pages that cover other specialized communities.

I think the most frustrating part here is that this tells White Males that you have no background that the board cares about. Whether you came from difficult circumstances, are second-generation immigrants from Eastern Europe, or otherwise had some difficulty to overcome, none of that matters. You’re not the right color. Your background and story don’t matter.

I can’t recommend entering the Navy, especially the officer corps, while this nonsense continues. Between reducing the retirement and other benefits, non-stop wars designed to prop-up the military industrial complex paid on the backs of young men and women, or the increasing use of the military for dumb political stunts, its simply not worth it to join. This proves that even if you join with the intention of changing things, you won’t make it to the higher ranks to do so.

The only real chance for change is a change in President and an absolute evisceration of the membership at the top of the Pentagon. You can probably cut the Admiralty it in half without many problems, given the ratio of admirals to ships nowadays. You’ll need to deeply cut and remove a large chunk of the Pentagon and HR staff that pushes these sort of policies. Most importantly, and perhaps the hardest part, will be restoring our nation’s confidence that we select the best officers to place in harm’s way when the nation needs them the most.

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. Please share this story with your friends, especially those considering joining the military, and consider donating to DaTechGuy. If you liked this article, consider purchasing the author’s book to support his writing endeavors.

Older Entries
Newer Entries