The anti-Midas touch

Where everything you touch turns to shit.  Turns out that Eric Shinseki has that.

You don't know who Eric Shinseki is?  He was the Chief of Staff of the Army back in 2001 who mandated that all Soldiers wear a beret as their headgear.  He wanted everyone to wear the beret in order to improve the esprit de corps.  This pissed off just about everybody.

The Rangers hated it, because Shinseki demanded that all Army Soldiers wear a black beret, and the black beret was the Ranger's color.  They now wear tan.

The rest of the Army hated it because we now had to wear a floppy hat that took two hands to get it sitting on your head correctly, that held in heat thanks to the fact that it was BLACK and WOOL, and stank to high heaven after a period of constant wear.

All in all, it was a decision that was a self-inflicted dick-stomping, and rather than improving the esprit de corps of the Army it did the opposite.  The beret was universally reviled by everyone who had to wear it, and in 2011 the Sergeant Major of the Army, who had listened to the troops, ordered that the soft cap be returned as the headgear for daily wear in garrison.  The beret still exists for the Class A Uniform.

So I told you all that just so I can tell you all this - the same guy who made that colossal mistake was put in charge of the Department of VA back in 2009.

And now we get this.....

A Veterans Affairs employee at the VA Medical Center in Cheyenne, Wyoming, has been placed on administrative leave after CBS News obtained an email showing an employee directing his staff on how to game the appointments system to make it appear as though veterans were being seen within the VA's 14-day directive.

And this is on top of the crap going on at the Phoenix VA...

Look, the VA has been in trouble for a while.  You can't conduct a thirteen year war and expect that the facilities you had in place before the war are going to be adequate to deal with the amount of healthcare that's going to be required by the troops coming home.  But Shinseki has been in place for five years now.  And what, if anything, has he done?

Everything he touches, it seems, turns to shit.....

Oh, the horror!

Yeah, keep in mind that this number is only valid if you don't take into account the number of military positions that were lost.  And since I'm neck deep in that area right now, let me assure you - the military is getting hacked into chunks and tossed out in the trash.

Too Much

Can we be done with the NFL Draft yet?  Please?

I was done with it a month ago.  I really don't give a damn about it right now.

Anyone actually paying attention knew this already

Reagan Recovery vs. Obama "Recovery".

One of America's greatest presidents versus the current Stuttering Clusterfuck of a Miserable Failure.

Free Money

And all you have to do is learn a trade that will make you employable up to the day you die.  And someone else pays for that education.

Dear Lord, were I not already in the military for the long haul, I'd jump on this like a dog on a bone.

Got home late

Crawled into bed way past midnight, and got maybe four hours of shut-eye before I was back in the office.  Keep in mind that technically, I'm still on leave.  But I spent the better part of the morning in the office trying to get things in order because the people up the chain have screwed things up so badly that everybody is hopping and popping trying to limit the damage.

I can't wait to leave this job.  Lordy, I can't wait to leave this job.

In Lieu of Actual Content, Part 8

And by now I'm pretty confident in my ability to spell the word "lieu" without needing any help...


(apropos of nothing, NSFW)

In Lieu of Actual Content, Part 7

I play the banjo!

(not really.  I'm a drummer.)

((yeah, as if you've ever listened to a band front-manned by a drummer!)

One Hour, Seven Minutes

I didn't break any land-speed records, but I'm only one minute off of my pace from 22 years ago, when I was 50 pounds lighter.

Not too damn bad, I'd say.

In Lieu of Actual Content, part 6

Hey!  Guess what I'm doing?

Last time I did it was in 1991.  How's that for a blast from the past?  I want to see what my time is compared to the young, stupid, out-of-shape me.

Of course, if I recall correctly, the route was only 10k back then....

In Lieu of Actual Content, Part 5

She's got that whole "biting my bottom lip" look that made Kristen Stewart famous...

(NSFW of course)

In Lieu of Actual Content, Part 4

Gimme some rope, I'm coming loose.....



If that doesn't explain the "in lieu of actual content" posts, I don't know what does....

In Lieu of Actual Content, Part 3

She's got that inviting look in her eye, I think...

(NSFW, of course)

In Lieu of Actual Content, Part 2

I must have played this song for weeks on end, trying to get the drum fills just perfect.  As usual, the songs that sound the simplest are some of the hardest.

In Lieu of Actual Content, Part 1

I'm in an undisclosed location right now, doing my best to enjoy life.  So in lieu of actual content, today you get bewbs.  NSFW of course...

Feel the "Tolerance"

You want to know why you shouldn't even bother trying to have a dialogue with the Left?

Because they hate you and they want you to die.

Remember, Conservatives think that Liberals are dumb.  Liberals think that Conservatives are evil.

We want to educate them.  They want to round us up and kill us.  For the good of the world, of course.

Brainless, pathetic and Criminally Incompetent

The State Department Spokeshole is using Daily Kos and Thinkprogress as reference sources.

Think about that for a while.  Our foreign policy is being run by people who not only read websites like Daily Kos and Thinkprogress, but they're using them as REFERENCE SOURCES.

Well, that certainly explains why America has become the laughingstock of the globe, doesn't it?

The problem with the Peacetime Military

Megan McArdle has a decent write-up about the Peacetime Military.  It's not bad, and from the perspective of someone on the outside looking in, it's pretty damn good.

However, what's missing is the perspective of the inside looking out.

The Peacetime Military is generally a smaller military.  Less spots to fill, and more people to fill them.  Think the 90's, when we had scores of Company Grade officers getting forced out, or more often as not leaving after making Captain or Major once they see who's in charge and what their chances are.

So less positions, more people competing for those positions, and since this is peace-time, we can't really judge you on how effective you are in combat.  We can only judge you based on your Evaluation Reports and track record in training.

Which means that the risk-averse politician rules the roost.

That was what I saw happen in the 90's.  The boot-lickers, the ass-kissers, and the zero-defect-menality morons were the ones getting promoted.  The commanders who demanded spit-polished boots in the field, because looking good was more important than actually doing your damn job kept getting promoted up, while the risk-takers, the guys who would possibly make a mistake but get up, dust themselves off and learn from it were either forced out or left of their own volition.

That means when the flying fecal matter impacts the rotating air-movment device, the people in charge, all up and down the chain, are the ass-kissing politicians who may or may not know what the hell to do once the lead starts to fly.

So how do you solve this?  Hell if I know.  This isn't just an American phenomenon, after all.  Other than having actual war fighters in charge, people who understand combat and what it takes?  And after a while, those people filter out.  We went from 1975 to 1991 without any major mobilization.  That's three quarters of a military career right there.  The remainders from Viet Nam in Senior positions were mostly gone, and the folks taking their place hadn't really done any heavy fighting.

And think about how many flag officers Obama has gotten rid of lately.  All that experience, gone.  All that knowledge, gone.  All that wisdom, gone.  And in their place?  People who aren't going to rock the boat, because you can ensure that to a completely political man like Obama, who has accomplished absolutely nothing on his own outside of politics, the political is all he cares about, especially in the people that he picks for leadership positions.

It's a lesson that will have to be learned repeatedly, over and over and over, until the Final Day.  Politicians make lousy leaders, in all aspects of life.  And the Peacetime Military gets taken over by politicians bit by bit, until the next war, when the politicians get weeded out for a short time.

Two competing philosophies

Laid out in an essay about economics.

For the conservative, people are an asset — in the coldest economic terms, a potentially productive unit of labor. For the progressive, people are a liability — a mouth to be fed, a problem in need of a solution. Understanding that difference of perspective renders understandable the sometimes wildly different views that conservatives and progressives have about things like employment policy.

Emphasis mine.  This difference in how the two philosophies see people needs to be laid out at every turn.  Beat it into people's heads.  We see people as assets and allies.  They see people as slaves and liabilities.

The cause is the cure?

I might need to try this:  Using yeast to avoid getting intoxicated.  I do love me some beer, but these days I don't drink too much of it.  And I certainly go light when I'm out on the town.

But boy, do I enjoy beer.  IPAs, stouts, Belgian ales, porters, all of 'em.