Not to worry though, no doubt all those 290-odd ships are stocked with the latest in gender-neutral washrooms, "multi-faith reflection rooms", and fully stocked canteens with the full array of locally-sourced, vegan, gluten-free and farm-to-table sustainably produced and women-owned nutritional supplements that all our fighting xirs need in order to take on the *real* enemy head-on: White Rage!
Take *that* Houthis! Tremble before Harris Doctrine Showboat Diplomacy!
To think that the costumed guys in the Village People videos are all actually straight, because the gay guys, being more skilled dancers and actors, were all too expensive to hire for a cheapo video.
As I recall, when Winston Churchill took over the British Admiralty, he was mocking the Navy's traditions as nothing more than "rum, sodomy, and the lash." He was not advocating using those things as recruitment and retention strategies.
I forgot all about them trying to use a drag queen to recruit!! What could POSSIBLY explain this behaviour?! Besides the weirdest kind of insanity we never heard of? CIA drug and trauma based identity destruction comes somehow to mind. what is the result? The demilitarization of the US armed forces. By accident? Impossible, it has to be by SOMEBODY's intention. China? HOW COULD THEY? It has to be done INTERNALLY. It's the same campaign as COVID shots and border destruction. Spitballing.
I'm sure there are very real "concerns" about the inclusion of genderless or gender fluid sea invertebrate harems and the appropriate feeding apparatus and preservation of oceanic lava tube habitat.
I feel like the current Navy would have, instead of Top Gun, a competition called Inclusive Result Aircraft Participation Event. Highway to the Mediocre Zone.
I had a 27-year career as a naval officer ... thus have some insight into how the system works. The vast majority of flag and general officers have very little actual authority over anything meaningful. For the Navy, that means shipbuilding strategy, force disposition, weapons purchases, never mind actual operations against a foe who might fight back. All that is decided by civilians in either the Department of Defense bureaucracy or in the defense industry.
In fact, it became obvious to me that one's flag officer career was simply an extended interview and tryout for the REAL work to be done after retirement, at Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, CACI, etc.
And this will absolutely result in a re-org (reorganization for those not familiar with navy talk). A re-org will move the losers around in order to shield their star players, hang a scapegoat out to dry and always makes new spots for more senior officers to make sure this never happens again. But it will happen again. DEI guarantees a diminishing return of high quality players.
High degree of probability that "China WILL take Taiwan" any day now - as we stick our collective heads further and further up our collective asses.
No ammunition for our guns, airplanes that can't fly, and now no fuel for our ships.
And tens of thousands understrength - in every branch except the Marines.
So we abandon enough weaponry to arm every warlord and petty dictator in the third world. We give away most of our ammo to the kleptocrats in the Ukraine.
And seem to be trying really, really hard to jump into war with Russia, and start another war in the middle east.
Anybody think we may have a bit of a leadership problem?
I think the main problem, ideologies aside, is that your ruling elites think themselves invulnerable. It would be difficult to impossible for any nation, or coalition of nations to hit the USA on her home soil, at least the way the USA regularly hits other nations.
A condition they think natural and therefore unchanging, which in turn is why they don't see that any and all challengers, enemies and opponents chooses other avenues of attack, instead of planning an invasion across the North pole and the two largest oceans.
The USA is the High School movie jock that no-one can stand up to on their own in a bare-knuckle showdown. But get him hooked on crank, beer, fatty/sugary "food", coke (both kinds), Viagra, amylnitrate, porn, online gaming, et cetera et cetera. . .
. . .and let his resultant diabetes, cardiac arrests and eventual stroke and colon cancer take him out 15-20 years down the line.
If only invulnerable China Joe By-dung hadn't got dementia, he would have taken Putin and Xi both behind the bleachers and beat the shit out of them. You know Joe was appointed to the Naval Academy, and wanted to play football there, but turned it down only because Roger Staubach got there first! He's told the story often.
Based on the fact that our elites are arguing about the meaning of the word "woman", I would suggest "stark raving mad" (or at least "utterly divorced from reality" -- which is equally dangerous) is more likely.
"It would be difficult to impossible for any nation, or coalition of nations to hit the USA on her home soil, at least the way the USA regularly hits other nations."
Any attack on American soil would merely be the perfect justification for another "war against terrorism." Ka-ching!!
I’m sure they’re ready to go, but any time a government is about to have new “leadership” it’s probably best to wait for the outcome. Sooner, or later (much sooner) they’ll jump. We’re not ready for duking it out with the CCP.
This sort of thing could almost lead one to believe that the current U.S. military is not really managed to be a practical fighting force but perhaps a mechanism to extract a trillion dollars a year from the American tax base to feed an industry... and to recycle a portion of those funds back to the politicians who enable it.
We're buying sleeping blankets for soldiers that weren't tested for Arctic weather. In Canada. The old joke that Canada could be conquered by the NYPD has never been more true.
I'll trade you the Swedish military's winter boots for those blankets.
The soldiers have to buy their own boots, because the ones the military ordered doesn't keep your feet warm in -30C. And in the North (1/3 of the kingdom) it's not rare with -40C during deep winter nights.
Meanwhile, the old style boots from the 1940s still hold up. Those were made so you could stuff hay or fur or wool into them to compliment your woolen knitted socks.
Maybe, just maybe, making stuff from materials from animals surviving deep winter /without/ gear would be the way to go? Reindeer-pelts instead of blankets, maybe? Ought to be a financial boon to the indigents in northern Canada, to raise enough reindeer and caribou for the military?
You are absolutely right. I would think that a basic pair of gloves that are worn for protection would be enough for anything above freezing. Especially if they keep your hands dry.
For winter, if it were me, I would want something rated much colder than -7°C.
Well, as a 25 year Navy vet, I can assure you of two things. 1) The Captain of the Big Horn has been (or soon will be) relieved of his (or her) command. 2) With one Admiral for every two ships, we know the Navy’s DEI program is in top notch shape!
"A review of GFO levels indicates an 11% increase in the number of four-star officers (36 on September 30, 1965 vs. 40 on September 30, 2018) and a 24% increase in the number of three-star officers (119 vs. 147). At the same time, the number of one-star and two-star officers has decreased by about 35% (1,129 vs. 734). However, during this time period, the size of the total force was cut roughly in half, dropping from 2.66 million on September 30, 1965, to 1.32 million on September 30, 2018. Thus, a more salient measure may be the proportion of GFOs to the total force."
More and more, this quote from John Gatto resonates with me. He's talking about education, but increasingly, it feels like the whole country:
"Think of your dining room table; now break off two legs. Replace one with a tall stack of dishes and the other with a large dog. The top of the table will look the same covered in cloth, but it wouldn't be a good bet to get you through dinner."
I have 3 teen daughters. I don't know what to tell them. I see no way their country will survive (at least as an intact republic) until they are married with children. But where do they go? What should they do? I honestly don't know.
To go back to Gatto's dinner metaphor, all I feel like I can do is crawl under the table and grab the scraps off the floor before the dog notices them and madly re-center the dish stack. Meanwhile, most of the guests are chatting away above my head, complaining about how the people worried about the increasingly significant lean of the table are just uneducated -- all modern tables lean like that -- and any mention of a dog or dishes is obviously crazy talk. None of them will dare to check under the table though.
What happened to the peace plan/negotiations that Boris Johnson was ordered to halt?
---
excerpt:
May 06, 2022
The Ukrainian news outlet Ukrayinska Pravda reported Thursday that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson used his surprise visit to Kyiv last month to pressure President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to cut off peace negotiations with Russia, even after the two sides appeared to have made tenuous progress toward a settlement to end the war.
Detailed discussion of work-arounds:
https://x.com/mercoglianos/status/1838933197318410741
Not to worry though, no doubt all those 290-odd ships are stocked with the latest in gender-neutral washrooms, "multi-faith reflection rooms", and fully stocked canteens with the full array of locally-sourced, vegan, gluten-free and farm-to-table sustainably produced and women-owned nutritional supplements that all our fighting xirs need in order to take on the *real* enemy head-on: White Rage!
Take *that* Houthis! Tremble before Harris Doctrine Showboat Diplomacy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eio7p2adUkA
To think that "In the Navy" by the Village People is now...full circle? Reality? I'm done.
*Looks at bourbon*
I hear you. Have been binge reading thru the Horatio Hornblower book series as either an antiacid or an analgesic - take your pick.
To think that the costumed guys in the Village People videos are all actually straight, because the gay guys, being more skilled dancers and actors, were all too expensive to hire for a cheapo video.
As I recall, when Winston Churchill took over the British Admiralty, he was mocking the Navy's traditions as nothing more than "rum, sodomy, and the lash." He was not advocating using those things as recruitment and retention strategies.
And yet, here we are, girlfriend. I'm not hip enough to know what they do instead of rum, though.
Bud Light.
BOOM!
I forgot all about them trying to use a drag queen to recruit!! What could POSSIBLY explain this behaviour?! Besides the weirdest kind of insanity we never heard of? CIA drug and trauma based identity destruction comes somehow to mind. what is the result? The demilitarization of the US armed forces. By accident? Impossible, it has to be by SOMEBODY's intention. China? HOW COULD THEY? It has to be done INTERNALLY. It's the same campaign as COVID shots and border destruction. Spitballing.
And they wonder why they can't recruit.
OMFG…🤦🏼♀️ I’m glad I did my 4 years and got out in ‘03.
To comply with the military DEI requirements for gender-neutral utensils, that should be "farm-to-spork".
Farm-to-table implies a phallocentric power hierarchy of vertically dominant structural members.
Moveable thumbs that can grip utensils is a cis-normative, species-ist statement. I'll have to report to you HR.
I'm sure there are very real "concerns" about the inclusion of genderless or gender fluid sea invertebrate harems and the appropriate feeding apparatus and preservation of oceanic lava tube habitat.
I feel like the current Navy would have, instead of Top Gun, a competition called Inclusive Result Aircraft Participation Event. Highway to the Mediocre Zone.
"IRAPE".
Good one!
I laughed out loud
You guys a cracking me up! Lolol
I know right! I cannot *like* enough.
"Showboat diplomacy" is hilarious
This post gives me Joy™
LOL
Fear not for now the navy have a mixed crew submarine completely adapted for women. Probably they even have a fully stocked abortion clinic aboard.
Lolol!
"The oiler is the third Military Sealift Command-operated vessel to run aground in just over a year."
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/middle_east/2024-09-24/usns-big-horn-15286129.html
Yikes
Right?
Holy shit. Glad we have two massive oceans between us.
Heck, now that i think about it, that actually might become a liability for the first time in our history.
Container ships and the earth: is there anything the U.S. Navy can’t hit? Other than recruiting goals.
I wonder how many of those Captains were DEI hires?
Holeee Crap!
This must be how the Roman legions felt under the joy of Emperor Nero.
I don't recall -- did he have a brat summer?
I heard Cleopatra was the original Hwak Twah Girl.
LOL!
lol, like
Well he did fiddle while Rome burned, so there's precedence.
How did that work out, anyway?
I had a 27-year career as a naval officer ... thus have some insight into how the system works. The vast majority of flag and general officers have very little actual authority over anything meaningful. For the Navy, that means shipbuilding strategy, force disposition, weapons purchases, never mind actual operations against a foe who might fight back. All that is decided by civilians in either the Department of Defense bureaucracy or in the defense industry.
In fact, it became obvious to me that one's flag officer career was simply an extended interview and tryout for the REAL work to be done after retirement, at Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, CACI, etc.
If Americans only knew the real deal ...
And this will absolutely result in a re-org (reorganization for those not familiar with navy talk). A re-org will move the losers around in order to shield their star players, hang a scapegoat out to dry and always makes new spots for more senior officers to make sure this never happens again. But it will happen again. DEI guarantees a diminishing return of high quality players.
If Kamala wins, China WILL take Taiwan, and the Middle East simply crumbles under bombardment.
High degree of probability that "China WILL take Taiwan" any day now - as we stick our collective heads further and further up our collective asses.
No ammunition for our guns, airplanes that can't fly, and now no fuel for our ships.
And tens of thousands understrength - in every branch except the Marines.
So we abandon enough weaponry to arm every warlord and petty dictator in the third world. We give away most of our ammo to the kleptocrats in the Ukraine.
And seem to be trying really, really hard to jump into war with Russia, and start another war in the middle east.
Anybody think we may have a bit of a leadership problem?
Or have we just gone stark, raving, fucking mad?
I think the main problem, ideologies aside, is that your ruling elites think themselves invulnerable. It would be difficult to impossible for any nation, or coalition of nations to hit the USA on her home soil, at least the way the USA regularly hits other nations.
A condition they think natural and therefore unchanging, which in turn is why they don't see that any and all challengers, enemies and opponents chooses other avenues of attack, instead of planning an invasion across the North pole and the two largest oceans.
The USA is the High School movie jock that no-one can stand up to on their own in a bare-knuckle showdown. But get him hooked on crank, beer, fatty/sugary "food", coke (both kinds), Viagra, amylnitrate, porn, online gaming, et cetera et cetera. . .
. . .and let his resultant diabetes, cardiac arrests and eventual stroke and colon cancer take him out 15-20 years down the line.
If only invulnerable China Joe By-dung hadn't got dementia, he would have taken Putin and Xi both behind the bleachers and beat the shit out of them. You know Joe was appointed to the Naval Academy, and wanted to play football there, but turned it down only because Roger Staubach got there first! He's told the story often.
I can't believe that is real, but I just watched a video of it. That guy lies about everything.
Brilliant analogy, America is rotting into the easy chair stinking of her own feces , as the rats wait patiently lined up on the TV tray.
Democrats, the gift that keeps on taking.
Based on the fact that our elites are arguing about the meaning of the word "woman", I would suggest "stark raving mad" (or at least "utterly divorced from reality" -- which is equally dangerous) is more likely.
Need you ask AndyinBC 😂
Nah. Rhetorical questions. Both.
I vote for mad.
me too-stark, raving
"It would be difficult to impossible for any nation, or coalition of nations to hit the USA on her home soil, at least the way the USA regularly hits other nations."
Any attack on American soil would merely be the perfect justification for another "war against terrorism." Ka-ching!!
… and alls well that ends well with Americka … night night sleep tight . 😴
I think the only way to save SOME of our country and culture is a Red Dawn event. From within.
That sounds suspiciously like a - a - r-r-r-rEV - uh, I can't say it.
Yup.
It's getting close to the witching hour...that's for sure
If Kamala wins, we'll be building our own gulags in Taiwan.
I’m sure they’re ready to go, but any time a government is about to have new “leadership” it’s probably best to wait for the outcome. Sooner, or later (much sooner) they’ll jump. We’re not ready for duking it out with the CCP.
Why would they wait?
They’re not going to jump before our elections.
Why? By the time Trump made it to the WH they would have consolidated their gains.
This sort of thing could almost lead one to believe that the current U.S. military is not really managed to be a practical fighting force but perhaps a mechanism to extract a trillion dollars a year from the American tax base to feed an industry... and to recycle a portion of those funds back to the politicians who enable it.
THAT'S CRAZY TALK
Ranks right up there with Teachers Unions saying they'd educate kids better if they just had proper funding.
OK...how much would do it?
Errrrr....however much you give us plus more. 🤔😄
lololo
But that whole Gaza pier operation was a complete success. That was one for the win column.
Oh, HUGE win
The only possible solution is to have one admiral per ship! That’ll make things much more efficient.
Oh the Canadian Navy Solution! *Checks notes*...yeah, about that.
Everyone in the canoe eh?
We're buying sleeping blankets for soldiers that weren't tested for Arctic weather. In Canada. The old joke that Canada could be conquered by the NYPD has never been more true.
I'll trade you the Swedish military's winter boots for those blankets.
The soldiers have to buy their own boots, because the ones the military ordered doesn't keep your feet warm in -30C. And in the North (1/3 of the kingdom) it's not rare with -40C during deep winter nights.
Meanwhile, the old style boots from the 1940s still hold up. Those were made so you could stuff hay or fur or wool into them to compliment your woolen knitted socks.
Maybe, just maybe, making stuff from materials from animals surviving deep winter /without/ gear would be the way to go? Reindeer-pelts instead of blankets, maybe? Ought to be a financial boon to the indigents in northern Canada, to raise enough reindeer and caribou for the military?
One of my buddies told me his issued winter gloves are rated from +10°C to -7°C. His comment was, "Why the fuck would I wear gloves at +10?"
Mine was, "What happens when it's -30? No war today guys, it's too cold out."
+10 is probably pretty cold if you've been sitting in a dugout for a few days. I imagine a pair of gloves would be pretty welcome.
You are absolutely right. I would think that a basic pair of gloves that are worn for protection would be enough for anything above freezing. Especially if they keep your hands dry.
For winter, if it were me, I would want something rated much colder than -7°C.
Two! Must have a counter-admiral too!
It worked for the Roman consuls, until it didn't.
And now I can't help thinking about the concept of "counter-culture" in this context.
Gilbert & Sullivan and the Captain of the Pinafore. Way ahead of us. Or US. It's worth a look for the first song.
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=i+am+the+captain+of+the+pinafore&PC=ARPL&PTAG=30530117&ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3di%2520am%2520the%2520captain%2520of%2520the%2520pinafore%26FORM%3dARPSEC%26PC%3dARPL%26PTAG%3d30530117&mmscn=vwrc&mid=2B4FF3B1EB738EE6644D2B4FF3B1EB738EE6644D&FORM=WRVORC#:~:text=I%20am%20the%20captain%20of%20the%20Pinafore...%20Sir,
And equal. Far more important.
They already have blue captains and gold captains, why not admirals as well?
With Commie-La in charge it won’t be another admiral. It’ll be a clueless Marxist political officer who can countermand every command.
Just wait til we roll in there with our awesome all electric tanks!! That’ll show em!
"72-hour time out for recharging. Hey, no fair still shooting!"
Well, as a 25 year Navy vet, I can assure you of two things. 1) The Captain of the Big Horn has been (or soon will be) relieved of his (or her) command. 2) With one Admiral for every two ships, we know the Navy’s DEI program is in top notch shape!
"A review of GFO levels indicates an 11% increase in the number of four-star officers (36 on September 30, 1965 vs. 40 on September 30, 2018) and a 24% increase in the number of three-star officers (119 vs. 147). At the same time, the number of one-star and two-star officers has decreased by about 35% (1,129 vs. 734). However, during this time period, the size of the total force was cut roughly in half, dropping from 2.66 million on September 30, 1965, to 1.32 million on September 30, 2018. Thus, a more salient measure may be the proportion of GFOs to the total force."
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44389/7
More and more, this quote from John Gatto resonates with me. He's talking about education, but increasingly, it feels like the whole country:
"Think of your dining room table; now break off two legs. Replace one with a tall stack of dishes and the other with a large dog. The top of the table will look the same covered in cloth, but it wouldn't be a good bet to get you through dinner."
I have 3 teen daughters. I don't know what to tell them. I see no way their country will survive (at least as an intact republic) until they are married with children. But where do they go? What should they do? I honestly don't know.
To go back to Gatto's dinner metaphor, all I feel like I can do is crawl under the table and grab the scraps off the floor before the dog notices them and madly re-center the dish stack. Meanwhile, most of the guests are chatting away above my head, complaining about how the people worried about the increasingly significant lean of the table are just uneducated -- all modern tables lean like that -- and any mention of a dog or dishes is obviously crazy talk. None of them will dare to check under the table though.
Nice
The problem isn’t that you’re holding up the table with a dog, it’s that you’re not paying him enough.
Further evidence of the sun that is setting on the American Empire.
Thank God. Isolationism is what weve needed for a long time
Has Kamala made Sprite the choice of Agriculture in America yet? A la The Idiocracy... 🤣
Electrolytes. It’s what plants crave.
Brawndo!
Yesterday I saw Zelensky say that Trump doesn't have a plan to end the war in Ukraine.
The war that Harris and Zelensky himself want to keep going forever.
What happened to the peace plan/negotiations that Boris Johnson was ordered to halt?
---
excerpt:
May 06, 2022
The Ukrainian news outlet Ukrayinska Pravda reported Thursday that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson used his surprise visit to Kyiv last month to pressure President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to cut off peace negotiations with Russia, even after the two sides appeared to have made tenuous progress toward a settlement to end the war.
...
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/05/06/boris-johnson-pressured-zelenskyy-ditch-peace-talks-russia-ukrainian-paper
They will eventually form the basis of the peace talks in 2025.
a web search also turned this up:
https://www.nprillinois.org/2024-05-06/the-story-behind-2022s-secret-ukraine-russia-peace-negotiations
and
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/boris-johnson-unveils-trump-s-peace-plan-for-ukraine-with-russian-crimea/ar-BB1qlkzB
Yes. Now I can't get the like reply to show up where I want to like. Mercy, mercy, does nothing work anymore. Ya think?
Pretty sure the shipping rep meant "passed" in his tweet...