Category Archives: Recent Posts

Recent Posts

Who Moved My Cheese?

2 Comments

Well written piece by a Cmdr USN, (ret)

SECNAV Spencer is a fan of the business book, “Who Moved My Cheese?” During his confirmation hearing, in a discussion of the challenges facing our Navy, he stated,

There’s a lot of cheese-moving that has to be done.

What does he mean regarding “cheese-moving?” From the review of the book from Library Journal;

This is a brief tale of two mice and two humans who live in a maze and one day are faced with change: someone moves their cheese. Reactions vary from quick adjustment to waiting for the situation to change by itself to suit their needs. This story is about adjusting attitudes toward change in life, especially at work. Change occurs whether a person is ready or not, but the author affirms that it can be positive. His principles are to anticipate change, let go of the old, and do what you would do if you were not afraid.

Well SECNAV, you don’t have to look for where the cheese is when it’s dropped right in your lap.

A tragedy can often be a catalyst for change. Tragedy often comes from a failure and it can open an opportunity to address root causes of that failure if the right leadership has the right tools and vision.

There is no question that our Surface community has a systemic problem in how it accesses, trains, rewards, and utilizes its Surface Warfare Officers. It was an identified problem when I was a MIDN three decades ago, and the commentary and panel discussions over the years on the topic are almost beyond counting.

To survive that culture has become a strange badge of cultural honor like Black Lung was to coal miners a century ago, or surviving the hazing rituals of the old Soviet Red Army. That isn’t a good thing – yet we allow it to persist.

Has this culture produced excellence? That is an open question. It is generally considered by both long time friends and potential future foes that though though the US Navy may be the largest navy, it is not the most proficient navy when it comes to fundamental seamanship. Training is part of that, but culture is the primary cause.

The USS ANTIETAM in January, USS LAKE CHAMPLAIN in February, USS FITZGERALD in June, and this month’s USS JOHN S. MCCAIN are giving a clear signal – again – that the long-standing critique is correct.

We can fix this, but we must have the will to do so.

This AM, retired Admiral James Stavridis tweeted out four areas to look at;

Especially the first three factors, this is spot on – and is where the SECNAV should focus.

To address this challenge, we do not need another Balisle Report to be put on a shelf until the next tragedy. We can fire CO & XO every day and Fleet Commanders every fortnight and it will not move the ball forward.

No, we need an unbounded review of the career training, progression, and incentives for our Surface Warfare Officers. Get that right, and then focus on equipment and the rest.

We do not need industry “experts” or consultants. We’ve tried that, it doesn’t work. Operational Pauses are nice and needed, but they are band-aids on a melanoma. Time to try something different.

First, invite the last three Royal Navy exchange officers who deployed with USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG 81) for a Chatham House Rule open-ended discussion.

Next, get a gaggle of Fleet Lieutenants, one each, on sea duty based out of Norfolk, Mayport, San Diego, Pearl Harbor, and Japan. No DC LT. No shore duty guys. If you need recommendations, drop me an email. In 72-hrs I’ll have a list of experienced, opinionated, critically thinking JOs who would be glad to talk to you – and no; you don’t need more than five. Spend an hour 1-on-1 with them, and then the next day talk to them as a group from 0800-1100. Just you.

When that is done, call your counterparts in the UK and The Netherlands. They are generally regarded as some fo the best out there, and have a service culture of speaking bluntly. Ask them how they develop their Surface Warfare Officers, and what their SWOs think of their American counterparts. They have opinions – trust me.

When that background is done, then you will have a bit of objective information you will need to engage with the bureaucracy that is set in their ways, scared of change, and insecure in their own beliefs. They will offer the same bromides and excuses they’ve rolled in the way of any meaningful change focused on the core seamanship shortcomings and perverse incentives that are the source of our problems.

We have good uniformed leadership in place, but to do more than publish reports and relieve people of Command, they need more. To instead change culture, habits, policies, and attitudes that no longer provide the best solution for our Navy – they will need a SECNAV with the drive, vision, and endurance to lead them to a better surface force.

Oh, there are still over four months left in 2017.

Originally posted 2017-09-01 09:33:04.

Recent Posts

Why all these Collisions?

4 Comments

I do not subscribe to the WSJ; therefore, I am unable to read the article upon which these gentlemen are commenting. However, from their comments I can surmise that the original author is blaming all sorts of things on the collision(s) the Navy experienced. I received this via an email from a very good friend, a Naval Officer with whom I shared a stateroom for a year aboard the US Chicago in the Vietnam era, and one for who I have the highest degree of respect. We both believe the same; this would never have happened on board the “Mighty Chi.” We ran PIRAZ (Positive Identification Radar Advisory Zone — at least that’s what I remember it was called) in the Gulf of Tonkin. I can remember OOD’s sharing horrid tales in the wardroom of the 100’s of sailing junks with no lights all around the ship as we neared our western zone, and the constant maneuvering they had to do to avoid collisions. I believe this small portion of the total comments speak heavily of what may be the “real” and inexpensive solution to this particular problem. My comments are in red. You decide.

Navy Has Many Causes for Its Poor Sailing

These collisions are unacceptable and I would expect both the captain and OOD of the McCain to be court-martialed.

 

The damaged USS John S. McCain, docked in Singapore, Aug. 22. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Aug. 30, 2017 4:37 p.m. ET

Regarding your editorial “The Navy’s McCain Moment” (Aug. 22) and Seth Cropsey’s “Has the Navy Reached Its Breaking Point?” (op-ed, Aug. 24): I served on a carrier during the Vietnam War and my principal duty was that of a watch officer. I went through countless hours of trading watches, serving first as a junior officer of the deck under instruction, then a junior officer of the deck and finally reached the pinnacle of officer of the deck underway.

We had captain’s standing orders for use when the captain wasn’t on the bridge. One of the most important was when to call him when we had a contact that was CBDR, constant bearing-closing range. That indicated a potential collision. When passing through heavily transited areas, i.e., Gibraltar, which we always did at night, we had the captain, executive officer, navigator and, of course, the officer of the desk (OOD) on the bridge. We posted extra lookouts for boats which didn’t show navigation lights. When in the Mediterranean we were constantly shadowed by Russian trawlers which harassed us. I never heard of any collisions during that period.

I’m struck by the spate of collisions, but even more concerned when I enlarged the photo of the USS McCain, which showed a rusting, ill-kept warship. We had paint crews out every time we entered or anchored in ports. The discipline to keep shipshape was imbued in us, as was the safety of the ship.

The captain bears the ultimate responsibility, and the OOD is in total command of the ship. These collisions are unacceptable, and I would expect both the captain and OOD of the McCain to be court-martialed for dereliction of duty and manslaughter. And I suggest rather than having our fleet standing down, the CNO enact training standards for OOD’s in the Navy. Amen!

David A. Rosow, Lt. j.g. USNR (Ret.)

Palm Beach, Fla.

I was the officer of the deck on the USS Santa Barbara when we sailed through the Singapore Strait in the dead of night. It was tense due to all the traffic. I changed course and speed multiple times, following the rules of the sea to prevent any collision.

I was trained by a very experienced Navy destroyer captain who told us never ever be in a situation where you had to rely on another ship to follow the rules of the sea to avoid a collision. Amen, he was trained by a “Skipper,” who was trained by a “Skipper.”

Bill Person

Bloomfield Village, Mich.

Another Naval collision. More U.S. sailors killed and injured. Yet, all the Journal editors can do is demand more spending. Military sources claim that during the last six years over 200 generals and admirals were ousted by the Obama administration. Retired Maj. Gen. Robert Dees stated the political “mandate for social agendas . . . declines our readiness. We’re spending more time on some of these social engineering projects than on developing and maintaining readiness in our force.” OMG, he has nailed it square on the head. I’ll bet that OOD on watch that night can recite all the rules of dealing with a transgender or gay sailor.

How is it possible that swift, maneuverable U.S. Navy combat ships have twice collided with lumbering cargo ships? Is it possible officers are promoted to command not only on merit, but due to their conformity with a social agenda ahead of military readiness? Could it be possible that families are burying their sailors at the altar of politically imposed social engineering? AMEN again!!

Before throwing money at the problem shouldn’t we seek answers?

Tim Schefter

Loveland, Colo.

Your editors are much too forgiving of those in command of the McCain. The facts are seemingly self-evident that the accident was caused principally by failure of the McCain’s commander and subordinates to maintain adequate “watch” and control of their ship. YEP!

 

C.A. Erickson

Bonsall, Calif.

Originally posted 2017-08-31 15:35:13.

Current Events, Recent Posts

FEMA Rebukes Rumors

If you know someone in TX experiencing the effects of this horrific storm, please send them this video in case they have been contacted by the scum sucking scammers we have in our society who take advantages of events such as this

Originally posted 2017-08-31 13:21:14.

Recent Posts

Surprise Ending

2 Comments

This short video is a must see. You will be surprised by the ending if you have not seen it before. Enjoy Marines!

https://t.co/wbIjQ0ix4X

Originally posted 2017-08-31 10:17:58.

Recent Posts

He Fights!

A friend and shipmate from my tour on the USS Chicago (CG-11) sent the following to me, and I could not help but to share it with my followers. Mr. Sayet speaks to his leftist friends. His points are very valid and worthy of repeating, but wait, who would I repeat them to; I have no leftist friends!

He Fights

By Evan Sayet

My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum.  They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.”  Here’s my answer:

We Right-thinking people have tried dignity.  There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency.  We tried statesmanship.  Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain?  We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney?  And the results were always the same.

This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.

I don’t find anything “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper” about Barack Obama’s lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party.  I don’t see anything “dignified” in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks.  I don’t see anything “statesman-like” in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent.  Yes, Obama was “articulate” and “polished” but in no way was he in the least bit “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper.”

The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the ‘60s.   To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale.  It has been a war they’ve fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one – the violent take-over of the universities – till today.

The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war.  While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety.

With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end.  Donald Trump is America’s first wartime president in the Culture War.

During wartime, things like “dignity” and “collegiality” simply aren’t the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors.  Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming.  Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today.   Lincoln rightly recognized that, “I cannot spare this man.  He fights.”

General George Patton was a vulgar-talking person.  In peacetime, this might have seen him stripped of rank.  But, had Franklin Roosevelt applied the normal rules of decorum, then Hitler and the Socialists would barely be eight decades into their thousand-year Reich.

Trump is fighting.  And what’s particularly delicious is that, like Patton standing over the battlefield as his tanks obliterated Rommel’s, he’s shouting, “You magnificent (people), I read your book!”  That is just the icing on the cake, but it’s wonderful to see that not only is Trump fighting, he’s defeating the Left using their own tactics.  That book is Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals – a book so essential to the Liberals’ war against America that it is and was the playbook for the entire Obama administration and the subject of Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis.   It is a book of such pure evil, that, just as the rest of us would dedicate our book to those we most love or those to whom we are most indebted, Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer.

Trump’s tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do.

First, instead of going after “the fake media” – and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri – Trump isolated CNN.  He made it personal.  Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as “the most powerful weapon of all.”

Everyone gets that it’s not just CNN – in fact, in a world where Al Sharpton and Rachel Maddow, Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof are people of influence and whose “reporting” is in no way significantly different than CNN’s – CNN is just a piker.

Most importantly, Trump’s tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position.  With Trump’s ability to go around them, they cannot simply stand pat.  They need to respond.  This leaves them with only two choices.  They can either “go high” (as Hillary and Michelle would disingenuously declare and the fake news would disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery.  The problem for CNN (et al.) with the former is that, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve.  It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive

Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obama’s close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright’s, church.

Imagine if they had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration’s weaponizing of the IRS to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administration’s cover-up.

This makes “going high” a non-starter for CNN.  This leaves them no other option but to ratchet up the fake news, conjuring up the next “nothing burger” and devoting 24 hours a day to hysterical rants about how it’s “worse than Nixon.”

This, obviously, is what CNN has chosen to do.  The problem is that, as they become more and more hysterical, they become more and more obvious.  Each new effort at even faker news than before and faker “outrage” only makes that much more clear to any objective observer that Trump is and always has been right about the fake news media.

And, by causing their hysteria, Trump has forced them into numerous, highly embarrassing and discrediting mistakes.   Thus, in their desperation, they have lowered their standards even further and run with articles so clearly fake that, even with the liberal (lower case “l”) libel laws protecting the media, they’ve had to wholly retract and erase their stories repeatedly.

Their flailing at Trump has even seen them cross the line into criminality, with CNN using their vast corporate fortune to hunt down a private citizen for having made fun of them in an Internet meme.  This threat to “dox” – release of personal information to encourage co-ideologists to visit violence upon him and his family — a political satirist was chilling in that it clearly wasn’t meant just for him.  If it were, there would have been no reason for CNN to have made their “deal” with him public.

Instead, CNN – playing by “Chicago Rules” – was sending a message to any and all: dissent will not be tolerated.

This heavy-handed and hysterical response to a joke on the Internet has backfired on CNN, giving rise to only more righteous ridicule.

So, to my friends on the Left – and the #NeverTrumpers as well — do I wish we lived in a time when our president could be “collegial” and “dignified” and “proper”?  Of course I do.   These aren’t those times.  This is war.  And it’s a war that the Left has been fighting  without opposition for the past 50 years.

So, say anything you want about this president – I get it, he can be vulgar, he can be crude, he can be undignified at times.  I don’t care.  I can’t spare this man.  He fights.

Evan Sayet is the author of The Kinder Garden of Eden: How The Modern Liberal Thinks.  His lecture to the Heritage Foundation on this same topic remains, some ten years later, by far the single most viewed lecture in their history.

 

“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the
liberties of a nation be secure when we have
removed a conviction that these liberties are
the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country
when I reflect that God is just, that his justice
cannot sleep forever.” Thomas Jefferson
=======================================

 

Originally posted 2017-08-22 13:52:10.