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Women in the Military – God Help Us

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I saw two stories today about the military and both of them were associated in one way or another with women and DEI.

The first one has to do with Defense Secretary Hegseth’s orders to force women to pass the same physical fitness tests as men for combat and other physically challenging roles.

You would think this should already be in place since women claim not to be inferior to men in any way.  But reality rears its ugly head and now this will essentially eliminate 99.9% of female candidates from the special forces organizations and a very large chunk of women from even basic combat roles.

This is one of the first things I see happening in the Trump administration that I can point to as a clear improvement on the status quo.  Ever since Obama the military has been woke and women in command positions has been a big part of the problem.  Hopefully now a lot of combat officer positions will be restricted to men and that should have a very positive effect on our combat capability.  Now if there are women who are physically capable of pulling their own weight in combat circumstances, I don’t necessarily think they should be in combat roles.  There are other problems with mixing women and men in close physical quarters.  But at the very least eliminating women who aren’t strong enough to fight from the equation is a big plus.

The second story is a NY Times article about the investigation of the crash of the Black Hawk helicopter and the civilian airliner near Ronald Reagan airport.

https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/black-hawk-pilot-rebecca-lobach-ignored-key-instruction-before-dc-crashreportclaims-article-151511950

The first item is that the pilot was a woman who was performing a periodic training flight to maintain her flight status.  The article says she had 500 hours of flying experience at that time.  But the most disturbing aspect of the article was the statement that the control tower had warned her of the collision danger and her trainer told her to change course to the left to avoid the collision and she did not.  She had fifteen seconds to change course and she did not.  In addition, the female pilot had some linkage to the Biden White House.  I didn’t see any details about what her role was.  But that immediately raised a red flag in my mind.

So, it’s very easy for me to immediately take these details and say that this disaster was caused by DEI.  Is that fair?  I don’t know, but as a first approximation I think it’s a reasonable starting hypothesis.  If even the NY Times is throwing this woman under the bus, then who am I not to cast the second stone?  And this goes hand in hand with a number of stories I’ve read of women in the military whose aircraft and naval vessel piloting have been less than adequate.  When I think of Camera Girl behind the wheel of her car and all the times I’ve told her to go left and she’s gone right (or other-left as she calls it) I get the sense that DEI can be a recipe for disaster.

Well, anyway, Pete Hegseth, keep going the way you are.  Put women back in the kitchen and the nursery and everyone will be that much safer and happier.

Update:

Here’s another more detailed article about the female helicopter pilot.

We Have Some Good News and Some Bad News

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It’s very rare that New York City newspapers can trumpet good news about crime in the city.  But last week they could:

“Major crimes in the subways, including robberies and felony assaults, declined 18 percent from Jan. 1 through March 31, to the second-lowest level in nearly three decades, police officials said at a news conference last week. There were no murders during the same period for the first time in seven years, the officials said.”

Unfortunately, this good news was nestled near the end of a crime story that was entitled:

“Police Seek Man Who They Say Violated a Corpse on an R Train.”

For the non-New Yorker, the R Train (or RR as it used to be known in my day) is a local subway line that plies the underground between Brooklyn and Downtown Manhattan.  The details were sparse but sufficient:

“The police were searching on Thursday for a man investigators believed violated a dead man Wednesday night on a train in a Manhattan subway station, according to an internal police document.

The person who died boarded an R train at around 8 p.m., according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter and the internal document. It was unclear on Thursday when or how the person died.

A man entered the same train car at around 11 p.m. at the Whitehall Street-South Ferry station in the Financial District, according to the official.

Within 45 minutes, the man saw the dead man and began to rummage through his pockets, the official said. The man then began to have sex with the body, according to the official and the document.

The sexual acts were captured on surveillance cameras inside the train car, the official said.

Soon after, the man got off the train and fled, the police said.”

Well, at least it’s good to know that the surveillance cameras were doing their job even if no one else was.  So, a man can drop dead and be lying there for three hours in a subway train without anyone including the crew aware of the fact and in fact another patron can take the opportunity to bugger the departed at his leisure without fear of interruption.

So, this 18% reduction in subway crime is being touted as a great success by the Mayor and the Police Commissioner’s offices but the fact that corpses are being sodomized on the R Train is to be taken in stride.  Call me a glass half empty kind of guy but somehow the 18% crime reduction rings a little hollow when necrophilia has surfaced in Gotham City.

I used to live in New York City during the time when crime was considered at its worst.  I can remember several gruesome murders and some aberrant behavior but I will say I’ve never heard that anything like this ever happened on the subway.  And the fact that the New York Times is trying to paint this “reduction in crime” as a triumph in law enforcement can only be described as Kafkaesque.

I like how the New York Times article describes the crime, “Police Seek Man Who They Say Violated a Corpse on an R Train.”  “Who they say” as if it’s in dispute.  What else could it be?  Could he have had prior consent from the deceased in the event his corpse happened to be found on the train?

I have friends and relatives who still live in the city.  I can only assume it would be too expensive for them to relocate.  Otherwise, I cannot imagine anyone who can get out, not doing so.  The public schools have become a sad joke.  The streets are covered with filth and the homeless and crime is at the point that you probably have to fear for your life on a regular basis.

But up until now you never had to consider that after you were murdered your corpse might be sexually abused by your attacker.  This does seem like an inflection point.  Or am I being oversensitive?

Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 04APR2025 – Is Americans

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What makes America great is Americans, not some global economic think tank idea about “Cosmopolitanism.”

We’re not a group of backwoods rubes crouching in fear of the outside world. What we are, and should always be, are people who care more about the well-being of each other and not the stock portfolio of a multinational corporation that will pull the rug at the first chance of increasing profit shares. This nation’s initials are USA not GDP. The overly misused phrase of collectivism when describing Marxist-style ideologies has woefully made it a dirty word for those of us on the Right-wing to employ. It needs to be reclaimed and utilized often. It is the proper attitude to have for our fellow Americans’ living conditions. We are all in the same boat, whether some are in first-class cabins or third-class.

Are protectionist tariff policies the silver bullet solution that will restore American labor and wage loss woes? Will the Rust Belt be revitalized with a glut of new manufacturing jobs by next year? Of course not. But it’s a start. Prepare for pain and embrace the understanding that it is needed and long overdue. The medicine that cures does not always go down easily. To go down fighting is better than to simply accept the current state of affairs.

Legacy media reporting tries to lead one to believe that tariffs will be the only strategy Trump will use. That is folly and only propaganda for the low-information citizen as they like to call most of us. Stronger tariffs are only one piece of the equation that (might) correct the dismal path we are on.

Things are very wrong with how the game is set up. Many of us know this. The promised results of NAFTA, free trade (Ha!) and WTO platitudes were a siren song that mainly enriched a select few. Brave voices spoke out on this such as Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot. They were right.

It is time for something different and if it takes burning my 401K to the ground so that my kids do not have to be serfs to the worship of an almighty GDP Excel spreadsheet God of Globohomo, then I say burn it to the ground.

Guest Contributor – Milo Mindbender – 23MAR2025 – The Vote

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I am of the belief that voting is one of only two times the government actually asks for your opinion, the other being jury duty. If you don’t vote you shouldn’t bitch about what the government does, since you chose not to express any of your ideas.
I also do not believe that the franchise should be free to all. If you are not a taxpayer, but are voting you are asking the public to cash checks you have no financial standing in. By limiting the franchise to tax payers you reduce the influence of those who do not contribute. I can hear the gnashing of dentures now “What about the retirees?”, they earned the franchise during their working years and should retain it in their “Golden Years”, maybe establish something similar to the 40 quarters to be eligible for SSI, require 3 years of being a net tax payer in order to establish the franchise right. Make everyone “Get some skin in the game” to quote a former President.

Maybe They Can Work for Tyson Chicken

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Donald Trump is a very old man.  He’s seventy-eight or thereabouts.  And, sure, he’s wealthy so he doesn’t have to worry about his kids or grandkids starving.  So why is he doing all this?  Some people say it’s for pride.  He wants to be remembered as a great man.  Maybe.  But would he be going through everything he’s been through for the last ten years just for pride?  I tend to doubt it.  Now, I don’t doubt that part of it is associated with pride.  I think he felt disrespected by the Democratic elite that mocked at the idea of him running for president.  And I’m sure he wants revenge on the people who have made his life miserable since he became president in 2017.  I think he’d love to punish as many of them, as severely as he possibly can, for all the dirty tricks and harm they’ve caused him and his friends and family.

But I still don’t think that’s the whole reason.  I think it’s because he’s an American and it angers him to see this country lose the characteristics that made it a great country.  He doesn’t want his descendants to live in a banana republic.  He doesn’t want them to live in fear of the secret police.  Basically, he wants them to be free.

And I believe this because that’s the same thing that motivates me to rail against the Deep State and the Fake News and root for Donald Trump and his insane crusade to “Make America Great Again.”  I’m not blind.  I know Trump is a huckster.  He runs casinos, sells steaks or bibles or golden sneakers or whatever the rubes will buy.  He’s PT Barnum with a hair transplant and a permanent tan.  But I believe down to my feet that he is just as angry about what the people in charge have done to this country as I am.  I know that he sells snake oil to the suckers but I think it angers him to see these regular people getting shafted by the likes of Barack Obama, George Bush, Bill Clinton and Mitt Romney.  Maybe he feels that these people are his marks and he has the right to cheat them a little bit but in return they shouldn’t be impoverished, dispossessed and replaced by whoever can be loaded on a boat, marched across the border and put to work in a Tyson chicken processing plant.  In other words, he thinks the American dirt people are still Americans and deserve at least the right to exist.

Of course I can’t prove any of this.  Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe he’s just crazy and he’s just doing this to satisfy some megalomaniacal craving for the spotlight.

But it doesn’t matter.  Because for whatever reason Donald Trump is fulfilling the wishes of me and about a hundred million other Americans who’ve watched this country systematically degraded and reduced to an anarcho-tyrannical police state where criminals run amok and law-abiding people have to keep their mouths shut to avoid being sent to a gulag.  He’s figured out how the system works and he’s single-mindedly taking it apart piece by bloody piece.  And it’s beautiful.

So, I can’t prove what I think about Trump but along with everyone else on my side we’re watching this spectacle in the way I imagine the fundamentalist brethren would feel if the rapture suddenly came upon them; shocked but ecstatic.  When all of the things you’ve been hoping for years would happen suddenly do, it makes you giddy.  And that’s how it’s been since January 20th.  And if he can keep this up for a few more months I’m starting to believe he can actually beat the Deep State and fix this country permanently (or at least for the foreseeable future).  So, keep breaking stuff Mr. Trump.  Reduce Washington DC to rubble and send the managerial state to the unemployment line.  Maybe they can work for Tyson Chicken.

The Trump Bump is Real

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So today was my scheduled zoom call with the guys.  It’s a group of eight former employees of the old firm who formerly used to take the (very) long walk every morning (and sometimes afternoon) down to the cafeteria and back to talk about “work.”  None of us was truly Left and most of was were decidedly Right but we tolerated a certain amount of centrism on some topics.  During the early years of the millennium, we were mostly hawkish and after Obama got in, we became increasingly angry over social issues like race and sexuality.

But one thing always seemed true.  We were disgruntled.  Now back in 2016 I famously championed Donald Trump and took a lot of grief because of this.  I made a small bet with one of my fellow coffee-walkers and when he had to pay up, he magnanimously framed the bill and hanged it on my wall for all to see.  Out of fear of the cleaning staff stealing the cash I replaced it with a Donald Trump million-dollar bill.  But the victory was very sweet.

Over the four years of Trump’s first presidency the tenor of our discussions varied but until 2020 they were generally on the optimistic side.  But once George Floyd and then COVID laid waste to the country we slid into disgust and the November fake election was the last straw.  Now whenever we got together (and after COVID it had to be remote) we uniformly despaired for the future of the country.  I guess you could say the Biden presidency was the term of our “resistance.”  Personally, we had our good and bad days.  And also, we one by one left the old firm.  But we valued the Wednesday zoom call and the solidarity it provided.  Interestingly the most left-winged of our number had a quasi-conversion and in 2024 voted for Trump!  Which we all considered a minor miracle.

But over the course of 2024 it was easy to see that our optimism for the political future was increasing drastically.  After the debate it was almost comical how excited everyone had become.  And after the election it was something like the scene in the “Wizard of Oz” when all the munchkins are dancing around singing about how “the wicked old witch at last is dead.”  And so as with everyone else on the Right we’re almost ecstatic with the activity and results we’re seeing in Washington as Trump and his merry band rip up all the floor boards in the deep state’s hideout and dig up the pots of gold they’ve stolen from the American people.

And now it’s gotten to the point where we’re so jaded that even revolutionary change is not enough and instead, we’re talking about ludicrous phantasmagorical things like eliminating the IRS and making the income tax a middle school math calculation like everyone pays 8% of their income or making it just a sales tax.  Next, we’ll be expecting Trump to announce that dunk tank with Democrats like Pelosi, Schumer and AOC in it that we can all get a chance at dunking.

So, yeah, it’s getting out of hand and that means we’re about to hit a wall and will have to come back down to Earth.  And that’s fine.  Life is mostly a serious matter and we shouldn’t be walking around laughing like idiots for more than a few weeks anyway.

But even if we calm down, let’s look at what we’ve gotten.  We’ve gotten back our hopes.  We’re looking at actual good news.  There is a way to course-correct and shrink down the federal bureaucracy and eliminate the deficit and defang the security state.  These are all wonderful things and way beyond what we expected from Trump just a scant few weeks ago.  Trump has gotten the upper hand on the establishment uni-party.  McConnell is a ghost of his former self and the Democrats have become a laughing stock without a path forward or a strategy for dealing with Trump other than hoping for some disaster to strike.  They’re probably praying to Gaia for COVID25 or something equally injurious.

So, at the call today we all acknowledged that the morale boost from all this winning is an enormous positive result above and beyond any and all of the actual policy changes that we enjoy.  Joy has a value.  Emotionally, psychologically and maybe even spiritually it enhances our lives and makes every part of our lives better.  I go to sleep easier.  I wake up more rested and I look at the world as a much better place.  Even the bad things are better because I feel more in control of the world and more confident that I can repair whatever needs fixing.

The Trump bump is real.