Far East Cynic

Up early this morning-searching for the Uzi and the 9MM. Fridays are always a good day to go postal.

When into my inbox comes a great new career opportunity.  This has potential-    

“Six years of college down the drain.”

Today,  the carefully ordered world of yours truly ( and that of my section of my company) was blown apart. In a situation familiar to many Americans-I am now facing an uncertain future-vis a vis continued employment here in Shopping Mall USA.  That might be a blessing in disguise-but the bills are not going away in the mean time. Me, my co-worker, and about 40 other people could be :1) working for a new company, 2) working in a different place with my same company, 3) working in a different place for a new company or 4) pounding the pavement looking for other gainful employment. Once again we have been screwed-only this time, just like the pig at breakfast-I am totally involved.

My company is trying to do the best it can for those of us it can do something for-which will not be all of us. Its one of the things I like about my company, they don’t just forget about you when you become yesterday’s news. Nonetheless-their options became severely constrained by a rather boneheaded decision made today.

I won’t be on the street with a tin cup just yet – for how long is still TBA. But it nonetheless is going to make for a challenging summer. The possibility of this day coming has been on the horizon for about 7 months-its one of the reasons I am so strident about economic issues and why I despise these so called “champions of government austerity”. It may be just business to someone who is not in danger of getting laid off-but for those who are its personal. It is also why I am more concerned about the unemployment rate rather than the deficit.

“Something will turn up“-wonder how many times people have told that to themselves in the last few years? I found myself telling myself that today. Unfortunately-it doesn’ always happen as quickly as one would like for someone in my age bracket.

I was going to study for my course  tonight-I think I’ll just burn my booze level down a couple of notches instead.

Anybody on the right side of the dateline want to see my resume? Please?

A friend sent me the following in an e-mail. I am so lucky to have been able to see the “Old Navy”-sadly, future generations will never get to know the fun we had:

Where Have All The Fighter Pilots Gone? 

 We used to go to the Officers Club or NCO Club Stag Bar on Friday afternoons to drink, smoke and swap lies with our comrades. Think about this when you read the rest of the letter below. What happened to our Air Force (or Military)? 

Drinking then became frowned on. Smoking caused cancer and could “harm you.” Stag bars became seen as ‘sexist’. Gradually, our men quit patronizing their clubs because what happened in the club became fodder for a performance report. It was the same thing at the Airman’s Club and the NCO and/or Top 3 clubs. 

Now we don’t have separate clubs for the ranks. Instead we have something called All Ranks Clubs / community clubs. They’re open to men and women of all ranks….from airman basic to general officer. Still, no one is there. Gee, I wonder why? 

The latest brilliant thought out of Washington is that the operators (“pilots?”) flying remote aircraft in combat areas from their duty station in Nevada or Arizona should draw the same combat pay as those real world pilots actually on board a plane in a hostile environment. More politically correct logic? They say that remote vehicle operators are subject to the same stress levels as the combat pilot actually flying in combat. —– REALLY!!!??? 

Now that I’ve primed you a little, read on.

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There are many who will agree with these sentiments, but they apply to more than just fighter pilots. Unfortunately, the ones with the guts to speak up or push for what they believe in are beaten down by the “system”. 

Unfortunately there is a lot of truth in the following text – supposedly, Secretary Gates has a force beating the bushes to learn who wrote this…. 

Subject: Where Have All The Fighter Pilots Gone? 

Good Question. 

———————————–

Here is a rant from a retired fighter pilot that is worth reading: 

It is rumored that our current Secretary of Defense recently asked the question, “Where are all the dynamic leaders of the past?” I can only assume, if that is true, that he was referring to Robin Olds, Jimmy Doolittle, Patton, Ike, Boyington, Nimitz, etc.? Well, I’ve got the answer: 

They were fired before they made major. 

Our nation doesn’t want those kinds of leaders anymore. Squadron commanders don’t run squadrons and wing commanders don’t run wings. They are managed by higher ranking dildos with other esoteric goals in mind. 

Can you imagine someone today looking for a LEADER to execute that Doolittle Raid and suggesting that it be given to a dare-devil boozer – his only attributes: he had the respect of his men, an awesome ability to fly, and the organizational skills to put it all together? If someone told me there was a chance in hell of selecting that man today, I would tell them they were either a liar or dumber than shit. 

I find it ironic that the Air Force put BG Robin Olds on the cover of the company rag last month. While it made me extremely proud to see his face, he wouldn’t make it across any base in America (or overseas) without ten enlisted folks telling him to zip up his flight suit and shave his mustache off. 

I have a feeling that his response would be predictable and for that crime he would probably get a trip home and an Article 15. We have lost the war on rugged individualism and that, unfortunately, is what fighter pilots want to follow; not because they have to but because they respect leaders of that ilk. We’ve all run across that leader that made us proud to follow him because you wanted to be like him and make a difference. The individual who you would drag your testicles through glass for rather than disappoint him. 

We better wake the hell up! We’re asking our young men and women to go to really shitty places; some with unbearable climates, never have a drink, have little or no contact with the opposite sex, not look at magazines of a suggestive nature of any type, and adhere to ridiculous regs that require you to tuck your shirt into your PT uniform on the way to the porta-shitter at night in a dust storm because it’s a uniform. 

These people we’re sending to combat are some of the brightest I’ve met but they are looking for a little sanity, which they will only find on the outside if we don’t get a friggin’ clue. You can’t continue asking people to live for months or years at a time acting like nuns and priests. Hell, even they get to have a beer. 

Who are we afraid of offending? The guys that already hate us enough to strap C-4 to their own bodies and walk into a crowd of us? Think about it. 

I’m extremely proud of our young men and women who continue to serve. I’m also very in tune with what they are considering for the future and I’ve got news for whoever sits in the White House, Congress, and our so-called military leaders. Much talent has and will continue to hemorrhage from our services, because wanna-be warriors are tired of fighting on two fronts – - one with our enemies, another against our lack of common sense. 

I don’t approve of political jokes–I’ve seen too many of them get elected.” 

Political correctness has doomed them, like our nation, to the hoary pages of history.

A commenter at Sullivan’s blog has it nailed down:

I think it helps to understand that, for right-wing populists, this thing we call “history” is less about real people who did real things in the real world, and more like just the Bible Part II. It’s a myth that can be manipulated to suit their purpose, which is usually to establish themselves as the only Real Americans. When Palin says she got it right, I believe she believes that, because her story wasn’t really about Paul Revere. Her story was a thinly veiled allegory of the Tea Party worldview, and in it, Tea Partiers are Paul Revere and the British stand in for Obama, the foreign usurper who is out to take their guns.

Speaking of Palin-here are some more interesting [fake] Tweets-that given time, she would have written:

Joshua Green makes the case why Weiner should resign.

I have no idea what will become of Anthony Weiner now that he has tearfully confessed, at great length and in uncomfortable detail, to tweeting photos of his naked torso and various other clothed and unclothed body parts to at least six women who were not his wife. I appreciate his candor, have great sympathy for his wife, and think Andrew Breitbart is odious. But Weiner’s refusal to resign seems like a spasm from the guy he was until a week ago: the chesty liberal loudmouth who tore up conservatives on Fox News and never backed down. Weiner may not realize it, but he’s not that guy anymore. He’s not the cartoon scourge of the right wing. He’s a joke, his behavior was egregious, and he ought to do the decent thing and resign.

That’s as compelling an arguement as any-methinks. We are living in a world, where a bunch of selfish jerks are out to destory the bedrock of improvements that have shaped this country for the last 60 years-and there is little time or room for the distraction that this episode has called. When you have one party that is joyfully willing to destroy the economy- just to selfishly get their way-the Congressman from NY gets thrown under the bus. Sad-and if we didn’t live in such a hypocrite filled country, it might be different. But it’s not and the stakes are too high right now.

Profanity ALERT!

Dear Andrew Breitbart,

               Just because Congressman Weiner was forced to confess and apologize for something that is none of your fucking business-that does not, somehow, make you any less of a sleazebag, richly deserving to be beaten with an inch of your worthless life. The only real crime he committed was forgetting that the world is full of slimy people like you out there-just waiting to exploit his electronic communications for your own personal gain.

               Please spare the moral lectures-coming you from they hold absolutlely no credibility. Especially since I know that had it been Sarah Palin with a picture of a BBC in her mouth and sent over Twitter-you would be leading the herd to edit the Wikipedia page to tell the story that there was a snake bite and she was the only person within miles to suck the venom out. You are that one sided and biased.

               I feel sorry for Weiner, and I think that once again-a golden opportunity was missed to tell you and the rest of your sick herd of sycophants to go f*ck yourselves. Instead of dodging, he should have pulled a Krystal Ball.

Ball (and good lord, these politicians could not have better names for these scandals) was a long-shot congressional candidate in Virginia last fall. There were embarrassing photos of her that hit the Internet, showing her fellating a reindeer nose. Instead of dropping out, or crawling under a rock, Ball said: “Society has to accept that women of my generation have sexual lives that are going to leak into the public sphere. Sooner or later, this is a reality that has to be faced, or many young women in my generation will not be able to run for office.”

             He could have stood up from the start and said,”Yea, they are mine. And what fucking business is it of Andrew Breitbart’s who I correspond with?” And then point out that that is all he is going to say and you can go fuck yourself. As has been pointed out, “One thing that strikes me about the questions being asked, and about this entire scandal from the get-go, is the presumption of a single standard of monogamy for all, and the ready assumption held by many in the press that it’s within bounds to enforce that standard on public figures.  But during this press conference, Weiner noted that his wife was aware of the flirtations before they married.  If Weiner and his wife have a private agreement about his flirtations, I fail to see how this is any business of anyone else’s.  The tenor of questions implied that Weiner somehow owes sexual fidelity not to his wife so much as to the rest of us.” Until someone fills me on on the quantity and quality of the life and services Mrs Weiner was providing-I’ll not pass judgement, thank you very much.

           You want to talk about whats’ moral-starting a wars without end is pretty up there-so is the idea of condemning over a 1 million workers to unemployment, just to prove some sort of “principle”.-Now that’s something to get fired up about. But you defend that kind of immoral conduct every day.

            So don’t get too high on your high horse-what goes around comes around you bastard-and eventually you are going to be made to suffer for your egregiousness.  You still suck.

             Oh and here’s a Tweet for you:

       Now go to hell,

Skippy-san

Lawrence Eagleburger passed away this weekend. He is one of the few professional Foreign Service officers to rise to become Secretary of State.

One of the things that gets lost in the whole stupid debate about the debt ceiling and the federal budget is that there a lot of folks who work hard for this country-who are not necessarily in the military. One of the sad “self taught truths” is that if a person working in government is not wearing a uniform, then he is not competent to do his job. Its a wrong perception -especially since I work at an agency where a lot of the uniformed presence is incompetent ( starting with #1 himself)-but the the lower levels have some really talented people. A lot of these professionals are doing the job for less money than I would care to.

My Canadian Counterpart has taken notice of Mr. Eagleburger’s career-and pointed out to the rest of us, why we should be grateful for his service to our nation. Read it-especially if you are of the Tea Bag persuasion.

You can now follow Skippy-san on Facebook! Some ass-wipe stole my nom-de- guerre on Twitter, so when you get those crotch shots, they are not from me!

Come help me fill up my wall!

Another good sea story-repeated from another post I made at another blog-a long time ago and in better times:

A long time ago and in a galaxy far away……………

The term did not have the same perjorative meaning that it has now. This post is not about a neocon. Its not about politics. Its not taking a position about a war-any war.

Its about a group of guys, getting together with time on their hands-to play a good hearted joke on a shipmate. One who within two days of arriving in the squadron had earned his callsign. Now, truth be told this fellow is a good soul and in the day, I counted him as a friend. However like the unflappable Henery Hawk from the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons-Chicken Hawk never met an argument he would not enter, even when it was probably not a good idea to do so. In the day he was young, thin, and was what one would say “intense” when it came to the business of AEW and learning the trade of an E-2 NFO. It was the job of your humble scribe to teach him the trade-and how not to to totally alienate your air wing buddies-during the 1987-1988 cruise of USS Coral Sea. (CV-43).

Because the guy was so passionate about things it meant that he was easily excited, and that is like blood in the water to a bunch of sharks fellow JO’s.

Of which we had more than a few. VAW-127 was a product of the Reagan era expansion of the fleet. When first it was put together, they put a CO and and XO in, 4 Department Heads-all of whom did not get along so well. As for the rest of the wardroom? It was all nuggets who grew up without what I would call, some good seasoning. (Ask SJS..). As a result, by the time I got there-it was a nut-house.

Now the powers that be, had recognized that this was the case,  and in an effort to make a correction,  they moved to bring some more “seasoning to the squadron”. That was of benefit to me, since there were more than a few folks pushing me to go do something non-fun and potentially disastrous like being a flag aide. In the words of Clint Eastwood, ” a man has to know his limitations”. So because of the need for experience and my fervent desire to avoid service in ships company or a flag staff, I got the nod to go to the squadron for a CAT-1A tour ( Second sea tour in a squadron). Better to be lucky than good!

For the most part, these guys had the flying bit down. However, what they failed to understand was that what they did was part of a bigger picture. And that, at the end of the day, no matter how well they did-there was still an inbred bias against them and their chosen ( or Navy chosen) choice of airframe . Us older folks were brought in to try to bridge that gap. As a senior LT and a RAG instructor with about 700 more hours than the most experienced NFO of the bunch it gave me a forum to work from. In fact in my check in interview with the CO he made it very clear to me that: a) I had sold my soul to the “company” and I had damn well better understand company policy, which meant his policy and b) my role was to be an ombudsman of that policy to the JO’s.

Anyway-Chicken Hawk shows up and earns his nom de guerre. Soon after we departed on cruise. The “hawkster” earned his stripes rather quickly-in both flying and his ground job. We all liked him-because he was a likeable guy. We also learned quickly-that he could be had.

So one night in Turkey-after having consumed over half a bottle Chivas’ version of liquid courage and telling the CO everything that was wrong with the squadron-the hawk had rendered forth that he was looking forward with great anticipation to receiving his Centurion patch. Something that looked like this.

Now mind you that during the day-flight jackets that said one had -been there, done that-were the rage. One could still have tons of patches on the leather jacket- a policy that has since changed. The green nomex jaket is now the “I’ve been there” jacket. ( In fact, I got a new leather jacket rather than have to remove all of my patches-its my sincere hope to give mine to my son someday when I move on…..). So while it was understandable, like lusting after someone’s sister-it was probably an emotion best left unsaid.

You see, for an NFO-particularly an E-2 NFO-the wearing of a centurion patch was something of a quandry. You did not fly the pass, yet you suffered equally the risk. Even more so, because you were totally putting your life in the hands of someone who may or may not have skillfully mastered the art of flinging 44,500 lbs of Grumman steel onto a carrier deck. Unlike the A-6 NFO’s- who took pride in “talking a pilot aboard”-it was our place to keep still and hope that the pair in the cockpit had not picked today to have a ramp strike.

So while I can accurately say that while every E-2 NFO took great pride in his centurion patches (I have 8 of them on 4 different carriers) it was a solitary pleasure we (for the most part) kept to ourselves. Chicken Hawk, having made it clear this was important to him , had provided a golden opportunity for our intrepid group of JO’s to decide that this would be a great opportunity to mess with a fellow squadron mate. And so a plan was hatched.

In the Navy, back in the days before e-mail, Blackberries, video teleconferences, and scanned PDF documents, there existed one way to get policy out the masses: The Naval Record Message. The Navy used, and still uses this vehicle to put out items of interest, policy, and changes thereto. It is also used to transmit official orders. Today they seem insignificant-given the greater accessibility of e-mail, but back then-they were a big deal. All Navy messages sent to the squadron, were assembled by the communications officer each morning and placed on a trifold, metal board-usually manufactured by the folks in Airframes, and delivered to the SDO’s desk while at sea. Ashore, this folder of steel had better be sitting on the Skippers desk before he came into work-else-wise it sucked to be the COMM O.

So with demonic determination, our group of young and able criminals determined to write a message that looked just like a Naval Administrative Message and which said something like this: “Henceforth, Centurion patches may only be worn only by designated Naval Aviators or personnel actually operating the controls”-or something to that effect. Bottom line, no NFO’s could wear a centurion patch according to the fake messge they had drafted up.

Now mind you-back in 1988, one could not simply type up such a thing in Word and print it. Oh no…… You had to type it with an OCR ball or printer (Optical Character Reader) and have it scanned by the comm center on the ship-in order to give it the appearance of a “real” naval message. It would then normally be transmitted. There was a way to scan the message, without transmitting it-which gave it the look and feel of a real naval message.

It was in this detail, that our old friend Murphy intervened. Had the youngin’s asked any of us “old hands” we would have reminded them that a copy of any message transmitted by a squadron was sent to the CAG staff. ( I used to use this as a way to cross check we were getting all of our messages…). The JO’s behind this particular plot did not know this and assumed that having bribed someone to scan the document they were done.

The rest you can probably figure out by now. 1) The “fake” message was put on our message board. 2) Chicken Hawk comes into the ready room, grabs coffee, sits down to read the messages the way a good naval officer should. Above said message is at the top of the message board, with a note in Red Ink ( only to be used by the CO-but some wag had stolen a red pen) that said, ” About G*damn time!” ( Our CO was a pilot). Chicken Hawk lights off and proceeds to render a long tirade about “those f**king bastards in the Navy, what the hell do they know about those of us sweating our b**ls off at sea”-yada yada yada. Meanwhile above said message is delivered by copy to the CAG staff. (The poor RM who accepted the bribe forgot about that detail).

As I mentioned, those of us in the know and working in operations, made it a point to pass through CAG Operations office at least once a day-and scan their message board. Well it seems the Assistant Operations officer from one of our A-6 squadrons ( CVW-13 was one of the few in the mid 80?s that had two assigned) . He was an NFO. He Xeroxed above said message and before long it had made the rounds of every ready room on the ship. Suffice it to say VA-55, VA-65, VAQ-133, and un-inidicted co-conspirators in VAW-127 were less than amused. The whining began and reached a crescendo at the CO’s meeting which, as fate would have it occurred that evening. The CO, who it seems had glossed over the message without really reading it, now demanded to see if he could have a copy of NAVADMIN XX-XX. He left the ready room shaking his head.

Now I was not in the plot, but I found it astounding that such a message could come out. Soon there after the ready room phone rang. It was the leader of the plot. Would I come see him in his stateroom? He was very concerned when I arrived. Seems a buddy of his was in 65, and was not happy about this annoucement of Navy policy. How did they get the message?

Why wouldn’t they I asked. It’s a NAVADMIN. And soon thereafter the details were revealed. “You idiot!” I remember saying, “don’t you know that a copy of every message into the comm center gets given to CAG. You do know there are no private messages on a carrier don’t you?”

Long story short, I told him that he was going to go see the skipper. I’d go with him-but HE was going to give the old man the bad news. Because by this time the whole thing had become a big deal within the senior leadership within the wing. Who assumed it was just lousy decision making by the higher ups. When they found out it was bogus-just the result of the machinations of some devilshly inspired JO’s-well that was probably not a good thing to be telling a CAG with a known mean streak.

End of story, our erstwhile JO told the Skipper who adminstered what I considered to be a mild ass chewing-having cut my teeth earlier with some real flamers-and then he went to see CAG. In a tribute to what I consider to be a mark of his leadership, none of the rest of us heard a thing about it again. Except for him to stand at an AOM and tell us the message had been transimitted in error and that there was no change in Navy policy.

As for Chicken Hawk? Well the folks just looked for new place to stick the needle. However, within 1 day of receiving his CV-43 Centurion patch-it was on his flight jacket.

Been there-done that.

Today was an interesting day. Not interesting in a good way, interesting in a reaffirmation of bad choices, kind of way. And, as an extra added bonus, I get to spend the rest of the month wondering who my employer will be come July.  Or if I will even be employed at all.  Just tons of fun.

But that’s why alcohol was invented-and I’m a “cup is half full” kind of guy.

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I finally had a chance to watch “To Big to Fail” on HBO. I think its a great movie-and in the middle of the movie, provides the clearest explanation of the 2008 financial crisis I have heard in months.  William Hurt provides an interesting portrayal of Hank Paulson-and in particular they do a great job of showing the popular lie that way too many Americans have been dulled through their own ignorance to believe: that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are solely to blame for the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Money quote near the end of the movie comes from Paul Giamatti: ” I only hope they will use the money [that we just gave the banks who almost destroyed the economy] the way we want them to. They will lend it it out, won’t they?” William Hurt(as Paulson) replies, ” Of course they will.”

We now know they didn’t. The greedy f*cks, after paying huge bonuses to themselves, held onto it for reasons that are yet to be clearly explained-save for what money they expended to elect their friends in 2010, and defeat financial reform, thanks to Citizens United. Hell of a job guys-thanks.

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I’ve also finished over the last few weeks a couple of books:

Written by the late Joe Bageant, its a great book that explains how the GOP base,’ i.e. America’s white working class,  has been ravaged by the very party that purports to take their side. And the conduct that was despised in “Too Big to Fail” is repeated in smaller scale, by the small business who are supposedly hurt by repealing the Bush tax cuts. Its a great book-and Bageant writes with an anger and a incredulousness that is missing from too many writers in America these days.

Truth in advertising, Bageant makes no pretense of trying to be even handed. He refuses to concede any points to the other side-and you have to know that going in to reading the book.  However, once you recognize that, the book resonates-mainly because you recognizes vinettes from our own experience in the Whining States of America.  That alone makes it worth the read.

The other book I read was Matt Taibbi’s “Griftopia”

Again you have to recognize the viewpoint that he starts approaching the problem from-but so far, no one-and I do mean NO ONE-has been able disprove any of his fact in the book. Wall Street and conservative America hate him, especially his savaging of Alan Greenspan. However he does a pretty good job of proving that Greenspan got it wrong as much as he got it right. Taibbi skewers everyone from the tea party to Ayn Rand. Again he points out that the mortages of “moochers” played a part in the financial meltdown, but only a part. Taibbi correctly points out, you can find maybe 1.4 trillion in subprime, but another 13 trillion is still missing. Taibbi HATES Goldman Sachs-and based on his documented evidence, it would appear there is good reason to.  I can’t say it’s undeserved.  The systematic way in which Goldman and others have funneled wealth to themselves at the expense of taxpayers, their competitors, and sometimes even their own employees is staggering.

It is worth the read-provided you understand the biases of the author first.

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I listened to NPR today talking about the resolutions on Libya, regarding failure to comply with the War Powers act. And suprisingly, I found my self in agreement with Dennis Kucinich-namely, if Congress is so upset about the President’s actions in Libya or the rampant waste of American tax dollars-so much so that it is willing to hold the entire economy hostage just to make a childish point-then they would act in a way that was really effective, like cutting off funds for the war, or impeaching the President for violating the War Powers Act. Funny, John Boehner does not seem the least bit concerned about the “what” of the issue-just with making it an opportunity to sound pompous. Being involved in Libya is a mistake, and Congress should exercise its oversight role.

But of course they won’t. They are too busy arguing about stupid spending cuts-while letting the wars waste billions.

And they act suprised, that lots of people like me are angry.

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I am deliberately not talking about Weinergate. 1) Because if Andrew Breitbart is involved-it does not matter what Weiner did or did not do with his boxer shorts. Brietbart will lie about it. Its in his nature.

Just once I’d like to see one of these guys go offensive into the merge:

“Yea, I follow hot chicks on Twitter. Get over it. I like hot chicks, OK?  Maybe if Mrs Weiner would take the “closed for the season sign” down from her box and start f*cking some more-I would not be reduced to following hot chicks and watching porn while drinking beer. Yes I said it-I like porn and beer too. You got a problem with that? Well I don’t. Rubbing one out only takes five minutes and the rest of the time, I am there studying on the issues of the day. So bite me, Breitbart”.

That’s what I’d like to hear.

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Speaking of following hot chicks, I’ve started following Mei Ling Lam on my FB page. She is a hot asian model who recently posed in Playboy. She was Miss Teen Maine in 2001.  Fortunately for me-I don’t know how to “tweet” pictures so I will just have to lust after her from my I-Pad and home computer:

Yes, I long for her -vote for me!

Thanks to Maurice for the title of this post.

This is a Navy Focused post. It would seem our boy Harvey is at it again-by usurping the chain of command:

UNCLASSIFIED//

FM COMUSFLTFORCOM NORFOLK VA//N00//

TO ALFLTFORCOM

ALPACFLT

INFO RHMFIUU/CNO WASHINGTON DC//N00/N1/DNS// RHOVZCH/COMPACFLT PEARL HARBOR HI//N00/N01/N1// RUCBCLF/COMUSFLTFORCOM NORFOLK VA//N1// RHMFIUU/COMNAVPERSCOM MILLINGTON TN//N00/N01/PERS26/PERS3/PERS33

     1//

BT

UNCLAS

SECINFO/U/-//

/REF A IS BUPERSINST 1610.10C, NAVY PERFORMANCE EVALUATION SYSTEM.  REF B IS CSG-ESG COMMANDER AND TYPE COMMANDER COMMAND PAGE 02 RUCBCLF0161 UNCLAS RELATIONSHIPS GUIDANCE.// GENTEXT/REMARKS/1.  THIS IS A JOINT COMANDER, U.S. PACIFIC FLEET AND COMMANDER, U.S. FLEET FORCES COMMAND MESSAGE THAT OUTLINES REQUIREMENTS FOR CONCURRENT FITNESS REPORTS FOR DESIGNATED BILLETS.

THIS MESSAGE SHOULD BE RETAINED IN THE COMMAND FITNESS REPORT BINDER FOR FUTURE REFERENCE.

2.  THIS MESSAGE ESTABLISHES THE REQUIREMENT FOR CONCURRENT FITNESS REPORTS BY THE TYPE COMMANDER FOR DESRON, PHIBRON, AIR WING COMMANDERS, AND O6-LEVEL AFLOAT COMMANDING OFFICERS.

3.  THIS CHANGE REFLECTS AND REINFORCES THE CLEAR AND DIRECT LINE OF RESPONSIBILITY BETWEEN THE TYCOMS AND THEIR O-6 MAJOR SEA COMMANDS DELINEATED IN REF B.  THIS ENABLES THE TYCOM TO DOCUMENT THE ABILITY OF WATERFRONT LEADERS TO DELIVER READY UNITS.

4.  TYCOMS WILL BEGIN TO SUBMIT CONCURRENT FITNESS REPORTS ON THEIR DESRON, PHIBRON, AIR WING COMMANDERS, AND THE COMMANDING OFFICERS OF THEIR O6-LEVEL SHIPS (CVN/CG/LHD/LHA/LCC/LPD) WITH A BEGINNING DATE (BLOCK 14) OF 12FEB01.

THESE FITNESS REPORTS WILL THEN BE SUBMITTED WITH THE SAME PERIODICITY OF REGULAR FITNESS REPORTS, INCLUDING CHANGE OF TYCOM AND DETACHMENT OF OBSERVED INDIVIDUAL, AS DELINEATED IN REF A.

5.  CONCURRENT TYCOM FITREPS WILL NOT BE SUBMITTED FOR SSGN OR SUBMARINE TENDER COMMANDING OFFICERS.

6.  DESRON AND AIR WING COMMANDERS AS WELL AS CVN/CG COMMANDING OFFICERS WILL CONTINUE TO RECEIVE COMPETITIVE REGULAR FITNESS REPORTS FROM THEIR CSG COMMANDERS.  PHIBRON COMMANDERS AND O6 AMPHIBIOUS SHIP COMMANDING OFFICERS WILL CONTINUE TO RECEIVE COMPETITIVE REGULAR FITNESS REPORTS FROM THEIR ESG COMMANDERS.// BT

I’ll translate into non-Navy speak. What that little missive above says is that the Type Commanders are now saying that they have the right to “comment” on your performance as an operational commander-even though the guy you really work for, and who is supposed to write your fitness report and rank you with against other commanders of equal rank-is a different officer, junior to the Type Commander and not in his chain of command. A “concurrent” report is not supposed to carry the same weight as a “competitive” report-but when the guy writing it is two or three pay-grades senior to the battle group commander-don’t kid yourself, it carries weight.

And what will they use to make an assesment? Metrics my boy, metrics. Those damn numbers that don’t take into account :where you were deployed, your operating tempo, your supply snarls, and sudden “pop-up” tasking from your operational boss. I suspect for good measure they will throw in your admin statistics and probably a couple bonus points about your support for women and gays in the Navy.

Now mind you-that being operationally ready to deploy is the primary responsibility of the individual unit CO, and backed up by maximum support from his Type Wing and Type Commander-who is supposed to provide that report with as little interference as possible.

Now it he gets to have a vehicle to hammer you when an individual ship captain justifiably complains about getting screwed out of an yard availability or an air wing gets screwed out of a training evolution-because the Type Commander was too stupid to apportion the right amount of TAD funds.

This goes back to my previous two posts about how the Navy is unbalanced. This is just another means for the flags to insulate themselves from the consequences of their own decisions.

And they wonder why their CO’s don’t take any intiative, drink a lot, and sleep with their hot looking YN’s. 

But Harvey likes it-as if he needs yet another way to fire people and stack up bodies like cordwood.