Blocking military promotions is bipartisan

Senator Tuberville is 100% correct to be concerned that the DoD is spending taxpayer money, in violation of the law, to allow ~~women~~ birthing people to travel across state lines to pursue an abortion.

Sadly, he recently caved from RINO pressure on this point. If you don’t know history you’d think it was only the eeeevil Republicans that stopped nominations. And you’d be wrong.

What about Democrat Senator Tammy Duckworth, blocking over 1,000 promotions in 2020? Why is that conveniently left out of every article?

Or the curious case of Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill blocking General Susan Helms, an Obama nominee, from her fourth star? General Helms was a female astronaut and selected to be the vice commander of Air Force Space Command. Senator McCaskill didn’t like that General Helms overturned a sexual assault charge on an appeal, so she simply blocked the general until she retired.

Now, personally I think Susan Helms made the right call and overturned a case that was lacking evidence. But Senator McCaskill was on a “believe all women claiming sexual assault” intifada, so that was never going to fly. Susan Helms was more than qualified to lead Space Command, but politics got in the way. That is Senator McCaskill’s right to do so. My issue is that if I search for “senator blocked nomination,” every link on Google is about Tuberville. Even adding “Democrat” and “2013” to my search doesn’t bring up McCaskill’s blocked nomination. I just happen to remember it at the time, and was able to dig it back up.

I don’t want to hear anymore about Senator’s “playing politics” with military nominations until I see references to Claire McCaskill and Tammy Duckworth at the end of those articles.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Putting our money where we say our mouths are

The recent budget deal to fund the Department of Defense, once again, showed how much elected Republicans are absolute wimps about negotiating. While continued billions to Ukraine was halted, we got nothing banning paid travel for abortion and a very limited spending cap on DEI.

We’re in the middle of funding one war in Ukraine, watching Israel fight another and trying to prepare to fight China…and we’re still wasting money on DEI and abortion?

But honestly, I’m not surprised, because most Republicans fail to put their money behind their values.

An easy example is Starbucks. Starbucks has long championed abortion, yet I still watch hundreds of Catholics order their Unicorn Latte (or whatever other sugary nonsense they prefer) from a company that happily donates to Planned Parenthood and a host of other reprehensible organizations. There are now hundreds of small coffee shops and plenty of other chains, and there is zero reason you can’t drink coffee from somewhere else. Yet here we are, throwing money towards the people that hate us.

Worse still, Republican voters are typically the stingiest in supporting alternative media. I’m becoming more and more impressed with Daily Wire’s “Bentkey” programming that my wife and I are likely going to cancel our Disney+ membership. Given the increasing amount of dumb programming coming out of Disney, its harder and harder for me to justify sending money to them when there is plenty of good kids content on Bentkey. I might have to use the DVD to watch Star Wars once in a while, but that’s already paid for, and at least they can’t change Luke’s preferred pronouns in my copy of Empire Strikes Back.

This Christmas, you should look at where you are spending your money, and try to find an alternative if that source is a raging liberal dumpster fire. Budweiser was a great example of people waking up and going “Hmm, not going to support this anymore,” and it sent a strong message to other businesses. But more has to be done. Continuing to pour money into organizations that hate your values is going to continue to breed feckless politicians, who follow the money.

While you’re at it, since Christmas is coming soon, why not send a friend or relative a copy of my book? It’s available in printed and audiobook format, and you can’t go wrong sending money to me.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

The Navy finally embraced warfighting

Well, at least a little anyway.

For the longest time multiple people have raised the alarm about the Chinese Navy developing more ships, more capabilities and especially more missiles. The worry has been the US Navy would get “out-sticked,” as in the range of Chinese missiles would be so great they could hit US ships before those ships could even fire back.

This was true over the past decades because the Navy primarily used the Harpoon anti-ship missile, which has an effective range of 75 miles, and has been in service since 1977. Meanwhile, the Chinese Navy rolled out a nearly matching missile, the C-705, in 2006, and kept rolling out missiles, from the YJ-12 and YJ-18 to now the YJ-21, which claims to be a hypersonic, sea-borne anti-ship missile. During this time, the US sat on its hands and did almost nothing to increase the range of our missiles.

This was made worse by the fact we already HAD a long range missile. The Tomahawk, normally considered a land-strike missile, had a maritime strike version known as the TASM as early as 1990, yet they were all scrapped after the first Gulf War. The TASM had an effective range of around 900 miles, making it far superior to the Harpoon in all things but speed.

Range makes a big difference…if I can shoot first and force an enemy to maneuver to avoid getting hit, I get to call the shots and drive any engagement. While Chinese missiles aren’t known for their quality (just ask the Indonesians, who watched two failed C705 launches from his vessels in 2016), having multiple missiles hurtling towards, even if they aren’t the greatest quality, still puts you in a reactive mode.

Thankfully, this story has a better ending than most. In 2020 the Navy asked Raytheon to re-develop the maritime strike tomahawk. Not surprisingly, since this had been done once before, it rolled out quickly in 2021, and made front page news today.

This proves a much bigger point though: decline is a choice. We never had to give up long range missiles. Even if we would have kept them in low production, we could have easily updated the design over the 90s and 2000s to keep a competitive edge over any adversary. Instead, we pissed away our advantage for years and are now playing catch up. We chose to decline, but thankfully we’re slowly choosing to do otherwise.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

What I learned on day one of recruiting

I’ve written a lot about the military’s recruiting crisis, and the overall military retention issues. Most of the retention problems are brought on by the military’s own stupid policies (such as cutting training pipelines, treating people like garbage, and focusing on killing babies instead of foreign terrorists) and others are assisted by members of Congress, most notably John McCain pushing for the changes to the military retirement system.

In an odd twist of fate, the Navy gave me a set of temporary orders to help assist in recruitment efforts in the town I grew up in. Over the past week, I interacted with both high school and college students, and the results were a bit surprising.

I accompanied two other Sailors for a few hours recruiting at a high school not far away from me. We sat at a table outside the lunchroom, handed out the main recruiter’s business card and some other Navy paraphernalia, and answered questions.

*Image generated by Bing…I don’t look this good in uniform 🙂*

The first thing I noticed is that despite it being winter and cold (it was 25F when I walked in the school), many of the students were in basketball shorts and even the occasional booty skirt, which I define as a skirt that barely covers your rear end. I had long pants, long sleeves and was wearing a jacket and I was still a bit cold since we were next to a window that leaked a lot of heat. I don’t even want to comment on the grooming standards, because there really were none.

That being said, the more surprising thing was the aimlessness of most of the students I interacted with. Our conversations would go something like this:

Kid: “I’m interested in joining the Navy.”
Me: “Great! Did you have a specific rate or job you’re interested in.”
Kid: “Not really, what’s available?”
Me: (Remembering there are 89 ratings in the Navy) “There’s lots of jobs! What sort of things do you like to do?”
Kid: “Meh, I don’t really know.”

This wasn’t just one conversation…it was the overwhelming majority of conversations. I mean, who the heck can’t tell me what they like to do??? Even if it was “play computer games,” I can turn that into “Would you like to fly drones?” The body language was also telling. Almost nobody looked me in the eye when we talked. Fidgeting, nervous, and just anxious in general. Since I was speaking to mostly juniors and seniors, the effects of being the high schoolers that grew up in COVID lockdowns were quite noticeable.

I spoke with the guidance counselor as well for some insight. She is assigned by the state, which specifically puts guidance counselors at schools to assist in career development. That’s a good thing, considering my guidance counselors were worthless when I was in high school. The one at this high school did everything from arrange ASVAB testing to factory tours and industry placement, on top of assisting in college applications and FAFSA forms.

It sounds like a much-needed change. The guidance counselor had similar experiences to mine with kids not having any clues about their direction in life. Most of them had to be pushed to do something, anything, to at least get somewhere. It wasn’t that they were opposed to one thing or another, it was that they didn’t have the desire for…anything, even stuff you would think is fun. We’ve already heard the rates of sexual intercourse and alcohol use are down among high school students. These are good things, but what we’re not catching is that teens are choosing to do…nothing. It’s similar to the “lying flat” movement in China. Teens today aren’t having sex, partying, going to the movies, working jobs, or…much of anything else.

Given that, it’s not surprising the grooming standards dropped. If you don’t have to impress the other sex, why bother dressing nice? Or combing your hair? Or picking out half-way fashionable clothes? Or taking a shower (yup, saw that too…). If you don’t care about much of anything, then much of anything goes. While plenty of people focus on the physical standards and obesity as issues, what I saw on the front line was a lot of aimlessness, of kids drifting through life without a clue, simply unsure of themselves.

I wasn’t that way growing up. As a junior, I knew I wanted to do engineering of some kind. Most of my peers were the same, having at least an idea of what they wanted to do for the next few years. My senior year I settled on electrical engineering, and I stayed that course in college. I currently have one kid in high school focused on the medical field, and whether she becomes a nurse, doctor, or some other job, she at least has direction and purpose.

More than anything else, our high schoolers need right now is a bit of direction and purpose. That might fix the recruiting crisis and a whole lot of other problems at the same time.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Analyzing the Pope’s Transgender response

Pope Francis is an interesting cat. Well, OK, he’s not a cat, he’s the Pope. Like most important figures, he gets misinterpreted a lot, and similar to Trump, anytime someone says “The Pope declared (insert heretical statement here) to be true!”, normally accompanied by worries about the impending apocalypse, my first reaction is always “Did you read the source documents?”

So, dear readers, let’s analyze the controversy around the Pope’s statements concerning transgender individuals. The Pope recently dined with some transgender women, which sparked a ton of news articles and controversy. If you only read headlines, you missed a lot of finer points:

One of the attendees, Claudia Salas, is a tailor and house cleaner, was the godparent to three of her nieces and nephews in her home country, Argentina. She did sex work to put the children through school.
Claudia, like many others, was impoverished and significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Father Andrea Conocchia, the pastor of the Blessed Immaculate Virgin parish in Torvaianica helped the transgender community with food and other assistance. Parish resources were stretched at the time because many people were cut off from income, so Conocchia asked for help from the cardinal who runs the pope’s charities. As well as sending money, the cardinal arranged for them to have COVID vaccinations in the Vatican and to meet the pope.

We have a good news story about Catholic charities helping all people, not just Christians, that got buried by the mainstream media. And yes, that means helping sinners, not dissimilar from so many stories of Jesus reaching out to the poor and destitute, dining in their homes and calling them to a better way of life.

The Pope’s recent “rulings” on transgender individuals comes in his response to a dubia, in this case from Most Reverend José Negri, Bishop of Santo Amaro, Brazil, who asked the following questions:

Can a transsexual be baptized?
Can a transgender person be a godparent?
Can a transgender person be a witness at a wedding?
Can two homo-affective people be parents for a child for baptism?
Can a cohabitating homo-affective person be a godparent?
Can a homo-affective cohabitating person be a witness at a wedding?

Straightforward questions. Homo-affective is the term used, which I’ll interpret as homosexual going forward.

The response is all of three pages long, and you should read the whole thing here. You can get the original Italian version here.

To the first question, the Pope starts by defining transsexual as someone who has undergone hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery. In the age of people identifying as demisexual and unicorn lattes, I think this is a good thing to do, so that we’re all talking about the same thing. The Pope says yes, you can be baptized, provided you have enough preparation. The preparation for Baptism involves (for adults) learning about the Church’s rules, going to Confession and then being Baptized, and it typically takes a year to do.

The Pope spends a large part of his response focused on the fact that if the person to be baptized does not repent of grave sin, the Baptism won’t confer sanctifying grace. The Church still considers transgender surgery a pretty big sin, and nothing in the Dubia states a transgender individual is not their birth sex. If a transgender person is baptized, they’d be unable to marry in the church or have sexual relations with another person. Essentially, they’d be called to chastity in the single life, similar to the call to chastity for individuals affected by homosexual attraction.

The point of baptism is to bring someone into the Church, and the Church is open to all, including sinners. I’m not surprised by this one bit. The Pope hasn’t said anything controversial here. The call to the transgender person, especially after surgery, would be pretty difficult, but that’s a cross that person would bear as part of their way of entering Heaven.

The response on godparents is much shorter: a transgender person can be a godparent if it won’t cause scandal or “disorientation in the educational sphere,” which I interpret to mean the child wouldn’t be confused as to whether transgender life choices are acceptable. As for wedding witnesses, lots of people can be witnesses, so its not a huge surprise to allow transgender individuals.

The Pope basically said that transgender people can enter the Church through proper preparation, can participate as godparents if not scandalous, and can witness at weddings. They can’t get married in the church, be ordained, and would likely be called to a chaste single life. That’s pretty hard, and many of them, like Claudia, come from a pretty rough background. We should be praying for their conversion.

All of us sin, in both public and private ways, but no sin is truly private. I don’t envy transgender individuals, just like I don’t envy those that struggle with pornography, alcohol, or same-sex attraction. It would be a huge challenge to go from being a transgender sex worker to becoming an upstanding baptized Catholic that must live out a single, chaste life. But the Church has done similar miracles before. St Augustine lead a scandalous life, yet he repented and became Doctor of the Church. St Mary of Egypt was a prostitute for 17 years before turning her life around. My hope is that this sanctification will hold true for transgender people as well.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, the Roman Catholic Church, or any other government agency.

What happened to caring about babies?

Democrats have been weaponizing the abortion debate and successfully turned it into a choice of either supporting women’s rights or stripping women of those rights. Having been subjected to the advertising onslaught in Virginia, the idiots that the Republican Party put in charge of campaigning have zero response to this.

Zero.

I saw NO effective counter ads, and the ads I did see were bland, “vote for me because I’m a veteran/good person” style ads. These are fluff and filler ads that don’t sway people.

Since Republican leadership can’t figure this out, I will humbly suggest the following ads that might help reframe the abortion debate:

Play a nice slow song, showing a mother cradling her baby. Now overlay a dark figure of (insert politician here) saying “If the baby is born after an attempted abortion, we’ll place it in a bucket and consult with the mother about what to do next.” Cue to a frame saying “We can all get behind protecting mothers and stop politicians from murdering babies.”
Show a black mother with two kids looking a little frazzled. A white lady in a suit walks up and asks if she needs help. She says yes, and the white lady recommends she abort her children in the future. Cue to a frame showing “40% of abortions are from black women. Let’s stop this racist practice. Make our politicians care about taking care of kids, not killing them.”
In the background show a woman and a man crying in a doctor’s office. Have the speaker voice say “Some couples want babies but just can’t have them. Instead of making adoption easy, politician (insert name) wants to kill off healthy babies.” Add a split screen showing another woman on a operating table crying. “Abortion creates two broken couples. We can all get behind expedited adoption laws to make them both whole again.”

This was just me daydreaming for an hour on actual, useful ads, plus a bit of time using these three scenarios when my pro-abortion friends bring up “women’s health” issues. I dated a young lady that had an abortion before I met her, and even 4 years later, she was still bothered by it.

Republican leaders lose on abortion because they refuse to roll up their sleeves and talk about the evils of abortion. Get off your stupid high horse and fight back. Talk about the genocide abortion is causing in the Black community. Push for expedited adoption rules and break the stranglehold the state bureaucracy has on adoption. Highlight the politicians that are totally cool murdering kids after birth. Yeah, its ugly, but Democrats are doing the same to you, and if you fail, millions of innocent children die, and part of that blood is on your hands.

BTW, the cute picture at the top: that’s the best Bing AI would generate. I tried to show a donkey holding a uterus, or put Planned Parenthood on the clinic, and the AI wouldn’t let me. One more sign that Satan is deeply entrenched in this debate.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Side note: The overwhelming majority of abortions (86%) are by single women, and a large chunk (nearly 40%) were from Black Americans.

Someone else’s kid

Newsweek took a stab at writing an article about the recruiting crisis, titled “Americans Don’t Want To Fight For Their Country Anymore.” Like most of these articles, it hits the typical, overblown points (culture, war, economy, etc.) and missed some very important points (we lost Afghanistan, the eroded benefits, and the lack of job satisfaction because we promote morons as flag officers). It was another “blah” article I would normally skip, except when I breezed through it I found one gold nugget.

Eustice said that these sorts of culture war debates were unlikely to deter the military’s target generation who were “very open…to all sorts of different lifestyles.” But he added: “Some parents will be turned off by those things and maybe not endorse military service as much.”

“It’s usually a little bit of a challenge to get parents to be for it anyway,” he said. “They’re supportive of their military but would prefer it to be someone else’s child.”

Someone else’s kid.

Someone else paying the price for deciding to not win wars decisively. Someone else doing the dirty work. Someone else having the nightmares after traumatic experiences overseas. Someone else having the aches and pains from years of combat. Someone else having a difficult time connecting with their kids because they were deployed for so long. Someone else not being able to share stories because they are either classified or too raw.

Someone else should pay the price so I don’t have to. Someone else should get their kid to volunteer so I can vote for politicians that needlessly break these people in unnecessary wars. Someone else should be a Gold Star parent so that I can feel good about admirals and generals that prioritize killing babies over terrorists.

Veterans Day becomes a harder and harder day to truly celebrate every year. I know that people mean well when they thank me for my service, and I always reply “Just doing my job.” I know most people do care at least a little when they offer to pay for a meal, or offer me a discount at their business.

But it increasingly feels cheap because the American people continue to tolerate politicians and senior military leaders that put our military personnel in losing situations. Time and again we go somewhere with a half-baked plan because a politician won’t accept the realities of war, we get shot at, and then in the end, we spent a lot of money to make the CEOs of the military industrial complex wealthy, while too many parents grieved over their child being laid to rest. I understand the sacrifice when we go somewhere to win and stop the advance of evil. Are we really doing that in Syria? How did we not do that in Afghanistan?

This Veteran’s Day, I’d invite you to do something far more important than buying a meal. Start questioning our senior leaders in government about the overseas voyeurism. This is a problem on all sides of the political aisle. We wouldn’t have the recruiting problem we have now if we had actually won our nation’s wars. We wouldn’t be shelling out so much money in VA benefits if we didn’t break those veterans in the first place. And perhaps more than anything else, that would be the best gift you could give next year on November 11th.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Don’t whine about the systems you built!

The incessant whining about Senator Tuberville is just non-stop these days, but a recent article in the Marine Corps Times absolutely takes the cake for the sheer hypocrisy shown concerning the Senate approval process.

First, we start with good news: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer decided to…wait for it…bring a vote on Lt Gen Christopher Mahoney to the Senate to confirm him as the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps.

But wait! Didn’t that dirty, mean, America-hating Senator Tuberville have a hold on all nominations? Of course, the answer is no, and as I pointed out many times in the past, all Senator Tuberville has done is make the Senate follow its own rules and not shortcut the nomination approval process, since the DoD decided to focus on killing innocent American babies instead of protecting the country from foreign threats. He even voted in favor of General Mahoney, and the heads of the Air Force and Navy. The Marine Corps Times, after a few paragraphs, finally admits the truth:

That’s because since February Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama, has refused to confirm senior military nominees through unanimous consent, in protest of a Pentagon policy covering time off and travel expenses for service members who travel out of state for abortions. Tuberville has argued that the military’s leadership gaps aren’t his fault and that it’s on the Pentagon to reverse its abortion policy or the Senate Democrats to hold individual roll-call votes on nominees. Democratic leaders estimated in September it would take 100 days of nothing but holding votes 8 hours a day to confirm what were then 273 nominees.
-Marine Corps Times

Reverse your illegal policy or else I’ll make you vote in accordance with existing rules?

Just a thought…if your rules make it hard to do work, you might want to fix the rules. Even better, maybe you reduce the vast number of generals and admirals, most of whom are totally worthless anyway and don’t contribute to the success of the military.

But the Marine Corps Times just can’t let it go, they have to come out against the evil Senator, so they fixate on an interview with the Commandant in September where he complained that his schedule was not sustainable, and he was only getting five hours of sleep a night.

5 hours of sleep!! The horror!!!

My brother in Christ, I have 5 children at home, and my wife and I are lucky if we get five hours of sleep a night. More importantly, generals and admirals have been telling junior Marines, soldiers, Sailors and airmen to pull long hours since…well, at least since I’ve been in, and probably before that. Anytime someone brings up sleep studies or the negative effects of not getting enough sleep, that person is chastised as a whiner. Will anyone do that to Smith?

Probably not, since he’s in the hospital. While Senator Tuberville did say he was praying for Smith’s recovery, he also, correctly, called out the nonsense remark on X:

“This guy is going to work 18-20 hours a day no matter what. That’s what we do. I did that for years.”
Marine Corps Times

And right there…that’s the unvarnished truth. We’ve created a two-tier system where it’s OK for junior military members to be deprived of sleep and ridiculed if they speak up, yet top leadership won’t do anything to change it, but then wants sympathy when they suffer too?

Or, more likely, they still don’t care, and they just want to score some cheap political points, because mean Senator Tuberville is asking hard questions about abortion that these so-called leaders don’t like answering.

If you’re not willing to answer hard questions, or (gasp) maybe rescind your illegal policy that murders innocent babies with taxpayer dollars, then perhaps you shouldn’t be in a leadership position.

Don’t whine about the systems you built. Generals Mahoney and Smith created the Marine Corps they now lead, and it apparently promotes a terrible sleep schedule. Well fellas, you own it. You made it over the past 20 or so years. You don’t get to complain about it. Same goes for the Senate…you made nominations hard, and you created hundreds of flag officer positions, so don’t whine when you have to actually review these people and follow your own rules.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Stay at home babies? Not so fast

It’s no surprise that many American kids are part of the “boomerang” generation, moving back in with their parents in their mid to late 20s. Rising housing costs and student debt load, coupled with a low inventory of cheap starter homes makes it hard to make it on your own. Even 18 years ago when I had to find housing on my own for the first time, I purchased a house and had to rent two of the three bedrooms to friends to make it economically feasible.

It’s tempting to say the current generation of 20-somethings is lazy and just doesn’t want to leave, and even more tempting to say it’s an American thing. Too many people just assume that Americans, on average, are lazier and fatter than your average European, Indian, Chinese, or other ethnic population. But I’ve traveled the world quite a bit, and I’ve found that is often not the case.

Let’s look at Italy, where a 75-year-old mother just won a court battle to evict her 40- and 42-year-old sons:

The 75-year-old mother, whose name has not been publicly released, made several unsuccessful attempts to persuade her sons, also unnamed, to move out of her home in Pavia in northern Italy, the news agency reported. Despite having jobs, the men —aged 40 and 42 — refused to find alternative accommodation of their own, ANSA said. They also refused to contribute to household expenses despite having their own incomes and failed to help out with household chores, per ANSA.
Insider.com

I mean, dang…42 years old and has a job? Talk about a freeloader! This article sparked my curiosity on what the average age of moving out in Europe is, which apparently varies widely by country:

The EU average is around 26, and the US average is….24-27, with 78% of kids 27 and older not living in their parents house. The only weird outliers in Europe is Sweden, where it appears to be strongly encouraged to leave the house at 18 no matter what.

Interestingly enough, even when kids in America move back into their parent’s house, it’s not for long, as almost 40% of them moved back and then out again before the age of 27. My guess is for every loser son or daughter that is staying at home and not contributing, there are 10-20 kids simply saving money with the plan to move out, and are grateful for their parents help, and compared to Europe, they are doing slightly better than the European average.

Let’s not jump onto the “American 20-somethings are adult babies” bandwagon…the kids might be alright after all.

Don’t want to hear your whining…

…when you realize you got exactly what you voted for.

This a reference to this article about “progressive” Jews complaining that their “progressive” left-leaning friends are totally, 100% OK with Hamas fighters butchering Jews in Israel. The article is essentially a “we didn’t see that coming” list of complaints.

My first thought was…wah?

Seriously, I’m tired of the “nice person” argument, which goes along the lines of “I voted for/supported these people that I thought were nice, while ignoring all the obvious red flags.”

All the progressive Jews that supported left-leaning losers who are siding with murderous Hamas militants…you got what you voted for.

All the progressive “Christians” who were shocked when the pro-abortion people they supported were totally cool with infanticide and murdering babies in a bucket after birth…you got what you voted for.

All the “mean tweets!” whiners that are now shocked we have two large, open conflicts within a few hundred miles of each other and involving major nation states…you got what you voted for.

You can whine about conservative candidates at the local, state and federal level, and you can vote for the left-leaning candidate because it makes you feel good in the moment…but it has consequences. The conservative politicians might not be polished (or maybe the news media is altering their coverage), and he or she might demand some responsibility in spending or enforcing the law, but we’re seeing what happens when people continually pick the politicians that sound nice on paper. We get murdered babies, both in the womb and out of it. We get wars that we either choose to lose or can’t really win. And we get encouragement towards all our enemies to take actions, whether its kidnapping Americans or shooting missiles at US Navy ships.

Those same people will come back and demand that the responsible politicians fix the mess. And after those people do, the same people will forget and vote again for losers that sound nice on paper.

It’s like the story of the ant and the grasshopper, where the ants stored up food for the winter while the grasshopper played a fiddle and gaffed off, only to then beg the ants feed him in the wintertime. I always hated that story as a kid, because I thought the ants should have let the grasshopper freeze to death. I mean seriously, he’s like 100 times their body weight. He’s gonna eat you out of house and home! Screw that lazy bug, let him die in the cold.

Those of us who did the “uncool” thing and worked responsibly, supporting things like balanced budgets, protecting life and being strong overseas to stop wars, we are tired of bailing you out. Don’t cry to me that “you didn’t know” your left-leaning friends would throw you under the bus. Just like the grasshopper living it up in the good times, you’re only complaining now in hopes of finding a free meal at someone else’s doorstep.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.