Current Events

The Shutdown

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Since I am a Department of Defense contractor, examining military recruits. I expected that we would not be called to come in after Monday but I worked Tuesday and was told they expect no slowdown. Of course, maybe they won’t pay us but that is still in the future.

UPDATE: Today is the 8th and I have been called again for tomorrow.

So far, the shutdown seems to be working with the assistance of Democrat verbal and active mistakes. I always thought Gingrich fumbled the ball in 1995. This time, the GOP strategy of passing small directed bills to fund popular programs, seems to be working. Certainly the Democrats like Harry Reid and the National Park Service are helping all they can.

Washington politicians may have the time to debate how to fund the government, now that their pig-headedness has shut it down, but the nation’s World War II veterans don’t.

“World War II veterans are dying by the hundreds every day,” says Fred Yanow, of Northbrook, Ill., who spent 1942-45 in the Pacific theater as an Army private. “It’s a shame that they don’t care about World War II veterans when so many of them are dying off.” The 16 million men and women who wore their nation’s uniform in the so-called “Good War,” from 1941 to 1945, are leaving for eternal R&R at the rate of 650 a day.

Which Washington politicians ?

Harry Reid ?

Claire McCaskill had some clever comments.

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DoD Back to Work Monday, Mostly

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Secretary of Defense Hagal has recalled most Department of Defense (DoD) civilians back to work Monday. The legal reasons why were in the NY Times Sunday 6 Oct 2013 edition this morning.

The following is the fine print behind the “Mostly” —

“I expect us to be able to significantly reduce — but not eliminate — civilian furloughs under this process,” Mr. Hagel said.
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Mr. Hagel warned that “many important activities remain curtailed while the shutdown goes on,” and he cited disruptions across the armed services.
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Late Saturday, the Defense Department comptroller, Robert F. Hale, said that Mr. Hagel’s order would recall Pentagon employees who work in health care, family programs, commissaries and training or maintenance.
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Additionally, the order will recall to work those civilian Pentagon employees whose jobs, if interrupted, would cause future problems for the military; those categories include contracting, logistics, supply and financial management.
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While the numbers have not been finalized, officials estimated that only 10 percent of the furloughed employees would not be recalled, including Defense Department civilian employees who work in auditing, some in legislative and public affairs, and Pentagon employees who service other government agencies.

Most of DCMA will be back to work Monday, as will DFAS, DCAA and DLA.

The DoD Inspector General (I.G.), civilians in the various uniformed Service I.G. offices and DoD civilians involved in things like planning DoD assistance to disaster relief efforts are still going to stay home.

Chronicles of the Fed-Gov Shutdown

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For all the times that this federal government shutdown repeated fiscal game of chicken has been played and I have been through this rodeo a number of times it’s the sheer, petty spitefulness of this iteration which has raised my hackles. Barrycading off the open-air monuments along the Mall including the WWII and Vietnam War monuments blocking off scenic overlooks and the parking lots at Mt. Vernon, and forcing the closure of a number of otherwise self-supporting attractions which have the ill-luck to be on federally-owned property. I am glad to know that the governor of Wisconsin is telling the feds to go pound sand, and suspect that the governor of Arizona may be coming close to doing so, likewise. Meanwhile, the commissary at Andrews AFB is closed, and the golf course is open. Yes, I know that they are under different funding organizations, but the optics of this are really, really bad. If this were a Republican administration, I suspect we’d be hearing all about it, with video and stills of tearful and hungry military dependents all over the news, but then if my aunt had testicles, she would be my uncle. For all I know the junior enlisted troops are happily shopping at Wally-world and the generic shelves at the local grocery stores and not missing the commissary very much at all … but knowing that President Barrycade likes to golf there and takes every opportunity to do so … really, as I said bad optics.

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Archive Post – Military Rites, Practices & Legends: BX & Commissary Privileges

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(An archive post from [gasp] 2004, wherein I attempted to explain and demystify certain military practices and establishments to a strictly civilian readership. I was reminded of this series, as one of the chief effects of the fed-gov shut-down is that just about all of the military commissaries at stateside bases will be closed from about midday today. The resulting effect on the retiree and active duty population at stateside bases probably will be rather minor, especially for those bases in or near larger cities, since Walmart, Target, Costco, Sam’s Club and local grocery chains provide alternative sources.)

The main attraction of these privileges – access to the military base Commissary and Exchange – lies mostly in the fact that such access is forbidden to the usual run of civilians, and so they tend to think of them as vast Aladdin’s caves of riches and materiel things, to which they do not have the magic key! Alas, while I am fairly sure that the gold-plated bases in the military pantheon probably are pretty well stocked with the luxury goods, and may very well resemble Aladdin’s cave, at the ordinary level they are as Cpl. Blondie observed “full of stuff you don’t need.”
When I was giving the school-kiddy tours at Mather AFB, to kids who had never been on a military base before, I would have the school-bus driver take a circuitous loop around the base, and point out the various establishments: “A base is just like a city or a town– this is the Headquarters building, it’s like the Mayor’s office and the City Hall, over there is the housing area, where everyone lives with their families. There is even an elementary school for the kids. That is our grocery store, only we call it the commissary. We even have our own gas station… this is the Exchange, it is just like a small department store, with a little bit of everything…”

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Al Shabaab’s Sarajevo in Nairobi

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There is a profound moral dimension to the photos and videos coming out of Kenya.

They are showing a multiracial civilization — an up-scale mall is the commercial epitome of modern civilization — under attack with multiracial cops and generally black African military saving multiracial civilians from faceless terrorist barbarians.

There is a huge message about the nature of our terrorist enemy that will resonate with the Western public in much the same way that pictures and video from Sarajevo did in the 1990s vis-a-vis the Serbs.

This Al Shabaab atrocity for publicity and fund raising will cost them and their Islamist co-belligerents far more in the long run.

Dehumanization works both ways.