Officer Quote of the Past Four Decades and a Real X File

Background

M.E. is a submarine blog. The naval genre was not Vigilis's first choice, but his mentor, Joel Kennedy, a retired submarine officer and author of The Stupid Shall Be Punished soon persuaded him to place his political blogs elsewhere (mostly).  

The problem with submariners, as anyone who ever qualified may admit reluctantly, is that there is probably not a more opinionated audience on Earth than one comprised of U.S. submarine veterans.  

For good reasons (like mission success, vessel and crew survival, etc.) we were all taught to know the most important things to know about anything boat related.  Naturally, this universal attitude eventually becomes our personal outlook ---in other areas, as well.  Submariners like to be in control for habitual reasons, if nothing more. 

President Jimmy Carter was criticized during his single term (by members of his own political party - Democrats) of micromanaging.  As an ex-submariner and control freak, Carter was probably guilty as charged. He was the only peacetime president, for example, who gave the nation gasoline rationing with long waiting lines based on odd/even licence tag numbers.

Jeff Mellinger, the last enlisted ranked serviceman to be drafted, retired from active duty in 2011.  
During his1968 presidential election, Richard Nixon had campaigned on a promise to end the draft. By early 1973,  no further draft orders would be issued.  


There were thousands of hard-working volunteer draftees in the submarine service. They became valuable crewmen. Due o the universal draft, their backgrounds were varied and often stellar. Some had more education than junior officers. Two U.S. nuclear subs were lost during this period with all hands. Some of our shipmates died. The SUBSAFE program was an afterthought during our era. Most of its beneficiaries have served since. Today's volunteer submariners are of the same sturdy metal, knowing full well that in war or peace, we will lose another sub, perhaps with all hands, someday again. 

Attentive readers will note that the forty-year recruit quality comparison (in the following quotation) begins after the draft ended. An obvious question then, is just who's interim service has not been up to current quality? 

Quote Covering the last Four Decades 

“It’s not that we have a zero defect mentality, because we don’t, but it is true that the quality of military recruits right now is the highest it’s been in 40 years.” - Nathan Christensen, Navy public affairs officer for the Defense Department to the Kansas City Star. source: The Washington Times

A Real X File

Lake Monster Commission Needs More Time

The 13-person truth commission set up by the district council of Fljótsdalshérað municipality in East Iceland in August 2012 to evaluate whether the infamous lake monster Lagarfljótsormurinn (Lagarfljót worm) is the phenomenon filmed by Hjörtur Kjerúlf, farmer at Hrafnkelsstaðir, has requested more time to complete the task, visir.is reports.  May 14, 2014 source

 Five million people have already viewed Hjörtur’s 30-second YouTube video. 

Submarines are always silent and strange.

Beyond Popular Reach

Why I never vote for lawyers

(1)

The Vetting Problem

"Jimmy Carter was a famed micromanager, often at odds with his own advisers, and he caught a lot of Beltway criticism for his focus on policy details." - Neil King Jr. and Jonathan Weisman, Aug. 12, 2009,  wsj.com/news/articles, A President as Micromanager: How Much Detail Is Enough?

Carter had been one of Admiral Rickover's hand-picked nuclear propulsion engineers in the submarine navy. In the middle of Carter's presidency the Three Mile Island accident, a partial nuclear meltdown occurred on March 28, 1979.

In May of 1979, President Jimmy Carter gave governors the power to regulate gasoline sales in their states --  including the power to impose odd-even rationing. Lines extended miles past stations and people had to wait hours to fill their tanks for over two months.

By 1980, Carter's popularity had eroded. He survived a primary challenge against Ted Kennedy for the Democratic Party nomination in the 1980 election, but lost the election to the Republican candidate.

How did a micromanager like Jimmy Carter ever get vetted by his party to become a loser president? The DNC's leaders WERE, AND ARE STILL lawyers.   Why Lawyers Can't Manage is linked below.

The criticism is not leveled at Democrats alone. Consider a Republic lawyer, Richard M. Nixon, for instance. I'll let you decide why the RNC vetting of Nixon was equally lacklusrter.  Guess what profession is part of and exerts great influence on the RNC.  

(2)

The Management (Leadership) Problem

 

Traditionally, lawyers are poor managers.  Take it from a Philidelphia lawyer: "Why Lawyers Can't Manage" - Daniel B. Evans (originally published by the Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association in Law Practice Management, Vol. 19, No. 7, p. 26 (October 1993).  

President Obama has two leadership problems. From what profession does the president himself and the majority of his cabinet and agency appointments come? They too are lawyers, of course.

(a)

The flawed launch of Obamacare (the Affordable Healthcare Act):   Although it appeared to be up and running, users quickly encountered numerous types of technical problems,^[3] and by some estimates only 1% of interested people were able to enroll to the site in the first week of its operations.^[4] Even for those that did manage to enroll, insurance providers later reported some instances of applications submitted through the site with required information missing.^[5] In its third week of operations, technical problems continued.

Apparently, neither the president nor the various geniuses advising him on launching Obamacare had ever heard about testing new software.  Users of the internet have probably known about beta testing for years:

A very early version of a software product that may not contain all of the features that are planned for the final version. Typically, software goes through two stages of testing before it is considered finished. The first stage, called alpha testing, is often performed only by users within the organization developing the software. The second stage, called beta testing, generally involves a limited number of external users. - webopedia.com

(b)

The IRS  501(c)4 scandal  (a bi-partisan outrage): U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) said, "We should not only fire the head of the IRS, which has occurred, but we’ve got to go down the line and find every single person who had anything to do with this and make sure that they are removed from the IRS and the word goes out that this is unacceptable."

The current past and interim IRS Commissioners under Obama (Werfel, Miller, Shulman) have been, of course, more lawyers.

Submarines are always silent and strange.