When I was in the Army on active duty as an enlisted men, we had three names for different kinds of officers- the ROTC (pronounced Rahh-ZEE) Nazis, who were guys who got their butter going through ROTC, the Mustang Men who were guys who went from green to gold and were enlisted who ended up becoming officers and who were, as a group, by far the best officers I’ve known, and then you had the guys from the Prick Factory, aka West Point. They churned ’em out year to year, and by and large the majority of them (when I was in) were just ladder climbing assholes. I was lucky that my CO from the point was a good guy.
Back to my point. I was watching Bill Maher tonight, and the panel was some idiot woman from CNBC, Chris Matthews, and some complete and total douchebag named James Glassman. And I wondered- where is the prick factory that turns out these morons? Why is there a never-ending stream of these morons?
And FSM bless Chris Matthews, who just tore shit up tonight. You honestly have to see it to believe it. He was excellent.
Oh, and the reason the mustangs were the best officers- they would never, ever, ever ask you to do something they wouldn’t do themselves. Soonergrunt has a shitload more military experience than I do, so maybe he could talk about this (if he can). I’d like to read his thoughts about what makes a good officer and a good nco.
Jeff Spender
joeforamerica.com/2013/10/america-needs-white-republican-president/#g7PexAvYuICWAfuH.99
Must be the same factory that turned out this chode.
Gin & Tonic
[Glassman] … is perhaps best known for co-writing the book Dow 36,000 (published 1999), in which he predicted that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would approximately triple in value to 36,000 points by early 2005.
When you’re that good, success follows success.
Fubar
Ah, the army. Air Force is only populated by gentleman/women of all ranks. John, you chose the wrong service.
Gin & Tonic
Help, I’m being moderated and I don’t know why.
cyntax
One thing good officers knew was to stay out of the way of good NCOs and let the noncoms take care of day to day to stuff with the enlisted. Course that’s predicated on knowing the value of a good NCO, which is something the Pointers seemed to struggle with (though not all of them).
PeakVT
Well, Glassman went to Hahvahd. But Dartmouth and UChicago are probably the two most reliable generators of right-wing assholes.
Jeff Spender
@PeakVT:
QFT. I’ve spent a great deal of time at UChicago, and while I love the campus it was filled with entitled dicks (I’m being unfair, there are also some really lovely people there).
I do know that my girlfriend was transformed during her time there from a kinda-objectivist who interned at the ARI to one more liberal than I am, and I have been described as the most liberal liberal who ever liberaled. I was actually quite stunned, and very relieved.
I think it might be because she ventured out of the bubble that surrounds that campus and explored more of Hyde Park. I think perhaps the gentrification and urban sprawl helped to open her eyes.
Roger Moore
Check the biography, and you’ll find that he’s from that well-known prick factory, Harvard University. He’s also the author of Dow 36,000 and the founding director of The George W. Bush Institute, which should tell you far more than enough to conclude that he’s a dickhead of the highest order.
KG
@Jeff Spender: jesusjosephmarymosesbuddhavishu&mohammed… is it possible to be any stupider than that? I saw someone else post that link before, but I refused to click… apparently being +7(ish) relieved me of that inhibition… I should have been +12 before doing that.
Comrade Luke
I’ve never been in the military, but I think this pretty much goes for all walks of life. Especially corporate America. The ones who didn’t have the time or interest to do it themselves were spending all that time playing politics.
KG
@Jeff Spender: heh, I went to Chapman Law, home of Hewitt and Eastman… I went in as fairly libertarian (admittedly borderline glibertarian), not sure if it was me or the word that changed since, but I’m apparently center left these days…
Comrade Luke
Given what’s happening to college tuition these days, that statement will probably be able to be applied to ALL university graduates in a generation or so.
the Conster
Chris Matthews has been eating his Wheaties. Him and David Corn are really nailing it on Hardball, and they’re taking no bullshit. DIdn’t see Maher, but I will, only because I think Matthews has had.it. He got a great Jesuit education, and good goddamn he loves his country and hates teh stoopid.
Warren Terra
@efgoldman: No objection to the rest of your comment (the convergence of Colorado Springs and militant Christianity scares the dickens out of me), but this part:
Dude was Navy.
Omnes Omnibus
@cyntax: I finished OCS, FAOBC, and Airborne School just before Christmas. My family spent Christmas Eve at my Dad’s parents’ house. My Grandfather, a WWII sergeant, took me aside for a couple of hours and talked about the War and how to be a good officer. Distilling his advice down… Listen to the NCOs; never contradict your NCOs in public unless someone’s life is literally on the line, don’t be an asshole to your NCOs; give your troops the credit when things go well; publicly accept responsibility when things don’t go well (later, behind the scenes, find out who fucked up and get it resolved). If an officer does that, good NCOs will make sure that he or she looks good and gets trained to move up. It worked for me.
VodkaGoGo
When I read the headline, I was hoping this would be about Busch Stadium and Cardinals fans.
MikeJ
@Warren Terra: Navy was a few days a go. Air Farce guy was booted today.
Comrade Luke
@efgoldman: I’ve been telling all of my friends that I think the college financing situation will be the next bubble to burst.
Of course, the banks will fight it tooth & nail, so it’s probably going to take longer than it should.
ETA: The other fiasco is all these universities running things “like a business”, which is just code for milking alumni for donations so they can create huge endowments, which they then re-invest in the stock market. We’re headed for a fall.
Cacti
What about officers from the confederate academies (VMI and The Citadel)?
Roger Moore
@Jeff Spender:
Shorter Not-Joe the Not-Plumber:
Redshift
@Warren Terra:
That was soooo two days ago. The one that just got booted was Air Force.
Warren Terra
@MikeJ:
@Redshift:
Oh, f’gawd’s sake. Who can keep up?
the Conster
@efgoldman:
He hasn’t done it this week. He’s chosen sides.
MorningtonCrescent
The mst3k version of The Starfighters will show you that the AF guys are definitely a really, really exciting and captivating bunch of guys.
youtube.com/watch?v=3dDumDN3Y5I
Redshift
@Comrade Luke: From what I’ve read, college tuitions have skyrocketed because:
– conservatives in state governments have pushed cuts to state colleges
– middle management has gotten much more bloated (that’s what “run it like a business” always produces)
– Some economics thing Krugman talks about that I don’t quite understand, whereby lots of things getting cheaper through automation and Moore’s Law means that other things that can’t scale that way, like teaching, get more expensive.
Omnes Omnibus
@ Cole: You forgot the College Option OCS people – 8 weeks of BCT and 14 weeks of OCS. It was a bitch. In my class (4-88) at Benning, 2/3 of the candidates were prior service ( no one said mustang or “green to gold”). It was challenging as fuck to keep up with the prior service people. They tended to be E-5s or E–6s, many were Rangers or SF. Many of them were assholes about us. So, in my platoon, the Dartmouth English major and I used to discuss Byron and Milton just piss people off.
Gravenstone
@Warren Terra: And an AF officer was just relieved as well.
Bill E Pilgrim
I remember Paul Krugman writing about this guy (or Krugtronia the Magnificent or whatever name Niall Ferguson and Joe Scarborough insist is what “his followers call him”, because one blogger said it as a joke and Krugman linked and laughed about it).
krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/from-the-department-of-things-that-are-just-too-perfect/
This may be the one case where failing upward can actually be given a numerical value. Start with 36,000, subtract whatever number the DOW actually had reached at whatever point this guy predicted it would be at 36,000, and bingo. His being wrong by more than 20,000 points was rewarded by moving up the Wingnut ladder.
Alison
@the Conster: I know Matthews can be good, but damn he makes it hard to watch him. Every time I try, within about two minutes of his first guest I want to scream SHUT UP AND LET THEM TALK CHRIS OMG SHUT UP SHUT UP. Dude cannot keep his yap closed for more than about 90 seconds. I don’t really know why he bothers having guests on most of the time.
I’ve got to think his closing segment is called “Let Me Finish” as a giant tongue-in-cheek joke on himself……
GregB
That CNBC asschapper was schooled very well. Debt, debt, debt, both sides do it! She was nauseating me and Matthews gave her some good scorn and he also got that GOP political hack pissed too.
KG
@Redshift: it wasn’t just conservatives. In the late 90s, when everyone was running surpluses, the California legislature kept cutting rates for the CSU (and probably the UC), money that could have gone to endowments for when the economy tanked instead became beer money for many of us enrolled at the time.
Not sure about the middle management thing.
As far as not being able to scale costs, it turns out that having classes on tv or online doesn’t quite work like we thought it would, so there’s higher costs for actual people
Alison
@efgoldman: LOL seriously. I don’t even want to know what it’s like talking to him on a cell phone…
Mandalay
@John Cole:
There are some great reviews of Glassman’s infamous book “Dow 36,000” on Amazon. This one is the “most helpful favorable review“…
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Hey, just because you don’t like your region’s accent getting publicity…..
The Sailor
ex-Navy. Fucking morons. Some Petty Officers were OK, Lieutenants were stupid, higher ups were unapproachable. Fellow swabbies were morons.
It was literally a ship of fools.
I got out of it exactly what I wanted to. Me.
the Conster
@Alison:
Yeah, I yell at him all the time to shut up and let his guests talk, but he’s really offended by the disrespect for this president and functioning government, and he very clearly states that it’s because of racism. He’s really offended by the overt racism. He isn’t on Morning Joe enough because he out-Catholic’s fucktard Joe and says things that deliberately stick it to him. I don’t think they like each other at all. Egos, but also differing worldviews.
chrome agnomen
@Alison:
i endorse this comment. though i believe that he can’t keep his yap shut for even 15 seconds.
Bill E Pilgrim
I saw Matthews in a coffee shop once, it took me a long time to realize it was him despite sitting six feet away, he looks much more his age in person. He was sitting with two teenagers, and it’s true that he didn’t stop talking the entire time.
I was actually wondering why this guy kept glancing over at me, but once I got who he was I realized that he was probably thinking the same, oh great someone recognizing me. Except I hadn’t, I often write in cafes and just frequently look around vacantly in between sentences.
Mandalay
@MikeJ:
Wow….
If that is true – that the person responsible for 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles was removed from his position because of alcohol problems – why does the Air Force choose to leak the information? I can understand why they would reveal nothing, and I can understand why they would go public with everything, but why hush up the reason and then leak it?
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: It is probably a huge conspiracy. Thank god you noticed.
Alison
@the Conster: Yeah, he;s definitely been good about calling that shit out, which is nice with the platform he has.
PurpleGirl
A couple of the people I knew in ROTC pronounced it rot-cee, definitely vocalizing the t.
Omnes Omnibus
@PurpleGirl: Yeah, but when you are talking about a specific type of person saying ROTC Nazi(pronounced Ratzy Natzy) is not unreasonable.
PurpleGirl
@Comrade Luke: One of the best bosses I’ve had was an attorney who worked her way through NYU law when they still had the night school. (And she graduated second her class.) She worked as a secretary at Alcoa. She was demanding, yet fair and didn’t ask you to do more than she had when she was a secretary. (When she had personal work to type, she would ask me to leave the typewriter set up with paper and margins set. She never asked me to type her personal work.)
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Sez you….
Mary G
This baseball game is agonizing. Just as I typed that the idiot announcers said it must be agonizing.
johnny aquitard
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh you are so mean. That will keep his brain churning all night thinking about who is in on it.
John Revolta
they would never, ever, ever ask you to do something they wouldn’t do themselves.
Not really germane, but this put me in mind of Michael Herr’s Lt. Gladly:
“We had this lieutenant, honest to Christ he was about the biggest dipshit fool of all time, all time. We called him Lieutenant Gladly ’cause he was always going like, ‘Men……….men, I won’t never ask you to do nothing I wouldn’t do myself gladly’, what an asshole. We was on 1338 and he goes to me, ‘Take a little run up the ridge and report to me,’ and I goes like, ‘Never happen,Sir.‘ So he does, he goes up there himself and damned if the fucker didn’t get zapped. He said we was gonna have a real serious talk when he came back, too. Sorry ’bout that.”
-Dispatches
Omnes Omnibus
That was one of central teaching points of OCS. “Never ask a soldier to do something you would nt be willing to do.” However, once you have shown that you are willing to do “x” , you can tell someone to do it.
srv
@Mandalay: Alcohol, gambling, womanizing, those are the cover stories.
It’s usually something a lot worse.
Julie
Yea, Matthews was stupendous tonight on Maher. And Cole is right about the two other guests, especially the female CNBC financial analyst. Asshats.
SectionH
@Omnes Omnibus: Accent schmatcent. Alison’s right. It’s the talking over/through all his “guests” that mostly made me hate his show. Possibly a genderish-linked response. Or not.
Omnes Omnibus
@srv: Like what? You are an expert, right? Tell us.
Felonius Monk
@efgoldman:
Amen to that.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman Still, it’s Northeast… W’evs….
BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: Tweety is from Philly.
NotMax
Too bizarre to not be true:
Plentiful of mouth and sparse of brain.
barry
I think Glassman was the clown who wrote Dow 30,000 and said that President Clinton was not responsible for any economic growth during 1993-2001 but that he was responsible for 9/11 and the deficits that ensued.
If Glassman were not of white skin, he would most likely be in jail.
Hill Dweller
@Julie:
Krugman regularly points out Wall Street types have no clue about macroeconomics. The debt, while a concern long term, isn’t our most pressing problem.
If given a chance to talk long enough, I’m sure her remedy for the debt would be personal SS accounts, with Wall Street types handling them.
Ruckus
@NotMax:
Dad had a sign on his toolbox.
Always put brain in gear before opening mouth.
For some it is unfortunate that they only have one gear they haven’t stripped all the teeth off of and it is the stupid gear.
SectionH
@efgoldman: I’m not sure what accent has to do with a man yelling in the first place. It’s demonstrable that Chris RAISES HIS VOICE to talk over people on his show. I don’t know if he was the first one to do this (likely not) but he’s glommed onto it.
I’m not sure why Omnes – who was posting fine on Military topics – got all funny about Chris Matthews/accent or what.
So skipping that, accents are the most fun thing ever. But they’re like wine. No, srsly. You have to have heard [tasted] them, and must be able to remember all the subtlies. I don’t mean replicating them in speech: just recognizing.
I’m fairly sure Chris Matthews knows what his signature words “Amurican” etc are, and exaggerates those for the effect.
John Revolta
I heard Carey got caught using phony chips at a casino.
NotMax
@SectionH
Must be a few grainy videos of Joe Pyne from the 50s or 60s on the net somewhere.
Villago Delenda Est
R-O-T-C
Sounds like bullshit to me, to me
R-O-T-C
That’s what it turned out to be
They made him a Second Lieutenant
They gave him a bar of pure gold
They made him a forward observer
He lived to be two seconds old
I was in an infantry battalion as the battalion signal officer as a 2LT, and we had a wide mix of officers from the various sources…OCS, Hudson High, various ROTC folks. The fuckups came from all three. So while in general the OCS guys who were prior service were pretty good, some of the Hudson High grads were not bad at all, and some of the ROTC guys were pretty good. But as Omnes pointed out, the ones who let their NCOs run things while they commanded and supervised, and demonstrated they were not afraid or unwilling to do the things they asked their troops to do generally were the ones that had the respect of the troops.
Respect is something that is earned by the individual…the rank insignia only goes so far.
piratedan
@Hill Dweller: and these wall street bastards are never anywhere to be found during a GOP administration while their busy putting two wars on the black ops tabs and cooking the books and as soon as a Dem shows up, “well we better put our fiscal house in order” to make sure that none of that spending spree be dropped on behalf of the poor, the sick, those that have melanin or are new here. They think that profit is the number one desirable trait and that it answers all ills, part of the reason we’re so fucked up as they’re all about short term gains and stockholder dividends without a care about the health of the company or the people who are affected by it.
James E. Powell
The Republicans really do know how to manage the propaganda. For example, if you want to get outright lies broadcast on a supposedly liberal show, just send a good looking woman to the Bill Maher show. He will let her say whatever she wants, will not interrupt her, correct her, or give her anything but a smile.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti:
I knew a couple of guys from VMI and The Citadel, and they were pretty much like the rest…a mixed bag. They got some razzing from the Hudson High guys (“why pay to be hazed?”). In general, I think after the first two years or so, new officers have acclimated to the “real Army” and their commissioning source becomes less easy to discern, even to seasoned observers. As Cole himself notes, his company commander was a ring knocker (another slang term for Academy grads) but a pretty good officer from the enlisted perspective.
NCOs can make or break young officers. Those who don’t approach their new profession with a willingness to learn from people who they outrank but are much more experienced are cruisin’ for a bruisin’.
SectionH
@NotMax: well, there’s a Wiki arkle. I am informed.
Phil Perspective
@efgoldman: Do people really forget all of Tweety’s crap re: The Clenis? He was one of the worst back then.
Phil Perspective
@Julie: Have CNBC hosts, except Dylan Ratigan, ever been anything less?
Phil Perspective
@Bill E Pilgrim: Speaking of Niall Ferguson, I’m surprise no one seems to have noticed that Krgthulu called him, very publicly, a troll.
piratedan
@Phil Perspective: if the moniker fits……Ferguson is like a Monty Python authority figure, loads of entitlement stoked with class privilege.
SectionH
@piratedan: PDFTT
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Roger Moore:
ROFL now there is a fate worse than death; praising that doufus forever!
Yatsuno
@NotMax: I thought maybe this had to do with Cory checking out Imani at the DNC convention. He did, err, evaluate her assets, shall we say.
They’d make a cute couple honestly. But that girl didn’t get the digits. Sigh.
PS: link isn’t working, but not your fault.
Ahh says fywp
@Fubar: gentle, ha ha, tgats klingon for asshole.
Air force drools, navy pilots rule
Ruckus
On the original question about prick officers(I include enlisted lifers in the group of pricks) only a very small percentage that I knew were not. I think a lot of it had to do with the time I was in(Vietnam era) as most of the navy enlisted I knew were draft dodgers who didn’t want to move to Canada or go to jail. We really just wanted to put in our time and get out. Not so most of the lifers and officers.
BruinKid
Oh yeah, Matthews was ON tonight. He wasn’t taking any crap from either conservative. Loved him straightening out Glassman on the much smaller shutdowns we had since 1977 that nobody remembers for a reason, because they were rather small and localized.
joel hanes
@efgoldman:
I have no idea what the solution might be
In my dream world, we elect blue state legislatures that return the public funding to education and even increase it, easing the tuition pressure at Our Great State Universities.
*sigh* what couldn’t we have accomplished with the $3T that we instead enabled BushCo to spend on killing browns in Iraq …
Hawes
I think Dartmouth has stopped producing so many RW assholes since the Dartmouth Review became an even bigger joke in the late ’80s, early ’90s. But they still produce a shit-ton of Wall Street Assholes.
The Pale Scot
@Redshift: Drunk in the control room. Why that just gives me the warm irradiated fuzies.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@PeakVT: I’d throw Princeton in that group purely on the strength of Ted Cruz. But yeah, the ivies in general. Plus, the American voters. They elect the pricks from their locality to represent them. Said pricks bring a bunch of prick attendees with them, and then who better to cover what pricks are doing than other pricks (on the takes one to know one principle)?
I find it hilarious that no one who went to Princeton will say that Ted Cruz is stupid, despite the massive evidence to the contrary. It’s like they can’t admit someone that stupid got into and through Princeton because it implies that maybe, just maybe, they aren’t as smart as they think they are either. Maybe he was clever back then, but there’s ample evidence that he’s a moron now.
virginia
Chris Matthews was on fire last night! Beautiful to behold. The other two panelists were left in shambles — super total Friday night fun.
pseudonymous in nc
Matthews is an odd bird. He’s a DC creature, and he can be Village Wrong at times, but he’s also still the Catholic kid who had Kennedy as a hero, served in the Peace Corps, believes in social institutions. Another route, via the suburbs, gets you Bill O’Reilly or Samuel Alito.
Seanly
@Cacti:
Those are pretend academies.
My wife & I had met a female West Pointer a few years back. She was in Columbia, SC for HR training. Her husband was also a West Pointer and was doing training elsewhere. Their first year married they were both in Iraq and saw each other for maybe a few days. The woman was very friendly and the guy seemed alright – he was probably in a bad mood as he’d just washed out of Special Forces training for the second & last time. He was convinced that active duty military shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
JR in WV
@Warren Terra:
You are wrong. It was one of each. Three star Major General of whom we don’t have any clue why he got booted, and a three-stripe Admiral who is suspected of playing with counterfeit chips at a commercial casino.
The General ran basically all the nuclear missiles, and the Admiral ran all the other nukes, or something close to that.
Also too, when I was in USN boot camp (1970, so nothing new here) they tried to make me attend Southern Baptist revivals every Sunday until I told them they couldn’t make me go to church – any church. The whining and crying when a recruit was correct could be heard clear to command level. So even there the AF doesn’t have a monopoly.
cyntax
@Omnes Omnibus:
Nice. Smart of you to listen to your grandfather. Though you’d have to have been pretty crazy to ignore the advice of a WWII vet.
maye
I had to turn off Bill Maher. That woman was so stupid, I was embarrassed for her, and I just couldn’t watch.
Avery Greynold
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Cruz stupid? Underestimate him at our own cost. Just because lies and simplistic drivel come out of his mouth doesn’t mean it isn’t carefully crafted. Cruz is stupid like Huckabee is reasonable. Just part of the con.
ET
I use to work with Glassman when he and his wife owned/published Roll Call. I won’t say I knew him well, but I will say he had a huge ego. But as a publisher he knew his stuff. He ran a small NOLA paper and made Roll Call more than just a Hill rag which is mostly what it had been.
allamr18
What makes a good officer and good nco? Im a USMC captain and ill tell you what makes a good officer, one that focuses more on training and development of his men and himself as well as listens to their ideas but gives them structure and direction. What good is a leader who doesnt understand the position he or she puts their soldiers in? A good nco acts based on commanders intent and often without direction. They see a problem and act to resolve using sound judgement. I had ncos who were better than sncos and I had some who were garbage. I had officers that I would follow into a wall and others I wouldnt follow to the store.
pluky
@srv: Like maybe some Christian Dominionist bullsh*t that got a little too close to sedition?
pluky
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: “Clever,” exactly. A distinction from “intelligent” and “genius” maintained in English English, but blurred, if not lost, to American English.
Redleg
I was an ROTC army officer with prior enlisted service and an NCO for a father. We had a few prior service guys in ROTC and they tended to be the best officers because they had a better understanding of what it was like to be an enlisted soldier.