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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Kelly vs. Gorka: “Kill A Chicken to Frighten the Monkeys”

Kelly vs. Gorka: “Kill A Chicken to Frighten the Monkeys”

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… which is an old Chinese proverb meaning ‘Eliminate a minor figure to keep the outside agitators in line”. Consensus seems to be that John Kelly, in his new role as Gatekeeper, pushed Gorka out to show the Breitbrats he’s gonna do his utmost to protect Lord Smallgloves from himself. Best summary I’ve seen, from the Washington Post:

Sebastian Gorka, a controversial White House staffer who served as a fiery spokesman for President Trump on national security matters, abruptly left the administration on Friday as his nationalist faction was being silenced, four people briefed on Gorka’s exit confirmed.

Gorka, a deputy assistant to the president, is a close ally of former chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who departed the White House last week. Together they saw their roles as enabling and promoting the president’s combative populism and revolutionary impulses.

Although Trump enjoyed watching his cable television appearances, in which he performed like a pit bull and taunted many news anchors for peddling what he and the president deemed “fake news,” Gorka had run afoul of many of his colleagues, including some on the National Security Council who considered him a fringe figure.

Officials said it was widely known that White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, who has been restructuring the West Wing to stem infighting and chaos within the staff, was eager for Gorka to depart the administration.

While Gorka publicly released a resignation letter expressing his displeasure with the changes that he felt left his faction silenced, two White House officials insisted Gorka did not resign but rather was forced out. A third White House official said the “writing was on the wall” that Kelly wanted Gorka to leave…

Now, way back on Thursday (doesn’t that seem like a long time ago?) Politico, Axios, and the NYTimes each published upbeat stories about how Gen. Kelly was gonna bring Marine-style discipline to this sloppy, disorganized, overweight White House, hoo rah!


… and that chorus of hosannas *might* just’ve had something to do with Gorka hustling back from his ‘long vacation that was discommoding his associates during this busy period’ to attempt — unsuccessfully — some facetime with Dear Leader…


.

Gorka, of course, has already found another Wingnut Welfare teat to suckle (he’s back at Breitbart, no doubt updating his resume & hoping for better offers). While I fully intend to schadenfreude my arse off about his plight, let us not forget:

Reader Interactions

110Comments

  1. 1.

    lamh36

    gawd…I have an irrational hatred of Haberman…she just literally comes off as a stenographer for this WH rather than a true investigative journo.

    ALL her scoops involve good spin that the admin wants to put out…seriously someone, anyone tell me the last Haberman scoop that involved ANYTHING negative or “damaging” to this WH

  3. 3.

    Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)

    It was hilarious when Dan Nexon fisked Gorka’s third-grade crayon scribble dissertation, and someone (possibly Gorka himself) saw fit to butthurt all over the comment sections.

    On a completely unrelated note, the only way I would pay $100 for a Mayweather fight was if he had to fight an enraged baboon. Or chimpanzee.

  4. 4.

    WaterGirl

    @lamh36: These so-called journalists have no shame. They are a disgrace to the profession, or at least to what’s left of it.

  5. 5.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    The daughter of President Donald Trump’s Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke went on a no-holds-barred rant against Trump over his call to purge the military of transgender personnel.

    “Shut the f*ck up, you know-nothing, never-served piece of sh*t,” wrote Jennifer Detleftson, a Navy veteran, according to The Hill.

    “This man is a disgrace. I’ve tried to keep politics out of my social media feed as much as possible, but this is inexcusable,” wrote Detlefson, who served in the highly demanding job of Navy special operations diver.

    “This veteran says to sit down and shut the f*ck up, you know-nothing, never-served piece of sh*t,” she wrote before signing off with the #itmfa hashtag, which stands for “Impeach the motherf*cker already.”

    (link)

  6. 6.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    The Washington Post:

    The president asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions whether it would be possible for the government to drop the criminal case against Arpaio, but was advised that would be inappropriate, according to three people with knowledge of the conversation.

    conspiracy to obstruct justice – count [insert number here]

  7. 7.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    @WaterGirl:

    These so-called journalists have no shame. They are a disgrace to the profession, or at least to what’s left of it.

    Word.

  8. 8.

    mai naem mobile

    My brain is really tired of Dolt45. Also,yesterday was depressing. They’re all puto madres. All of them in this WH.

  10. 10.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @lamh36:

    I have an irrational hatred of Haberman…she just literally comes off as a stenographer for this WH rather than a true investigative journo.

    ALL her scoops involve good spin that the admin wants to put out…seriously someone, anyone tell me the last Haberman scoop that involved ANYTHING negative or “damaging” to this WH

    I totally get where you’re coming from, and I’m not defending Maggie, but it is not her job to write negative or damaging things. It is her job to report the facts. (I agree that she chooses her “facts” selectively.) But I think we’re misunderstanding the role of journalists if we only want them to write negative stuff about administrations we despise and only positive stuff about those we admire. And I think that’s dangerous.

  13. 13.

    Gin & Tonic

    I have no idea who Matt Negrin is, but people who use Cyrillic look-alike letters like he does, just end up looking like morons. The д he uses as a substitute for “a” is the same phoneme as the Latin letter “d” – it’s not an “a”.

  14. 14.

    lamh36

    @SiubhanDuinne: Maggie Haberman reports “the facts” as told to her by her WH sources…i.e. “spin”…unless I missed it, rarely do I see her contradict it in any way.

    I am not expecting Haberman to be “negative” and attack the admin.

    But I can surely expect her to not just give a readback with NO pushback. There is no pushback from her that I can see.

    There is a reason why she is the goto stenographer for Ivanka and Jared.

    Can I at least expect her to do more than just repeat the spin?

    Can we agree there should be a balance in any reporting? If so…please show me any reporting from Haberman, of late that isn’t a positive slant?

  15. 15.

    Major Major Major Major

    @lamh36: she has a very myopic view of a reporter’s job and doesn’t really care about the broader context of the story or coverage; but she’s very good within that narrow scope. IMO. I think AL said similar the other day.

  17. 17.

    ruemara

    I cannot help being depressed. It is incredible how much they are letting him get away with for power. This gives people who’d kill me for speaking my mind a great big warm welcome. Unbelievable.

  18. 18.

    Starfish

    @SiubhanDuinne: I don’t know.

    Maggie writes stuff to piss off the right and left and is condescending toward everyone, but I am not sure how much we are really getting out of her journalism. It’s hard to tell where the journalism ends and being a stenographer for some PR flack in the White House begins.

  19. 19.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    @lamh36:

    Can I at least expect her to do more than just repeat the spin?

    You can, but you’re gonna be disappointed.

  22. 22.

    Chet Murthy

    @lamh36: I think we can set aside the issue of “pushback”. You nailed it with “stenographer”. Reporting “the facts” is not the same as “reporting the subset of the facts that powerful people tell her” nor “reporting the spin of facts-or-not-facts-(== lies) that powerful people tell her”. “Stenographer to the rich & powerful” != “reporter”.

    ETA: outfits like Propublica seem to be able to carry out reporting (as does the WaPo sometimes) without having to take sides, to “pushback”, right? They’re just reporting reality, in a balanced and fair manner. And as has been clearly demonstrated, “reality has a liberal bias”.

  24. 24.

    Epicurus

    Trump is certainly a “yuuuge” problem, but there can’t be a hot enough spot in Hell for those Republicans in Congress who have allowed him to do what he has done. One can only hope Director Mueller is able to finish his investigation quickly and get some convictions before Hair Furor is able to pardon the lot of them.

  25. 25.

    Anne Laurie

    @lamh36:

    There is a reason why she is the goto stenographer for Ivanka and Jared.

    Can I at least expect her to do more than just repeat the spin?

    Don’t expect you to agree with me, but I find Haberman useful because her breathless tell-me-more style gets those idiots to expose themselves much more openly than they would with a ‘hostile’ reporter.

    It’s a variation on Don Lemon playing dumb, because that way he gets more out of the far-right interviewees because they feel like he’s confirming their anti-affirmative-action bias.

  26. 26.

    Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)

    @Major Major Major Major: Alex Hazanov made the same point – her problem’s an incredibly myopic view of her job as just another beat, not helped by an incredibly thin skin. In that respect she’s more like Cillizza (“I do this because I literally can’t do policy) than Shafer (“lololololol nothing ever matters what are you some kind of NERD?”)

  35. 35.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @lamh36:
    @Starfish:

    I tried to make it clear that I am in no way defending Maggie Haberman or her brand of “journalism.” I agree that she is little more than a stenographer for the WH, albeit one who has some skill with crafting sentences. I was pushing back on lamh’s

    ALL her scoops involve good spin that the admin wants to put out…seriously someone, anyone tell me the last Haberman scoop that involved ANYTHING negative or “damaging” to this WH

    To me, that sounds as though lamh wants Maggie to write stories that are negative or “damaging.” I am saying, Maggie should just report the facts and if they are damaging that will be clear enough, and then it is up to the editorial team and columnists to point out why. Maggie, as a reporter, should not be considering either positive or negative, helpful or damaging — she should be focused on ferreting out, and reporting to her readership, the facts. Here is what Trump said. Here is what Jared did. Here are the people Ivanka met with last week. And point out factual discrepancies: Trump said “A” on Monday, and “B” on Tuesday, and those statements directly contradict each other. But then leave it to Bobo and Collins and Blow and Modo and Krugman and the rest of them to pick those facts apart and examine them. When I read the front page of the NYT, I want to feel confident that the facts are as accurate as possible (and that if there are errors or omissions, there will be a correction).

  37. 37.

    Jack Canuck

    @Major Major Major Major: Sounds like a lovely day. I miss Vancouver – lived there for about 14 years in my 20s & 30s, but haven’t been back since 2007 after moving to Melbourne the year before. I’d love to get back for a visit, but I suspect I’d be shocked at how much it’s changed since I lived there. Enjoy your visit! Don’t miss the Museum of Anthropology out at UBC if you can get there – great collection of First Nations stuff.

  38. 38.

    Fair Economist

    @SiubhanDuinne: The point is that since Haberman never reports anything negative about the administration, she’s not “reporting”, she’s being a propagandist. There is a LOT of negative about this administration. She has to be highly selective and biased to keep it out.

  39. 39.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Gin & Tonic:

    The д he uses as a substitute for “a” is the same phoneme as the Latin letter “d” – it’s not an “a”.

    Like using Sigma as a substitute for E.

    MY BIG FAT GRΣΣΚ WΣDDING

    Makes me crazy.

  44. 44.

    Another Scott

    TheHill:

    Two fatal crashes involving Navy vessels in recent months came after years of warnings from congressional investigators and military officials about overworked crew and shorter training schedules, according to a new report.

    The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that sailors often arrive at their assigned ships without adequate training and are often overworked by an average of almost 30 hours a week.

    A May report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that sailors often are forced to train newer members while on-the-job, which cuts into personal and other work hours.

    “Experienced sailors routinely provide on-the-job training for less experienced sailors, so the time doing this must come out of sleep, personal time, or other allotted work time,” according to the May 2017 GAO report.

    Two guided missile destroyers, the USS John McCain and the USS Fitzgerald, collided with other vessels in recent months. A total of 17 sailors died or went missing from the collisions.

    […]

    Whocouldaknowd??

    I’m sure if everyone claps louder and sings God Bless America louder that everything will be fine. We’re the best and we just need to pull together – nothing else needs to be done.

    We’ll see how great things really are when we go to war with North Korea and Iran and Venezuela and …

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  45. 45.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steve in the ATL:

    uh, I’m pretty sure that you said she was your favorite columnist ever with the exception of the WSJ editorial writers

    Well yeah, of course Nooners is always going to have pride of place in my heart.

  46. 46.

    Quinerly

    Has nothing to do with anything. But this is an open thread….If anyone has an interest in the Navajo, you have to read “The Book of the Navajo.” Written in 1976, last edition 2010. Used on Amazon. Raymond Friday Locke. Absolutely fantastic. I’ve been trying to take a Trump break.

  47. 47.

    tobie

    @lamh36: I think of Habermann as the Rona Barrett of political journalism. She’s a gossip columnist except her beat is not Hollywood but the Hill.

    That said my impression of what she’s trying to do in this tweet is not to rebroadcast the White House spin but to draw attention to how they’re spinning Gorka’s departure.

  50. 50.

    schrodingers_cat

    @SiubhanDuinne: I am not lamh but when she interviews the President, she can ask some tough questions, instead of soft balls that she lobs. A reporter from a high school newspaper would ask tougher questions than Maggie fucking Haberman.

  53. 53.

    Chet Murthy

    @schrodingers_cat: And a reporter who doesn’t interview Dampnut can win a Pulitzer by following the paper trail, putting two and two together, and … well, you know, Farenthold. Haberman just doesn’t wanna -work-, is all. Like Dowd, Judy Miller, Cilizza, and so many others, they’re content to attend the Court of the Tangerine Turd.

  54. 54.

    Raoul

    So, with Kelly whipping some order, what we get is:
    -Transgender Ban implementation language
    -Arpaio pardon
    -“Good luck” to Texas
    in the span of I believe four hours Friday.

    In other words, he’s helping Mussolini get the trains running closer to on-time (yeah, I saw that it apocryphal, so what). A more effective White House is a thing to worry about, even if Kelly and a few key folks may be able to keep the nuclear football farther away from the Outraged Orangutan.

  57. 57.

    Redshift

    @Another Scott: You’d think they’d be using this as an argument for their plan to “rebuild” the military (i.e, bloat the budget even more.)

    Of course, the Republican thing since at least the Reagan era is to spend more on hardware (and defense contractors) and screw service members, but they usually have no problem lying about that.

  60. 60.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @SiubhanDuinne: Yeah, but Haberman was one of the leading “but her emails!” people out there, for which she deserves no quarter.

    Broderism sucks, because it goes out of its way to give the party of racist fucks every possible break, while moaning about Democrats who are not only not doing it too, are actively working against it.

    Hence my nym.

    Wipe them out. All of them.

  61. 61.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @schrodingers_cat: Jesus fucking Christ, I doubt that there is a person commenting on the blog who wants Trump’s White House to be more efficient or effective. There is a difference between noting that someone is being effective and doing a good job and approving of that fact. Rommel was a hell of a general. He also worked for Hitler.

  63. 63.

    Schlemazel

    @Another Scott:
    We are spending hundreds of billions a year on this shit and yet they can’t staff and train adequately? Seems they should be looking at some downsizing

  65. 65.

    Lyrebird

    @Raoul: I’ve seen other comments concerned that if Kelly continues with actual curbing of awfulness, e.g. forcing out another openly-declared Nazi, that it will slow down any progress towards impeachment.

    Doesn’t sound like Mr. Kelly himself is someone to whose defense I want to leap (I think that’s English???), I’m more worried about focusing resistance efforts. I doubt we’ll be able to know what Kelly’s actually doing, good or bad, until we get some criminal convictions of the other members of the maladministration.

    Sentimental fool that I am, I sure hope Kelly (ETA: is indeed) one of the people trying to keep that football very far from White Supremacist Littlegloves…

  66. 66.

    Another Scott

    @Redshift: Yup. Keeping the assembly lines for the fighters and tanks and ships and subs is vital for national security, but having enough human beings to actually run the things, with enough sleep so that they aren’t hallucinating or not seeing floating skyscrapers coming towards them, isn’t important. :-/

    In fact, they need to shrink the number of people in the DoD, because people are too expensive and get in the way of keeping the assembly lines running, you see… :-/

    (sigh)

    Grr…

    To be clear, it’s another (long-running) example of how our rhetoric is about 20 miles ahead of our actual realistic capabilities. If we really want to have a “blue water” Navy that can operate anywhere, then we need to be willing pay for it – and be realistic about how much it costs. (There’s a reason why “Waterworld” was the most expensive movie of its time – everything’s more expensive at sea.) Similarly with the rest of the Services.

    It’s dangerous to put operational demands on equipment and personnel that can’t perform the mission. It’s also dangerous to national security because it makes potential adversaries doubt our willingness and abilities to keep our international commitments.

    Yes, we spend huge amounts of money at the DoD – more than the next 8 nations combined as measured by dollars spent. But we get huge benefits from having a (mostly) peaceful world without major conflicts between large powers. And if we want to keep those benefits we have to be realistic about the costs – or adjust our DoD posture to fit what we’re willing to spend.

    We should also note that as a percentage of GDP we’re 9th at 4.35% (as of 2012).

    To be clear: we spend a mountain of money on defense and a lot of it isn’t spent wisely. We need to spend our defense dollars more sensibly. And we need to spend much more on domestic needs. If the economy were growing the way it should (and would be with sensible national policies), then the DoD budget would be easier to rebalance. Strangling the federal budget is making fixing the DoD a more difficult problem than it should be. And it’s getting our people killed even in the “richest” Department.

    :-(

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  68. 68.

    PPCLI

    @lamh36: even in the linked article, and other NYT articles by her that I’ve read, she insists on calling this trip to his golf course a “working vacation”. It was a vacation. During which Trump was his lazy self. Just because the WH insists on calling it something else doesn’t mean you should parrot their cheap propaganda.

  69. 69.

    Chet Murthy

    @catclub: To which, I think, I (and perhaps others) would respond that she never managed to ferret out of the Hair Club for Men Spokesman, that he’d used his charities in illegal ways, that he’d sexually assaulted women, and the list goes on and on. Instead, those important facts (amongst many others) were dug up by invesgative reporters who could never get an interview with Lord Putinfluffer.

    The position that she’s doing a service with her sycophancy, that perhaps it’s a clever pose, is -also- spin. It’s pernicious, and leads us to believe that cynicism and clientism on the part of reporters is only normal. Journalists have a special place in our constitutional order, and hence, special responsibilities. She (and Cilizza, and Dowd, and Judy Miller, et al) abandon those responsibilities.

  70. 70.

    Bill Arnold

    Since it’s an open thread, an amusing [1] group vivisection of a human-caused-climate-change-denial paper:
    The application of machine learning for evaluating anthropogenic versus natural climate change
    (Paywalled except for figures and abstract; scihub has it fwiw. (Note I have legal access.))
    and
    merciless critique post and comment thread – “Machine unlearning”

    More to the point:
    Global oceanic dead zones persisted for 50,000 years after end-Triassic extinction event
    (paper abstract)
    My reading of the literature (not an expert!) is that we’re headed pretty quickly towards large anoxic oceanic dead zones.

    [1] am very easily amused.

  71. 71.

    Lyrebird

    @Omnes Omnibus: Have you seen this video of Mattis giving some impromptu pep-talk style remarks to active-duty folks in Jordan?

    No idea whether, 15 yrs down the line (FSM willing) I’ll read the books and approve of his policy decisions, but unlike the head of the maladministration, this man is not a Nazi. He’s clearly a human who actually gives a (*&#! about at least some other humans beyond his immediate family.

    Sad that this is the bar to clear; glad I saw the video.

  73. 73.

    Chet Murthy

    @PPCLI: I want to turn the Haberman discussion around. Was Walter Cronkite being a partisan, no longer an objective journalist, when he said the following:

    To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, if unsatisfactory conclusion. […..] But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

    I think he was stating -facts-.

    ETA: And what is the relationship between his comments, and the reality of the time? And can we compare that, with the relationship between what Haberman writes, and today’s reality? Who of the two was -informing- the American public, and who was just confusing them with backroom chatter from the royal court?

  75. 75.

    Another Scott

    @Bill Arnold: Yup. 3 links max (total – including the “reply” link if that’s included). It cramps my style, too. I feel your pain.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  79. 79.

    Fair Economist

    @Lyrebird:

    Doesn’t sound like Mr. Kelly himself is someone to whose defense I want to leap

    English would me “Doesn’t sound like Mr. Kelly is someone whose defense I want to leap to.” Some grammarian (in the 19th century IIRC) wanted to apply Latin grammar to English and a lot of people tried to follow it but it doesn’t make much sense in English.

  81. 81.

    Fair Economist

    @Schlemazel:

    EDIT: the same as the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a TootsiePop

    There must be some profound truth there. Balloon Juice is sweet but sticky? I dunno.

  82. 82.

    Another Scott

    NavyTimes:

    WASHINGTON ― Scores of the Navy’s T-45 trainer jets were unable to evacuate Naval Air Station Kingsville and remain directly in the path of what is projected to be the worst hurricane to hit South Texas in decades.

    On Thursday, NAS Kingsville, which houses 99 of the Navy’s 197 T-45 primary jet trainers, evacuated all airworthy aircraft ― if there was also a qualified pilot to fly.

    But only 28 of Kingsville’s T-45s were determined to be airworthy, or to have a qualified pilot available, in order to evacuate the jets to Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, said spokesman Kevin Clarke.

    The remaining 71 aircraft were put in hangars on base, Clarke said. There they will ride out Harvey’s 90 mph or more winds, any remnants from the anticipated 12-foot storm surge and potentially 35 inches of rain. The storm is expected to make landfall late Friday or early Saturday as a category 3 hurricane.

    Kingsville, unlike nearby Navy flight training base NAS Corpus Christi, is located about 30 miles inland. That distance should give Kingsville’s aircraft and hangars better protection against any storm surge, Clarke said.

    […]

    The Fitzgerald and McCain collisions were just symptoms…

    :-(

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  84. 84.

    Hungry Joe

    Re “working vacation”: J. Edgar Hoover never took a plain ol’ vacation — it was always a “working vacation.” Never mind that most of his time (when he came to California, at least) was spent in ritzy La Jolla bistros and at the track in Del Mar — where, if he didn’t win, his wagers were slipped back to him because, you know, he was J. Edgar — it was always a “working vacation.” One time, on the patio at the La Valencia Hotel, he spotted Raymond Chandler, who lived nearby and like to walk over to the La Valencia to knock back a few. Hoover sent a waiter over to invite him for a drink. Chandler told the waiter to tell Hoover to go to hell. The FBI opened a file on him.

  85. 85.

    Another Scott

    @Omnes Omnibus: I don’t know all the details, obviously, but it seems clear to me that it’s not just a “leadership” or “training” issue. 15+ years of wars with no end in sight, and lack of seriousness about the actual costs in people and dollars for those trying to do the jobs they’ve been given, is a huge problem for our military.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  87. 87.

    Mike J

    “This is why Gale Force Esports is one of the number one teams in Rocket League today.”

    After I bet all that money on Ambition.

  88. 88.

    Jack Canuck

    @Major Major Major Major: It is a way out, yes. There are buses right out to UBC – cheap but slow. Cab’s of course would cost a lot more, but be quicker. Depends on how you want to spend your time I suppose. Definitely worth seeing though.

  89. 89.

    catclub

    @Another Scott:

    We should also note that as a percentage of GDP [spent on the military] we’re 9th at 4.35% (as of 2012).

    we should also note that the closest large nation is Russia at 3.6?% of a much smaller GDP. All the rest of Western Europe and large Asian nations are even lower in % of GDP.

  91. 91.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Jack Canuck: Thanks for getting back to me :) (cc @Omnes Omnibus)

    Yeah, the buses look to be about an hour. Cab is in the $30 range, which is pretty pricy! I mean, I have a book (Secondhand Souls, by Christopher Moore), and the cab says it’s like 20 minutes anyway to a bus’s hour and $2.50. Plus I hear the campus is worth seeing. Worst case scenario, I miss out on brunch, which, I mean, whatever.

  93. 93.

    Mike in NC

    @efgoldman: My ship deployed to the Persian Gulf in 1984 and I regularly was working or on watch for an average of maybe 16 hours a day. Some things just seem to never change despite advances in technology.

  95. 95.

    Another Scott

    @Omnes Omnibus: No.

    I need to work on my posting here, I think. My elaboration on points of agreement too often seems like accusations…

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  98. 98.

    J R in WV

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:

    I like Jennifer’s ideas. I wonder if there’s a newsletter that I could subscribe to in order to get more of her thinking. I knew some divers while in the USN, long, long ago. She doesn’t seem to hold back much, does she? Thanks for sharing her with us!

  99. 99.

    Davebo

    Poor Seb. The benefits suck at Brietbum but he will still be able to pony on to his wives bennies for a week or so.

    Then, it’s Obamacare! The Horror!

  101. 101.

    akryan

    “after offering to fall on a literal one,”. Seriously? Is he saying that he was willing to commit suicide? Fucking freak.

  102. 102.

    Anne Laurie

    @akryan:

    “after offering to fall on a literal one,”. Seriously? Is he saying that he was willing to commit suicide? Fucking freak.

    No, sorry, that’s a parody tweet (Gorka does collect swords/knives & does bloviate in Victorian phraseology).

  103. 103.

    Brachiator

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Adam has talked about how the army is at its limits. The navy seems to be operating beyond its limits.

    Although it’s obviously Trump’s responsibility to address these issues, I would think that these problems have been building for some time. I wonder whether anyone brought problems up during the Obama administration, or hell, even the Bush administration.

    Would admirals and generals downplay problems so that the president and Congress can keep the portion of the budget going to the military within agreed limits?

    What other issues besides maybe a lack of money (for staffing and training) could be at play?

    .

  104. 104.

    low-tech cyclist

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Broderism sucks, because it goes out of its way to give the party of racist fucks every possible break, while moaning about Democrats who are not only not doing it too, are actively working against it.

    Hence my nym.

    Speaking of which, when are they going to whine about Trump, “He trashed this place, and it wasn’t his place,” the way they did about Bill Clinton? Shoulda happened months ago, if they had any evenhandedness at all.

  107. 107.

    J R in WV

    Shouldn’t Herr “Doktor” “Professor” Gorkkka’s last name be spelled with three Ks???

    Just as a matter of approved style for Nazis?

    Asking for a “friend!”

  108. 108.

    J R in WV

    @Brachiator:

    What other issues besides maybe a lack of money (for staffing and training) could be at play?

    Well, for example, attempting to design systems to minimize human interaction might well cause failure of that system for lack of actual real intelligence applied at the most appropriate moment, as in before collision/grounding become inevitable.

    Keeping military staff enlisted for long enough to develop expertise during a 15+ year war we show no signs of being able to end with victory is a strategic failure leading to a personnel crisis. With fewer senior enlisted staff able to share lessons learned through harsh experience, as opposed to computerized course-ware, junior staff won’t even have the chance to learn highly skilled tasks, such as using binoculars as a lookout during night cruising watching for other ships cruising nearby.

    If a lookout sights another ship or object, and the bearing (direction to) of that sighting remains constant over time, your ship is on a collision course with that other object. Action must be planned at least, and implemented at the proper time, to avoid a catastrophe. No computers or radar are necessary for this task except in a situation of low visibility, which was not the case in the Fitzgerald.

    There are so many tasks like this, that require humans to perform and to teach. Fire fighting on board ships is a critical skill necessary to survive, and not just in combat. Ships are a hostile environment and fire is a constant danger. I learned to fight fire by actually fighting fires in controlled training environment.

    Damage control as in de-watering and patching holes in the hull is a hands-on task best taught by senior staff (CPOs) who have actually done it. It cannot be automated as the environment is too random, chaotic in fact. Very difficult for skilled humans to carry out in the dark with injured personnel, bent metal hull shapes, gushing seawater, fuel leaks, etc. And this description doesn’t address combat, it speaks to common peacetime hazards like running into something.

    By building in a predisposition to shower monies on military contractors to every planning environment, the planning is distorted in a seriously negative manner. And those monies are not available for staffing by members of the military, for promised benefits to service members or their families.

    Continuous warfare AND a hostile personnel environment does not enhance the odds of a service member deciding to re-up for a career in the military. Those service members leave after their “volunteer” hitch, have just almost learned enough to be nearing expert in their MOS, just approaching the ability to train newer members of their unit. WASF because the service members are being screwed.

    My nephew signed a contract with the USN after graduating from college with a dual major in math and physics. I doubt he has learned yet that his “contract” is really only binding on him, and doesn’t obligate the Navy in any serious way. There is always “needs of the service” out in that contract somewhere.

    That six year enlistment? Optional for the military in all cases. Especially during a war, which is forever now. I didn’t attempt to educate my nephew, as my RWNJ brother has spent 20+ years indoctrinating his sons regarding the military (where he never served!) and my instability as a liberal hippie… wishing him the best of luck, but it is a world of continuous warfare.

  109. 109.

    Brachiator

    @J R in WV: If the thread is not totally dead, thanks much.

    I also appreciate the bit about your brother, who has opinions without actual military experience.

    There is, I think, a brilliant book about British naval history, Command of the Ocean, which deals not just with battles, but with issues of operations, staffing, training, etc. Similar issues in the Age of Sail as you note now.

  110. 110.

    mere mortal

    “Gorka had run afoul of many of his colleagues”

    Gorka had run afowl of many of his colleagues.

    FTFY, in appreciation of the post’s title.

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