Speaker 1: And welcome on board everybody to another edition of mid Rats.
Speaker 1: I appreciate y'all taking time to join us today, and
Speaker 1: we already have a cabal of folks who are joining
Speaker 1: us live. I'd like to extend the invitation. If you
Speaker 1: are so inclined, Kent's already done it, go ahead and
Speaker 1: roll into the chat room in the course of today's show.
Speaker 1: This is a maritime melee show, which means we have
Speaker 1: our list of things we want to talk about, but
Speaker 1: we're always interested in what you have as well, So
Speaker 1: in the chat room is a great place for you
Speaker 1: to go ahead and put those comments in there. Also
Speaker 1: want to make the altar call. If you don't already,
Speaker 1: go over to iTunes, Spotify, spreaker, wherever you get your
Speaker 1: podcasts aggregated, find mid Rats and go ahead and subscribe
Speaker 1: that way. If you can't join us live, we'll always
Speaker 1: be ready for you when your schedule so allows. And
Speaker 1: after a couple of weeks break Mark and I were
Speaker 1: back and I just wanted to kick it off because
Speaker 1: this is the day before the eleventh day of the
Speaker 1: eleventh month that we call Veterans Day, so on behalf
Speaker 1: of the two veterans who do this little podcast and
Speaker 1: for all of our buddies who are out there as well,
Speaker 1: a happy Veterans Day. And also I do this on
Speaker 1: a not irregular basis. And I don't know why, Maybe
Speaker 1: it's my anglophilia, but I've always liked the way that
Speaker 1: the Commonwealth Nations, led by the mother country, Great Britain,
Speaker 1: how they do Remembrance Day. It's a much more sober,
Speaker 1: a much more serious, more different theme too. It's more
Speaker 1: in line with the American Memorial Day, except again it's
Speaker 1: a much more somber and serious organization and not an
Speaker 1: excuse to go to the beach and go off this summer.
Speaker 1: So for all my all our friends in the anglosphere
Speaker 1: wearing their red poppies, I hope you have a good
Speaker 1: Remembrance Day. Besides that, hey, we all survived the election
Speaker 1: here on the Eastern Seaboard, didn't we mark.
Speaker 2: Yes, we did. And by the way, as long as
Speaker 2: we're congratulating view, we got to congratulate to US Marine
Speaker 2: Corps on their ten millionth birthday whatever it is. Anyway,
Speaker 2: a lot of good people marines and they deserve to
Speaker 2: enjoy a birthday celebration.
Speaker 1: I don't know is that is that who or yut
Speaker 1: or what is that?
Speaker 2: For the Marines.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's always a great way to get him started.
Speaker 2: I speak, I speak limited marine. Well, buy him a
Speaker 2: whole in your box of crayons the next time we
Speaker 2: wait takes some mount.
Speaker 1: For dinner work. Yeah, I can't survive their physical training
Speaker 1: requirements anyway, so I'm just always nice of the Marines.
Speaker 1: They're good in a bar fight.
Speaker 2: By the way, I should tell you that listeners that
Speaker 2: Sally is having some technical difficulties with his as usual
Speaker 2: with his not so if he just leaves, If he
Speaker 2: just leaves, you'll hear me tab dancing. Well, I don't
Speaker 2: worry when.
Speaker 1: Yep I popped out for a second. Apologies to the listeners.
Speaker 1: I've i've, i've reset circuit breakers, did the atheon reset
Speaker 1: and my whole it spectrum, but for some reason it
Speaker 1: keeps popping out for a few seconds of time. So
Speaker 1: hopefully that doesn't bother many folks today. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think one of the things we were going to
Speaker 2: discuss is the effect of the of the election. And
Speaker 2: you know, of course, we don't know yet who these
Speaker 2: secretary of Defense will be uh or who and what
Speaker 2: the fallout is going to be from the the on
Speaker 2: the Department of the Navy and the other service branches.
Speaker 2: But in this last iteration, President Trump was indicated a
Speaker 2: lot of pro Navy stuff, and I hope we get
Speaker 2: a Navy person in there as a Secretary of Defense
Speaker 2: after a long stint of Army people running the show. So,
Speaker 2: you know, we need to talk about a lot of things.
Speaker 2: But one of the things I wanted to bring up
Speaker 2: is the first. The first thing is not to make
Speaker 2: any serious blood and to not show yourself in the
Speaker 2: foot with the decisions you make. And that includes, in
Speaker 2: my mind right now, things not undoing some damages that
Speaker 2: we've chosen to do to ourselves, which includes the theoretical
Speaker 2: closing of the Red Hill Orange Oil Storage Facility fuel
Speaker 2: storage facility in Hawaii, and I would highly recommend that
Speaker 2: they not do that because that is vital to our
Speaker 2: efforts in the Western Pacific to have a source closer
Speaker 2: than the continent of the United States for arche amounts
Speaker 2: of fuel. And I think that it hasn't whatever they're
Speaker 2: doing to decommission, it has not gone far enough that
Speaker 2: they can't be undone and at least keep it undone.
Speaker 2: The closure undone until we get an adequate replacement that
Speaker 2: has a similar, if not greater capacity, because it's absolutely
Speaker 2: vital to our national security.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's one of those things that it for
Speaker 1: those that know, they know that it's much more port
Speaker 1: and the intention it's getting and whether you're looking at
Speaker 1: on the edge of living memory. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know how many volumes of books have been written about
Speaker 1: the failure of the Japanese to hit our fuel storage
Speaker 1: in Hawaii. You know, they never did their third wave,
Speaker 1: which they should have done. That really gave us the
Speaker 1: ability to kick things off in the Pacific War. And
Speaker 1: also there's a reason why the Ukrainians are attacking the
Speaker 1: Russian fuel infrastructure here. You can't fight without fuel, and
Speaker 1: there's nothing out there that can replace what's happening in
Speaker 1: Red Hills and Red Hills was a failure of leadership, management, inspections,
Speaker 1: all the usual problems. Anybody that's lived in Hawaii knows
Speaker 1: what that's like. That that should not be a reason
Speaker 1: why we should put our nation at strategic risk. We
Speaker 1: can clean it up and do it right. Nothing they
Speaker 1: can replace it right now. We just need to just
Speaker 1: do what needs to be done. Let the usual suspects
Speaker 1: in Hawaii. I yell, all they want to but you
Speaker 1: gotta do what you gotta do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a really good GEO report where I'm going
Speaker 2: to link to in the chat room on Redhill, and
Speaker 2: what you one of the main things you're going to
Speaker 2: get if you look at that is that there was
Speaker 2: the chain of command for that facility was way too complicated.
Speaker 2: You know, most of the times you you have a facility,
Speaker 2: you want one one group in charge, one person you
Speaker 2: can run of the whole show. And that really isn't
Speaker 2: the way it worked. And they were using contractors, and
Speaker 2: the contractors screwed up, and you know, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of there's a lot of blame to go around, but
Speaker 2: it isn't it isn't necessary to point fingers at this point.
Speaker 2: It's necessary to keep the thing alive until we find
Speaker 2: a way to replace it and if we're going to
Speaker 2: replace it, and one of the other things, you know,
Speaker 2: as as long as I'm on the theme of let's
Speaker 2: not shoot ourselves in the foot, I saw the other
Speaker 2: day that a discussion about not putting some of the
Speaker 2: anti ballistic and other defenses on Guam because we seem
Speaker 2: to have some kind of budget issues. Well, you know,
Speaker 2: I think that GWAM is a pretty important place in
Speaker 2: the scheme of things for the defense of the western
Speaker 2: of our Western Pacific friends and our own asset am
Speaker 2: a GWAM that the trust territory is the Pacific. There
Speaker 2: are a lot of American citizens out there who who
Speaker 2: deserve to be protected, and to do it to deny
Speaker 2: them that protection because we spent a lot of money
Speaker 2: on and you can you can name your wherever you
Speaker 2: think miss the current administration has sent money they shouldn't have.
Speaker 2: You know that that is not a good reason to
Speaker 2: to not fully fund the effort to protect that that island,
Speaker 2: which is vital to our national security. And and as
Speaker 2: longer on that line, I mean as we need to
Speaker 2: really take a hard look at to spit at reopening
Speaker 2: a lot of the facilities we had available to eas
Speaker 2: during World War Two. And we'll talk about that a
Speaker 2: little later, but you know, we need to relook at
Speaker 2: what we're doing on the on the whole the Alaskan
Speaker 2: Aleutian Island chain, and we need to look at the
Speaker 2: you know, places like mid Midway and Wake and Johnson,
Speaker 2: the toll and and a lot of these other places
Speaker 2: that we used to used to have as seaplane bases
Speaker 2: and other things that see see what would be useful
Speaker 2: in today's modern with today's modern technology in the world.
Speaker 1: And that was one of the great things to see
Speaker 1: earlier this year is they're reclaiming the airfield tenion just
Speaker 1: you know, right along the lines of what you mentioned there,
Speaker 1: which is exactly what we we need to do. Also,
Speaker 1: I put in the in the show chat a link
Speaker 1: to a substack of mind from the fourth where I
Speaker 1: addressed the anti ballistic missile problem and a few options
Speaker 1: out there about GUAM. It's a serious issue and it's
Speaker 1: not being addressed in the serious manner. And one thing
Speaker 1: that I worry about is analysis paralysis. We need to
Speaker 1: not We don't have the luxury of saying we'll make
Speaker 1: a decision in physical year twenty thirty and we'll start
Speaker 1: doing something in fyscal year thirty, you know, twenty thirty
Speaker 1: two now, where we've wasted too much time doing things
Speaker 1: like that. We just need to take action, and you've
Speaker 1: outlined a few that are right there. We have CBS
Speaker 1: for a reason, and it's time to move forward and
Speaker 1: to take action. One thing for this election. That's going
Speaker 1: to be interesting. We're already starting to see some of
Speaker 1: the players that may be coming in to the new
Speaker 1: Trump administration because people are policy. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I saw there are people who are having their
Speaker 1: profile raised significantly. Earlier this year, we had Bridge Coleby
Speaker 1: on here at mid Rats and he's grown up to
Speaker 1: the big leagues. He just did an over hour long
Speaker 1: interview with Tucker Carlson, who has the ear of the
Speaker 1: senior leaders in this administration. Bridge, I would encourage and
Speaker 1: I'll put a link on the show page for the
Speaker 1: mid Rats we had him on and for the Tucker
Speaker 1: interview he recently did. I caught bits and pieces of it.
Speaker 1: But you are also seeing other serious people that are
Speaker 1: going to make some changes in these bold faced areas
Speaker 1: from what we've seen in the last few years. You know,
Speaker 1: we're talking Israel, Ukraine, NATO, China, what's happening in the
Speaker 1: Red Sea. As as people come on board, you're going
Speaker 1: to see who's going to be advising the president, and
Speaker 1: you'll be able to find a paper trail on that.
Speaker 1: But what I didn't expect to see. I don't know
Speaker 1: whether you had a chance to look at it. Yet
Speaker 1: and I'll post posting the chat and on the show
Speaker 1: page as well. His President Trump had some very interesting
Speaker 1: ideas about what he wanted to do, which you know
Speaker 1: is killing hundreds of thousands of American citizens, and that's
Speaker 1: the drug cartels in northern Mexico. I got some of
Speaker 1: the quotes from the video was and this was President Trump,
Speaker 1: time for America to wage war on the cartels. It
Speaker 1: will be the policy of the United States to take
Speaker 1: on the cartels just like we took down isis a
Speaker 1: full naval blockade of the cartel, special Forces cyber war
Speaker 1: and defining them as a foreign terrorist organization. And the
Speaker 1: lawyers in the group, you'all can start pulling us code
Speaker 1: empty squad that are triggered by those types of words.
Speaker 1: That's something close to home that will be very interest
Speaker 1: team to watch flesh out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I did see that, and I think it's, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a huge challenge there because it's we
Speaker 2: also have to make keep peace with Mexico. Not that
Speaker 2: they post much of themselves, post much of a threat
Speaker 2: to us, but they are they are have been over
Speaker 2: the years of fairly good neighbor. It's you know, they're
Speaker 2: just they're just unable to control what's going on. And
Speaker 2: when your cartels are more powerful than your police and
Speaker 2: uh and armed forces, you've got some real issues. And
Speaker 2: there's so much money in the cartels and I don't know,
Speaker 2: you know where we're going to put a naval blockade
Speaker 2: on them unless we're going I thought we were doing
Speaker 2: a pretty good job of catching some of the stuff
Speaker 2: coming up from from South America. But you know, I
Speaker 2: know a lot of people. I used to work with
Speaker 2: a lot of the Customs guys both to the you know,
Speaker 2: their air their there U S Customs had an air
Speaker 2: force made up of I guess retired Navy P threes
Speaker 2: and some other aircraft. But uh, you know that that's
Speaker 2: a that's an interesting group of people, and they did
Speaker 2: a great job trump you know. But it's just as
Speaker 2: long as a demand, it's not just a matter of
Speaker 2: going after the cartels. We've got to cut down on
Speaker 2: the demand. And you know, it's our friends in China
Speaker 2: who are shipping all this fentanyl for here, so you
Speaker 2: know that isn't That's another thing is we've got to
Speaker 2: stop the flow of stuff from China. And it's you know,
Speaker 2: you've seen all the zombies on this on the streets
Speaker 2: of various big cities and small towns for that matter.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just it's just a problem that really
Speaker 2: really needs to be attacked. And you know, if it's
Speaker 2: if it's a we've had the war on drugs before,
Speaker 2: I think the war on cartels, the war on on
Speaker 2: this particular Chinese effort perhaps, you know, I think it's
Speaker 2: intentional to weaken the United States. So, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: very hopeful that that somebody is going to run that
Speaker 2: program that is got the the nerve to pursue it vigorously.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Chris, Chris Chappie, who does a YouTube channel for
Speaker 1: Task and Purpose, And I'll link this on the show
Speaker 1: page later as well. I was about to look it
Speaker 1: up right now, but get distracted. We need to focus
Speaker 1: on our conversation. He had a video that came out
Speaker 1: about the same time the President Trump made his comments
Speaker 1: about the cartel. Where As Chris does he's got a
Speaker 1: great team working for him. I assume he has a
Speaker 1: team working for him. Either that or he's really good
Speaker 1: at your research. But there is there's a war going
Speaker 1: on right now, a civil war inside the Cineela pronouncing
Speaker 1: that correctly cartel that the Mexican military, which is really
Speaker 1: the only uncorruptible force they have in Mexico, are are
Speaker 1: going in and doing what looks like if you've seen
Speaker 1: video of Fallujah, that's what's happening in city of a
Speaker 1: million in Mexico right now. It's not getting much play
Speaker 1: here north of the border. I know the new president Steinbaum,
Speaker 1: whatever her name is in Mexico doesn't give the appearance
Speaker 1: to somebody who's all that pro American, But there might
Speaker 1: be a convergence of interests here. If the Mexican government
Speaker 1: is already doing Flujah type operations in their own cities
Speaker 1: against the cartels, that it might actually be a good
Speaker 1: time that we can work together, especially with the intel
Speaker 1: assets that we have in place, because if you're still
Speaker 1: in protecting the American people, we already have people being
Speaker 1: killed by the tens of thousands and the and I
Speaker 1: think everybody here has either in their family or in
Speaker 1: their friend's family somebody that has been affected by what
Speaker 1: Fitanol has done in the last decade to people. So
Speaker 1: it's there's a lot of danger there because we've all
Speaker 1: been part of, you know, the mowing the ocean and
Speaker 1: the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific. That I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: it's futile, but it's got limited benefit that there are
Speaker 1: other ways that you can interdict at the source the
Speaker 1: actual production of these incredibly nightmare drugs. This is a
Speaker 1: long time from Jimmy Buffett's pirate running grass and an
Speaker 1: old shrimp boat. Are you know? Cocaine cowboys dropping kilos
Speaker 1: out of the window, driving flying over Texas. This is
Speaker 1: a whole different ballgame, and it also flows together really well.
Speaker 1: There's been a really good reporting on this. If you've
Speaker 1: seen it the last four years, the huge influx of
Speaker 1: illegal immigrants into the United States. They're not coming there
Speaker 1: on their own. The cartels own the northern part of Mexico.
Speaker 1: They're paying money to the cartels. They've made billions and
Speaker 1: billions of dollars off of that. So by securing our
Speaker 1: southern border at last and cutting off that business of
Speaker 1: smuggling people across the border in the in the millions,
Speaker 1: that also will constrict one of the income sources from
Speaker 1: the cartel. And for those parts of the border that
Speaker 1: aren't yet secure of what they've been able to do
Speaker 1: is you overload the border patrol with ten thousand people
Speaker 1: coming through Eagle Pass, Texas, and then you can run
Speaker 1: your fittinol forty miles to the west through the desert
Speaker 1: and nobody's going to catch them. So there's some synergy
Speaker 1: there of a few policies that can be changed that
Speaker 1: really could make some address to address the issues. And
Speaker 1: it really is a national security issue. It's more than
Speaker 1: just just drug control. It's it's a cancer on our
Speaker 1: larger society. And if we can control the supply coming in,
Speaker 1: then some smarter people will have to work on why
Speaker 1: there's such a demand for it inside the US.
Speaker 2: Yeah, President Shinebaum, I think it is the coach, you know.
Speaker 2: She She has had at least one call with President
Speaker 2: to elect Trump and apparently it was cordial. So we'll
Speaker 2: see how this goes. But you know, the first problem
Speaker 2: Mexico has is admitting they have a problem. Could use
Speaker 2: some help. And you know, any a joint task force
Speaker 2: be uh combined, combined to ask words right would be
Speaker 2: would be a good idea. If we're gonna uh, it
Speaker 2: would be better to be invited than to then to
Speaker 2: bloods in our way and.
Speaker 1: In military to military would be a good way to
Speaker 1: approach it because One of the things that Chris Chiappie
Speaker 1: outlines in his video is when the Mexican military, which
Speaker 1: is the use they use naval, infantry and marines as well,
Speaker 1: it's not just the army. When they go in, one
Speaker 1: of the first things they do is they surround the
Speaker 1: local police headquarters and disarm the police because the civilian
Speaker 1: police are so corrupt that they can't be trusted. People
Speaker 1: talk about interagency law enforcement, Okay, you're going to have
Speaker 1: a bunch of FBI and Border Control people talking to
Speaker 1: civilian police people south of the border. To me, that's
Speaker 1: just an invitation for intel leakage and all sorts of problems.
Speaker 1: If we can find a way to have it military
Speaker 1: to military, there's more of a chance to you having
Speaker 1: some security on what actions you're going to be taking.
Speaker 1: But people know that there's not You're not having a
Speaker 1: bunch of people who have Age of Aquarius views of
Speaker 1: human nature that are going to be coming in the
Speaker 1: Trump administration. I don't think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, again, it's gonna really depend on I mean, the
Speaker 2: Secretary whoever the new Secretary of State's going to be
Speaker 2: and the new Secretary of Defense are gonna have some
Speaker 2: they're gonna have their work cut out for him, because
Speaker 2: in the way things work, especially if you if if
Speaker 2: President elect follows up on his promise to get rid
Speaker 2: of a lot of the the folks in the swamp,
Speaker 2: so called swamp, then you know they're gonna have to
Speaker 2: They're gonna have an uphill fight against a lot of resistance.
Speaker 2: And that meeting that was reported where somebody was, you know,
Speaker 2: what do we do if he I'm not sure what
Speaker 2: in the content that you know, we never know because
Speaker 2: not sitting in the meeting, but apparently the context was
Speaker 2: what do we do if he decides the US US
Speaker 2: military to help round up the illegal immigrants and ship
Speaker 2: them out? And you know that that whole meeting of
Speaker 2: senior people, I assume pretty disturbing and it bodes not
Speaker 2: well for a smooth implementation of policies that the President
Speaker 2: electors said he would like to see in place.
Speaker 1: If that's going to be I think a defining point
Speaker 1: in the first year of the administration. I pointed out
Speaker 1: earlier this week that in a fifty to fifty nation,
Speaker 1: you would hope that the people who populate our bureaucracy
Speaker 1: for our government for all the people would roughly represent
Speaker 1: the people within a couple of standard deviations. So you
Speaker 1: would hope that the voters in Maryland, Northern Virginia, and
Speaker 1: Washington d C. They don't have to be, you know,
Speaker 1: fifty to fifty when they vote, but sixty forty would
Speaker 1: be fine. You know, sixty five something like that would
Speaker 1: would be okay. But when you look at at the
Speaker 1: election results in Washington, d C. I'm maybe off a
Speaker 1: percentage point or two, but it doesn't matter ninety three
Speaker 1: percent for President Biden, whether you are pro Biden or
Speaker 1: pro Trump or if those numbers will switched around. That's
Speaker 1: not healthy. So when you have that much of a
Speaker 1: hyperpartisan environment where you have a lot of people who
Speaker 1: they're not used to being around people who have different
Speaker 1: policy positions than they do, they can react in unhelpful
Speaker 1: manners kind of what that report has where they're getting together.
Speaker 1: I mentioned a few times I live in a metropolitan
Speaker 1: area of a million people. It voted for President Trump
Speaker 1: by a point and a half. In twenty sixteen, it
Speaker 1: voted for President Biden by I think three points and
Speaker 1: twenty twenty and the twenty twenty four election they voted
Speaker 1: for Trump again by about a one point seven points.
Speaker 1: It's a fifty to fifty metropolitan area. Everybody gets along here.
Speaker 1: There are no riots, there are no threats. Everything's fine.
Speaker 1: Everybody gets along here because you're you drive down a street,
Speaker 1: you see Abiden, a Trump, Abiden, a Trump, abiden a
Speaker 1: Trump sign, and that's just how folks live. I think
Speaker 1: that that makes for a healthy environment. That's not healthy
Speaker 1: in Washington, DC when you have ninety three percent all
Speaker 1: for one political party. We see that manifested in some
Speaker 1: of the trials and the jury selections and things like that.
Speaker 1: But how they address those people in the bureaucracy that
Speaker 1: are not willing to do their job still because they're
Speaker 1: hyper political. There's going to have to be accountability. There's
Speaker 1: going to be some person health action. There has to be,
Speaker 1: and you have to make examples of people. If I
Speaker 1: don't care what your personal politics are, If you have
Speaker 1: a legal order, you execute it. You and I both
Speaker 1: have have served under different political administrations, and I've been
Speaker 1: given orders by Republicans and Democrats, some of which I didn't.
Speaker 2: Beginning to get a little fuzzy on your sound, so
Speaker 2: over the yeah, I think I think you're right. I mean,
Speaker 2: it is astonishing when you saw those things and I
Speaker 2: came remember it was ninety three or ninety seven percent,
Speaker 2: whatever it was. It was one of those stunny fears.
Speaker 2: I live in a state capital, and you know, it's
Speaker 2: it's like every other large fairly large city with the
Speaker 2: politicians in it, you know, it was it was probably
Speaker 2: sixty five thirty five Democrat in this in this particular area,
Speaker 2: while the rest of the state, except for the other
Speaker 2: art for all art metropolitan areas, is quite red. So
Speaker 2: you know, the reds, the Reds prevailed, but you know,
Speaker 2: you still got the challenge in the state House and
Speaker 2: the legislature is Republican, but the but the some of
Speaker 2: the Council of State is not. So you know, maybe
Speaker 2: that's the way it should be, that it's a more
Speaker 2: balanced system where you've got a different groups representing different interests.
Speaker 2: So they have to they if they're going to achieve anything,
Speaker 2: they have to kind of compromise a little bit to
Speaker 2: move things forward. But you know, and I just there
Speaker 2: was a lot of there were a lot of discussion
Speaker 2: at one point on where it went or how you
Speaker 2: would do it, about not letting I mean making d
Speaker 2: C much smaller and and putting the residential areas of
Speaker 2: d c UH into the states surrounding them, rather than
Speaker 2: having and and then not having anybody be able to
Speaker 2: live in the district of Columbia itself, so that the
Speaker 2: people would be wouldn't be quite as one sided as
Speaker 2: it seems to be right now. I don't know how
Speaker 2: you would do that where we go, but it's an
Speaker 2: interesting thought, one of those things where you go, well,
Speaker 2: it's you know, if it's that biased, what is how
Speaker 2: is this going to work exactly?
Speaker 1: I've also been interested to see how the inauguration hasn't
Speaker 1: even taken place yet, but we've already seen on the
Speaker 1: international stage some preliminary movements, Cutter told Hamas, but we'll
Speaker 1: have to actually see if it takes place. Told them
Speaker 1: that they need to go find and do home, which
Speaker 1: would be nice to see. And the European Union, I
Speaker 1: believe it or not, is still getting a lot of
Speaker 1: their hydrocarbons looquified natural gas from Russia. Realizes that now
Speaker 1: they have a hydrocarb and friendly administration on the way
Speaker 1: that maybe they can make nice with the US by
Speaker 1: buying r LNG. I think at least our audience we
Speaker 1: would just be happy if the rest of the Alliance
Speaker 1: would spend the bare bare minimum of two percent of
Speaker 1: their GDP on communal defense as opposed to buying our LNG.
Speaker 1: But it's it's interesting when things that you would hope
Speaker 1: that nations would do on their own, they don't do
Speaker 1: it unless they feel like Uncle Sam is going to
Speaker 1: have a slightly different attitude in seventy days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we've seen a number of examples of that,
Speaker 2: and we've seen number of examples that internally in the
Speaker 2: US two where suddenly steps have been taken that would
Speaker 2: be like cutting off I think was in New York
Speaker 2: City right, that they cut off or shortly will cut
Speaker 2: off some of the benefits that the immigrants that they're
Speaker 2: now housing in hotels and stuff or you know, are getting.
Speaker 2: You know that, and that really you don't have to
Speaker 2: round people up to send them out. You do need
Speaker 2: to cut them off from all the benefits and then
Speaker 2: suggest that if they want, believe will provide some kind
Speaker 2: of transportation for him out of the country to someplace else.
Speaker 2: But you know, I don't I just so many. I
Speaker 2: think I think the the a lot of the people
Speaker 2: in the in the media things didn't understand how mad
Speaker 2: people got about about programs that were obviously incentivizing people
Speaker 2: to be in the in the country illegally, and and
Speaker 2: and other programs like the student loan waivers for people
Speaker 2: you know who who's gonna if if they don't That's
Speaker 2: another one was thinking of, if if they don't want
Speaker 2: to pay their own student loans, why should Joe the plumber,
Speaker 2: of course, who now probably makes more than they will
Speaker 2: ever make in their life lives anyway, But or you know,
Speaker 2: the the the guy who's changing your royal down at
Speaker 2: Bolina where we get your royal at Tangent, why why
Speaker 2: should he or she be paying for their paying off
Speaker 2: their student loans because they were They didn't encoura any
Speaker 2: of those things. I just you know, I think a
Speaker 2: lot of that kind of just got overlooked by by
Speaker 2: people on the on the side that lost this last election.
Speaker 2: And I think that's one of the one of those
Speaker 2: other issues. If if you don't cancel this, if you
Speaker 2: cancel the student loan grace that mister Biden was supposed
Speaker 2: to I was trying to invoke. You know, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of money there is like a you know, not
Speaker 2: all of them. Remember it's exactly a tree, But a
Speaker 2: whole lot of money can be used for for other
Speaker 2: things that I'm for the American taxpayer, or you know, God,
Speaker 2: we could pay off the national debt, which has been
Speaker 2: wrung up pretty pretty highly, which is why we can't
Speaker 2: have some of the nice things. But you know that
Speaker 2: all that as is, I mean, that is politics, and
Speaker 2: that's going to be addressed. I assume the other things
Speaker 2: you and I talk about are the are the defense issues?
Speaker 2: You know, do we are we going to get tenders
Speaker 2: for the ships that we're going to have to deploy?
Speaker 2: Are we going to be able to to you know,
Speaker 2: we're looking at I put up a video the other
Speaker 2: day of the imar's reloading process and it's really quick,
Speaker 2: it is, And I'm thinking, why did the Navy not
Speaker 2: think that they ever had to reload those those vertical
Speaker 2: launch cells on their on their destroyers and cruisers, And
Speaker 2: and I think long before now. I mean, I know
Speaker 2: that we've got some system that seems to be pretty
Speaker 2: slow in and of itself, but at least there is
Speaker 2: a system coming that may help us solve that problem.
Speaker 2: But I just am baffled by the by the thinking
Speaker 2: that went into that lack of planning for re arming
Speaker 2: those those ships, you know, especially for the vertical launcher.
Speaker 2: So you know, that's why I would say, let's put
Speaker 2: Hi Mars in as many things as we can, and
Speaker 2: you know, let the Marines play with them. And we've
Speaker 2: already done this. They put them on EPFs, they put
Speaker 2: them on amphibs. They can shoot. They they have pretty
Speaker 2: good accuracy, you know, seventy seventy nautical miles or so.
Speaker 2: I don't remember their new ragne, but you know, there's
Speaker 2: no reason not to do that. Let's let's the Marines
Speaker 2: want to go play in the weeds and and be
Speaker 2: running around the jungle and be very active in uh
Speaker 2: in in uh In, being mobile and vicious, and they
Speaker 2: need the weapons to do it. So let's let's load
Speaker 2: them up with high mars. And the army is doing
Speaker 2: the same thing that they've adopted the s M six
Speaker 2: and the Tomahawk for land based anti ship programs. And
Speaker 2: that's an old mission for the army. I mean, they
Speaker 2: were the original coast artillery people. So yeah, let's encourage
Speaker 2: that too. We don't have to we don't always have
Speaker 2: to buy new aircraft carriers and and uh and big
Speaker 2: deck cruisers. If we can if we can spread a
Speaker 2: lot of these weapons system around on smaller units. And
Speaker 2: that's the other thing I would suggest to the new
Speaker 2: administration is that, you know, you let's not get all
Speaker 2: hyper with the big people who want to build more
Speaker 2: more carriers. I mean, I think we need replaced carriers,
Speaker 2: but you know, let's look at small ships with her
Speaker 2: with the systems like arm mars and other things that
Speaker 2: can go fast, can be very mobile, hard to target,
Speaker 2: and yet are very deadly, and let's you know, just
Speaker 2: also drone them all up. Let's get more drones. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's what the cno cur cynos said. Let's you know,
Speaker 2: we're going to have this snazzy high drone filled systems
Speaker 2: out there. Well that's great. You know, now people are
Speaker 2: finding ways to defeat drones. But let's at least give
Speaker 2: ourselves a chance to have these these great big mind
Speaker 2: laying some surface vessels out there and give us this.
Speaker 2: Just keep doing that, Let's keep pursuing that. Let's make
Speaker 2: things hard on the people who want to cause bad
Speaker 2: things to happen.
Speaker 1: And here's here's the thing you're building exactly what you
Speaker 1: talk about. And we've touched on this before, but there's
Speaker 1: a perfect time to weave it back in and what
Speaker 1: you're proposing it doesn't require a new program office. It's
Speaker 1: going to take a decade to do this, And here's
Speaker 1: something for regulars that can go ahead and take a
Speaker 1: nitroglyssin pill on it. I want to praise LCS for
Speaker 1: a second. A tack ems that Hi Mars carry is
Speaker 1: a short range ballistic missile. We are spending gobs of
Speaker 1: money after gobs of money to put conventional prompt strike
Speaker 1: on three DDG one thousand class ships and all these
Speaker 1: other items, and those would be great and wonderful, but
Speaker 1: they're not operational right now, especially the Independence class. LCS
Speaker 1: has a lot of square footage on the back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want some conventional prop strike. Look at the high mars.
Speaker 1: What do you need to spray on it to make
Speaker 1: it salt water robust enough? But there's a great conventional
Speaker 1: prompts strike platform that has some reach. You put high
Speaker 1: mars of a tackles on the back. I don't know
Speaker 1: how many you can. We'd have to get Hippo on
Speaker 1: here to have him make an estimate how many you
Speaker 1: could strap onto the back of an Independence. Even if
Speaker 1: you have to give up the helo that might be
Speaker 1: worth it for the mission. There's your mission module, Hi
Speaker 1: Mars boxes, and you also have you're talking about bringing
Speaker 1: lots of drones. The Chinese and the Iranian steal ideas
Speaker 1: from us all day. Let's steal their ideas. I think
Speaker 1: most people have seen their launch platform for their Shahid
Speaker 1: is basically a basic connex box that they elevate at
Speaker 1: forty five degrees, take the lid off of and they
Speaker 1: have them stacked in there like so many Pez pellets
Speaker 1: and a pez dispenser, and I think they have at
Speaker 1: least a dozen of them in one of those boxes.
Speaker 1: And there goes the flying lawnmower. There are ways that
Speaker 1: you can take what we have right now, customize, change,
Speaker 1: do a modification, and put them on a ship. Is it?
Speaker 1: Is it? No? But again, we don't have the luxury
Speaker 1: of time for development. If you want, if you want
Speaker 1: to have something that's spoken, start working on it and
Speaker 1: it can replace those if you're smart. Little architects are
Speaker 1: going to worry about if you're right now in twenty
Speaker 1: thirty five, we need something else, and that is highlusion.
Speaker 1: If we can think outside the box and have somebody
Speaker 1: that's willing to give the direction and guidance to do that,
Speaker 1: which is why I'm really looking forward to see who's
Speaker 1: going to be the Secretary of Defense, who he gives
Speaker 1: as the Secretary of the Navy. Look at their background,
Speaker 1: because I think they're going to have, especially on the
Speaker 1: Maritimes side of the House, because it's carryover from his
Speaker 1: first administration. The Navy has a window and an opportunity
Speaker 1: here to get some leverage and make some big changes
Speaker 1: if it has the right people at top that will
Speaker 1: give those onunderneath them the top cover they need, because
Speaker 1: I know there's both civilian and military people in the
Speaker 1: bureaucracy who think just like we do. We've we both
Speaker 1: talked to them, but they don't have the top cover
Speaker 1: and the orders to go do it. So I think
Speaker 1: that there's there's enough people in place that could really
Speaker 1: do some impressive things, especially if from an engineering point
Speaker 1: of view, if they're told to. It's just they've got
Speaker 1: to have that civilian leadership that points them in that
Speaker 1: direction and kicks them in the tail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think they also have to, you know,
Speaker 2: they've got to quit thinking this this vessel has to
Speaker 2: last forty years. They you know, we can we can think, okay,
Speaker 2: we've got a tenure. When's what will we do if
Speaker 2: we had ships that only had the last ten years,
Speaker 2: because that can be minimally manned. I hate to use
Speaker 2: that term, but can be you know, small enough that
Speaker 2: they don't require huge crews that you know that we
Speaker 2: can you know it just it's the kind of thing
Speaker 2: that Admiral Zumwalt talked about when he had the when
Speaker 2: he was talking about the kind of the two tier navy,
Speaker 2: and he wanted the the small, agile forces. That prompted
Speaker 2: you know that the turl hydrofoils and the and you
Speaker 2: know all that stuff that that came around, and then
Speaker 2: that Admal Sabrowski and other people you know also raised
Speaker 2: we don't need and of course Captain Hughes, we don't
Speaker 2: need every ship to be huge, because when you lose
Speaker 2: a huge destroyer or cruiser, you lose a lot of capacity.
Speaker 2: But if you lose one PHM, you've lost one PHM
Speaker 2: and maybe you know what eight ten missiles. So you know,
Speaker 2: the the the effectiveness of smaller, heavily armed units and
Speaker 2: large quantities is significant in the right locations. And I
Speaker 2: would think of all the locations, the the area around
Speaker 2: the Philippines, the area of the South China Sea. Those
Speaker 2: that's you know, that's that seems to me to be
Speaker 2: prime turf for some high quality but heavily armed and
Speaker 2: networked systems of small units and men friendly sidekicks going
Speaker 2: out with them. And you mentioned the early.
Speaker 1: Tenders and other auxiliaries. We have holes that are already
Speaker 1: under production that can be modified to do this mission.
Speaker 1: There's there's no magic about it. And you know, people
Speaker 1: who have a short memory, they just think about submarine
Speaker 1: tenders like, yeah, we've got to have new submarine tenders,
Speaker 1: Roger that I'm talking about destroyer tenders that we can
Speaker 1: do significant depot level maintenance forward because there's we no
Speaker 1: longer live in a world where you can safely go
Speaker 1: to Yakuska in Japan and get that done because you're
Speaker 1: you're you're under the gun there. We have to have
Speaker 1: the ability to do like we did in the last
Speaker 1: Great Pacific War, and destroyer tenders are a great way
Speaker 1: to do that. But again you get into analysis paralysis
Speaker 1: with our acquisition system and you'll have you know, a
Speaker 1: half dozen GS fifteen's come in and tell you why
Speaker 1: they can't do it as opposed to how it can
Speaker 1: be done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we talked at briefly about this before
Speaker 2: we started the show. But you know, for me right now,
Speaker 2: I would I would go get whatever the constellation, whatever
Speaker 2: the FREM design from some other navy, couple of them.
Speaker 2: You know, Let's buy a couple from the Italians or
Speaker 2: the or whoever else is using them and play with them,
Speaker 2: you know, take our let our people use them as
Speaker 2: they are currently configured. And then if we can continue
Speaker 2: with the NAVS version of the Consolation, because it's already
Speaker 2: I guess they're already cut steel and stuff, but the
Speaker 2: next version ought to be based on what the users
Speaker 2: find useful in the in the design that the Italians
Speaker 2: are using. It makes no sense to me to build
Speaker 2: something because some GS twelve somewhere in NAVSE decided and
Speaker 2: we really or somebody else got stuck their finger in
Speaker 2: the pies of you know, we really need this ship
Speaker 2: to have X and Y when there's and that changes
Speaker 2: everything on it. So that I am a big you know,
Speaker 2: and you have to think short term, you know, we
Speaker 2: have to let's think we're going to need stuff for
Speaker 2: the next four or five years, and so let's think
Speaker 2: what can we do now, what you know, what can
Speaker 2: we get going? And then and then work from there.
Speaker 2: Then then long range planning kicks in, where we you know,
Speaker 2: what does the navy of ten years from now or
Speaker 2: fifteen years or twenty years from now look like, Because
Speaker 2: I don't think it's going to look the same as
Speaker 2: what we have now, because the world has changed a lot.
Speaker 1: And it's and it's going to a continue to change.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that nobody really has seen
Speaker 1: the dust on. And again, this is another implication of
Speaker 1: the election is I mean, Israel has already been kind
Speaker 1: of unleashed, but the Trump administration will be even more
Speaker 1: friendly towards Israel doing what it needs to be done.
Speaker 1: It's going to make a huge difference because they're going
Speaker 1: to bring back hardball with the Iranians. I don't see
Speaker 1: anybody in this administration who wants to go to war
Speaker 1: with Iran, but when it comes to putting sanctions back in,
Speaker 1: going after them financially, going after those who supply them.
Speaker 1: If you can make Iran worried about her internal issues
Speaker 1: because she doesn't have enough money, then that's money that
Speaker 1: she's not giving to the hu Thies, Hamas, Husbillah and
Speaker 1: other organizations. And that's going to be a huge impact
Speaker 1: on the Middle East if we can pick up where
Speaker 1: the previous Trump administration left off, where slowly but surely
Speaker 1: getting the Gulf Arab nations in Israel to realize they
Speaker 1: have a lot more to gain through business and healthcare
Speaker 1: exchanges and cooperation than they have on multi generational tribal warfare.
Speaker 1: So that's another part of this by product dis election
Speaker 1: that I'm looking forward to seeing is Iran being put
Speaker 1: back on the back foot where she needs to be
Speaker 1: until the Iranian people decide that they want to find
Speaker 1: a new government.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that, you know, all those things that
Speaker 2: happened to the first Trump administration for which they got
Speaker 2: unlimited amount of credit, Abraham Accords, all that stuff. I mean,
Speaker 2: we're seeing some of that come back. As you said
Speaker 2: earlier that when katar the Kataris tell Hamas that they're
Speaker 2: no longer welcome. Now, you know, I don't know whether
Speaker 2: that means that they're just saying that or they're really
Speaker 2: going to throw throw them out, but you know, that's
Speaker 2: a good sign. And that just one of those things
Speaker 2: that you get when you get a voice that they've
Speaker 2: heard before, come back into the onto the onto the scene,
Speaker 2: I would think, you know, and we're seeing that all
Speaker 2: over the place. So I think that's good, and I
Speaker 2: think that you know, we're as we discussed, we've got
Speaker 2: CBS and things. I just I'm going to put up
Speaker 2: a link to the building of the basis during World
Speaker 2: War Two in the Pacific because I think it's a
Speaker 2: germane to the discussion we're having is, you know, we're
Speaker 2: worried about the missile range of the of the Chinese,
Speaker 2: and they don't, you know, they don't they don't need
Speaker 2: to have too great a missile range to hit Guam
Speaker 2: and and some of the other things we want certainly
Speaker 2: want to try and defend. But there are a lot
Speaker 2: of other islands out there that are either US territories
Speaker 2: or US I mean actual US property, So you know,
Speaker 2: we need to look at how we could develop those
Speaker 2: if we needed to, to help build our own Great
Speaker 2: American Wall to stop the Chinese from dominating the Pacific
Speaker 2: and having too much influence on our friends and neighbors
Speaker 2: like Australia and New Zealand and in the Japanese because
Speaker 2: there's no there's no you know, we have to have
Speaker 2: good assets available from which to do our own work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's gonna be fun. And I've not kept
Speaker 1: secret the fact that in the main people who are
Speaker 1: running our foreign policy in the president administration, both National
Speaker 1: Security Advisor Sullivan and Secretary of State blinking they may
Speaker 1: be they probably are well intentioned people who are just wrong,
Speaker 1: but they've been disasters. And the fact that we're going
Speaker 1: to have some turnover in the next seventy days I
Speaker 1: think it is or sixty eight days, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: I'm yeah, yeah, and that's absolutely critical. And of course
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense Austin he should have something, somebody else
Speaker 1: should have taken his place after the events in Doubles.
Speaker 1: So again, done lots of service for his country. I'm
Speaker 1: sure he's won intention but he was the wrong person
Speaker 1: in the wrong job. I think the record proves it
Speaker 1: as such. And I think for those that look back
Speaker 1: at the first Trump administration, they just didn't get their footage,
Speaker 1: their footage they're footing early on because for a variety
Speaker 1: of reasons, it took a while, in some cases almost
Speaker 1: three years. But yeah, they've been there, they've done that,
Speaker 1: they've got their people. It's going to move fast. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think John Conrad has been banging the drum about
Speaker 2: the army dominance of the the Defense Department, and you know,
Speaker 2: I think it is time to really refocus on the
Speaker 2: I'm glad we have the army, and I'm glad just
Speaker 2: like I'm glad the our Marines have been around for
Speaker 2: two hundred and forty nine years. But you know, the
Speaker 2: Marines are naval force, and we need to have a
Speaker 2: strong navy because we we have oceans that are our
Speaker 2: barriers or provide barriers from the bad guys, but we
Speaker 2: need we also have people who live out in those
Speaker 2: areas that are being threatened by the by the Chinese
Speaker 2: as they as they do their normal thing of that,
Speaker 2: they just decided to rename a bunch of islands in
Speaker 2: the South China Sea. They call them our islands, and
Speaker 2: and and you know, you know how that goes. And
Speaker 2: now that we've declared them to be ours, everybody else
Speaker 2: has to comply with what we say. I mean, they're
Speaker 2: they're just they're constantly boiling the frog. They trap you
Speaker 2: into thinking they're going to be law abiden and then
Speaker 2: they decided they get to choose which laws they're going
Speaker 2: to abide to.
Speaker 1: Well, they've got the body who is going to encourage
Speaker 1: some aggressive negotiation.
Speaker 2: And there's again.
Speaker 1: He's going to have some people coming into the State
Speaker 1: Department that I think probably some of their first actions
Speaker 1: is going to be focusing internally the people that I've
Speaker 1: been reading and listening to who may or may not
Speaker 1: be the next Secretary of State. I don't know who
Speaker 1: it is, but I know who they read and who
Speaker 1: they talk to. They're very aware of the problems that
Speaker 1: we've discussed here through the years about the Department of
Speaker 1: State and their permanent class. And with the Republicans having
Speaker 1: power in both the House and the Senate, I think
Speaker 1: that gives them a little bit of a window here
Speaker 1: because the executive branch can do a lot and executive
Speaker 1: orders whatever, but those can be overturned when the change
Speaker 1: seats again. But if you really want to make change
Speaker 1: that has teeth and has legs, got to go through
Speaker 1: the legislative branch, and the State Department is really overdue
Speaker 1: for that. I think there is a I haven't done
Speaker 1: the whip count, but I think there is a critical
Speaker 1: mass of people in the House from both parties and
Speaker 1: the Senate in both parties, who are willing to make
Speaker 1: some changes about our staff and our bureaucracy, and if
Speaker 1: they want to get ahead of the game, that's what
Speaker 1: they'll do, if they want to be smart about it.
Speaker 1: Because that's one thing that's been really apparent in the
Speaker 1: last week is how much attacking the bureaucracy is going
Speaker 1: to be not in just the national security arena, but
Speaker 1: a general theme of the next administration. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of frustration with how the Pentagon and the Department
Speaker 1: in Navy works. So people that have had those ideas
Speaker 1: in their bottom drawer might be time to take it out,
Speaker 1: dust it off, find somebody who has access to the
Speaker 1: lever of power and introduce them to your ideas, because
Speaker 1: you may have a window to actually affect some positive
Speaker 1: change here in the next twenty four months before we're
Speaker 1: looking at the twenty twenty sixth election cycle. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Sorry, sorry, my dog is trying to get double fed.
Speaker 2: He's good at that. Yeah, you know, And as we've
Speaker 2: pointed out, though, the issue was trying to overcome the
Speaker 2: resistance movement of you know, no, this is this is
Speaker 2: not what I studied when I was at Georgetown or
Speaker 2: or wherever these people American University or where these people
Speaker 2: come from. And so I can't I can't agree to it.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, it's just it's like trying to
Speaker 2: explain economics to people who just think money appears magically
Speaker 2: out of the air. And you know, they don't recognize
Speaker 2: that taxpayer toiling away at some job making diesel engine
Speaker 2: in some places is the one footing the bill for
Speaker 2: a lot of their randiose ideas that were developed an
Speaker 2: academia and have no correlation with reality.
Speaker 1: Modern modern military, modern monetary theory. There are there is
Speaker 1: a critical mass of people who do think money you
Speaker 1: can just you can just print the money. You can
Speaker 1: just print the money. They've been kind of quiet the
Speaker 1: last thirty six months, but they are still there. And
Speaker 1: you know President Trump has our President elect Trump, whatever
Speaker 1: the correct term is to use it, and this inflection
Speaker 1: point he's talked about the towards the end of the
Speaker 1: Rogan podcast, he actually talked about wanting to address government
Speaker 1: spending in the deficits. We'll see how that works house.
Speaker 1: So I would do one little bit of caution as
Speaker 1: we're coming near the top of the hour, there's a
Speaker 1: non zero chance that the top line number for defense
Speaker 1: isn't going to grow above inflation all that much, if
Speaker 1: that becomes part of the agenda, and that's where things
Speaker 1: get interesting. If the pie isn't going to grow significantly,
Speaker 1: then you've got to make decisions about how you're going
Speaker 1: to change the allocation in that pie. And you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about compromise. Who's going to be part of
Speaker 1: that negotiation, who's going to run that table? And again
Speaker 1: that will be who is going to be the Secretary
Speaker 1: of Defense. What's their background, what are their biases and
Speaker 1: because they're the ones that are probably primarily going to
Speaker 1: have the ear of the president. And kind of a
Speaker 1: wild card here and we haven't really touched on it,
Speaker 1: but I saw a point that I had to appreciate before.
Speaker 1: I know, our friend Claude Bearbay has done lots of
Speaker 1: studies on this, but I think the incoming Vice President JD. Vance,
Speaker 1: he's the first going to be the first president or
Speaker 1: vice president that has a Marine Corps background and he
Speaker 1: retired as an ETH. He not retire you left active
Speaker 1: duty as an E four. So the mafia is going
Speaker 1: to be up at the Naval Observatory. So again on
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps birthday. I guess that's their birthday present
Speaker 1: this year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's uh, based on my experience with the
Speaker 2: form mafia, they think there's a lot of stuff done,
Speaker 2: not necessarily in the in the traditional pathways, but it's uh,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm glad we have somebody who got some
Speaker 2: experience at that level instead of you know that the
Speaker 2: powdered and kwaift officer class that we've always had. So
Speaker 2: I think I hav an former enlisted guy hanging around,
Speaker 2: even if it's as a vice president, is a good idea.
Speaker 2: When we haven't talked. I mean, there are a lot
Speaker 2: of things we should be talking about. Merchant shipping, you know,
Speaker 2: the recreation of all that. We've beaten some of those
Speaker 2: issues flogs and his issues pretty hard. We know we
Speaker 2: need to do it. We also need things like we've
Speaker 2: got these auxiliaries that are being laid up because they
Speaker 2: don't have careers. We need to put us send people
Speaker 2: on them or USN civilian mixed crews and get them
Speaker 2: underway so that our fleet doesn't have you know, we're
Speaker 2: wearing at all these other ships. It's just got brand
Speaker 2: new ships sitting wait for cruise that is a ridiculous waste.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it also burns out the cruise that you
Speaker 1: do have forward, So you either increase the supply of
Speaker 1: people or you have to decrease the response to the
Speaker 1: demand signal because people will always want to deploy ships,
Speaker 1: but there's a cost to that down the road, which
Speaker 1: again that's supposed to be our c ando's job to
Speaker 1: look at the long term. Goes back to over a
Speaker 1: decade ago where we had our senior leadership saying eight
Speaker 1: to nine month deployments are the new normal. No, No,
Speaker 1: that wasn't the right answer. You're burning out your sailors
Speaker 1: and your ships to make your job convenient now, as
Speaker 1: opposed to having a stewardship view of things where you're
Speaker 1: going to pick fights now to make sure that the
Speaker 1: people who have your job in five, ten, fifteen years
Speaker 1: don't run into the problem we have right now. That's
Speaker 1: because of short term focus, lack of a stewardship mindset,
Speaker 1: and people not willing to make powerful enemies. It's a
Speaker 1: lot easier to just piss off your seagoing, enlisted and
Speaker 1: field grade and company great officers than it is to
Speaker 1: piss off people on the board of directors of Boeing
Speaker 1: and write down who may be offering you a job
Speaker 1: within days after your retirement. Yes, I'm subtweeting, the former
Speaker 1: chairman of the Joint Chie says staff.
Speaker 2: You know, I see there's a lot of stuff in
Speaker 2: in the early on in the chatteran about discussions of
Speaker 2: DEI I mean, if you want to cut money, and
Speaker 2: maybe I don't know what the cost of that stuff is,
Speaker 2: but you know, I've seen that somewhere that President elect
Speaker 2: Trump was you know a lot of those programs, everybody
Speaker 2: saying those are those are dead? You know, I know
Speaker 2: in the locals in the state government here, they pretty
Speaker 2: much defunded all those things for the for colleges, and
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's a it's a I don't notice
Speaker 2: that the quality of education of our students in those
Speaker 2: universities and colleges has gone down one iota either. But
Speaker 2: we got you know, we've got too many people who
Speaker 2: have to do things to justify their existence, and the
Speaker 2: things they do are often counterproductive to getting real things done.
Speaker 2: So and if Musk is going to be the the
Speaker 2: czar of cutting government, I hope he takes lessons from
Speaker 2: the Argentine President whatever his name is, pretty much ruthlessly
Speaker 2: went through the Argentine government and I mean to cut
Speaker 2: out the tax like they're quot to the rs and stuff.
Speaker 2: So and there their economy has responded and responded well.
Speaker 2: And yeah, the we've done the same thing with the
Speaker 2: DEI and in the Free State of Florida as well
Speaker 2: in the last two years, and nobody misses them. And
Speaker 2: they've taken that money and they've repurposed it in the
Speaker 2: universities to everything from scholarships, traditional instructors. I remember they
Speaker 2: changed their name this summer from the Office of Diversity
Speaker 2: Equity Inclusion, but just as a one data point at
Speaker 2: the US Naval Academy, their DEI office, they're now calling
Speaker 2: themselves Fuzzy bunny Farts or whatever they're calling themselves this
Speaker 2: week they've changed their names. Try to hide, but if
Speaker 2: you look, if you look at it, it's half dozen
Speaker 2: plus people. That's a payroll of well over a million dollars.
Speaker 2: That as just people. That's not their tad, that's not
Speaker 2: their travel, that's not the seminars they're hosting, none of that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, there's a lot of money that they actually
Speaker 2: spoke and that cuts you off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the cat is after me.
Speaker 2: We need to we need to stop before they come
Speaker 2: looking for you directly instead of just cutting your sound
Speaker 2: off some.
Speaker 1: Wey. That's It's been a great hour and as always,
Speaker 1: we appreciate we had a really good, live, live group
Speaker 1: of folks with us today, which is always nice to
Speaker 1: see in a really active chat room. So come back
Speaker 1: for future mid Rats in the chat room, and thank
Speaker 1: you very much for joining us for another edition of
Speaker 1: mid Rats. We'll be back next week. I don't think
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a two week break for a while,
Speaker 1: so that's always a good thing to have. And until
Speaker 1: next time, I hope everybody has a great Navy day. Uh.
Speaker 2: Thanks, thanks everybody for being with us today.