Weerd’s wife is going in for surgery today.

Our family included them in our prayers.

Please add them to yours.

This is the next in my series of posts that deal with the military.

The Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) Creed was something that I first began hearing about two hours after I got to Basic Training.  It was also one of the last things I read before I signed my discharge papers.  If you want a mission statement for my life, both now and when I was in the Army, this is it.  It serves as a reminder of the standard to which a leader should hold himself. 

No one is more professional than I.   I am a Non-Commissioned Officer, a leader of soldiers.  As a Non-Commissioned Officer, I realize that I am a member of a time honored corps, which is known as “The Backbone of the Army.”

This is what I am, not what I do.  I will never allow myself to be less of a professional than anyone else.  I set high standards, and strive to achieve and surpass them.

I realize that I am a member of a group that has a distinct mission and role in our society.  I am an individual, but my importance as an individual is surpassed by the importance of my group.

I am proud of the Corps of Non-Commissioned Officers and will at all times conduct myself so as to bring credit upon the Corps, the Military Service, and my country regardless of the situation in which I find myself.

I am proud of my ability to call myself a leader and the accomplishments that other members of my organization have achieved.  I will never bring discredit on them or myself through my actions.  There are no excuses for compromising my integrity or morals.

I will not use my grade or position to attain pleasure, profit, or personal safety.

My needs are not as important as the needs of my subordinates.  If they work late, I work later.  If the workload is heavy for them, it’s heavier for me.  If they’re working in crappy conditions, I have no business working in a nice comfortable office.  Rank does not have its privileges.

Competence is my watch-word.  My two basic responsibilities will always be uppermost in my mind – accomplishment of my mission and the welfare of my soldiers.  I will strive to remain tactically and technically proficient.

I must always be able to not only do my job, but the jobs of my subordinates and immediate superiors.  I cannot expect my people to do their jobs right the first time if I can’t do it.  I must understand the job of my boss so that I know how best to support him.  My basic jobs are to get the job done and take care of my people, in that order.  Sometimes these come into conflict.  I must have the ability to find a path that satisfies both goals.  Being technically proficient means that I have the skills and knowledge inherent in my job.  Being tactically proficient is to be able to apply these skills in a real-world setting.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a genius if you don’t get the job done, but you can’t get the job done if you don’t have the skills.

I am aware of my role as a Non-Commissioned Officer.  I will fulfill my responsibilities inherent in that role. 

Again, I know to which standard I am held, both by myself and by society.  I will meet and surpass that standard.

All soldiers are entitled to outstanding leadership;  I will provide that leadership.

All people deserve to be led by a professional.  People don’t crave management, they crave leadership.  Sometimes a leader has to give express instructions that cover all the details.  Most times it’s only necessary to make sure people know what needs to be done, with what resources, and when it needs to be done by.  A leader has to be able to provide both kinds of leadership, and knows when to apply them.

I know my soldiers and I will always place their needs above my own.

In order to lead someone, you have to know and understand them.  If you can’t be bothered to remember details about your people like their backgrounds, education, experiences, and families, how can you expect them to trust you?  If you can’t keep it all in your head, keep a leader book.  Your personal needs, when compared to the needs of your subordinates, come somewhere between whale scum and the bottom of the sea.  If people know and understand that you put them first, they will walk over hot glass for you.

I will communicate consistently with my soldiers and never leave them uninformed.

Keep your people informed.  Even if people don’t like the truth, they hate falsehoods and cover-ups.  Don’t be cruelly honest, but don’t pull punches either.  If they know they can trust your word, they’re less likely to doubt your motives when told to do something.

I will be fair and impartial when recommending both rewards and punishment.

Nothing destroys a group like favoritism and/or bullying.  If someone deserves a raise, promotion, or pat-on-the-back, give it to them.  If they deserve a reprimand or worse, give it.  Some of the people who I have the greatest respect for weren’t afraid to chew my ass the day after recommending me for an award.

Officers of my unit will have maximum time to accomplish their duties; they will not have to accomplish mine. I will earn their respect and confidence as well as that of my soldiers.

I will do my job in such a manner as to give my boss the greatest chance of success in doing his job.  I will never neglect my responsibilities so that my boss will have to fulfill them personally.  My superiors will know that when I am assigned a task, I will carry it out to the best of my abilities, and if I ask for help, I really need it.

I will be loyal to those with whom I serve; seniors, peers, and subordinates alike.

Loyalty is not lock-step acceptance of orders.  Loyalty is letting your boss know when you think he’s wrong.  Loyalty is also keeping this to yourself when you’re speaking to or around people from outside your group.  Support those around you, and make sure they know they can come to you with a  problem in confidence.  Never complain about the boss in front of your people.  If he’s an idiot, they’ll figure it out on their own, but don’t confirm it.  Never sell your people out, no matter what. 

I will exercise initiative by taking appropriate action in the absence of orders. 

Most times, you will be on your own.  You may not have been given the authority to do what you think needs to be done, but you still have to do it.  It’s easier to ask forgiveness for getting the job done by going beyond your orders than it is to fix a problem that’s become worse while you wait for someone to tell you what to do.  Train your subordinates to think, and your job will be easier. But remember, you can delegate authority, not responsibility.  If you or your people screw up, take the ass chewing.

I will not compromise my integrity, nor my moral courage.

Once you’ve sold out once, you will never be trusted.  Never lie.  Never cover up.  When you screw up, and you will, admit it and take your lumps.  You’ve earned them.  Don’t shy away from the hard decisions.  Never take the easy wrong in favor of the hard right. 

I will not forget, nor will I allow my comrades to forget that we are professionals, Non-Commissioned Officers, leaders!

Again, a reminder of the standard that you are held to.  Also an admonishment that you will support your peers and help them to live to this standard. 

DaddyBear, braking hard to avoid rear ending the moron in the car in front of him who stopped 20 feet short of a red light:  “Dickhead!”
Irish Woman:  “Now dear, it’s the Lord’s day.”
DaddyBear:  “Of course, dear, you’re right.  Hey, Holy Dickhead!”

This popped up on my playlist while BooBoo and I were driving Girlie Bear to her mom’s house tonight.  It’s one of my favorites.

It’s a dead man’s party
Who could ask for more?
Everybody’s coming
Leave your body at the door
Leave your body and soul at the door

I thought it was a trade, but apparently Jimmy’s coming back to the States too.

Oh well, better luck next time.

Is it just me, or does everyone else get a mental image of Morgan Freeman playing Dracula on Electric Company for the song “Peck on the Neck” when they see this?

Or am I just the freak here?

Nothing like the “sins” of the mothers coming back to bite the daughters in the ass.  An Episcopal preschool in Texas has refused to admit a 4 year old little girl for the horrific sin of having two mommies. 

I’m not as good a Christian as I could be, but I at least recognize that you don’t encourage people to live better lives by shunning their children.  We all come to the Lord as sinners, broken and bereft.  But you don’t punish the family of someone you consider a sinner in order to make a statement about the sin.

Is homosexuality something that transgresses against the mandates of Christ’s Gospels?  Who knows?  I’ve read the new testament a few times, and I’ve never seen it mentioned.  There are some passages in the Old Testament which seem to be where all of the justification for the kerfluffle over gay marriage is coming from.  But that raises the question of do we put the laws of the Old Testament, in all their intricacy and breadth, over the law of the New Testament, which is to love each other as Christ loves us.  Period.  Not “Love the people who look and think like you” or “Love the people who don’t stray from the norm”.   Do we shun a “sinner”, or do we accept the person who does things we disagree with as a member of Christ’s flock and try, through our own example, to help them to live better lives as Christians?

Look, I’m the last person who should be judging who should and who shouldn’t be allowed to marry.  I admit that.  Is marriage between two adults who happen to be of the same sex wrong and evil and blasphemous?  Not my call.   What happens between two adults is none of my business.  If a church decides not to take that same stance in regards to the adults, that’s their call.  They can deny them access to sacraments such as communion, confession, or marriage.  Their church, their rules. 

But a child that is being raised by two gay parents has no dog in that fight.  This little girl only knows that two women love her, and are trying to get her into a school to start her education off to a good start.  My guess is that the parents in this situation will take their child somewhere else so that the little one won’t be mixed up in the chest beating that this kind of situation can bring on both sides.

If a church restricts me in a way that I don’t feel is in keeping with Christ’s message or enforces rules that I find offensive, I can leave, will leave, and have left to find another place to share my worship.  This “Christian” church should feel ashamed of itself and re-read the Gospel which was brought not for just a select group, but for all.

This is the next in line for the military stories posts.

When I was a young sergeant, I was transferred from the easy life of a desk jockey in Germany to the Intelligence Center in Arizona.  It wasn’t the same as being sent to a division, but it was a big difference for me.  I’d spent the last three years learning how to shuffle and produce paperwork with the best of them, and now I was drawing field gear and heading out to the desert to learn, train, test, and fix.

My first day with my unit was Monday.  Monday was Motor Pool Day.  Our battalion commander sergeant major loved the motor pool.  It was brand spanking new, so he made us keep it looking new.  Think steam cleaning vehicles every time we drove them off of concrete and sweeping the red kalichi dust off of the tarmac at least once a day.  Think using a plumb line to make sure all of the trucks were lined up in a perfectly straight line.  He was one heck of a sergeant major, but he was over the top in an occupation that makes everyone who succeeds a little OCD.

On the plus side, he made the mechanics personally responsible for any equipment in the motor pool that didn’t work, even if fixing them was my job.  That meant that when a vehicle, trailer, or generator stopped functioning, they came out and made heroic efforts to either fix it or get it replaced.

My platoon was equipped with one HMMWV, six M577 armored command posts, and six 10kw diesel generators, along with assorted trailers and such.  In Germany, if I needed a military vehicle, I’d sign out a VW van. Electricity came out of a wall socket, and water came out of a faucet.  Here, I was signing for a 35 ton APC, learning the care and feeding of a diesel generator, and washing/drinking out of a water buffalo trailer.  Since I was the new guy, regardless of rank, I got the track, trailer, and generator with the most problems.  I got to know our mechanics very very well over the next couple of years.

Within a week of signing for my track and all its contents, we were prepping to go to the field for a week.  By the field, I don’t mean go out and train under a scenario to sharpen your warfighting skills.  By the field, I mean drive out to a training area, set up all of your equipment to highly inspected standards, and give the same training to mostly uninterested officers, NCO’s, and IET privates. Our job in the TOC was to set up, give briefings on the technology we had to show the students, and then run the students through a few hours of simulated use of the equipment in the afternoon.  It was interesting the first couple of times I did it.  It got old fast.

Halfway through the 3rd day of doing this, my generator started roaring like a jet trying to take off and billowing black smoke.  It got shut down before it blew up or caught fire, and we connected and fired up the spare.  The next day, the motor pool sent out Specialist P to work on it.  SPC P was one of the head generator mechanics, and was a walking fire plug of a Puerto Rican.   He took one look at the generator, and pronounced it “f***’ed”. 

Thinking he was being sarcastic, I inquired where in the manual I could find the correcting procedures for a f***’ed generator.  He gave me the look he must have reserved for fools and small children.

“Sergeant, no military gear is ever good, even when it’s brand new.  There are only three classifications of equipment:  Broken, Fixed, and F***’ed.   Broken means that it’s not working but can be fixed.  Fixed means it’s working and hasn’t broken yet.  F***’ed means it’s not working and nothing we can do will make it work again.  Your generator is f***’ed.  You should tow it back to the motor pool and we’ll work on getting it sent to the depot to be repaired or replaced.”

As I’ve become the mechanic version of an IT worker, I’ve taken this philosophy to heart.  No equipment is ever good.  It may be working now, but it’s only a matter of time before it fails.  The trick is to know what is most likely to fail and be prepared for it.  And when it’s f***’ed, be ready to admit and and get a new one.

Mid-term elections are heating up.  Locally, we’ve got a Senate seat being given up by the retiring Jim Bunning (R) being contested by Jack Conway (D) and Rand Paul (R).  Of course, our Representative, Jim Yarmuth, is up for re-election, and for the life of me I can’t remember who’s running against him.  Hmmmm, that doesn’t bode well for the GOP in that race.  Gonna have to do some homework there.

From the Democratic side, I’m hearing a lot of “The Republicans are evil!  Bush caused all this! Hope and Change is working!  More stimulus!  Tax the rich!  Pay off the poor!”.

From the Republicans, it goes “Obama is a moron!  We’re circling the drain!  Cut Spending!  Lower taxes!”

From what I can see, the issues that I care about are, in no particular order:

1. Economics – Get the government out of the private sector and let the market figure out which companies (Auto manufacturers, banks, mortgage lenders) deserve to survive.  Quit giving my money (I earned it, and it was taken from me while I was looking down the barrel of a tax law) to fund the latest pandering of either party to their political base.  It’s a simple formula.  Let me keep more of my money, and I promise to spend it or invest it wisely and pay taxes on the income from the investment.
2. The War – Yes, our combat troops are out of Iraq, at least for now.  But if you try to tell me that the Iraqi security forces are cohesive and competent enough to keep that country from sliding back down into the sewer, I’ll call you a blue faced baboon of a liar and a fool.  We’ll either repeat our mistake in Vietnam of just leaving and not getting involved as that country fell to our opponents, or we’ll be back in a year or so.  As for Afghanistan, are we following the right strategy to bring the people over to some semblance of good government?  Is Karzai and his group of kleptocrats the right horse to bet on?  Can we convince the Taliban that it’s better to work with us to improve their country and let us go home than it is to continue to martyr themselves at the point of a bayonet?
3. Health Care – It’s none of the Federal government’s business how I pay for my health care and how much I and my employer pay.  Want to make me happy?  Get rid of the national healthcare bill, and let insurance companies compete across state lines for customers.  Let me buy my medications from whomever is licensed to sell them to me.
4. Defense – I’m pro-military, as you may have guessed.  But having grown up around the Air Force and spent most of my early adulthood in the Army, I know there is a lot of wasted manpower and money in the defense establishment.  Want to cut the defense budget?  Try cutting out a lot of the fat in the procurement process.  Tell the Pentagon to scale back its fanatical obsession with buying the new shininess from BAE and Lockheed.  How about we do a non-political evaluation of all of the bases, overseas and domestic, that we have and decide if we need all of them without Congress messing it up, and then actually close bases in less than a decade?
5. Border security – I find it personally insulting that my grandfather came through Ellis Island and worked hard to stay out of trouble and be productive to become a citizen and now someone can slip across our southern border or jump off a container ship in Oakland and expect to be taken care of by our social safety net while working in a gray market of slave labor.  Want to make me happy?  Get all of those who are here illegally out, be they a Hispanic day laborer who slipped across the border at Nogales, or an Irish student who entered the country through LAX and let his visa lapse.  Prohibit the federal government from doing business with any company that uses illegal immigrant labor in any way.   Let the economy absorb whatever damage that causes.  Close the bloody Mexican border using whatever means are necessary. Better control the Canadian border if that becomes necessary.  Force ships coming into our ports to be inspected for illicit human cargo.  If we need immigrants to do work we don’t want to do, then let them in in a controlled manner, either as legal residents or as foreign workers with an expectation that they will take themselves back to their home countries after a very finite period of time.

Here are a few “issues” that are being brought up that I don’t want to hear about from politicians:

1. Gay Marriage – It’s none of my business, and it’s none of the federal governments either.   Let the states and the courts figure that out.  Find another subject to talk about. 
2. Mosques – It’s either a location that’s a few blocks from Ground Zero that just happens to be right for building a Muslim community and worship center, or it’s a victory mosque being built to stick a thumb in our eye on the site of a national tragedy.  Either way, it’s not a federal issue.  I have my own opinion, but I’m not using it as a political yardstick. 
3. Abortion – It’s the law of the land, no matter how I feel about it.  Until either the Constitution is changed or the Supreme Court changes it’s mind, quit yammering on and on about it.
4. George Bush – He’s been out of the White House for a year and a half.   Democrats have been in charge of Congress since 2006.  Either share the blame for the mess we’re in or stop dredging up old news.
5. Barack Obama – Personally, I think he’s the second coming of Jimmy Carter.  I hope he’s a one term president.  I don’t agree with his politics or his work ethic (Wish I had that much vacation time, even if they are working vacations).  He’s the president.  He’s a citizen, unless something unexpected crops up.  Move on.  You can talk more about him when he’s an actual candidate in 2012.

To summarize:  I have a pretty well defined set of things I want to hear about from political candidates.  I’m tired of distractions from both parties that keep us from discussing those things.  The more you talk about the distractions, the less likely you are to get my vote.  It’s the right of someone who considers himself to be a political independent to look at both parties and decide which one’s candidates turn his stomach less when deciding how to vote.  Your goal is to be as non-nauseating as possible by telling me what you believe are the important issues in our country, and what you plan to do about them.  If we can agree, then you may earn my vote.  If we don’t, well at least you got consideration.  Try to baffle me with bullshit, and you won’t even get considered.

Slashdot is reporting that Amazon is considering placing advertisements in their ebooks to keep prices low and up the amount of profit from their sale. 

Let me be clear:  If Amazon does this, I will stop buying ebooks from them, period.  There are more than a few publishers and sellers of ebooks that I can go to other than Amazon.  If all of the book sellers I use start including advertising, I will stop using electronic media to read books.

To put it bluntly, I hate commercials. 

I read books for escapism.  I’ll be the first to admit that.  I read so that I can stop concentrating on the real world for a while and either learn something or be entertained.  You cannot swing a dead Windows box around without hitting an ad or product branding in almost every other form of electronic entertainment.  My dead tree magazines are almost half full of advertisements.  I use an RSS reader in part because I don’t want to wade through half a web page of banner ads and pop-up/-under ads that slow down my system.  I use the DVR on my cable box to record a lot of the programs I watch primarily so that I can fast forward through the commercials. 

When I go to the movies, there is now about 20 minutes of commercials and previews shown prior to the feature.  I pay about $60 a month for cable television, and I still have to deal with commercials, especially when I’m up late at night and can’t sleep.  Ever try to find something interesting to watch at 2 AM?  Half of the channels have turned into a QVC shopping channel, or are given over to infomercials. 

So I read.  I used to read a lot more, but I still read as much as I can get away with.  The advent of the ebook and reader software on my phone have made it a lot more convenient to grab a few minutes to read a few pages.  I’ve started budgeting myself to four ebooks a month because I found the convenience of surfing Amazon or WebScriptions so easy to use that I found myself spending my entire personal entertainment budget for the month in an afternoon.

But I’m paying for the books.  I expect to be left alone to my thoughts when I read, not bombarded by still more ads.  If Amazon and the other ebook vendors have to raise prices a bit to keep the books ad-free, so be it.  I have a set amount each month that I spend on books, electronic or dead tree.  If the price of ebooks goes up, then I will adjust the number I buy accordingly, but I will continue to buy. If advertisements are mandated, that will dry up entirely.

Amazon, please don’t kill the golden goose.  Housing the data for an ebook has to be cheaper than warehouses full of paper books.  Downloading a book to my iPhone has to be cheaper than shipping it to my house.  Amazon charges almost as much for an ebook as they do for a dead tree version, so their profit margin on them has to be at least as good.  Fill them with advertisements, and you will kill the medium.