On Moms and Dads

It's been a work week and a weekend of writer's block. There is so much to write about that I don't where to start. Add in that so many topics are interconnected in some way, piecing them together has actually caused my brain to lock up. Somehow this has brought me to a point where I am sitting here in retrospect of my relationship with my parents over the years. Don't ask me how I got to this subject, I don't really know. Well, OK that's not really true. The reality is that when you want to write but can't seem to coherently put some big, grand idea in print, you fall back on "Let's make fun of mom and dad". Sorry mom and dad but it was only a matter of time.



So let's start with dad. My father is a rather quiet man. At least he is when my mother is around because when my mother is around, no one can get a word in edgewise anyway. Get dad alone and he will talk. We have had many a conversation lasting hours about all different things, especially now that I am older. I say now that I am older because it is a conversation, give and take on whatever subject comes up. When I was younger it had the appearance of a conversation but was, in fact, more of a lecture and learning exercise on logic with me on the receiving end. During those years of my late teens and early twenties, when I knew everything and had the answers to all the world's problems, nothing could be more frustrating and aggravating than to mention them to my father. He sent many a great idea to the trash heap of great ideas not by simply dismissing them; "Get lost kid. It will never work". Nooo, not my dad. He actually listened to the idea and then asked questions. Questions I hadn't thought of and therefore had no answers to. In the end, I would stomp away angry and mumbling about how he just didn't understand but inside thinking "Damn it! He's right again". See dad was my Devil's advocate, my Red Cell in a way and he was very efficient in that capacity. But I owe him for that because he taught me how to think.



My father is also a font of historical knowledge, especially military history. Get into a conversation with dad and you will walk away with some trivial knowledge about some obscure, British regiment serving under Wellington during the Napoleonic Wars. Mind you, it's not simply confined to the Napoleonic Wars, it can be about any period in military history. "Hey dad, traffic's really bad today on the highway". An hour later, you are walking away with some quote from some guy who fought in the Boer War, along with a background of his unit and why they were where they were that somehow relates to the cause of traffic jams. Go figure, who knew? Of course, not all of these lessons in history were delivered straight forward. Some were imparted subliminally. To this day, the song "Waltzing Matilda" will periodically pop into my head. Why? Because dad would hum or sing it while shaving and my bedroom was across the hall from the bathroom so I would hear it. Over and over and over. For years I wondered who Matilda was and why dad was singing about her. Was she someone dad knew before mom? Did he dance with her? Why would anyone want to even waltz with a girl named Matilda? Does mom even know about Matilda? I learned later that the song was like the National Anthem of Australia or something and was, of course, sung by some obscure Australian unit during some war a long time ago. Regardless, THE DAMN SONG IS STILL STUCK IN MY HEAD! Thanks dad.



My father is not big on mystical or supernatural things. This goes down to even having a distrust of organized religion. Despite that, he has still found a way to put a hex on me that has followed me throughout my adult life. Let me explain. Dad's entire career was with the Army and this had a profound effect on his children. As I mentioned before, he was big on military history so myself and my sisters were exposed to military history. Somehow, the Army creeped into everything. It was so bad that it led to fights with my sister. Nothing was so infuriating, so humiliating and demeaning to a young boy as finding G.I. Joe in the toy box naked because my sister had taken his fatigues and put them on her Barbie. She even took his rifle! Score one for Women's Lib. Of course, I got the last laugh when the fatigues ended up on the floor and naked G.I. Joe was in bed with naked Barbie. Score one for the guys! Unfortunately, mom found that one which triggered the "Maybe it's time to talk about the birds and the bees" alarm. But I digress so back to dad's curse.



Since we played army, we played with little plastic green army men. The problem was I always thought big. See, it wasn't enough to just have ten little American army guys against ten little German army guys. Oh no, it had to be, say, the Battle of the Bulge or the Normandy invasion. Not a part of those battles but the whole damn battle. That meant tons of little plastic army guys. So instead of going to the local drug store and getting a bag of the generic "big" little plastic army guys, I went to the hobby shop and got the small, HO scale guys. These guys were perfect. They were small enough that you could have hundreds of them, whole battalions could be formed. Plus, because they were mainly for dioramas and war gamers, they were historically accurate. The drug store army men were the same mold just a different color plastic; Americans were green, Germans were gray. BORING! With the HO scale guys, Germans were Germans right down to their helmets and weapons. The same for Americans. Even better, there were British, Italian, Japanese. You name the country and they were represented. Even better, there were tons of vehicles to go along with them. It was an arsenal that any young lad with dreams of world domination would drool over. And, the vehicles were historically accurate. I know, I know, what's up with the fixation on historical accuracy? I couldn't tell you except that even at the ages of 6, 7 or 8 years old, attention to detail was important.

So anyway, on some holiday or birthday, I don't remember which, dad gets me a little gift. I kind of know what it is by the package; it's a little pre-built vehicle that they sold at the hobby shop. I'm hoping it's a tank or something because tanks are cool and they fight and that's what we are doing when we play, we're fighting a war. So I open it up and what do I see? A little HO scale 2 1/2 ton truck. What used to be called a "Deuce and a half". A TRUCK, DAD? No tank? What am I supposed to do with this? You can only guess at the little lesson old Sarge imparted. "Your troops need to move son. They also need supplies. How do you think those supplies get there? An army travels on it's stomach... logistics is the key to winning the war son...logistics is the key". Mind you, that truck was one of the first things to get blown up whenever there was a battle.

Now fast forward to my late twenties. I've been working in the trucking industry since eighteen and am now in management at a regional company, dispatching freight all over the Northeast. At one point I'm contemplating going to school to get a degree in supply chain management, aka LOGISTICS! That's when it hit me; "Logistics is the key, son". How the hell did I end up here? All those boring lectures that I had no interest in about logistics and what industry do I end up working in? Fast forward again to the age of 38. I decide to go back in the Army and this time specifically pick a combat arms job, tanker. I go through all my training and get assigned to a unit. Where do I end up? The 101st Airborne Division (AASLT). AASLT stands for Air Assault. It's a light infantry division whose main mode of transport is by helicopter. NO TANKS! I end up in the division headquarters and deploy to Afghanistan. What is my job in Afghanistan? I manage a country's worth of ammunition for training. Basically, a LOGISTICS JOB!

"Logistics is the key, son... logistics is the key". Thanks dad.

There's more to tell about dad but it's in relation to mom. I haven't even begun to talk about mom yet. I'll save that for part two. Thought you were off the hook mom, didn't you?

From Their Own Mouths!

Check out this video from YouTube. Pay close attention to what each speaker is saying about the "Public Option" and a Single Payer Health Care System. This is a perfect example of how the "Progressives" operate.

First we were told all those angry people at the Town Hall meetings were shills for the insurance companies and Republicans. Then we were told those people were just stirred up by lies and myths being perpetrated by opponents to "reform". I talked about this in a previous post, the arrogant perception of the Democrats that we, the people, are stupid and don't know what's best for us. Folks, ask yourself this; If the Democrat's agenda is so good, why do they feel the need to lie to us about it?

We have been continuously hearing from the Obama Administration, Congressional Democrats and the sycophantic "Main Stream Media" that those opposed to the current plan are opposed to "Health Care Reform". Not actually true! I, for one, will agree that there are problems with financing health care that need to be addressed. However, I don't think the plan(s) being proposed by the Democrats are good or the right fix. So I'm not opposed to health care reform, just to the power grab being attempted by the "Progressive" Party currently in power. Woe be to me for standing in the way of "progress".

There's Truth in Humor.

Check out this correction in today's L.A. Times. Here it is if the link does not work:

"TV listings: The Prime-Time TV grid in Thursday's Calendar section mistakenly listed MTV's "Jackass" show on the MSNBC cable schedule at 7 and 10 p.m. where instead MSNBC's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" should have been listed."

For once, the "Main Stream Media" reported just the facts. Too bad it took an error in the TV Listings for that to happen. Or was it an error?

"So Let It Be Written, So Let It Be Done"!

The title of this post comes from Cecil B. Demille's movie "The Ten Commandments". The movie was about Moses, played by Charlton Heston, leading the Jews from slavery in Egypt to the promised land. The line comes from Yul Brynner's Pharaoh character. Whenever Pharaoh made a decision or ruling, "So let it be written, so let it be done" would be proclaimed.

That line seems to sum up the mentality of the modern Democrat party. When I say the Democrat party, I'm not necessarily talking about the rank and file but more those who run the party. The Obamas, Pelosis, Reids and such, to include the Hollywood airheads, paranoid bloggers and dogmatic academicians. To the general public, these people style themselves as "Liberals" but in fact they are "Progressives". Progressive thought is grounded in the grand family of failed utopian ideologies that made the Twentieth Century such a bloody one. Marx was a "progressive". Lenin was a "progressive" as was Mussolini, Stalin and yes, even Hitler. Granted, these men are examples of the progressive movement gone to extremes. But that is where the lesson lay for progressive thought is far removed from and anything but liberalism.

Read the history of the "progressive" movement and you will read a tale of arrogance and conceit. It is a tale of intelligent people, at least they thought so, who, due to the advent of scientific discovery and the industrial revolution, thought they could tame nature and rationalize the world. They dismissed the idea of God as silly superstition because science "proved" there was no God. With science, Man could conquer nature and reshape it, engineer it into a wonderful, rational utopia where everything worked perfectly and progress was achieved. Man could be, would be God! Of course, not everyone could partake of this Utopia,oh no. For in order to bring about this new world order we had to speed up the evolution of Man. This would be accomplished not by Natural Selection but by Artificial Selection. Gone would be the indigent, the handicapped, the "stupid", the lazy and unfit. The "lesser" races would have to go also to weed out the undesirable genes of those "inferiors". The Old World would be torn down, replaced with new concepts, ideas and morals all guided by a "ruthless pragmatism" for the betterment of society.

Progressives believe themselves to be rational beings, therefore what they think is right is based on rationality. If someone disagrees with that thought well, they're just acting irrationally. That can be the only reason because the "Progressive" is the rational one. That, my friends, is the fatal flaw, perhaps one could say the "Fatal Conceit" to borrow from Fredrich Hayek, of the "Progressive" mind. They see an irrational world where this in fact a rational world. When you try to rationalize an already rational world, you become irrational.

So what does this have to do with today's politics? The so called "Progressives" won the election and in their arrogance thought they could once again begin reshaping the world. But the people who voted for them became nervous, then fearful, then angry for they are not stupid. They've seen this before and all they need do is look across the Atlantic to see a possible future for the Progressives are far more entrenched in Europe than here. Europe is slowly committing suicide. The anger arises from the feeling of being duped. Back in 2008, amidst the cult like fawning, soaring rhetoric, Grecian column festooned pageantry and choirs singing "Hope and Change", many voters thought they were electing Moses to lead them to the Promised Land. Now they realize instead they got Pharaoh.

Measurable Metrics

Earlier today I caught a bit of Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice discussing the Administration's new strategy for Afghanistan on CNN. During the course of the interview, Ambassador Rice mentioned that while they hadn't done so yet, the Administration would develop "measurable metrics" to gauge the progress and success of the strategy. Measurable metrics is a term that, for some strange reason, keeps popping up in recent conversations. So, of course, when those words came out of Ambassador Rice's mouth, the phrase "Danger, Will Robinson, danger" echoed in my head.

My fear is that the Administration and the military leaders on the ground in Afghanistan will fall into the trap of setting measurements to determine progress that don't necessarily reflect real progress or paint a misleading picture. We have done this before and then been stymied as to why the situation didn't improve. It can go both ways. We can fool ourselves into believing we are successful when we are not or think we are failing when we are in fact successful. All because the "measurable metrics" we establish may not reflect reality.

Losing Sight of the Mission

I had a long phone conversation last night with my best friend that lasted several hours. Thanks to this blog, Verizon Wireless will remain profitable. Anyway, the conversation evolved over a range of subjects, separate yet interconnected. Basically, you could say one thing led to another. The last part of the conversation ended up being about institutions, bureaucracy and leadership or lack of thereof. My, oh my wasn't that conversation enlightening. We work in different organizations, with different goals and yet suffer with the same problems.

My friend Joe works for the Department of Children and Families (DCF) back in my home state as a Social Worker. As such, his job puts him in the field dealing directly with the clients. So his job, one could say his mission, is to work with and help his clients, who by the way are people. Listening to Joe describe his job, one can sense the frustration he has in trying to accomplish his mission. The frustration stems not from the clients but from his own organization and the way it works. For example, though he is assigned clients and has to deal with those clients, he has no authority to make decisions about each case. Those decisions have to be made by someone higher up the chain. In addition, every contact with a client, be it a face to face meeting or even just a phone call has to be documented and reported. He, of course, has more than one case (client) assigned to him with more added all the time. The net effect is that, by his estimation, 20% of his time is actually spent with the client while the other 80% is spent doing paperwork. In addition, though his job is to help his clients, he isn't given any authority to actually help them.

The interconnection between the above aspects is interesting. The mission of DCF, at least initially, is to help children and families that find themselves in certain circumstances that require outside aid. On paper, that is still the mission. Because the organization deals with people, it needs to be careful in how it provides it's services because of the possibility of that aid making the situation worse. The wrong decision could adversely affect the client which opens up the organization to lawsuits. So, ostensibly to protect the client, the organization puts into place processes and procedures to check against this possibility. Decisions need to be checked and validated up the hierarchy giving the top of the hierarchy ultimate authority to make the final decision. This leads to those lower down on the chain not even bothering to make decisions but to pass it up. 80% of the workers time is spent documenting all interaction with a client in order to protect the organization from a possible lawsuit or investigation stemming from the wrong decision adversely affecting the client. In effect, while on paper and to the public, the mission of DCF is to help people, subconsciously within the organization, the mission has shifted to protecting the organization from the very people it is supposed to help. Those within the organization who are good at accomplishing this new mission are promoted to positions of leadership based not on their ability to help people, but on their ability to abide by the processes put in place. Thus the new, unstated mission perpetuates itself. What we call "group think" sets in. The organization has lost sight of it's original intent and purpose.

In my phone conversation, I identified Joe's frustrations without getting all the details very quickly. I said "Let me guess,..." and proceeded to list off a series of situations and circumstances that when tied together painted a picture of the culture of his organization, the source of his frustration. I was able to do this because I substituted "U.S. Army" for "DCF", "Sergeant" for "Social Worker"... need I say more.

Power to the Sourpoints!

Anybody who works in the corporate world or government will most likely appreciate this piece from the Wall Street Journal Taste page. It's entitled "Speaking truth to PowerPoint". Of all the items in the arsenal of the United States' military, PowerPoint has to be the most under appreciated in terms of lethality and destructiveness. Want to simultaneously sow confusion in the minds of your enemy while sapping their physical strength? Hit them with a PowerPoint presentation.

I am convinced that the key to defeating Al Qaeda is to infiltrate their command and training camp network with specially trained teams of briefers highly skilled in the use of PowerPoint. The concept is similar to a virus in that the mission is two fold. Not only do the teams masquerade as jihadists and use PowerPoint to present their ideas, more importantly they train the real jihadists in how to use PowerPoint. As the jihadist start to master PowerPoint, the first symptoms of the virus appear. The organization becomes sluggish and confused. Because the structure of Al Qaeda resembles a network of cells and affiliated organizations, each cell or group will do their slides differently. The Taliban may use a green background, the color of Islam. Egyptian Islamic Jihad may opt for a template that resembles old parchment in order to get that "original Quran" look. Dissention sets in as each group argues over who's slides are more Islamic.

At the lower level, more and more IED attacks are less successful. This is because in the training camps, rather than learn how to build and emplace an IED by actually doing it, Johnny Jihad gets the instructions in bullet point format with serious gaps in information. When he tries to figure out why the IED didn't work, he can't because his instructors didn't give him an actual training manual. Instead, they gave him a packet of printed slides with the same bullet points from the presentation. When Johnny Jihad tries to recall what the instructor said during the period of instruction, he realizes all the instructor did was read the bullet points out loud and ask if there were any questions. Of course there were no questions because: a.) The students didn't know there was a gap in the information and b.) It was Thursday night so all the students wanted was to get released for the day so Johnny Jihad could hook up with Joey Jihad.

At the same time, the logistics system starts to strain both physically and financially. More money has to be budgeted for laptops, network servers, printers, power backups, ink cartridges, printer paper, binding machines, staples, staplers, staple removers, clear plastic covers for the slide packets, spiral combs for the binding and so on. Not only do all these supplies have to be purchased, they also have to be transported from, for example, Pakistan over the mountains into Afghanistan. This is in addition to/ competition with bullets, food, explosives and personnel. Because there is a shortage of donkeys and Toyota pick ups in theater, the supply chain becomes clogged, slowing down the conduct of operations. The highest level of command notices what is going on and sets out to remedy the situation. Osama Bin Laden dispatches subordinates on a fact finding tour to figure out what the problem is. Their task will be to identify the problem, develop a solution and then brief the seniors on that solution. The brief will of course be presented in PowerPoint because Osama's schedule is packed with other breifings and he doesn't have all day to read a report.

The solution the subordinates devise, and brief in PowerPoint, seems simple and is designed to streamline communications, planning and logistics. An SOP on formatting slides is established.

• All slides will be written in a size 12 Arabic font, white background, black lettering.
• All slides will have a header consisting of the Al Qaeda symbol in the upper left corner, the subordinate organizations symbol in the upper right corner, the phrase "Allahu Akbar" directly centered on the page with a thick green line beneath separating the header from the content.
• No complete sentences are allowed. Only brief, concise bullet points will be used.
• The last slide will have the same header but no bullet points. In place will be one word in size 30 Arabic font; QUESTIONS?

For example, rather than communicate a plan like this: The suicide bomber will detonate his charge precisely at 1200 hrs in front of the checkpoint. Immediately after the blast, supporting forces will will engage surviving enemy forces with precise direct fires until enemy capabilities have been reduced to ineffectiveness due to high casualties.

The plan will be communicated like this:

• At noon he go BOOM!
• Everybody else shoot.
• Enemy Dead.

Of course this Standard Operating Procedure is only a guideline. In order to maintain Esprit De Corp, in addition to developing creative thought in juniors, subordinate commanders are given flexibility in developing slide formatting SOPs for briefings within their organization. However, those slides will have to be reformatted in accordance to the higher level commands SOP when briefed to the higher level command. Someone will forget to change the font size on one of the slides which will lead to 15 minutes of lecture about how the slide is not formatted correctly. That 15 minutes will eat up much of the briefing causing a whole slew of slides to be skipped and information lost.

On the logistics side, the subordinates solution for supply and support functions is to contract out those functions. This is deemed more cost effective as it frees up manpower for suicide bombings. Because the Jihad is already ongoing, the decision is made to bypass the bidding process and directly contract the most capable company in the region. That company turns out to be The Bin Laden Group. This spurs Muslim conspiracy theorist film makers to produce documentaries pointing out the connection between Bin Laden, the Saudi government and former President Bush thus concluding the whole Jihad is all about oil and profit, not about establishing a new Caliphate.

The benefits of this strategy for the United States war effort are huge. First off, this plan has been tried, tested and successful under various conditions already by the U.S. military on a global scale. The strategy does not require any additional funding or personnel increases as we already have a large cadre fully trained at all echelons. The third order of effects in terms of breaking enemy morale thus their will to fight are guaranteed. For example, prior to deployment, I had to attend Counter IED classes. The class was several hours long and the instructors gave it using a combination of audio-visual techniques. After the introductory slides, I was subjected to about 30 minutes of web videos showing IED's blowing apart Humvees and fellow soldiers. This was followed by three hours of PowerPoint slides covering enemy tactics, how we counter those tactics, how they counter our countering, various pieces of equipment we use to disrupt IEDs that work fine alone but cancel each other out if too close and then more web videos of Humvees blowing up. It was a great presentation but when I walked out of the class, I was sweating, heart beating fast and thinking "OH SHIT! I'm gonna die!". It's a 100% surefire guarantee that if given PowerPoint, some Jihadist in a training camp will do the exact same thing to their guys. I'm not saying that by using this plan Al Qaeda will fall overnight. But over time the organization will definitely lose it's ability to accomplish much. The best part of this plan is that we can define victory. The day Osama appears on Al Jazeera in one of his videos and after the first few words he says "next slide", we know we won.

The basis for this plan is what I call the Anti-Boyd's Law or Reverse OODA Loop. It goes like this:

1. I observe my own organizations actions and inadequacies.
2. I orient my enemy to those same actions and inadequacies.
3. He decides to adopt them.
4. His actions mimic mine.

The principle is sound. If it doesn't work for me, it won't work for him either. The reason this plan hasn't been put into effect is that I would have to brief my chain of command with a PowerPoint presentation. I suck at PowerPoint.