ROK Drop Open Thread – November 27, 2016
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday. Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday. Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.
Okay, this is getting monotonous! Isn’t anyone else paying attention on Sunday? I know I have no life and am on the computer way too much. Hehehe.
Let’s see, what should I write about? Trump is getting boring now that he’s doing the transition team thing. Hmmmm…. okay, something near and dear to my heart these days… How long before the Philippines impeaches Duterte?… (as Linda Richman would say… Discuss)
Truthfully, I’m not sure how long until impeachment proceedings will start against Duarte.
My few Filipino friends are either neutral (because they live in the States) or support him (because they live in Korea, and think the drug problems in the Philippines require such harsh measutes).
I haven’t been to the P.I. in many years, and back then, the only drug I knew about was some fine, sticky icky ganja. Now the drug of choice is meth, which is a bit more harsh on the body than the little green weed.
Also, Duarte isn’t playing p*ssy-foot with the Muslim rebels that have been causing so much trouble forever. Negotiations and limited actions hasn’t been all that successful. Duarte is following a scorched earth policy.
The old Urban Legend that the Japanese buried the war gold somewhere in the P.I. seems to have played out, as the U.S . doesn’t seem as eager to go back in.
Time will tell.
Here are some polls that went unnoticed.
Hey Joe, polling organizations lost a lot of credibility earlier this month. I’m thinking they need to regroup and reorganize before they’re useful in real life. YMMV.
South Korean President, Says She’s Willing to Resign
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/world/asia/park-geun-hye-south-korea-resign.html
So begins the end-game? 😮
Even if she does resign I wonder how much if any of the revisionism performed by her administration will be repaired?
@Tagum City Tim, Duerte might not have a chance to get impeached, he may get assassinated before that ever happens:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/29/asia/philippines-marawi-blast-duterte-team/
Looks like Trump is going to appoint General Mattis as Secretary of Defense. When was the last time a president appointed a soldier and not a bureaucrat?
We may have to wait for the confirmation hearing to learn the answers to concerns.
Off the top of my head, if he’s the bare-metal hard-charging Marine he’s made out to be, I’d like to know if he’d be predisposed to recommend boots on the ground for every flareup around the world.
Marines are also known to have much more austere views on quality of life compared to the other services. How would that background affect his recommendations on how funds should be allocated?
On spending, will the new administration be able to overcome the Sequestration and Debt-ceiling impasses that the current administration got hamstrung with, where Congress insists on cuts from somewhere to offset any additional spending?
Time will tell, but I’d be very surprised (and disappointed) if Trump went full-bore interventionist policy. I seriously doubt it. Nor have I ever met an “austerity General”.
Guess I should add….austerity as far as resources go (boots on the ground-wise).
I’m sure you knew that by austere quality of life I meant on and off-duty living conditions. They used to say, “If the Marines wanted you to have a family they would have issued you one.”
Yes. But on the bright side, we aren’t likely to get 96 more SAPR programs when there isn’t fuel for the jets or money to train pilots.
That’s the work of a bureaucrat. Imagine if Hillary had been elected. She’d have probably put Gloria Steinem in as Sec of Defense.
I think the vast majority of our problems in the military can be traced back to putting bureaucrats in charge of the whole thing.
I’ve heard that many times, yet Marines, Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen get married and raise kids all the time. Usually the QOL depends on how recently the local area upgraded housing.
When I was first stationed at Pearl Harbor in 1988, they STILL had the “temporary” houses they had built during WWII. But not long after, they began demolishing those old Flintstones houses and putting up modern structures. The housing over at MCAS Kaneohe was pretty nice whenever I drove past on my way to surf at Pyramid Rock.
QOL has taken a bit of a hit here at White Sands though… Sort of. The base has downsized so much we have lost several restaurants, the golf course, and most of the clubs and bars. Now there is only the Bowling Alley and Sports Bar, the Swimming Pool, the Gym, as well as a decent sized Commissary (that’s losing money, but they keep it open because people do live on base), a shoppette sized PX, and several parks with good playground equipment.
The OLD housing is being torn down, except for a few historical units (Dr. von Braun’s House, etc), and all new housing has been built. All the new places are nice, if somewhat cheaply built. The old houses were built rather sturdily, but you can tell they are from the 1950s and earlier. One car garages, but large back yards for entertaining.
You’re at White Sands? NM? I lived in Alamogordo for three years.
When we arrived at base housing it was 1950s era (lead paint, asbestos, had to sign a disclaimer to live there). Everything went to privatized housing and they built new homes, but very quickly and cheaply and obviously not intended to be built to last. I liked the 1950s house better (except for the appliances, and kitchen layout).
Most of the privatized housing contracts are a sort of Ponzi scheme. They are using maintenance money to do renovations (there isn’t much of that either….we’re talking using money YEARS into the future, it an unsustainable plan). To give you some idea of how unrealistic it is, at the current base I’m at they have allowed 23 dollars per month per home for maintenance. They can’t make ends meet with 90 percent occupancy and they won’t make it with 100 percent either, but they are hoping to get civilians on to the base to live so they can try.
Nice! Yep, WSMR for a while. They don’t have all the houses filled, and our one big unit moved away. Waiting to see who the Army plops into that multi-million dollar facility. Right now, it’s a bit of a Ghost Town.
Holloman seems to be upgrading their houses as well. WSMR is keeping a fair number of the old style houses, the ones they installed Central Air into. The rest had swamp coolers, and those are being torn down at a rapid pace. Check Google Maps view now, then come back in a year or so when they update the images.
I wanted one of the old Senior Officer’s houses, with the fantastic view of the Organ Mountains out the back on Polaris St, but my beloved wanted a more modern kitchen and bigger closets. And a full bath, not a shower in the Master Bathroom. So we compromised, and I gave her everything she wanted. 😉
I’ll be coming back to Korea (I hope) once my son finishes High School here.
I was on a CRAAM exercise at White Sands once. Pretty cool place. Our temporary barracks were close to a readiness training center for troops about to deploy if I recall. Went on a march down a desert road and saw some old non-functioning radar towers I assume were 50’s or 60’s era.
Just the small area I was able to see obviously had a lot of history.
@MTB Rider, have you made it out to the Trinity Site yet at WSMR during one of their open houses? Very cool place to go and see.
I’ve visited all of the State-side bases I was stationed at over the years and I think only one set of gov’t quarters is still standing out of the five that I lived in.
I have, and visited the George Mcdonald Ranch house where they built the plutonium trigger as well. The V2 site is on my usual bicycle training route.
Lots of interesting history around here, and I’ve tried to see as much as possible.
Definitely a lot of interesting history at WSMR. Hopefully you have made it up into the Sacramento Mountains for some bicycle rides as well. I really like that area of New Mexico.