Sunday, September 16, 2018

The Coast Tards

h/t Borepatch


USCG PO2 Garrett Brada gives the OK sign before an ice dive. -DoD photo
















Make no mistake: if your ship is foundering, or you're overboard, or floating in an exposure suit or raft on the open sea, or having a heart attack 300 miles from land, or sitting on your roof after a hurricane, the Coasties of the USCG are the finest thing you'll ever want to see.
If you're smuggling dope or breaking the law on the water, they're the last thing you want to see. And when activated to federal military service in time of war, they've consistently punched far above their weight.

But the reason they'll never shake off the pejorative term "Puddle Pirates" among the actual military, and forever be regarded as little better than some third world brown-water navy, is silly PC horseshit like this:














And solely because of PC-pants-wetting hysteria spawned by a 4chan meme joke, the USCG relieved the hard-working Coastie in the hurricane center who was simply doing his job, not flashing KKK gang signs.

Coast Guard Relieves officer, accuses him of white supremacy for making OK gesture

And only monumental commissioned jackholes of the most moronic sort, with their heads shoved so far up their asses they can see out of their own throats could think, or pretend, it was ever otherwise.

It's also an open question if their parents were ever married.

But two can play at this game.

 
Alternatively, you could relieve every one in the chain of command who played any part in removing the Coastie from his position in that hurricane center, put permanent official letters of reprimand in all their files, restore the officer removed from his post back to it without any further prejudice, issue him a formal letter of apology from and signed by everyone from the Secretary of Transportation and the Coast Guard Commandant on down to his immediate OIC, and send everyone else from CPO to Rear Admiral in the USCG to mandatory "How Not To Be A Monumental Jackass" training, to ensure this kind of bullshit ceases immediately and Coast Guard-wide, NLT noon Monday.
 
But since we're talking about the Puddle Pirates' senior management, I'm not holding my breath.
 
Maybe it would be simpler to just relieve everyone in that service above a certain rank (LT or LT j.g. is probably the cut off (though I'd allow LtCmdr's with sterling records to make a good pitch for retention), and then just let common sense percolate up as normal promotions replenish the removed officer corps over future years.
 
Or, all y'all can just keep walking around with your heads up your asses, and giving me fish in the barrel to shoot from this blog.
 
You can get odds on which is likeliest.
 
And some serious history by Vox, from Kenny at Knuckledraggin:
 
 
So much for jokes pinning that to white supremacy, Coast Tards. Pry your heads loose, and come up for air, will ya?

9 comments:

SiGraybeard said...

Not a week goes by that I don't hear something like this that makes me think Elon Musk is right and we're living in some sort of simulation. Only it's run by the Onion. This has to be made up; it's hard to believe anyone is stupid enough to believe that 4Chan stuff, but I'll make an exception for media.

Roger said...

Perhaps little known is that the OK sign is also in American Sign Language the sign for Asshole.
Perhaps there have been folks expressing an opinion of the speakers.

Aesop said...

No, it's not.

For "asshole", you have to invert the entire hand gesture, putting the thumb on top, and hold your hand up at chest level.

"OK" looks like "OK", for the same reason an "n" is not a "u".

Close, but not.

https://www.boredpanda.com/sign-language-insults-cut/

Anonymous said...

Guy realizes the press in there in a situation room, he's looking OFF CAMERA, a MASSIVE hurricane is coming in, he needs to communicate in the most discreet way possible that something is ok to someone else while the camera is on, and gets fired for it. Sickening. Anyone else attributing ANY OTHER motive to his actions is the one with the problem. Too bad the Coast Guard leadership are, apparently, a bunch of pansies.

Anonymous said...

Puddle Pirates...

...and ever since the woman LT on the USS Mesquite ran it aground 100 feet offshore on a reef during night watch in my old AO, I thought "Hip-Boot Navy" was the proper term...

Pat H. said...

As the US government continues its disintegration, this sort of action will go on. Remember, this is the same government that permits same sex marriages in the USMA chapel.

Anonymous said...

I would hope (and actually might expect) that there would be some entrepreneur who would hire this gent merely to right such wrongs. Dude oughtta apply to Black Rifle Coffee, I'd bet Evan Hafer would find a place for him
Boat Guy

rick said...

I think he was messing with the cameraman. Something like the meat-gazer/circle game gesture.

The Gray Man said...

He looks like he's scratching his ear or leaning his head on his hand. Fuck the USCG for wasting our time and money going after the guy. Ridiculous. I bet he was a good officer. If he sucked, he wouldn't have even gotten a talking to.