Posts Tagged ‘military’

Obama voters

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

UPDATE: Here is an Obama supporter, and presumably voter. She must be highly educated and she wants to nationalize the US oil industry. What a brilliant idea ! She must be very, very highly educated. It takes years of Marxist economics to arrive at those brilliant insights !

A few people have noticed something when Obama voters are described. They are all “highly educated”. What does that mean ?

Here is one characteristic:

I stole a friend’s idea and devised “The World War II Test.” I invited the applicants for interviews. These PMI wannabes came off as slick and somewhat rude. I noted something among my subjects, a sense of entitlement, they all, to varying degrees, emitted a message along the lines of “Why are you bothering me with this silly interview? I am obviously brilliant. I have a degree from Columbia. I am not going to spend my whole life as you have in this stupid bureaucracy. I just need this to add to my resume. I am in a hurry.” I hit them with the test, which consisted of about dozen questions about WWII and its aftermath. I recall a few.

He asked them a few questions like “Who were our allies in World War II?” One applicant said “Why are you asking about World War II when the job is about NATO ?

Hmmm…

Now, here is someone   who is not “highly educated” and is probably not an Obama voter.

We do know that there are Obama voters out there from stories like these.

No doubt those people are “highly educated.”

If you wonder who Marcus Luttrell is, this is his story.

John Boyd and the American military

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008

A recent article repeats the story of John Boyd whose acolytes continue to try to modify the culture of the Pentagon. Boyd originated the concept of an OODA cycle. This is often compared to the PDCA cycle attributed to Walter Shewhart who was the director of the Western Electric Laboratories in the 1920s and was the mentor of Edwards Deming, often credited with the quality improvement process used by the Japanese in manufacturing.  Boyd was less concerned with improving manufacturing processes than with winning aerial combat. His classic work is about winning gunfights but, inevitably, his genius comes through and his insights will change military strategy for hundreds of years. His first major initiative resulted in the F 16 fighter. Boyd had tremendous influence on airplane design but his greatest contribution was in philosophy. He changed how the military thinks. Unfortunately, he did not live long enough to see his ideas become doctrine. It is rare for the rebel and contrarian to see how he has changed everyone else. Sadly, Boyd did not have the opportunity but he did change everything and Iraq, finally, shows how men who do not know his name, use his ideas to win wars. He would be satisfied, I suspect.