On October 19, 2021, Levine became the first openly transgender four-star officer in the nation's eight uniformed services with her commission as a four-star admiral in the United States Public Health Service.
Only in Joe Biden's* America can a man be declared the 1st woman 4 star admiral. My grandparents wouldn't recognize the country they risked everything to immigrate to in the early 20th century.
(10-20-2021 08:06 AM)TigerBlue4Ever Wrote: My grandparents wouldn't recognize the country they risked everything to immigrate to in the early 20th century.
Hopefully they would see that while some things were indeed better in that era, in many other areas we are far better off today than in the early 20th century.
(10-20-2021 08:06 AM)TigerBlue4Ever Wrote: Only in Joe Biden's* America can a man be declared the 1st woman 4 star admiral. My grandparents wouldn't recognize the country they risked everything to immigrate to in the early 20th century.
When I first saw the thread title, I was afraid it was an actual Navy admiral that was putting on a 4th star, not to mention how he/she/it would have gotten the first three stars. I thank God that at least it is USPHS and not USN. Upon reflection, what is telling about that is that the fact that I, as a retired Navy officer, would even consider that as a realistic possibility is frightening.
We are building $14B aircraft carriers that don't have working catapults, arresting gear, weapons lifts--or toilets. We are running our most sophisticated surface combatants into merchant ships or aground in front of the Honolulu airport. We have staked the future of our anti-submarine warfare (ASW) forces on a class of $800 million each littoral combat ships (LCSs) which not only cannot perform ASW because their noisy engines block out their sonars, but are incapable of any combat mission, littoral or otherwise. We have decommissioned and sunk approximately 50 of our best ASW ships before the ends of their useful lives, and are also early decommissioning perhaps the most advanced classes of anti-air cruisers and nuclear submarines in the world. We burned up a major warship sitting at the pier. Not to mention that the particular warship and her sister LHAs/LHDs are characterized as amphibious ships but cannot launch a viable amphibious assault because they have no ship-shore connectors to get tanks or heavy artillery ashore, leaving the Marines to get rid of their tanks and artillery and repurpose themselves as an ultralight infantry that is little more than a bunch of boy scouts with BB guns. We are committing in theory to a 350-400 ship fleet (when we actually need 450-500 or more) with a shipbuilding budget ($22B/year) and an average cost/ship ($3B) that will support building 7 ships/year for a fleet of about 210-280. With a current fleet of less than 300, we are attempting to maintain the same deployment commitments that we had with a fleet of 500-600 in the mid 1980s, resulting in a lack of adequate time to perform maintenance or training (except I hear that our equality/diversity/inclusion training is top notch).
If the leadership of the USN were seeking to destroy it as a viable fighting force, what would they be doing differently?
(This post was last modified: 10-20-2021 12:16 PM by Owl 69/70/75.)
(10-20-2021 08:06 AM)TigerBlue4Ever Wrote: Only in Joe Biden's* America can a man be declared the 1st woman 4 star admiral. My grandparents wouldn't recognize the country they risked everything to immigrate to in the early 20th century.
It all started when we allowed women to vote.
You might have meant this as a joke but you're right. We never should've let that happen. It was all downhill from there.
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Rachel Levine is now a 4 star admiral
![[Image: 18ab93d24846bf7ad1976368d59d024f_500x0.jpg]](https://media.gettr.com/group2/origin/2021/10/20/00/b02a5c60-3698-dc76-d75a-46d9610155e5/18ab93d24846bf7ad1976368d59d024f_500x0.jpg)
