In The East Wing

Abdullah Najjar 0:00
Okay, welcome back to the east wing, folks. This is part two with my good friend Jason riddle, who spent approximately 20 years in the US Air Force. If you didn't get a chance to have a look at part one, perhaps you would want to do that first before proceeding into listening to part two of our conversation. Also, please be aware that some of the language here is quite flagrant, so your discretion is advised. All right. Welcome everybody to another episode of In the East Wing. This is part two with my good friend Jason riddle. And in today's episode, we'll try to focus more on, I guess, politics and a fair bit about Jason's career and the changes in administration. So Jason, welcome back.

Jason Riddle 0:52
Thanks, brother. It's great to be back. I'm deeply honored. Thank you for letting me come back absolutely and I had a great time the first time, and we're gonna have a good time this day.

Abdullah Najjar 1:02
Oh, yeah, no, I'm sure. But so before we, before we proceed into the I guess the spicy topics, although I'm sure even the beginning is gonna be spicy. I was just wondering how, when you first joined, which was, I think, in the late 90s, when you joined the Air Force in 1999 in 1999 Yeah, at the time, I think it was the administration of it wasn't George Bush, it was Bill Clinton. So Bill Clinton

Jason Riddle 1:31
was still the president for a few more months,

Abdullah Najjar 1:35
weeks, weeks, yeah? Because in the year 2000 is when Bush, yeah,

Jason Riddle 1:39
no, I, yeah, so he would have so I joined January 6, 1999 Yeah, so Bush W Bush would have been sworn in, and that like that, that January he would have been sworn in. Oh, okay, right, yeah, this wasn't the election in 98

Abdullah Najjar 2:07
think he got in office in 2000 if I'm not saying, because there's a Supreme Court decision, let's do some

Jason Riddle 2:12
Google. Yeah, let's look that up. The hard part being in the past,

Abdullah Najjar 2:19
yeah? But it's interesting, though, it feels like it was a long time ago, like 25 years ago. Gosh,

Jason Riddle 2:28
oh my God, my spelling is horrible.

Abdullah Najjar 2:30
Yeah? This is a time when, like, if one, if one is exposed to Joe Rogan, this is when he

Jason Riddle 2:35
did, Jamie, yeah, pull Yeah. We don't have a Jamie, yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 2:39
but shout out to Jamie, our advisor, though, because we do have a an advisor, Jamie.

Jason Riddle 2:45
So oh one to oh nine. So I did, I did serve a year under the Clinton administration. Gosh. So that that tracks, yeah, yeah.

Abdullah Najjar 2:53
So when a year and a half, yeah, yeah. So you That's

Jason Riddle 2:57
right, because I said in the first episode, remember, we were talking about I was overseas, yeah, when 9w was, was, was inaugurated. Oh, yeah. And, like, a couple days after, we had our first big bombing mission in the north, that's right. And it was, like, game on, yeah, you know, listen here, bitches,

Abdullah Najjar 3:16
yeah, yeah, because it was a first, you said, like, he got into office. And then there was the Iraq bombing. Like sending a clear message. We

Jason Riddle 3:25
sent our sent everything that we could to go attack the North. Yeah, from Kuwait. Good Lord, yeah. To reference where we were. We were in Kuwait at Al Jabber. We pushed into the no fly zone, wow, attack targets that had been attacking us for months.

Abdullah Najjar 3:40
Payback. Payback.

Jason Riddle 3:44
Or for years, in some cases, yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 3:46
yeah. And so would you say that your service was impacted largely through the changes in administrations throughout the years?

Jason Riddle 3:54
Some yes and some No, okay, um, because I was in the training pipeline for that year and some change when Clinton was still in President, and I wasn't a big Clinton fan either. Was back when I was Red Team kid, you know what I mean, I was a good Republican, and I was like, Fuck, this guy sucks, you know? And when you people don't realize that Californians are very political. Oh, very like, even back then, even back then. And be, I think it's because of the environment that is so skewed in one political direction that those who oppose oppose so aggressively. You know what I mean, and and so like to be a California Republican was, like, a big deal, wow. And like, you had to swing hard. You got to be ready to throw down, right and so. And, you know, my first foray into politics was I worked on Dan Lugar's campaign in 1998 I was running for governor, and he didn't. Win, but my job So, long story short, the dealership had found out that I had joined the military, and so I had nothing to do in December of 98 and I was coming in in January of 99 and I quit working there in the early part of December of 98 Well, we're full on in this election season. And so my job for the party, for you know, California GOP, was to go rip down the opponent signs. I

Abdullah Najjar 5:32
didn't think you guys were that nasty. Oh yeah.

Jason Riddle 5:36
So we just went all around Sacramento, like this little like gang of hooligans, holy shit, ripping down the other guy's side. Gosh, and I was a paid volunteer, if you will.

Abdullah Najjar 5:46
That's interesting.

Jason Riddle 5:49
And it was, it was, I mean, it's fun. I mean, I was, you know, just turned 21 you know, yeah, I was a wild kid then. And, you know, when I came in, I was in when you're in the training environment, you're very sheltered, yeah, you know, you have no clue what's going on in the outside world when you're in basic training, and even in the front end of tech school, you know, because my text, my initial school was nine months, almost 10. I think it was 10 by the time was over because I'd failed a couple classes, had to stay a little longer, learn how to fix airplanes is challenging. And I found out I had test anxiety there, like I That's when I found out I had surreal condition, a real condition, and I would freak the fuck out when that bullish, and I think is so much was on the line, and they would tell you, like, here's this test. You better get a 70 or better, or you got to go find a shitty job. Oh my. And it was like, all that went and they would do that, like, minutes before you go start filling in bubbles. You know what? I mean? It's like, yeah, you know, I'm like, Oh, maybe I don't know. You know, you're freaking out. And it's like, you know, I'm gonna get fired from my government job that I don't even have yet. You know what I mean? So it's a lot of pressure and, you know? And then there's the pressure of the industry, right? You don't want to be a fuck up airplane mechanic, because that's right, we just saw in the last 24 hours, you know? Yeah, wash, you know? People, people die in airplanes, yeah, a lot, you know. So if you are not that sharp, sharp, sharp, leaning edge, then you know, somebody could croak, and you would be responsible, right? And I never wanted that on my hands. So, yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 7:32
no, not at all. You don't want to be the kid who's, who's, you know, the the odd one out, and they're like, how did he get involved? Right? Yeah, right. And I got him in, I'm

Jason Riddle 7:41
sure whoever works on those Black Hawks right now, yeah, they're going through it. Because whenever there's a crash, there's an investigation right away, right? And first things that get that happens is all the maintenance records on that aircraft get seized. Yeah, the cops come in, snatch all that shit up, and then they start going through who's touched this airplane, or in this case, a helicopter, in the last 72 hours, the last 48 hours, in the last you know, who released this aircraft? You know, all that kind of stuff starts happening. And you know, you hear about, like, the whole unit gets pulled in for a drug test. You know, everybody this blanket kind of actions in regards to a crash. So that's a big deal.

Abdullah Najjar 8:22
And so with that, you know, you have, I guess you have to be quite responsible and have to be quite cautious. So to training, they must ensure that dude, you know, you gotta be on top of your game, otherwise you're just not. Well, there's

Jason Riddle 8:36
a personal aspect they do. They don't teach you, and it's when you get to your first unit. You know, there's the because training never really stops, right? There's always a flow of new people coming in, yeah, or and on, old people going out, people retire, people get out. It's a cycle of life in any unit in the military, right? But, um, in aircraft maintenance at the time, we were directly tied to our operational unit. So we were part of the fighter squadron. We weren't an aircraft maintenance Squadron, we weren't an Aircraft Maintenance Group. We were in the 74 fighter squadron as their maintenance unit, right? And so one command, one unified action, right? And it had its benefits, and it had its drawbacks too. One of the drawbacks being our highest ranking officer was in oh three. So we had a captain that was our senior maintenance officer, but the commander of the squadron is an oh five. So guess who wins all the arguments, not us. So that's part of the reason why the restructure happened. And there's aircraft maintenance squadrons or aircraft maintenance groups now, but they create their own stupid that goes with it too. But what I was getting to is that you get to know the pilots who are coming up at the same time as you are. Oh gosh, okay, you know, I'm still friends with, you know guys I knew, who are retired colonels. Now that I knew them when they were a lieutenant, wow, and they knew me when I was an airman, because we got there around the same time. They're learning how to fly the a tenant at the operational tempo, right? Because they do come trained on flight how to fly the aircraft, but they don't know how to run at the pace that we run at, and we're learning how to maintain this aircraft, right? So you have that kind of bond of being in that I'm new phase, right? We were new together, right, that kind of thing, right? You know, I think going to work at a company like, you know, you always kind of remember the guys

Abdullah Najjar 10:35
who came in with you, or gals that came right? You already guys in the same phase of life, in that state, same

Jason Riddle 10:39
phase of life. They might be, have been a smidge older than me, because they were, like, you know, they had graduated college, right? But, like, I'm 21 turning 22 these, some of these dudes are, like, 24 right? We're not that far apart in age. Yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 10:52
there's a still, still same 425, right?

Jason Riddle 10:54
So that was kind of, it was, it was nice, you know? And when that happens and you get to know these folks, it's a different ball game, you know, I'm not going to be responsible for my homies death, you know what I mean, right? I'm going to bust my ass to make sure that he used to go home and see his kids. That's why, right? And that really resonated with me every day. And that's the caliber I train my subordinates to, you know, like, because they would be like, well, you know, all these people, I'm like, Well, yeah, because I gotta go talk to him about what he saw, you know, I mean, because I can't go take the aircraft for a test drive, yeah, I have to go back. And sometimes you can read what they wrote up. You know, they only have like this, like two inch by three inch square to write up malfunctions, right? So sometimes you need more than that. And or if I would see indication in the cockpit where maybe steps were skipped, and I'd be like, hey, So was this a you know? And they'd be like, Oh yeah, yeah, sorry, bro, you just go back and just sign it off, you know, recycle power system checks good, yeah. You know, there

Abdullah Najjar 11:58
has to be clarity and transparency between the two parties, right? Yeah, and

Jason Riddle 12:02
you get to know each other, right? And we're all on the same team. We're not, yeah, we're not battling factions, you know, which now I do feel that, now that that separation is exists, where maintainers and operators, if you will, are not under the same umbrella. There is a lot more factionalism. Because when I did return to aircraft maintenance in the Drone World, there was a lot more factionalism.

Abdullah Najjar 12:26
Oh, oh, yeah, what would you say? You would attribute that reason to

Jason Riddle 12:32
because of the difference in command structures, and we all have a different dad who has a different view of what is right and what is wrong? Oh, and when you add that dynamic to the situation, it becomes a my team versus your team. And it, you know, like we used to rag our pilots. You know, it takes a college degree to break an aircraft and a high school diploma to fix it. But, you know, at the same time, it's like, you know, that's, that's just a joke. We're just talking shit, yeah, when I made it back to the community in the end of my career, like that was dogma, wow, you know, yeah, it's true. These fucking dudes don't know what the fuck they're doing. And that was, that was, it was, like, very much more, a factional wedge in between the two? So, yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 13:24
that's interesting. Though. I'm glad we brought that up, because we didn't really highlight it in a previous conversation. Aircraft Maintenance

Jason Riddle 13:31
is so dramatic. Gosh, oh my god, yeah, yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 13:34
I remember even like there was an example in a previous episode. I can't really share it off the top of my head, like the details, but I do remember how there was, there was a close call with you being on, like, the pilot seat. You were trying to fix something. Yeah,

Jason Riddle 13:52
I left the injection seat hot, yeah. And

Abdullah Najjar 13:55
it was, like, that was uh oh yeah, yeah,

Jason Riddle 14:00
oh yeah. Well, and you know, when you come, like I said, When you come to the training pipeline, you hear all these horror stories about shit that happened, right? And one of the horror stories I heard was about the f4 had a different man, a different manufacturer that made its ejection seats. They're called Martin Baker, okay, Asus makes the more modern ones, right? Like the safe over to computers, like Ace, no, it's like AC

Abdullah Najjar 14:24
ISS. AC ISS, okay, Aces

Jason Riddle 14:26
two is the most well, at least in my era, was the injection seat model, right? Okay, and because they could have a newer one. Now, I don't know, right? And I don't want to tell lies out of school, but the Martin bakers were infamous for going off at the wrong time. Shit. They call him Martin Baker, widow makers. Oh, shit. And there's this horror story of what happened. This event happened at Nellis, where a guy was because, you know, the cockpit is about throughout a foot and a half. You. You lean over it, right? Yeah. So the pilot sits in it. It's really me only when people talk about strapping an aircraft on that's pretty serious, because it's, it's, it's only really meant to hold you and make you do only certain movements you don't really have full freedom, yeah, no, mobility, no, not, not in a fighter. Yeah, right. And, and so this dude is leaning over the cockpit, working on something, leaning over the seat. The seat is safe, but it went off and, like, threw his body, like, and so when I had that, like, ass pucker moment that I'm sitting on a live seat, what's the first thing that goes through my head? Is this, this event through Nellis, yeah, right, yeah, I could have got splattered across this cockpit, right? God, and so the and what's wild is so fast forward to 2005 when I retrained into SATCOM, yeah, I met a guy who actually was on the ramp shit and sat Nellis the day this incident happened, gosh, and verify all accounts. And I was like, Oh,

Abdullah Najjar 16:08
that image is probably stuck in his head. Oh, yeah.

Jason Riddle 16:10
It was like, his first day on the flight line. And so when this happens, I'm like, holy, gosh,

Abdullah Najjar 16:15
that's experiential learning, yeah, in real life. And of

Jason Riddle 16:19
course, there was a lot of, I'm sure there was a lot of those conversations happening. I see this is what happens. Yeah, you don't do this. You don't do this step. You have to that step. And if you don't, if I get splattered by the seat, man, you know. And, gosh,

Abdullah Najjar 16:31
yeah, gosh. So with, with your first, to say, entry, 2001 or maybe that was your first deployment. My first appointment

Jason Riddle 16:43
was up across 2000 into 2001 Okay, yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 16:46
you've had that could have been, I think potentially, under the George Bush. It

Jason Riddle 16:52
was the beginning of the W Bush, yeah, yeah. How

Abdullah Najjar 16:55
would you say

Unknown Speaker 16:58
your

Abdullah Najjar 17:00
I don't, I don't know if operational tempo would be to write description, but perhaps the the system, broadly speaking, changed per the changes in administrations. Like your job. How did that what sort of major changes did it experience from one administration to the next? Well, you have

Jason Riddle 17:21
it like I said, I don't really remember a lot of the goods and bads of the Clinton years. Yeah, right now, there were people who raised me in the military who knew the goods and bads of the Clinton years and were again, equally unhappy with his performance. Particularly, I think Clinton closed more bases than any president. And seriously, presidency, yeah. And so a lot of that, that Cold War infrastructure, got chipped away at by the Clinton administration, right? Yeah. And a lot of people got a lot of positions got, like eliminated. So they went from having more people they know what to do with in at most capacities, to having not enough, and that is a big culture shock, yeah, you know, I think I remember hearing that my old shop before I got there was like 15 people, just for avionics, and I was person number six. Okay, you know what I mean? So, like, or person number five. So, yeah, that's, that's a big cut, you know, our, I want to say our, our entire flight, which was like, our kind of equivalent to, like a squad, or quite already, like the equivalent to, like a platoon in the army, right? But we had four different career fields in there. We had, you know, electro environmental, we had engines, we had us, and we had communications and navigation, yeah, so we had four different career fields underneath one banner, leadership, right? Yeah. I think our entire flight wasn't even a full 30 people. And you know, all of us are charged with working on all 22 aircraft. That's

Abdullah Najjar 19:05
30 for 22 aircrafts. Gosh. And

Jason Riddle 19:09
like I said, I was the fifth avionics guy. Yeah, we got another one that same year, the year after that, which was, which would have been into 2000 we got one other guy. Wow, now, and you want to talk about change in administration after that, after after Iraq? Yeah, we got, like, fucking, like, eight people, nine people a year, yeah, so, like, our numbers went up big time. Oh, yeah. And I remember, I don't know if I said in the first episode, there was a point where I supervised six people, but I was, and I didn't necessarily facilitate all of their training, but I was facilitating training for 11 people, yeah, and we had to review training records every Friday night, so like a night, like tonight, right? Right? I'd be sitting underneath a nose gear of an A 10 while my guys are working on the aircraft, and I'm listening to them yeah over the interphone so I can hear what they're troubleshooting. And I'd be down on the ground signing off tasks, Whoa, yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 20:13
no breaks even on Friday night, yeah, no drinks, no, no hitting the bar. And

Jason Riddle 20:17
my backpack was about the same size of my backpack I carry at school, so it'd be full of training records, holy, yeah. And they're big. They're big, like, like, tri fold binders like this, but they open up three ways. Wow. So you have, like, you know, formal training here, or their tasks over here, and then, like, you have a ledger on the other side you have to write out. So you'd have to sign off tasks in the middle, yeah, and then right at the when you got done, you had to write, okay, today I signed airman blah, blah, off on these 20 tasks. And then you and the trainee had to sign it. So I'd go back through and you like, you have a line for the training to sign. The trainee has to sign all the tasks that you sign them off on. So they have to agree that they have that capability of knowledge, wow. And then then you have to go back through it. So I'd be doing my part. And then that shift, I try to catch everybody I could. And I had the whole next week to try to catch the other guys that weren't on my shift, yeah, to sign off their stuff too, man.

Abdullah Najjar 21:07
Yeah, that you said peak Iraq

Speaker 1 21:10
War, yeah. So, so this is like, oh 404, okay, yeah.

Abdullah Najjar 21:14
So that is a major event. If we were to say, fast forward to, like, the rise of ISIS. Would you say that during that time you experienced also another accelerated No,

Jason Riddle 21:27
no, my no ISIS was definitely they do more with less, with less. So we went through in six we went through one big round of cuts that cut because so I got my, I got into communications in oh five, yeah. In six they there was, like, the they canned a bunch of majors. There was a bunch of majors that were, like, non promotable, so for rank, and they just were like, Okay, you can't make it bye. And so they got canned. I had to fight for my my new position. I ended up on the mandatory retraining list. And mind you, I don't even I'm again, my training has reset, so I'm back at the bottom in a new career field, right? I figured I would be safe because I'm a new guy again, right? But they look at your years in service, and so they're like, Well, maybe you're not a new guy. Maybe we need a shit, can you too? And so, like, I had to, I had to fill out a bunch of documentation to, like, prove why I wanted to stay in the career field. But that mandatory retrain list came around every year, the Obama years,

Abdullah Najjar 22:43
dude, every year, bam. Because they're trying to remove people, trying to well, and

Jason Riddle 22:47
my whole career field, by the time we, because we, when I got there, they were already, like, in this state of influx, right? So they're, they're combining with ground radio and part of our IT function, the tech control, a piece of tech control, became part of what became radio frequency transmissions. And when that happened, um, and granted, all conversions are slow process. I just went through one in avionics, right? So that was another reason why I left the career field, was because I feel like the the new imposed structure, it made it like impossible get promoted. Okay? And I was like, we're not going to be in a dead end job. I mean, it's probably gonna join the military is get the fuck out of a dead end job. Yeah? You know, scale. Not gonna be in another dead end job. Yeah. And so I, when I get to satellite communications, they're like, Oh, guess what? You know, six. So I retrained throughout all 2005 you know, six, they decided to push this new career field merger. And so I want to say by mid oh seven, like, everything had been documented, where everybody was retrained into the new career field, but it was still a mess. And that again. So that mandatory retraining list comes around. It's got like, 300 names on it. God, and now I don't know if that meant all 300 had to go, because they would never, like fully be transparent about how many people had

Abdullah Najjar 24:16
to go. They would never, well,

Jason Riddle 24:17
why not? I think they were trying to hope for to get more. Oh, so if they didn't tell you how many had to go, they would maybe get more people to volunteer to go. And so I see the strategy, yeah, it's kind of a fucked up strategy. And so, and that happened, but that happened like, all the time, like, and I almost considered when I was in Belgium, I retook the ASVAB, which is the test you have to take when you join the military. Oh, because my administration scores were garbage. God, I think I got like a 40 something out of 99 in admin, right? So, but, but it's broken out to admin. Jen. Roll. And this is, this is just Air Force breakout, because everybody, every, every service, does their own weighting of the scores, right? And so I was, it's admin, General, electronics and mechanical, yeah. So in general, I get a 95 in, in in, in electrical and mechanical get 99 so, like, I crushed it in, in the the area I ended up in. But I was like, you know, I was looking at other jobs. And one of the jobs I was looking at was contracting, uh huh, which I thought was a pretty cool gig, because they managed contractors, right? And so I was like, this is kind of a cool gig, you know, it's like, little little bit of production, like project management type stuff going on, you know? And they had a fad bonus, like, it was huge. It was a six multiplier, which means it was like, like 6% of your base pay times the years of service. So like, it ended up being, like, 450 K. It was a big, big ass bonus, wow. And, and it hit different metrics. So like, if you had certain amount of time and service, it wouldn't, you didn't get the good bonus, okay, but you had this. So I thought I did. I thought I knew this is why it didn't happen, okay? So thought I did. And I was like, sweet, I'm fucking doing this. The Army hosts a course called GT improvement, and it's where it's basically like, how to improve your scores on the ASVAB, right? And they kind of go back through some some good old fashioned, like, high school shit, and kind of like, get you squared away. And, like, you have to go through some English stuff and and it was, it was a really helpful class. And I was like, you know, being that I was in this joint billet, I, like, in a joint job, I was like, hey, so there's, is there a GT improvement class happening? And can I take it? And they're like, Well, I don't know. Find out. And then I found out that the the unit I was directly attached to was hosting it. And I was like, Oh, can I really fucking take it? And they were like, like, Yeah, I think you could take it. And so, you know, I asked my dads, and they were like, yeah, yeah, you can take it right along. Give a fuck nice. They like me anyway. So get me out of the shop for a little bit was probably a blessing. So I go and take this GT improvement class, and I retake the fucking ASVAB right away. Fucking destroy the asthma. Get all 90s and above on in all four categories. Love it. And so I was like, Okay, now I'm qualified for No shit, any job in the Air Force. So amazing, pal. And it was amazing feeling too, yeah. And I was like, All right, putting together this retraining pack and get the fuck out of the fucking SATCOM, because it's a mess. And I put together the retraining pack and I go send it up. And I had to talk to a career counselor. And the career counselor goes and looks at my records, and he goes, You sure you want to do this? And I was like, Well, yeah, it's got this fucking ridiculous bonus. Gets me the fuck out of here. Gets me out of this shop, this job. I fucking hate it. Let's go. And I had, I was coming up on 15 years service. Wasn't quite there, was almost there, okay? And, and he's like, You got too much time to service bro, you're you'll you fit the the higher end of the the bonus scale, you qualify for any of the bonuses. And I was like, well, and he's like, do you want to draw your package? And I was like, Yeah, withdraw me. I guess I'll deal with this bullshit for another five years. Oh my god.

Speaker 2 28:24
The excitement was there, and then they yank it out again. I

Jason Riddle 28:31
just got promoted to so when I when you pick up a new stripe, it kind of puts you in a new bracket of how you weigh against everything else. And so it was that also didn't help either. So I was like, Oh well, it happens. And that was what year, yeah, this was in Belgium. So this is in 1220, 12, around the time when fucking Libya

Abdullah Najjar 28:54
so crazy, yeah, oh, my god, yeah.

And then you said there was a something before the recording we talked about with, I think it's Trump administration, 2015 it was the no 1017 Yeah.

Jason Riddle 29:06
So I did, I did deploy under the first Trump, Trump v1 Oh, yeah, um, now on one thing, okay? Because we're talking about how the the flavor of the military changes, yeah, for administrations, right, yeah. So, you know, I had the change from Clinton to Bush. That was, we suddenly kind of got it was, like, it was like, the golden era of my career. We got everything we asked for. Oh, wow. And then some we needed people. You got people. You need fucking supplies. You got supplies. You need fucking deployments. You get deployments, wow, you know, it happened because, and that's probably because of 911 Yeah, you know, we, our nation, had been attacked. Want to go square these dudes away whatever it takes, right? Um, but as the war, like, kind of like, begin to draw out that momentum. Starts to go away, right? And that was one of the things the Obama administration wasn't a big fan of. Anyway. They felt like it was bloat in the military, right? Even though that what, what really had happened was that all the particularly in the area of having personnel, all the damage that the Clinton administration had done wasn't totally undone, but it was better, right? So we got to where we're, like, at a good strength of amount of people, yeah. And the Obama years are like, nope, too many people. And so they start hacking people, yeah, they turned on a 15 year retirement. It's where you can retire at 15 years of service. Whoo, I know I have a buddy of mine who took it. He took the 15 year out. I have a few friends that kind of, like, took other early out

incentives. There were, does the hidden early out Yeah, like,

different hidden early outs, like, there was a time where, like, they would, like, give you certain amount of money to get out. Yeah, um, like, everything to reduce the force, wow, which, which is crazy to me, because when you think about, I don't know what goes on in the equation in in Washington, where they think the people cost more than the stuff does. You know? I mean, like, not every fucking office needs new furniture every year, right? You mean, not everybody needs brand new computers every six months. Not everybody needs brand new servers. Every six months, you start adding up all this shit, and it starts to cost, you know, millions and billions of dollars, right? You don't need all that shit all the time, you know. And and other commands are cheaper than others. You know, I was in Air Combat Command, so ACC, we used to say, another cheap contingency. And so, you know, an ACC was super tight with their budget, right? But, and I wasn't always in ACC, but that's the command I served in the most right? But, yeah, it was, like, always this, like, tightening of the of the belt, you know, oh, you know, or to cut back on training, TV wise, which are or trips where you send people to go training. Gotta cut back on those abroad to train abroad or in the States. So, like, basically, so, like, if there was, you know, because the different training bases have different trainings they offer, right? That's right. And some trainings are mandatory, so you have to go, right. But then others aren't, and so, you know, but they're, they're nice, because you can get a guy spun up on, you know, training that's, you know, an additive, if you will, right? One of the things that got cut in the Obama years was we would advance through skill levels in your career field, right? Like when I was talking about when I retrained a SATCOM and they're coming after me for my job, I was a recently re issued three level, right? It's 357, and nine, right? Nines are E, eights and E nines. Threes are e1, through e4, and usually around e4 you make your five level, between e5, and e6, seven level, yeah. And then nine after you make e7, and so I was a recently re christened three level, but I was also still a seven level in aircraft maintenance. Okay, so, so it's not that the old career field goes away, it's still there. It's just your secondary, okay, so there were times where, for accounting sake, I would count as an avionic seven level, right? Or I would count as a SATCOM three level. So I kind of like had this, like, middle ground I lived in for a little while, and until my current rank, or my current training matched my current rank. And when did that happen? That happened at my second base as a sack armor, oh, yeah, in Georgia, okay? And because it takes a while to get trained, it means, by design, you don't want somebody to smash through, right, such important training, right? There are things that could be cut, but that's for when I'm Secretary of Defense, I'll take

Abdullah Najjar 34:20
care of that shit. But so with Trump coming into power, and obviously we're going to talk about, like the funding, the freezing of like funds and things like that, that has been impacted. So that

Jason Riddle 34:29
was big time in the Obama years. So budgets got cut, like crazy. A look up sequestration. That's where there was, like a shrinking of the defense budget, like, drastically. Oh, so we had, like, a new threshold we can only hit. And so once you ran out of money, no mass money, and so, and that happened a lot. So, like, through, so he got what? Oh eight was he elected? So, yeah, eight, 910, 11 was. At 12, 1314, 1516, was Trump, right? So, and Obama was still president throughout the calendar year of 16, if I remember

Abdullah Najjar 35:08
correctly, that's right, because Trump got in January of January of 17, yeah. So,

Jason Riddle 35:12
yeah. So across those eight years it money was tight, man, really tight. And that that's when we have this rise of ISIS, right? Yeah, and that was one of the kind of punches at the Obama administration. They didn't take the ISIS threat as seriously as it could have, because they didn't put their money where their mouth was. They didn't spend the money on it, right? And I know this podcast probably not as exciting as the last one, because we're talking a lot about money, no. But this is good, you know, and that's kind of just how it was like, so they cut funds, and they cut people really bad. And that's what I was trying to say, like, you know, no one really thinks about the things that are expensive, but they look at the people that are expensive. And that's what's ridiculous, because I feel like the people cost less than the stuff does,

Abdullah Najjar 35:56
right? Because you're carrying gear to cost, like, New

Jason Riddle 35:59
Year, you're responsible for gear that's worth millions of dollars, right? You're maintaining gear that's worth millions of dollars, right? You know. And the people are worth, you know, a couple 100, couple 100,000 by the time they're trained up, right? And so I don't think we cost as much as they made us out the same. But I think what it is, it's because it's easy to cut, oh, it's I can just I can shit. Can bodies all day long. But if you're going to sell off equipment, who's going to buy it? You know? I mean, there's a lot more, it's harder. And that was one thing that I resented about the Obama administration, was that I felt like it was always the the push the button to fix the problem, and once I push the button, the problem is fixed. And there was never, well, maybe the problem is a little more complicated than just pushing the button, yeah, to, like, put some research into this and do some legwork, and then maybe we can, you know, come up with other ways to cut. And there was, there was a whole initiative to cut back. There was, Oh, God, was it AF. So 21 was Air Force smart operations for the 21st century. And not everybody had this, because it was like supposed to hit everybody, but it didn't, yeah, um, and it hit Air Mobility Command really bad. And they called it the Lean shop, lean shop. And the Lean shop would come to your shop, come to where you work, and they would watch what you did, and then they would develop a report for you to do things smarter based on their observations. Oh, it it never worked, right? And they would create what they would call lean events. And so they would like, take you through a task and then watch how the people perform that task, and then be like, okay, so you could have, like, saved a couple of minutes here, or seconds here or buying this part. Are they experts at this? No, no, they were just like, fuck. Those who they had hired do their

Abdullah Najjar 38:00
consultant like

Jason Riddle 38:01
some consultant, you know, usually retired GIS, right, who are like, this is this thing's fucking stupid. Anyway, I already know it's stupid. But yeah, here I owe you this report that says, you know, you could have saved money here, but we really couldn't, you know. So there was, there was that when it came to the the ASO 21 thing, I was sheltered from absolute 21 a little bit because I had, I had moved away, I moved back into the joint world again, yeah. And so I got to, I was sheltered from that, because after 21 went crazy when I was in Belgium, gosh. So I had those, those almost four years of being, being in Belgium, yeah, where I was kind of protected from a lot of the stupid that was going on in the regular it's

Abdullah Najjar 38:41
even better. Yeah, was there major things happening under Trump v1 Um,

Jason Riddle 38:47
not really, okay. Um, we all kind of thought it was going to be like going back to the the glory days of the Bucha years, right, where, if you wanted it, you got it, right, yeah. Um, there was none of that. Whoa. There was a lot of just silence out of the White House and out of policy, like, a lot of just not things happening interesting, right? Because, even, because I would have thought that, like, at least money for logistics would have got cut back on, yeah, right. And no, he's

Abdullah Najjar 39:19
also thinking, like pulling out of Syria like that, right? And

Jason Riddle 39:23
there was a lot of like, I mean, it was just kind of shitty that, like, it definitely wasn't as good as what people think it was, right? Like, we always do this thing where we put the old President on this big pedestal, and, oh, my God, everything he touched was beautiful and golden. It was amazing. And that's not always true, you know, like, things were good in the Bucha and they were also bad in the Bucha. Things were good in the Obama years, they were also bad in the Obama years. People are people, right? You know, yeah, they make mistakes. You have, you have both right? And both dynamics. They're not everything's going to be perfect and beautiful. And, you know, rainbows emit from every orifice on our body, right? You know, so, you know, it's not, it's not really ever like that. And so I think that what happened with the Trump v1 years, which I was shocked, was that the money for parts and supplies was not really a thing. Whoa. And that stayed like Obama era spending levels, which I thought that was interesting to me. So like when I got to Qatar and I ordered a new radio, it took like months for it to show up, and lots of justification to order new radio, wow. And so if I needed to, but I could turn shit in. I had old shit to turn in. They were all about it, you know. And so, because I had these, I had some, we went through a service wide upgrade, where we downgraded these older radios, and which was hilarious, because I bumped into these pieces of shits back in 2015 like the Navy lived, lived and died by them. Oh yeah, we love it was the PSC five radio, and they're like, fucking Oh yeah, PC buys were everywhere in the Navy. And it's like, you guys are fucking killing me, like we're like, a couple generations past you now. And they're like, Well, of course, Air Force was nothing but money. That's the old so they love to say the Air Force is nothing but money, you know, no, we fucking don't. We have the same budget everybody else has. We just spend dumber on prettier shit that makes everybody think we have all this money because, like, you know, there's, there's, like, there's an old meme that floats around as like a soldier when he first goes to an Air Force Base, and it's like, Will Smith from The Fresh Prince, like, looking out the window the cat was, like, you know, and everything's all pretty and beautiful. And, no, it's not, it's, it's a facade. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's made to look like that, yeah. And, in fact, people, and not just that, lot of the shit that people are awed by, that's fucking cold war money. You know what I mean? Like, you know, the world loved, there was a point where, in the 50s, the Department of Defense loved the Air Force, because we had all the nukes, right? We're keeping the Russians at bay. You had the nice toys. If you want it, you get it right. And, and they flaunted that shit, but, but people think about it, you know, here we're gonna fast forward to 2008 2009 2012 2010 it takes money to maintain that stuff, right, right, right. You're pretty big brick buildings you built during the Cold War. Take, take millions of dollars to maintain, yeah, you know, they privatized housing in the Obama years. That was one thing that happened, I thought was very that was interesting, housing for base housing. Oh so. And that was DoD wide, right? And I think you went to like, three different contractors. I think it's down to one now. I think there's only one surviving contractor that runs housing for all the all those who are live in base housing. And we lived in base housing at the time with me and my eggs, yeah, and through the transition. So we had government run base housing, which was sweet, okay, like they were strict on certain things slow to fix things. But then they were like, but then, like, when shit was fixed, was fixed, right? Okay, right? You didn't really have to worry about having to, like, create another ticket for leaky sink. They came to fucking knock that shit out right away, right? You had a higher level of of maintenance. Okay, right? And so then base housing, then we moved to the next base housing, because we'd had a good experience from Mississippi to Georgia, and it was garbage in Georgia, oh, and like mold, and this the the house we had the person who lived there before us had paid to carpet the living room. Yeah, they didn't carpet. A lot of base houses didn't have carpet everywhere, and so they paid to carpet the living room. So we inherited a house that had carpeted living room. Made us kind

of a unique item, bougie instead.

And because that dude had moved out, they had to replace the carpet. So they were even more salty about that, and they did a shitty job, right? And so like, like, we had a bad link leak underneath the master bedroom sink, and there was a big show the counter. Like, you have this, like, desktop right here, the counter in the kitchen would, like, lift up,

Unknown Speaker 44:19
whoa.

Jason Riddle 44:22
But, and they were a pain in the ass with getting maintenance, because they're a contractor. They're not we're not part of the government, but we are the government. We take their we take their money, right? And we were in an off base compound that was base housing, so we're like around the corner from from where work was, but yet, we're a secured by the base location. Well, these assholes, they they don't know how to do anything if you put two cars on our street, side to side, yeah, Nobody drives. Gosh, there's not enough space to make it through there. Gosh. And so we had a few traffic issues like that on our street, and like we would call the fucking. An office, and they'd be like, oh, yeah, we can't do anything about that. And I'm like, but you when you take on the contract for base housing, you take on all the bullshit that goes with it, that's right, you have to deal with this traffic situation, because I can't call base security forces. I can't call the base cops to come deal with this. And I'm like, do I need to call because this isn't Warner Robins. It's like, do I need to call Warner Robins? PD, and have them come deal with deal with this traffic situation? And they're like, Well, no. And I was like, well, then who takes care of this? And so we had pushed back on that office a lot, and they hated us by the time we left. My command had to be there when I own process, because they're like, fucking jerks, because we had gotten in a bunch of fights with them and they it was bad my ex. My ex is really good at picking fights with people that she made me come clean up, and that was one of the fights that she picked with somebody and made

Speaker 2 45:50
me come clean up. Sorry, I had to go through that. Yeah,

Jason Riddle 45:53
it was. She was really good with that kind of shit. I'm so glad that No, and it happened in Belgium too, because she pushed back when we lived on base in Belgium. Oh my, I didn't want to live on base in Belgium. Was

Speaker 2 46:01
it nicer base? At least, no. Even in Belgium, do you

Jason Riddle 46:06
guys are no, it was much worse situation. And we had, we had an incident where, so they were wanting to change the they were wanting to create remote access for the base housing contractors to have access to the thermostats in the house, and they were going to set all the thermostats at a much lower temperature across the entire enterprise. And, you know, it was, is pretty freaking cold, lots of little kids, yada yada yada, and all of us kind of thought it was bullshit, and it was kind of a safety situation. And, and when you create this, this when scarcity becomes the the norm, right? You know, this is in 2012 2013 we're trying to leave when scarcity becomes the norm, then it creates these kind of things, right? Where they're like, oh, I can share. I can save a couple of dollars here. I can save a couple dollars here. Save a couple dollars. Yeah, and that had been the that had been the phrase it pays across freaking oh eight to 15. God was cut, cut, cut. Save money. Save money. Yeah, DOD cost too much. And so that affected you guys, firsthand, firsthand. And so I got in this big tiff with them. I was an area coordinator. Was big shit, and so I had been like, kind of like, tasked as a leader with with their office. I volunteered to lead the project with their office and make sure my area was squared away nice. But they fired me as an area coordinator after I pushed back on that. And I was like, Oh, well, that's shitty. I smashed her sign before I returned it to

Abdullah Najjar 47:47
Nice.

Jason Riddle 47:48
I was like, I just when I pulled it out of the ground like broke and we had gotten to a big, big tip with them over a repair to the house. So the neighbor next to us, our house was a grouping of four houses, right? Our backyards are connected. Um, the guy on the end next to me is supposed to be my pathway out from my backyard. Well, he didn't want to see it like that. What do you want to see it like? You want to see it as I should bring everything through my house, because we're physically connected. Yeah, we share walls. Okay, right? And so like, if I had to mow my grass, the intention was where I could go through his gate that exits out onto the street, through his yard, into my yard, mow my yard, and go back around that way. Equipment doesn't move through the house. Okay, right? No, he had a problem with that, and he had a toddler who he felt would open the gate between our two houses. And I was like, well, that gate needs to be open, because if there's an emergency in the front of my house and we have to evacuate through your backyard as our route of evacuation, yeah, so, no, I'm not gonna fucking button up this, this gate for you, right? Because

Abdullah Najjar 49:06
that's ridiculous. Yeah, precautions are necessary, right? He didn't

Jason Riddle 49:10
say it that way. So he snitches to his dads, who are not my dads. They bitch to my dads who bitch to EUCOM headquarters, whoa, I get my ass chewed by the sergeant major at U com over this, and my supervisor has to go throw two zip ties on this gate. And I was like, get the fuck out of here. Are you serious? Oh, my God. And so, like, we were just done with these people by the time we left Belgium, I had, I had two active IGE investigations against my command there, seriously, yeah.

So, like, I was like, I was ready to go, Yeah, you were done with that place. And

so when I left, I was like, you know, yes, we're going back to fucking Vietnam. But like, this place found a way to make Vietnam, like, look nice, you know what I mean. And so we go back to. Ville and like, things were better, and a lot of that drama that was in Belgium was gone. And make no mistake, a lot of this was incited by my ex wife, like she was really, really good at pick a fight, and she cussed that guy out in the backyard, gone. And so that was part of what went up the chain. You know, my ex is a card carrying Karen, so she creates a legal fight that I had to fucking deal with. You know, after I get my ass by the star major, you know, it did damage to my career, like I didn't get a good evaluation out of there. I didn't get you usually get a metal when you PCs, when you move from base to base, you get some sort of, you know, combination metal based on your time there. Thank you. Nothing out there, man. And it shows in your records. And so, you know, people, when they look at your records, like, well, I should get a metal out of this. But How bad did you suck? You know? And it's like, no, I didn't really suck that bad. I just, I, I lost a couple of big dumb fights. You know what I mean? Like, I'm sorry, you know, yeah, man, but yeah, that was what it was. Gosh,

Abdullah Najjar 51:13
I so I think we have, we started it by a

half an hour, right, of course, but maybe we can do five minutes and then we'll wrap it. Yeah. I was wondering, you know,

Jason Riddle 51:27
but yeah, under Trumpy one like I expected a lot of the scarcity problems that we had had across the Obama years to not necessarily go away overnight, but to at least get somewhat better, yeah? And they did not. They, they kind of stayed the same, and there was never, like, there was not an influx of people. Like, there was post 911 which is to be expected, but I was kind of shocked that there was just, like, you know, there was a lot more go, do you know? Like, you know, we're bombing the fuck out ISIS, yeah. And drone striking the shit out of ISIS, yeah? Soleimani, I think yeah, Soleimani and fucking their territory in that, that year that I was there, from 17 to 18, had shrunk from like this big, like octopus looking thing that went across would have been western Iraq into Syria and down into southern Iraq. Is this big fucking blob of ISIS territory, and we shrunk that shit down to nothing, you know. So, so we did kick, you know, it, to quote Sarah Palin, we did kick ISIS his ass, but it was still kind of done on the cheap, yeah, and still not the same kind of flavor as it was in the in the W years, and that that went all the way until I got out. Yeah, so when I, when I got to Vegas, it's still kind of the same thing, you know, we're, we're kind of, you know, another cheap contingency again, right? And it was that kind of vibe the rest of the way through. Promotion rates didn't never get never got better our, I think they actually got a little worse, because we redid our, our, our promotion system in 2015, yeah, under Obama, still, where they come up with these, these, these two promotion statements that can come from your command, right? One is, must promote. One's promote now. And only a certain amount of people of each career field can get those statements. So it's like a stratification, yeah, right. If you're not seen by the command doing the shit all the time, they don't know who you are, you know, and I never got one of those top two promotion statements. I never knew anybody who was of my career field that got promoted who didn't get one of those top two promotion statements. So those. So if you got one of the top two, if you got the top one, your promotion rate, for me, 67 was 98% if you got the second one, it was like 89% if you got the third one down, which is what most of us got, which was promote, right? Yeah, it was 10%

Abdullah Najjar 53:59
why is there such a huge gap. This is insane. This is right, insane. So

Jason Riddle 54:04
out of, out of we're talking three to 400 people that are eligible every year, they're promoting about 25 Whoa. So by the by the way, the numbers shook out. Remember I was talking about pissed out about having a dead end job. Yeah, had a fucking dead end job. Again, shit. And I was like, Oh, this is what's happening. And, you know, I did my best to do everything I know how to do to try to get fucking promoted. Yeah, study my ass off, because we still had to take our tests back then, right? Study my ass off to and I my test scores were, we're promotable under the old system, oh, they took away because you should get promotion points for time and grade and for time and service. So basically, experience based points. They took that away completely, man, so you could take some so if he had a noob who was recently, like, promotion eligible, so he had to. Be two years in your permission position to be promotional eligible. So you have someone who has had like, say, say, we're talking from e5, t6, from staff sergeant to tech sergeant. That person has been a staff sergeant for two years. You don't really learn a lot in two years, okay, right? And that's your first for for real foray into leadership, right, right? Like you can be criminally prosecuted for being a bad leader, and you can also ensue criminal prosecutions on your subordinates. So it's a lot of power, yeah, there and then, if that person was a kiss ass and they were a shiny star in the organization, they could get one of those top two promotion statements, and they would get picked up for E sex. So you kind of have an inexperienced leader moving up the leadership rung. Gosh, I hate that. I hate that, right, very corporate, right?

Unknown Speaker 55:53
All of

Jason Riddle 55:54
this was in those this was all in that scarcity environment. Was to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. No, don't promote the best people. Promote the people who promote cheaply, right? That's what it was that was like the slow mo, promote cheaply. You could promote people, but it needs to not, not cost us a lot of money, man. And so that's why it became so challenging for those to to make, to make great right? To promote it.

Abdullah Najjar 56:17
And today, with this new administration, Trump the two. How does the freezing of these different funds and things of that nature impact the military? It

Jason Riddle 56:28
depends on what funds he freezes and when. Okay, right? You have operational funds, okay, you have, I think di does not fit operational money, okay? I think that's the infrastructure money is, I think, with the eye, because it's like a in in Garrison type activity, right? Because in the contingency environment or in the field, di is a consideration, and it's important, yes, but it's not like top tier killing the bad guys is top tier. Oh, yeah, right, you know, we apologize about how we talk to each other, we kill the bad guys.

And so there's that one thing that I want to bring up to you about, that the new that that promotion restructure, one thing that came out of that, and this, this, this kind of part went in full face during the Trump years. If you were darker than a white person and a male, you were not getting promoted. Holy shit. I knew a lot of African American men who were passed over because of those inherent biases that live within the commands. Whoa, yeah, the racism, the systemic racism, let its let its little head pop out. Oh, my scarcity age, gosh, and a lot of African American men were passed over for promotion. Yeah, you were a, if you were a cute blonde, white girl, the world was your oyster. No shit. And it was like that, wow, because it's all old e sevens and E eights that are making this decision to give these promotion statements to these people. That makes better dudes, that makes sense. Very rarely were there females in that room or women that were part of that decision making process? Man, I was lucky when I first come back to the States, when this shit was starting to pop off, I was in a command that was led by women, and so they kind of saw through some of the bullshit, yeah, and they they, I feel like they were pretty fair in who they gave the promotion statements to. Interesting. But fast forward to my next command, no, it's all dudes. And if you're a black dude in our you know, you're not gonna fucking get promoted shit. And I saw a lot of, like, an empowerment, of, like, the systemic racism, right, where you'd have, you know, because I, because I said, Give me all your scrubs, give me all your shitty people, right? Remember, I said that in the first episode, yeah, because I was tired of their clicky bullshit. So I took all the people they didn't want. They were all fucking lot of more African American men. Oh yeah. I had, I had everyone who was not white and everyone who was not straight work for me. Wow, real

Abdullah Najjar 59:14
fast. Wow, that's something they would jump right on. Like, they're like, Yeah, you want to Yeah, oh. They're like, Oh, you

Jason Riddle 59:21
want these fuckers. Boom. It was a kid who had a lot of medical problems. They gave me him too, yeah. And it was just like, Oh, I see where we you saw. You saw the pattern. You saw. I'm like, oh, okay, so this is what's happening here. Wow. But granted, I took those dudes and I fucking shit in their eye sockets for the next year until I got out. So, you know, I had my opportunity to prove them all wrong, yeah, with those folks. But all the time I had fucking leadership from, you know, the leadership chain coming to me. Hey, why so and so got headphones on? That's the thing, you know. Why is, you know, I saw, I saw one of your guys fucking walking with their hands in their pockets. Ooh. And I would combine, and it was always black kid, almost always a black kid. Oh my. And I'm like, oh, okay, this is what's happening here. Okay, well, and by this time I'm in the sanctuary zone, I Well, you can stop being racist, yeah. And because I saw like five white kids fucking walk with their hands in their pockets, no one said a goddamn thing. I saw fucking several people with their headphones on who are of varying shades and genders, no one said a goddamn thing. So maybe we can have a little equality here, yeah, and we can actually fucking do this, right? And I also would tell them, you know, you know, particularly, if I was friendly with these folks, I'd be like, Hey, listen, you know, we're at fucking war, and you're here bothering me about clothes. This where we want to be? Yeah, we're in the longest war our country's ever touched. They deserve that. And you want to come and fucking talk to me about someone who has their fucking hands in their pocket. I'm glad you had the privilege to say these things. And thank God, thank God I had the privilege to say these things, because you know words. You know when you hit that 18 years of service, words are no longer felonies. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You know, words were never a felony, but, you know, still, and I was like, you know, I got the opportunity to, like, really push back on some folks and that and that kind of led to the the reason why I did what I did towards the end of my career anyway, because I took that internship at the mob Museum, because I just sick of these assholes and their shit. Like, God, there's, it's my wife talks about it. And I've heard other other like post menopausal ladies talk about it. They're like, at 50 the switch gets turned off. Where your give a fucks gets set the heart off. I think I had that at like 41 when I hit the sanctuary zone in the Air Force. And I got to be like, yeah, you can go yourself. Here's how and why, because, because no longer does. Can you really be punished for your speech, as long as it's not blatantly mutinous, not blatantly, you know, yeah, inciting some sort of violence or something like that. But you could tell people really what you thought. And then I and then they fucked up, and they gave me two more years on that than I could have took. And I was like, Oh, sure, okay, you know. And, and I told him, what was what? You know? Yeah, you're this is ridiculous. Yes, I understand standards are important. Yes, I understand that, that the rules are the rules, and they're written away for a reason, but there's a bias, clear but there's a clear bias, and there's also a clear line being drawn on you fighting the easy fight and not trying to fight the hard fight. I can fucking call you out on your fucking on, on having your hands in your pockets or the wrong color socks, but I can't fucking make sure I get enough bodies in the fucking in the theater when they ask for people. I can't make sure that all my aircraft are mission ready, you know, I'm saying, like, like, there's definitely a missed measurement there. And, and I would always fucking rub that right in their fucking face like a dog that pissed on the floor, you know. And really see, see, this is, this is a World War on Terror. You fucking dip shit, put your fucking face in it. We're losing because you fuckers think sock color is important,

Abdullah Najjar 1:03:02
you know? And it was ridiculous. Oh my gosh. I'm glad you don't have to deal with that right now. So glad I'm out. Yeah, yeah,

Jason Riddle 1:03:08
being retired has been beautiful, and that's the attitude that I can't stand. Like if I ever get the chance to have some sort of serious senior level influence over the military, that that people who think that's important, their days would be extremely numbered.

Abdullah Najjar 1:03:22
Yeah, it's like, focus on the mission. Forget about that shit. Yeah, yeah. And stop being racist. That's number one.

Jason Riddle 1:03:27
Like, right now the the two senior leaders of the Air Force or two bald white guys, right? The chief of staff is bald white guy, and the Chief Master and small white guy, wow, they have taken away all initiatives to to create beards, because that was part of dei Dei, was part of the drive to allow men to not have to shave, or to have it be contingency based, right? So if the threat of you being deployed to a chemical environment came up, you'd have to shave, you'd have to wear a gas mask every day, right? But if that fucking wasn't in the cards, then you could fucking grow a beard. That was where we were going, right? That's gone. Now. There's a new push to, they're trying to, they we had blues Mondays when we're in fucking in the Obama years, so you gotta wear blues the Air Force blues on Monday, yeah, which is ridiculous, because all that just shows is that fucking the entire service can show the whole world that they don't work because they're wearing the uniform they're not supposed to do labor in. You know what? I mean? Like, it's fucking ridiculous. And so that, I think they're bringing that back. And there's the with the OCP uniform, the current multi cam uniform. They they green lit a duty identifier that they would wear on the left shoulder. Yeah, that so, like, for me, it would have said, like, calm, or it would have said, radio, right? But they're, they've took, they've taken that away, really, yeah, that's a new thing. They just took away. So there's a lot of, like, again. Back to this little fuck bullshit, right? You know, you think China gives two shits, you

know what I mean about who has been busy doing their own thing. You think Russia gives

two shits about, you know? Oh, that I could see what that guy does for a living. Let me shoot him first. You know what I mean? Like, you think they fucking care about that shit? No, it's this clear lack of focus on the big things. And I think it goes back to what I said before, is that this is an easy, this is easy for me to fight, yeah, easy fight for me to win. Yeah, I can't fight it. Can't win the big one, right? And that's, that's the when you cut out some of the experience I was talking about before, when you don't reward experience or or you even make the argument that experience isn't valuable, yeah, right. That's, this is what you get. You get people who are misaligned with what's important, because this is what they they got promoted on, yeah, they got promoted on fuck shit. So of course, that's what they're gonna do when they get to just big leagues, right? They're gonna move this crazy forward, yeah, yeah, trust me, when under the the riddle administration, your asses are fucking gone. I'm voting for the riddle.

Abdullah Najjar 1:06:19
Thanks for joining me again. Yeah,

Jason Riddle 1:06:21
thanks brother. Had a

good time. Yeah, thank you so much. We'll do this again for sure, absolutely part three, part three trilogy. Yeah, that's right.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai