Boom-boom or bye-bye?

~ Patrick O'Grady
“Yo, I got your solar, wind, and geothermal technologies right here. …

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, etc.

The roving Eye of Mordor has fallen upon Sandia National Labs. And where the Eye goes, the Sword shall follow.

The deets remain elusive. But the gist of it is that Sandia plans “to reduce its workforce” by as many as 510 employees as part of a “restructuring effort aimed at cost reduction,” which may include a “voluntary separation program” and a hiring freeze.

This is PR-speak for “budget cuts, buyouts, and layoffs.”

One to three percent of the staff is not a huge bloodletting, unless you happen to be one of the 510 and have a couple kids in university, a parent in a nursing home, and the usual credit-card debt and home/auto/college loans outstanding.

Nevertheless, you may well ask, how is it that the Military-Industrial Complex is reduced to counting its pennies in these dark days?

Well, it seems as though the Military portion of the Complex is in tip-top shape. No shortage of comfy chairs, caviar, and Champagne in the Boom-Boom Room.

But the Industrial aspect? Well … it suffers from elevated levels of solar, wind, and geothermal technologies that don’t kill foreigners, DEI, or The Woke, and thus are not covered by MAGA Cross-Red Shield. So those have to come off, stat. And with a scimitar, not a scalpel.

Anesthesia, you ask? Ho, ho. Suck it up, Buttercup. Drugs are for Closers. And you posie-sniffing Poindexters wonder why you weren’t invited to the King’s Birthday Parade. You should’ve grabbed a chair in the Boom-Boom Room before the music stopped.

7 thoughts on “Boom-boom or bye-bye?”

  1. Heh. Lucky Herself doesn’t work for the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) up in Golden, CO. They are looking at a 56% (no, that is not a typo) budget reduction for FY ’26. Their main gig is renewables and energy security. Bye, we don’t need no renewables or energy security.

    Just got off the phone with a good friend and colleague (I recruited her back in the day when I was in charge of a chemistry lab) who left the Bomb Factory for a job up at NREL this spring, as she and her significant other were a little tired of bombs and New Mexico. So they sold their house here, turned in her resignation at LANL, loaded up their truck, and moved to Goldenee….Colorado, that is….no swimming pools, no movie stars.

    Now she is wondering if her next job will be in New Zealand.

    p.s. Great movie, Dr. Strangelove, even more so in current times when the inmates are running the asylum. Back when I took the job in the bomb factory, the guy they hired me to work with handed me a copy on a DVD and told me to watch it first, and then start work.

    Reply

    1. I think I may know someone working at NREL. A buddy’s sweetie has cycled through a couple jobs in the Republic, being a woman of many talents and interests.

      We don’t know what might happen with Herself’s gig at Sandia. As a librarian, she is not directly responsible for nuking wogs, snowflakes, and Democrats (but I repeat myself).

      However, the library does serve everyone in Sandia, from tree-huggers to bunker-busters, so she has one foot in each half of the Complex.

      Time will tell. In the meantime, the house and both cars are paid off, we’re down to one cat, and we live frugally. Save for the asshole who keeps buying bikes, of course.

      Reply

    1. Thanks, K. We’ll be fine. No kids, we live simply, and since I’m not in charge of the money, we should be able to get by without having to fight the cat for her kibble more than one day a week. Two tops.

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  3. C’mon aboard! Just know there are yard chores galore so’s if you want room AND board, you’ll have to wield some garden tools along with a good number of Stihl implements. The gas powered hedge trimmer is the most challenging. What the hell was I thinking when I bought the pro version? Two passes and my arms go into jelly shakes.

    Reply

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