Excoriating an expired equine

Flogging the dead horse. What usually happens at a meeting of middle-graded officers, most of whom do not yet realize they have, at best, one more promotion ahead of them, and think they must impress the senior officers present with their exemplary analytical elocution... usually just decreasing their chances for even that *one last* promotion.

To save me work (hah! I'm still trying to figure out what to do with captions!) Bill the Rotorhead sends along this little document to help you navigate your way through the military maze. Herein is a list of ways to ensure you've seen your last promotion. Trot 'em out at your next meetings!

Conventional wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. A recently declassified document indicates that there are 22 separate and distinct strategies that Pentagon-dwellers try when they discover they are riding a dead horse:

1. Buy a bigger whip.

2. Ride the dead horse "outside the box."

3. Ride the dead horse "smarter, not harder.”

4. Buy a commercial, off-the-shelf dead horse.

5. Appoint a Tiger Team to revive the dead horse.

6. Call the dead horse "Joint" and let others ride it.

7. Form a Staff Study to find uses for dead horses.

8. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

9. Create a training session to increase riding ability.

10. BRAC the farm on which the dead horse was born.

11. Name the dead horse "Paradigm Shift" and keep riding it.

12. Institute a policy directive that no horse is too dead to beat.

13. Say things like, "This is the way we've always ridden this horse."

14. Increase the standards required for dead horse riding certification.

15. Revisit the Key Performance Parameters (KPPs) for dead horses. [exactly the kind of work which then comes to me!]

16. Promote the previous rider out of the stable and assign a new rider.

17. Lobby Congress to pass legislation declaring that the horse is not dead.

18. Harness several dead horses together to obtain increased speed and power.

19. Do a cost analysis to determine if contractors can ride the dead horse cheaper. [Of course we can!]

20. Arrange liaison visits to foreign militaries to see how they ride their dead horses.

21. Produce a PowerPoint slide show proving the horse is better, faster and cheaper dead.

22. Say the horse was underfunded to begin with, then lobby Congress for additional funding.

Got any ya wanna add to the list?