The Marine lingo threw me off a bit, but this is what I took from it:
Basically, when you do a daily, which I think is like our preflight or postflight inspections, you have specific carded items on your inspection list. Things like checking a hydraulic valve or wiping down struts.
Now, there are things that can absolutely keep a plane from flying that are not listed on a preflight. In the Air Force, everything comes with a “zonal inspection”, which is a catch 22 telling you to check the entire area and everything in it. I don’t know if the Marines have or had that then.
So from my understanding, he’s telling them to stick to the cards, and don’t down a bird over something not on the inspection. Hence the “Don’t go hunting for downers.”
Listing part of an inspection as something that needs to be done later is also fair game. For instance, I’ve signed off a post flight before, but left it as “Unable to check formation lights due to circuit breaker maintenance, acft req formation light check prior to next flight.”
So that part is fine. But him telling them that they’re “not gonna not sign off on” something is absolutely wrong. If you don’t feel comfortable signing off on something because something is wrong with the aircraft, absolutely do not. Sure he can say he’ll take the heat if something goes wrong, but at the end of the day, it’s your name on the corrected by block.