The anti-Midas touch

Where everything you touch turns to shit.  Turns out that Eric Shinseki has that.

You don't know who Eric Shinseki is?  He was the Chief of Staff of the Army back in 2001 who mandated that all Soldiers wear a beret as their headgear.  He wanted everyone to wear the beret in order to improve the esprit de corps.  This pissed off just about everybody.

The Rangers hated it, because Shinseki demanded that all Army Soldiers wear a black beret, and the black beret was the Ranger's color.  They now wear tan.

The rest of the Army hated it because we now had to wear a floppy hat that took two hands to get it sitting on your head correctly, that held in heat thanks to the fact that it was BLACK and WOOL, and stank to high heaven after a period of constant wear.

All in all, it was a decision that was a self-inflicted dick-stomping, and rather than improving the esprit de corps of the Army it did the opposite.  The beret was universally reviled by everyone who had to wear it, and in 2011 the Sergeant Major of the Army, who had listened to the troops, ordered that the soft cap be returned as the headgear for daily wear in garrison.  The beret still exists for the Class A Uniform.

So I told you all that just so I can tell you all this - the same guy who made that colossal mistake was put in charge of the Department of VA back in 2009.

And now we get this.....

A Veterans Affairs employee at the VA Medical Center in Cheyenne, Wyoming, has been placed on administrative leave after CBS News obtained an email showing an employee directing his staff on how to game the appointments system to make it appear as though veterans were being seen within the VA's 14-day directive.

And this is on top of the crap going on at the Phoenix VA...

Look, the VA has been in trouble for a while.  You can't conduct a thirteen year war and expect that the facilities you had in place before the war are going to be adequate to deal with the amount of healthcare that's going to be required by the troops coming home.  But Shinseki has been in place for five years now.  And what, if anything, has he done?

Everything he touches, it seems, turns to shit.....

Oh, the horror!

Yeah, keep in mind that this number is only valid if you don't take into account the number of military positions that were lost.  And since I'm neck deep in that area right now, let me assure you - the military is getting hacked into chunks and tossed out in the trash.

Too Much

Can we be done with the NFL Draft yet?  Please?

I was done with it a month ago.  I really don't give a damn about it right now.

Anyone actually paying attention knew this already

Reagan Recovery vs. Obama "Recovery".

One of America's greatest presidents versus the current Stuttering Clusterfuck of a Miserable Failure.

Free Money

And all you have to do is learn a trade that will make you employable up to the day you die.  And someone else pays for that education.

Dear Lord, were I not already in the military for the long haul, I'd jump on this like a dog on a bone.

Got home late

Crawled into bed way past midnight, and got maybe four hours of shut-eye before I was back in the office.  Keep in mind that technically, I'm still on leave.  But I spent the better part of the morning in the office trying to get things in order because the people up the chain have screwed things up so badly that everybody is hopping and popping trying to limit the damage.

I can't wait to leave this job.  Lordy, I can't wait to leave this job.

In Lieu of Actual Content, Part 8

And by now I'm pretty confident in my ability to spell the word "lieu" without needing any help...


(apropos of nothing, NSFW)

In Lieu of Actual Content, Part 7

I play the banjo!

(not really.  I'm a drummer.)

((yeah, as if you've ever listened to a band front-manned by a drummer!)

One Hour, Seven Minutes

I didn't break any land-speed records, but I'm only one minute off of my pace from 22 years ago, when I was 50 pounds lighter.

Not too damn bad, I'd say.

In Lieu of Actual Content, part 6

Hey!  Guess what I'm doing?

Last time I did it was in 1991.  How's that for a blast from the past?  I want to see what my time is compared to the young, stupid, out-of-shape me.

Of course, if I recall correctly, the route was only 10k back then....