Ben & Jeremiads

I dunno, Ben. The future of your country is more in danger thanks to the people you call friends.

I don’t want a return to a feudal world where on the wealthy and connected are only allowed to have opportunities while the rest of us fight over rotting turnips but that is where the world is heading.

This guy is too dumb for prime-time. He’s strictly crazy eddy. Meanwhile, if you haven’t already read it might I direct your attention to Ta-Nehisi Coates making the case for reparations over at The Atlantic?

Plus: kudos on the headline.

@Benedick: It’s more a case for an American Truth & Reconciliation Commission by my reading, but well worth the time spent.

And remember folks – there is no Tea Party. It is merely the 24% of dead enders who stuck with Bush 2 until the end. Of course, they cannot speak his name because even they know he was an unmitigated disaster.

@blogenfreude:

Frank Rich…

Gutfeld is more of a wisecrack artist than a comedian and, like Miller and other comics on the right, is careful to label himself a libertarian, so damaged is the conservative brand.

So now we have progressives and libertarians, because “liberal” and “conservative” spoiled on the shelf. Same lines, new labels.

@nojo: Yes, but you will admit that no MoveOn members ever showed up at a Bush rally with AR-15s.

Question: when one boards a plane when do they do the safety demo? Before take-off? I can’t remember.

@Benedick: Yes. When you pull away from the gate. Just flew in from London today, so it’s fresh in my mind.

@Mistress Cynica: As the plane taxis out to the runway? Then the flight attendants do a last walk through before buckling up?

Terminal 5?

Anyone know about flying with pets? (pugs and boxers aren’t allowed on planes)

What in sweet hell was that singing and dancing number?

@ManchuCandidate: Like hell you’re gonna let Bobby Morse go without a proper sendoff.

@ManchuCandidate: Besides, I was preoccupied wondering which closet my picture of the moon landing on TV is buried in…

I was ten, so I remember it quite clearly, but I doubt I really appreciated it. For that, you would have needed to spend some quality time in a world without a moon landing, and precociousness is no substitute for experience.

Closest comparison I can make is the Internet. There’s a world before and after, and the world before will soon be unimaginable. Connection is now the default, disconnection simply an option.

@Benedick: Yes, that’s it. Don’t know about flying with pets. Have you tried having the pugs declared “emotional support animals”? Then they have to treat them like guide dogs and let them fly.

@Mistress Cynica: Thanks. Not planning to fly the little buggers anywhere. It’s research. I was interested that all those squashed-face dogs aren’t accepted. I could fly the pugs in the cabin one at a time but what’s the point of that? I met a Californian princess in Miami – I think she’d flown there for crown fitting – anyhow, she’d flown her Shih tzu as a therapy dog. It’s already funny. When the airline questioned the validity of its status she pitched a full-scale scene on the plane. I was never more impressed.

Interestingly, the airlines won’t accept cane corsos. Made me think of baked.

I have a spam email this morning the subject line of which is “Lovely Poofs”.

@nojo:
I guess so. For a moment I thought Sterling spiked Don’s coffee with LSD.

Melbell just dropped a 116-point word on me in WWF. She looks sweet, but she has a license to kill.

@Benedick: Holy cane corso. If anyone could talk that beast on to the flight it’d be baked.

@Dodgerblue: As opposed to Mrs. Dodger, who crushes me on a daily basis.

@nojo: You know you wished Sally kissed you by the telescope.

@SanFranLefty: And I would have asked her the same question afterward.

@nojo: Wouldn’t we all?

I guess I’m back to watching Frasier re-runs until they close out Mad Men, or Walking Dead comes back.

/sees tweet, sobs/

@ManchuCandidate: To say that this season has been wildly uneven would be the understatement of the century, however the G.I. Jeff episode is one of the best half-hours of television of all time.

@¡Andrew!: It just makes Harmon’s absence from Season 4 more poignant, he says, having just finished binging on the entire series.

@¡Andrew!:
As a child of the 80s I enjoyed that ep.

S5 was hurt by the loss of Troy. The stories lost focus and the finale wasn’t great but it was much better than S4’s finale.

@nojo:
S5 was enjoyable which is way more than I can say about its “nerd rival” series The Big Bang Theory which is, at this point, insufferable.

@ManchuCandidate: The Troy sendoff was outstanding, but you can see Harmon valiantly struggling to deal with his loss. There were at least two great episodes after that — MeowMeowBeenz and G.I. Jeff — but Abed is, well, also at sea. Troy & Abed were actually three characters, the third being their combination.

@nojo: @ManchuCandidate: Is this a Sport thing?

@Benedick: Troy as star high school quarterback didn’t last long, so no.

@ManchuCandidate: Was it ever not insufferable? I’m asking.

@mellbell:
1st season, part of 2nd. I think. I stopped watching as it became Nerd Friends and in part because Sheldon went from anti-social nerd to roommate agreement touting disagreeable asshole who reminded me of my former housemate (minus the high IQ and smarmy dialogue) that I wanted to reach into my TV and strangle him.

There isn’t shit to do here unless you enjoy hunting for the unibomber.

I AM TOO OLD FOR NATURE

@JNOV: What is this thing with the VA being run by generals? Shouldn’t it be run by experienced hospital administrators? Plus: One is never too old for nature. One only needs to find the right hiking boot.

@Benedick: I was wondering the same thing. The VA is functioning under faulty logic, and we do have experienced hospital administrators in our active duty hospitals. Surely some have retired, but have they ever been a Joint Chief? I’m not sure, but I think the Joints Chiefs’ main function is to send us to war to give me job security. :/

When I was hired, I was blown away by all of the military lingo like tour of duty = your workday hours. Leave = vacation. Stuff like that. The first thing I thought was, “Whoa. Did I reenlist?” What made it more difficult was that I was hired with about 50 people who had just left the military. This VA as minimilitary was a seamless transition for them, as many still had a military hierarchical mindset that I hated when I was in and I hate now.

The assumption is that you had to have “been there” to “get it,” and some vets with whom I work sniff at co-workers who haven’t “served.” Many vets that I speak to in the course of my job are audibly relieved when I tell them that I am a vet. It’s a weird culture, but it soothes them some to know that vets are helping vets. This brotherhood (some girls allowed) begins in bootcamp and is reinforced until you get out. Some people (even before these recent wars), can’t handle civilian life after the brainwashing and they rejoin the ranks.

When I used to go to the VA in Philly, my doctor had a brag wall you wouldn’t believe. I asked him if the VA wanted them to hang their degrees going back to their kindergarten report card so that the vets would accept their “authority” re: treatment. He smiled at me.

Welcome to the weirdness of the VA.

The smartest and most compassionate person I work with, the one whose heart breaks when he reads some of these files…he has never served.

Few military trust a civilian to take care of vets or anything military. John McCain is a war hero. W is a poseur.

I *think* the VA needs to look at prior military hospital administrators. I’d stay away from the folks working at Kaiser, etc. The Mercy chain could work.

What’s that saying – that some of us are still fighting the war in our minds? It is true even if you haven’t been in combat. I flashback like you wouldn’t believe. Luckily, the majority of my direct bosses get it because they flashback as well because they are vets. We’re allowed to take walks when this happens. IOW, people get PTSD, and flight is better than fight.

I have to go to work – mandatory overtime! End of the month crush to hit our numbers! But every number is a vet, right?

We do need a vet running the show or we’ll be more dysfunctional. They should’t pull from the war mongers – maybe from the medics. We have a different mindset (usually).

My hiking boots are dusty.

<3

/gratuitous cat-contortions/

If It Fits, I Sits

@¡Andrew!: Yeah, yeah: Cats look down at you; dogs look up to you; pigs is equal.

@JNOV: Tis a puzzlement. Mayhap we should get Disney humping VA ass. Them bitches get shit done.

Baby doll, blow the dust off your boots – as the bishop said to the actress – and get your fine ass up in them hills policing species die off. And such as.

@¡Andrew!: I like this.

@Benedick: We saw a deer swimming between islands in the san wan day fook wah strate. Outdid the Orcas.

Next weekend we’re driving to Spokane (shurrup, nojo) because I like the drive (shurrup, nojo), and we’re staying at the gaudy Davenport Hotel because it’s gaudy and seems very out of time and place. I want Jr. to see the weird concrete avalanche protector thingy on I-90, The Gorge and the wild horses. Maybe we’ll take the North Cascades Pass, because nothing screams road trip like running out of gas in volcano land.

We didn’t meet our numbers today, annnnnd they are going to put up flat screen TVs/monitors, like BIG ones, all over the building so we can see our production (possibly production across the VBA) in real time. Not only are these things a humongous waste of (taxpayer!) money, but they’ll induce pissedoffedness and nervous breakdowns. I have no idea who came up with this jackass idea, and I’d love to know how much this setup will cost. It sure as shit won’t work for months, and it will crash nationwide systems, kinda like when my new office went online and crashed the national systems every few days. Innovative! Wait until we go paperless…

Oh, really?

I came back to add why I love road trips with my son: We sing off key at the top of our lungs, and we talk.

@JNOV: I’m considering driving out to Salt Lake City again because I love it that you go about 30 miles down the NYS Thruway, turn right, and drive 2,000 miles. I love that.

Good to know: Keep the windows closed in Nebraska. The entire state seems to smell like pig shit.

@Benedick: Go West, young man, and keep thy nose plugged.

Yeah – you’re passing factory-farmed hogs and rendering plants. Same goes from Des Moines to Storm Lake, Iowa in case you were considering an alternate route. You’re welcome!

Bene – you are comment 149,944, or I am. Maths is hard. The race for 150K is on!

Naw. This is 149,947.

@JNOV: Alice’s restaurant is closed = 149,950?

@flypaper: True bummer. Lewis Katz died, too. (And you’re 149,948…)

@flypaper: The Dylan Hotel, complete with peace sign, just opened about a half mile away. Mr Zimmerman owns the top 200 hundred acres of our mountain.