Therapy

This week went to hell pretty much on Wednesday, and I hit the utter nadir (I hope to God) yesterday, between work and the gov’ment*. So I’m closing it out with this:

*It seems that Fairfax County’s Personal Property Tax administrators work only part time, which barely gives them the hours to send you bills for years during which you were not a resident, but not the hours to be at their desks to take your phone calls to remind them you've sent them documentary proof of your non-residence. I hate living in a Confederate state.

Whirlwind tour

Let’s close out the week with a few more visuals from the Kleptocrat’s first foreign trip, in which he sucked up to despotic regimes that support terrorism, pissed off our (possibly former) allies and generally embarrassed us in front of the whole world.

We’ve seen him bonding with leaders of Muslim nations in which he has still undivested business interests, and sticking his foot in his mouth in his photo ops with the Israelis. And there was that lovely moment in Tel Aviv where he tried to show the world how his latest trophy wife can’t get enough of him. And that note for those folks at Yad Vashem telling them how lucky they were to have him stop by.

Well, moving on to Rome for a flying visit with Pope Francis I, we had more unpresidented moments. Debarking from Air Force 1 at the airport, we saw another demonstration of how practiced Melania is at avoiding those tiny hands:

Then there was the photo op with His Holiness and the Klepto Family. Social media was alive with bubble captions for this money shot:

My own paltry addition to the genre:

Kleptocrat: “When does this guy give me the gold necklace?”

Melania: “As God is my witness, if he tries grabbing my hand this time, Imma clip him in the kidney.”*

Ivanka: “Wonder how long I have to wait before I put this outfit up on eBay?”

Kushner: “Gevalt!”**

Francis: “Ohmeyn.”

*Notice her hands—they’re clenched, like she’s expecting to have to Take Action.
**STOP PRESS: I understand that Kushner (and Ivanka, but who cares?) has returned already to the District They Call Columbia, possibly to seek legal counsel on account of the special investigation into collusion between the Gauleiters and Russia has named him a Person of Interest.

No little yearbook messages, but the Pope gave Donnie Two Scoops a copy of his encyclical on climate change. No chance that he or anyone in his administration will read it, though.

(Maybe he’ll toss it to Spicey—who is a practicing Catholic and was by all accounts very much looking forward to the opportunity to meet the Pope. In an act of petty humiliation remarkable even for this jerk—who only measures his own stature by how low he can force others around him—the Kleptocrat brought a random selection of toadies, but left his press secretary behind on Air Force 1.)

Moving on to Brussels (which he has referred to as a hellhole) yesterday to attempt to throw his not inconsiderable fatness around with NATO, he had the assembled leaders from those nations sniggering as the guy famous for stiffing vendors, workers, partners, creditors and American taxpayers demanded that they all need to “pay up”.

(BTW, the occasion for the gathering of NATO leaders was the dedication of a memorial to the victims of the September 11^th attacks, the only time in history that Article 5 of the treaty has been invoked. Stay classy, Klepto.)

The Kleptocrat tried one of his intimidating my-hands-may-be-tiny-but-I’ll-break-yours handshakes on French President Emmanuel Macron. The 39-year-old Macron was prepared for this puerile stunt, and held the tiny hand in a white-knuckle grip for several seconds after the 70-year-old bully had gone limp.

(It may well be that this literal mano a mano contest was payback for an earlier incident where Macron had ignored L'il Two Scoops and greeted other leaders. Eventually the Chaos Monkey couldn't stand it any more, grabbed the hand of the lesser being and tried his usual dominating ape schtick. Payback's a bitch, my short-fingered vulgarian.)

(We're told, BTW, that the traveling dumpster fire assured Macron that he'd never supported his opponent in the recent French election. That would be Marine Le Pen, the right-wing nut job whom he had publicly praised during the campaign. But yesterday it was—and I quote—"You were my guy." I'm sure Macron found that both heartwarming and reassuring. And expressed that gratitude in his handshake.) 

But wait—there’s more. Proving that any class this buffoon has is strictly low, the glory hound literally shoved his way into the front of a cluster of NATO leaders to get full camera coverage. Note the smug look on his orange visage as he gets there.

There were wags on Twitter positing that, with all the revelations about connections between various Gauleiters and Russia over time, the Kleptocrat might order Air Force 1 to put down in some country without an extradition treaty (like Vatican City) and refuse to come back. Or that, what with extreme vetting of criminals trying to enter the country, Immigration wouldn’t let him back in. But I suppose at some point he’s going to come back like a bad penny.

What are the odds, though, that those swell gifts the Saudis gave him will not make their way into the White House inventory, but will end up in some vault on an over-mortgaged estate in New Jersey?

Paid parking

Being a fourth-generation Californian, one of the certain unalienable rights that should be self-evident to all is the fact that tax money supports the building and maintenance of roads. Therefore it’s an abomination to God and man to charge highway tolls or parking fees on public streets.

Arlington County obviously thinks differently. I don’t believe there’s a business district in South Arlington that doesn’t have either parking meters or pay-and-display devices, and every one of them burns my bacon. Even the parking lot between the Aurora Hills branch of the library and Virginia Highlands Park has meters at every space.

But what crisps me even further is this slogan that you find on all the meters:

I just cannot believe they paid money to slap up that piece of snottery on every single post.

Bind up the wounds

As we approach Memorial Day, when we’re meant to pause, think about and thank the men and women who’ve made great sacrifices in the defense of our country, it saddens and infuriates me that those on whom we depend can’t count on us for much of anything.

It’s bad enough that the military can’t discharge veterans who have physical or psychological scars from their tours in Iraq and Afghanistan fast enough, so the services don’t have to finance and provide support for them. But it turns out that the Veterans Administration medical system—which is supposed to guarantee them care for life—has apparently been a lot better at delaying treatment and falsifying records than it has at actually providing the care these people deserve.

This isn’t just some rogue facility doing it, either. Administrators in VA hospitals in Washington, Texas, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and other states have systematically instructed schedulers to book medical appointments for months out, but to classify those appointments as having been requested by the patient, so the hospital’s stats look good.

So good, in fact, that facility senior managers get performance bonuses. Monetary bonuses. They profit from these practices.

But veterans, on the other hand, die while waiting for those appointments.

President Obama and Secretary for Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki have pronounced themselves “mad as hell” about the revelations, although it’s not clear how much of a surprise this can be, since these practices have been reported by whistle-blowers for more than five years. And they are preceded by conditions in what should be one of the flagship military care facilities, Walter Reed Hospital, being worse than you’d expect to find in a facility in Central African Republic.

Investigations have been launched. Congress is on its hind legs. And blah, blah, blah.

You know—the harm’s way into which we send our defenders is not supposed to include the systems that were established to support them. I am ashamed that the people we elected to office—Congress and Executive branch alike—think they can cut corners and score points off the wounds suffered by the men and women of our armed forces.

We should keep that in mind on Monday, when our pols show up at Memorial Day parades. On their way to fundraising events.

Laboring under no illusions

I pretty much said all I can say on the subject of labor in my post for Labor Day last year. So this time around I’ll just point out that it’s not looking good for those of us who have to work for a living.

There are a lot of people facing layoffs in the coming months, from companies ranging from HP to Food Lion. These figures only cover private sector jobs; these folks will be joining thousands of government workers on the unemployment line.

Think about this when you cast your vote in a couple of months.

Jobs for the lads...& cheerleaders

It seems the US doesn’t have a lock on padding governmental payrolls with salaried positions that don’t really add a lot of value to the tax-paying public. The Telegraph reports that Britain’s Coalition government is going after local councils for cutting back on essential services like libraries and education while retaining such employees as “cheerleading development officer”, bouncy castle attendant & “future shape programme manager”.

(I have to say that of those three, the only one I can actually fathom in terms of duties is the bouncy castle attendant. I didn’t even know Britain had cheerleaders. Hmm. Maybe future shape program management involves a Magic 8 Ball? I could do that job!)

Local councils are the infrastructure of the UK’s government—there’s Her Majesty’s Government (Parliament, ministries & some central services like motorways, Metropolitan Police & the NHS) & then there are the borough councils, who are pretty much responsible for everything else. Including a lot of the policies affecting the NHS within their jurisdictions.

Apparently the existence of these, uh, jobs of questionable community value (unless you’re restricting “community” to those persons who hold them) is not news. The Times (London) reported on them two years ago, back when Labour were in power. Evidently Glasgow employs a “street mediator”, who “deals” with kids hanging out on street corners.

(My question is: only one street mediator? In Glasgow? S/he must be busier than a flea-infested hound dog's hind leg.)

Trade unions are of course rearing up on their hind legs to defend the jobs & I’m sure the Tories/Lib-Dems are pounding fists about the waste (but are probably silent about who’s on their own staff doing what jobs). & since the jobs have been around for a long time (in one case—a ceremonial mace-bearer for Newcastle-upon-Tyne—evidently since 1399. According to a Newcastle former Lord Mayor), I’m betting that the story will die down without much being actually, you know, done about it.

So enjoy it while you can.

& if you have any thoughts on what a future-shape program manager or cheerleading development officer might be, please share.

FDA to the rescue

Okay, we really are living in a Salvador Dalí movie: following in the footsteps of of Washington, New York & probably other states, the FDA & FTC are moving to ban caffeinated alco-pops.

Seems alcoholic energy drinks (an oxymoron that should have been a clue from the start) are really, really bad for you (especially if you drink six of them at a frat party) & so supermarket & convenience store shelves should be cleared of them ASAP. (On Tuesday the manufacturer of these things announced it would take the caffeine out of their formula. That makes it so much better.)

Now, coming from the agencies that took bleeding decades to slap a “smoking may be hazardous to your health” sticker on packs of cigarettes & allowed GlaxoSmithKline to manufacture & sell (at top dollar) defective drugs for years (despite constant warnings by a whistle-blower) before finally tickling a $750M fine out of them (a sum which can be vacuumed out of the sofa cushions in the executive lounge), this is just kurazy.

All I can think is that the alco-pop industry doesn’t have the juice that big pharma & big tobacco does so it was easy for the FDA to be seen to protect the public.

It’s still Chien Andalou.