Preping for the role
Obama is in the process of picking those he wishes to have in his Cabinet. The list below has leaked out as potential candidates are chosen for their “acumen” or patronage.
The Kumbaya Cabinet
Department of Agriculture–Secretary John Kerry
Department of Commerce–Secretary Charles Schumer
Department of Defense–Secretary John Murtha
Department of Education–Secretary Louis Farrakhan
Department of Energy– Secretary Albert Gore
Department of Health & Human Services–Secretary Nancy Keenan
Department of Homeland Security– Secretary Tony Lake
Department of Housing & Urban Development–Secretary Cynthia McKinney
Department of the Interior–Secretary Russ Feingold
Department of Justice–Attorney General Elliot Spitzer
Department of Labor–Secretary Jesse Jackson
Department of State–Secretary Madeline Albright
Department of Transportation–Secretary Ralph Nader
Department of the Treasury–Secretary George Soros
Department of Veterans Affairs
This Department closed to save money
October 19, 2008 at 12:04 pm | Trackback
15 comments
Where’s Powell? As a junior infantry officer he must have dreamed about lowering the sea level and healing the planet. General Overwhelming Force is very sensitive and transformational. Bah.
I think it’s interesting that you apparently harbor the perception that Obama would gut veterans’ affairs programs upon taking office. Have you looked at McCain’s record? Obama may have been against the war, but he at least supports the troops once they’re in it.
http://www.veteransforcommonse.....cleid/9559
Further: Here is validation of Obama’s claim (during first debate) that he has an 80% voting on DAV (Disabled American Veterans) issues while McCain’s is just 20% :
http://www.delmarvanow.com/app...../810090447
The DAV is not the VA, Shannon. They’re aren’t alike in the least.
I’m a vet, as are a couple more of us here. The VA is a bloated money hole, in my view. Like all bureaucracies, it’s inefficient and dense, and does almost nothing very well.
Maybe you know all the details, rather than the approval/disapproval stats. What is McCain’s shortcoming in vets’ affairs, and the war?
Actually, Shannon, the more I hear about this, the less I care. The bill for all the unrestrained, non-means tested entitlements, the one in the near distance, will fall on you.
Thanks for all the stuff you’re paying for, including my prescriptions, which allows me to save more of my property and assets for my children.
History is on your side, in a sense - which doesn’t mean the triumph of common sense, good judgement or good policy or the good society (whatever that is). It simply means that bad ideas take hold, and race along unimpeded until a crack up of some kind.
The silly self-indulgence, wishful thinking and moral cluelessness of the ’60’s never disappered, it simply matured and led to Barack Obama. I’m aware of that, and see its inevitability.
I apologize for being unclear. I wasn’t trying to say that the VA and the DAV were the same thing. I was saying that if a candidate votes to support disabled veterans, that’s a good litmus test for his overall integrity when it comes to supporting veterans in general. If you can only vote to support DAV issues in 20% of the cases, what does that say about you? Disabled veterans are people who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country–if McCain can’t support them, I think that says a lot about him.
Let me try to answer your question this way: I believe that war is very often necessary, and that it is also very expensive. It is expensive not only because of costs on the ground, but because of the cost of supporting veterans once they come back from war. When you have an unpopular war (regardless of whether or not you support this war, you must agree that it is unpopular) the cost of supporting veterans goes up because society itself is not as likely to support them. I know a veteran who came back to his law firm from Iraq to find that they had passed him up for a partnership–they didn’t want his name on the sign if he was going to die Iraq. Now what that law firm did is despicable, and I would blame them and only them for their actions. But the fact is that if the administration is waging a widely unpopular war, lots of despicable actions like this crop up, and our veterans need even more support than they would if the war were lauded by the public.
My problem with McCain is that he has voted for the war and for troop increases during the war, but has voted against shortening or spacing out tours, voted against numerous veterans healthcare provisions, etc. Additionally, and I don’t know where McCain stands on this, but I believe that we need to implement policy that will help returning veterans reintegrate into the workforce, especially during times of recession. We are getting veterans passed up for jobs because they spent their college years fighting for their country in a war that some 70% of the population disagrees with–we must do something to help these veterans. If McCain agreed with me on this issue, I’d like to see him take a stand on it with either his voice or his vote. Obama has, by the way.
Hotspur, I know that you are a vet, which is why I took the time to comment on this issue. I am not a vet, but my father is, and several people that are close to me are serving in Iraq right now. I do thank you for your service, and hope you understand that while we may disagree on the candidates, my opinion is formed out of a deep respect for veterans.
Hotspur: I don’t mind paying for your prescriptions if it means that you can save more of your property and assets for your children. I think that because you risked your life to serve your country, and I didn’t, that’s not a bad shake for me.
Shanon: A few points:
1. I would suggest that holding Bush, McCain or anyone else responsible for your friends loss of a partnership because the war is “unpopular” is a bit unreasonable. The president can’t be help respoonsible for the reprehensible actions of partisans who don’t support his policies.
2. As to shortening tours, and believe me as a veteran and someone who has many friends serving, shorter tours can be dangerous. For example, the AF has short tours of 3-4 months. However, all my friends correctly note that this is barely enough time to learn your job, and then once you’ve actually got a clue, you get yanked out of there for the next rookie’s rotation. Making really short tours, in my opinion and from what I’ve heard from others, is actually a bit dangerous. Now, I don’t know if that’s part of McCain’s reasoning, but it’s what I’d deduce from my own knowledge of the situation.
3. On veteran’s health care, I would argue that just because you are a veteran doesn’t mean you’re entitled to health care. So, in my view, your medical issues would have to be directly attributable to your service before I’d consider giving you health care benefits. To me, it’s much like turning 65. Just because you made it to that age doesn’t mean you get a free ride. Of course, you don’t really give me specifics on what the veterans health care bill was about, so it’s hard to say.
4. Maybe you see vet discrimination in the employment process, but I haven’t. Vets do receive resume and employment help when they leave the service. I attended the same training they give the retirees except for the retirement pay portion.
Personally, I would think McCain would understand military and veteran issues a lot better than Barack Obama.
Shannon, the same crap you are spouting about an unpopular war was running out of the mouths of the “patriots” at home during WWII. The Korean Action had the same batch of whiners that think everything should be wrapped up by the third commercial. Of course these are the ones that DIDN’T go into the service, that were put out by the war shortages (poor babes)
Go get some history!
The VA isn’t as monolithic as you think. It depends on where you are in the system. White River Junction, the Vermont Outpatient Clinics are highly efficient, virtually no wait time for your appointments and only some of the desks very busy. (Podiatry and Auditory) Dartmouth Hitchcock works with the hospital (many of the doctors are earning military retirement credits with the VA)
How do I know? I use the VA for all my health care and I’m VERY active in the DAV plus a Life member in the VFW. (All DAV members are life members)
If Obama gets elected (that ISN’T assured) and he enacts his idiot socialist plans, you’ll be begging for the BS of Hoover and FDR. Hope you know how to sell pencils.
I never underestimate the extent of human stupidity.
No I didn’t vote for Bush, I don’t care for McCain and I NEVER vote Donk.
Shannon:
Shining the spotlight on ANY group, especially in a presumably egalitarian and just society (striven for), out of some sentimental, sympathetic or retributive urge is unwise and plainly dangerous. If I went to war, it’s a page in my book, no one else’s, and it’s incurred no obligation on my neighbor or my country unless that service resulted in a clear and definable disability. I have some issues, but where I’m capable, I plan to live out my life on my own ticket. If I were disabled, matters might be different. They aren’t.
But when we honor valor, we honor a virtue, not a person or group of persons presumed to possess it . Veterans, as a group, are composed of the same percentage of slackers, time servers, cry babies, greedheads, phonies, rascals, liars, audacious and/or quiet heroes as any civilian population.
Mailer, whatever his moral faults, defined heroism as doing what is dreaded the most, even if for an agoraphobic, it’s crossing the street. You, Shannon, might express daily acts of heroism that would dwarf those of thousands of military people, and you get nothing from your society for it. You’re a better human being in the eyes of your fellows and your God, if you have one, but the virtue you practice is self-contained…it requires no one else to observe it or honor it, and it shouldn’t.
Employment discrimination? It’s entirely too complex an issue, and it results from the preposterous way in which the current wars have been waged, largely with reserve forces. This landed one of my sons in an awful way; another, who is now Special Forces, will probably be a preferred candiate for some types of professions…of the non-killing kind. I’m skeptical of legislated or normative attempts to right injustices of this kind. Again, preferences, like comparisons, are invidious.
I would never doubt your kindness, your convictions, or your willingness to struggle for justice (as you see it). It pains me to think that you have a debt with men like me. A few of us feel that you do, most of us don’t. What we want, if anything, is for this land of individuals to remain a land of individuals; not a land of groups, a land of mini-mobs, coercing advantages from other mini-mobs with our particular government-approved plight as the tool. No one goes to war for a country like that.
You ask a lot of yourself, Shannon. You should ask at least as much from everyone else.
Shannon, one more thing, you give these links as if they can be trusted to have pure unadulterated value. Given the way the lame stream media works, I trust none of them until I can find other corroborating sources agreeing in basics at least.
I watched NBC savage “Joe the Plumber” for daring to challenge “The One” on his tax position.
Free speech isn’t about saying what’s on your mind; it’s about being free after having said it. I don’t trust the current Democrats to understand that difference.
Woodchuck: I gave the links because I’ve checked them out and verified their accuracy. If you want to check them out, go ahead. If you don’t, don’t. It’s fine with me either way.
In fact, I would love it if you all would just research McCain vs. Obama on the veterans’ issues that are important to YOU. Because McCain has consistently misrepresented his record. That’s all I was trying to point out. Hotspur, I represented my own position to you rather than trying to argue policy because I figured that at least that way if you disagreed with me you’d know where I was coming from. Mission accomplished? I’m not saying that I think we should be giving people handouts. I’m saying that we should take care of the people who make sacrifices to protect our country. We could talk all day about what to what extent we should “take care of” whom, and we may agree or we may disagree. Disabled veterans–and again, McCain has a 20 percent rating with the DAV–I believe should be taken care of. Other veterans, under other circumstances? I think that the effects of war, particularly some of the psychological effects that you don’t see right away, should be taken care of. But that’s just my opinion.
Also, Woodchuck: I am also disturbed by the treatment of Joe the Plumber. However, I don’t think it would have happened if McCain hadn’t straight-up used him, thrusting him into the spotlight. When someone has been used repeatedly to make a point, and then the media finds out that he doesn’t really make that point all that well…I mean, they’re pretty predictable. McCain should have seen that one coming.
Whether McCain used him or not, NBC and the MSM were flat out wrong going after him. Not a peep out of “That One” either, strange isn’t it. That which is not condemned, is quietly condoned.
Try this for a bit of Obama crowd beliefs. http://www.zombietime.com/prairie_fire/ Just a small glimpse of internal thoughts.
Supposedly, you are known by the company you keep. He runs with a very sordid bunch, Chicago politicians. They’re worse than the regular dirtbags that make DC a cesspool.
Nothing in this country will change until the people get their collective act together and dump the currently constructed DONK and RINO parties.
Woodchuck: Re: Joe the Plumber, I would never argue with you that the MSM is not totally worthless and disgusting. Complete agreement.
Thanks for the Prairie Fire link. Was unaware that this was up online, and am reading.