jerseyhoya wrote:The Idaho GOP Gubernatorial Primary Debate Will Change Your Life

Maybe the solution is more debates like this

I can't recommend watching this more highly

jerseyhoya wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:The Idaho GOP Gubernatorial Primary Debate Will Change Your Life

Maybe the solution is more debates like this

I can't recommend watching this more highly

oh wow it did not stop after the first guy

I think never going to Idaho is a solid course of action after watching that abortion.

have a friend from boise. sounds like a cool town, tbh.

My bad on the haverford/swarthmore thing. Whoops.

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/h8p5tx/harry-reid-s-vegas-placation

John Stewart is awesome.

I think you can get lunatic fringe candidates in any state so don't think the debate says anything bad about Idaho. Usually they're just not allowed to participate in the debates.

New York allows anyone and everyone, too

http://nypost.com/2014/05/15/syrian-reb ... nnel-bomb/

Man's inhumanity to man taking an old form. Tunneling, then placing hundreds of thousands of pounds of high explosives under key targets.

i guess the only solace is that we are staying out of it. we have no military solution for it and would just create more problems. unfortunately, negotiations seem non-existent

Pretty much everything out of Syria sounds horrific, but tunnel bombing the army base of an opposing army during a war seems like a pretty sweet move tbh

deputy chief of staff is going to the VA to 'assist' Shinseski at the VA because they suck at everything. Hospitals have been lying about appointments, their new metric system doesn't even work, and the backlog is happening again (300K have been waiting for more than 4 months). it's not like having Shinseki resign will do anything, it's just a scapegoat for an inept system that's been overwhelmed and is utterly unprepared for anything. i want heads to roll but what does it even accomplish at this point?

goddammit this pisses me off. everyone's for helping veterans until it actually comes to fucking doing something about it

edit: LG, what do we need to do here?

SK790 wrote:have a friend from boise. sounds like a cool town, tbh.

Yeh, I remember reading an article about Boise years ago and it made me put Boise on my list of places I'd like to at least visit. The outdoor activities in the area are world class and the city seems like a college town, something like Madison. But I've never been there, so I can't say for sure.

jerseyhoya wrote:Pretty much everything out of Syria sounds horrific, but tunnel bombing the army base of an opposing army during a war seems like a pretty sweet move tbh

When it doesn't massively backfire on you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Crater

the people who litter the comments sections of news articles are trying to have a 30 million man march in DC

A group of self-described revolutionary-style patriots with a million mobilized militia members are heading to downtown Washington, D.C., this week to bring a simple message to political leadership, from President Obama to House Speaker John Boehner: Get out.
They’re called the Operation American Spring — and they’re vowing to oust the likes of Mr. Obama, Mr. Boehner, Attorney General Eric Holder, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Sen. Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Raw Story reported.

The group expects between 10 million and 30 million similarly thinking Americans to meet them in the capital on Friday for a rally that’s being billed as a sort of “Arab Spring” for Americans.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... ust-obama/

and the live feed certainly looks intimidating

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/operation ... pring-live

Youseff wrote:the people who litter the comments sections of news articles are trying to have a 30 million man march in DC

A group of self-described revolutionary-style patriots with a million mobilized militia members are heading to downtown Washington, D.C., this week to bring a simple message to political leadership, from President Obama to House Speaker John Boehner: Get out.
They’re called the Operation American Spring — and they’re vowing to oust the likes of Mr. Obama, Mr. Boehner, Attorney General Eric Holder, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Sen. Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Raw Story reported.

The group expects between 10 million and 30 million similarly thinking Americans to meet them in the capital on Friday for a rally that’s being billed as a sort of “Arab Spring” for Americans.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... ust-obama/

and the live feed certainly looks intimidating

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/operation ... pring-live

Some 70 facebook comments, and though I only read about 20 or so, it doesn't sound like any of the supporters are actually going to attend, but they will pray.

Full disclosure: I've worked with the VA's Strategic Studies Group in the past, and there are some really talented people within the bureaucracy, however...

The VA is a product of World War One and World War Two. These two wars created a massive expansion of the VA, and firmly entrenched it into the Federal bureaucracy. The fundamental problem is that it hasn't changed much since then.

One of the guys I worked with over there said the VA will never open another hospital because it's too expensive. They want to add people and medical pros to existing civilian hospitals and perhaps rent space from them as well. I think the stat he threw at me was 80% of the VA hospitals are in bad locations because of demographic shifts since the 1960s, which was the last great expansion of VA facilities.

So I think that's a great idea. How to implement is a problem, especially politically when shutting down VA facilities is a problem for rural areas (good jobs, support to rural vets, Congressional noise, etc.) Outsourcing to civilian providers seems like a good solution to eliminate the short term backlog.

I'd also start looking to start getting better providers into the VA. My wife said the VA hiring process for medical professionals wasn't worth the hassle to end up as a GS12 or GS13. Need to something to unscrew that problem. Many of her peers from the George Washington PA Program (second best in the nation), would have liked working for the VA (herself included) but the hiring process for a $65K a year job was just odious to them. She made $70K a year out of school and it took 24 hours for her to get hired into a civilian practice...

Better oversight and punishment of bureaucrats and medical pros who screw up. Stop racing for the almighty dollar and do the right thing. Bonuses have to be delinked from quantity of care to quality of care, timeliness of care, and effectiveness of care. Anyone who took a bonus should pay it back immediately or face Federal fraud charges.

At the political level, I'd introduce legislation that ensure the VA budget is increased at an exponential rate the day the nation commits to armed conflict. Must tie the back end of the design with the initial decision together. Also might provide a decent braking mechanism for actually going to war.

I'd also increase VA pension payments. 100% disability only gets you about $30K a year. That's fucking criminal in my mind.

I'd start purging the system as well. There are some people in the VA who have been there way too long, just like many other Federal bureaucracies. There seems to be a special breed of stubbornness within VA personnel to any kind of change, and I think dealing with the Army Staff on a daily basis is a frustration of special means. Make the VA a better place to work, make people proud of taking care of those who went into harms way, and for God's sake, get the very best mental health, prosthetic, and elderly care professionals you can get. If that means the VA needs a budget that is doubled, so be it. God knows we spent enough money in this country on nonsense, the least we can do is make our veterans feel that they will get legitimate and responsive medical care.

I'm increasingly biased as I inch closer to retirement age of course. I have skin in the game, so to speak, due to serious back and leg injuries due to military service. So I want the best, I want to feel confident in these people. But it's going the other way. It also will make recruiting more difficult for the military, a third order effect most people ignore...who wants to join when you get shit on when you are in need of medical assistance?

pacino wrote:deputy chief of staff is going to the VA to 'assist' Shinseski at the VA because they suck at everything. Hospitals have been lying about appointments, their new metric system doesn't even work, and the backlog is happening again (300K have been waiting for more than 4 months). it's not like having Shinseki resign will do anything, it's just a scapegoat for an inept system that's been overwhelmed and is utterly unprepared for anything. i want heads to roll but what does it even accomplish at this point?

goddammit this pisses me off. everyone's for helping veterans until it actually comes to fucking doing something about it

edit: LG, what do we need to do here?

awesome reply, thanks man, gives me a lot to think about. a lot of that sounds similar to my department (on a state level), and we deal with the poorest in our society, many of whom are veterans.

I hope it helps in some manner. It makes my heart weep to see this crap.

pacino wrote:awesome reply, thanks man, gives me a lot to think about. a lot of that sounds similar to my department (on a state level), and we deal with the poorest in our society, many of whom are veterans.

Don't lie. We work with fakers who don't deserve our help and are only trying to take our tax dollars. It's a FACT.