Once again I’ve been pulled in another direction from what I had originally planned on writing. I was watching the evening news and saw “our” Joint Chiefs Chairman, Admiral Mullen, talking to “our” troops – brave young men and women – who are away from their families – about the possibility of a reduction in their benefits because of the budget “crisis.” If I were sitting in a truck stop somewhere about to eat my steak and saw the report, I would have lost my appetite. That almost never happens.
You should have seen their faces – these young warriors – perplexed is the emotion that I picked-up on. Behind that is surely anger. My reaction would be “are they kidding?” The goals of the Afghanistan and Iraq “conflict” are highly questionable and confusing. “We” are there, but we’ not. The “wars” are not covered like they were during Vietnam. It’s similar to the shuttle program, which just “retired”. Once the astronauts blasted off – also with questionable goals – they were forgotten, until some of the press would mention the “spectacular” landing in a three second “report” – then ignore the entire space program, until the next launch.
This whole debit ceiling – budget crisis is being ignored by many of us. We have our own problems to worry about. Rich old white men playing with our money. None of them needing to rely on social security, Medicare or disability “entitlements”. Many of us wish Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan were President right now. Boehner and Reed make quite the dynamic duo – NOT. The rest of “our” Congress can be classified as nothing less than pathetic. But that’s nothing new.
You see all that in the eyes our service members. Some of you might remember burlesque. When the act wasn’t going well, the stage manager would take a stick with a hook on the end of it and drag the actor off stage, before the audience would pummel him or her – with tomatoes, lemons, bottles or a combination of all three. You would need a mighty large hook to drag all the members of Congress out of the Capitol building. I was hoping someone in the audience over in Afghanistan would have pulled Admiral Mullen off his bully-pulpit with a hook. I respect the man, but he was making a fool of himself.
I am reminded of an earlier time in my trucking “career”. I was delivering hardware supplies to stores throughout the New York tri-state area. My “route” went down as far as the Delaware – Maryland border and included the warm friendly neighborhoods of the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. I’m kidding, of course.
I was home every night and was paid $10 an hour. That was about twelve years ago. I was a card-carrying “member” of one of the weakest locals of the Teamsters Union. Which is probably why I made $10 an hour and not $15. One nice union perk was when I just showed up on Saturday morning at the warehouse, just in case they needed a driver to take something somewhere. They never did. I sat every weekend for a few hours, then went home. I was paid an extra $100. Sweet.
On one occasion, the VP of Operations wanted to hold a drivers meeting about something. Union drivers meetings are not the same as ABC long haul trucking holding a drivers meeting. Union drivers, especially, the ones in New York City, are extremely grumpy. They carry knives. They use knifes. They didn’t dislike management – they despised them. I felt the same way. We once shrink wrapped a warehouse supervisors car, to get payback for a decision he made we didn’t so much care for.
So, we all gathered around in one of the crummy meeting rooms. It was cold outside. A typical NJ winter. I put $.50 in the coffee machine for a hot chocolate. The cup dropped, the hot water and cocoa power fell in. And so did a disgusting brown cockroach. I picked up the cup and it was just having a swim on top of the hot liquid. Good thing there was no whipped cream – I would have never seen it. I imagined that was what prison was probably like. I was in a room full of union truck drivers, “sporting” switchblades, all angry and I was holding a beverage with a cockroach in it. Did I mention I was only one of a handful of White drivers there?
The VP walks in. Our jaws dropped. He was wearing a PINK (fuzzy) cashmere sweater. The look on our faces was very similar to that of the troops listening to the Admiral over in Afghanistan today. We didn’t hear a word the VP said. He had no credibility. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs did not wear a PINK sweater, but he might as well have. Same with the President and the members of Congress.
RELATED NEWS:
(Reuters) – It is unclear if the United States will be able to pay troops on time in the event of a debt default, the top U.S. military officer told troops in Afghanistan on Saturday. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/30/us-usa-debt-afghanistan-idUSTRE76T0MH20110730
Thousands of military spouses quit their jobs each year to move with their significant others to a new duty station. Their prospects for getting a job at their new location are grim: While the national U.S. unemployment rate is above 9 percent, it’s a whopping 26 percent for military spouses, according to a report by NPR. http://www.stripes.com/military-spouses-face-especially-grim-job-prospects-1.150650
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