Bill MacClellan “doubles down” on the stupid
Yesterday, we wrote about Bill MacClellan of the Saint Louis Post Dispatch who claims that most veterans don’t do anything heroic, so they don’t deserve a government-funded funeral. Today, he goes back for another bite at that turd;
As I said in Wednesday’s column, the way you cut a budget is by cutting small programs and trimming big ones. I suggested letting veterans service organizations provide military funerals for their members. That did not seem despicable or outrageous to me. It still doesn’t.
Nor did it seem political. I thought reasonable people on both sides of the aisle understood we have to control our spending.
Sadly, if the response I’ve gotten is any indication, there’s not much hope for any kind of a deal. Nobody wants to give up anything. I was hoping veterans could lead the way. It would be a heroic thing to do.
Yeah, well, Billy-boy, it seems that you’re the only one who gets to define heroic in this discussion. Veterans have already suffered mightily in this “program cutting” thing. Thousands of retirees in the West have had their healthcare slashed. All retirees had our surplus of healthcare premiums raided by the government to spend for other things while they hike our premiums and co-pays. This year, we finally got a tiny cost-of-living increase for the first time since 2009. So, now, you think that when we “hurry up and die” like the government wants, we shouldn’t get the send off into the great beyond that we deserve?
I flunked out of college and was drafted into the Marine Corps. I went to Vietnam. I did nothing heroic.
You went to Vietnam while the rest of your generation didn’t – you don’t see anything heroic in that? Just because you don’t think your own service is worthy, stop shitting on the rest of us.
Category: Politics
Hmmmmm. Per research that 2/17 Air Cav did and posted on the earlier article about this . . . “fine individual”, he went to both the University of Illinois and Arizona State.
Anyone want to bet on whether or not he used the GI Bill to fund his education? Or if he thinks he should repay the cost of those educational benefits, plus 35-40 years of interest at market rates, to the Federal government?
I’m guessing the answers to the above questions, in order, are “Yes” and “Hell no”. Those were his bennies. He earned them by serving in the USMC!
Freaking hypocrite.
What a shit bag.
He says, “Nobody wants to give up anything. I was hoping veterans could lead the way. It would be a heroic thing to do.”
For me speaking from my own personal perspective, what else does he want “us” to sacrifice in order to “lead the way”? I sacrificed my youth, my knees, my back and shoulders, my hearing, and lost time with my family. I don’t expect much in return after 25 years of service, but I guess it’s not enough.
As for my retirement and TRICARE, while I’m glad to get them, I think I’ve earned them.
On one hand, I want to be a bit of a dick….On the other..No wait, I want to be a dick there too.
ASU’s J-School isn’t THAT hard to get into.. …it’s ASU!! (Alma Mater, I can talk crap).
I did some looking into this guy and during the time he was a night police reporter in Phoenix, there was some nasty stuff going down between the media and the (allegedly) mob. Talking to my father in law, it seems that it was a pretty tough beat as a reporter. They actually killed one of em with a carbomb outside of a nice Phoenix hotel (Don Knowles) a few years earlier.
As for the USMC service, here’s a hypothetical question for you: He’s a self-loathing leftie with an agenda, so why should we give two craps what he thinks?
Answer: We shouldn’t. He’s offensive, and obnoxious, but relatively harmless. The American public would go absolutely apeshit if the federal stopped providing military honors at funerals. They are far more likely to cut our benefits/retirement/health insurance first…Oh wait….
I’m sure if he’s so noble he’ll pay back the government every dime he ever got in benefits, adjusted for inflation. Otherwise, he’s one of the, “Fuck you I got mine now piss off” crowd.
And before people flame me for what I get, the only post-service compensation I’ve ever asked for or expected is a pine box and a resting place next to my brothers in Boscawen. If that’s too much to ask, I’ll be more than happy to tell that dickweed to piss on an electric fence.
My take on this MacClellan is that he’d complain if he were hung with a brand new rope.
If you read the 2009 interview (linked elsewhere) with him, he whines about liars and whiners and people having no empathy, and so on ad nauseum, but he’s the biggest whiner in the heap.
I’m sure that if he were told to give up his share of social security when he retires, he’d say ‘oh, no, I earned that’, so this whining is all part of his schtick, even though he says he has no schtick.
Don’t give this jerk any more credence than you can. I think he just likes saying things that piss people off. He’s not worth the angst he wants to generate in you.
Well, how’s about you get the welfare leeches to give up their section 8 housing, Bridge Cards, Obamaphones and the rest of what they did nothing to earn before you go after veterans, MacClellan? Then we’ll talk.
If I’m not mistaken the CBO recently released a report showing there are over 52 overlapping and redundant offices/programs that can be merged or reduced and this fuckstick wants to cut funerals. GFTO
Well, my less than stellar career resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Yes, I’ll take some credit for that. I spent the majority of my career preparing for the Great Fulda Gap Live-Fire Exercise that was cancelled in 1989. We all did our part and all contributed to victory over the Evil Empire.
Upon my demise, I ask only that my ashes be interned at the same National Cemetery that shelters my WWII veteran father. Don’t need an honor guard or a flag ceremony. Perhaps that’ll save a dime or two.
Can we get proof he served, just want to be on the safe side with these guys coming out of the wood work
@NHSparky: I tried to talk my brother into pissing on electric fence once. Sadly he’s not that dumb. He did lick his fingers and touch it though….Haha. Ah, memories of youth.
We take him at his word that he’s a vet.
Maybe he’s not. (I’m just sayin’)
Lets make sure we get a statement from his family saying that when HE passes away, He doesn’t get honors. (You know…so that we can save money.)
So here’s the deal: I earned my retirement benefits not so much by the nature of my heroic service (no, I was not a hero either), but because I was prepared to deliver heroism had it been needed during my military career.
Get back to me after you cut out all the payouts to individuals and groups which contribute absolutely nothing toward the betterment of our society. Those would be unearned benefits. Meanwhile, threatening my earned benefits makes no sense whatever and just makes you look like an idiot.
Asshat does not even understand that the majority of veterans internments are already performed in large part by Veterans Orgs. The minimum requiremnets is the Veterans parent Service provide someone to hand the flag to the next of kin, and more than likely now days a recording of Taps being played. That flag cost about 50.00, the burial plot probably a little more, and that is the extent of our ripping off of the taxpayer.Why do these assholes always go after Veterans and not welfare recipients??
Any former band geeks out there, the National Cmeteries sure could use a few more trumpet/bugle players to perfom Taps.
“I was hoping veterans could lead the way”
I guess the blank check I signed for the amount of up to my life isn’t enough.
ANCCPT: ASU may not be all that hard to get into. But it ain’t free, either. And neither is the U of Ill.
When he ponies up the $$$ to repay Uncle Sam for the bennies he undoubtedly used to pay for one or both of them (Vietnam-era GI Bill), then he’s got standing to talk. Until the, he can ST . . . just be quiet. (smile)
I am greatly disturbed by McClellan’s suggestion. This is Good Friday and I am struggling to retysrain myself. The Christian thing to do is to say a prayer for him…………….aaaaargggghhhhhh.
“retysrain” is a good indication that I am failing in my effort to exercise restraint.
Hondo: That’s true, and while it’s hypocritical for his to advocate cutting benefits he already earned from people who are still in the process, again: He’s just a windbag. We’ve all dealt with em before. Let him flap his gums. His actions speak FAR louder than his words, and his actions show that he used the earned benefits of his service to improve his life *as they are intended to do*. He projects his insecurities and political positions onto others. That’s all. If he would engage the forums here (a polite term for your gang of heathens here at TAH) he could make his case for cutting whatever he wants and the inescapable fact is that he already used what he’s advocating taking away (not the funeral req. obviously, but the other benefits), and he’s got nothing to stand on. Not a single damn thing; ergo he’s just *another* typical ‘do as I say, not as I do’ hypocrite. File him under ’eminently forgettable lefties’ in your tags and lets move on to more interesting stuff.
I watched him on TV last night… he does admit that he used the GI Bill. In his opinion that is more than enough compensation for his service and does not expect to get any more…
Great! That’s fine for you Bill. The rest of us, who read through our contracts, knowing that we get: lower pay, longer hours, deployments, time away from the family, physical discomforts leading to medical issues (for some), are tired of seeing other veterans getting screwed over by the nation and its leaders who bait and switch on us as they please (I’m 4th generation military).
We are making a stand on principle that if we do not stop the government from taking away our dwindling benefits, then where else will it end?
ANCCPT: all of what you say above in comment 18 is true. And it’s all irrelevant regarding the issue of whether his BS should go unchallenged and/or be ignored.
McClellan is indeed a fool and a tool. But he’s a fool and tool who has an audience, a bully pulpit from which to disseminate his opinion, and an agenda. Unchallenged, he will convince a fair number of people that he’s right – by default. Unchallenged, a lie repeated often enough can convince people it is truth.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Here’s what I posted in the comments for our friend Bill McLellan:
As I stated yesterday it’s interesting that this program is one you feel unnecessary. It’s a program that costs the state, by your accounting, 3.5 million a year. ($400 x 729) x 12 months = 3.499 million. Your fiscal state budget for 2014 is 25.7 billion dollars, so if I understand you correctly after analyzing the budget with all the attendant waste and fraud the one program you find to cut that is worthy of an entire column represents less than a hundredth of 1% of the budget.
You need to find a little over 70 other programs just like this to get to a 1% reduction in the state budget. I am certain you are already all over that, you should call the governor and let him know what those other 70 programs are. He was concerned because his budget had 165 million in funds not yet legislated. Your contribution of 70 programs worth about 3.5 million each would put him a little ahead of that number and get him close to a savings of almost 1 entire percent in the budget.
Maybe that’s why folks are angry with you, because out of all the waste and mismanagement you felt that veterans were the ones who should carry the first water on the budget. Not the folks who have never and will never contribute to the general welfare or common good, but the folks who have already given at least a few years of their lives in service to the country. Why not suggest that cops and firefighters take a pay cut next, that will probably get your email humming along nicely as well.
@ #20: To which I would only add that since he is one of us veterans, he invites our scrutiny in particular.
Hondo: Well put. I tend to conserve my ammo for the bigger targets, but well put. I forget my Burke. And the fight goes on!
This is just a retread of the old “now that we’re done with them, veterans need to go away” syndrome. Not only do they want veterans to be expendable, they want them to be invisible, too. And free wouldn’t be bad, either, of course. They always like freebes.
Same shit, different day.
USMC vet or not, how’s about at this turd’s death, to save $$, we put him in a trash bag and toss him in the dumpster.
Lead by example, assturd, lead by example.
2/17 Air Cav: you could give him a “hymn”. Or maybe paean him. (smile)
Want to make a cut that is a good start? How about limiting welfare money to 3 children. How about cutting congress pay to the average monthly income of America? How about cutting the payments we make to other countries to solve their education or food problems until we solve those problems in America?
This ass-monkey wouldn’t know heroic if it teabagged him. Sure, he was a Marine, and I have a little respect for him because of that. But, even Marines can be assholes and idiots. A uniform does not make you righteous and above reproach.
Nobody wants to give up anything. I was hoping veterans could lead the way.
They already do, you sanctimonious, paint-huffing window licker. There’s already plenty being asked and given. So turn your ire towards someone else.
Perhaps I am not educated enough about the Navy, but how does one get drafted in the Marines, when they brag about only taking…. volunteers?
SSG–about 43-44K were draftees during the Vietnam era. A far smaller percentage of their force than the other services during the same era.
The Marines did take draftees during the Viet Nam war. I enlisted in 1965 and we started seeing draftees in Viet Nam about late 1966. Once the draftees started showing up, the quality of the Corps went into a nose dive. WHile some draftees were fine Marines, most were double losers – too chicken to be draft resisters, then into the Corps rather than the slacker Army. In my experience, for example, we had almost no drug problem until the draftees started showing up. IF there were one argument against a modern draft, it would be the effect of draftees on the formally all volunteer Marine Corps. If MacClellen was a shit-bird Marine draftee, that’s all I need to know to explain his present attitudes towards the military
Ahh. Thanks guys.