I’m gonna leave this city, got to get awayAll this fussing and fighting, man, you know I sure can’t stay.
I remember hearing this song quite a bit in Southeast Asia. Canned Heat had its following but if you noticed, they had only one basic song with different lyrics. Standard jazz E-A-D progression. The humor in it all was “gonna leave this city, got to get away”. You couldn’t get much further away than the Republic of Vietnam. We were most always 200 klics east of Timbuckf_____gtu as near as I could figure. As for the fussin’ and fightin’ part of it, you couldn’t find more combat excitement unless you had one of them fancy DeLoreans with a One gigawatt Flux Capacitor mounted on the trunk lid and dialed it back to The Battle of the Bulge in WWII.
For my birthday present, my son is taking me elk hunting in Idaho this coming week. All I have to do is watch. I’ll keep you posted if I bag one. The standard- news and film at 6. Cupcake will be holding down the LZ and taking my calls. Feel free to call if you have some catastrophe. She just brought home a couple of rescue kittens who were homeless. Just what we need- a couple of furniture destroyers. Pickles is going to want to leave home.
Mostly, this was a great excuse to finally put a scope on a beautiful rifle my dad bought back in 1984 but never prepped for hunting. I took it down to Bass Pro Shop™ recently and had them mount a 3X9X40 Leupold on it. They were far more interested in buying it from me than selling me the scope. This thing is new-in-box like a blast from the past. I don’t think they even make them anymore in the model I have. In fact, there ain’t no ammo for it in Seattle. I had to order in from Midway™.
“It” is a Model Mark V .270 Weatherby Magnum. I must still be in shape. It took me 13 rounds to get it zeroed in. It packs a pretty good wallop but I don’t ache this morning. The ol’ boy who mounted it said he’d bore-sighted it in close enough to “get it on the paper”. He must own a paper mill. After 2 shots at a 36X36 satellite dish with no strikes at 150 yds. I sashayed back on up to the hacienda and grabbed a 4X8 sheet of plywood to give me some reference. At $5.47 a shot, I wanted to conserve ammo.
It’s high resolution- click on it for a closeup.
It was shooting 38 inches high and 34 inches right. That’s a shit ton of minutes of angle to fix in eleven shots and be certain you didn’t twitch slightly. I will say that once you apply anything more than about .015 foot pounds of pressure on the trigger, that round is long gone.
Now to discuss our favorite subject- VA. I would hope everyone would chill out about starving to death for lack of a VA compensation check. Equally, I’d suggest we all step back and quit worrying about all the VA doctors and nurses quitting. The problem isn’t that the VA Poobahs are being a Dick. It’s primarily because VA isn’t willing to pay their employees livable wages. A civilian nurse can command about $130 K/year minimum if she’s hot. At VA, the same gal is going to have 4 times the workload for $85 K beginning wages fresh out of school. Lather, rinse and repeat for Psychologists to keep up with the horrendous PTSD cases. Or Doctors for all the DM II and Parkie’s. As it is, they can’t even keep up and have to farm them out to the local market… at market rates, mind you, just like steak and lobster at the restaurant. So how do you ever save money doing that?
Yes, they 86’d the AFGE union so the VA employees are now without. But to be honest, the AFGE was a toothless tiger. They came on bad and scary but that’s akin to a declawed cat. All hiss and no piss. VA employees can’t go on strike. Their paychecks keep pace with what the Government said a GS payscale would pay with COLA…and no more. VA skirted that with all these “performance pay” metrics or a big fat allowance to move Their SES personnel from DC to their new digs in Phoenix or Seattle. I’m seeing a different metric now. Seattle has had the same Director now for over ten years. No more Musical Chairs and an automatic bump up on the SES ladder every 3 years.
The big news I get from the legal jungle drums we litigators all listen to is a sudden rush of ratings decisions in the waning days of this current fiscal year ending September 30th. VA’s production levels soared to wondrous new heights never before seen but a well-known side effect of that is accuracy. We all saw some real daisies emerge in the last days. I know VA is using AI but their AI machine is beginning to develop its own M 21 and autopen and make up new statutes and regulations I’ve never seen or heard of. Check out this one as one of many examples of what they’re cranking out.
Sorry Roger. One a&a to a customer. No pyramiding. You’ll notice every rating decision on that one above has a supportive cite to a controlling reg but the “one to a customer” finding of fact doesn’t. That’s readily explainable because there isn’t one. It’s a pure fig newton of someone’s fervid, feverish imagination. But then they let some ol’ GS 14 step 5 RVSR crank out 85,300 ratings decisions-every one of them a grant- at the rate of 4.5 minutes per signature… for a couple years or more and never bat an eyelash. Go Philly. I understand there are also going to be an inevitable shit ton of CUE notifications going out directly giving a haircut to some of you. I’ll also take a wild guess and say they’ll all emanate from Philly too.
The good news from Quantico is the military is going to begin focusing again on what they do best- killing people. No more morbidly obese generals. No more Pronouns 101 or the correct polite phraseology to say ‘no!’ to those recalcitrant Russians about this Ukraine misunderstanding. No more 5 pushups for you ma’m but 50 for for them SFs, Rangers and the SEAL Teams. No more sex change operations. The only sex surgery will be for those unfortunate souls who come down with that incurable social disease we used to call the Black VD. Them ol’ boys will still get a free testicle enucleation to cure them forever. Or some gal who wishes to get her tubes tied or a mastectomy for breast cancer. But that’s military shit. We’re Veterans now so that really doesn’t get in to our wheelhouses, right?
As for deploying the Nasty Guard to cities? Again, that isn’t what we deal with here. We do jokes and VA claims-not necessarily in that order. We demand equality of humor. Our motto is Win or Die. As for the future of VA, I’m confident they will stumble through this period of revamping their procedures, ceasing their All Hands on Deck fly-ins for VA training events in Orlando on December 21-24 and their famous Halloween Karaoke Sing offs in Omaha. What the hey? The VA compensation tables are a study in poverty in this day and age. Washington State just announced the new minimum pay per hour come 2026 is $17.00/hour. In Seattle proper, it’s already $21.06/hour.
As an interesting footnote, at our recent DC conferences, we heard VA is looking at the SMC rates with an eye toward raising the per-month levels. Adult daycare is getting frightfully expensive. Visiting Angels™ is right out unless you’re at SMC T.
Closing on a brighter note before I put on my facepaint and camo and go out killing poor defenseless elk, I just bagged a great Barry bump case all the way from SMC L to R1. Relax. Of course we’re going for R 2. I just like to corral the R 1 first without appearing overtly greedy. Always remember. This is like a horseshoe ambush with a complete ring of inward-facing Claymores with one clacker. When the dust settles, only then do you complete the second half- i.e., go in and make sure everyone is down and doesn’t get up. My LRRP buddy says they used to call that “Giving everybody a third eye”. Yeah. That’s Ed’s lived experience. 11B40speak.
At asknod, we don’t subscribe to being nice with VA employees any more than they play nice with us. Legal bullets and hand grenades are cheap. My dying clients deserve aggressive representation- and they get it from us. This ‘don’t poke the bear’ mentality being preached by DAV, VFW and AmLeg is pure crap. You never win by sitting by the phone or the mailbox waiting and it’s a guaranteed way to stay at 60% until you die.
And that’s the way it is at LZ Grambo Sunday October 5 in the year of our Lord, 2025.
asknod
Bethanie Spangenberg
kcraveiro
robinhoodesqvetsatty
Wesley McCauley
Veterans Claims Help 
At my VAMC in Reno we were already shorthanded, which I believe is the case throughout the country, We’re short of doctors and nurses especially. They seem to be rotating the nurses where the most need is and that can be anywhere in the country.
Our new VAMC appears to be on hold and it was cut back from 51 acres to 33acres. It was a long time coming and was sorely needed. Now we don’t know when or if we’ll get it. This could all be moot but info about it is hard to get.
I’ve also noticed that many of the employees seem to be not so happy. The ones that are still there, we lost around 20% of the people needed especially for the new facility, that is if it’s even built, are working harder than ever, overworked is what it seems to be.
I’ve gotten care there since 1974. Actually it was pretty bad when I first had to use it but has really gotten good since at least Clinton forward and improved steadily until recently.
It seems a shame that so many good people that were giving us excellent care are now gone.
That RD is a classic. You and I need to start a BS bullitin board. I’m afraid we’d run out of room though. Happy hunting.