next for Pence: a paintball tournament

I suppose it was inevitable that Vice-President Pence would have to show his package after Trump dropped two huge loads recently.  But since Mike doesn’t have the authority or irrationality of Aging Orange, he had to settle for serving notice to Kim Jong-Un inside the Korean DMZ.

Cautioning the North Korean dictator that the U.S. “era of strategic patience” is over, the Veep assured Kim that all options are on the table to defend the good Koreans, the Southern ones.  He did not specify if that table was in the White House or the less hygienic Mar-a-Lago.

This is not the first time Pence has played the brave little non-soldier.  Ten years ago, he and John McCain visited a Baghdad shopping area.  According to Mike, “thousands and thousands of Iraqis were moving about in regular everyday life like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime.”

I remember the video of that.  Summer in the Hoosier State must be brutal, aside from the heat and humidity.  Pence and McCain were in flak jackets surrounded by U.S. troops in a sealed-off area.

This is a major sore point for me: politicians who hide behind the military.  More to the point, pols who never served.  You know, chickenhawks (not the gay slang ones, per se).  Current White House/Florida resident D. John Trump is a primo example.

The Cheeto received four student deferments.  After his graduation, he got a medical deferment for bone spurs on his heels.  Fortunately they went away and no longer affect his golf game, unless he’s playing through the pain.

To his credit, Trump did attend military school in New York, which likely has more dangerous summers than Indiana.  And he did tell Howard Stern that avoiding STD’s while dating was his “personal Vietnam”.

Yet he and his veep surround themselves with active duty troops and veterans for political parsley, promising a bigger military budget and better VA care.  I question the need for more muscle, and I’m still waiting for the VA to step up.

Some other vets may agree, but I’m speaking only for myself.  Indeed, the military definitely leans right.  In 2012, Time magazine said that’s largely because “today’s military is an all-volunteer force increasingly drawn from the Sunbelt, where the Pentagon has focused its recruiting efforts since the draft ended 40 years ago.  And traits the military prizes — like aggressiveness and respect for authority — tend to be more pronounced in conservatives.”