You know the drill by now. We didn't want anything to do with the news, which is why we're posting this instead...
...and because the journalistic importance of "padding" can hardly be overstated, here are some random bits and pieces of Wednesday-ish stuff:
• Ladybug the pitbull (Penny's second-in-command) is recovering splendidly from her recent leg surgery, and is actually ahead of the curve. She has no discomfort at all and our biggest therapeutic duty will be keeping her from running around like a Tasmanian devil for the next couple of months.
• We just received another letter from the Social Security Administration saying that Mrs. J's monthly payment is being withheld (again) because she has overdue Medicare premium payments on the books. We already wasted a couple of hours of our life on this last month and established that we are in fact paying the premiums directly from her Social Security benefit and paying the premium by check, so have been double-paying for quite a while and they actually owe us a refund of hundreds of dollars. We haven't called them to complain again yet, because experience tells us there will be no satisfactory conclusion anyway.
• Speaking of governmental incompetence, we've still found no way for Daughter J to get a Texas driver's license until mid-August (the DMV only allows you in by appointment and, thanks to Covid, appointments take about six months)...meaning she can't work until then. Are illegal aliens waiting this long to be given a driver's license? We wouldn't bet on it.
• We're hearing a lot of BS about the difficulty of obtaining photo IDs for certain segments of society and wonder why no one has taken action on the obvious solution we suggested back in 2014:
Caption: "How would you all like to be dropped over a fence in New Mexico?"
ReplyDelete"Have you seen Tickles the Clown? Oh, wait, that's the other comic."
ReplyDelete"There's this architect named Stanford White who'd REALLY like to meet you!"
"Dolly, you might want to tell Thel that PJ's diaper has REALLY gotten loaded..."
Your state offers assistance getting you through the Social Security/ Medicare quagmire. Research national ship program or search for your state ship program. I'm sure they will be able to help
ReplyDeleteIt's a volunteer service to help with issues like yours.
Caption: Vaccination passports please.
ReplyDeleteBefore I escaped from california 30+ years ago I would drive to a small town (yes, there are small towns there if one drives long enough) to renew my driver's license. It was worth the two or three hour drive rather than stand in line for several hours'. Plus, even in california small town folk are much more polite than those in San Jose or 'gasp!' San Francisco.
ReplyDeleteCaption: Biden finally has his first cabinet meeting.
ReplyDeleteDr. J-As a now retired management SSA employee, please listen to what I'm saying. 99.5% of the cases sail along very smoothly, but when that one case jumps the tracks, it can take a good deal of effort by a well trained employee to set it right. Your bride's foul-up at SSA will not get fixed by a phone call or by someone repeatedly hitting the enter key there all day. Based on my four decades of experience in multiple field offices while climbing the ladder, my best advice to you is to write a detailed letter of complaint to your congressman, both senators, and to *46. This will force your case to be pulled from the stack on a lower level employee's desk and be looked at by someone in management. That supervisor or manager will be responsible for watching it until it is resolved. You'll also have the satisfaction of knowing you got management busy writing reports to the politicians of what went wrong and how it will be fixed. SSA's funding depends on congress, and they are especially sensitive to embarrassing screw-ups like this one being spotlighted. Looking like incompetent dotards to the very people who decide their budget is not the image they want to project.
ReplyDeleteJeez, I'd forgotten about Ms. Permanent Bad Hair Day. Is she still alive?
ReplyDeleteWhich one of you am I going to sell to Ghislaine Maxwell today?
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear Ladybug is progressing well.
Your battle with Social Security & Medicare: Such a shame considering that had a private company did this to you, you could sue for remuneration plus punitive damages. Your best alternative is what @George Leroy Tirebiter suggests.
Daughter J: Just have her head south of the border, burn her IDs, and then leap over the fence again. Then the government will be happy to help her, starting with voter registration.
Just a snippet of the hypocritically absurd: MLB commissioner Rob Manfred who is responsible for pulling the All Star Game out of Georgia because "Jim Crow" is also a member at the exclusive Augusta National Golf Club. I wonder if he'll be attending The Masters this week, much less resigning his elite membership with an institution that actually did participate in Jim Crow-like behavior decades past.
Before CA put holograms on their driver's licenses, for $50 you could go down town San Diego and get a new license, SS Card, and birth cert in a few hours. Putting the hologram on the driver's license delayed the procedure three days after which the counterfeiters were back in business. The costs have undoubtedly gone up, but hell, it's worth a shot.
ReplyDeleteYou'll probably need to make an appointment at your 'local' SSA office and sit with a real person to get that straightened out.
ReplyDeleteGood Luck.
"I brought each of you 10 ballots, and remember, do NOT check any names with an "R" after them."
ReplyDeleteI think Mr. Tirebiter and Burner both have good advice. Mrs. Muenster had a similar issue, the the in person visit fixed it. Of course, it didn't hurt that the SS worker was one of her former fiddle students!
What ever happened to the ever brilliant Debbie Washerwoman Schmaltz? Not that I miss her, mind you. I'm surprised she isn't on The View or some similar piece of liberal tripe TV show.
Speaking of ignorant liberals (but I digress): https://babylonbee.com/news/google-removes-entire-state-of-georgia-from-google-maps
@John the Econ -- What's the chance Rob Manfred pays his own membership costs/dues for Augusta National? Good chance MLB actually foots the bill as a perk.
ReplyDelete@Stilton....having worked in state government for 30 years I can verify the recommendation posted by Mr Tirebiter on how to deal with state and federal agency problems. The higher up the food chain you can contact with your complaint, the better the chances are of getting your issue resolved successfully and quickly.
ReplyDeleteAs for Daughter J’s situation, the same recommendation applies. Have Daughter J. write a letter to the governor and expound on
her difficulties in getting a TX DL and how that problem compounds her inability to gain employment, which creates a problem to secure medical coverage to address her acute medical issues, which she cannot afford due to not being able to work because she is unable to gain a TX DL. Further, explaining being unable to get a DPS driver license appointment until August 2021 - yada, yada, yada.
Additionally, since the state has been opened for business (after COVID) why aren’t state government operations being opened for in person services? (Maybe a news story for a tv station to inquire from the governor).
Good luck to resolving these issues.
@Mike aka Proof- Good one!
ReplyDelete@M. Mitchell Marmel- I'm particularly impressed by the Stanford White reference!
@Hans56- I found the program but haven't called yet. The website didn't look wildly promising.
@Fish Out of Water- "If you haven't been shot then you'll be shot"
@Fred Ciampi- I looked around for semi-nearby towns where I could do that, but they're all playing by the same stupid rules right now.
@TrickyRicky- The little girl is the "Secretary of Let Me Sniff Your Hair."
@George Leroy Tirebiter- Your plan is probably the way I'll go, but I was hoping to have a handful of "smoking gun" evidence to start with. Unfortunately, when I went to the Medicare website (to print out our previous payments) they'd completely erased my wife's account - so I had to create a new one. Granted, the new one shows her previous data, but it was still another pain in the back end.
@Velveeta Processed Cheese Food- She's too annoying to be really gone. I assume she's just lurking in the shadows.
@John the Econ- Nice Ghislaine Maxwell reference! We'll continue to fight Social Security, Medicare, and the Texas DMV because that's such a satisfying use of our time.
@Anonymous- As tempting as getting fake documents might be, I'm not going to make it that easy for any political foes to put me away for a felony (grin).
@Burner- It may come to that. Dang it.
@Colby Muenster- I like the ballot gag. And I pretty much always like anything the Babylon Bee does!
@Dan- Good point!
@Bobo- Thanks for the advice. I shall make my voice heard!
Wow, just wow. Busty Ross still knocks my hat in the creek. Long may she wave.
ReplyDeleteHubba hubba, as us old fossils still say.
@Stilton: Well, to be honest, I had just watched The History Guy's story of Stanford White and Evelyn Nesbit...
ReplyDeletehttps://thehistoryguy.net/a-rooftop-murder-stanford-white-henry-thaw-and-the-trial-of-the-century/
Just heard on another site we frequent (or, in his case, frequented) that we lost one of our own. Rem1875 has apparently been sick for some time, didn't let anyone know as that wasn't his style. He apparently went to meet The Lord on Easter Sunday, which seems highly appropriate.
ReplyDeleteGood site, check it out, you'd all be welcome.
https://thenewamericanist.com/in-memoriam-despicable-rem1875-%f0%9f%87%ba%f0%9f%87%b8/#more-23353
@Sortahwitte- The classics never go out of style.
ReplyDelete@M. Mitchell Marmel- I'll check that out!
@Pete (Detroit)- Damn. Thanks for letting me know. I'm going to share the link on the main post tomorrow so folks can visit. He'll be missed.