by John Galt » Thu Aug 28, 2014 3:02 pm
it's difficult to say how much time was spent "not working" vs "not at the white house". i mean you could just do nothing at the white house all the time but that doesn't mean you're working more than another president because you "never take a vacation"
while these servants should have to work hard i don't care where they do it
he was a major general, and while rare for them to be KIA... it's because it's rare for generals to exist. the number is hard capped at 231, but, there's also a cap of 21% of that number being above 2 star general. as he was a 2 star general, that means that probably about 91 2 star generals exist if half of the ones below tha cap are 1 star and half 2 star. So that's a big number at least in terms of relevancy for the president to attend the funeral. as his position is commander in chief, his direct report secretary defense, whose report is chairmen of the joint chiefs. under them there are commanders for theaters which then command the various departments. we're still up in the 4 star general range (there's 7 of them) and then they turn to 3 star generals. there's about 40 of those people all commanding in similar level of roles before we get to 2 star general. i feel like getting mad about this is like getting mad that the ceo of mcdonalds didn't come to the funeral for your shift manager (and you work at mcdonalds).
so then the response is "well he was on the job". sure, he was on the job... but it's a job that people get kill and get killed in routinely
Americans learn only from catastrophe and not from experience. -- Theodore Roosevelt
My life has become a single, ongoing revelation that I haven’t been cynical enough.