It all started with Tricare

For those of you who spent your lives bad mouthing your country and smoking dope, you probably don’t know what Tricare is. It’s the military health system that replaced that godawful CHAMPUS and, I gotta say, it’s purty good. Puzzled the Schlub why Baracula didn’t just expand it to the entire US population, thereby avoiding the rise of the Tea Party in reaction to his Marxist takeover of medicine. Premiums are low, you get pretty good coverage and choice, so, what’s not to like?

The website.

It is the worst constructed, convoluted, incomprehensible concoction of unrelated kerap ever conceived. Don’t let the appearance fool you, don’t let the ease of access take you in- it is of the Devil. Why?

Passwords.

Someone who hates the military conceived the password system, which requires, nay, DEMANDS an incomprehensible set of numbersletterscharacterscapitals dependent on what day of the month it is and WHICH CHANGES EVERY FREAKIN’ THIRTY SECONDS!!! And don’t EVEN try to use different iterations of a previous password, bucko.

A few days ago, I had to go in and make some changes to providers. It was like entering the fifth circle of hell. I had not used the website for months, due to their insane password policy, and discovered they had, somehow, made it even worse. Because, not only did I have to get my new password (which required a special key code they could only mail to me, not use internet, doncha know) but I also had to initiate a similar but even more diabolical password for my Tricare provider, the baby-eating Health Net Federal Services (by the way, this page comes up when you click on 'I'm a Beneficiary. You have to manually switch the page to English. How PC)

That’s when I discovered the DoD Single Service Login.

The SSL is the new method by which we retirees now have to access our retirement accounts, medical information, VA stuff, what have you, and it is more successful than any previous Russian attempt to subvert and demoralize the US military. Somehow, while negotiating the minefield that is Tricare, I managed, unbeknownst to me, to activate an SSL with the username for my military finance account. I have no idea how this happened, and only found out about it when I tried to enter my account using what I THOUGHT was my login, you know, the one I had actually set up the account with about ten years ago?

Two Help Desk phone calls later to Brandon (who is the best Customer Service rep in America, bar none, and I have no idea how I managed to keep getting through to him. Only guy working yesterday, I guess), here’s what I found out:

a. The DoD decided to completely bollix up retiree’s logons by creating brand new, spiffy Basic and Premium account levels for access to your finance, military and medical records. They didn’t happen to mention this to anyone, of course, just did it one day.

b. You can access both accounts through your old login…unless you made the fatal error of trying to log in to Tricare which, somehow, has signed a contract in blood with DoD to completely bollix up any subsequent login attempts by switching out your user name without you knowing it. So your account locks up in 1.5 tries, ya know?

c. The system will offer your security questions- 3 at a time. Not one at a time. And they’re security questions from ten years ago, so you don’t remember if you gave full answers or the one-word lower case answers experience taught you was the only way to match what was on file. Three at a time. Do you know how many iterations of answers you have to go through for favorite teacher favorite movie favorite book worse food on three questions? It’s a number even bigger than the national debt.

So, Brandon had to cancel my SSL. Which means I now have to wait for a password through the mail, which should get here sometime in December. That’s for the basic account. To get the premium account, I have to show up at a VA Regional Office in person with all of my military documentation to prove that the guy with the basic account is the same guy standing in front of your desk, Mr. VA Administrator, so I can now get access to my own retirement and medical records, which I used to access with a simple login.

My nearest Regional Office is 250 miles away. Only open 9-4 M-F.

Or…you can get a Basic AND Premium account by calling the VA’s 800 number. Cool!  So, seven menus later, I get, “Unfortunately, we cannot take your phone call at this time. Goodbye.”

Just take me out back and shoot me.

Letter

Dear President Hopeychange,

Amazing. In the face of overwhelming evidence, stretching back almost 100 years, you still believe that centralized planning and confiscation of individual wealth is the key to prosperity. That could be admired as persistence. Or, it could be a sign of idiocy.

Depends on one’s perspective, I suppose. I mean, you probably think you are being true to wonderful concepts developed through years of scientific study and experience, evidence be damned. But, you gotta remember, what was once called persistence is now called stalking, and things have changed a bit. Por ejemplo, Schlub and about 250 million of his fellow Americans are not too knocked in the head with giving you more of our money. You and the rest of the overlords have a penchant for losing it so, no mas. And that means you’re in danger of getting slapped with a No Contact order for all that sending candy and singing under windows and showing up at a wedding and screaming “Elaine! Elaine!”

Of course, the stalker is usually the last to know his attentions are unwanted. That’s because of a little self absorption, possibly some narcissism- how can anyone resist such a charming fellow as me? All the girls want me. All the taxpayers are dying to shovel over more of what they take home because the experience-that-is-Obama will, godlike, use their filthy lucre to usher in the Millenium. Everyone will be happy. They’ll don their robes, pick up their sickles and cut wheat all day and, at night, sing “Kumbaya” around campfires…well, not campfires, global warming, you know… solar panels. Yeah. From Solyndra.

So, seriously, man, you might want to revisit that whole Marxist viewpoint thing. It’s getting a bit old. Like following an ex-girlfriend around.

Your friend,

Schlub

Reckless Endangerment II

On a lark, Schlub checked out Gretchen Morgenson's home page at the NYT and followed the link to Reckless Endangerment. Then I checked out some comments there and at other places, like Huffpo. Lots of deserved praise for the book, but, curiously, a lot of it was misplaced. Most of the commenters were railing against the banks and Wall Street and eeeevil capitalism. Morgenson, herself, seems to be in sympathy with them.
 

Did they read the same book I did?

Because, as was quite clear to Schlub, the banks and Wall Street were merely playing a dealt hand. Our much loved, benevolent and sincerely wonderful government had, through the Community Reinvestment Act, pretty much told the banks to hand out loans to anyone with a pulse, or else. So, they did what you’d do, complied, and turned to Wall Street for "creative" investment instruments that turned a pretty sorry situation into short term profits; like when a tree falls on your house, you sell firewood.  So blaming the banks and Wall Street and eeevil capitalism is a lot like blaming the house owner and his chain saw.

But that’s understandable. Liberals always have problems with the origin of things.