That has to hurt

You decide to take a Presidential trip to some steel mill to blame somebody for something, but you know you’re going to have to pass  them to get on the plane. They stand straight as a bayonet on the tarmac, their impeccable uniforms standing out in stark relief against the white of the helicopter. The brass on their belts and covers shines like gold, their shoes like black mirrors. Their salute is pure snap-and-pop, the product of years of living a disciplined, purposeful life, a life where every man is expected to give everything he has and then some for the good of the mission and the Corps, where excuses are simply not tolerated, where responsibility, respect, and honor are not quaint, outdated concepts, but a living part of who they are as individuals and as a brotherhood of warriors. (And a sisterhood as well.  I’m talking to you,  Elizabeth Jane Arens, the finest squad leader I knew.)

And you have to salute these men back. And it galls you, to the deepest pit of your soul, because you know that when you salute those Marines standing by that helicopter, you’re actually saluting better men than yourself.  Men that share a tradition of excellence that goes back 238 years, and it’s something that, no matter how many elections you win, or how many bad laws you manage to ram through a dithering and ineffectual Congress, you can never be a part of. They have something you don’t, and never will, have.

They have the title.


Yeah, that's some first-class system eating all your personal data.
Not only did they process an application I did not submit, the letter says they referred my application to a state agency -- a state agency with which I did not authorize them to share any information. (BTW, this particular state agency outsources application processing and claims that state and federal privacy laws don't apply to them.)

Speaking of,
Appearing before Congress on Thursday, the magicians of Obamacare eventually conceded that, on their supposedly HIPAA-compliant database, deep in the “information architectural process” is a teensy-weensy little bit of “source code” that reads, “You have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication of any data transmitted or stored on this information system.”

Democrat members of the House committee professed to be bewildered at why anyone would be either surprised or upset to discover that his information can be shared with anyone in the federal government, including a corrupt and diseased IRS that uses what confidential information it can acquire to torment perceived ideological enemies.
A previous endeavor by the company handed that no-bid contract:
CGI is not a creative free spirit from Jersey City with an impressive mastery of Twitter, but a Canadian corporate behemoth. Indeed, CGI is so Canadian their name is French: Conseillers en Gestion et Informatique. Their most famous government project was for the Canadian Firearms Registry. The registry was estimated to cost in total $119 million, which would be offset by $117 million in fees. That’s a net cost of $2 million. Instead, by 2004 the CBC (Canada’s PBS) was reporting costs of some $2 billion — or a thousand times more expensive.


A new helmet for the Army... I just don't know.