SCENE: Mitch BERG is boxed in in at a stoplight. Avery LIBRELLE rides up in between cars on a recumbent e-bike. BERG ponders getting away over the sidewalk, but figures it’s not quite worth it.
BERG: (dejectedly, resigned to the inevitable). Hey, Aver…
LIBRELLE: Shut up, Merg. Republicans like you are slandering a good man who served honorably for 24 years in the Minnesota National Guard.
BERG: So you dispute…
LIBRELLE: Shut up! There is no overriding or exception to the honor that must be bestowed on people who serve .
BERG: Unless it’s George W Bush.
LIBRELLE: He was a silver-spooned coward!
BERG: Right. (Checks traffic. No joy). So, to recap, Governor Walz served…
LIBRELLE: …with impeccable honor. For 24 years.
BERG: Right. Now – you do realize it’s not me saying this.
LIBRELLE: It’s a bunch of political hacks!
BERG: It’s his battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Kolb:
And it’s his battalion’s chaplain, Captain Bjertness:
The chaplain of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s field artillery regiment said there is no excuse for the Democratic VP pick to have abandoned his National Guard unit before a critical deployment — not even running for Congress.
“In our world, to drop out after a WARNORD [warning order] is issued is cowardly, especially for a senior enlisted guy,” retired Capt. Corey Bjertness, now a pastor in Horace, North Dakota, told The Post.
Bjertness, 61, was the chaplain for the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery, of which Walz was command sergeant major before retiring in 2005, two months before the unit deployed to Iraq. Walz has said he did so to run for Congress, and he was elected the next year.
And it’s the guy who replaced him as the Command Sergeant Major at the virtual last minute before they went overseas.
“He had the opportunity to serve his country, and said ‘Screw you’ to the United States. That’s not who I would pick to run for vice president,” Thomas Behrends, one of the retired officials who signed the letter, told the New York Post on Tuesday.
They have between them, if I’m doing my math correctly, a bare minimum of 55 years of honorable service among them.
Does that not make their point of view not merely dispositive, but above reproach?
By your logic?
LIBRELLE: (Looks around, quietly rides away).
BERG: Recumbents look stupid…
And SCENE
Lieutenant Colonel *Behrends. Kolb is just relaying the message.
Recumbent bikes are stupid. Agreed.
At least a few of the riders use a flag for visibility since they’re so low to the ground you can’t see them, especially in traffic.
SSC: I don’t see very many, but every recumbent rider I see always has a white goatee or beard. Guys in their 50s and 60s. I never see younger people riding them.
Recumbents are often loved by people with back problems who can’t handle bending over the handlebars, which I’d agree likely correlates well with gray hair. They are generally disliked by cyclists with healthy backs because they tend to weigh a lot more.
And electric bikes? I guess there is a point to them, but I’m on wheels to get exercise. Battery assist works against that, at least until it wears out and you really get a workout because they’re a lot heavier than a regular ride. For many, they seem to get riders going fast enough to really hurt their heads when they crash.
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