Mick reminds us that today is the 73rd anniversary of the raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi, the highest peak on the island of Iwo Jima. From the History channel;
During the bloody Battle for Iwo Jima, U.S. Marines from the 3rd Platoon, E Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Regiment of the 5th Division take the crest of Mount Suribachi, the island’s highest peak and most strategic position, and raise the U.S. flag. Marine photographer Louis Lowery was with them and recorded the event. American soldiers fighting for control of Suribachi’s slopes cheered the raising of the flag, and several hours later more Marines headed up to the crest with a larger flag. Joe Rosenthal, a photographer with the Associated Press, met them along the way and recorded the raising of the second flag along with a Marine still photographer and a motion-picture cameraman.
Rosenthal took three photographs atop Suribachi. The first, which showed five Marines and one Navy corpsman struggling to hoist the heavy flag pole, became the most reproduced photograph in history and won him a Pulitzer Prize. The accompanying motion-picture footage attests to the fact that the picture was not posed. Of the other two photos, the second was similar to the first but less affecting, and the third was a group picture of 18 soldiers smiling and waving for the camera. Many of these men, including three of the six soldiers seen raising the flag in the famous Rosenthal photo, were killed before the conclusion of the Battle for Iwo Jima in late March.
Mick sends us a link to Fox News which reports that the US Israel Embassy will open in Jerusalem in May, 2018 ahead of schedule and in conjunction with the 70th anniversary of Israel’s declaration of their independence.
A ribbon-cutting is being planned for mid-May. Israel proclaimed independence on May 14, 1948.
The May opening marks a significant acceleration. Vice President Mike Pence had said previously the embassy would open by the end of 2019. And Tillerson had said it could take years.
Initially, the embassy will consist of just a few offices inside an existing U.S. facility in Jerusalem.
In October, 1995 the House and Senate passed a bill called the “Jerusalem Embassy Act,” which formally recognized the city as the country’s capital and called for the U.S. Embassy in Israel to be moved there from Tel Aviv by 1999. That was three presidents ago.
Bert sends us a link to Fox News which tells how Daniel Barrett Swecker, who had been convicted of DWI offenses twice before, struck and murdered Afghanistan veteran Nelson Marvin Canada.
When Swecker struck Canada with his car, Canada was launched 120 feet from the site of the impact. Swecker left the scene on foot and called his wife from a pay phone despite the fact that he had a cell phone in his pocket.
Oh, by the way, he should have been jail from his last conviction when he was driving drunk at 80 miles an hour and at double the legal BAC.
Court records show Swecker had two previous DUI arrests.
A judge originally sentenced Swecker to six years in prison but he appealed his case and remained free. The appeal allowed for the six-year prison sentence to be reconsidered, a decision criticized by District Attorney George Brauchler.
“I respect the court and the process the court employed, but I respectfully and strongly disagree with the decision,” he said in a news release. “He ran over and killed an active-duty soldier, one who had survived a deployment to Afghanistan only to be run over by a repeat drunk driver.”
The judge sentenced Swecker to six months for his murder of a veteran and his third conviction for Driving While Intoxicated. He blew a blood alcohol level of 0.118, more than double the legal limit.
Let me say right off the bat that the gunman at the Broward County, Florida school bears all of the responsibility for his murder of 17 former classmates whatever his name is. No one else. However, a long string of failures made it possible for him to engage in his grisly task.
The Broward County Sheriff’s Department made nearly 40 trips to gunman’s home in a seven-year period responding to complaints from neighbors. The school had suspended him and issued a warning to classmates to report if they saw him on campus with a backpack. The FBI had ignored warnings when he posted threats to Facebook and You Tube. From KTLA;
Posts under videos on YouTube and other sites by someone using the name [name of the gunman] include threatening comments, such as:
“I whana shoot people with my AR-15.”
“I wanna die Fighting killing s**t ton of people.”
“I am going to kill law enforcement one day they go after the good people.”
On an Instagram account under the name @[name of the gunman], his profile picture shows him with a mask around his face, wearing a Make America Great Again hat. Other posts include a photo of a rifle, a collection of firearms on a bed, and a photo taken through a scope looking out a window.
A video blogger said he warned the FBI in September about a possible school shooting threat from a YouTube user with the same name as [name of the gunman]. An FBI agent confirmed that a field officer in Jackson, Mississippi, received the tip and interviewed the person who shared it. But no additional information was found to help identify the person who posted the comment and no connection was made to south Florida, said Robert Lasky, FBI special agent in charge of the Miami division.
And finally, we discover last night that the Resource Officer, a Broward County Sheriff’s Deputy, Scot Peterson, assigned to the school during the time of the attack, hesitated outside the school building for four minutes while students inside were being murdered. The ultimate failure. Now, according to Fox News, former deputy Peterson is being protected by the Sheriff’s Office, ironically;
The deputy “was seeking cover behind a concrete column leading to a stairwell,” Officer Tim Burton of the Coral Springs Police Department, who responded to the shooting, told the New York Times.
The Times also reported that in February 2016, the sheriff’s office received “thirdhand information” about Cruz planning “to shoot up the school.” The information — which said Cruz had knives and a BB gun — was forwarded to Peterson, who was working at the school back then.
When a WSVN-TV reporter tried to approach Peterson’s Boynton Beach home for an interview Thursday, he said he encountered a contingent of six police officers standing guard.
“They prevented us from approaching the house,” WSVN-TV’s Frank Guzman tweeted.
I think its odd that Sheriff Scott Israel didn’t give us that information about Deputy Peterson’s failure to engage the gunman until after the CNN Townhall broadcast. I’m sure the gungrabbers would have sat down and shut up if Israel had mentioned it during the broadcast.
The NRA doesn’t seem to be the problem as much as the government’s lackeys who ignored this gunman before he was a gunman.
Watch my buddy Pete Hegseth take Geraldo to the woodshed at about 6:30 into this video;
Our partners at Military Phonies send us their work on this fellow, David Willard. He claims to be a Navy SEAL, and he’s convinced a lot of his friends that he’s a SEAL. Willard even has a jeep with the Trident painted on the hood and a fugly cap that only pretenders buy;
Well, he was in the Navy for less than six years and he served as an Airman Apprentice (E-2) but no SEAL Training or assignments;
Someone sent us their work on this Catalino Aguda fellow. He claims that he was a member of an Air Force Tactical Air Control Party. A TACP travels with Army and Marine Corps maneuver units and act as advisors to commanders in the application of air power to the battle. They establish and maintain command and control communications, and provide precision terminal attack guidance of U.S. and coalition fixed-wing and rotary-wing close air support aircraft, artillery, and naval gunfire.
They have the AFSC (MOS) 1C4X1 and wear the distinctive black beret after they complete the grueling 85-day course (which traditionally boasts a 50% washout rate). After the completion of the course, graduates attend the USAF Survival School at Fairchild AFB, WA. So they are a tight-knit bunch. When the picture above of Mr Aguda appeared in their Facebook page, no one recognized him. Probably because he never attended the training and he was never assigned to a TACP.
In the picture, he’s wearing Master Sergeant rank (E-7), the TACP black beret with the TACP Crest (without the flash), a Meritorious Service Medal, the Joint Service Achievement Medal, and the Air Force Combat Action Medal – none of which he earned according to his records. Now, I know that he left the service before the Air Force Combat Action Medal came in to existence in 2007 (the Air Force equivalence to the Navy Combat Action Ribbon or the Army’s Combat Action Badge), but it was backdated to 2001 and his name isn’t on the list of six Airmen who were awarded the medal.
Maj. Steven A. Raspet of Fountain Valley, California (for actions on January 8, 2006 at Afghanistan)
Capt. Allison K. Black of Northport, New York (for actions on December 4, 2001 at Afghanistan)
Senior Master Sgt. Ramon Colon-Lopez of Bridgeport, Connecticut (for actions on March 11, 2004 at Afghanistan)
Master Sgt. Charlie Peterson of Detroit, Michigan (for actions on July 28, 2004 at Iraq)
Master Sgt. Byron P. Allen of Birmingham, Alabama (for actions on April 12, 2004 at Iraq)
Staff Sgt. Daniel L. Paxton of Abingdon, Virginia (for actions on March 28, 2003 at the Kuwait-Iraq border)
Aguda retired with twenty years of service in 2006 as an E-6 Technical Sergeant AFSC 2E173 Ground Radio Communications Craftsman and none of the training allowing him to wear the beret appears on his DD214. He served in Desert Storm, but I don’t see anything in his DD214 that indicates that he served in Iraq, like he claims in this picture of his MC vest;
There is nothing in his records that indicates he attended the Army Basic Airborne Course, but there are the jump wings in the above picture. Everyone wants to wear jump wings, but no one wants to haul their parachute off of Fryar Drop Zone.
It’s strange how in the top picture he’s wearing three medals he didn’t earn and there are are tons of stuff he did earn on his DD214 but he’s not proud enough of his real accomplishments to wear any of them.
An Empire man was killed over the weekend after breaking into a Dora residence and attempting to run over the homeowner’s son.
Walker County Sheriff Jim Underwood said the unnamed man who shot Jason Richard Almazon, 30, on Saturday while he was attempting to flee in a stolen truck will not be charged.
“We will not be pursuing criminal charges against the shooter because we believe the evidence shows this is a case of justifiable homicide. We’ve also consulted with the District Attorney as they have the ultimate prosecutorial discretion with criminal cases,” Underwood said.
Almazon and Blaine Carl Jones Jr. , 48, of Sumiton, reportedly burglarized a residence on Ball Park Road in Dora Saturday morning.
Jones left the scene with items stolen from the residence, and Almazon stayed behind with the intention of stealing a truck with keys taken from inside the residence.
When the homeowner’s son and a second man who owned the truck caught Almazon in the act, Almazon attempted to run over the homeowner’s son.
The owner of the truck fired several times at Almazon, who was later pronounced dead by the coroner.
According to Underwood, Almazon was not armed but was using the stolen truck as a weapon.
The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department received a 911 call about 7:20 a.m. Wednesday, from a man who said he had shot someone in front of his home in the 43100 block of Mountain Highway E. in the Eatonville area.
The caller told police his teenage son received a threat overnight stating that someone was going to “shoot up the house.”
Wednesday morning, the father told police, several people pulled into his driveway and at least one of the passengers fired multiple times at his mobile home, hitting the bedroom area of the trailer.
The father said he fired back at the suspects, striking one of them.
The suspects then drove off leaving their critically injured comrade behind.
Minutes later while en route to the shooting scene, deputies spotted the car involved in the crime.
Deputies arrested a 31-year-old man and a 17-year-old man. A dog was also in the car and taken by animal control.
Woodbury police responded to the scene of the shooting Tuesday night. NJ.com reports police learned a group of four people allegedly planned to rob their 20-year-old acquaintance, but the attempted robbery went south after one of the robbers accidentally shot himself while hitting the victim in the head with a gun.
The robbers fled, but were quickly apprehended not far from the scene. Police say the gun used in the assault was found in the suspects’ car.
The robbery victim and suspect were taken to hospitals for treatment of injuries that were not life-threatening. All four suspects now face charges.
KTUE reports on the latest incident of “Swatting” which happened in San Jose, California. Officers responded to a 9-1-1 call that claimed a home had been the target of a home invasion conducted by armed thieves.
But the call ended up being bogus. It’s part of a new fad called “Swatting.” San Jose police units converge at a house in the 200-block of North 11th Street, shortly before 5 p.m. Officers quickly deploy and duck behind cars and trees for cover, with one wearing tactical gear and pointing the business end of an AR-15 at a target. The 911 call that brought them claimed a home invasion and robbery by armed men.. But it wasn’t true, it was a hoax.
“We just got swatted. I didn’t think that would happen. But that’s the reality I’m dealing with,” said Matt Stillman, the target of the prank call to police.
He says he was inside writing code with friends when police called, asked if armed men were holding them hostage, then ordered all five people out with their hands behind their backs.
This incident didn’t end like the one in Wichita where Andrew Finch was shot to death by an anxious police officer. Stillman thinks a disgruntled neighbor called in the bogus incident.
“Cause he’s a hater. And he tried to run me over with his car a couple of months ago. Wanna be a gang-banger who can’t do anything with his life,” said Stillman.
