Author: TSO

Actually meant to do a post about this a few weeks ago when it was on Fox, but couldn’t find the link until I looked around this morning.

I’ve been lucky that I ran into this guy Nick Palmisciano a few years ago, and we really hit it off.  Like myself he was in the Army (albeit he was unfortunately an officer) and we are both from Massachusetts.  So, mostly we just bonded over sports teams, and his made up drink which invoves Irish Car Bombs, shots of Jaegermeister and red bull, followed by making the bear fight movement from the movie Anchorman.

Suffice to say, that I think highly of him.  Once a year I go through my clothes and toss some, and it occurred to me that in the T-Shirt division roughly 3/4 of what I own are Ranger Up shirts.  Like this one, which is my favorite:

Anyway, a few weeks ago Fox News did a piece on how Nick runs his company, and how he is paying it forward.  It really speaks to me about how vets look out for other vets:

There was also an awesome story this week in a somewhat unlikely place, the website of Dr. Steven Pressfield.  Pressfield is an author, and specifically the author of my favorite book of all time Gates of Fire about the battle of Thermopylae.  If you liked the movie 300, this is like 10 times better.  Not only do I own the book, but I have the audio book which I listen to nightly.  (I have weird sleep issues, so listening to the same thing over and over calms me.)  It kind of broke my heart when I had a bad email experience with Dr. Pressfield who was openly critical of both Iraq and Afghanistan.  But he’s such an incredible author I try to forget our politics are so different.

Anyway, the beginning of his piece about Nick and Ranger Up which should be read in full:

Nick Palmisciano was earning a quarter million a year when he learned he was being promoted — a promotion that would add another hundred thousand or so to his income.

The promotion announcement landed on a Friday. The following Monday he gave his notice.

“I knew that if I took that promotion, the golden handcuffs were being slapped on and Ranger Up was going to die—and I was going to spend my life working for other people doing something I really didn’t care about that much,” said Nick.

What is Ranger Up?

In Nick’s words, “Ranger Up is a content machine.”

Don’t let the t-shirts and jeans on the home page of its site fool you into thinking it’s an apparel company. Yes, there’s the clothing, but if you dig, you’ll find a full-fledged media company, leveraging its free content to move pay-walled content.

Unlike many other content providers, who are struggling to monetize their content, offering a free article here and there and then banking on the hope that readers will buy a subscription instead of site jumping to another URL where more free content is available, Ranger Up offers a seemingly endless supply of videos and images—including the original series “The Damn Few” and the “Rhino Den” blog. The content being created by Ranger Up is distinct. It isn’t available in bulk online, which means its audience is digging in its heels and sticking around for more. In turn, this content has helped them engage, retain and grow a community that pays for content, too, in the form of t-shirts and jeans and signs and other gear, rather than site jumping for its next dose of free content.

How’s that working for Ranger Up?

According to Internet Retailer, Ranger Up’s “high level of engagement is what drove $750,000 in social commerce sales for the e-retailer in 2013—as 28% of its total online sales came from shoppers who clicked to the site from social networks. The role of social networks in driving traffic is even greater: Nearly 39% of Ranger Up’s 2013 traffic stemmed from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube . . . . That earn[ed] the merchant the No. 2 spot in this year’s Social Media 500, which ranks online retailers by the percentage of traffic they receive from social networks, a measure of how effectively they are reaching their audience via social media.” So, if anyone cares what I am Thankful for at this time of year, high on that list is guys like Nick that look out for their brothers in arms.

If you want to buy their T-Shirts for Christmas presents, you can go to their website.   This is the one I am asking for.

I’m still not dead.

But, were I afraid I might be, then I would go down like the Poxy Bastards.

I will however be out all day tomorrow if anyone is looking for me, I’m alive and well, and probably at the police station filing a report.

I literally don’t remember that last time I was awake late enough on a Saturday to watch SNL that I wasn’t wasted and out at an Irish Pub, but for the 1-2 people who haven’t seen this yet, it was genius.

But no matter how good it is, no skit will ever match the More Cowbell skit.

need more cowbell from nicemusicltd on Vimeo.

You’ll note of course we haven’t talked about this asshat in months.  He doesn’t like that.  Jonn and I joke occasionally and guess how long before he sends us another rambling and insane email because we aren’t discussing him.  We actually expected it when his wife’s boss got fired by the people of Florida.   I’d love to think we played a part in that.  I’m anxiously waiting to see where she lands next, so that every email from Paul from there on can get sent to the Chief of Staff of her new boss so that he’s aware of the racist and sexist nature of his employees husband.  (That’s part of being able to “petition for a redress of grievances.”)   I know if I got elected I would want to know that my employees husband did time in jail, hates Jews, levies death threats and calls people “White ni**ers.”

But last night he really overdid himself.  He apparently got some spell check device, which is awesome, because the shit is at least readable now.  He still can’t figure out “their”, “there” and “they’re” but noted geniuses with genetically superior Viking blood can’t be held accountable for that.

And so, in all it’s glory, I give you the latest missive from Paul.  I could go through and Fiske it line by line, but there really is no point.  Everyone here knows that we didn’t pick his name out of a phonebook, dude came here, lied about being in Viet Nam, then threatened to kill my wife, blow up my house and harass my kids.  (Apparently his genius fake marine combat vet Private Eye was unable to discover I am without progeny.)  But anyway, I give you this email from a man whose first comment here said that we were worse than the Nazis wh0 killed the Jews.  (Which I guess in retrospect was a compliment, since he has said he hates the Jewish people.)

[By way of background incidentally, Bernath and Wittgenfeld informed my employer they have 7 days to terminate my employment or they will take action.  That action I won’t discuss, but I was authorized to go and get an attorney ready to sue them both, so that is nice.  I informed Wittless that I would not be responding to his emails as his last one constituted extortion and was going to be addressed by our attorneys.]

What a buffoon– Dallas he is trying to intimidate you with nonsense.
Extortion is a criminal act and is prosecuted at the State level. You
have not sent in any monetary payment demands.

For any civil action the plaintiff has to show damages. Seavey was not
fired as he is wormed in as an agent of the American Legion, and my
view is he is supported and endorsed in his Internet criminality by
the American Legion whom are culpable for years of cyber bullying and
other offenses with Seavey as the point man.  No damage no suit. Made
up stuff.

In our omnibus efforts we had an expert witness read his writings. As
you know this man is a narcissist possessed with self love and disdain
for others. He uses this baseline pathology as a “grey market or soft
criminal”  He is on par with pederasts, flashers, subway masturbaters
and the like. He wants the attention of the crowd and wishes to stand
out– see the Murtha tape it is obvious. When criticized he flees and
is not strong.

Seavey with Lilyea found away to attract attention to themselves, by
manipulating Google as to there writings on there hate filled blog. As
this scheme matured they found out they could influence and direct
their crowd by phone calls and side emails as to follow there
“editorials”. The young punk goons then follow the leader as to
Seaveys  postings and spend hundreds of hours trying to ” get a rise’
out of their victim. They attack in the most intimate details of a
persons life to simply perturb others. Prey on strangers. Cause a
reaction. That is there motive.

Then from there position of controversy, they try and maintain and
position themselves as journalists. Without regulation, or
admonishment, they amplify there acts into whisper phone calls to the
press, call employees and employers and try and disrupt livelihoods,
by tarring there victims, generally causing great worry and anxiety.
This is where they have crossed the line into a series of acts. The
law is clear– this is not First Amendment turf, this is criminal
stalking.

There is an extensive file on Lilyea in WVA, and just needs a push
into a criminal enterprise when Jay Courier gets more pressure to
interrupt this man. Lilyea, facing an early death is an old crank,
with a cross to bear as others were promoted and dealing with his self
failure. Just an old dying grunt, lashing out at his White Whale from
grievances past.

Every one who has come in contact with this pestilence knows that they
jumped from being the self appointed police of Vets rank and pay, they
then used this public acceptance of Google to put anything on line to
disparage others, create a mob, whip up their crowd and disparage and
cause harm to anyone they see and impose this treatment. Finding
skeletons, looking for embarrassment, any traffic ticket or divorce to
anger their target.

It is no wonder that Lilyea is despised and Seavey has a growing
following of victims in full hate mode, growing as to his coorinated
acts and misuse of the public nature of the Internet.

Both social malcontents, Lilyea will die in 2015 a broken old
miscreant, with no epitaph but that he angered so many
stranger-victims, he has weekly death threats which the WVA police
ignore and tell him to stop his Internet rag, as he is just a pest.
But Seavey is the true sociopath. He directly interferes with any one
he does not like and attacks the victims household, and job– seeking
to flash the victim as in some bad action worthy of law enforcement
the press or some other dictact.

He takes pleasure in angering others, sees this as a battle of wits
and just common sense tells you that all the writings, all the time it
took, this sick sociopath, works endless hours with his pals feeding
him any material, tax records, drive bys, photographs, antecedents,
owned property, spouses, careers, and on and on to create vitriol and
controversy as to their targets.

Then have the balls to claim two points:

1) They are “not responsible” for their posters violent and filthy,
ugly attacks and comments when they targeted the victim

2) They are exchanging in a ‘free marketplace of ideas”

There true motive is to use their blog to make extra paltry income,
harm others and suck in emotions of pleasure when the “get a rise”,
which is there air.

Seavey is truly sick– you can see it in the posts. No remorse, no
apology, an un-regulated hate monger, virtually masturbating as he
pours over his little PC screen, as the latest interest. He takes
pleasure in others harm or worry, provokes anguish and suffering and
seeks to ‘out” whomever he sees as to some misdeed or past, attacking
there reputation and business, or family or social standing.

The same as a pederast, rapist, or tormentor of others, something went
wrong with this guy in childhood, to continually seek attention,
manipulate his situation, diminish others, seek disparagement not for
financial gain but for his mobs pecking order and his own life
failures. One day he will cross the line again, and perturb someone
who may not control themselves. In otherwords of you keep going to the
bar and picking fights with drunk strangers, when you get shanked you
should not be surprised. That is his path and destiny.

He has raised so much enmity and hatred form strangers, this is why he
is attacked and revealed. Eventually the sheer weight of his
transgressions will backfire and as trifling with human emotions,
someone or a group or the authorities will yank his leash hard.

This is no First Amendment business– Seavey acts shocked that he did
nothing wrong. In my case, for attacking an Innocent, my beloved wife
who has never appeared in this matter, he has a debt to be settled, as
a man and husband.

This man is a sociopath, denies his clearly wrong actions and
misdeeds, vilifies others and disturbs the social fabric, just out of
adolescent “fun” by finding a vic, beating, raping or kidnapping,
exercising “power” over his victim and repeating the act. A real
sociopath, that foments rage and probes into peoples personal
bushiness. Hiding behind his PC, if he were practicing these acts, in
public or in a bar or an argument with a stranger he would be on the
receiving end of harsh and immediate street justice.  If he said any
one of his key writings to a stranger taking his insults, which is all
his thoughts are– insults, he would find a face to face vic putting
him in the hospital. What does he expect? You insult strangers with
the most ugly words as to their family life  or person, how are they
going to react??

Lilyea is a crank and gone soon. No wonder people write that they want
to piss on his grave as a final solution. Seavey is a sociopath, and
worthy of a criminal pathologist probing his serial “soft crimes”.
Anti-social and borderline crimes as to general attacks on others,
eventually that which he has sown, shall he reap. Either legal ,
career or marital or neighbor discord, someone will yank this guys
chain, as he plows the turf of hate, ugly words and interference in
others private lives.

A criminal pest–One error in his calculus of hate, antipathy and
discord and all his offenses will be raised up by his collective
victims. He is on that path. A public nuisance and one who needs help
and treatment by the authorities in increasing levels until he is
court ordered to not go on the Internet or wind up in jail.

Everyone involved knows these truths–

It really is beautifully written. I’m somehow reminded of Percy Bysshe Shelly’s poem “Ozymandius” (my fourth favorite poem*)….

met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

* In order….
1) Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
2) If, Rudyard Kipling
3) Michael (A Pastoral Poem), William Wordsworth
4) Ozymandius
5) To His Coy Mistress, Andrew Marvell

An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

Yes, I love poetry, no, I am not attracted to men. Except maybe Paul, because he really is such a sexy beast. Rawr.

From my paying home…..

I count myself blessed that I ever got to serve in the Army with men like Ryan and the countless others like him that rose to the challenges of taking on Al qaeda and their ilk.  If you don’t get our magazine though, you probably didn’t get a chance to read my article.  My editor was kind enough to put it online so everyone can read it, and I wanted to share it with you.

Going in it was important to me to do a piece on Ryan the person, as opposed to Ryan the Hero.  Because honestly, when I first met him it was well before he got the military’s highest honor, and I only knew he’d been injured in a huge battle.  He and I as well as Ian Deplanque the Legion’s Legislative Director and Mike Denton mentioned in the article spent a week together on horseback in Montana.  I laughed so much that week that my ribs ached.  And I was just so impressed with Ryan as a person that when I heard he was receiving the medal, I couldn’t have been more pleased.

To me, he is the epitome of everything that is good about the military, and the younger generation.   Anyway, you can read the full piece by CLICKING HERE, but I wanted to share some snippets from the piece, and throw in the videos from my interviews.  The clips and passages here are in a different order than the larger piece, but you should read that when you get a chance.

A burst of machine-gun fire initiated contact, followed by an RPG round that hit the position and wounded or stunned everyone at OP Topside. Spc. Matthew Phillips managed to toss one grenade before he was mortally wounded. Pfc. Tyler Stafford and Pitts were seriously wounded, and within the first 20 minutes all nine men at the outpost were either killed or badly hurt. Insurgents then swarmed through a wire barrier that provided meager defense.

“I could look back and see the amount of fire that the OP was taking,” says Sgt. Mike Denton, who was stationed below Topside. “It was just a huge dust cloud, and explosion after explosion after explosion. You knew that nothing good was happening up there.”

Because of its elevated position, Topside was critical to the base. Losing it would have given the more numerous insurgents excellent firing positions. As President Barack Obama said at Pitts’ Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House on July 21, “against that onslaught, one American held the line … just 22 years old, nearly surrounded, bloodied but unbowed.”

Wounded in both legs and with shrapnel in his arm, Pitts crawled onto the sandbags and fired a machine gun at the approaching insurgents. Alone and bleeding, the perimeter of his position breached, his predicament was grave. He could hear enemy voices as they closed in. He made a prediction about his fate: “I was going to die and made my peace with it.”

Pitts would not go down without a fight, though. He began throwing grenades, but because his attackers were so close and the grenades had a five-second fuse, he would “cook them off” for three seconds before hurling them. After exhausting his supply of hand grenades, he picked up a grenade launcher and began firing almost directly straight up to hit targets surrounding his position.

Staff Sgt. Ryan M. Pitts of Nashua, N.H., strode onto the Hall of Heroes stage at the Pentagon one day after receiving the Medal of Honor last July. His biggest little fan, 9-year-old Evan Pertile of Columbia, S.C., had a prime seat next to his mom, Rachel, and their friend, Leta Carruth, in the third row.

Evan was especially excited about his trip to and from the Hall of Heroes. “We got a police escort from the hotel to the Pentagon, and then they took us back from the Pentagon!” he declared.

That Evan could be there at all delighted Pitts. At 5, the boy was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor that is now in remission. While he was ill, Evan received a special visit from a wounded soldier recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The soldier was Ryan Pitts.

After he returned from the war, Pitts graduated from the University of New Hampshire at Manchester and now works for Oracle Corp. in business development for the public sector, which includes DoD and other federal agencies. He’s also on the board of directors for DreamCatchers, a New Hampshire nonprofit organization that provides social and recreational activities for individuals with special needs.

“My involvement with DreamCatchers began when I was a student,” he says. “We had a business program class where we did a project to help raise money for them.” Pitts and his team used a benefit auction, featuring art created by special-needs teens and adults, to raise funds.

“The mission is to help kids make friends, have fun and build confidence,” Pitts says. “And it is to provide those same experiences that other kids get growing up, for these kids.”

I’m not really a very good writer, as my editors will attest to.  But this piece I am particularly proud of, because I think I succeeded in getting across the message of what Ryan is all about, and how he’s just an illustration of what the vast bulk of veterans are all about.  Brotherhood, charity, hard work and love.  Ryan’s my friend, and I am incredibly grateful for that.  I’m enough of a little kid at heart that I’ll admit that when he or Sal Giunta (another paratrooper MOH recipient) call me I get all giddy.  And when I say Ryan is the nicest dude in the world, I mean it sincerely.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the piece in the Magazine, and the videos.  Thankfully, despite my poor writing skills, I’ve been blessed with a videographer (fellow Legionnaire John Napolitano) and subjects to write about that make it pretty easy.  The hardest part of this piece was cutting it from about 3,000 words down to 2,500.  If they had given me 15 pages in the magazine I could have filled it with stuff about Ryan.  About his views on military service, family, and what makes America so great.

So, if Ryan sees this, thanks for making my job so easy.  For everyone else, I hope you enjoy Ryan’s story.

(Thanks also to the Pertiles for welcoming us into their home and talking about their visit with Ryan.)

As a veteran, I wanted to voice my disapproval with just how ridiculously horrible this is about to be for all veterans.  So here you go.  Slight language warning.

Some back story first.  For a while the Chairman of the House Vets Affairs Committee was Bob Filner, and the ranking member was Steve Buyer.  I loathed both of them.  Filner was a jackass that sexually harassed staffers non-stop, and Buyer, despite being a fellow alumnus took the occasion of the Christmas Tree lighting at the White House to literally scream at me in front of my date in the East Room.  Both of them are now gone.  Thank God.  Those two couldn’t agree on water being wet.  The one time I heard Filner say something humorous was when he and I were talking on an escalator and he said he wanted more money for PTSD research because “Lord knows Steve (Buyer) needs a lot of mental health help.”

After they left, it was Chairman Miller of Florida (GOP) and Ranking Member Mike Michaud of Maine.  (Interesting side note, Michaud is the only Dem I remember running a race as a pro-life, pro-gun Dem against a pro-choice, anti-gun GOP.)  Anyway, I loved Michaud.  One of the nicest guys out there, bar none.  Just a wonderful human being, and I honestly was rooting for him in his Governor’s race. (Maine is my birth state.)  But he lost.

So now the Dems have an opening for Ranking Member.  It’s down between two people (or was), Corrine Brown, and Tim Walz.

So, some more background.  When Walz first ran, I loathed the man.  Seriously loathed him.  a) He was a sergeant major, and 99 percent of SGM’s are useless.  b) He claimed repeatedly that he was an OEF veteran.  That statement is true, in so far as he was activated under OEF orders.  But he spent his time in Italy.

Then I met him, and spent damn near 2 hours literally shooting the shit with him.  Over everything.  When I disagreed with him, I told him so.  And unlike all the other prima donnas in Congress, dude actually listened.  With the exception of some time I spent with Jim Webb, it was the most entertaining time I spent with a Dem Congressman or Senator not named Herseth or Marshall.  I still think his OEF thing was BS, but on a personal level, I really liked him.

And dude was incensed by the whole VA scandal.  Like, red in the face pissed off at hearings.  He was a damn bulldog.  And honestly, I think he brought great credit to himself and the Vets Affairs Committee, and he got along great with Chairman Miller.  Another sidenote, I’ve spent a lot of time with Chairman Miller as well, and he is great.  In fact, Gabe Malor (from Ace of Spades) and I had a few beers with him at convention last year, and he never played the “don’t you know who I am” card or anything.  He just walked up, stood at the table with us and drank a beer or two.  Just awesome dude.

So anyway, Walz was NOT first in line for seniority on the Vets Affairs Committee.  Roll Call has a pretty good recitation of it:

Rep. Tim Walz of Minnesota thought there would be a vote after Thanksgiving on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee ranking member race. As it turns out, his face-off against Rep. Corrine Brown of Florida will happen on Wednesday.

It gives Walz less time than he and his allies said they anticipated to build support around his uphill challenge of Brown, who benefits from seniority and the backing of the Congressional Black Caucus, of which she is a member.

Before the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee can meet to vote on a recommendation to the full House Democratic Caucus, Walz will have to clear an additional hurdle: A vote on whether he is even eligible to hold the post.

Walz is the highest-ranking enlisted soldier to ever serve in Congress and has had a seat at the Veterans’ Affairs Committee table since 2007. He is, however, on the committee via waiver, and his opponents say it doesn’t qualify him to run against Brown, who after nearly two decades on the committee is next in line to succeed the current retiring ranking member, Michael H. Michaud of Maine.

Anyway, word leaked out today that not only will he NOT be the Ranking Member, he’s being stripped from the Committee.  Which is a complete shame, because he at least has some clue about what vets are going through.

Instead, we get Corrine Brown.  Who had this to say:

It would take a year to go through everything wrong she just said there. The Orlando VA is an unmitigated disaster. It is WAY over budget, and should have opened years ago. It’s like praising the Hindenberg for it’s safety record before it burst into flames. The VA there was so bad that INS actually found illegal aliens living in the ceiling of the place. I am not even making that shit up.

And all her claims about how great Florida is should be to the credit of Miller, the Chairman who is from Florida, and not her nonsense. So great, now she will be the Ranking Member and work with Miller. My prayers are with him, because she would drive me completely out of my mind in about 17 seconds. Want to see why? Well, just enjoy this video of the eloquent gentlewoman from Jacksonville:

And here’s Walz:

Corrine Brown’s the woman who will clean up VA? You have got to be shitting me.

BONUS:  IN the last Congress, Corrine Brown sponsored 1 bill.  HR 4439, which dealt with discrimination in rail projects.  Tim Walz had 17 bills, 10 of which were veteran or military related.

Great job Dems.  When you aren’t punishing a double amputee expectant mother with service overseas, you are promoting this lunatic.  I can not stress enough how much this pisses me off.

UPDATE:  I’m still super pissed, but Pelosi at least let Walz stay on the committee and gave him some responsibility.  Probably because no one in their right mind would let Brown talk to the veterans.

Sometimes a consolation prize makes all the difference, Minnesota Rep. Tim Walz learned Wednesday.

After party leaders appeared to have blocked the Minnesota Democrat from running for ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Walz — who is the highest-ranking enlisted soldier to serve in Congress — ended up getting much of what he wanted anyway.

He will be on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee in the 114th Congress, and he will have a larger role with veterans service organizations.

Still idiotic.  He should be the Ranking Member.  I get that the CBC wants more of their people in leadership, but come on.  Let’s try not to be completely idiotic.