Author: TSO

Crossposted…..

This is actually an update to a story that started over a year ago.  You might remember it from some of the TV coverage at the time, but in case you don’t, here is one story about it:

So, the girl was supposed to say the Mexican pledge, and sing the Mexican National Anthem.  She didn’t, and failed.  She has now filed suit, and I will address that below, but about the pledge and anthem, there are two things that deserve note.

Regarding the pledge, it is interesting to note that had this girl been required to salute the US Flag and do the pledge, this would have been unquestionably unconstitutional.  In fact, the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624(1943) that compulsory requirements to pledge to the flag by school children violated the first Amendment.  It’s astonishing to me that this school district somehow thought that a compulsory pledge to another flag would somehow by just fine.  Further, as my friend Dr. John Fonte noted in a November 2005 piece entitled “Dual Allegiance: A Challenge to Immigration Reform and Patriotic Assimilation“:

Dual allegiance is incompatible with the moral basis of American constitutional democracy because 1) Dual allegiance challenges our core foundation as a civic nation (built on political loyalty) by promoting an ethnic and racial basis for allegiance and, thus, subverts our “nation of (assimilated) immigrants” ethic; and 2) Dual allegiance violates the core American principle of equality of citizenship.

So the pledge is bad.  Arguably worse though is the Mexican National Anthem, which contains in the First and Fith stanzas these lines:

But if some enemy outlander should dare to profane your ground with his sole, think, oh beloved Fatherland!, that heaven has given you a soldier in every son….War, war without quarter to any who dare to tarnish the coats of arms of the country! War, war! Let the national banners be soaked in waves of blood. War, war! In the mountain, in the valley, let the cannons thunder in horrid unison and may the sonorous echoes resound with cries of Union! Liberty!

Now, I have no big problem with the martial nature of the lyrics, since our National Anthem is not especially peace-like either.  But then again, we don’t force British folk to sing our national anthem. The Mexican National Anthem was written in 1854, and all the stuff about war is a direct reference to the battles they had just held with the Americans.  So basically this Texas high school, whose inclusion into the United States is what started this war in the first place, is requiring this young lady to sing a song which glorifies the killing of 13,283 US Citizens.  That to me is unconscionable.  (If you want to learn more about that war, I recommend to you Jeff Shaara’s Gone for Soldiers which I happened to be rereading just as this story came out again.)

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Anyone ever watch these PBS specials?

I got hooked into a 2 hour special on American Whaling a while back, and today have been listening to the one on Robert E. Lee which is exceptional. There is also one about the Dinosaur Wars which I think I shared earlier that is outstanding. Anyway, wanted to share this in case anyone hadn’t seen for whatever reason.

Watch Robert E. Lee on PBS. See more from American Experience.

Crossposted.

Meet Staff Sergeant Maurice Scott, a special operations Marine and a hero.  His heroism is of the variety one sees in TV and movies, but few ever get a chance to see in real life.  In September of 2010, Staff Sergeant Scott was serving as a Joint Terminal Attack Controller, Marine Special Operations Team 8133, Marine Special Operations Company Charlie, 1st Marine Special Operations Battalion, in Farah province, Afghanistan.

During a night helicopter raid into an insurgent stronghold on 6 September 2010, Staff Sergeant Scott employed supporting aircraft to great effect to disrupt activities and sever supply lines. Using aircraft sensors, he guided his unit to their security positions. As the sun rose, both security positions came under ruthless assault by enemy forces intent upon regaining their sanctuary. Coordinating bomb, rocket, and gun attacks from the aircraft overhead, Staff Sergeant Scott held off the enemy assaults while observing from an exposed position that sustained withering fire from the insurgents. With the adjacent element pinned down by mortar fire, Staff Sergeant Scott spotted and eliminated an insurgent cave position with the employment of a missile strike, enabling the element to regain security. Hours later the attack began again when insurgents fought at close range with hand grenades. Leaping to the wall he engaged the enemy with his weapon while directing aerial gun runs that were dangerously close to friendly forces. His bold actions broke the back of the assault, causing the enemy to break off their attack.

For his actions he was awarded the Bronze Star medal with “V” for valorous actions.

Scott is the kind of hero we’ve come to expect from our men and women singled out for their actions; humble and willing to share credit. 

“You can’t attribute the success of the mission to one individual,” Scott said. “Everyone is actively involved in the process. It represents the achievements of our team.”  Scott, a former Army Ranger, has served three deployments to Iraq and two to Afghanistan.

The Bronze Star is awarded for either meritorious service or combat heroism. The bronze “V” is a combat distinguishing device for acts of combat heroism or valor.

“There was excellent leadership at the team level,” Scott said. “That’s what allowed us to perform with accuracy.”

The Bronze Star recipient, whose father was an Army lieutenant colonel, had a military upbringing and realized his own military career when he was 18.

What seems absurd though is that if any of the aerial fires mentioned in the citation were from drones, the pilot of that drone, (located somewhere within the US) will be retroactively eligible for a medal which outranks SSG Scott’s in order of precedence.

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OK, so the guy who wrote the Esquire article is from the “Center for Investigative Reporting” which is innocuous enough that it didn’t really ring any bells. So today as I researched more, I found this piece of effluvient:

VA’s disability backlog hurts Navy SEAL who killed bin Laden

The Navy SEAL who says he killed Osama bin Laden is unemployed and waiting for disability benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In an exclusive story for Esquire by Phil Bronstein of the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Shooter adds many details to what already is known about the death of the al-Qaida leader. His name is withheld to protect his identity.

The Shooter told Bronstein, CIR’s executive chairman, that he alone killed the terrorist leader, recounting minute details of those brief seconds. As the second Navy SEAL up a staircase, he saw bin Laden inside a room.

The author of this piece, on CIR’s website? Aaron Glantz. That name rung a bell, so I went to my book shelf at work, and sure enough, he’s the editor of this piece of shit:

Really? The “Center for Investigative Reporting” has a guy defending them that couldn’t even see through the bullshit lies of IVAW?

Layers and layers of fact checkers.

UPDATE: The Esquire author actually praises Aaron Glantz on the show with the unsufferable balding dude:

Seriously. Are you kidding me? If Glantz told me bullets could hurt people, I would have to have 5 people corroborate it and I would still assume it was a hoax.

My BS detector is pounding so loud it is drowning out the voices in my head. As I see it there are only two valid theories on this story:

1) The dude is not who he is purporting to be, a la a ton of folks before him. In which case Esquire sucks for falling for it.
2) The reporter doesn’t speak military, and so it was like conducting an interview in a foreign language, and this guy botched teh shit out of it.

I think it is #2. Let me give you an example.

Shooter: “….and because of leaving at 16 years instead of 20 years, I don’t get my retirement health insurance through TRICARE, any retirement, nothing. They effed me.”

Now, the reporter hears this and doesn’t know what TRICARE is, so he googles it, finds out it is a healthcare provider, and alters the article to say that the guy doesn’t have health insurance.

Now, what the shooter says is accurate, but when this reporter “translated” it he made it into a soup sandwich because he didn’t know that Shooter was entitled to VA.

Now, could it be that this guys claim through the VA isn’t done yet? Hell yeah. Probably isn’t. Especially if he didn’t plan ahead. But all he needs to do to get VA care is walk in and sign up. It’s what I did.

Also, every guy I met in the military hated “SEAL Team Six” in terms of the name. They would put it in air quotes and such. Because everyone I met always used “DEVGRU” which is the official name. I suppose the report could once again have gone the easy route and used ST6 when the Shooter kept referring to “DEVGRU” rather than explain it, but that only adds into my theory #2.

Besides, are you really trying to tell me that the dude that killed Bin Ladin can’t find a job? That is BS. Anyone that made it through BUDS and spent 8 years in the teams will have enough contacts to find a job. I refuse to believe otherwise.

Overall, I remain skeptical of Esquire’s story.

BTW- I suppose the third option is that everything here is right, but then it doesn’t make sense at all, because if this guy is honorably discharged, he should be able to get into the VA for 5 years. Either way, wouldn’t an actual reporter contact someone to ask why this guy doesn’t get any healthcare? And wouldn’t that person be able to tell Esquire he’s entitled to VA?

OK, so yesterday I get an email from HR that informs me that our CEO would like to hold a meeting with every employee tomorrow (which is now today) at 1400 hours. The people not in this building will attend via some sort of teleconference, and there is no clue regarding what said meeting is about.

Now, I have the greatest job ever. Love it. Wouldn’t take another one even if that job was to be the full time sun tan lotion applier to Kate Upton and Tom Brady. The one problem with my job is that it’s the only one of its kind. I basically have the Tigger of sinecures.

The wonderful thing about tiggers
Is tiggers are wonderful things!
Their tops are made out of rubber
Their bottoms are made out of springs!
They’re bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy
Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun!
But the most wonderful thing about tiggers is
I’m the only one

So anyway, said email set off my rampant paranoia. I’m not sure if I am the only one that is this bad, but I would rather they said “We’d like to talk to you about your upcoming termination” than “We’d like to talk to you about something.” I can live with bad news, it is an absence of all news that drives me nuts.

Well, technically what it does is give me the hot trots, and makes it damn near impossible to sleep. Like, I would have hired Michael Jackson’s doctor (or even Kervorkian) last night if it would have guaranteed me a good night’s sleep. Instead of my usually shiny, happy dreams (which oddly feature a lot of “little people”) I dreamed about bad things, like the time I went to class and had the wrong TPS cover sheet on my research paper. And then realized I was naked and had the physical makeup of a Ken doll in the waistular region.

So anyway, I came into work today fully prepared to box up my Eric Gagne bobblehead doll, my not-Buddha light (Budai as I have been informed) and the Aerogarden with dead jalapeno plant. But then I decided to just ride it out. Hey, maybe it’s good news, like maybe the Bobs got together and decided to have Hawaiian Shirt Friday. Unlikely, but so is getting a job like applying sun tan lotion to New England’s Quarterback.

So, I started thinking. If I were to be fired, what are the top 5 videos I want to be watching while someone tries to figure out how to get me out of the building.

I’ve decided on these five:

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I heard this on Mike and Mike of all places, and it actually is somewhat interesting.

Strippers are employees of the club they work at, not independent contractors, says the Kansas Supreme Court. This important distinction means strippers are eligible for unemployment.

This line from the opinion had me howling though:

The officer concluded that, despite Milano’s’ “creative assertion that a gentlemen’s club is merely a place with good atmosphere, good lighting and good food,” the facts reflected that the atmosphere of Club Orleans was largely derived from the presence of its semi-nude dancers.

Wait, so dudes DON’T go to Nuddy bars for the food? Seriously, who knew? What about Crystal City Restaurant? I always heard they have the best steaks in Alexandria.

I think the title of this spells out the situation sufficiently:

Women’s Unclean Breasts Cause Diarrhoea, Says Egypt Prime Minister Hisham Qandil

Pastrami also does that to me, leading me to question whether boobs aren’t made of pastrami.

And after all this time I finally know that it wasn’t the heavy drinking that left me permanently fluid during the early to mid ’90’s, it was the motorboating.