Author: TSO

Support Defenders of Freedom: Lost in the debacle that was the Tim Poe affair is the fact that he actually did serve honorably in Afghanistan, and really was injured there. The stories after that were his and only his. But Defenders of Freedom should not bear the fault for Poe expanding on his record, and they won’t again. This week I will be honoring DoF, starting off with a meager $10 to help their mission. DoF sends support boxes to our men and women in uniform, support wounded Soldiers with emergency financial assistance, supports the families of wounded Soldiers and support the USO at DFW Airport (which helped at least one blogger get married.) So, I hope you will join me and give them a few dollars. Don’t let the fakers define who we are.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS REGIONAL

Last day of voting to see who makes the Sour Sixteen!

1 Tim “Stuttering Jackass” Poe v.
8 Alex “Subway Sandwich Shop Commando” Popovic

POE:  Dude cried on TV more than when Kristen Stewart got caught boning a director and had to admit to her Twi-tards that she cheated on her werewolf.  The guy that did the “Leave Brittney Alone!” video wrote me and said “That dude looks like the biggest sissy in history.”  I can just imagine the increased flow of Estrogen if he takes home the win in the Stolen Valor Tournament.  One small step for Poe, one giant leap for stuttering jackasskind.

POPOVIC: Anyone tried this new avocado sandwich thing they have going on at Subway?  That was all Popovic’s idea, in consultation with the President, the NSA, NSC, FBI, CIA, and Jared.  If you showed up and he was wearing that mandress though, would any of you actually eat the $5 footlong that this moron made?

12 Ayush “Major in the Navy SEALs” Arora v.

4 Bill “Psychic SEAL” Brockbrader

ARORA:  A Major in the Navy SEALs who rescued hostages in Columbia.

BROCKBRADER: A psychic with the Navy SEALs trained at Area 51 by an extra testicle brought back on the Space Shuttle Columbia.

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Have about 2 hours left on voting in the Sotomayor regional, so if you want to vote, now is the time to do it.  I only bring it up because in the Schaffer/Wilson race, there is less than 2 percent seperating the two of these guys. 

Working on today’s bio’s now, and when they are done, the Sotomayor Regional closes.

 

So Yon (and Wittgenfeld) are on a tear to discredit Soldiers Angels, as you likely all know. Blackfive put up a piece yesterday, and I wanted to do that, and get in front of the FOIA they are doing on me.

First, the SA thing should be read in full (I had nothing to do with writing it incidentally), but there’s one section that bears mentioning about the financials. As I said on Facebook last night:

Soldiers’ Angels has responded to the allegations of impropriety by Mr. Yon. It is long, but it spells out why the Charity Navigator rating can be difficult to grasp sometimes. SA gets 70/70 on transparency, where it loses is in the financial section, and that is because it choses to hire veterans (which counts as overhead) rather than pay an outside firm which would be a “program cost.” In terms of units sent overseas and veterans helped with jobs, our way is significantly better, but Charity Navigator assigns a lower rating. Anyway, read it if you get a chance.

From the letter, a bit more on that last part:

Another area which reduced our financial rating relates to a change in Soldiers’ Angels operations that we believe directly supports our mission. In 2009 we started the S.A.V.E program to employ troops leaving the military and provide a transitional period while they sought permanent work. In the early years of Soldiers’ Angels, we hired third party companies to send out care packages on a large scale each day, which was considered by Charity Navigator as a 100% Program Expense. As more troops started coming home from the wars and leaving military service, we recognized that many were struggling to find or keep jobs in the civilian sector due to the challenges of reintegration and Post-Traumatic Stress. As such, we opened our own warehouse in San Antonio to send care packages directly and staffed it with recently-returned veterans to give them a chance to transition within a safe environment mentored by fellow veterans. In this way, Soldiers’ Angels has supported close to 30 transitioning veterans. Supporting returning veterans through S.A.V.E is consistent with the Soldiers’ Angels mission and logically falls under Program Costs, but Charity Navigator declared it to be overhead, shifting a major expense into the Administrative column.
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And now we have half of the (now called) Sour Sixteen:

*(16) Fatty McQuatermillion Pounder def. Martel 61/39
*(12) John def. Groves 65/35
(3) Tillson def. Blumenthal 58/42
*(15) Oliver def. Holland 61/39

*Upsets abound.
We still need an actual name for the Fat Marine.

Sniper Conceptual Series:

Quick Update: As of 1450 hours, the 1 v. 8 matchup is EXACTLY TIED. So if you have a favorite, start hitting your email to round up votes.

Support Defenders of Freedom: Lost in the debacle that was the Tim Poe affair is the fact that he actually did serve honorably in Afghanistan, and really was injured there. The stories after that were his and only his. But Defenders of Freedom should not bear the fault for Poe expanding on his record, and they won’t again. This week I will be honoring DoF, starting off with a meager $10 to help their mission. DoF sends support boxes to our men and women in uniform, support wounded Soldiers with emergency financial assistance, supports the families of wounded Soldiers and support the USO at DFW Airport (which helped at least one blogger get married.) So, I hope you will join me and give them a few dollars. Don’t let the fakers define who we are.

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR REGIONAL

So, without further ado, here we go, which of these 8 will be the 4 to advance to the unSweet Sixteen?

1 Gregory John “Trident and trim” Schaffer v.
8 Mike “Goth Special Forces” Wilson

SCHAFFER: You might remember Schaffer from the classic “I contracted for sex with Bar Rafaeli and ended up with Betty White” debacle. Not that I’m in any way implying that dirty dirty Betty isn’t a monster in the sack, but probably less so than Schaffer’s current cellmate in prison. Which is good, because this dirtbag deserves every pounding the Queens can give him at Shawshank.

WILSON: I have to admit, I like this guy’s power move. He’s sort of saying “sure, I listen to cutter music (Morrissey, The Smiths) and wear eyeliner, but that doesn’t mean I can’t throw on an Army uniform with the tape on the wrong side.” Just a power move. Like taking a ham sandwich to a pig roast, or a date to the Playboy mansion. Dare I say it, I like the cut of this man’s jib! And his eyeliner by Mabeline.
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This one should be sub-titled: TSO has lost his ever loving mind, and this is the longest most boringest post in history.

 (*Editor’s Note: this will interest maybe 3 people in the entire world, but Jonn told me to post, so I am posting. Besides, I did kind of want to hear about a memory from 1979-83 that didn’t deal with Reagan or the Olympics.)

I don’t usually go through any serious bouts of melancholy, largely because my memory sucks.  But every now and again I remember something from my childhood and I end up googling the hell out of it and living the wonder years of 4^th-7^th grade, back when dopey blogs and Stolen Valor knuckleheads hadn’t become my daily grind.  In the past 2 months, all the things on this list have been brought up to me, and I almost wish I was 11 again.  So, without further ado, I give you the Top 5 things I loved about being in the 4^th-7^th grade.

In no particular order:
AVALON HILL GAMES

You remember board games?  Those were the things we played back before World of Warcraft and Diablo et al.  The only actual computer game I remember from back then was this dopey game called “Pillbox” where you had two artillery pieces on mountains and you shot at each other by putting in an azimuth and a correct amount of powder.  And you just kept bracketing until you hit the target, which is what I envision the 13 series guys doing now.

Anyway, in like the 6^th grade I joined the Mt Everett Regional High School Gaming Club (we were 5-12^th grade at my school), mostly for the chicks.  OK, mostly because they accepted me for the gigantic nerd/tool that I was.  And they had a ton of board games from Avalon Hill, and Mr Milukas (my math teacher) and Herr Kolmer (my German teacher) would administer the games.  My favorites were Magic Realm (pictured above), this game called “Origins of World War II” and Diplomacy.  I also loved Wooden Ships and Iron Men, although I lost every time, and Gladiator, but I always lost at that game too because I picked the dopey dude with a trident and a net.

But Magic Realm was boss.  I was always the White Knight and would go hire the “Order” which was some pseudo Templer Knight type organization.  In Diplomacy I always tried to get France, although now I question the wisdom of that.  I used to convince myself that “Diplomacy” was not nerdy because it was Henry Kissinger’s favorite game.  Now I realize I was a nerd for playing Henry Kissinger’s favorite game.

RETURN OF THE KING RECORD BY Rankin/Bass

UPDATE: Blackfive found this for me:

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BTW- Make sure you vote today and send it around because with 100 votes in so far, not one person has made it to 60% so these races are very close.

Results from yesterday’s balloting:

(1) Wittgenfeld def. Lowry 72/28
*(5) Sharkey def. Gugle 65/35
(3) Truitt def. Eddings 60/40
(2) Comacho def. Barwan 74/26

And so, next round will be Wittgenfeld v Sharkey and Truitt v. Comacho.

Thanks as always to The Sniper.

Support Defenders of Freedom: Lost in the debacle that was the Tim Poe affair is the fact that he actually did serve honorably in Afghanistan, and really was injured there. The stories after that were his and only his. But Defenders of Freedom should not bear the fault for Poe expanding on his record, and they won’t again. This week I will be honoring DoF, starting off with a meager $10 to help their mission. DoF sends support boxes to our men and women in uniform, support wounded Soldiers with emergency financial assistance, supports the families of wounded Soldiers and support the USO at DFW Airport (which helped at least one blogger get married.) So, I hope you will join me and give them a few dollars. Don’t let the fakers define who we are.

JUSTICE GINSBURG REGIONAL

So, without further ado, here we go, which of these 8 will be the 4 to advance to the unSweet Sixteen?

16 Fatty McQuartermillion Pounder v.
9 Asleigh “Shrapnel slit my throat” Martel

POUNDER: Dude pulled an amazing upset last week when he took down the #1 seed Williamson.  Word on the street is that he celebrated by eating his way through 4 Hostess trucks, and was still hungry so he ate the pineapple from between his Chevrons.  He kind of looks like that chick from Mike and Molly but with a ridiculous Moustache.

MARTEL:  I just watched the video about her again, and I have nothing nice to say. I would take umbrage with the VA saying there is no evidence of a head wound.  Dude, just look at her.

12 Albert “Sensei Dick Munch” John v.
4 Dave “Tiger Hunter” Groves

JOHN: I swear this dude is my sleeper favorite guy of the whole tournament.  “I’m a former US Army special operations soldier, a surgical technologist, internationally certified in sterile processing, hold black belts and/or high degrees in over half a dozen different martial arts to include but not limited to Ninjitsu, Jeet Kune Do, Muay Thai, Krav Maga and Lotar……”  Yeah, well I’m a paladin with 18 charisma and 97 hit points I can use my helm of disintegration and do 1d4 damage as my half-elf mage wields his plus 5 holy avenger.

GROVES: This dude is closet funny too, I especially liked his story about…. “During one battle, Grove lost a friend to a Vietnamese arrow.”  I once lost a close friend to a Columbian lawn dart.  Shit came flying out of fricken nowhere.  Also, stop stealing your made up stories from Apocalypse Now, seriously.  You were never dangling from the bottom of a helicopter with a cheerleader unless you are VT Woody.

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