This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Blue Falcons

  • Slear clarifies his WP opinion piece; I’m still paid too much

    Our buddy, Jeff Schlogol of the Military Times, wrote to ask Blue Falcon LTC Tom Slear to clarify his opinion piece in the Washington Post this weekend. Apparently, we didn’t understand what he was saying, he says and we shouldn’t get upset, mostly because he didn’t write the “provacative headline”. OK, I’ll give him that one. But it turns out that we weren’t wrong about anything else he wrote;

    Q: To be clear, do you feel that benefits for service members are “too generous”?

    [Slear:] I believe Tricare is very generous. A 10 or even 20 percent increase in premiums is reasonable. Retired pay is generous enough that the proposed 1-percent cut in the [annual] cost-of-living adjustment for those under 62 is also reasonable.

    […]

    Q: Would you also be willing to take a reduction in retirement pay?

    [Slear:] I would be willing to take the 1-percent reduction in the [annual] cost-of-living adjustment as proposed in the budget agreement last year. I would be willing to take a larger reduction as long as it’s part of a reassessment of all federal pensions and social security.

    Q: Based on the feedback you have received, what do people misunderstand about your arguments for compensation reform?

    [Slear:] The common misperception was that I’m for taking a meat cleaver to military benefits. What I did say was that military benefits aren’t sacrosanct — they should be part of the discussion about reducing the federal deficit.

    So, I’m not sure what he thinks we misunderstood about his back-stabbing bullshit trying to make veterans look like money-grubbing welfare recipients. Like I said in the initial post, Slear can refuse to accept his pension and refuse to use Tricare – he can make personal decisions if he thinks that he didn’t earn his benefits. But, I don’t see him doing it. He’ll only do that if the rest of us have it forced down out throats.

    Well, I’ll only go along with it if I see Congress make the hard choices and slash Federal spending across the board. If Congress closes tax loopholes for illegal immigrants and cracks down on Social Security and welfare spending for the folks who will never work maybe then I’ll think about contributing that which Slear thinks I can afford without reviewing my personal spending.

    So, it turns out that we didn’t misunderstand LTC Slear at all. He’s climbing on the Obama Administration’s train to roll over veterans to tell us to sacrifice even more without asking the rest of the country to sacrifice – because we used to go along to get along. As early as 2009, the Obama Administration was coming for our medical benefits when they tried to make service-connected veterans buy insurance and it hasn’t stopped. So, LTC Slear walked off the FOB in the middle of the night and surrendered himself to the White House.

  • Jim Gourley: 10 reasons not to vote for a veteran

    Jim Gourley: 10 reasons not to vote for a veteran

    JimGourley

    Chief Tango sends a link to an article that was in Foreign Policy but had too much pop-up BS for me to read the damn thing. So, Stars & Stripes gets the traffic. The article is written by Jim Gourley, who claims to be an Iraq veteran and advises his readers to not vote for veterans. Why? Well because f**k you that’s why. Here’s the short answer;

    10. We are really bad at managing tax dollars. Not really. Most of us barely scraped by with broke dick equipment and made it work well enough to kill hundreds of enemy with bailing wire and 100-mile-an-hour tape. Real soldiers never got near government dollars, but officers like Gourley always had everything they needed.

    9. We’re just as political as the politicians. Again, a lie. I can count the number of political conversations I had with members of my infantry units on two fingers in the two decades of service in that branch. Yeah, we voted. I became a Republican after voting for Jimmy Carter. I needed to police myself.

    8. Being a vet doesn’t make us a morally superior candidate. Another lie. Have you seen the morally reprehensible members of Congress who lie to our faces on the floor of the House and Senate. Just being truthful once would make us morally superior.

    7. Combat isn’t an accomplishment. Says the intelligence officer. Leading troops in combat against an armed enemy and bringing them all home safe made me more accomplished than any of my peers in college, and probably most of my professors. See, there’s the key word, Gourley – Lead. Look at the mess we’re in because there are no leaders in Congress or the White House.

    6. We really don’t understand the average American. Um, we are the average American. We come from families across the country, in every high school, every grocery store, every MacDonald’s. We weren’t raised on special farms where the government grows it’s soldiers. What we don’t understand is why there are so many who feel entitled to government handouts, and why they’re so afraid of us. We don’t understand why crime is so high and the law enforcement agencies are so afraid to deal with that problem. When we did something wrong, punishment was swift and painful. We don’t understand why Americans are so slow to recognize dangers to the country and why we’re so willing to coddle our enemies. We don’t understand why civilians aren’t all at the recruiting station trying to make something of their sad, dependent lives.

    5. Our life experience is limited. Yeah, life experience is limited – like the 22-year-old buck sergeant who was responsible for the lives and well-being of eight other men and a half-million dollars worth of equipment. As compared to the 22-year-old college grad who once was responsible for getting the keg to the frat house on Saturday night – and he was probably late.

    4. We’re overrepresented as it is. The stupidest, most telling excuse of all. There was a time, arguably a better time, when nearly every member of Congress was a veteran. You know, back when they had a work ethic and were grateful to be alive and felt a duty to those of us who hadn’t returned to honor their memory by preserving our country.

    3. We make a mess of the dialogue. WTF does that mean? Have you listened to the assholes who worry about islands that may tip over because there are too many Marines on it? FFS.

    2. The parties are just using us as poster children. No, not the parties, the politicians. One comes to mind in particular – the fellow who “reported for duty” at his convention. Then there was the Senator who had for years been telling his constituents that he’d been to Vietnam when he hadn’t. And the Senator who said he flew in Vietnam combat missions when he was actually just a guy who ferried planes between Japan and Vietnam. But then, we honor fake Indians, too.

    1. We actually do feel entitled! Probably because we’ve actually accomplished something in our lives before we turned 40 years old. We’ve bet our lives and our futures on an idea of liberty and freedom, instead of living off our parents for our entire young lives. When we go to college on taxpayer dollars, it’s because we earned it before hand. And used our youth as down payment on our promises.

    Gourley is an associate of Tom Ricks, so I understand that he is willing to sell his soul for an opportunity to screw his fellow veterans. In fact, he writes how we’re hiding behind our service, but I’ll bet cash money, that’s the first thing he’ll hide behind trying to defend this intellectually vacuous POS. A Baby [LTC Robert] Bateman making his political bones on the backs of veterans. Good luck with that, Jimmy, I hope you choke on it.

    By the way, if you look at Gourley’s LinkedIn profile, you’ll notice that he leans heavily on his military career. So, I guess it’s alright for an aspiring writer who intends to write anti-veteran screeds to advertise themselves as a veteran, somehow it qualifies him to be a writer. But politicians not so much.

  • Letters from Bernath, homophobe edition

    Always nice to hear from a friend:

    Counselor:
    As a further sign that I wish to meet and confer to resolve all differences short of litigation; I know that being an open homosexual is now considered to be a great thing, with open homosexuals serving in the US Army and Navy. So, your “coming out” really can’t be considered a bad thing, right?

    I also want to tell you how “brave” you are for coming out and I am sure that all your colleagues (esp. the lesbians Valkarie and Ex PH2) will stand with you firmly, like a ramrod crossing shit river.

    Daniel A. Bernath
    Attorney at Law

    I totally get why he thinks I am gay. I dress superfluously and flamboyantly. In fact, Joan Rivers once said that I do more for her in my Patriots hoodie than any other man has done for her since 1927. I get it. Look, I am a sexy man, there is no escaping that fact. When Bernath sees pictures of me, I don’t doubt he feels a stirring in his loins. I’m his Tom Brady.

    The problem is, I am happily married. To a woman. So I just don’t see it working out between Dan and I. However, I really hope he does find the courage to come out himself. As he says, I have NO PROBLEM with gays at all. Heck, I even saw a gay midget dancing to Copa Cabana a few weeks ago, and it was one of the highlights of my life. Any of you on my Facebook know that to be true. It was a thing of sublime beauty.

    But Dan is trying so hard to fight off the gay. Like Jacob wresting the Angel, poor Dan is being held down by his homosexual latencies. Which got me thinking, would Dan actually make a good gay?

    I report, you decide:

    Push play for the music as you peruse Dannie-Boi’s pictures.

    Dan could live his dream of being bathed by men.
    Man bath

    Or be a unicorn.
    gayunicornman

    He and Richard Simmons could hawk Obamacare together.
    Daniel Simmons

    He could finally start dating Johnny Weir.
    skating gay

    He could march in the Phony CPO Pride Parade.
    prideparade

    Heck, he could even create his own video game.
    video gayme

    You’ll never convince anyone that you aren’t, as Ace of Spades would artfully state it, “a pack a day smoker of the cock.” So you might as well set yourself free Dan. You’ll feel better about yourself.

    Now with new Poll Goodness:
    VillageBernath

    Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world’s leading questionnaire tool.

  • Brandon Bryant, Blue falcon drone guy, resurfaces

    AtDrum dropped off a link in comments that Hondo sent to us to Brandon Bryant’s latest attempt to impress hippie chicks in the pages of GQ repeating the stories of his depredation as a drone operator;

    From the darkness of a box in the Nevada desert, he watched as three men trudged down a dirt road in Afghanistan. The box was kept cold—precisely sixty-eight degrees—and the only light inside came from the glow of monitors. The air smelled spectrally of stale sweat and cigarette smoke. On his console, the image showed the midwinter landscape of eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar Province—a palette of browns and grays, fields cut to stubble, dark forests climbing the rocky foothills of the Hindu Kush.

    Really? The air smelled of stale cigarette smoke? It must’ve been really stale because it’s been decades since the military allowed smoking in enclosed spaces and work areas. And why was anyone sweating? They were in an air-conditioned office. But that’s same kind of bullshit Bryant has spread and we’ve been able to disprove for months since his first appearance in the media complaining that the snack machine in his workspace ran out of Cheetos. He’s claiming that he caught the PTSD from watching the TV screens and his drone’s actions. I’m beginning to think that everything causes PTS if Bryant caught it.

    While Bryant considers leakers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden heroes willing to sacrifice themselves for their principles, he’s cautious about discussing some of the details to which his top-secret clearance gave him access. Still, he is a curtain drawn back on the program that has killed thousands on our behalf.

    And there it is – instead of being a quiet professional, Bryant wants to make a name for himself like Eddie Snowden and Breanna Manning. I’ve received several emails from some of the drone operators who despise Bryant for trying to make a name for himself on their work. Initially, Bryant claimed to have killed thousands of insurgents, and he was forced to back away from that number when his mates called him out. They’ve also disputed his other claims, but that doesn’t seem to stop him from flapping his gums, nor does it stop the media from returning to the lying little f*ck to give them the story that they’ve already written in their empty, pointed little heads.