Category: Dumbass Bullshit

So, nutty-ass Jesse Ventura has decided that his settlement in the case in which he sued a grieving widow wasn’t enough. He’s going after the publisher of Chris Kyle’s “American Sniper” book, Harper Collins, too, according to the Washington Post;

According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, Ventura’s new lawsuit claims that publicity created by Kyle’s telling of the incident — a 2006 bar fight in which Kyle said he punched a celebrity in the face for making disparaging remarks about the military — “increased sales” and generated “millions of dollars for HarperCollins.” Kyle didn’t identify the celebrity as Ventura in “American Sniper,” but he did so in subsequent media interviews.

I’m sure that Ventura’s reputation suffered greatly from those few paragraphs in the book – it couldn’t have been his wild conspiracy theories or his stupid complaints about the media.

The New York Times tells the story of Lawrence J. Franks Jr., a West Point grad who was a medical platoon leader in the 10th Mountain Division and decided that wasn’t rigorous for him, that the lack of action led him to be suicidal after his eventful four years at the Military Academy, so he decided to bolt from Fort Drum and join the French Foreign Legion;

On Monday, Lieutenant Franks was sentenced to four years in prison and dismissal from the Army on charges of conduct unbecoming of an officer and desertion with the intention to shirk duty, specifically deployment.

[…]

In an interview last week at a hotel near Fort Drum, where the court-martial was held, Lieutenant Franks said that he actually yearned to go to war, but that his deployment was still almost a year away and in the meantime felt he could no longer control his suicidal urges.

“I needed to be wet and cold and hungry,” he said. “I needed the grueling life I could only find in a place like the Legion.”

He’s that he planned to kill himself on a pistol range by being a lieutenant – pretending to trip and discharge the weapon at himself, but then he talked himself out of that, that pesky Christian ethos thing interfered. So instead the ring knocker went AWOL.

Lieutenant Franks was taken in despite being wanted by the United States Army, and, like all other recruits, was given an assumed name. He became Christopher Flaherty and signed a five-year contract.

“We never ask where they come from, ” a French brigadier general, Laurent Kolodziej, said in video testimony from Paris. “You have people knocking on the door, just make sure they don’t have blood on their hands, and we take them in. The Legionnaires, it’s about giving someone a second chance.”

The lieutenant became a lowly legionnaire second class. Being stripped of rank, possessions and identity, woken up in the middle of the night to run in the rain, deprived of sleep and food, marched for hours on end while singing the slow, sorrowful songs that are a tradition in the Legion and harangued by sergeants who knew recruits had no one to call to complain, took the focus off his inner demons, he said.
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Continue reading the main story

“Slowly, the depression went away,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking of killing myself anymore.”

So, basically, he deserted to go to war. He probably should have found another route like going to Ranger School or volunteering for Special Forces duty. I’m pretty sure that sitting in a cell for four years isn’t going to be very therapeutic. But then, no one ever accused lieutenants of being too smart.

Earlier this month, we reported that Discovery Channel personality, Joe Teti was ready to file a lawsuit against some of our friends. Military Times reports that the suit has been filed in a North Carolina venue;

The lawsuit also names:

The Special Forces Association and its president, retired Army Col. Jack Tobin.
Retired Special Forces Sgt. Maj. George Davenport, a longtime SFA member who added Teti to his Special Forces Poser Patrol’s Facebook “Wall of Shame.”
Former Marine Scott Hughes, moderator of the Military Phonies website, who was among several calling on Teti to produce his active-duty DD-214 and National Guard NGB-22, both official military documents, listing units, schools, awards and other pertinent details of service.
Monique Haina, who the lawsuit claims has posted “dozens if not hundreds” of false and defamatory statements on Facebook and other websites.

All are named for alleged defamation and causing Teti financial losses and emotional suffering.

Tobin and the SFA did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Davenport declined to comment until he could consult with his lawyer. Hawke and Hughes deny Teti’s claims.

You can read the lawsuit at the link to the TAH link at the top of this post, if you haven’t read it yet. The folks at Professional Soldiers write to tell us that there has been a PayPal account set up if you’re moved to help the legal defense.

In my opinion, I don’t think Teti has a chance and he’s probably sweating the discovery phase. But, like I’ve said before, this should be no surprise to anyone – it took him about a half hour after our first post about him for him to start threatening me with a lawsuit, and I basically gave him a tongue bath. The man can’t take criticism, even in small doses.

There has been some internet interest in our year-old post about Dan Bilzerian, the fellow who likes to tell everyone that he was almost a SEAL. Apparently, the interest is because he was arrested at LAX this week and he’s being held without bail for attempting to manufacture explosives, according to TMZ. It could also be related to the fact that he kicked a woman in the face in a Miami nightclub.

We’ve learned an arrest warrant was issued in Clark County, Nevada. Bilerzian has been charged with violating a law making it a crime to possess an explosive or incendiary device with the intent to manufacture it.

According to the criminal complaint — obtained by TMZ — Bilzerian had ammonium and aluminum powder, along with ammonium nitrate mix — and when mixed it acts like pure TNT.

The warrant was issued last month but it was confidential … under seal, presumably because cops were continuing to investigate and they didn’t want their cover blown if the warrant became public.

Bilerzian likes to tell people two stories about his abbreviated SEAL career- that he was booted in the final days of the course for punching an officer. Don Shipley says that’s unlikely. Alternately, Bilerzian tells folks that the instructors at the SEAL course hammered him in peer reviews, but instructors don’t write peer reviews – students write them. Shipley tells us it’s most likely that the male Paris Hilton trust fund baby wasn’t SEAL material and the instructors recognized that trait.

It looks like they were right.

So there was this fellow, Adam Everet Livix, who was pretending to be a Navy SEAL and living illegally in Israel. He was arrested by Shin Beit, Israel’s internal security service, for possessing explosives and plotting a terrorist attack, according to CNN;

The Christian man lived in the Palestinian-controlled West Bank communities of Hebron and Bethlehem, where Shin Beit claims that he rebuffed a Palestinian activist’s solicitation to assassinate President Barack Obama during the U.S. leader’s visit to Israel.

Livix then moved into Israel — spending more than one year there illegally, since his entry permit expired in September 2013, according to prosecutors.

In Israel, Livix “falsely presented himself as a Navy SEAL” — an elite U.S. military special operation unit — and “dealt with various criminal activities and came up with ideas for a variety of terrorist attacks,” Shin Beit said.

Livix also “expressed … his negative opinion of the Arab population of Israel and his wish to harm sites in Israel holy to Islam,” Israel’s Justice Ministry said.

NBC News says that he is wanted in the US on drug charges. He’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, he tried to buy explosives from his room mate, an Israeli soldier.

Thanks to farmgirl with a mosin nagant for the CNN link.

Chief Tango sends us a link from the Guardian in which Bradley Manning complains that his civil rights are being violated because we won’t chop off his appendage;

I filed a petition to change my name in January of this year. Even with some assistance from counsel, the petition took nearly four months to draft and file before I ever made it to a hearing before the court. The hearing and filings were public, and I had to pay fees for filing and posting a legal notice in a local newspaper costing me nearly $500. And, despite making it clear that I identify as female, and having two military psychiatrists recommend support for my transition, legally changing my name has no effect on the “legal” gender status that the government imposes upon me.

Photo identification isn’t the only thing at stake for trans people. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, one in five trans people in the US have been denied housing because of their gender identity. One in 10 have been evicted because of it.

We’re banned from serving our country in the armed services unless we serve as trans people in secret, as I did.

I’ll state the obvious here, Bradley; you’re a criminal, you don’t have any civil rights that don’t apply to your conviction. You are a traitor, you flaunted the laws of this country, you don’t get to pick and choose which laws apply to you – either they all apply to you, or none of them apply to you. You already made the choices in that regard. Sit down and shut up.

Our buddy, Don Shipley, addresses this issue about professional fatass Johnnyb34434. What Don says has pretty much been my policy to ignore the plus-sized moron. Now, other conservatives, like Laura Ingraham, have noticed him with the suddenly popular attention on stolen valor this week, so the videos are popping up everywhere. Bulldog and I were lamenting the deluge of email we expect as a result.

I doubt that anyone even makes a uniform big enough to fit over that frame, and even if they did, no one is going to believe that the dude is a veteran. I mean look at him. He’s too round and soft to play the part. I doubt he even leaves his home – who wants to carry that much stored energy around town? He’s probably going to eat himself to death pretty soon anyway. Or he’ll have a heart attack going up and down the stairs to his mom’s trailer.

Jeff Quinton sends us a link to his blog where he reported from a WBAL story about recently discharged Coast Guardsman Sterling Orlando Scott who pretended to be an Army Sergeant Major to defraud the Coast Guard Mutual Assistance Program;

CGIS agents indicated that they received information from a Chief Warrant Officer on December 2, 2014, who reported receiving a phone call from an individual that identified himself as “Sergeant Major Reese from Army Emergency Relief” on December 2nd around 1:00 p.m.

The person claiming to be “Sergeant Major Reese” indicated that he had an Army member flying to Baltimore that needed emergency travel assistance. In addition, “Sergeant Major Reese” contacted the Coast Guard Mutual Assistance Program at 2401 Hawkins Point Road in Curtis Bay asking for assistance for a soldier named “Orland Scott”, whose wife was reportedly killed in a car accident. The person calling was believed to be the defendant posing as “Sergeant Major Reese”. CGIS agents had developed information that the individual posing as “Orlando Scott” was actually Sterling Orlando Scott who had committed similar schemes under that name at military installations in Galveston, Texas, Yorktown, Pennsylvania, Savannah Georgia and Elizabeth City, North Carolina.

On December 4, 2014, the suspect showed up at the Hawkins Point Road location to receive the funds approved for his alleged crisis. Once he signed for the funds, he was immediately taken into custody by detectives and agents conducting surveillance.

Dumbass.