Category: Dumbass Bullshit

The law suit that Jimmy Janos, aka Jesse Ventura, aka “Scruff Face” has brought against deceased SEAL, Chris Kyle, goes to the courtroom tomorrow according to Fox News. Of course, since the suit can’t be against a dead man, Janos is suing the widow of Kyle instead;

“Ventura is going to have to prove falsity … but the harder part is proving actual malice,” said Raleigh Levine, a law professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul. “It has to do with what you know about the truth — that you actually knew that what you were saying was false or that you recklessly disregarded the truth.”

Besides sorting out what happened in the bar, jurors will have to assess whether Ventura’s reputation was damaged and whether Kyle used Ventura’s name to make a profit.

[…]

Big money may be at stake. Court documents show Kyle’s book had earned royalties of more than $3 million as of June 30, 2013, and the judge already has ruled that proceeds from an upcoming movie could be subject to damages, too.

Ventura has said the case isn’t about money. “It’s about clearing my name. It’s a lie,” Ventura told The Associated Press in February.

Ventura and Taya Kyle are both expected to testify during the trial, which will likely last more than two weeks.

Apparently, both sides will present eye witnesses to prove their particular view of events. I can only imagine the types of witnesses that Janos’ side will present.

Video added to keep the discussion on track;

You may remember that, in his first few months in office, the President tried to make service-connected veterans buy health insurance. The idea went down in flames eventually, after the Veterans Service Organizations stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the Oval Office. Well, some rocket surgeons, writing in the pages of the New York Times, resuscitated the idea. Michael F. Cannon and Christopher Preble think that if veterans were forced to buy health insurance somehow it would prevent war;

We propose a system of veterans’ benefits that would be funded by Congress in advance. It would allow veterans to purchase life, disability and health insurance from private insurers. Those policies would cover losses related to their term of service, and would pay benefits when they left active duty through the remainder of their lives.

To cover the cost, military personnel would receive additional pay sufficient to purchase a statutorily defined package of benefits at actuarially fair rates. The precise amount would be determined with reference to premiums quoted by competing insurers, and would vary with the risks posed by particular military jobs.

Insurers and providers would be more responsive because veterans could fire them — something they cannot do to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Veterans’ insurance premiums would also reveal, and enable recruits and active-duty personnel to compare, the risks posed by various military jobs and career paths.

Most important, under this system, when a military conflict increases the risk to life and limb, insurers would adjust veterans’ insurance premiums upward, and Congress would have to increase military pay immediately to enable military personnel to cover those added costs.

I guess the first step would be finding insurance companies who would be stupid enough to insure folks who fight our nation’s wars. It doesn’t seem very profitable to me – which is why the military has it’s own health care system, and there’s a health care system for veterans, because by it’s nature, there’s no chance for a profit in treating service-connected casualties.

The pair posit the contention that Congress wouldn’t have authorized the use of force in Iraq if they had to consider health care costs before the invasion of Hussein’s Iraq (in the form of a pay increase for the troops to cover the increase in premiums). Do we really want the full force of our foreign policy contingent on the prospective cost of health care?

Contrary to what the chattering classes believe, sometimes war is the answer and the troops understand what might be the costs to them. In a country that goes to the mall when the troops go to fight their wars, Americans need to accept the job of taking care of those troops instead of trying to find ways to compound their sacrifice.

See, now I’m confused. I was told during the debate about rescinding the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that gays only wanted to serve the country in a military role, that was all the debate was about. So the local CBS station in San Francisco reports that the committee for the Gay Pride event in that city has blocked the National Guard from setting up a recruiting booth at the event;

Last year, the National Guard had a booth at Pride Weekend for the first time – staffed by gay soldiers – following the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. The Guard was also welcomed at Pride events in Los Angeles and San Diego.

The military’s current ban on transgender service members serving openly, minority recruitment tactics, and sexual assault scandals were factors in the board’s decision, Pride Executive Director George Ridgely told LGBT news weekly Bay Area Reporter.

[…]

There were some protests against the National Guard’s presence at last year’s San Francisco event, which also featured the controversy over Army Pvt. Bradley Manning of Wikileaks fame being selected – then dropped – as grand marshal of the parade.

First of all, I’d point out that the California National Guard had nothing to do with Manning’s conviction for espionage. I know all of those folks in uniform look alike to you people. Secondly, I’d point out that Manning was convicted of espionage. Thirdly, you people complained for years that you couldn’t serve openly and now you’re blocking your own people from access to serving in the military? I’m only looking for some consistency here.

By the way, Manning has been invited to be the Grand Marshall of the Gay Pride events in San Francisco for two years in a row now. I’m pretty sure that the California National Guard is dodging a bullet by not recruiting from a demographic that wants to honor a traitorous spy.