Category: Dumbass Bullshit

Andy sends us a link from Fox News in which anti-gun New Hampshire legislator, Timothy Horrigan is going to bat for food stamp recipients who want to use the food stamps to buy firearms;

The position Timothy Horrigan, (D-Durham), took this week on the Statehouse floor in Concord, stating that barring purchases of firearms with Electronic Benefits Transfer cards, violates the Second Amendment, put him at odds with some gun control groups and in the same camp as some pro-gun groups that often disagree with him.

“It’s not up to me to make that choice for people,” Horrigan told FoxNews.com. “I’m not saying that they should be allowed to use their benefits to buy up an arsenal, but they have a right to purchase guns for hunting or self-defense. If you or I have those rights, then they should as well. It’s not my place to tell them what to do.”

Yeah, but I’m pretty sure that he wants to tell legal firearms owners what to do with their guns. He says that the food stamp benefit isn’t all that much, so why are we so upset about them using it to buy booze, tobacco, lottery tickets and guns? Maybe because it’s for food? If they need money for food, and the need is so great that the taxpayers are paying for their food, then it should only be used for nourishment, not to fund their personal choices.

The other day, we discussed Jim Gourley and his list of ten reasons to not vote for veterans. Apparently, he didn’t feel that he’d been beat up enough so he writes another piece in the Stars & Stripes today. Basically he’s saying that he made gross generalizations about veterans to make his point; we shouldn’t make gross generalizations about veterans. What? You guys didn’t see that?

As to the respondents who disputed the validity of my reasons, I cannot agree more. They were entirely correct that the arguments against voting for veterans were gross generalizations that could not be readily applied to any candidate by simple virtue of their time in uniform. However, what these people missed is that this was the entire point of the essay.

If one cannot rationally apply blanket statements and stereotypes of military service in arguing against a candidates’ potential for elected office, then neither can they use them in support of that candidate. This is why they were listed as ten inconvenient reasons.

I guess that he was pointing out absurdity by being absurd, but you know rereading the original, I don’t see it. If that was his intent, he should have explained it in the original. He also says;

I have no strong leaning to either party. My voting record in presidential elections is 50/50, and I’m a registered independent. As for my service record, I served as an Infantry platoon leader before moving on to the Intelligence career field.

Yeah, well, I voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Joe Manchin in 2012, and I’m a registered independent, but is there anyone on this blog that can’t figure out which way I lean politically based solely on the ideas I present here?

While I wouldn’t vote for a candidate based entirely on whether they served in the military or not (Tammy Duckworth, Chuck Hagel, never), their service is certainly a big consideration, especially if their service influences their politics. And I think the rest of you would agree. However, I would never write an opinion piece that gave you reasons to vote against any candidate solely because they didn’t serve, but that’s what dingus here wrote.

I should point out that I was right when I said in the original piece that he’d hide behind his service when defending himself.

Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.

Nearly a year ago, we talked about Joe Teti, one of the stars of the Discovery Channel’s TV show, “Dual Survivor”. We proved that he was who he said he was, a Recon Marine and a Special Forces soldier. We also proved that he wasn’t a military veteran of the War Against Terror, although he did participate in the war as a civilian contractor. Those facts aren’t in dispute.

Joe thought that the characterization of him in the comments needed to be edited out and I refused to do that. It’s not the purpose of this blog to present only the opinions that we like. So that pissed Joe off and he called to make a thinly veiled threat to sic his lawyers on us. When that didn’t work, he started attacking us on his Facebook page and we got some threats from Teti-huggers.

The last few weeks, we’ve had about 20,000 visitors to those links above because Dual Survivor started it’s new season, I suppose. The publicist of that show contacted Military Times to do a puff piece on Joe. Of course, the first Google search result for Joe Teti is TAH’s post. So they called me, and I predicted correctly that they couldn’t use anything I told them in the interview. But he did lift some of my comments from the blog. From the Air Force Times;

Retired Army Sgt. 1st Class Jonn Lilyea runs the popular military blog This Ain’t Hell. He writes that while Teti’s military records largely check out — he was in the Marine Corps and Army Special Forces — “he could hardly be a ‘combat veteran of OIF and OEF’ as he claims in his bio in the way that most of us understand the term ‘veteran.’ ”

Mary Schantag, who heads both the POW Network and FakeWarriors.org, has investigated some 5,000 contested claims of combat experience and valor medals. She contends that a contractor simply cannot earn the same status that a military member can.

“I don’t care if you’re a veteran of however many contracting scenarios,” she said. “It does not make you a combat veteran.”

I’m convinced that Teti intended to portray himself as a military veteran of those wars by hinting at it. I didn’t say that in the post, but now that he has proven himself to be drama queen and a diva over my posts, I’m more than willing to say that out loud. He doesn’t like your discussion over his veteran status in his claims, so there must be something to it.

He liked that I let him have total control over what I wrote (we stayed in telephone contact through out the process) but he didn’t like that he couldn’t control your opinions. I’m pretty sure that he doesn’t like the direction that the Military Times article took, either. Needless to say that I didn’t watch the show before I wrote about it, nor have I watched it since. I’m just not interested in the subject, or in Teti, honestly. If I wanted to watch whiny little bitches, I’d watch another reality show where at least there are whiny little bitches with boobies.