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

Category: Media

  • Maddow on Fort Hood shooting

    rachel_maddow

    Are you sitting down? You may need to before you read this article sent to us by Greg. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow criticized the media for being lazy after the Fort Hood shooting for concluding that Ivan Lopez’ tour of Iraq was the reason that he killed three others before turning the gun on himself;

    “If we think of every other mass shooting in America as somehow particular to the circumstances of that shooting but this one as explained away as ‘Oh he was an Iraq vet’… not only does that not help us understand what happened here, it is an offense against every other veteran who right now is getting that stigma shoveled onto them by a lazy civilian world and a lazy civilian media who find this dangerous veteran stereotype to be an easier thing to point to than America has a bad mass shooting problem.”

    I’m no fan of this Maddow fella, but at least he got this one right, although, I’m thinking that he is gong to turn it around on us and blame the lack of new gun laws. You can watch the video at the link to Huffington Post above.

  • SPC Ivan Lopez; the anomaly

    Yesterday, thousands of veterans suffering from PTS didn’t shoot anyone, however one, Ivan Lopez did kill three people and left 16 injured. One female military policewoman confronted Lopez and he did what he should have done before he started his spree. I heard Lopez’ name early in the erratic news broadcasts and checked AKO (Army Knowledge Online) but found nothing on any Ivan Lopez at Fort Hood – they must have scrubbed his account before releasing his name.

    LTG Mark Milley, Third Corps and Fort Hood commander of the sprawling central Texas Army base, said in a press briefing that Lopez was being treated for PTS although the diagnosis wasn’t finalized quite yet. Well, we know that people who do have PTS don’t normally hurt other people, they hurt themselves, but not the rest of us. So it’s unfair of Milley and the media to check off the PTS box as the cause for this incident.

    From Fox News;

    The suspect had arrived at Fort Hood in February from another base in Texas. He was taking medication, and there were reports that he had complained after returning from Iraq about suffering a traumatic brain injury, Milley said. The commander did not elaborate.

    An FBI official told Fox News there no initial indication that the gunman was motivated by any religiously-fueled ideology. “But it is still early in the investigation and we are not ruling anything out,” the official said.

    Late Wednesday, investigators had already started looking into whether the gunman’s combat experience caused lingering psychological trauma. Among the possibilities they planned to explore was whether a fight or argument on base triggered the shooting.

    Lopez was a truckdriver, so while I’ll buy into the TBI theory, the PTS not so much. The media is reporting that Lopez bought the Smith & Wesson .45 recently, and since the military doctors hadn’t diagnosed him yet, that seems reasonable. I’m sure that he hadn’t shown any predisposition to violence, so there was no reason to alert the FBI to put him on the NICS system.

    But, the media has arrived at their preconceived notion that it was PTS that made him kill people, so case closed, but like I said, how do they explain the fact that everyday, thousands of veterans with PTS haven’t murdered anyone?

  • Washington Post; Pain & Pride

    Washington Post - Pride and Pain

    The Washington Post has an article on Sunday they titled After the Wars; A legacy of pride and pain, of course it’s about the current newest generation of veterans, and basically, it’s just how the Post blames Bush for taking us to war and helps veterans feel like victims of the Republicans. Of course they do a good job of that, if you read the comments after the article. However, there is a portion with which I agree.

    The vets hail from families where service in the military is tradition: More than four in 10 have fathers who were in the military, and half have at least one grandparent who was. Almost 40 percent say all or most of their friends have served in the military. By contrast, a national Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted in December found that 32 percent of U.S. adults had “hardly any” or no friends who have been in the military.

    Slightly more than half yearn for their time in the wars. Of them, almost two-thirds cited the bonds they forged with fellow military personnel. “It was a unique time,” said Kevin Ivey, a retired Army helicopter pilot who spent a year in Afghanistan starting in 2004. “I miss my crew, the folks I was with, the organization. You make lifelong friendships in war.”

    Many vets see themselves as a cut above the rest of American society, as noble volunteers who stepped up to promote and protect U.S. interests while the rest of the nation went about its business as usual. Sixty-three percent think service members are more patriotic than those who are not in the military; 54 percent think the average member of the military has better moral and ethical values than the general civilian population.

    Almost seven in 10 feel that the average American routinely misunderstands their experience, and slightly more than four in 10 believe the expressions of appreciation showered upon veterans — often at airports, bars and sporting events — are just saying what people want to hear. More than 1.4 million vets feel disconnected from civilian life.

    “A lot of vets find it easier to talk to each other, especially about their wartime experiences,” said Jennifer Smolen, who served in Iraq for a year with an Army Reserve engineer unit and is now an active member of a Seattle area American Legion post. “There’s a feeling that civilians who weren’t there just don’t get it.”

    Yeah, I spent a night trying to drink Silver Spring, Maryland dry with some Afghanistan veterans and that’s pretty much what I told them, like the Vietnam veterans before them, they did what they knew in their hearts what most of the country couldn’t burden themselves with. When it’s all said and done, that’s what it boils down to. There are tough jobs that most people aren’t willing to do, especially if they have to put their lives and their families on hold. Besides, someone they don’t know will probably do the job for them.

    But, if they do happen to know someone who goes to war to protect them, boy, you’ll hear mentioned in every conversation to prove their own patriotism that their cousin’s brother-in-law’s neighbor is in Afghanistan.

    The readers at the Washington Post have a very low opinion of veterans and the troops and they make things up about them, like that teacher we talked about from Butte Community College last week.

    They think that we don’t have a choice other than military service, that we can’t get into college because we’re poor or we’re stupid. But, they get into college, and most of them have to take remedial classes and get a four-year degree in six years. Poor has nothing to do with anything – everyone can get loans and grants these days. Especially if you’re poor. Maybe that argument worked well with my generation, but in this day and age not so much.

    And who says that college is the end-all, be-all? My office was all college graduates and they were the dumbest people I’ve known. I went to college twenty years after I graduated from high school, and I didn’t learn a damn thing that I hadn’t learned already in high school. College is just an excuse these days to continue living off your parents while you put off making decisions about your future for four-to-six more years.

    Obviously, veterans didn’t put off that decision. We hang out with each other because we already have life pretty much figured out. We know what real poverty is, and we’ve seen it. Poverty doesn’t exist in the US. We’ve seen the worst that people do to each other.

    We’ve seen the government at it’s worst and at it’s best and we understand that there’s not much difference between the two. We also know the difference between a job and a profession, and it has nothing to do with a pretty certificate on a wall.

    This generation doesn’t have hippies spitting on them in airports, but they have the media and the liberals doing the soft-classism bit in the job market. Every time a veterans farts in public, it’s news. yes, they run the news stories about the veteran heroes who rush into buildings, but those stay in the news for a day or so. But when a fricken World War II veteran shoots up the Holocaust Museum, it stays in the news for months, until he finally dies awaiting trial.

    A bigot who was thrown out of the Army more than a decade ago happens shoots up a temple and the VETERAN part of his history leads the news for months. The lies and exaggerations get to the point where a 21-year-old can’t get a sales job at Macy’s because she’s too scary to put on the sales floor based on her experiences during her deployments.

    Sure, it’s because the straights don’t understand our experiences, but it’s because the media only want to lead with the blood on our hands – the same hands with which we hold our children and hug our wives and stroke our pets. The same hands with which we begin friendships and do our jobs.

    But the real killer of the article is this part;

    Only 53 percent of them believe the war in Afghanistan has been worth fighting, and just 44 percent say the same for Iraq. Slightly more than a third — almost 900,000 vets — “strongly” believe the Iraq war was not worth it.

    Yeah, well, ask any American if the world isn’t just little bit better without Saddam Hussein and his sons in it. Ask them if they wish bin Laden was still alive. I’m not going to defend the ways in which those wars were fought, but the fact that we needed to fight them can’t be diminished.

    The Washington Post was never on the troops’ side while the wars were being fought, neither were many of the Washington Post’s readers and all that did was encourage our enemies. Touting our too-soon withdrawal from Iraq and the one coming up in Afghanistan probably contributed to “not worth it” poll result. al Qaeda is sitting pretty in Falujah and they’re kicking ass leading up to the Afghan election.

    That can all be laid at the feet of the anti-war crowd who can’t support the military during a Republican presidency because of their petty politics. The troops have done their job despite who was in the White House and they did it without wavering, it’s too damn bad that the people they’re doing that for can’t give them the same consideration.

    But, at least we have each other. And the only secret handshake to get accepted into our circle is to speak our name. Our name resonates across the generations, from each of our country’s wars. We have veterans from every conflict since and including the Korean War here and each of us has been accepted upon arrival. Well, with the exception of the liars.

    Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.

  • Stolen Valor: What it Should be Teaching America about its Veterans

    I am going to open up with this link to a young man explaining why he donned an Army Combat Uniform and wore it around campus, until several young veterans called him out and asked him to remove the garment. (This is the link to the original video) The Veterans were arrested for Disturbing the Peace and making threats. The young man who was wearing that uniform has now become the victim in the eyes of his local news organization–in this act of bullying–as they portrayed it.

    Here are some simple facts to warm this conversation up:

    • The young man is well within his rights to wear that uniform as he pleases. It is a first amendment right.

    • The news organization can say whatever they want as long as it does not endanger the public. It is a first amendment right.

    • Disturbing the Peace is defined as: “a crime generally defined as the unsettling of proper order in a public space through one’s actions. This can include creating loud noise by fighting or challenging to fight, disturbing others by loud and unreasonable noise (including loud music), or using offensive words.” These young veterans legally violated this law.

    I’m not disputing any of this. That is the country we live in. What this case does do is highlight the differences between the veteran class and the non-veteran class.

    I am going to focus on two key points. The first being, why Stolen Valor means so much to us as Veterans, and why civilians don’t understand. The second being, a highlight of the behavior differences between Veterans and civilian personalities as highlighted in this case.

    Why Stolen Valor matters.

    Lawyers, doctors, and accountants are all professional fields in which you have to meet a series of minimum requirements to be able to participate. And all of those careers carry felony charges for impersonating and practicing the profession without proper licensure. There are no laws supporting the impersonation of a service member. Why? Because it poses no risk to the public for the impersonation. It isn’t fair, but it is the truth.

    All of those jobs carry with them a high amount of effort to enter into those fields. They also carry high financial rewards compared to the Military, which has high costs and fewer rewards, which is why Stolen Valor has become such a hotly contested issue for us. The civilian population doesn’t understand that we don’t put any piece of our uniform on without earning it, not the stripe down my Dress Blue pants, the bars on my sleeve, or the ribbons and badges on my chest. Every one of those items is a representation of a cost paid, either by myself, those beside me, or those that came before me, individuals who I am now able to call my brothers and sisters. All of that said, those ribbons, badges, bars and stripes when added together don’t amount for anything of marketable value.

    They represent something.

    The licensure attained by doctors, lawyers and accountants has a marketable value. They will attain a higher wage. That licensure, which they worked so hard for, does have value after they earned it.

    I have only placed my awards onto one resume (by request of a military provided resume coach), and I was offered an entry level position.

    I understand, it is capitalism. But when we remember the blood, sweat, and tears that go into everything that makes up our uniforms, and all that we got from it was a strip of cloth or a shiny badge . . . that is why we get so emotional about them. That is why you can hear that Ranger’s voice cracking when he fended off the passive-aggressive assaults from the crowd, while he defended something he earned, which was being portrayed by someone as cheap trinkets that the young man wanted to earn.

    The difference between veterans and civilians.

    75% of Americans do not meet the minimum requirements for military service according to a report titled: “Ready, Willing, and Unable to Serve,” published by Mission Readiness (You can find more information about them at www.missionreadiness.org). According to this article in the NY Times (which also addresses the divide between the military and civilian class) less than .5% of Americans are presently serving. That means that only 2% of those eligible to enter military service do so currently. There was a time, WWII, when 12% of the US population served in the military, which was in a time of the draft. This is important, because in an all-volunteer military we need to consider the types of people that it will attract, especially in a time of war. Whereas, during draft time, those able were obligated to serve, capturing a more diverse (not demographically, but value-wise) segment of the population as opposed to today. That, is actively serving, including guard and reserves.

    The total population of Americans who are veterans is about 10% now. I want to throw this number out there, although it is less important for my argument.

    Today, when America is still technically at war, there is no hiding the potential consequences of military service. This is a spectacular filtering process. By virtue of the War on Terror, we only recruit those who understand that going to war is a distinct possibility. Those people are more devoted toward personal and national values, hard working, and risk averse, which is also an important consideration.

    We don’t see the world the same way, and we are quite willing to step outside of our comfort zones, which is important when we consider how insulated America is from the reality of the struggle to survive. We pay lip-service to daily struggles, but in the developed world, if we completely quit trying, there is a government sponsored safety net to help us meet our daily needs. Only by stepping outside of that net, which is a substantial effort, can we find within our nation the daily struggle to survive.

    The consequence of this insulation is our transition up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. We no longer need to concern ourselves with the physiological or the safety levels, and have moved into a mixture of the love/belonging and esteem levels. If you want proof of this, go onto your Facebook page. You will find it all over, watching how friends and family interact and what they talk about. Or, for that matter, look back to the News 10’s representation of the interaction between the young man and the veterans who called him out. Their focus wasn’t on the safety afforded the country by those veterans who have put themselves into harms way, it was on the young man’s need to belong to an organization he is unable to join–because he is unfit.

    Unfit.

    In a nation where everyone wants to belong, there are organizations in which we are unfit to join. You simply don’t meet the minimum requirements. These requirements aren’t set forth by any small measure. The consequence of us loosening the standard on the physical and mental capabilities of an applicant has a far greater consequence compared to that of most civilian sector jobs. In the most extreme of positions–which makes up approximately 12% of the military population, the remainder being in support roles–the consequence of being unfit may potentially have deadly consequences. Now, this isn’t having to come in on Saturday to finish a report, or receiving a lower tip from an unsatisfied table. In the combat arms community, being unfit is a gross liability to one’s self and those around them. Even our support elements, which are less in the direct line of fire by the nature of their duties, understand that their failure to act isn’t a late shipment and an unhappy customer. It is a nineteen-year-old who doesn’t have ammo or chow.

    These types of extreme circumstances, paired with having a military raised in a time of war, create a culture of doers. Within the ranks, we don’t have a culture that promotes conversation. I promotes action. We need to get things done now, or this will be the consequence. That isn’t true for the better part of our country, which has a heavy focus on conversation, which was why in this video we heard several people asking those Rangers why they were going after the civilian impersonator. They asked the question, confused at the veracity in which these Rangers addressed the problem in front of them, and when they got an answer they walked away or called the police (Because public safety is not the responsibility of every citizen, it is the duty of the police officer).

    The sad part is our voices are being drowned out, because the indifferent, unaffected class of civilian Americans who are untouched by war are a growing population, while the population of veterans is dwindling.

    US Population 317,736,457 (Taken on Mar 22, 2014 at 2127 UTC US Census Bureau)

    Post 9/11 Vets 1,761,446  (Taken from US Census Bureau)

    It is only a matter of time before the .5% of veterans is all that remains of our veteran population. And this nation’s perspective only further alienates their veterans, a class of people who have dropped down a level on the Hierarchy of Needs on behalf of others, those who are currently portraying us as bullies and impersonating us to gain recognition for acts that were not their own. We have foregone the safety level, and sometimes physiological level, and have stepped down the pyramid. It wasn’t for our own sakes, the economic return wasn’t there, especially compared with the opportunities that exist in the civilian sector–at a much lower cost. We did this because we believe in something, that it was worth it for others for us to do these things.

    The hard part is awareness. There is only one way to educate a person about the differences in perspectives to truly make them understand. But that was why we did it, so that those who we left behind wouldn’t have to endure what we did. The consequence of our own actions is the ignorance of the civilian population. As a result of these differences, the insurmountable divide that is ever growing between a population of ignorant individuals and a dwindling population of the aware will only get worse. They will segregate themselves from us and us from them.

  • CBS News correspondent leaves

    Sharyl Attkisson left her job as a CBS News correspondent the other day, apparently because the news agency wouldn’t run her articles which were critical of the Obama presidency. According to our buddy Eric Wemple, a media critic at the Washington Post;

    Rumors of Attkisson’s stormy relations with her superiors at CBS News have made the rounds for months and months. In conversations from last year, CBS News sources told the Erik Wemple Blog that Attkisson, who came to the network from CNN two decades ago, was frustrated that more of her reporting on Benghazi and other investigative pieces didn’t make “The CBS Evening News” with greater frequency.

    Attkisson herself didn’t help matters when she said on a Philadelphia radio show last May that her computers had been hacked, and she even went so far as to suggest that the intrusions could have had something to do with her work investigating the government. CBS News later confirmed breaches of her computer, though it never disclosed who had been responsible for them.

    I suppose that being a reporter for a news organization who won’t run your work is like being a plumber who no one allows to fix the plumbing. CBS did put her product on their webpages, but it hardly ever made it to Americans’ television screens. But CBS news never makes it to my TV screen anyway.

    In the comments, Washington Post readers are glad that she left because Koch Brothers, Faux News, etc… I suppose that they’re unaware that the things they believe are wrong because they can’t stomach criticism of “their guy”, that no real information will penetrate their tiny, closed minds. They’re feelings are more important than facts.

  • Those American Olympians and their “Alternative Lifestyles” . . . .

    David Wise’s alternative lifestyle leads to Olympic gold

    The story is from NBC’s coverage of the Olympics.  And yeah – that’s the title they actually used for the article.

    Want to know what NBC apparently considers an “alternative lifestyle”?   Well, let’s see:

    • Being married and a good father at age 23;
    • Spending quality time with his family vice constant partying with friends;
    • Attending church regularly; and
    • Having thoughts about becoming a Pastor one day in the future.

    Sheesh.  “Alternative lifestyle” my azz.  Sounds more to me like what’s generally called a “fine young man”.

    But remember:  the mainstream media isn’t biased or pushing an agenda.  No, not at all.

  • Piers Morgan: America turned on me

    Andy sends us a link to an AFP link about CNN pulling the plug on Piers Morgan’s show, whatever it was called. Of course, Piers doesn’t admit that it’s because he’s a talentless hack who couldn’t even attract Leftists to the slot formerly home to Larry King. He blames Americans for not being nuanced enough to appreciate him;

    “Look, I am a British guy debating American cultural issues, including guns, which has been very polarizing, and there is no doubt that there are many in the audience who are tired of me banging on about it,” he added.

    […]

    America has suffered an epidemic of gun violence over the last three decades. The vast majority of weapons used have been semi-automatic weapons obtained legally by the killers.

    Yeah, nice try, there Agency France, but gun violence has actually declined in the last three decades, but then just saying it makes it true, huh?

    So, the anglophile New York Times writes;

    Mr. Morgan’s approach to gun regulation was more akin to King George III, peering down his nose at the unruly colonies and wondering how to bring the savages to heel. He might have wanted to recall that part of the reason the right to bear arms is codified in the Constitution is that Britain was trying to disarm the citizenry at the time.

    He regrets none of it, but clearly understands his scolding of “stupid” opponents of gun laws was not everyone’s cup of tea.

    “I’m in danger of being the guy down at the end of the bar who is always going on about the same thing,” he said. He added that he was sure there were plenty of people in the heartland angry “about this British guy telling them how to lead their lives and what they should do with their guns.”

    Americans don’t like to be told how to think about an issue, we just want the facts, but cable news has become 24-hour editorializing from journalists, who really aren’t experts on any subject except themselves and their feelings. We don’t really give a rat’s tiny, furry ass about what journalists think about an issue. So, CNN, here’s the secret to an effective news show – report the news and let us guess about the politics of the person giving that news to us. Morgan’s problem wasn’t that he was British preaching to Americans, it was that he was preaching to us, no matter what kind of accent he has. We don’t watch Rachel Maddow for the same reason and he doesn’t have an accent.

  • NRA news; Dom Raso: Knee-Jerk Reactions

    Comm_Social_KneeJerkReactions

    The folks at NRA News sends us their latest commentary from Dom Raso who talks about the media and their habit of injecting their opinions into the news, especially when it comes to shooting incidences;

    Journalists spend their lives chasing stories. And that’s fine; that’s their job. But their job is not to analyze the situation and then broadcast their own opinions to the world.

    The shooting at the Navy yard in Washington is a prime example. I mean, the trash and useless information they put on the air was embarrassing. I felt like I was listening to little kids point out the obvious, and then repeat it over and over, adding in more of their own uninformed speculations each time.

    But they just can’t help themselves, and even worse, they pretend to be instant experts on every subject. A plane crashes, and Piers Morgan’s an aviator. A bomb goes off and he’s a warrior. The next thing you know, what’s dominating the airwaves are the opinions of the media – instead of the facts, evidence and the truth of the matter.