Category: Support the troops

We bounced this story around last night between me, TSO and Old Trooper, but the only source we could find was iReport at CNN, the same place that told Ballduster McSoulpatch’s tale of woe about being discharged from the Army as a colonel for being gay. So you can see why we didn’t run with it last night. But today Fox News tells the tale about Staff Sergeant Chad Staples, veteran of the war in Iraq where he was wounded and paralyzed from the waist down when he shielded another soldier with his body.

So he was in a Best Western hotel when their elevator broke down. He called the front desk for help getting his bags and wheelchair down the stairs;

The hotel employee [Holly Oyerbides], Staples said, replied: “’What do you want me to do about it?’ She laughed at him.”

At that point, Staples said his son used a couple “poor word choices” by using two expletives.

“He said, ‘Are you [expletive] serious? I’m in an [expletive] wheelchair,’” Robert Staples said. “He then hung up the phone and then threw his bags and wheelchair down the stairs and slid down on his backside.”

Best Western representatives, in a statement posted Thursday on its website, apologized for the incident, citing a power outage that impacted the area.

See, the story sounded too far-fetched when we heard it last night without some more background, but everything led back to iReport.

I hope the little shit got fired, too. If she couldn’t help, she didn’t have to laugh and answer as she did. Oyerbides was over-employed, obviously, if she couldn’t treat the man with a small measure of decency.

If you’ve been around here awhile, you’ve seen occasional comments from our buddy, Blanka Stratford. She wants to give you guys an opportunity to help her raise some money for charity while she rides a bike from Boston to New York later this year. I’ll let her tell you the details;

This September I will be participating in a 300-mile bike ride from Boston to New York City as a means of generating funds for Housing Works, which is a NY-based non-profit organization fighting the twin crises of AIDS and homelessness. The motive behind this cycle ride is not only to help the aforementioned group, which also advocates for health care reform, but to expand the meaning of “Soldiers are Heroes” beyond combat and reinforce the fact that service men and women are at the foundation of not only America’s communities, but the world’s. Although this initial charity run is domestic, “Soldiers are Heroes” boasts thousands of international members. So, in the near-future, I am expecting to develop an intercontinental merger of service members, veterans, friends and family members who are willing to not only share their thoughts and experiences, but who are also willing to take the next step forward in uniting the world through discourse and diplomacy.

Within the next few months, I will be providing greater detail to the significance of “Soldiers are Heroes” and also sharing my personal experiences and setbacks as a combat veteran diagnosed with PTSD, an American citizen, a woman, and finally a human being who does not want to turn her head away from the problems our societies face. The bike ride sustaining the efforts of Housing Works is only the first step in transforming “Soldiers are Heroes” from a singular cause to a full-fledged non-profit international organization to aid those who serve our respective countries and to place these experienced men and women in positions where their voices will be heard. But I need all the help I can get. If you could pass this along to any of your friends, I’d also greatly appreciate it.

Thank you for reading this and take care!

Blanka

So, if you can pry a few bucks loose, send it her way at this link.

Last week, we were visited by that great pro-troop, pro-American band Madison Rising. This week, they’re asking for our help to get them started on their new album and their country-wide tour. You can go to their Kickstart project page and donate as little as a $1 to help them get started.

As I mentioned last week, the lead singer, David Bray, is a former Navy Corpsman who served with 2/2 Marines. That ought to be worth a coupla bucks anyway.

In case you missed them last week, there are a couple of videos and links to their music at that post. It’s hard to get me excited about music that isn’t country these days, but this band is the exception. I’m pretty sure you’ll like them, too.

By the way, as an aside, they offered to put on a free concert at Zucotti Park while it was being occupied last year and they weren’t allowed a permit to play – so that makes them good guys.

The folks at Johnson & Sekin wanted us to know about the veteran organization Heroes on the Water;

The Heroes on the Water program lets mother nature do what she has done for hundreds of years: heal. It’s an individual thing, each wounded warrior draws something different from it. But to a person, each one reconnects with a part of himself or herself that they thought was lost.

Heroes on the Water helps injured service members with their physical and mental recovery using the therapeutic qualities of fishing from kayaks. Every HOW event across the country brings together wounded military personnel for guided kayak fishing excursions. Participants are taught kayaking and kayak fishing basics, and sometimes adaptive kayaks and paddling equipment are required. Warriors hang out with other kayak anglers, connect with colleagues and most of all leave behind stresses and memories for several hours communing with nature.

I’ve never been a Kiss fan, well, until now. I don’t have to listen to the music to like them, right? A couple of months ago, the band was hiring veterans for their upcoming show and now this.

Andrew Leahey at the Washington Times reports that they held a private concert for 1600 members of the military last night;

“We owe so much to the brave men and women who voluntarily put on that uniform and go to places where people don’t like them,” Gene Simmons explained earlier this week, several hours before he and his three band mates — Paul Stanley, Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer — paid a visit to patients at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

“The vets that we’ve met never ask for praise, glory or money,” he added. “They just want to re-enter society and get a job. We do these all-vet shows to show our appreciation, because what they do for us is beyond comprehension.”

“We used to stop every single show in the middle,” Mr. Simmons remembered, “and hoist the Stars and Stripes before saying the Pledge of Allegiance, right there in the middle of the concert. Very cornball, very not cool, but I don’t care. Sometimes, you gotta flush cool down the toilet and just arch your back and stand proudly, realizing that you’re living in the greatest country on the face of the planet.”

The whole article is worth a read, so go.

We’ve put up some of the music from pro-troops band Madison Rising before, so I was a little shocked when I opened up our email today and found an email from Becky Bray, the wife of lead singer, David Bray, asking us to post some links for them on TAH. She mentioned that Dave Bray was a Navy Corpsman with the 2/2 Marines, so that alone ought to get him a few more fans.

I noticed at their website, they have a couple of tracks that are right up this crowd’s alley. “The Right to Bear” and “Where Was The Media Then”.

But here are the vids she sent us – turn up your speakers (unless you’re at work) they rock pretty hard;

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