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

Category: Veterans Issues

  • Ed Schultz is not an advocate for veterans

    Dominick sends us a link to the Blaze in which a 23-year veteran decides to waste his time by calling Ed Schultz to disagree with him on Obama and veterans.

    The veteran tells Schultz that he was one of the thousands who were kicked off of Tricare Prime (that we’ve been talking about for years here) and Schultz all but call him a liar.

    “First of all, you have, uh, your facts wrong,” Schultz responded, changing the subject and hollering over the caller when he tried to respond. “I’m not going to freaking argue with you, Russell. You’re full of crap, okay? You’re full of it. The government shutdown hurt the veterans. Is that wrong or right?”

    “It hasn’t hurt us yet,” Russell said.

    Schultz then vowed to “break your idiot argument down piece by piece!”

    The caller again reiterated that he is one of the 171,000 retired veterans who lost their benefits, a move that was supposedly intended to “reduce the cost of providing health care to military retirees.” The Democrats refuse to consider the Republican’s proposal to address the problem, he said. The vet also said he didn’t retire from the military for Obamacare.

    “You have your facts wrong,” Schultz repeated, without actually explaining what facts were wrong. “You know what, you need a right-wing talker.”

    Schultz and the Democrats, in general, pretend to care about veterans until one disagrees with them and tries to bring up facts, then we’re “drinking the Kool Aid” and lying.

  • NRA’s Life of Duty; Dom Raso

    Comm_Social_dom_training

    The folks at NRA Life of Duty send us Navy SEAL Dom Raso’s latest commentary on Training;

    Dom says owning a firearm means little if you don’t train with it.

    They also send us a link to their membership page where active duty military and first responders can sign up for the NRA at no cost for the first year.

    There is also a link to a Frontlines special report on private citizens filling the gap left by the government in regards to fallen soldiers.

  • Sunny Anderson; Air Force vet on Food Network

    I know you guys talk about food and cooking when you think that I’m not looking, so I thought this might interest some of you. The folks at ABC News sent us this piece they did on Army brat and Air Force veteran Sunny Anderson who has a show on the Food Network. She says she began her broadcast career in Korea on AFN;

    Long before becoming a Food Network star, Anderson joined the U.S. Air Force in 1993 and worked as a radio broadcaster in Seoul, South Korea and in San Antonio, Texas. “I knew that there were radio stations, television stations, newspapers, and magazines, for the military, by the military, and I wanted to be a part of that,” says Anderson. She picked this field out of passion and since she wasn’t going to be a “lifer” in the military she focused on a career that she could do on the outside. “My transition from the Air Force started before I even got in the Air Force,” she says.

    She has a cookbook coming out – ”Sunny’s Kitchen: Easy Food for Real Life”.

  • Alliana Guitron; Ms. Veteran America

    Alliana Guitron

    According to YNN, Alliana Guitron, a Syracuse native and the President’s videographer was named Ms. Veteran America;

    Guitron has been serving her country since 2000. She is a Combat Documentation Production Specialist and has traveled the world with the President, Vice President and First Lady as their videographer.

    Guitron currently lives in Maryland where she is working on a degree in criminal justice.

    The Ms. Veteran American website explains the award;

    The purpose of this event is to showcase “The Woman Beyond the Uniform“. As women, some of our femininity becomes lost when we wear the uniform; because we have to blend in with the boys. Our grace, poise, beauty and talents become camouflaged during our military service.

    Along with being Soldiers, Marines, Airmen, and Sailors; we are also Mothers, Wives, Daughters, and Sisters!

    Proceeds from this event provides housing for homeless female Veterans and their children.

    Last year’s winner was Denyse Gordon whose focus was on sexual violence in the military during her reign, according to National Public Radio;

    Gordon first experienced harassment early in her career, from a high-ranking civilian in her squadron who touched her and spoke to her inappropriately. She told her superiors, who questioned her story and warned her that coming forward could affect the perpetrator’s retirement. She felt blamed and never filed a complaint.

    Later in her career, a man in another branch of the military physically assaulted Gordon. “He was an officer, and I was enlisted,” she says. “So if you tell, you get in trouble, and I didn’t want to feel the scrutiny that I felt at my first base, so there was no way I was telling. There was no way.” So she buried it, stayed in the military and threw herself into her schoolwork, earning multiple degrees.

    Gordon says she blames the men who harassed and assaulted her, but not the military as an institution. “There are individuals that are flat out not going to believe you. And it’s a hard pill to swallow when it’s your superiors, when it’s your close friends because if they feel if you come forward you will ruin unit cohesion, you will ruin that esprit de corps,” says Gordon. “And I hope one day that the leadership would put so much pressure on any offenders that they would think twice, three times before even venturing into that arena.”

    That’s probably the most mature view of the problem that I’ve read – she blames the men who harassed her and not the military, in general, like most of my liberal friends seem to do.

  • Media mischaracterizes vets at rally

    This is the headline of Salon’s article about the rally yesterday;

    Salon banner

    Of course, it says “protesters”, but what they mean to say is that TWO protesters engaged in waving Confederate flags and shouting that Obama is a Muslim. But they make it sound as if the entire protest contingent was a bunch of right wing nuts. It was Larry Klayman who made the statement, according to CNN, and as near as I can tell, Larry Klayman isn’t even a veteran according to the biographies that are on the internet;

    “I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up,” said Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch, a conservative political advocacy group.

    Here’s the URL to the CNN article and it’s original title;

    CNN URL

    Of course, what the media is trying to do is paint veterans as right wing crackpots instead of people who are trying to win back our dignity and our political voice. Of course, we must be partisan. Because we don’t like balancing the budget on our backs and because we don’t like our memorials shut down in our faces, we must be racist, too, especially if some dude off the street showed up with a confederate flag;

    Confed. flag at vet rally

    I guess none of the reporters could ask the dude with the flag which side he represented, or if he was a veteran or not before they splashed their broad brush on the entire crowd.

  • More pictures of the Million Vets March

    Someone sent us their pictures around the Million Vets march in DC yesterday, October 13, 2013;

    MVM1

    MVM2

    MVM3

    MVM4

    MVM5

    MVM6

    MVM7

    The Park Service says that they arrested one person, but that the arrest was unrelated to the rally.

  • Million Vets March

    The March on DC today, to take back our memorials kicked off on a drizzly morning when some veterans took down the barricades around the World War II memorial as well as some of the others. Our buddy, The Sniper, was there;

    Sniper at the Memorials

    From Fox News;

    “Veterans have proven they are not timid and we will not be timid and calling out any that use military as pawns,” [former Governor Sarah] Palin told the crowd assembled at the Million Vet March on Memorials. “We can only be America, home of the free, if we are America, home of the brave.”

    Protesters shouting “U.S.A.” and “Tear down these walls” are putting the blame squarely on President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders.

    From Twitchy, some folks carried the barricades to pile up in front of the White House;

    Barrycades

    From DC local News;

    Bruce Wing and his wife traveled from Atlanta to support the veterans.

    “The shutting down of these memorials, if one looks at right and wrong, that’s clearly wrong,” he says.

  • Million Vet March on the Memorials

    Our friend, Harry Riley, sends this message;

    MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT!

    What: Veterans March to take back our war memorials

    When: Sunday, October 13, 2013, at 9:00 AM

    Where: World War II Memorial, Washington, DC

    Why: The Obama Administration is using the government shutdown as an excuse to keep our veterans from acknowledging the debt owed to them and their predecessors. This is unforgivable. It is also unjustified, as no taxpayer funds are spent by keeping these shrines open. We will open them ourselves, if that’s what it takes.

    Be with Special Operations Speaks on Sunday as we join other veteran-support organizations in repossessing what belongs to us and the nation, not to a bunch of political hypocrites.

    Keep up to date on this event by checking our website: www.vetmarch.com. The latest information will be posted as soon as it’s available.

    We know that there may be some degree of confrontation, given the anti-military attitude of the administration. It is our intention to avoid confrontation, and we request that you join us in avoiding any kind of physical contact with Park Rangers, police, or other law-enforcement personnel. Give them no excuse to hijack the moment.

    Pass the word. BE THERE!

    There’s more information at this link.