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

Category: Veterans Issues

  • Autumn Sandeen still whining about DADT

    TSO sent us this link about Autumn Sandeen, the gentleman who served 20 years in Navy and then decided he didn’t want to be a gentleman any longer;

    “If I had told people about being transgender, I would have been kicked out for being mentally disaffected,” she said.

    According to military regulations, a gender identity issue is a mental disorder. Those who openly identify with the opposite sex or cross-dress are banned from enlisting. Military regulations say cross-dressing can be grounds for court-martial.

    “Mentally disaffected”? Really? “Mentally discontented and resentful especially against authority” according to the dictionary. I think you meant “defective” Autumn, old boy.

    “We’re not allowing capable people who have something to offer the country to serve their country,” said Sandeen.

    Um, you just did twenty years and retired. How are we “not allowing capable people to serve”? You mean to say that we’re not allowing capable people to serve while wearing frilly pink sun dresses.

    Attorney Bridget Wilson has represented a handful of transgender personnel kicked out of the military. She said the first change will likely first have to come from the world of mental health.

    “That means you have to get it out of the book of mental disorders because that’s the basis of the discrimination,” said Wilson.

    Well, ya know, this might mean it really is a mental disorder;

    A few years ago, Sandeen bought a female uniform for photos so she could be remembered for who she was and not for who others thought she was. It was an action that would not have been necessary if Sandeen had been allowed to serve openly.

    Why wouldn’t he prefer the uniform in which he served? And, ya know what? I haven’t found a reason to put my uniform on in the sixteen years since I retired, let alone buy a new one. Of course, I’m not an activist trying to make a stupid political point with a military uniform, either.

    Autumn Sandeen ugliest tranny in the Navy

    While federal law prevents VA facilities from performing sex-change surgeries, some VA centers provide hormone treatment and counseling.

    Why? How could that be service-connected?

    10News spoke to several groups opposed to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and they said allowing transgender troops to serve openly would be a big distraction and a problem for morale.

    Oh, a big distraction? Really? Sort of like allowing gays to serve in the military and making the transition while there’s a war on?

  • This is a TAH public service announcement.

    With the new promotion system going into affect combined with the reduced time for up or out is good idea to bring up the new online classes and what all Soldiers should know.

    First of the old system ATIA is dead. Any courses taken after January 1st will not count. Considering that most of the classes were taken off ATIA leaving less then thirty classes. But any hours earned before the new year can be grandfathered in. Make sure that you keep a printed or electronic copy for S1. At this time the S1 cannot manually update them to your ERB and to present them prior to your board. At this time the only way that seems to work in added these hours to your ATTRS transcript is to contact the Army Training Help Desk that can be found My Training section. You can sent them screen shots of your old ATIA course list as well as what is current on you ATTRS. You can tell the classes that came from the old ATIA system because they will be taged with a ATSC – LMS identifier. Oh and that Army Warrior University Enrollments will not show any new classes that have been taken not using ATIA

    The current system Army Learning Management System (ALMS) has been going through some changes. The time limit and number of chances you are given to pass your the test for the courses has been removed if registered through Army Training Requirements and Resources System (ATRRS). Instead you are given the option of downloading the class material in a PDF format that can be used when taken the test. Some computers have issues with displaying the course material and test at the same time. For this issue you have to download the PDF before you can be allowed to take the test.

    Also this is a important part. If you want credit for your classes to show in your ATRRS transcripts and ERB, you must register in ATRRS. Signing up for classes in ALMS will not show up after you complete it at this time. This is important because the number of hours listed on your ERB sent directly from your ATRRS transcripts. Also any new classes will automatically be updated to ERB without having to go to your local S1 with the 20 point increase min.

    There are some current issues with ALMS. When you complete a test make sure that you exit out correctly. Because if you do not do this, your exam will be recorded as incomplete. Even if you scored a 100. Some of the classes will have issues and I think I found one. I have taken and passed the exam at least ten times and no dice. I waiting on a reply from the ALMS and ATTRS support staff about this.

    Hopes this helps, I wanted to do this since I spent the good part of January as a acting squad leader and getting my second Soldier of the Month board win. (Don’t get too excited, I was the only one competing this time. ). I am been working on the new ACCP system since that is one of my weak areas. This April will be five years in the Army and I want to become a NCO before my sixth year. Also people have been asking me questions about the new ACCP system so I figured that it would be a good subject to talk about.

  • Happy Birthday, Frank Woodruff Buckles

    Fellow West Virginian, Frank Woodruff Buckles, the last surviving World War I doughboy who also found himself in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Second World War turns a hundred and ten years old today according to the Herald-Mail;

    A story in the May 30, 2010, edition of Parade magazine on Buckles said he lied about his age in 1917 when he was 16 so he could enlist. The Army sent him to France, where he drove ambulances and motorcycles. After the armistice, he helped return German prisoners of war to their country.

    In 1941, he was working in Manila for the American President Line, a shipping company. When the Japanese invaded the Philippines during World War II, Buckles was captured and spent 3 1/2 years in a prisoner-of-war camp before he was rescued by American forces when they retook the Island nation.

    Mr. Buckles is the subject of a movie “Pershing’s Last Patriot” to be released next year.

    You can read about him at the Smithsonian Magazine.

    Thanks to Old Trooper for the link.

  • It was the paper’s fault

    After a months long investigation of the incompetent boobery at Arlington National Cemetery, the Northern Virginia Technology Council arrived at the conclusion that paper isn’t an adequate record keeper according to the Washington Post;

    “They relied on three-by-five cards, which anyone in today’s age knows is a totally inadequate way to keep track of records of the remains,” he said.

    The cemetery also used just one fax machine, which Warner said “created an enormous bottleneck for the thousands of families trying to call in and schedule an interment for their loved ones. Backing up this fax machine was a manual system with paper and pencil.”

    Warner also said urns at the cemetery, rather than being stored properly while awaiting inurnment, would “sit for extended periods of time on a desk with simply a paper record attached to it.”

    Apparently, the paper also buried eight urns in a single burial site and left headstones laying around. Luckily, none of the people were found to be negligent, so they continue to get their forced-retirement pension checks…cuz it’s all the paper’s fault. Bad paper. No ice cream for you.

  • Town replaces vet’s pilfered medals

    When the local news station reported the theft of $5000 worth of things in Joe Torres’ home, at least one businessman in Fresno, CA decided that the theft of his medals from his tour of Vietnam was too much. From ABC30;

    Josh Valdez entered Joe Torres home with a gift Sunday. He brought medals and ribbons that are exact duplicates of the ones Torres lost in a home burglary Tuesday.

    “It makes me feel great. It makes me feel great. I appreciate this from the bottom of my heart.” said Torres.

    Valdez’s family owns a military supply store in Clovis. They were watching Action News Thursday night and decided to help Torres.

    The thief hasn’t been caught yet, but at least Joe Torres knows who his friends are.

    Thanks to ROS for the link.

  • It’s so easy to cut Defense

    Apparently, the tea party movement doesn’t know there’s a war going on either, according to the Associated Press;

    “The widely held sentiment among Tea Party Patriot members is that every item in the budget, including military spending and foreign aid, must be on the table,” said Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots. “It is time to get serious about preserving the country for our posterity. The mentality that certain programs are ‘off the table’ must be taken off the table.”

    Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe, leaders of the group FreedomWorks, recently wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial that “defense spending should not be exempt from scrutiny.”

    Of course, we can’t consider cutting money for parks, and bogus spending on saving species of doomed plants, cutting the number of redundant functions of the government, doing away with useless government agencies. Let’s cut out things that government is supposed to do like defend the nation.

    I guess cutting the defense budget and the veterans’ budget is politically expedient for the Republicans as well the Democrats.

    Thanks to Tman for the link

  • Veteran finally gets burial

    ROS sent us this video about Arthur Johnson, a Korean War veteran who died last year with no family;

    It seems that Johnson’s records were burned in the Records Center fire in 1973 and the nurse who cared for Johnson in the nursing home in Indiana couldn’t get the Records Center to find his records. So last year in November she wrote to Andre` Carson, the district’s congressman and she got no answer.

    So the reporter Cat Anderson shows up to ask the congressman why there was no answer…by the end of the day, they had Johnson’s records, and now he can get the burial he deserves. So the lesson of the story is to get your own reporter so your congress person can get the job done that they’re supposed to do. Otherwise, they’re too busy to respond to a nurse. Too busy sticking their noses in everyone else’s business doing shit they have no business doing.

    I dunno, if I lived in Indiana, I’d be tempted to let Carson’s office know what I think of them and thank them for doing what they should have done without the prodding of a TV news camera.

  • Chase apologizes for screwing over thousands of troops

    Sporkmaster wrote earlier about JP Morgan-Chase over-charging thousands of troops for the mortgages and repossessing 14 homes. Well, it seems that they’re making amends;

    JPMorgan Chase said those 14 properties have been or will be returned to the owners.

    Marine Capt. Jonathan Rowles filed a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, claiming it charged him 9 percent interest on his mortgage and then continued to insist he owed the higher interest rate even after the bank re-set his rate at 6 percent, according to NBC. So far, Rowles has been refunded part of his money, a bank official told Stars and Stripes on Tuesday.

    The refunds come after a review that the bank launched several months ago into home loans to troops, according to a statement from JPMorgan Chase. The bank now has a team dedicated to military families’ loans.

    “We made mistakes here and we are fixing them,” the statement said. “There is no finer group of people than the men and women in the armed services who fight to protect our country every day.”

    Well, if read the articles related to this story, you’d know that JP Morgan Chase were harassing the living shit out of families for months which makes me think they only recently came to that “finer group of people” conclusion. Real recently – like yesterday recently. After a big meeting to determine what this was cost them in terms of public relations recently.

    Military families who have questions about their JPMorgan Chase loan can call 1-877-469-0110.

    Questions like “how do I get out from under you blood-sucking vampires”?

    Thanks to Jeff for the link.