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

Category: VoteVets

  • Beeker on Bergdahl

    Beeker on Bergdahl

    Brandon Friedman, known around TAH as Beeker, has been trying to besmirch the reputation of Bowe Bergdahl’s platoon mates at least since 2014, when we first noticed him doing that. The Daily Caller noticed that he’s back at it.

    Friedman probably isn’t the best judge of military leadership – he worked for Jon Solz at Move On’s VoteVets, then when VoteVets board member, Tammy Duckworth went to Shinseki’s Department of Veterans’ Affairs, she took Friedman along with a bunch of other VoteVets writers, at the moment that their blog crashed, with a little shove from TAH. Then, as the Shinseki ship crashed on the rocks, Friedman and Duckworth jumped ship ahead of the other rats.

    I guess it’s not hard for Friedman to defend Bergdahl’s walkabout, seein’s how Friedman went on a walkabout to get away from the impending leadership failures at VoteVets and at Shineki’s VA.

  • Trump blocks VoteVets on Twitter

    Trump blocks VoteVets on Twitter

    I really don’t blame President Trump, VoteVets adds nothing to the discussion about veterans – they’re just a bunch of T-shirts that MoveOn puts in front of their protests. But VoteVets seem angry that the President has blocked them;

    “The Commander in Chief can block @VoteVets, the voice of 500k military veterans and families, but we will NOT be silenced,” VoteVets.org wrote on Twitter, including a screenshot that shows Trump had blocked the organization’s account.

    The group has in the past criticized the president over his budget proposal, Republicans attempts to repeal and replace ObamaCare, and the president’s executive order temporarily barring individuals from certain predominantly Muslim nations from entering the United States.

    In one television advertisement aired during MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in early February, VoteVets spoke directly to Trump, telling him to start acting like “a legitimate President.”

    “Look, you lost the popular vote… You’re having trouble drawing a crowd… And your approval rating keeps sinking…” an veteran of the war in Afghanistan says in the ad.

    Yeah, VoteVets doesn’t have a 1/2 million veterans among their membership. They’re mostly MoveOn members who joined VoteVets to boost their membership. I remember the good old days when TAH ran them off their own blog and forced them on to Facebook where they can block me. VoteVets is funded by George Soros and the limolibs at MoveOn.

    VoteVets say that their mission is to support veterans running for office – they’ve never supported any conservative candidate for office. In fact they spent millions of dollars to campaign for Harry Reid, a draft dodger, using their definition. They say that they supported Chuck Hagel as proof that they support Republicans, but they never existed during any of Hagel’s campaigns for his office.

    Tammy Duckworth started her political career with VoteVets. When she went to Shinseki’s VA she took a bunch of VetsVoice (their blog) writers with her as propagandists for Shinseki. Those propagandists still pray at the Duckworth/Shinseki alter.

    All VoteVets is actually a distraction from veterans’ issues.

    That picture at the top of the page is a meeting between VoteVets’ director, Jon Soltz and members of IVAW (Iraq Veterans Against the War) to work out their anti-veteran strategy for the Obama campaign in 2009.

    Thanks to David for the link.

  • VoteVets thinks that they represent veterans

    There’s an article at Stars & Stripes today about mainly two competing Veteran political action groups, Concerned Veterans for America and VoteVets. I don’t think that anyone here would argue that they’re not both partisan, but VoteVets is more connected to Big Liberal money;

    VoteVets Chairman Jon Soltz rejected any comparison between Concerned Veterans for America and his organization, which claims 450,000 members and was founded in 2006.

    “I’m hesitant to say they’re anywhere equivalent to what we’ve built over eight years,” Soltz said. But VoteVets.org has also taken heat for its campaign advertising, recently drawing public criticism from a prominent Kentucky veteran over an ad assailing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for not supporting a bill that would have boosted VA funding by $21 billion. The ad was part of a $600,000 ad campaign against McConnell by VoteVets, which operates both a PAC and a social welfare arm known as VoteVets Action Fund.

    McConnell “has been a vocal advocate about the urgent need for reform at the VA and was instrumental in helping ensure Senate passage of the important bipartisan veterans bill that was signed into law last month,” Karl Kaelin, vice chairman of a Kentucky committee of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said in a statement released by the McConnell campaign.

    McConnell’s camp also dismissed VoteVets as a front “funded by environmental activists.” The VoteVets Action Fund has received more than $6 million in grants from a long list of environmental, labor and other progressive groups since 2010, according to the CRP. The group has also made grants to such Democrat-friendly allies as the American Bridge 21st Century Foundation and America Votes, an umbrella group for progressive activists, according to IRS records.

    “We’re progressive, period,” Soltz said. “There are a lot of veterans out there who don’t feel veterans organizations represent them.”

    Soltz might have started his organization to help liberal veteran candidates running for office, but it became an anti-Bush propaganda machine. In fact, in the last mid-term election, they threw their money at Harry Reid’s campaign – Reid, using VoteVets own definition of the phrase “draft dodger”, was a draft dodger because he stayed away from the draft by going to college and marrying – just like Dick Cheney.

    While everyone else was criticizing the VA and Eric Shinseki for the failures of that organization, VoteVets defended Shinseki and targeted those of us who wanted him out – all of VoteVets’ blog writers left VV to work for the VA, by the way, led by VoteVet board member Tammy Duckworth. At least the crew at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America took their shots at the VA’s incompetent leadership, but not VoteVets.

    VoteVets took to paying for environmental ads using combat veterans as puppets to sell unicorn shit-powered cars to the public, ostensibly to save the lives of troops in their wars for oil – wonder where they got that from.

    Soltz was right in the first paragraph of the quote from that article – there is no comparison between CVA and VV – VoteVets does absolutely nothing for veterans except Jon Soltz. CVA, on the other hand, focuses all of their assets on fighting for veterans’ and for the troops. I’ll grant that they are conservative in their political leanings, but in the service of veterans. (I’ll disclose here that CVA paid for my trip to the Republican convention two years ago)

    Vote Vets is beholden to environmental groups and is wholly-owned by those drooling morons at MoveOn – wherever Soltz can find some cash to keep that organization alive for his own enrichment and aggrandizement.

  • Beeker on Bergdahl

    Beeker on Bergdahl

    beeker brandon

    So, Brandon Friedman, affectionately known here on these pages as “Beeker”, an infantry platoon leader in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Vice Chairman of VoteVets as well as the administrator of their blog VetsVoice which TAH effectively killed. Friedman followed Tammy Duckworth to the Department of Veterans Affairs as their chief of new media propaganda, the Director of Online Communications. He left the VA when things started getting too hot at that department and now he is Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, you know to cover for the failures at that agency.

    Friedman is cutthroat. He’ll throw anyone under the bus who doesn’t toe the party line. I have intimate knowledge of that. He’s even stooped to using TAH for some of his attempts to cut the wings off of his political opponents. But, I’m saving the specifics of that particular story for a time when I need it. Brandon knows what I’m talking about.

    But now, he’s casting aspersions on Bergdahl’s leaders and his unit to salvage the White House’s image in that discussion. Throwing an entire unit under the bus to make the President and this administration, along with Bowe Bergdahl look good.

    Of course Friedman says that he’s “not a fan of speculation” just before he begins to speculate. There’s no evidence that there were failures of leadership in Bergdahl’s unit, so Friedman makes them up out of whole cloth. I guess, in a courtroom they’d call that “sowing seeds for reasonable doubt” – the last refuge of a defense attorney who is in over his head. But, you know, a commissioned officer in the United States Army shouldn’t be screwing over his brother officers in that manner.

    And even if there was a leadership problem in the unit, that doesn’t mitigate deserting your unit and being the subject of millions of dollars spent on finding you and trading five high value prisoners for you.

    The White House has even stooped to calling what Bergdahl’s former platoon mates have done in the media as “Swiftboating” him, according to an NBC White House correspondent, says Breitbart. Of course, it’s misuse of the term – swiftboating means to call out a member of the military on his lies, like the Swiftboat Vets for Truth did to John Kerry. So, in that sense, yes they did swiftboat Bergdahl, but, of course, the White House means to disparage a number of veterans of the Afghanistan War to save the fairy tale that they’re trying to shove down our throats.

    So, see, we’re all heroes and worthy of praise unless we turn on the party line – then we’re all shit. Well, Brandon Friedman, you’re shit for turning your back on your brother officers for your thirty pieces of silver.

    Thanks to our countless friends who sent us links to Friedman’s Twitter account.

    This is from Patrick;

    bergdahl video

  • Brandon Freidman lectures on non-partisan VSOs

    Brandon Freidman lectures on non-partisan VSOs

    beaker

    Brandon Freidman, pictured above, former VoteVets officer, former Veterans’ Affairs official has decided that he wants to defend Ric Shinseki from the countless attacks from VSOs by questioning their politics. I know, ironic isn’t it?

    Beeker Tweet

    Somehow, an American Legion post hosting a Concerned Veterans for America event touting patriotism and “defending freedom” is partisan. You know, this coming from the guy who started a blog war with us because we reported that newly-minted President Obama didn’t attend the Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball back in 2008.

    I wonder how “defending freedom” and patriotism is partisan, how those two concepts are political. But, Beeker…er, Freidman, says that VSOs should be non-partisan, you know speaking as a former officer of the most partisan organization in the country, VoteVets. VoteVets – those guys who think that green fuel is more important than the way veterans are treated by their country.

    And, oh, yeah, Brandon, if you want to play that BS, I know stuff and you know I know stuff. Remember how that blog war ended?

  • VoteVets doesn’t care about dead veterans

    VoteVets doesn’t care about dead veterans

    Jon Soltz

    We’ve bumped up against that corrupt organization that purports to represent veterans run by Princess Jon Soltz that is called VoteVets. They claim to have 300,000 members, most of whom have never served in the military and most of those count dual membership in MoveOn.org. VoteVets claims to be a non-partisan organization, but when I asked them a few years ago which Republican they have supported, they answered “Chuck Hagel” even though Chuck Hagel has never been in a political race since the existence of Votevets. I once caught Jon Solz collaborating with IVAW and Veterans for Peace in a pre-election strategy in 2009 to fool veterans into voting for Obama. So now we have Obama, how much do veterans matter to Soltz and VoteVets?

    What should be their priority in the last few weeks in regards to veterans, would you say? I, personally, would think that the corrupt treatment of veterans by the Veterans’ Affairs Department would be somewhere near the top of the list, wouldn’t you? Well, not at VoteVets – they have more pressing issues to use your good name and selfless service to advance;

    Votevets' issues

    All of the Veterans Service Organizations (VSOs) are pounding the table and demanding Secretary Shinseki’s resignation, but at VoteVets you only hear crickets;

    VoteVets Press releases
    VoteVets Press releases2

    It should at least be on their news page, right? Wrong!

    VoteVets News

    So what are they concerned about?

    VoteVets Active campaigns

    In regards to that issue that they don’t seem to care about, that being the scandals at the VA, I should probably point out that when Shinseki went and took that job, he hired (now congresswoman) Tammy Duckworth on his staff. Duckworth had been a member at VoteVets and she cleaned out the staff of writers at the old VoteVets blog, VetsVoice and took them to the VA with her. 5 writers from VetsVoice went to the VA to run their new media organization. So, you can see how it might be considered some sort of incestuous relationship between the VA and VoteVets and why VoteVets doesn’t feel a need to put the interests of veterans above the interests of their parent organization, MoveOn and the Obama Administration. By the way, all of those writers have left the VA and none have come back into the fold at VoteVets.

    I should also point out that in Harry Reid’s last campaign for his Senate seat, VoteVets ran campaign ads for him despite the fact that, using their own definition when referring to Dick Cheney, Harry Reid was a draft dodger since he used draft deferments to avoid military service. The money that they spent on Reid’s campaign, could have gone to real veterans’ campaigns, but somehow Reid was more important. Just like the renewable fuels issue is more important than the Veterans Affairs Department negligence in the deaths of veterans. At VoteVets.

  • Another political attack on a veteran

    We talked the other day about the attack on gubernatorial candidate and Iraq veteran Anthony Brown by perfumed prince Doug Gansler and the attack on Tom Cotton by Mark Pryor in the Arkansas Senate race. Now, in Alaska, Democrat Mark Begich puts out the following ad against Marine and GWOT veteran Dan Sullivan who went to work for the Bush White House and was called to active duty for two years.

    Gansler, Pryor, nor Begich have any military service, and apparently, they don’t respect the service of their opponents, we can only guess at their opinions of their constituents’ service. Thanks to Chief Tango for the link to Breitbart.

    By the way, I can’t find any evidence of VoteVets supporting either Sullivan or Cotton, but VoteVets claims to be non-partisan. I asked them once if they had ever supported a Republican veteran for office and they said that they had once supported Chuck Hagel, however Chuck Hagel never ran for office after the founding of VoteVets, so…I guess the answer to my question would be ‘no’.

  • VoteVets and their usual BS

    Someone sent us this video on Facebook from those lying little turds at VoteVets. In the video, Glen Kunkel says that he had to pass a background check to get into the Marine Corps, but that anyone can buy an M4-style weapon with “no questions asked”.

    Yeah, well, I bought mine at a gunshow last Spring and I had to fill out the same forms that I would have to fill out at a gun store. I had to answer the same questions that everyone else in this country has to answer, so I don’t know what the Hell Glen is talking about.

    I guess VoteVets is now the IVAW for MoveOn, the Left just needs veterans who wear the t-shirts for their idiot causes. By the way, the scary bleeding target and the Sandy Hook imagery is just macabre. It didn’t make me want to press anyone for universal background checks – it made me want to punch Jon Soltz in the throat. Shame on you, Glen Kunkel, for selling your soul for this outrageous and blatant lie.