Category: Who knows

Our buddy, Aunty Brat, sends her Thanksgiving Day wishes to us from the frozen North;

The first Canadian thanksgiving was celebrated on 15th April 1872 to thank the recovery of King Edward VII from serious illness. The next thanksgiving was celebrated after a few years in 1879 on a Thursday.

The rest of the history of the day is at the link.

This year, as for the last few, this day holds special poignancy for me. Yes, I absolutely give thanks for all the blessings I have, but my thoughts always stray to Afghanistan where members of our Canadian ‘family’ are right now (and yes, we DO still have Canadian troops far from home in Afghanistan.) I think about the Canadians who have given their lives so that I and my family might be together, safely celebrating this day. As I hug my now grown child, I give a silent thanks to those families who this year will have an empty chair at their family table.

So stop by and give her our best wishes.

I didn’t bother mentioning that gay members of the military were getting their own special leave to get married, mostly because all I could say about it was “I told you so” when the gays started getting special privileges – because they said overturning the don’t ask, don’t tell policy was about serving, but it was actually more about getting benefits and general acceptance of the lifestyle. So now, I’m mentioning it because they’re whining that they’re having a hard time getting their special privileges to the LA Times;

The frustrations are palpable for soldiers such as Spc. Jodie Harper, an Ohio National Guard member and Army supply clerk stationed in Kuwait. When he heard about the new policy, he immediately applied for 10 days of leave to wed his longtime companion, Craig Roberts, in Washington, D.C., where gay marriage is legal.

With Harper on a nine-month deployment and Roberts in school and working two jobs, the couple is struggling to make ends meet. Once married, Roberts could register for federal benefits available to spouses of other National Guard troops, including military health care, tuition assistance and payments to help defray housing expenses.

But Harper’s battalion commander, Lt. Col. Mark Raaker, refused, saying only emergency leave was being granted. “He said if leave is granted for me to be married then it’s not fair to heterosexuals,” Harper said.

Raaker did not respond to a request for an interview. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman for the Army in Kuwait, said: “Deployed soldiers, because they are in support of the war effort, are only authorized leave in emergencies such as the death or serious illness of an immediate family member.”

Yeah, who knew that the poor special gays wouldn’t be allowed to return from their deployment to use their special gay leave? I’m sure that’s not what the Obama Administration had in mind.

In interviews, half a dozen military members also said their applications had been rejected, and for widely varying reasons. In some cases, commanders said they could not be spared time off. In others, officers were unaware of the new policy or said the procedures had not been finalized.

In still other cases, gay and lesbian soldiers have been approved for leave to get married — while other soldiers in similar circumstances have seen their applications denied.

So I guess the special gay leave should just be granted regardless of the current military operations in which they’re supposed to be engaged. Enough will never be enough.

ROS sends us a link to the story about Walker Greentree a seven year old with an eye on becoming a SEAL someday. he had a discussion with his mother about who would be quieter, a ninja or a SEAL. To settle the argument, Walker decided to go the expert on the subject, Admiral William H. McRaven, the Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command. Here’s a record of the discussion;

I don’t want to sound like a weekend safety briefing, but our buddy, Blanka, an Iraq veteran, pictured above, was struck by an apparently drunk driver the other day. I love Blanka like a sister, so it’s one of the countless things weighing on my mind these last few days, but she sends this message to you from her hospital bed;

I had been walking back to my hotel after visiting a friend in Jersey City, NJ. The last thing I remember was trying to cross the street. An hour later, I woke up underneath a parked car, lost and delirious. After calling several friends, I was able to remember who I came with to Jersey. I called him and asked him to take me back to the hotel, not realizing the seriousness of the situation.

The next morning, I could barely breathe. I was taken by ambulance to the hospital. Final verdict: concussion, whiplash, fractured left ankle, fractured left fibula, broken left radial bone, fractured spine, severely bruised hip and rib cage. I underwent surgery the following Tuesday and will be wrapped up in casts and a wheelchair for several months. I just wanted to warn people of the dangers of drunk driving. I’m guilty of it myself, and learned my lesson after crashing my car into a tree. In this incident, the driver was not found, but the injuries amounted to the verdict of being hit by a car that was in all probability driven by someone severely intoxicated and unwilling to take the charges. Hope you can help me spread the word.

I know Blanka, a frequent visitor and commenter here, will be OK when all of this ends for her. And I know most of you are smart enough to not drink and drive, but think of Blanka, if you’re ever tempted.

Aaron Alexis shot out the tires of some construction workers’ tires in 2004. Three years before he joined the Navy. In 2008, while he was in the Navy, he tore up a nightclub. In 2010, he shot though his ceiling because his upstairs neighbor made too much noise in his opinion while he was living in Fort Worth. After he was evicted from that apartment, he shot through the wall of his new apartment in the house of his landlord and employer, for unspecified reasons.

In the the first case, the paperwork was lost on the way to the prosecutor’s office, in the second, local authorities left it to the Navy to punish him, but they decided it would just be easier to get rid of him. In the third, the police decided that there wasn’t enough evidence against him. The fourth incident was never reported to authorities.

Just last month, in Rhode Island, Alexis called the police because people were talking to him through the walls and ceiling of the motel room and they were sending vibrations through his body. The Newport police warned the Navy about Alexis’ bizarre behavior. Last month.

But, you know what caused the incident at the Navy Yard? Security clearance procedures. Well if you ask Congress. Susan Collins, a Republican Senator from Maine says the military needs to cut the time between renewal of clearances says the Washington Times;

“One step that can be taken immediately is ensuring that criminal databases and the terrorist watch lists are always consulted and that there’s some sort of continuous monitoring that would pick up problems rather than waiting as long as five or 10 years to review security clearances,” said Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, on CNN’s “New Day” on Wednesday morning.

Yeah, well, how would that have prevented Alexis from walking into the Navy Yard with his access card?

To his credit, General Martin Dempsey told the media today that this tragedy shouldn’t stigmatize veterans when they’re looking for work and require a security clearance;

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, says those who have served in the military should not be stigmatized by having to answer questions about their mental health status on security clearance forms.

I’m pretty sure that Alexis wouldn’t have been truthful about that question anyway. And if you scare military people away from the jobs that require a clearance, you won’t have anyone to fill those jobs, speaking generally.

You know what else caused the shooting, as long as we’re looking for politically expedient answers that are easy to understand and specious? Sequestration.

A Pentagon inspector general’s report on Tuesday said the Navy Commercial Access Control System (NCACS) is flawed in screening contractors because it uses only commercially available databases, not government lists such as the FBI National Criminal Intelligence System or the Terrorist Screening Database.

Yeah, in order for the screening process to work, there has to be information there. In Alexis’ case there was nothing, because no one wanted to do anything about him. Just like no one wanted to do anything about Jared Loughner, James Holmes, Adam Lanza and Nidal Hasan. Everyone knew that there were problems in each of those five cases, but no one wanted to say anything – well, until after the fact, then you can’t keep them away from the TV cameras or force them to shut up. Is that too simple? Is that too easy to understand? Is that not complicated enough for the people who have a string of letters and periods after their names?

What needs to change is the culture, and the government can’t do that for us. So nothing will get done except a bunch of stupid laws and regulations that wouldn’t have prevented this tragedy or any of the others. But the politicians will feel better about themselves and those who think that government actually does something will sleep better thinking the government is on the job. The rest of us, firmly rooted in reality, will sleep with a gun under our pillows.

Thanks to Twitchy for the cartoon.