Category Archives: Current Events

Sgt Penny, USMC

Another great contribution from Greg

 

Saving Sgt. Penny                                                                By: Greg Maresca

Daniel Penny joined dignitaries at the Army-Navy football game last Saturday as an invited guest of Vice President-elect J.D. Vance. In contrast to our times, if it was up to the denizens of the left, Penny would be in a jail cell for the rest of his life.

It was in May 2023 that a 30-year-old homeless schizophrenic named Jordan Neely, high on synthetic marijuana, threatened subway riders in the bowels of Manhattan. Neely’s criminal credentials included 42 arrests from theft to assault. Neely’s repertoire during this subterranean ride included throwing garbage and issuing death threats.

Amid Neely’s increasing volume and threats was 24-year-old Marine Corps Sgt. Daniel Penny who did what so many simply won’t – he selflessly acted to protect those around him. From the Halls of Montezuma to the subways of New York. Penny’s courage prevailed over woke cowardice underscoring the refrain on how a Marine can be your best friend or your worst enemy.

There is nothing like the subway during those notorious “off hours” while riding the “local” because the entertainment is always free, but it can go dark very quickly as this incident proved.

Penny subdued Neely by placing him in a chokehold.

Neely later died while in medical custody.

That fateful subway car was filled with passengers, many of whom were black and Hispanic, who didn’t miss a beat in expressing their gratitude for Penny’s decisive action. Their gratitude was ignored by the New York media. For Penny’s efforts, he was arrested and charged with negligent homicide by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Another story ignored by the mainstream media and reported by black conservative writer Larry Elder noted that on the same day Penny pleaded not guilty, “Jordan Williams and his girlfriend, who are both black, were on a Brooklyn subway train when Williams, 20 years old, was approached by an aggressive 36-year-old ex-con homeless black man, Devictor Ouedraogo. In a confrontation captured on video, Ouedraogo punched Williams’ girlfriend in the face, and Williams then pulled a knife and fatality stabbed Ouedraogo. Unlike in the case of Penny, no activists publicly accused Williams of engaging in “racially motivated vigilantism.”

All charges were dropped against Williams, while Penny’s lengthy trial was just getting underway.

Leftists understand Neely not as a menacing threat to society, but as an unfortunate victim since he was black. Provided Neely was white, and Penny was black, this would be a nonissue. Moreover, if both were black, or if both were white – no charges – just another carefree day riding the BMT.

Neely posed a threat to passengers on the subway, many, if not most, of whom were black. The D.A. who charged Penny is black. The mayor of New York, who praised Penny’s heroism, is black and a retired NYPD captain. The jury that found Penny not guilty included four “people of color.”

Yet, Penny’s acquittal, according to the head of the New York Chapter of Black Lives Matter, means “white supremacy got another victory?!”

It was a case that should never have made it to court. Penny was rightfully acquitted, and leftists and racists everywhere went bonkers. Where was their outrage for all the people who felt terrorized by Neely?

Many remain anchored on the sideline refusing to intervene for fear of being charged and enduring our dysfunctional legal system.

Rather, they break out their phones and record it.

Penny should be celebrated for his character and courage. A free and prosperous society applauds those who act on behalf of others. It doesn’t ridicule, criminalize and sue them.

Naturally, Al Sharpton delivered a eulogy blaming racism for Neely’s death. A Neely family member responded, “Today, white supremacy got another victory. Today, the KKK, the Klansmen, the evil in America got another victory. Those among you who say that Daniel Penny is innocent have racism and bias in your heart.”

Enter Neely’s father who personifies the term “deadbeat dad” seeking a substantial payday on the grave of his son he abandoned decades ago recently filed a civil suit against Penny.

Most see through the hypocrisy, begging the question has the pendulum swung far enough for society to finally start admitting the truth about these incidents that are the real “threat to democracy.”

If this civil suit is not thrown out, racist lawfare only continues to spiral out of control to the detriment of all.

~ Maresca is a New York City native and Marine Corps veteran.

And BTW, to all my faithful followers, please have a very merry Christmas and an absolutely Happy Year. For me, January 20th cannot come soon enough. I have decided that starting on that day, I will start anew watching TV news, but I will be watching CNN and MSNBC as I can’t wait to see their spin on everything Trump does. It should be fun.

How callous can someone be?

What a disgrace. How callous can someone be? What have we become? Unbelievable!! I wish I would have been on that plane!!

perry

STOCKTON, Calif. (AP) — The father of a California soldier recently killed in Afghanistan says he felt disrespected and hurt by passengers who booed him and his family when they were on a flight to meet his son’s remains.

Stewart Perry, his wife and daughter were on an American Airlines flight Monday from Sacramento to Philadelphia with a transfer in Phoenix to receive the remains of his son, Sgt. John Perry, of Stockton, when the flight was delayed, the Stockton Record (http://bit.ly/2fFOIRc) reported Saturday.

Perry, an ex-Marine (former Marine) who lives in Stockton, said the flight to Phoenix was 45 minutes late and the crew, fearing the Gold Star family could miss their connecting flight, made an announcement for passengers to remain seated to let a “special military family” deplane first.

Perry said several passengers in first class booed, complaining that it was “baloney” and that they paid first-class fares. He said he doesn’t know if the passengers from Sacramento knew there was a Gold Star family on board or whether people sitting in the coach section complained.

“It was just disgusting behavior from people in first class; it was terrible to see,” Perry said.

Originally posted 2016-11-20 12:50:05.

The Price Is Riot

The war of words continues. A very interesting article regardless of where you sit.

cecile_richards_2011_shankbone_2

 

 

Cecile Richards, President of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America By David Shankbone (Own work)

By Tony Perkins
Originally published in Tony Perkins’ 
FRCAction on November 16, 2016
Tony Perkins is the President of the Family Research Council (FRC)

I wouldn’t be shocked that this group is going the extra mile to undermine the legitimate transfer of power (said former Senator Scott Brown, who watched the marches sweep through his own city of Boston). It comes to question whether they are using taxpayer money appropriately or even legally. This goes above and beyond their duty and ability to provide services for women.No wonder there are so many anti-Trump protests. Apparently, there’s good money to be made in joining them! Barely a week after his election, Donald Trump is already creating jobs. Thanks to Planned Parenthood Action, Americans can make a good living joining their phony demonstrations against the president-elect. Craigslist ads like “STOP TRUMP—up to $1,500/week. Hiring immediately. Call today, start tomorrow! $15-18 hourly rate + bonus + overtime, up to 77 hours per week!” have been running in major cities like Denver and Philadelphia for weeks. Clearly, the end of the election has only been the beginning of another phase of manufactured outrage.

Of course, questions have been swirling around Planned Parenthood’s use of taxpayer dollars for years. And while it’s illegal for Cecile Richards’s group to spend a penny of the government’s money on political advocacy, a full bank account certainly gives them the flexibility to. The reality is this:  Any group that can afford to spend $30 million influencing an election doesn’t need a half-billion in taxpayer assistance. For too long, Americans have been on the hook for the group’s corruption while women who need honest and safe care take a backseat to Planned Parenthood’s politics. (And unpopular politics at that!)

In the meantime, talk about an embarrassing display of the Left’s crumbling support. Cecile Richards’s group is so desperate for “followers” that it has to invent some. The Craigslist ads are exposing this movement for the mirage it is. This is exactly the kind of deceptiveness that we’ve come to expect from the Left. In this just-finished election Americans had a front-row seat to the dirty tricks liberals were using to disrupt Trump rallies—and worse, cheat the system. Thanks to undercover videos by James O’Keefe, voters learned that liberals were even willing to pay the “mentally ill” to disrupt Trump rallies in many cases with the full knowledge of the DNC and Clinton campaign.

report by Fox News, based on arrest records of those arrested during a demonstration against Trump in Portland, showed that less than half voted. Something isn’t right when people will go to the trouble of protesting—and even getting arrested—but they won’t exercise their most basic and fundamental right as a citizen to vote. The bottom line:  don’t allow the manufactured outrage of the Left to mislead you into thinking that this effort is anything more than a vocal, well-funded minority.

Originally posted 2016-11-20 12:40:04.

Another View of Snowflakes

This is an interesting piece that perhaps provides another view of Millennials and why they are they way they are. This is an interesting take on the snowflake theory. It’s worthy of the read and thought, IMHO You read and decide.

We’re Not Snowflakes: How Millennials Approach Conflict

By Rebecca Whitworth
Over the last week, a new topic trended on my Facebook. Since it had nothing to do with the election, I was immediately interested. A study of a new male birth control drug had been discontinued after several men suffered from extreme depression; one committed suicide. The reaction from my female friends was unanimous. “Sure, we have to take birth control and suffer the side effects, but men get to quit as soon as they get uncomfortable.” This outrage led to a lot of backtracking as soon as they realized they were essentially making fun of suicide, but their reflexive outrage reminded me of another argument. A few weeks ago, there was a flare of pro-choice memes. The resounding chant was “Babies are not a punishment for sex.” I stared at that for a minute, not even sure how to react. No, they’re not a punishment, but they are the biological result. We’ve evolved for thousands of years in such a way that sex reliably produces babies.

 

It took a while, but I finally realized that my friends believe they have a right to have sex without getting pregnant. They believe that there should be a foolproof way for them to prevent having babies, free of side effects.

I was thrown for a loop. But that logic explained so much. I grew up to understand that the world was a preexisting system, full of established hierarchies and old traditions. When I look at situations, I seek patterns. In hierarchies, I look for where I fit and how I can be effective. However, this was not what I was taught in school.

In school, our heroes were Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Their faces stood ten feet tall in my middle school auditorium. These were heroes that made a stand through non-participation. Over and over, we were taught that disagreeing with something was enough to force change.

English class required us to read books that dramatized the lives of the downtrodden, the underdogs, and even the morally reprehensible. One detailed how a poor boy who had done even more poorly in school forged his high school transcript to get into college. Another detailed the final days of a murderer, who was the protagonist of the story. The worst, Perfume, told the story of a psychopath who hunted women to turn their scents into perfume. He was also the protagonist.

I say “protagonist” deliberately because these men weren’t touted as heroes outright. But between these books and the entire semester we spent on books detailing graphic deaths, the tone was uniform and clear. We were taught that survival means working outside of the system, and we were forced to stare at our own mortality. And the books told us that our lives would be even shorter if we played by the rules.

In history class, we learned about the wars. But the people we learned as heroes were those who took a pacifist stance, who simply refused to participate. We learned about desertion from the Vietnam War, but we didn’t learn that it was wrong. And we certainly covered the Vietnam protests, but never covered the discrimination and violence faced by veterans upon their return. The message was that protesters were attacked, usually for just protesting, because protest was a powerful weapon. We were taught about Rosa Parks, the Suffragettes, and more aggressive protesters such as Malcolm-X. We learned the moral way to affect change was to refuse to participate in the system. The message was that all uses of force were oppression, and that oppression was evil. Not only was boycotting moral, it was the only moral route.Outside of class, we watched movies and played games and read comics all designed to glorify the rebel and the anti-hero. It played perfectly into our teenage angst. Our heroes overthrow evil corporations. As long as they were fighting, it didn’t matter how they kept going; most action heroes are rough-around-the-edges, hard-drinking wrecks outrunning their emotions. We learned that the struggle was more important than the success—what good was a hero without a tragic back story? The ends justify the means.

 

All my favorite characters—the stoic, loyal type that was honor-bound to their cause or their chain of command—never saw the end of their movies. Sacrifices to the plot. That’s what you get for trusting the system.

Further, and even worse, we saw our heroes attack our government. Again and again, we saw the “Pocahontas” plot line—the noble savage fights off the arrogant white man. In Avatar, the film stopped trying to mask its agenda and put the evil mercenaries in American military uniforms. We saw, repeatedly, that the government had shadow programs, and all shadow programs went rogue. We were taught that government transparency was the only way to keep us safe. We were never told, though, that everything the civilians know, the enemy knows, and that some secrets are kept for a reason.

Essentially, every moment our parents weren’t around, we were taught to act out. We were taught that if we hated something enough, it would change for us. That if we disliked something, we were morally obligated to boycott it, and to be vocally angry about it. We were told that we could be anything, but that the only thing worth being was a rebel. We learned that the strong bend the world by sheer force of will.

That’s why millennials feel the rules don’t apply to us. Not because we were told we were “unique, special snowflakes.” Certainly not because we were given participation trophies—most of us saw through that, and some took it as an insult. (Really? I might disagree with her on this point) It’s because of how we see the world. Because the system is rigged and the rules are dangerous, we don’t have to accept them.

If my peers were taught like I was, it explains why they request “safe spaces” at college instead of arguing—if boycotting is our most effective tactic, the best way to win an argument is to refuse to have it. It makes sense if our work ethic suffers when we don’t agree with a new company policy, because we see participation as paramount to support. We invent new words to describe the new genders and identities we’ve decided need to exist because it is our duty to bend the world towards what we believe. When an endangered animal is shot on the other side of the world, we tweet and post and yell about it, because outrage alone can create change.

Perhaps it’s not so surprising, then, that the millennial reaction to conflict is flat rejection. It’s always worked for us before.

Originally posted 2016-11-20 12:31:38.

FINALLY – a beacon of sanity?

duncan-hunterI don’t want to boast. . . . .  er . . . . . . yes I do. What else would you expect from a Marine? He’d make a great SecNav or even DOD. Personally, I just like him to be SecDef so he could overturn all the idiotic things that Ash and Trash Carter and POS Ms. Mabus instituted during their watches. They have not done one thing that improved the fighting abilities of our men and women. Everyone of their initiatives was nothing but  social engineering of the military and to weaken them.

Trump adviser says military needs counter-revolution, reverse social engineering policies

A key congressional supporter of Donald Trump says the president-elect’s defense secretary should move quickly to reverse a number of social engineering policies adopted in the Obama years that “have cut down on the warrior mentality.”

Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican, told The Washington Times that the armed forces need a counter-revolution.   It should reverse at least three policies: women in the infantry, open transgender troops and the near-banishment of the word “man” from Navy and Marine Corps titles.

Mr. Hunter, a high-profile member of House Armed Services Committee, was one of the first in Congress to back Mr. Trump. He co-chaired the New York real estate magnate’s congressional leadership committee and promoted Mr. Trump in op-eds and media interviews.

The Trump transition team is considering Mr. Hunter for Navy secretary or even secretary of defense, a huge stepping stone for a 39-year-old former Marine Corps major.

Here is Mr. Hunter’s Pentagon agenda:

  • Reverse the December decision by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to open direct land combat jobs in the infantry and special operations to women.

Mr. Hunter said Mr. Trump should follow the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford.

Gen. Dunford was the Marine commandant when he recommended continuing the gender ban for infantry and special operations forces, citing Corps studies that show mixed-sex units are inferior to all-male. Mr. Carter and Navy Secretary Ray Mabus rejected his advice.

“Chairman Dunford has been in multiple combat tours,” Mr. Hunter said. “Probably the smartest person in the military, period, and he said leave special ops and infantry out of it. What’s happening now is, again, we’re taking our eyes off the ball and going down on these side roads.”

The Army and Marines are in the early stages of trying to mold women into the infantry. No woman has applied to be a Navy SEAL, and one failed at becoming a Green Beret.

“It doesn’t do anything to further our capacity as war fighters,” Mr. Hunter said of adding women in direct land combat roles. “It doesn’t do anything to make us more effective or efficient at getting the job done and killing our enemies and protecting our allies. It’s just a distraction. It’s not like there are thousands of women getting into the infantry now. It will never be that way.”

  • Nullify the June 30 decision to open the ranks to transgender service members and fund their sex-change procedures.

The Pentagon issued a detailed transgender manual that dictates the responsibilities of medical staff and commanders to shepherd troops through the counseling and medical process.

“Ridiculous,” Mr. Hunter said. “Overturn it immediately because it doesn’t make any sense. How does that help you fight and win wars? That’s what I think Trump is going to bring to this — some common sense. Period.”

“Having transgender operations paid for by the U.S. taxpayer is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard of because it doesn’t do anything to help America project power or to fight and win its wars. Nothing. There’s no upside to it whatsoever,” the congressman said.

  • Overturn the liberal agenda of Mr. Mabus, a Democrat and former governor of Mississippi.

In particular, Mr. Hunter said, the Trump team should revoke Mr. Mabus’ September order to remove historic job descriptions, such as hospital corpsman and yeoman, from Navy enlisted ratings. Mr. Mabus also removed the word “man” from titles, though he left the rating “seaman” for the bottom three enlisted ranks.

Under Mr. Mabus’ edict, the Marine Corps also ditched the title of “man,” converting infantryman to infantry Marine.

“It’s the politicization of the Navy and trying to chip away at the war-fighting mentality,” Mr. Hunter said. “Liberals like Ray Mabus are offended by the war-fighter mentality. You can call it ‘manliness.’ You can call it ‘roughneck,’ kind of people who fight America’s wars. I think they offend liberal sensibility, the liberal sensibilities of the Obama administration and Mabus in particular.”

  • Ship naming.

Mr. Hunter also has been a persistent critic of Mr. Mabus’ theme of naming warships after liberal Democratic activists, such as farm labor leader Cesar Chavez and gay rights advocate Harvey Milk. He said it is not too late to remove those names in favor of naval combatants or trailblazers.

“There are a lot of great people you can name ships after that would give the sailor pride to sail on that ship. Harvey Milk isn’t one of them,” Mr. Hunter said.

“Why not go the Medal of Honor route?” he said. “If they are going to break tradition, why not go, ‘OK, we’re going to name them all after war fighters or great sailors or great leaders within the Navy or great explorers — people that had an impact when it comes to ocean-going?’ There’s plenty of people to name ships after.”

The Obama administration defends its emphasis on social change in the ranks.

Originally posted 2016-11-16 10:38:05.