Tag Archives: military

Current Events

Paradise Lost

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Critical things to think about in 2023

I never dreamed I would have to face the prospect of not living in the United States of America, at least not the one I have known all my life and the one I served for nearly thirty-six years. I have never wanted to live anywhere else. This is my home—I was born here. But now every day when I wake up and have my morning coffee, I come face to face with the reality that everything is changing for the worse. No matter how I vote, no matter what I say, no matter how much I pray, something evil has invaded our nation, and I personally believe our lives are never going to be the same.

I have been confused by the hostility of family and friends. I look at people I have known all my life—so hate-filled that they agree with opinions they would never express as their own. I think I may well have entered the Twilight Zone. We have become a nation that has lost its collective mind!

You can’t justify this insanity:

If a guy pretends to be a woman, I am required to pretend with him.

Somehow it’s un-American for the census bureau to count how many Americans are in America. I have a neighbor who was a census taker. He told me he counted everyone in the house, legal or not. When ask why, he said it means more money for the county.

Russians influencing our elections are bad, but illegals voting in our elections are good.

It was cool for Joe Biden to “blackmail” the President of Ukraine. He laughed while bragging about it.

Hunter Biden is a crook, but the DOJ nor any of its agencies will investigate him. He has literally become untouchable no matter how much wrongdoing he commits.

Twenty is too young to drink a beer, but eighteen is old enough to vote.

People who never owned slaves should pay reparations to people who have never been slaves.

People who have never been to college should pay the debts of college students who took out huge loans for their degrees, many of which were in majors that they now cannot find jobs, but oh it was fun.

Immigrants with tuberculosis and polio are welcome, but you’d better be able to prove your dog is vaccinated.

Irish doctors and German engineers who want to immigrate to the US must go through a rigorous and lengthy vetting process, but any illiterate gang banger or terrorist who jumps the southern fence is welcome.

Five billion dollars for border security is too expensive, but $1.5 trillion for “free” health care to those who jumped the fence is okay.

If you cheat to get into college you go to prison, but if you cheat to get into the country you go to college free.

If you cheat in an election nothing happens to you, but if you point out the mathematical errors of that election you are a conspiracy theorist & disdained.

People who say there is no such thing as gender are demanding a female President.

We see other countries going Socialist and collapsing, but it seems like a great plan for us.

Some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while others are not held responsible for what they are doing right now.

Criminals are caught-and-released to hurt more people but keeping them in custody is a violation of their rights.

The imbeciles in this country elected—with the help of outright fraud from a group of about five key states—an incompetent president who can’t string a series of words together into a coherent sentence. We as a nation have become the laughingstock of the entire world—no nation will ever trust us again.

Nothing makes sense anymore—no values, no morals, and no civility. People are dying of a Chinese virus, but it’s racist to refer to it as the China virus even though it began in China.

And, of course, pointing out all this hypocrisy makes me a “racist!”

We are clearly living in an upside-down world where right is wrong and wrong is right, where moral is immoral and immoral is moral, where good is evil and evil is good.

Our once viable political parties are in shambles. One is run by a collection of minority misfits appointed by leaders whose interests are self-centered and self-fulfilling. While the other is run by a collection of old, tired, worn out has-beens who have made their fortunes in the political arena and need to be ousted, and some new breeds who know what needs to be done, but are shouted down and suppressed by the has-beens.

And the biggest has been of all is one who did a good job as president but did not know how to win friends and influence people. And as a result was hated so much even by some members of his own party. Yet, he continues to run his mouth and talk ill of fellow party members thinking that will put him in good graces with the members at large. He would do well to remember a phrase from the greatest GOP president in my lifetime, “No Republican should ever speak ill of another Republican.”.

Wake up America, the once great unsinkable ship  America has hit an iceberg and it’s taking on water and sinking fast. We are being shouted down by the generation who came of age during the participation trophy era and believe everything needs to be fair and everyone deserves what they want, regardless of the cost to society. We Americans are drowning. Speak up while you still have a breath and a voice, for soon you will have neither.

This needs to be sent on to a lot of people. Please do it.

 

Originally posted 2023-02-28 13:18:12.

Recent Posts

“Coffee or Die”

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You may have never heard of this company. I had a while back but never thought much about them until my friend Doug who reads the WSJ daily sent me this article. I hope I am not stepping on any toes at the WSJ by posting this. Every Veteran needs to read this. I’ve not tasted their brew, but plan to. What is interesting is how the company was (is) treated by some of our major commercial banking institutions and prestigious law firms. I do business with one of those banks, and you can bet your sweet bippy they are going to hear from me. How about you?

If you’ve tasted their brew, let us hear your comments on it.

Friday September 16, 2022

A Socially Conscious but Politically Incorrect Company

You might call Black Rifle Coffee Co. a socially conscious enterprise. “This is a veterans’ corporation,” founder and CEO Evan Hafer, a former Green Beret, says in a Zoom interview. More than half of Black Rifle’s employees have served in the military or are family of veterans. In 2021 the company put $5.3 million in shares toward starting the BRCC Fund, a charity dedicated to helping wounded or traumatized veterans and their families. That was on top of $1.2 million in charitable contributions and $3 million worth of coffee and related products to active-duty military and first responders.

But Mr. Hafer says Black Rifle struggled to find banks and law firms to help it arrange an initial public offering. Since he founded the company in 2014, companies have told him that it was “too irreverent” and poses “reputational risk.”

You can see why Black Rifle wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Its blends include AK- 47 and Silencer Smooth, and its social media presence is colorful, to say the least. The company’s YouTube channel features a shooting contest that ends with Mr. Hafer trying to get a bull’s-eye after taking a direct shot of bear spray to the eyes and a video titled “Could You Be a Pregnant Man?” Mr. Hafer’s personal politics have also drawn outrage from the media—he voted for Donald Trump twice—as has the company’s popularity with some controversial figures on the right. Kyle Rittenhouse was photographed wearing a Black Rifle T-shirt. But none of this seems to have hurt the company’s revenue, which reached $233.1 million last year.

Mr. Hafer thinks the numbers should be evidence enough that Black Rifle’s reputation isn’t a material risk. But his company “started hitting a lot of resistance” from high-level finance companies and law firms, although they claimed they were interested in working with veteran- run corporations.

In 2019 and 2020, a Black Rifle spokeswoman says, company leaders were talking to Chase, Bank of America and Macquarie Group about raising capital. After initially showing interest, all three companies declined to work with Black Rifle, citing the company’s image. In 2018 Black Rifle had tried to open an account at a Chase branch in San Antonio and had been turned away over reputational concerns. The spokeswoman says that Macquarie was particularly fixated on the name of its in-house magazine, Coffee or Die, which covers military issues and won the Military Reporters & Editors Association’s 2022 journalism contest for overseas coverage.

Bank of America and Chase declined to comment. Macquarie said in an email: “We take into account a broad range of factors in making financing and investment decisions. We do not comment on confidential commercially sensitive discussions, including those that did not move beyond a very preliminary stage like this one.”

Black Rifle hit similar roadblocks in 2019 and 2020 with Skadden Arps, Latham & Watkins and Simp-son Thacher & Bartlett. All three law firms passed on working with the coffee company because of its image. According to the Black Rifle spokeswoman, Latham & Watkins said that its reputational risk committee thought no one from top law schools would be willing to work at the firm if it took on Black Rifle as a client, especially because its name included the word “rifle.” The name “is an homage to the service rifle,” Mr. Hafer says. Like the guns he taught special-operations soldiers to shoot, he says, coffee is “ lifesaving equipment.”

Simpson Thacher declined to comment. Skadden Arps and Latham & Watkins didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Despite these obstacles, Black Rifle is thriving. The company went public in February through a special- purpose acquisition merger with SilverBox Engaged Merger Corp and this summer rolled out marketing partnerships with the Dallas Cowboys and Amazon Prime Video.

Yet Mr. Hafer worries what the seemingly arbitrary treatment he experienced will mean for other veterans. “I think it’s going to be really important for those guys—men and women both—to understand, these are the types of doors that are going to be slammed in your face if you’re not conforming to a very specific narrative,” he says. “I don’t want them to go through some of the same issues that we’ve had to go through to get access to capital.”

Ms. Keller is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.

Originally posted 2022-09-17 11:01:29.

Current Events, Recent Posts

A Day to Remember

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Memorial Day. The holiday of holidays is upon us. With all the family get togethers, barbequed dogs, burgers, and cold beer let us not forget what the day is all about. Greg once again gives us a peak into the new America, where everything wrong is now right and vice versus.  Of all the things wrong that can be fixed, why not this one? I have a close attachment to Arlington having buried so many brothers in those hallowed grounds during my time at The Barracks. Thank you Greg and may God bless Jazz and his family in hopes they will get closure sooner than later.

Arlington’s Unsightly Reckoning

By: Greg Maresca

Robert Jasinski “Jazz” and Greg Maresca

What was blatantly missing in action during this much anticipated primary polling season was my time-honored conversation with my old Marine Polish paisan, the Jazzman – Robert Jasinski. During his six-decade run on this third post from the sun, he was an avid historian and a political sage who never hesitated to engage with anyone on any topic.

Having been deployed the world over while in the Corps and an avid reader, Jazz was well spoken and quite knowledgeable. For over a generation, before each primary and general election, we would examine and critique the political ticket facing us in Pennsylvania from top to bottom.

In the midst of this primary season, I reached out to his older brother Stan who promptly informed me what candidate his late brother would have supported in the state’s senatorial race, which on the GOP side is still being contested in an extended recount. My intent was to find out when Jazz’s cremains would finally be laid to rest sometime this spring in the nation’s most hallowed burial grounds, Arlington National Cemetery.

Prior to Jazz’s unexpected step into eternity on January 24th, we had planned to visit Washington D.C. later this year. We had been contemplating it for some time. The nation’s capital was like a second home to the Delaware County native having done a tour of duty at Marine Corps Headquarters. A favorite haunt of his was Arlington. I had been on the cusp of Arlington having visited the Iwo Jima Memorial. For whatever reason, that most iconic of World War II monuments was as far as I ever ventured.

It was initially understood that any interment at Arlington, provided you were not recently killed in action, would take between three to four months. This is despite the fact that not every veteran is eligible to be interred there.

After hearing back from the funeral director, Stan told me that the backlog for burial at this national shrine stands more than a year out. In fact, the funeral director said interment of Jazz’s ashes would most likely occur in June 2023, some 17-months after his passing.

Is there a staffing problem?

There is absolutely nothing about the unprecedented backlog on the Arlington website as it is business as usual. A call to their general service number yielded nothing but more of the same. What I did learn was how Arlington conducts approximately 6,400 burials a year. The cemetery averages 30 funerals per day with their backlog consisting of a 4,500 long waiting list extending to a 15-month delay.

This is an astronomical amount and totally uncalled for.

These unelected bureaucrats in the federal government are still in blame mode putting the delays at the feet of the mighty COVID excuse. How long are we going to use COVID as a crutch for every miscue and mistake? We package $40 billion in military aid to Ukraine and bequeathed more than twice as much military hardware to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Yet, with this Memorial Day weekend upon America, we can’t bury some of our veterans in a timely fashion affording closure for so many families.

There are those  who believe there are some good members of Congress but can’t figure out what they are good for. Perhaps our polarized Congress can fix this. After all, what is there to disagree about?

Perhaps since Congress has been delegating its authority to the executive branch, it begs the question: where is the Biden administration in all of this? Since Biden got us out of Afghanistan in record time, why can’t he sign another one of his numerous presidential executive orders to expedite laying to rest Americans in a timely fashion?

Too often the unrelenting volley of class warfare, microaggressions, and the pronoun police coupled with department store sales and barbeques drowns out the true meaning of Memorial Day. Some veterans gave all in the line of duty and we honor and remember them today, while others pay daily over a lifetime.

Arlington has the remains of more than 330,000 souls buried under plain, white granite stones all in formation where every day is Memorial Day, and where waiting lists should be entrusted to the dustbin of history.

If you’ve never visited these hallowed grounds, you should. In fact you must. We owe so much to the men and women at rest here. It is absolutely beautiful, especially in the spring when the Cherry blossoms are in bloom. One of the things that impresses everyone is that no matter at what angle you look at the white markers, they are lined up perfectly. It’s a place where you can walk around and “feel” them whispering to you. Please go if you have not.

Originally posted 2022-05-28 11:35:51.

Recent Posts

Today’s Potpourri by Choice

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Wow, there is so much “stuff” going on in our world today, most of which is taking us away from the important items that we Americans  really care about, or perhaps I should reword that and say that I as an American really worry about. e.g., immigration, inflation, election credibility, demise of our 911 Force, lies and treachery by all our elected officials, especially in the intelligence community, and so much more.

I make no apologies for my not worrying at all about Ukraine vs Russia. Let them slug it out and may the best and strongest win. I am concerned more about China than Russia, but that’s just me.

Much of the BS going on I cannot do a damn thing about, so at my age and station in life, I simply ignore it, albeit I will say some of it does bother me. For example:

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/03/30/complete-list-of-military-items-named-for-confederacy-is-more-than-750-long/

Or what about the criminals of criminals, Bill and Hillary, having to pay fines that amount to squat considering how much they squandered, But then they are the Clinton’s

FEC fines DNC and Clinton for Trump dossier hoax

What about Trump? Is he back on the attack? Wayne Root thinks so.

WAYNE ROOT: I Just Returned from Mar-a-Lago…and I Have Bad News for Democrats, America Haters and the Media: “TRUMP IS BACK!”

Oh, let’s not forget about our one-time mighty military force. What happened to it?

Read the Article ›

Finally, you hear the MSM pundits talk about our national debt and pontificate how it may be paid off someday. Have you any idea exactly what that big number equates to per American taxpayer? How about $242,500.00. Got that much hanging around in you bank accounts to help pay that off? Do any of you believe our current national debt  will ever be paid off? If you do, you my friend, are smoking some strong stuff. As an Economist, I side with  the group that laughs at that question and says no only no, buy “Hell no, it’s impossible; it will never be paid off even in your great, great grandchild’s lifetime.” Check out this website, browse around, it is filled with interesting data; go to it often and watch how it changes.

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

Other than that. all is going  swimmingly well in the deep bowels of Washington, D.C.

PS. Today laws are made not for justice, but for justification.

Have a great day! Sgt B

 

Originally posted 2022-03-31 11:10:59.

Current Events

Finally!

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FINALLY!  Generals from all services are beginning to speak out against what CMC is doing to the Marine Corps. Many have met with him, but state, he took notes, asked no questions, and changed nothing. This first article is from a Marine I know very well. I was his Company GySgt for a short while, until I was commissioned and  stayed in the same company; he was a Capt at the time. I served with him again when he was a Colonel and  G-1 of the 2d Marine Division. Then again when I had 2/6 and was going to become 2/8, he was my regimental CO. Then yet again when he was a fresh caught  BG at LFTCLant. So, I know him fairly well.

I and several others pegged him as a future general when he was nothing but a captain at 8th & I. The smartest, most capable Marine officer I ever met throughout my career. When he made four star he was assigned as  Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic and Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Command. Consider the significance of that assignment. The first time ever that a non-naval officer was assigned to that billet. He controlled all the  forces, including the navy ships throughout the Atlantic!

General Jack knows his stuff, so I am heartened by the fact he has finally come to life. Someone had  best listen to him, specifically another four star named Berger!

Wasteful Spending, a Shrinking Force and the Marine Corps’s Big Bet

The Marines may be “the only branch adapting fast for the future” (“U.S. Defense After Ukraine,” Review & Outlook, March 8), but what future and how wisely? The military’s poor record of predicting the next war urges maintaining flexibility. This has long been a strength of the Marine Corps, which maintained itself for decades as a combined-arms force in readiness, rapidly deployable, balanced and able to organize for any mission. This has proved its worth to the nation at all levels of crisis and conflict.

Yet today the Marine Corps is betting all on a conflict with China in the Western Pacific, to the neglect of other contingencies, creating littoral regiments to be scattered in small units across island chains to engage Chinese ships with missiles as part of a campaign for sea control. To pay the bill for this new vision of war, the Marine Corps has already got rid of all its tanks. It is reducing cannon artillery from 21 to five active batteries, eliminating three infantry battalions and reducing those remaining by a third in manpower, and reducing air power and other combat support commensurately. The war in Ukraine shows the folly of this. Or should someone tell the Russians and Ukrainians these systems are all obsolete?

These initiatives risk turning the Marine Corps into a niche force optimized for one conflict that is unlikely to occur, while hobbling its ability to meet security challenges that are certain. This is not what the nation needs or expects from its Marine Corps.

Gen. J.J. (Jack) Sheehan, USMC (Ret.)

Alexandria, Va.

Mr. Sheehan was NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (1994-97). How dare the WSJ refer to this Marine as “Mr.”

Another general speaks out in the same WSJ article.

The editorial board has been right on its defense analysis for months. Now it is correct about our defense-budget outlook, especially the relationship between the creeping inefficiencies that have plagued the Pentagon and our need to modernize.

If Vladimir Putin is successful, he will not stop at Ukraine. Nor will Xi Jinping stop at Taiwan. America must be ready to combat these threats and adjust to the end of the post-Cold War order. That will require more defense spending—a reality that our NATO allies are coming to grasp as well. But if we don’t get more bang for the buck, these spending increases won’t yield the capabilities we need to defend our freedoms, which are at risk.

Though we spend more today in constant dollars than we did at the peak of the Reagan buildup, we have a smaller force by all measures. The largest drivers of this ever-shrinking fighting force are a broken acquisition system that costs more, takes longer and produces less; the excessive amount of money tied up in the Pentagon’s massive, layered overhead and support functions; and the fully burdened and life-cycle costs of the all-volunteer force, with its outdated personnel management, compensation and retirement programs.

Without reforms, we will not improve our capabilities in either the quality or quantity necessary. The Pentagon and Congress need to establish performance goals that ensure we are better, faster and cheaper than our adversaries. The focus needs to be on outputs, not only inputs.

Congress should also fund the government through a regular process instead of the insanity of never-ending continuing resolutions, which already cost the Defense Department close to $40 billion in purchasing power in this fiscal year. The Pentagon and defense-industrial base need steady, predictable funding. Budget chaos is no way to deter our adversaries.

Maj. Gen. Arnold Punaro, USMC (Ret.)

McLean, Va.

Mr. Punaro is author of “The Ever-Shrinking Fighting Force.”

Your editorial observes that President Jimmy Carter “did a 180-degree turn . . . and began a defense buildup.” This is a bit generous. Alarmed by the enormous Soviet military program and the overthrow of the shah, NATO countries agreed to each undertake a 3% increase in real defense spending. Yet when Mr. Carter offered his budget for fiscal year 1980, his defense numbers were closer to half that, which his spokesmen rationalized with the fatuous claim that the part relevant to NATO had met the target.

In the face of this foot-dragging, two “defense Democrats,” Sens. Ernest Hollings and Sam Nunn, took matters into their own hands, introducing an amendment to raise the overall number by 3%, as pledged, and by 5% the next year. The Carter administration lobbied strenuously against this, yet it passed 55-42. This began the buildup that was carried much further by the Reagan administration, contributing to victory in the Cold War.

Joshua Muravchik

Wheaton, Md.

Mr. Muravchik was executive director of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (1977-79).

STRENGTH    RESPECTS    STRENGTH. Always has, always will, Amen

Originally posted 2022-03-12 10:09:43.