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

Our buddy, Headhuntersix, sent us a slew of photos from the US Army South Best Warrior Competition at Camp Bullis, TX. US Army South’s website describes their mission and the units involved in accomplishing that mission. Headhuntersix says that “The mission is huge and pretty cool. Counter narcotics, personnel rescue and re-integration plus all the training we do with Latin American militaries”

CAMP BULLIS, Texas–Sgt. Andrew French, 512th Geospatial Engineering Detachment, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, fires his M4 Carbine Rifle at the Zero Ranger during the 2013 U.S. Army South Best Warrior Competition at Camp Bullis, Texas May 13. The U.S Army Installation Management Command is hosting the competition here May 13-16. (U.S. Army Photo by Master Sgt. Kevin Doheny, U.S. Army South Public Affairs)

Most of us have heard the phrase, “looks like a bag of ass”. But what does one look like?

Here ya go – take a look.

At first glance, maybe not that bad.  Until you look a bit closer at a couple of things.

Take a good look at the knot in the tie.

Then take a good look at the ribbon rack above his left pocket.

FOIA is in progress. RUMINT is that some of the decorations are legit, but not all of them.

Stay tuned. More to follow.

Several of you have sent us links to the news that attention monger Adam Kokesh has been arrested….again. This time at a rally in Philadelphia for the legalization of marijuana. Of course, you probably remember that Kokesh is planning to march on the District of Colombia on July 4th with loaded rifles. At his Facebook page, the hippies are convinced that his arrest yesterday were some kind of conspiracy between the DC & Philly cops to prevent the march.

I almost didn’t write about Kokesh this time because this is an obvious attempt at some measure of notoriety to boost his numbers at the ill-considered plan to march on DC, in fact everything he does is to pump up his idiot minions. We’ve been following Kokesh since the birth of this blog through his days with Iraq Veterans Against the War, his brief stint on Russia TV, his failed congressional campaign, his “Footloose” remake at the Jefferson Memorial. This one is his biggest attention whore move, though. Nearly every major newspaper in the country has covered Kokesh since he announced his march on DC a few weeks ago. Most of them have come to us for background on him. Thanks for not linking to us, you jerks.

Even the Washington Post, which gushed over Kokesh during his anti-war days, has turned on him in this latest venture.

But who goes to pot rally and doesn’t expect to be arrested? It’s an illegal drug, for Pete’s sake. You can argue whether it should be legal or not, but it’s illegal now, so you’re going to be arrested for engaging in consuming the drug. The hippies claim that Kokesh didn’t have any pot on him when he was arrested, but in the video at the Facebook link you can clearly hear him urging people to fire up their doobies as the cops move through the crowd.

Of course, I lay all of this at the feet of the District of Colombia’s judicial system. Kokesh has been arrested countless times in the District and the judges have all let him off scot-free. He was arrested for putting anti-war posters up in a national park despite police warnings, he scaled barriers to keep protesters off of Capitol grounds.

Kokesh put up racist, anti-Muslim posters on George Washington University campus and signed the posters with the name of a conservative student organization. The University president vowed that he would make arrests and take action against the conservative students, until Kokesh admitted that he had done it, and then the entire matter was dropped.

No judge has the testicular fortitude to actually punish Kokesh, and like a child, he ups the ante everytime, but the government won’t set boundaries for him. So I hope they’re pleased with the creature that they’ve created with their gutless reaction to the man.

Chief Tango sends us links to today’s feel good story from the Florida panhandle. Apparently Ricky Taylor and Teresa Sunday thought a homeowner had too much stuff and they tried to relieve him of some of it. The homeowner caught them in the act;

The homeowner held the suspects at gunpoint while he called the Sheriff’s Office. As he was speaking with dispatchers, one of the suspects, identified at Ricky Taylor, lunged toward him. The homeowner fired a .38 caliber revolver, striking Taylor in the leg. Taylor was alert and conscious when he was transferred to LifeFlight to be airlifted to Baptist Hospital in Pensacola. His injuries did not appear life threatening.

The female suspect, identified as Teresa Sunday, received a minor injury on her face from a ricochet; she was taken into custody at the scene by the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office.

Taylor and Sunday are being charged with battery, property damage criminal mischief, burglary and larceny. Sunday was being held without bond early Saturday morning in the Escambia County Jail, while Taylor remained hospitalized.

The homeowner was not injured, and no charges have been filed against him.

I don’t know about you, but I feel better.

Fox News reports that the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence has filed a Federal lawsuit against Nelson, GA, where the city council recently passed an ordinance requiring heads of households to own a fire arm with certain exceptions – like people who oppose firearms, criminals and people with mental or physical problems which preclude gun ownership or operation. But that won’t stop the gun grabbers at the Brady Center from this needless law suit;

“Forcing residents to buy guns they do not want or need won’t make the city of Nelson or its people any safer, and only serves to increase gun sales and gun industry profits,” Jonathan Lowy of the Brady Center said in a statement.

City manager Brandy Edwards said town leaders had not seen the lawsuit and had no immediate comment.

Council members passed the ordinance April 1 requiring every head of household in the town of 1,300 to have a gun and ammunition, but there are exceptions. The law exempts anyone who opposes gun ownership or has certain disabilities.

City leaders said the law was mostly symbolic, isn’t being enforced and includes no penalty.

So, the Brady Center applauded New York, Colorado and Maryland when they passed gun-restrictive laws that won’t make anyone safer, but they oppose laws that they claim won’t make anyone safer when if puts guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens. I think they’re just afraid that this particular social experiment in Nelson will only support the contention that allowing law abiding citizens to own gun reduces crime and make them look foolish. Why else would anyone at the Brady Center care what happens in Nelson, GA, with it’s population of 1314 souls (in the 2010 census)?

The Washington Times reports that Magpul, the company that makes those excellent magazines for AR-style rifles along with other modifications to the popular rifle, has joined with 54 Colorado sheriff departments in a Federal lawsuit against Colorado’s new gun ban legislation. Magpul says although it’s joined in the lawsuit, it’s still leaving the state, according to a post on their Facebook page.

Just to clarify, we are still moving, regardless of the outcome of this legal action. That train has left the station, and we are well into the selection and negotiation process as well as arranging many elements to be prepared to launch and already moving some production out of state.

This lawsuit, however, could have national implications. If this suit can get a mag ban struck down as unconstitutional, the nation may see a ripple effect across other states who choose not to trust their Citizens with their natural rights. That makes this fight worth fighting even more than just the implications for CO, which would have been enough to get us involved.

The Times reports;

“This isn’t good public policy. These are really awful bills,” said Weld County Sheriff John Cooke at a Friday press conference. “They are unenforceable and encourage disrespect for the law, which puts both law enforcement and the public in greater danger.”

The Democratic state legislature approved the bills, along with a third bill requiring gun owners to pay for their own background checks, with no Republican votes. Democratic state Sen. Mary Hodge issued a statement Friday accusing the sheriffs of “playing politics.”

“We can’t just sit by and do nothing while first-graders and moviegoers are being mowed down in one fell swoop with weapons equipped with large-capacity magazines,” said Ms. Hodge. “It’s time to stop playing politics and start protecting Coloradans from massacres and unnecessary gun violence.”

Yeah, the sheriffs and Magpul are playing politics while the hippies wave bloody shirts claiming that they’re “doing something” dredging up images of dead children regardless of the fact that doing something, this legislation, will actually do nothing in The Greater Scheme of Things.

The Stars & Stripes reports that which we already know – the plan to force them to work overtime won’t clear the back log.

Members of VBA Truth — a group of anonymous claims workers with the stated goal of “raising awareness about what’s really going on in this dysfunctional agency” — said the overtime requirement announced this week shows that VA leaders don’t have a well-reasoned plan to end the backlog, and the problem isn’t just simply underperforming processors.

“We’ve been forced to work mandatory overtime the last two years, and yet the backlog remains,” said one VBA employee, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of firing. “It burns employees out and creates a feeling of resentment to the agency.”

As I mentioned earlier in the week, if the VA is like other government agencies, there is no overtime pay. An employee gets credit time which means that you get an equal amount of time off for the time you worked which creates a vicious cycle when the VA is trying to overcome a growing problem.

Department leaders said the required overtime, amounting to 11 or 12 days for claims employees, would have a “measurable impact” on reaching the department’s goal of eliminating the backlog in 2015.

VBA Truth members disputed that. They said similar overtime mandates, in spring 2012 and summer 2011, produced no real progress on the backlog.

I’ve heard similar complaints in my emails from those of you who work at the VA – that the problem is systemic and that the agency is flawed to it’s roots. But trying to change the way a government agency works takes leadership, and there is none at the VA.

Pictured above is a young Fallschirmjäger who couldn’t find the drop zone during a recent joint military exercise near the town of Dueren in Germany. Subsequently, he had to be rescued by the local firefighters before he could finish his part of the exercise. Take it from one who has had his share of tree landings, we have a way of overcoming this obstacle – we merely deploy our reserve parachutes and climb down the outside (climbing down the inside of the reserve has it’s own shortfalls) of the parachute. The reserve provides a thirty-foot avenue of escape from your leafy prison. And usually much more preferred than ending up in the pages of the UK’s Daily Mail.

Thanks to COB6 for the link.

Maybe, if you’re still not mad at the IRS for being political animals in the arena of battle, you can get mad at this; a veteran who was wounded in Iraq and spent part of 2010 recovering from those wounds had his checking account seized by the IRS, because somehow they figure that he made six-figures that he didn’t pay taxes on that year. Well, he’s 60% disabled and they seized his disability check, which is technically against the law;

I kindly read the federal code mentioned above to the lady I spoke with at the IRS, reminding her that VA disability money is 100% exempt. She placed me on hold for another age (I could see a man coming- bearing water- over the horizon) and then she came back on the line and told me, “We do not take veterans’ disability money. We wait until the funds are deposited from the VA and then we take all of the funds from your bank account.”

The good news is that through my persistence, and my refusal to accept their answer, that it is okay to launder VA disability money, I was able to get the IRS to refund all of the money they’d taken from my bank. I am working with the IRS to remedy their great misunderstanding of my earnings for 2010, and I am reaching out to all disabled veterans to let them know that if this is happening to them, they do have rights, and they need to stand up for them.

As everyone has been telling me in the comments and emails, today is Armed Forces Day, and I’m sure you all join me in supporting the soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors who are currently doing the job many of us wish we could continue doing, those who are carrying the baton of freedom and security that we passed on to them. They’re doing a wonderful job and we approve.

On August 31, 1949, Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson announced the creation of an Armed Forces Day to replace separate Army, Navy and Air Force Days. The single-day celebration stemmed from the unification of the Armed Forces under one department — the Department of Defense. Each of the military leagues and orders was asked to drop sponsorship of its specific service day in order to celebrate the newly announced Armed Forces Day. The Army, Navy and Air Force leagues adopted the newly formed day. The Marine Corps League declined to drop support for Marine Corps Day but supports Armed Forces Day, too.

In a speech announcing the formation of the day, President Truman “praised the work of the military services at home and across the seas” and said, “it is vital to the security of the nation and to the establishment of a desirable peace.” In an excerpt from the Presidential Proclamation of Feb. 27, 1950, Mr. Truman stated:

“Armed Forces Day, Saturday, May 20, 1950, marks the first combined demonstration by America’s defense team of its progress, under the National Security Act, towards the goal of readiness for any eventuality. It is the first parade of preparedness by the unified forces of our land, sea, and air defense”.

The theme of the first Armed Forces Day was “Teamed for Defense.” It was chosen as a means of expressing the unification of all the military forces under a single department of the government. Although this was the theme for the day, there were several other purposes for holding Armed Forces Day. It was a type of “educational program for civilians,” one in which there would be an increased awareness of the Armed Forces. It was designed to expand public understanding of what type of job is performed and the role of the military in civilian life. It was a day for the military to show “state-of- the-art” equipment to the civilian population they were protecting. And it was a day to honor and acknowledge the people of the Armed Forces of the United States.