I have the need to haul quantities of water to various spots for drinking, washing, and construction uses. Be it from water for concrete to washing some equipment, I need to have the water mobile.

I also have the need to take fuel to my heavy equipment. Those pieces of equipment can suck up 60 gallons at a time. Driving a 55,000 lb excavator a half mile to a fuel station is just not practical.

The fuel tanks with pump can run well over a thousand dollars, and although nice, are far above what I require. So in this HMMV trailer I have I plan to siamese two 55 gal metal drums and plumb them up for a pump run by an organic 12 volt battery. The water will likewise be pressurized through a organic pump and routed to some standard faucets for convenience

We going to start with the old Armee trailer which has been serving me well for a few years now.

I am amazed at how poor some sales people have gotten over the years. Today while I was trying once again to get some information on tires to purchase for C-Max I called National Tire and Wheel.

I called the place twice before in the past couple months, approximately when I was writing about purchasing another set of tires to test on the truck. Each of those other times, I couldn't get an opinion out of the sales person with a crowbar. I would ask a question then get a short curt answer that was really saying, "Buy or get off the line."

Ever had that feeling, like the person you are talking with hates the public, hates his job, realizes he is going nowhere and it is all coming to bear on you? Ever feel like you have to work really hard just to get the other person to listen? Well I am accurately describing National tire and wheel.

I have seen the change over the years. You see I was buying mud tires from them all the way back to 1992. I would call, talk about tires, the sales person would normally steer me toward a set of generals and I'd order four and be done with it. A year later, I'd repeat and get another set.

But no more. THose people have really changed. If they were thinking they would place friendlier people in sales. They would realize that that is the point of contact and in the case of me/today, the difference between a publically written complaint and a sale of five tires. Being so cavalier with a customer tells me that sales guy doesn't care, and likely the whole operation is running on the cheap and designed to sell as many tires before the sales person burns out and quits.

After the guy placed me on hold today and didn't even tell me, then failed to come back, I had had enough. I wrote a message to them. I don't know why, perhaps just to give some caring manager, if there is one, a clue as to what his people were (not) doing. I did get a response from a "Mark" which I will post. He apologized, which I don't need and doesn't help anything, but it is apparent that he doesn't know the problem exists. I'm wondering if he condones the attitude his sales people display, he doesn't know about it (which says he is disconnected) or he just doesn't see it (Part of the problem)

I don't know...But I do know I clicked on a few buttons and came up with a good price on similar tires on Amazon.com

Transcript follows:

From: Don H <hoverjunkie@hotmail.com>
Date: 8/23/17 4:05 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: info <info@ntwonline.com>
Subject: Rudeness

I wouldn’t normally say anything, but you people, well the sales people I have talked to are really rude!
I don’t know who would buy from people like that.

So I have called three times trying to zero in on a tire choice. All three times I was not helped AT ALL when I asked for an opinion or advice. This guy I just talked with placed me on hold during our conversation when I started to dig and get information critical to my decision. Over the years, I have ordered tires, 4-5 at a time from you many times.

I will never come to you again. If you care to get some honest feedback, here it is: I for one will never work to hand over my money! That means you have to work to earn it. And if it’s not asking too much being courteous would be a good place to start. Your sales people sound like inmates in a forced labor camp. I get the distinct impression that everyone hates their job there and just wants to either grab a quick sale or move along.

I own a fleet of vehicles. You lost me for good. Do yourself a favor and fire your whole sales staff and put someone in there with no knowledge at all that will at least be nice. Then back that group up with one of the people lacking all social skills, but has product knowledge. That way, I’ll bet more people will at least hang on the phone line and if some have a question, then the guy with the brains but no social skills could provide an answer.

Seriously folks, just a terrible job!

Don Harward



From: Mark Hayes <MHayes@ntwonline.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2017 5:34 PM
To: Don H
Subject: Re: Rudeness
 
Don, first let me apologize for the problem. I would really like to get to the bottom of it. I can go back and look at calls and hear them recorded. Can you give me some ideas of what times you called in and from what phone number? Did you talk to different people each time? Or did you get the same person each time? We're all three calls placed today?



Re: Rudeness
DH
Don H <hoverjunkie@hotmail.com>




  Reply|
Today, 6:27 PM
Mark Hayes (MHayes@ntwonline.com)
Mark,

I have called on three separate occasions the past several months. On any of those cally your guy could have sold me 5 tires.

I'm wondering how you didn't pick up on this? I'll try and explain how it happened for me each time. I would call and briefly try and explain my truck, what I use it for, and what I am looking for. When I stop talking there is a deadspace, silence. I always get the feeling that the voice on the other end just doesn't want to answer any questions, which very well may be the case. I suspect these people are burned out and judging from the (lack of) intelligence from the average American, you must get your share of stupid callers and/or questions.

Then along comes a guy like me. I have done my homework to try and zero in on a product and to make the final selection all I need is an informed and educated opinion. Call it a recommendation.

I was interested in getting to the bottom of the Federal MT tire questions I have. THe surveys I run have been 28% negative, citing numerous occasions of belt separation. I think I found and read 22 comments from different people. I also found some favorable responses. Given that I want to upgrade to a 37" tire on my duramax truck because of the low 4.56 gears it has, the $231 price point of the Federal tire is very interesting.

I asked what were your guys experience with quality issues, belt separation, and returns. THe man I spoke with said he had never seen a single failure or return on a federal tire...then he just stopped talking. I feel like I am pulling this out of him and he is just not volunteering anything. How about, well, if you don't think that tire would work, how about our new mr. yong MT for a little bit more?

But just like everytime before, I get crickets. So I ask "Well, what would you recommend?"
then he asks me what size tire, which has me wondering because I already told him. THat to me confirms he hasn't listened at all, I feel he hates his life, and is getting annoyed with me. Now look, I am at the point where I really want to get rude myself, but I have learned control and resist. He says something then click! I am on to some awful rock and roll music and wondering what the heck just transpired? I am getting upset at the moment but instead of just hanging up, I quietly decide that this company will never get a dime from me and wait to see if he ever comes back. I finish that repulsive song, and half the way through the next one I hung up, then wrote that email.

You know, you never know who you have on the other end of the phone. I happen to be the owner of RealManTruckWorksandSurvival.com a forum web site where people come to learn about trucks, modifying them and a plethora of military subjects. I am also a retired Army officer. Later on tonight you will be able to read my opinion about how poorly your employees handled not one but three calls from me. You, of course please feel free to respond, I believe in fairness.

Don Harward

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdfZjrSWxts&feature=em-share_video_user

Please watch this vid

The message starts with addressing the white/black problem, however the core message is much more important

Forgiveness leads to love. God is love. Unforgiveness leads to anger. Anger is not of God. The ONLY way to find peace in the perfect will and plan of your creator is to forgive.

Watch the vid

http://www.wnd.com/2017/08/america-warned-of-race-war-if-whites-do-1-thing/

Liberal thinking

How Not to Become a Target on Social Media

By Scott Stewart

VP of Tactical Analysis, Stratfor

 

Stratfor

 
It's August and for much of the world that means it is vacation time. In recent days I've seen ample evidence of this as people have tweeted, posted on Instagram and otherwise announced their vacation plans to the world. In many cases they even provide play-by-play updates. While sharing this information with friends can be fun, these details are being broadcast to a wider audience that is not well known to vacationers, if at all. And this is where the danger lies: Crooks are increasingly finding social media to be a criminal intelligence gold mine.

Nobody's Home

Advertising one's vacation plans is like sending out a notice to criminals that your home may be unoccupied. You may have plans to have the mail picked up and even timers on the lights to make it appear that someone is home, but widely announcing that you will be gone for a week or two is an invitation for criminals to pay a visit. This can be compounded by people posting photos of all their nice belongings on other social media and by either listing their address or having loose privacy and location settings that reveal exactly where the photos were taken. These posts not only tell criminals that the house is vacant, but also show what is worth stealing and where the house is.

 

Unfortunately, with the explosion of social media, more people are increasingly, and unwittingly, providing this information to anyone who is watching. I have seen colleagues who have thousands of followers on Twitter (and certainly they do not know all of them) announce they are not home by posting that they have arrived in airport X or announce that they are going to attend a conference in city Y for a week. They even tag the locations they are posting from. When I see such a post, I grit my teeth because I imagine a criminal thanking them for the information that their house is vacant or that their wife and small children are now home alone. If one wants to share these details on social media, it is far better to do so after the fact rather than before or during travel.

Tracking You

But such compromising information is not merely confined to vacation or other travel plans; it also applies to social media posts that give malefactors notice that a person will be at a specific location at a determined time. For years we've been advising people against setting patterns in their daily routine that criminals or terrorists can use to plan an attack. These warnings apply equally to social media.

 

I have many friends, including several who are female, who post on social media every time they check into the gym. I realize that they are proud of their commitment and like to encourage their workout partners, and that the gym encourages check-ins as a form of advertising — but such information can make it easy for a rapist or stalker to identify their patterns and plan an attack. Now, certainly someone targeting a woman can develop this information in person, but to do so a criminal would have to conduct physical surveillance, leaving him vulnerable to detection. Posting so much information on social media makes the criminal's work much easier. Because of this I caution friends — no matter their gender — against posting this data on social media.

 

The danger does not relate to just women. I recently had to talk with a family member who is a police officer and who was having his Fitbit wrist band post his running routes and times on his Facebook page. This is incredibly dangerous for a cop who has arrested hardened criminals — especially in this era when police are being targeted for attack. A run is a great time to assault police officers, because they will not be wearing their protective vest, are probably unarmed and may not be practicing good situational awareness — especially if running with earphones. When I explained this to him, he said that he carefully monitors whom he connects with on Facebook. However, providing this type of granular information is still a dangerous practice when you can't guarantee how secure your friends' accounts are and whether they use robust passwords. Also, there have been numerous cases of stalkers and other criminals using fake accounts to work their way into a target's social media circle. Beyond that, if you post something on social media, it doesn't matter how closely you monitor your connections, there is always a way to find it. Based on these facts, I was able to persuade him to stop posting his running routes and times.

Doxing Yourself

These are but a few examples. Apps and sites continue to multiply as do the number of smartphones, watches and other devices that interact with social media. Most people simply do not realize how much information they are posting to the internet and how that information can be collected and used to target them. While there have been some highly publicized cases of social media being used to prey on celebrities, ordinary people simply don't understand that the threat also trickles down to them too.

 

So far, we have been focusing on physical world criminals, but cybercriminals can also use information provided carelessly on social media. These threats come in a variety of forms, including identity theft, credit card fraud, email scams and phishing attacks. For example, a cybercriminal could see a social media post that a person is on vacation in Mexico and then send an email to everyone on the poster's contact list saying he was in an accident and needed an emergency money transfer.

 

In addition to consciously limiting what they post on social media, people should also develop a detailed understanding of how much of their personal information is available on the internet. The hacker community uses the term "dox," short for documents, to describe the process of sweeping the internet for information on a person. In hacker practice, this information is normally published to publicly identify and embarrass the person being doxed, but this practice can be quite useful for people to do to themselves. By doing this, they can become aware of what a criminal can uncover. This process not only serves to help reveal personal vulnerabilities, but it can also be used to identify gaps in the information required to conduct a crime or attack. Information drives the criminal and attack cycles, and I've written about how identifying and being alert to those gaps can be used to protect against attack. Not only does this concept apply to governments or corporations, but it can — and indeed should — also be used by individuals to protect themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNaZCDhvh88

French Air Force aerobatic team

and

Jetmen

Fantastic!

Where were these photos taken?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XjUFYxSxDk

 

Electric Car Costs True or not ? Makes you wonder!!!!!
   
 
"At a neighborhood bbq I was talking to a neighbor, a BC Hydro executive. I asked him how that renewable thing was doing. He laughed, then got serious. If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, he pointed out, you had to face certain realities. For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service.
 
The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On our small street (approximately 25 homes), the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than 3 houses with a single Tesla, each. For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.
 
This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles . Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So as our genius elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are we being urged to buy the damn things and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive, new windmills and solar cells, but we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system! This latter "investment" will not be revealed until we're so far down this dead end road that it will be presented with an oops and a shrug.
 
If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are eco-friendly, just read the following:
 
Note: If you ARE a green person, read it anyway. Enlightening.
 
Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors...and he writes...For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25  miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine. Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9 gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.
 
It will take you 4 1/2 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph.
 
According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned so I looked up what I pay for electricity. I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.
 
The gasoline powered car costs about $15,000 while the Volt costs $46,000........So the American Government wants  loyal Americans not to do the math, but simply pay 3 times as much for a car, that costs more than 7 times as much to run, and takes 3 times longer to drive across the country....."

Can'd decide if I think this is funny or that it scares the crap out of me...

Bobby:

https://cincinnati.craigslist.org/cto/d/clean-chevy/6234141263.html

NIGHT STALKERS VISIT OSHKOSH
FOR FIRST TIME, 160TH SOAR SHOWS A HELICOPTER
July 26, 2017 By Mike Collins
Tucked away in the southeast corner of Boeing Plaza at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, this week is a large Boeing Chinook helicopter. But it’s clearly not a standard CH-47. This one’s painted flat black, instead of the U.S. Army’s normal green. Bulbous fairings housing fuel tanks and special equipment line both sides of the fuselage, and a massive aerial refueling probe juts forward of its nose. And aren’t those M134 7.62-mm electrically operated, air-cooled miniguns protruding from each side of the forward cabin?

 Visitors to EAA AirVenture 2017 line up to walk through a MH-47G heavy assault helicopter operated by the U.S. Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment--the storied "Night Stalkers." Photo by Mike Collins.
Visitors to EAA AirVenture 2017 line up to walk through a MH-47G heavy assault helicopter operated by the U.S. Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment--the storied "Night Stalkers." Photo by Mike Collins.
Although the Army's MH-47G heavy assault helicopter is in high demand to support special operations troops around the world, one of them landed in Oshkosh for EAA Airventure. These special-purpose aircraft are operated by the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), better known as the “Night Stalkers.”

The 160th SOAR has never been to AirVenture before. In fact, public appearances like this are very unusual for the unit. One of the helicopter’s crewmen said the only other public event that he recalled the regiment participating in was in West Point, New York—home of the United States Military Academy.
“We had an opportunity to be a part of this. It’s really an awareness campaign,” said Chief Warrant Officer 4 Ryan Walters, a senior flight instructor in the MH-47. “It’s a very high-demand asset. This is an opportunity for the public to see it, and interact with the crew. We’re also here to assist U.S. Army Aviation recruiting.” Walters, who joined the Army in 1998, graduated from flight school in 2002. After flying medevac missions in Blackhawks for a year in Iraq, he had the opportunity to join the 160th SOAR. Walters has logged 1,800 combat flight hours.

The Night Stalkers have been very well received at AirVenture, Walters commented. “I think people are really enjoying seeing this—it’s not a normal Chinook,” he said. “We’ve had nothing but good feedback and long lines.”

The massive MH-47G has a maximum gross weight of 54,000 pounds, cruises at about 120 mph, and has an endurance of about five hours; because it doesn’t have a tail rotor, it can operate at higher altitudes than any other helicopter in the Army’s inventory. It can carry a crew of six, and up to 33 troops. The heavy assault helicopter has a fully digital glass cockpit that is compatible with night-vision goggles; a rescue hoist; and a cargo ramp that allows rapid loading and unloading. The cabin has four gunners’ positions. The model has been deployed continually since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and this airframe—like all the others in the fleet—has seen combat.

Flying the big, black bird can be stressful, Walters acknowledged. “I’m comfortable being solid IFR for six hours and dodging thunderstorms. To me, that’s a low-stress environment,” he said. “When you fire up the APU, that’s when the adrenaline kicks in.” The MH-47 is very agile for such a large helicopter, he added.

Walters said he plans to retire from the Army next year, and that his next career will not involve flying helicopters. “I would never be able to match in a civil helicopter what I’ve done with this helicopter,” he said. That doesn’t mean he’s done with flying, however: Walters said he would like to buy a single-engine piston airplane so he can fly his daughter to get lunch.

Never far from my and many other's thoughts...Our brothers and sisters in arms out there constantly doing what is hard, doing what is necessary, doing what takes courage, and doing what is right

May God bless each and every one of them, protecting them from the evil which surrounds them and make them utterly lethal when they inevitably meet the demons of the field!

Absolutely Brilliant! "Trumped" by the Alinsky-ism, so coveted by the Left.

 

Maybe Team Trump is like a duck. Floating calmly and looking vulnerable on the surface but underneath the water paddling like hell to get where it wants to go.

 

Operation Overlord, the most successful amphibious invasion in history, was in no small part successful due to the most effective deception and disinformation campaign in history. The key to the Allies completely fooling the Germans as to the real location of the invasion (Normandy) as opposed to where Adolf Hitler thought the troops would land (Calais)—thus meaning all the German generals who wanted their jobs had to think that as well—was the Allies knew what Hitler believed and just played to his preconceptions. They flew twice as many reconnaissance missions over Calais as Normandy and twice as many English Channel surveillance missions by ship. George Patton (whom Hitler expected would lead the invasion) was put in charge of a two million man phantom army, complete with inflatable “tanks,” telephone pole “artillery,” 24/7 radio traffic, and even two million phony pay stubs. When the invasion came, Hitler foolishly withheld critical reinforcements while still awaiting the “real” invasion.

 

Flash forward to February 2017. The Trump team had known for months that, far from getting even a reasonably fair shake from the Fake News media (and even conservative media), they would face the most blistering, unrelenting, baseless and usually cowardly attacks of any Presidential administration since Abraham Lincoln’s. Team Trump knew that the only hope the Democrats had of stopping the Trump agenda was the “Russian collusion” story, concocted immediately after Hillary Clinton’s loss to explain away her pathetic and horrid campaign. Moreover, Team Trump—and here I’m largely speaking of Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller—fully understood and the tactic of isolating people and programs to destroy them one at a time.  Even before the inauguration, Bannon had a massive white board with strategic “rollouts” during the first days, not just weeks, and they were all over the map. Everything from regulatory rollback, ending the “mandate” in Obamacare, elevated levels of vetting “refugees,” a travel ban, tax relief, new arrangements with allies—these were all in place when I visited Trump Tower just before the Inauguration.

 

“How do you like how we’re flooding the zone?” Bannon asked me. Indeed that perfectly described it. The initiatives were so varied, so widespread, that none could be isolated without giving up on all the others, and therefore, none could be attacked with Alinsky tactics.

 

But the genius of what followed is still either ignored by even “conservative” writers, or not understood at all.  Team Trump also understood that they needed a window of a few months to lay the groundwork for all of this, to get the necessary people in place, and to begin drafting all the paperwork necessary. Their biggest enemy was the leak. If word began leaking out to Republicans, especially, who could be harassed, lobbied, and bullied before the whole package was drafted, many pieces would never see the light of day.

 

Sometime in this period, I’m convinced Trump (but most likely Trump and Bannon, because this is pure Anti-Alinskyism at work)came up with the “Cheese in the Maze” deception program.  The idea was to constantly leak stories of chaos or disaffection within Team Trump in order to get the Fake News media chasing those rather than the policy stories. Hence, the “Bannon-Kushner fight,” “Trump Furious with Sessions,” “Bannon on the outs,” “McMaster Seeking a Coup,” and, the latest, “Sessions Considers Resigning.”At no time did I ever get confirmation from within Team Trump that any one of these was even remotely true—but on the other hand I couldn’t get Team Trump to admit to the “cheese in the maze”strategy. Nevertheless, along with “Muh Russia,” the Fake News media was 100% absorbed in what were essentially National Enquirer headlines while oblivious to the earthquake under their feet.

 

Just consider one example: when Steve Bannon (later it was discovered both Bannon and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus) left the Middle East trip “early” for DC, the Fake News media immediately headed straight for the “Is Bannon Out?” stories. At the same time, they were pummeling Priebus as being an ineffective Chief of Staff. This was at the very time that Trump announced deals with Saudi Arabia for $110 billion. Deals such as this were negotiated and drafted weeks before Trump walked the Saudi red carpet and swung his ceremonial sword, and in large part were shepherded by Priebus. Moreover, the whole Mideast trip ran like a fuel-burning funny car: quick, efficient, and no wasted time on the strip.

 

It was unreasonable to think this deception could continue forever, but it seemingly did. Trump’s daily tweets were becoming the focus of such intense scrutiny that all the major Fake Newsnetworks dedicated time to an absurd, meaningless word Trump tweeted, “#covfefe.” Literally, prime broadcast time was being given to the analysis of what “#covfefe meant. Never once did it dawn on any of the talking heads that Bannon and Trump, sipping their diet Cokes after hours, giggled like kids as they said, “What can we put out tomorrow that will keep them going for a few days?” Trump’s daily Twitter scroll literally set the table for 99% of the news coverage that day—of course, all somehow tied back into “Muh Russia.”

 

I knew that finally someone was seeing through the deception when Sam Stein of the Huffington Post on May 31 became the first Fake News outlet to acknowledge something was wrong in Alinskyland. He warned, “While You Obsessed Over Trump’s Scandals, He’s Fundamentally Changed the Country.” This was an astounding admission, but Stein pointed out that Team Trump had already enacted titanic reforms and turned the country around, largely with the power of the presidency, and right under the noses of the Left.

 

Yet Trump kept feeding the “Russia” story, maneuvering the dim-witted and linguini-spined FBI director James Comey into testifying to the fact that, well, Trump had not ever been under investigation, but that in fact Loretta Lynch had engaged in likely obstruction of justice. Comey managed all this while likely perjuring himself in two different ways—but that’s another story.

 

The following two days after the Comey testimony, the headlines were shocking in their confirmation of the “cheese” theory:

*Coal Industry Outlook to improve 4.7% next year.

*First ever US natural gas exports to northern Europe

*First US Coal mine in years opens

*”EPA moves one step closer to upending Obama’s climate legacy

*Indo-American Hotelier Partners with Trump on new Hotel Chain “American Made”

*Dems slam GOP senators’ efforts to fast-track healthcare bill (What? I thought it was “dead?”)

*Trump to create council to punish agencies for stalling or delaying projects

*Trump to announce new Cuba policy

*Trump’s Pentagon filling top jobs after slow start.

 

Meanwhile, in just the previous two weeks, a Muslim female-mutilation ring in Dearborn was raided by the DOJ, a leaker was arrested, and two anti-Trump celebrities were fired. And none of this related to Russia!

 

The cheese in the maze strategy has utterly flummoxed and embarrassed the Fake News media, even more so because aside from Stein, they still don’t get it. Nor will they. The Fake News establishment is far too arrogant to admit it’s been wrong, let alone that Trump and Bannon have consistently played them since November

New Army Training Tells Female Soldiers To ‘Accept’ Naked Men In Their Showers
I recently received a copy of the new ‘Tier Three Transgender Training’ materials that the U.S. Army is now using in mandatory training for all soldiers.
 James Hasson By James Hasson
JULY 5, 2017
On June 30, hours before the policy took effect, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis postponed the opening of military enlistments to transgender people for an additional six months. The delay does not prevent currently serving soldiers from transitioning, however. It is intended to give the joint chiefs more time to review and mitigate the Obama-era rule’s impact on the “readiness and lethality of our [armed] forces.”

Late into President Obama’s last term, his military officials allowed transgender soldiers to serve openly, even funding gender-change surgeries with taxpayer dollars. Former Defense Secretary Ash Carter set a July 1 deadline for all four military branches to write policies for accepting openly transgender enlistments. Formerly, soldiers exhibiting gender dysphoria were automatically discharged.

While the Pentagon’s review takes place behind closed doors and the inevitable culture-war volleys spill into the public square, it is critical to understand the real-life implications of the policy shift. I recently received a copy of the new “Tier Three Transgender Training” materials—a PowerPoint and accompanying lesson plan excerpted below, with full documents at these links—that the Army is now using in mandatory training for all soldiers. The active-duty officer who sent the materials completed the training with 40 other soldiers last week instead of conducting their morning physical training as usual.

Military As Social Engineering, Not National Defense
The force-wide presentation sheds quite a bit of light on the implications of the rule change on transgender service members. The policy prioritizes subjective feelings over combat-readiness and inverts military order by placing the needs of individuals over the well-being of their units.

The policy allows transgender soldiers to switch their “gender marker” in the Army’s personnel database without undergoing sex reassignment surgery or any other physical changes.

For a soldier to officially change gender requires only some paperwork. A military doctor or civilian medical professional must certify that the transgender person has achieved “stability in the preferred gender” and the soldier must change the gender designation on the soldier’s passport or birth certificate. From that point on, the transgender soldier is “expected to adhere to all military standards associated with their gender,” and “use the billeting, bathroom and shower facilities” of their new gender.

For example, “Vignette Four” of the training module presents the following scenario: “following her transition from male to female (which did not include sex reassignment surgery) and gender marker change in DEERS [DEERS is the military’s personnel database], a transgender Soldier begins using female barracks, bathroom and shower facilities. Because she did not undergo a surgical change, the Soldier still has male genitalia.”

How should troops respond? “Soldiers must accept living and working conditions that are often austere, primitive, and characterized by little or no privacy.”


The slide tells soldiers to “understand that you may encounter individuals in barracks, bathrooms, or shower facilities with physical characteristics of the opposite sex despite having the same gender marker in DEERS.” The next bullet point adds, “all Soldiers should be respectful of the privacy and modesty concerns of others. However, transgender Soldiers are not required or expected to modify or adjust their behavior based on the fact that they do not ‘match’ other Soldiers.” This is a first. The military is normally in the business of telling soldiers to “modify or adjust their behavior” all the time.

Consider what these policies mean in real life: Most Army showers look like a prison cell with several showerheads on the wall. Anyone who has dealt with the practical challenges of funneling 30 people through them in ten minutes understands that “privacy” will be incompatible with reality. Female soldiers who feel uncomfortable sharing facilities with individuals who still have “physical characteristics of the opposite sex” will just have to put up with it.

The adjustments to “billeting” are equally intrusive. Modern barracks resemble college dorms, with two soldiers of the same sex — now “gender marker” — sharing rooms just large enough to accommodate the basic necessities of military life. The training forbids any commander from ordering a transgender soldier to use a facility that is inconsistent with his “gender marker,” and rejects the idea of separate facilities for transgender soldiers. If separate facilities of any kind are created, they must be for soldiers who feel uncomfortable sharing facilities with a member of the opposite biological sex. In short, the rest of the unit must adjust, not the individual transgender soldier.

Watch My Genitals While I Urinate
The changes also affect drug-testing procedures. DoD Instruction 1010.16 requires urine specimens to be “collected under the direct observation of a designated individual of the same sex as the Service member providing the specimen.” To be blunt, “observers” must watch the urine sample leave the tested soldier’s body and enter the collection cup.

Under the new rules, however, “absent an exception to policy,  the observer will be the same gender as the Soldier being observed (as reflected by the gender marker in DEERS).” The change is justified by interpreting the term “sex” in existing drug testing regulations to mean the same thing as “gender.” Lest there be any confusion: the policy means that an 18-year-old female soldier may be forced to drop her pants and urinate in a cup in front of an anatomically male non-commissioned officer who has a female “gender marker,” and vice versa.

YOU DIDN'T SEE THIS PHOTO OR THIS STORY ON NETWORK TV AFTER MEMORIAL DAY
 
 
BY: JOSEPH CURL, THE DAILY WIRE
MAY 30, 2017
 
President Trump on Monday marked his first Memorial Day as commander in chief, heading to Arlington National Cemetery through the throngs of motorcycles participating in Rolling Thunder to place a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
The large audience packed into the cemetery’s amphitheater cheered when Trump was introduced, and the president delivered a powerful tribute to Americas fallen service members, calling them angels sent to us by God.
 
To every Gold Star family, God is with you, and your loved ones are with him, Trump said. They died in wars so that we could live in peace. Every time you see the sun rise over this blessed land, please know your brave sons and daughters pushed away the night and delivered for us all that great and glorious dawn.
Of course, you wouldn't know that Trump did that if you looked at the top newspapers in the country.
In fact, you wouldn't even know that Monday was Memorial Day, or that nearly every town across the United States held a parade to honor America's troops.
 
The New York Times didn't have anything on its front page about Memorial Day.
 
It used a small teaser box at the bottom left corner to tout a story about "a soccer star's farewell to A.S. Roma," whatever that is.
Not a word or a picture dedicated to America's military branches and their sacrifice.
The Washington Post front page was full of anti-Trump stories, "Serving Intelligence to Trump in Small Bites" and "Budget Would Cut Civil Rights Position," to name a few.
And the main art showed a factory in Kentucky, not Trump or America's veterans.
The paper, whose new motto is "Democracy Dies in Darkness," did feature one tiny picture at the bottom of the page with a referral to the Metro page for a story about Memorial Day, but no mention or photo of Trump.
Only USA Today, among the country's biggest papers, featured a shot of Trump laying the wreath, with a reference to an inside story and more pictures.
But here's the shot that, had former president Barack Obama done it, would've put him on every front page across the country.
Since it was Trump, though, the country's liberal papers decided not to print it.
 
 
The boy's name is Christian Jacobs, 6, and he's dressed like a Marine because his father, Marine Sgt. Christopher Jacobs, was killed during a training accident in California in 2011.
A great picture of America's president on Memorial Day.Â
And every newspaper that didn't run it -- for purely partisan reasons -- ought to be ashamed.

The Canadian government finalized a deal and paid the former teenage terrorist Omar Kadr $10.5 million in a way that his victims will not be able to sue him for the money.

Kadr was radicalized by his father and taken to Afghanistan when he was 15 years old. He admitted to throwing a grenade that killed an American soldier and partially blinded another.

Kadr, a Canadian citizen, was captured, taken to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and incarcerated in the U.S. military facility for 10 years. The Canadian government made the payout to compensate Kadr for abuses he suffered as a teenager under detention.

The payout was quietly given to Kadr, who cashed it immediately, circumventing efforts by the injured soldier and the widow of the U.S. soldier killed to file an injunction against the payout.

“The injunction is moot. It is absolutely moot,” University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran told The Globe and Mail. “Plus, if they are smart, that money is not sitting in Omar Khadr’s name, it is sitting in a trust fund or it is sitting in a corporation or some other structure, and good luck in enforcing against that.”

Writing in the Middle East Forum about the subject, human rights activist Tarek Fatah remarks how Canada’s “values have turned upside down in a bizarro world, one of our own making.”

Fatah explains:

“It is true that at the time Omar Khadr committed his act of terror and murder, he was only 15 years old, but in the context of the war against civilization by Islamic terrorists, be they from the Taliban, ISIS, Al-Shabab, or Boko Haram, the vast number of volunteers who have taken up arms and carried out war crimes are in their teens.

“For bleeding-heart liberals whose guilt-ridden frame of mind cannot comprehend beyond the storybook picture of the child soldiers hired by African war lords, this may be a shock, but the ultimate hero of Muslims in the part of the world Omar Khadr was photographed making IEDs, is the 8th century 17-year old Arab invader of India called Muhammad Bin Qasim, and from Kabul to Karachi every child jihadi wishes to emulate the rape and plunder of this Arab jihadi. We are not dealing with the God’s Army in Uganda or the Liberian child soldiers of the 1990s.

“The Muslim boys who go to fight jihad do so not under any pressure, but for the lure of entering Paradise and meeting the opposite gender for the first time. This may sound bizarre to the non-Muslim, but trust me, this is not fiction nor propaganda.”

I am so sick of this gay crap in the military. Its a killing organization. Take the focus off sexual orientation and spend the time zeroing weapons. Stop any unnatural act like changing a man into a woman or vise-versa and practice hand to hand and knife fighting.

Stop removing references to Islam from military manuals and instead, write about that religion. Focus on its weaknesses, the lies it is based on, the torture and hatred it promotes, and study it so that we can effectively destroy people of that faith who have been turned toward terror and violence.

Forget about addressing any racial differences and recognize that soldiers are simply people with a job and a pay grade. Take the time wasted on discussing our differences and spend that on night movement techniques.

In other words if it doesn't have something to do with killing a bad guy one second quicker then spend no time on it at all!

Recognize that men and women are different. That a real living God made them different. Allow for those physical differences, but, by word, if a gal thinks she can be an Army Ranger, I say, have at it! Having said that, I'd say very, very few would want to try and even fewer would win that tab. But if they did, I for one would honor it! I would not make any more of it, however than I would for anyone else who earned it.


MILITARYCORRUPTION.COM DARES TO BE
"POLITICALLY INCORRECT" - WHILE OTHER MEDIA
OMIT LESBIAN ASSAULT DETAILS, WE GIVE YOU
ALL THE NEWS - MARINE LT. COL. JENNIFER
GRIEVES  FAILURE TO REPORT ARREST FOR
PHYSICALLY ATTACKING HER FEMALE "WIFE"
TO CHAIN-OF-COMMAND PLAYED PART IN HER
BEING FIRED FROM COMMAND OF HELICOPTER
SQUADRON - GRIEVES FIRST WOMAN PILOT TO
COMMAND "MARINE ONE" AT WHITE HOUSE

© 2017 MilitaryCorruption.com

MARINE LT. COL. JENNIFER GRIEVESOne thing that MilitaryCorruption.com cannot be accused of - now, or at anytime during the 17 years we have been online "fighting for the truth and exposing the corrupt" - is not telling it like it is or being intimidated by "political correctness."

A good example of that is our coverage of the recent firing of Marine Lt. Col. Jennifer Grieves.  While other media chose to ignore the fact the super-achiever officer's arrest for "assault" was for fighting with another woman, we here and now, can tell you all the details of what's in the police complaint.

The altercation, and failure to report same to her chain-of-command, stemmed from a cat fight between Grieves and her female "wife," where the "victim" told police she had been "scratched" and "punched on the chest" (i.e. her boobs) by her irate mate.  It's all there for any enterprising reporter to find in the police records at the Onslow County, N.C. courthouse.

As far as we know, we're the only media organization that has dared report the lesbian-lovers quarrel.  Maybe that's because we are 100 per cent "un-PC" here.

"WIFE" WANTS A DIVORCE

Grieves was arrested after her spouse made a complaint to cops Dec.16, 2016. The Marine officer was officially charged with simple assault, a misdemeanor.  The charges were eventually dropped a couple weeks later, but there was so much bad blood between Grieves and her "wife," the aggrieved woman filed for divorce.  The couple were married Aug. 18, 2015.

Here is where Grieves began her slide to disaster.  She neglected to inform her chain-of-command at Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 464, New River, that she had been arrested, and that is a big "no-no" when you're a commanding officer updating paperwork to maintain a security rating.

Someone tipped off Maj. Gen. Matthew Glavy, C. O. of 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing and he ordered the 46 year-old onetime USMC poster girl fired "due to loss of trust and confidence in her ability to lead."  Translation - a career-ender for the hard-charger who enlisted in the Corps 27 years ago, and once was a media darling when she flew Obama around with an all-female crew in the Marine's most distinguished chopper.

They're getting to be known - and rejected. The Crusades have finally started as predicted. 

The first countries to ban Islam: 

See how the world is acting fast on the threat posed by Islam and its barbaric Sharia Law. 

Japan

Has always refused Muslims to live permanently in their country and they cannot own any real estate or any type of business, and have banned any worship of Islam. Any Muslim tourist caught spreading the word of Islam will be deported immediately, including all family members.



Cuba

Rejects plans for first mosque.



The African nation of Angola

And several other nations have officially banned Islam.

Record number of Muslims, (over 2,000) deported from Norway as a way of fighting crime. Since these Muslim criminals have been deported, crime has dropped by a staggering 72%. Prison Officials are reporting that nearly half of their jail cells are now vacant, Courtrooms nearly empty, Police now free to attend to other matters, mainly traffic offenses to keep their roads and highways safe and assisting the public in as many ways as they can. 

Germany  Alone in the last year there were 81 violent attacks targeting mosques.



Austrian Police arrested 13 men targeting suspected jihad recruiters.

A Chinese Court sends 22 Muslim Imams to jail for 16 to 20 years for spreading Islam hatred and have executed eighteen jihadists; China campaigns against Separatism (disallowing Islamist to have their own separate state) Muslim prayers banned in government buildings and schools in Xinjiang (Western China). Hundreds of Muslim families prepared to leave China for their own safety and return back to their own Middle Eastern countries.

Muslim refugees beginning to realize that they are not welcome in Christian countries because of their violent ways and the continuing Wars in Syria and Iraq whipped up by the hideous ISIS who are murdering young children and using mothers and daughters as sex slaves. 

British Home Secretary prepares to introduce 'Anti-social Behavior Order' for extremists and strip dual nationals of their Citizenship. Deportation laws also being prepared.



The Czech Republic blatantly refuses Islam in their country, regarding it as evil.



Alabama -  A new controversial amendment that will ban the recognition of "foreign laws which would include Sharia law".

16 other States have all Introduced Legislation to Ban Sharia Law.

(President Trump just issued orders to implement the 1952 Law banning Islam and Sharia Law in the 50 States of America)

 

North Carolina bans Islamic "Sharia Law" in the State, regarding it now as a criminal offense.

The Polish Defense League issues a warning to Muslims.



Many Muslims in Northern Ireland have announced plans to leave the country to avoid anti-Islamic violence by Irish locals. The Announcement comes after an attack on groups of Muslims in the city of Belfast, Groups of Irish locals went berserk and bashed teenage Muslim gangs who were referring to young Irish girls as sluts and should be all gang raped, according to Islam and ''Sharia Law''. Even hospital staff were reluctant to treat the battered Muslim patients, the majority were given the Band-Aid treatment and sent home with staff muttering ''Good Riddance''.

Dutch MP's call for removal of all mosques in the Netherlands. One Member of the Dutch Parliament said: "We want to clean Netherlands of Islam".

Dutch MP Machiel De Graaf spoke on behalf of the Party for Freedom when he said, "All mosques in the Netherlands should be shut down. Without Islam, the Netherlands would be a wonderful safe country to live in, as it was before the arrival of Muslim refugees.''

Please share this e-mail with your family and friends if you agree. 

If you lack patriotism towards your beloved Christian country, and lack Guts then simply click on delete. 

I'm more than happy to forward this on - maybe I'm more of a realist than a racist?

GOD BLESS our men and women in uniform!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/uoABty_zE00?rel=0

WASHINGTON – One of the most bizarre spectacles in Washington is flying almost completely under the radar, even though much of it is playing out in public.

And, it begs one simple question:

Is someone blackmailing one of the top members of Congress in plain sight?

It’s a question that demands to be asked, given the basic known facts.

Wasserman Schultz embraces dormer Democratic Party nominee for president Hillary Clinton (Photo: Twitter)

Democratic bigwig Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., has become the central figure in two major computer hacking scandals, but she has responded to the incidents in completely opposite ways.

When WikiLeaks published 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments from the Democratic National Committee, or DNC, on July 22, 2016, Wasserman Schultz resigned as the group’s chair two days later, the day before the start of the Democratic National Convention.
She didn’t really have much choice.

·                            The emails revealing DNC leaders conspired to sabotage the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders to secure the nomination of Hillary Clinton was an embarrassing            political disaster.

·                            Thousands of Sanders supporters were marching in the streets of Philadelphia demanding her resignation as DNC chair.

·                            Wasserman Schultz was told to resign by then-President Obama, according to CNN.

In that first hacking scandal, Wasserman Schultz simply resigned. In her own hacking scandal, she has shown all the signs of stonewalling.

With evidence piling up that her own congressional office computer was hacked, Wasserman Schultz has:

·                            Refused to fire the suspect;

·                            Given him a new title and kept him on her payroll;

·                            Apparently allowed him to continue access to her computer system;

·                            Demanded Capitol Police return her laptop, a key piece of evidence in a criminal investigation;

·                            Seemingly threatened to cut the department’s budget if it did not comply;

·                            Admitted to violating official information security policy, but she blamed the House’s chief administrative officer for not stopping her.

Her behavior is so extraordinary, it would seem to raise a question as to whether she is even trying to obstruct justice.

Why would she take such risks?

And why would she protect the person who is accused of victimizing her?

The suspect had access to any and all of the sensitive, and/or confidential, information in her congressional computer system, including any material that could be politically embarrassing, as was the case with the DNC emails.

If the hack were to put her career on the line, she may have nothing to lose by trying to bury the case.

But there’s another salient factor to consider.

The key suspect had what cyber-security experts consider numerous red flags indicating a potential blackmailer.

The secret scandal
Conservatives are frustrated that the scandal has received virtually no national attention and has been ignored by the major media.

Politico, BuzzFeed News and WND have covered the story, while the Daily Caller has devoted an investigative team to digging up details for months.

When the story broke five months ago, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, called for a congressional investigation, saying, “The facts regarding technology procurement and potentially illegal violations of the House IT network by several Democratic staffers is very concerning.”

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio

But as far as is publicly known. soon-to-retire Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, never did launch an investigation.

And, as even more damning and bizarre revelations began piling up, the national media kept turning a blind eye to the story.

These are the basic facts of the case.

In early February, three brothers and two of their wives who managed information technology, or IT, for some 80 Democratic lawmakers were relieved of their duties and barred from computer networks at the House of Representatives.
Not all of the lawmakers required full-time IT services, so the brothers worked as shared employees, and the offices split their salaries. It was up to each lawmaker to decide whether to fire them.

The brothers and their associates are now under criminal investigation by the U.S. Capitol Police, which is getting expert technical assistance, presumably from the FBI.

The criminal investigation actually began in late 2016, with the brothers under suspicion of secretly accessing the lawmakers computer networks, storing information on secret servers, and stealing equipment from Congress.

The IT techs were employed by three members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and five members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, which store sensitive national security documents, including material related to terrorism, on their own committee servers.

Representatives for the two committees said those systems are sealed off from the lawmakers’ own office computer systems, they have their own IT staff and security measures, and that officials are confident no sensitive material was taken from committee servers.

In theory, at least, it was technically not impossible for a lawmaker to have transferred classified material from committee servers by merely remembering it and then typing it up on his or her own office computer. However, as that would be illegal and even potentially treasonous, any lawmaker would be taking a substantial risk by doing so.

Still, there is one additional odd detail that makes the case all the more peculiar: The IT workers under investigation are Muslims and Pakistani nationals.

Meet the Awans
Imran Awan has worked for Wasserman Schultz since 2005, the year she became the congressional representative from Florida’s 23rd district.

Imran and his wife, Hina Alvi, are personal friends with the congresswoman, according to multiple sources.
Imran has “unusual clout among House Democrats,” according to the Daily Caller, and he has been photographed with former President Bill Clinton.
Imran Awan pictured alongside former President Bill Clinton (Photo: LinkedIn)

Payroll records show that soon after Wasserman Shultz hired Imran, other House Democrats hired him, his wife, his two brothers Abid and Jamal, and his brother’s wife, Natalia Sova, as IT workers. (From Ukraine, Sova is the only one of the group who is not a Pakistani national.)
Public records show Imran was paid $165,000 a year; Abid made $161,000; Jamal, Hina Alvi and Natalia Sova earned $160,000 each.

Those salaries are comparable to what top House aides such as chiefs of staff earn, not IT workers. Why these computer technicians made such exorbitant salaries has never been explained by their Democratic employers.

In fact, $160,000 a year is three times the average House IT staff salary, according to InsideGov, which lists the median salary for legislative assistants as $43,000 annually.
Since they began working for the government, the family members have made $5 million overall, according to Legistorm.com.
Imran has been paid $2 million and Abid $1.5 million.

Only 100 of the 25,000 people who have worked in the House since 2010 have made more than Imran.

U.S. Capitol

But, despite all that income, the Awans have had persistent money problems, including huge debts. Imran’s wife took out multiple second mortgages.

House staffers told the Daily Caller that Imran (and, recently, Jamal) did the bulk of the work and the others were rarely seen on Capitol Hill.

The staffers alleged the no-show workers were only on the payroll to collect three more big salaries and to get around a rule that prevents aides from making larger salaries than members of Congress.
Imran arrived on Capitol Hill in the early 2000s, and Abid joined him in 2005. Alvi was put on the congressional payroll in 2007 and Sova in 2011. Jamal was added in 2014.
It’s not clear how many of them are now suspects in a criminal case and a cyber-security investigation into whether sensitive congressional information was compromised, as well as the possible theft of money and equipment.

Most Democrats apparently fired the four after the investigation was announced in February.

Wasserman Shultz has refused to fire Imran, and she has given him a new title of “adviser” to get around his ban from the House computer network imposed by Capitol Police since Feb. 2.
Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-NY, who is also reported to be friends with Imran and his wife, has also refused to fire Imran.
Meeks blamed the investigation on Islamophobia and said “their background as Muslim Americans, some with ties to Pakistan, could make them easy targets for false charges.”
‘These are very bad people’
Someone who knows the Awan brothers disagrees.

A relative of the brothers’ stepmother, Samina Galani, said she has spoken out against the Awans because, “I am fighting to protect the country. These are very bad people.”
And she says she’s speaking out because she believes lawmakers have tried to limit the investigation and downplay any crimes.

The relative said the brothers threatened Galani (identified sometimes as Gilani) with violence and held her in virtual captivity from Oct. 16, 2016, to Feb. 2, which was, perhaps not coincidentally, the day the Capitol Police announced the investigation of the Awans.

According to court documents filed April 14 in Fairfax County, Virginia, Galani claimed the Awan brothers warned her not to talk to U.S. law-enforcement authorities and demanded she give them access to assets belonging to their dying father, Muhammad Shah, her husband of eight years.

The relative said they used high-tech listening devices to ensure Galani’s compliance and repeated her private conversations back to her to prove she was being monitored.

The relative urged Galani to get a secret cell phone. Galani called police in Fairfax County, Virginia, just before the House investigation became public.

The police report obtained by the Daily Caller said Galani claimed the brothers were denying her access to her dying husband and scheming to get his life insurance by forcing her to give them power of attorney.
“I made contact with her stepson, Abid, who responded to location and was obviously upset with the situation. He stated he has full power of attorney over his father and produced an unsigned, undated document as proof,” said the police report. “He refused to disclose his father’s location.”

Galani’s relative said Abid then “threatened her very severely, made her fearful, they told her they are going to abduct or kidnap her family back in Pakistan, and she had to apologize.”

The court documents show Galani, herself, said, “Imran Awan threatened that he is very powerful, and if I ever call the police again, [he] will … kidnap my family members back in Pakistan.”

The relative said a life-insurance executive told Galani, “a few days before the father’s death, the beneficiary was changed and Abid became the beneficiary.”

The Daily Caller reported Galani escaped from the brothers and filed a second police complaint with Fairfax County for insurance fraud and other abuses.

In the court documents, Galani said Imran portrays himself abroad as a powerful person in Congress and travels with a VIP police escort in Pakistan, because of what he describes as his political power in the U.S.
In May, Imran’s wife, Hina, who may be a criminal suspect in the House hacking investigation, fled to Pakistan where she reportedly has “significant assets and VIP-level protection.”

Bad business
Despite Meeks’ suggestion that the Awans are being investigated because of Islamophobia, it’s not their first brush with the law.

Abid was convicted of drunken driving one month before he started his job at the House. He was arrested for public intoxication a month after his first day.
His record also includes driving with a suspended or revoked license.

Imran has also been convicted of criminal misdemeanors, using an illegal radar detector and driving an unregistered vehicle.

While earning $161,000 a year since 2005 for a House job where he was rarely seen, Abid appeared to spend most of his time running a car dealership that went bankrupt.

Abid listed $1 million in liabilities in his 2012 bankruptcy.
He managed to keep ownership of two houses by telling the court that he and his estranged wife, Soba, needed separate homes.

Former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz fending off calls for more debates while at the New Hampshire Democratic Party convention in Manchester, Sept. 19, 2015. (Image: C-SPAN)

Before the business folded, a congressional credit union repossessed two of Abid’s personal cars. He owed the credit union $10,000, which was never repaid. Debts to numerous other small businesses and individuals also went unpaid.

In 2010, after just one year in business, Imran began running the floundering dealership, which was called Cars International A, LLC, and referred to as “CIA” in court documents.

Imran forbade Abid to even to talk to anyone about the business.

Meanwhile, somehow, Imran was also working as a realtor, in addition to running the dealership and his attending to his House IT duties.

Abid’s one-time business partner, Nasir Khattak, said the dealership’s finances involved bizarre and complicated transfers, including the swapping of staff and cars with a dealership next door.

“It was very bad record-keeping in Cars International … it is close to impossible to make any sense out of all the transactions that happened,” the Daily Caller found Khattak had said in court documents.
Those documents also showed business associates have accused Abid of stealing money and vehicles from them.
But perhaps the most bizarre – and suspicious – aspect of the House investigation occurred when a creditor who threatened to sue the Awans, Rao Abbas, suddenly appeared on the congressional payroll and ended up receiving $250,000 in taxpayer-financed salary through the end of 2016.

On top of all that, the Awans’ dealership was unable to repay a $100,000 loan to an Iraqi businessman, Dr. Ali Al-Attar, who has ties to the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, and fled to the Mideast to avoid prosecution for tax fraud in the U.S.

According to the Daily Caller, that loan was “funneled through a company with impossible-to-decipher financial transactions that the congressional information technology staffers controlled.”

Extraordinary access
Given the Awans’ business dealings, it may be no surprise that their work in the House was not done by the book, to say the least.

These are the key elements of the case that make its so extraordinary and so potentially troubling:

·                            The Awan group had access to all of their bosses’ emails, documents and confidential files: everything on the lawmakers’ office computers and other electronic devices.

·                            That gave the technicians illegal access to all secret and privileged congressional information, including any potentially sensitive material that could be compromising        and/or politically embarrassing.

·                            Lawmakers have no way of knowing if anything on their electronic devices was copied.

·                            The technicians had no oversight, and there was virtually no tracking of what they did.

·                            That was an extraordinary violation of the House security rules.

·                            The Awans are suspected of setting up a secret server to store information.

·                            They were paid much more than those in similar positions.

The suspects were all banned from the House of Representatives computer network back in February when the investigation was announced. But, despite all the damning evidence that continues to accumulate, no one has been charged or arrested. It also appears that none of their passports has been confiscated.

The Awan group had access to all the lawmakers’ emails and confidential files on office computers because they had set up the user accounts.

It appears the investigators might have begun looking into the Awans when they discovered congressional information was being sent to an off-site server, leading to suspicions the brothers were accessing and stealing the material.
The Daily Caller spoke with a former House IT staffer who said there was virtually no in-house tracking of what the suspects did.

That’s because, the paper reported, “Awan bullied central IT to bend the rules for him so there wouldn’t be a paper trail about the unusually high permissions he was requesting.”

It was a major violation of House rules that the suspects’ actions were not logged.

“IT staff at HIR can be tracked for every keystroke they make,” said the source. However, “when these guys were granted access to the Member’s computer systems, there is no oversight or tracking of what they may be doing on the Member’s system. For example, they could make a copy of anything on the Member’s computer system to a thumb drive or have it sent to a private server they had set up, and no one would know.”

Former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz in the spin room of the 2012 CNN/Tea Party Debate in Tampa, Florida. (WND photo / Joe Kovacs)

“After being notified by the House Administration Committee, [Abid] was removed from our payroll. We are confident that everything in our office is secure,” Hilarie Chambers, chief of staff for Democratic Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, told the Daily Caller.

But she really had no way of knowing if that was true, according to what multiple House IT workers told the paper.

All told, the Awans are accused of doing so much that was so illegal, a House source told WND the suspects will likely receive prison sentences.

That fact makes it all the more curious that House Democrats are downplaying the apparent seriousness of the investigation.

‘They have something on someone’
“I don’t know what they have, but they have something on someone. It’s been months at this point,” Pat Sowers, who has managed IT for several House offices for 12 years, told the Daily Caller. “Something is rotten in Denmark.”

“There’s no question about it: If I was accused of a tenth of what these guys are accused of, they’d take me out in handcuffs that same day, and I’d never work again,” said the manager of a company that provides high-tech services for House Democrats.

House IT workers have a number of reasons to openly wonder if the Awans are blackmailing members of Congress.

For starters, money trouble and access to sensitive government information is a bad mix.

Security experts consider the combination a bright red flag marking a security risk with the potential for blackmail.

While congressional committees dealing with national security are confident their computer systems were not compromised, the length of the investigation suggests the FBI may be looking into whether sensitive material may have been illegally accessed on the individual computer systems of the Democratic lawmakers on the committee who employed the Awan group.

And, even if portrayed to WND as unlikely, it is not impossible lawmakers stored classified information on their own electronic devices, including office computers.

But information doesn’t have to be classified to be private, privileged, extremely sensitive and of the utmost importance. Or, embarrassment.

According to House IT workers, the term “classified” is used to describe secret and important material by spy agencies and intelligence committees, but not by regular members of Congress.
Sensitive material stored on their computers need not be related to national security to be so politically embarrassing as to be useful to a potential blackmailer.

When congressional staffers downplayed the significance of the Awan investigation because they apparently did not have access to classified information, multiple House IT workers told the Daily Caller that rankled them, because “those semantics misleadingly made it seem like they didn’t have access to extremely sensitive information.”

That was especially true because the Awans had installed everything on their clients’ systems, set up all the accounts and granted all the required permissions and restrictions, which effectively gave them full control over the lawmakers computer systems.

And their remote access meant lawmakers would never even know when the Awans were on their system.

A central IT worker said members of Congress were simply trying to ignore the seriousness of the problem, and “security of computer systems on the Hill is not really taken seriously.”

Five congressional IT aides told the Daily Caller they were baffled by the loyalty shown by lawmakers who had not fired Awan group suspects.

That led them to wonder if the lawmakers were being blackmailed.

Especially as there still have been no arrests.

As of May, only 20 lawmakers out of the some 80 who employed the Awans at some point had publicly confirmed firing them.

A House IT employee said the new technicians who took over those offices found some had all the office computer data sent to a secret offisite server.

They also discovered a non-government iTunes account to which staffers’ iPhones were linked.

And while the Awans were allegedly committing all those security risks, it doesn’t appear lawmakers were getting stellar service in return.

An IT specialist who took over an Awan office told the Daily Caller they did not keep a hardware inventory and had a lawmaker paying for phone lines that hadn’t been used for years.

Sowers said the number of lawmakers who showed such loyalty for such bad customer service “would definitely be suspicious.”

He added, “I love the Hill, but to see this clear lack of concern over what appears to be a major breach bothers me. Everyone has said for years they were breaking the rules, but it’s just been a matter of time.”

And yet, despite all the problems, the Awans reportedly worked for more congressional offices than any other IT group.

A Democratic IT contractor implied there was a cover-up, telling the Daily Caller that lawmakers are saying, “Don’t say anything, this will all blow over if we all don’t say anything.”

The technician said the Awans “had [members of Congress] in their pocket,” and “there are a lot of members who could go down over this.”

Obstruction of justice?
It may be difficult to imagine how the demand to return of a key piece of evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation, and the threat of “consequences” if that were not done, would not amount to obstruction of justice.

But that’s what Wasserman Schultz did in public, in an incident that received remarkably little press coverage, and none in the mainstream media.

It happened as she was questioning Capitol Police Chief Matthew Verderosa during the annual police budget hearing of the House Committee On Appropriations’ Legislative Branch subcommittee on May 18.

The Florida congresswoman’s questions were triggered by investigators’ seizure of one of her laptops.

A federal employee told the Daily Caller, as investigators were zeroing in on the Awan brothers, someone had hidden a laptop used by Imran in a crevice of the Rayburn House Office Building. (Rayburn is connected by a tunnel to the adjoining Longworth House Office Building, where Wasserman Schultz’s office is located.)

The source said police later found the laptop and seized it as evidence in the criminal investigation.

But, during the May 18 hearing, Wasserman Schultz openly pressured police to return the evidence to her.

“My understanding is the Capitol Police is not able to confiscate Members’ equipment when the Member is not under investigation,” she told the police chief.

“We can’t return the equipment,” replied Chief Verderosa.

Wasserman Shutlz then responded with a not-so-veiled threat, warning the chief, “I think you’re violating the rules when you conduct your business that way and you should expect that there will be consequences.”

In the context of the hearing, the most obvious “consequence” would be cutting the Capitol Police budget.

Wasserman Schultz is one of the eight members of the subcommittee in charge of that budget.

All told, she spent three minutes of the hearing trying to get the chief to return her laptop, without apparent success.

 

 Wasserman Shultz had another bizarre moment the day before, also during an appropriations hearing, when she admitted to violating official information security policy “for years and years and years.”

And then she curiously blamed the House’s chief administrative officer for not stopping her.

“If a member is using an application outside of the House infrastructure and the protection of the, [of] our cybersecurity network, they’re in violation of House policy?” asked Wasserman Schultz.

“Of the House Policy 17, yes ma’am,” replied House information security officer John Ramsey.

“So members are not supposed to be using Dropbox?” she asked, referring to a popular Internet site used to share and store files.

“Not according to the policy,” Ramsey replied.

For some reason, she chose to reply: “I am more than happy to admit that I use Dropbox. I have used it for years and years and years. It is not blocked. I am fully able to use it.”

The congresswoman then blamed security officials for not preventing her from using the site.

“So, there is a vulnerability in our network in spite of the fact that you say that you’ve taken steps to address it,” she surmised. “And there is not enough of a – of a policy that – that applies across the board. And you need to make sure that you tighten up your rules and policies so that you can really take and assure us that you take seriously protecting our network.”

Wasserman Schultz then seemed to use that line of questioning to ask if House security officers were spying on her.

“Are members monitored?” she inquired. Then she asked how they made sure lawmakers were following the rules and whether security officers contacted members of Congress directly.

“When the policy came out, ma’am, we had sent some targeted communications out to the various IT systems administrators that service … the members,” Ramsay explained.

But instead of faulting Imran for not informing her of security policy, Wasserman Schultz blamed security officers for not contacting lawmakers directly.

Deriding the practice of “just lobbing e-mail into a tech person’s inbox,” she persisted, “Wouldn’t you think that you would have a policy where you inform every single member and that we actually have a meeting with each member’s tech person so that you can inform them exactly what the rules are, what is allowable, what is not allowable?”

“We do inform every IT person, IT administrator in every congressional office. If that’s not enough …” replied Chief Administrative Officer Phil Kiko.

Link to DNC hacks?
Another oddity of the case is the question of whether it is mere coincidence that there were computer security breaches at both Wasserman Schultz’s congressional office and the DNC that she headed, or whether the two incidents may be related.

The Daily Caller learned that Imran had the password to an iPad used by Wasserman Schultz and the DNC at the time of the publication of the hacked emails by WikiLeaks.
The paper reprted “Imran was on call for, and on a first-name basis with, top DNC staff,” and that Wasserman’s “world – and iPad – mixed DNC, House and campaign business.”

When the DNC emails were published by WIkiLeaks, with the politically toxic information that cost Wasserman Schultz her party chairmanship, former interim DNC Chair Donna Brazile initially claimed the emails might have been fabricated.

When that soon turned out not to be true, Brazile then blamed the Russians for wanting to hurt Clinton’s presidential candidacy.

What was the truth? The DNC would not let investigators find out. They refused to let the FBI examine its server, according to former director James Comey.

A logical conclusion might be the DNC did not want still secret but embarrassing information on the server to be revealed.

The same conclusion might apply to Wasserman’s Schultz’s attempt to retrieve her laptop held by Capitol Police as evidence.

Was Imran connected to the DNC hacks and leaks? Ironically, it was hacked DNC emails that showed Imran’s unusual access to the DNC computer system.

WikiLeaks published an email chain that showed Garret Bonosky, deputy director of the DNC, wrote on May 4, 2016: “Amy – I will call you shortly. I have to get this ipad thing figured out. Need to make sure I have her username and password.”

“I do not have access to her ipad password, but Imran does,” replied DNC Assistant to the Chair Amy Kroll.

In March, the Daily Caller asked Wasserman Schultz spokesman David Damron whether the hacked DNC emails might have come from Imran, but did not receive a response.

He also did not respond to a request for any stronger evidence the Russians were responsible for the hacks.

The paper also reported on the greater likelihood the DNC was hacked by someone known to them and trusted rather than by a foreign government: “Computer security experts say the most common threat comes from someone abusing a position of trust, trusting the wrong person or a perpetrator manipulating someone using ‘social engineering’ to gain access; all such explanations defy the prevalent stereotype of distant strangers using high-tech tricks.”

Ghosts in the machine?
The case of one member of the Awan group, the aforementioned Rao Abbas, might illustrate how the brothers apparently used congressional employees who actually performed little, if any, work, to increase the brothers’ own income, and conducting what the Daily Caller termed a “multi-million-dollar IT scam.”
The paper reported that although Abbas made $250,000 in his role as a House IT administrator, his most recent job experience had been working at McDonald’s, which had fired him.

Abbas was said to be Imran’s best friend and lived in the basement of a house owned by Imran’s wife. It was a basement he rarely left, according to his upstairs neignbor.

Imran was also reportedly having that neighbor make rent checks payable to Abbas.

Payroll records dug up by the Daily Caller showed Abbas was the only IT worker on Capitol Hill serving Reps. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., and Ted Deutch, D-Fla. Spokesmen for the lawmakers refused to say if if they had ever seen Abbas in their offices.

If Imran was doing the actual work, that would have violated House rules against using non-staff members.

Cleaver, at one point, had five of the six members of the Awan group on his payroll. Deutch had three, but only Abbas for the last two years.

Abbas was also on the payroll of former Florida Rep. Patrick Murphy, and Reps. Charlie Crist of Florida and Jacky Rosen of Nevada, who took office in January.

Spokesmen for Crist and Rosen declined to say who recommended Abbas.

A House IT worker told the Daily Caller about “ghost employees … When a new Congress would come in, they would have the members of the offices they were servicing vouch for them.”

Another congressional IT worker, one who took over some of the Awans’ clients, said office workers “weren’t used to seeing their technicians.”

The Daily Caller reported that someone had to do the work for what it called “no-show employees,” and one of those people, from 2013 to 2014, was Imran’s old high-school friend, Haseeb Rana.

Rana wouldn’t comment, but his father told the paper “they made him do all the work … After three months, he wanted to leave. We were having a very charged relationship with Imran. [Haseeb] was not satisfied with their behavior.”

Who used the Awans?
Although the Awan ring reportedly worked for some 80 Democrats in the House, it is difficult to identify all of them, given all the murky arrangements.

But the list of those reportedly employing the Awans and their associates includes these 23 current or former Democrats in Congress, in no particular order:
Andre Carson, Luis Guiterez, Jim Himes, Terri Sewell, Jackie Speier, Mike Quigley, Eric Swalwell, Patrick Murphy, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Joaquini Castro, Lois Frankel, Ted Lieu, Robin Kelly, Tammy Duckworth, Mark Takano, John Sarbanes, Diana DeGette, Cedric Richmond, Charlie Crist, Jacky Rosen, Sandy Levin, Karen Bass and Marcia Fudge.

Paris Agreement 101

 

Confused about the Paris agreement and why Trump chose to get us out ?

 

Róisín Michele clarifies it, brilliantly:

 

In December 2015, nine months before the end of his presidency, Barrack Obama signed the Paris Accord. The United States did not. In order to ratify it as a treaty 2/3 of the Senate had to approve it.

Obama told us it was not a treaty, but an executive agreement between himself and other nations. The Paris agreement was an agreement only with the Obama Administration, and an unratified treaty in which case it had no effect. The Constitution's separation of powers prevents the President from binding the country unilaterally. Our system does not divide authority into spheres controlled exclusively by the Senate, House and President. It requires combinations of offices to work together.

 

Obama's counter parties in Paris knew he lacked the support to bind our country. In fact, they watered down the wording of the agreement to support Obama's agreement that it does not require ratification.
Examples: they changed the word "shall" to "should" in many places in order to avoid calling it a treaty. The negotiators choose between a treaty that would bind the United States and the promise of an outgoing president. Any claims that Trump or the United States "is going back on it words" is disingenuous. Only Obama gave his word and the other parties in Paris helped design the agreement to throw our Constitution out the window. Obama ignored his constitutional duty to submit treaties to the Senate. In fact, a statement from the Obama White House said it all when the White House signaled it would bypass the Senate no matter what by saying "I think it's hard to take seriously from some members of Congress who deny the fact that climate change exists, that they should have some opportunity to render judgement about a climate change agreement."
Under the agreement Obama signed, the UN would have called the shots on what we did within our own borders to protect the climate. They would have also had the power to punish us through embargoes and trade agreements.

 

Under Obama's agreement, China, the world's major polluters are ALLOWED to increase their emissions where the United States cannot.
India is hinging it's participation on billions of dollars of foreign aid.

 

The agreement was less about the climate and more about other countries gaining financial advantage over the United States. This was a United Nations program that gave foreign leaders in Europe and Asia more say with respect to the United States economy then we do. It would have handicapped the United States economy - it was a deal that would have punished the United States, while imposing no obligations on the world's leading polluters. China would be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants, but we cannot, according to the agreement. India would be allowed to double its coal production by 2020, but we have to get rid of ours. Even Europe is allowed to continue construction of coal plants, but we cannot.

 

Obama's requirements in the Paris Accord would cost the United States economy nearly $3 trillion. By 2040 our economy would lose 6.5 million industrial sector jobs including 31 million manufacturing sector jobs.
It would decapitate our coal industry which now supplies one-third of our electric power.

It imposed unrealistic targets on the United States for reducing our carbon emissions, while giving countries like China a free pass. China would actually be allowed to INCREASE emissions until 2030.

Obama committed $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund - which is about
30 percent of the initial funding - WITHOUT being authorized by Congress. We are $20 trillion in debt.  US taxpayers should not be paying to subsidized other countries energy needs.

The United States is already a Clean Energy and Oil & Gas Energy Leader. We can reduce our emissions and continue to produce American energy without the Paris Accord. America has already reduced it carbon-dioxide emissions dramatically (who remembers those yearly emission tests). The United States is the leader in oil and gas production.

 

For anyone that thought the Paris Accord was all about clean river and air, it is not and never was.

 

THE AGREEMENT FUNDS A UNITED NATIONS CLIMATE SLUSH FUND UNDERWRITTEN BY THE AMERICAN TAXPAYERS.

by Brian Hayes | Top Right News

President Trump unleashed ICE once again this week, this time deploying its Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit, along with the DEA to arrest dozens of convenience store owners across 4 states.

Over 60 people were arrested, and already 35 of them have been indicted by a Federal grand jury, with federal conspiracy charges for money laundering,distributing controlled substances and trafficking contraband cigarettes.

The AP carried this story:

(T)he suspects conspired for more than 2 years to buy contraband cigarettes in  St. Louis , a low tax market, while transporting and distributing them in  Chicago ,  Illinois , and  New Jersey , which are high tax markets. The store owners are accused of using several convenience stores that they operated to create the appearance of legal cigarette purchases.

Illegal profits form the contraband cigarette sales were laundered through accounts associated with the stores, and used to manufacture and distribute illegal controlled substances.

A synthetic drug, K-2, was sold every day from a handful of the convenience stores. Authorities said the store owners manufactured synthetic drugs themselves by importing chemicals from  China .

“The collaboration with our federal and local law enforcement partners is the key to breaking criminal enterprises in this area,” said Special Agent in Charge James M. Gibbons of HSI Chicago.

“Synthetic drugs that are sold as substitutes for cocaine and methamphetamine, are neither legal nor safe,” said James P. Shroba, Special Agent in Charge of the DEA St. Louis Division. “These substances were never intended for human consumption and only serve to satisfy the avarice of the seller.”

If convicted, the defendants face a maximum of five to 20 years in prison and the a $1 million dollar fine.

But here’s what the Associated “Press” didn’t think you needed to know…the names of those indicted.

See if you notice any pattern…

Mohammed Almuttan, aka Abu Ali, 35,  St. Louis , MO

Rami Almuttan, aka Abu Louay, 33,  St. Louis ,  MO

Hisham Mutan, aka Abu Mohamed, 41,  St. Louis , MO

Saddam Mutan, aka Abu Ali, 24,  St. Louis ,  MO

Mazin Abdelsalam, aka Abu Mohammad, 38,  St. Louis ,  MO

Najeh Muhana, aka Abu Yazan, 41,  Fairview ,  NJ

Fares Muhana, aka Abu Yamama, 40,  Cliffside Park ,  NJ

Ayoub Qaiymah, aka Abu Faysal, 23,  Richmond , VA

Naser Abid, 23,  Chicago ,  IL

Yadgar Barzanji, aka Abu Siver, 47,  St. Louis ,  MO

Wafaa Alwan, 50,  St. Louis ,  MO

Ahmed Abuali, aka Bazilla, 31,  North Bergen ,  NJ

Mohammed Kayed, aka Mohammed Fayez, 21,  Clifton ,  NJ

Momen Abuali, 20, Little Ferry, NJ

Firat Sevindik, 42,  Cliffside Park ,  NJ

Mohammed Mustafa, 30,  North Bergen ,  NJ

Mohammad Karashqah, Abu Yazid, 47,  North Bergen ,  NJ

Fayez Sheikha, 46,  Mishawaka ,  IN

Jihad Shihadeh, Abu Malik, 58,  Chicago Ridge ,  IL

Ismael Abadi, 57,  Carol Stream ,  IL

Abed Hamed, Abed Fawzan, 39,  Greenville ,  NC

Maher Hamed, Abu Alazara, 33,  Swansea ,  IL

Abdel Adi, 25,  Oak Lawn ,  IL

Muhanad Khatib, Abu Alamin, 36,  Chicago ,  IL

Eyad Awad, 38,  Chicago ,  IL

Ismael Mustafa, 60,  Kankakee ,  IL

Hayder Al Fatli, 40,  St. Louis ,  MO

Kutlay Guvener, 35,  Chicago ,  IL

Saad Al Mallak, 30,  Dittmer ,  MO

Hassan Abdelatif, 29,  Collinsville ,  IL

Mahajir Naz, 32,  St. Louis ,  MO

Talal Abuajaj, 23,  St. Louis ,  MO

Basem Hamdan, aka Abu Ramiz, 57,  St. Louis , MO

Zainal Saleh, 29,  St. Louis ,  MO and

Ibrahim Awad, 39,  St. Louis ,  MO

That’s right…every single one of the 35 men indicted is Muslim. Nothing to see here, huh?

And there’s more. According to sources, “at least 20” of the men are being held on additional “immigration detainers” by ICE. That means they are “suspected illegal aliens.”

The AP didn’t feel you needed to know that either. I’m sure it just slipped their minds.

This is just the latest in a continuing series of Muslim-owned convenience store criminal enterprises.

As TRN reported, in 2015 state authorities in Alabama uncovered  a massive, EBT-for-terrorism scheme in which Muslim-owned convenience stores exploited the U.S. welfare system to fund ISIS:

The massive probe, dubbed Operation T-bone, targeted those they say have been cheating the food stamp system to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars and sending  the profits via wire transfer to Yemen, some of which is suspected to have funded Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist activity.

And back then it was Alabama D.A. who led the investigation — not the Obama keystone cops, who strangely had nothing to do with that bust.

All 11 stores shut down by authorities were Muslim-owned.

There is a long history of Muslims using welfare systems for criminal activity, as well as purposely abusing the system. As we reported in 2013, a prominent Muslim cleric called on Muslim immigrants in Western nations to purposely collect government welfare as a so-called “Jihad Seeker’s Allowance.”

But during the last 8 years the Obama Administration has neglected the problem, whether deliberately or from incompetence.

It’s nice to see the new administration is not wasting any time in bringing these criminals to justice.

An F/A 18 dispatched by the United States Navy recorded the U.S. Military’s first air to air kill since 1999 after shooting down a Syrian fighter poised to strike American forces near Tanf. The Naval fighter was dispatched after the Syrian plane released a bomb near Syrian Democratic Forces on the ground. While no one was killed, the Department of Defense was curious how the Syrians were able to get close enough to endanger American lives. The results were released in a press conference early Monday morning. According to senior Air Force officials, the alert fighters that were supposed to be covering the SDF and American forces were grounded for the Air Force wide Transgender Stand Down Day.

Wing Commander Colonel Chris Yeager told reporters that he was informed of the threat but chose to keep the pilots grounded anyway. “Look as a commander you have to balance threats. Sure the threat of getting blown up is bad, but if we don’t get our mandatory training done on time and show up amber on an excel sheet, there’s going to be hell to pay. I get paid to make the hard decisions, and I owe it to our gender non conforming Airpersons to make sure everyone feels special. I really hope the Syrians don’t try anything in the last half of this week. We’ve got SHARP and EO to get through. No way we can provide cover during that time.”

American ground forces were concerned about the delay however. One sergeant who was on the ground with the SDF remarked “I can’t believe this. How have they not learned how to forge an online training certificate by now? Even the Marines get it and all theirs are in crayon. Plus if the Navy is blowing people out of the sky what the hell do we need the Air Force for? It’s seriously becoming just a place to store all the hot chicks in the entire military.”

“Honestly I’m relieved” said Captain Bill Mitchell, one of the Air Force pilots stuck in the training. “I joined the Air Force thinking I’d just fly a bomber around Alaska to pay for college. I didn’t think I’d ever see any actual combat because I mean come on it’s the Air Force. Thank God they didn’t attack during the daily beach volleyball game otherwise not even the Navy would have made it up there.”

Others were less enthused about the mix up.  “The Navy has been poaching other peoples’ missions since the Bin Laden raid,” said salty Delta Force operator Hugh McGruff.  “Everyone knows that ground combat belongs to the Army and air combat belongs to the Air Force, I mean it’s right there in their name, “Air” Force.  So what they hell is the Navy doing in the skies above Syria, or on the ground in Pakistan, anyway?  Maybe they should concentrate on not getting their people captured by Iranian sailors or something,” he grumbled before shuffling off to a black helicopter and departing on his fifth raid of the day.

Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldslager made a public statement praising Colonel Yeager but cautioning that the Air Force needs to be ready at all times. “The commander on the ground had a tough call to make and he’s going to get a Bronze Star for it, no question. But this might not have happened had we been a little more ready. I’m afraid I’ve got no choice but to stand the Wing down for a week for mandatory training on the importance of combat readiness.”

_____

Article 107 News is a satire publication, and you shouldn’t think anything we publish is real.  You should, however, mercilessly mock anyone who does.  If you want real news, and you should, check out our sister site The Havok Journal.

The real reason the Navy jet did the shoot was because it was there.  Mandatory training, to include EO/SHARP/transgender is important for the military, the fact that such training is necessary and regularly conducted is not the point of this article.  The point of this article is twofold:  1) there is too much mandatory training in the military, to the point where officers are faced with the dilemma of either “finger drilling” requirements (or falsely reporting their status) or they have to choose the often career-damaging option of telling the truth and looking bad in front of their superiors.  2) we’ve reached the point in our military where professional malfeasance is not only forgiven, but often completely overlooked, but political missteps or ethical lapses are professional death sentences.  “A private faces more consequences for losing a rifle than a general does for losing a war.”  That should concern all of us.