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Author: TriSec    Date: 02/22/2022 00:20:08

Good Morning.

Posting again on Monday night - It's school vacation week here in Boston, and I'll be off to dispatch some trolleys at an early hour tomorrow. So let's dive right in.


So how's a little sexual assault with your morning coffee? Yeah, not the best thing to read first thing in the morning, but the United States Military Academies seem to have a growing problem in this regard.


Students at the U.S. service academies filed 131 reports of sexual assault during the 2020-2021 academic year -- the highest number since the Defense Department began closely tracking the problem in 2006.

The reports represent a 7.4% increase from the 2018-2019 academic year, which was the last time students spent a full year in class before the pandemic.

It marks a 43% increase from 2019-2020, when students were sent home in March to protect them from contracting COVID-19.

While the increases are “troubling,” they still only represent a fraction of sexual assaults at the academies, according to data released Thursday by the DoD's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office.

Students listed 747 sexual assaults at the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Military and U.S. Naval Academies in a survey conducted by the office covering the 2017-2018 school year, yet just 92 were formally reported. The survey is collected every two years.

The expansive gap indicates that the academies are a "long way off" from their public goal of encouraging all victims to report sexual assault and to reduce how often the crime occurs, according to Nate Galbreath, the office’s acting director.

"We recognize that this is a troubling problem," Galbreath said during a call with reporters on Thursday. "It's a horrible thing to have to experience and we are here to help make sure that it happens less often and that victims get the kind of care and support they need to recover."

Retired Navy Capt. Lory Manning, director of government relations for the Service Women’s Action Network, called the information in the most recent report “disheartening,” given that the academies exist to educate the future leaders of the armed forces.

“As the Service Academies initiate the changes recommended last July by the Independent Review Commission on Sexual Misconduct and approved by Congress in December, I hope reports of sexual assaults committed by students at our Service Academies will become a thing of the past,” Manning wrote in an email to Military.com.

For the second year in a row, the Air Force Academy had the highest number of reports, at 52, up from 38 during the shortened pandemic year.

The U.S. Military Academy at West Point had 46 reports in the 2020-2021 school year, twice the number it had in the truncated previous year.

The U.S. Naval Academy reported 33 sexual assaults, up from 27.

Although the shortened academic year makes comparing the trend more challenging, since cadets and midshipmen were sent home in spring 2020 to complete their semesters, the number of reported sexual assaults is clearly on an upward trend despite training and education initiatives at the schools.


Now, what I do out there in the city of Boston has no comparison here, but hear me out. This is a leadership problem. Dispatching trolleys - well, I'm in charge of the city for the day. How I run our operations permeates every phase of the day, from the conductors, to the ticket sellers, to the concierges. If I run the city smoothly and efficiently, and do it in a upbeat and positive manner, everybody can tell. It's as easy or difficult as I choose to make it.

So why is this a leadership problem at the academies? Look at who has been in charge over the last few years. The former Commander-in-Chief was an ignorant schlub who couldn't be bothered with the day-to-day operations of running the country, nevermind the military. But if he says things like this:


Trump: "No, no, Nancy. No this was [inaudible] and I moved on her very heavily in fact I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said I'll show you where they have some nice furniture. I moved on her like a bitch. I couldn't get there and she was married. Then all-of-a-sudden I see her, she's now got the big phony tits and everything. She's totally changed her look."

Bush: "Your girl's hot as shit. In the purple."

Multiple voices: "Whoah. Yes. Whoah."

Bush: "Yes. The Donald has scored. Whoah my man."

Trump: "Look at you. You are a pussy."

Bush: "You gotta get the thumbs up."

Trump: "Maybe it's a different one."

Bush: "It better not be the publicist. No, it's, it's her."

Trump: "Yeah that's her with the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful... I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything."

Bush: "Whatever you want."

Trump: "Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."


It doesn't take that long for that kind of attitude to permeate everything from top to bottom. As we have all observed, it's easier to destroy than to create - and in the four years we all suffered under the former President, he managed to undo nearly everything that it took two-and-a-half centuries to build under the American system. President Biden can only do so much - but his attitude may slowly but surely start to turn things around.

Moving on, as Omicron retreats, things are headed back towards a more "normal" feeling, whatever that might be now. Boston has recently dropped it's vaccine mandate, but a face
-mask mandate remains in force for indoor spaces. We're doing the best we can giving tours on an enclosed trolley. But we should expect that those who are tasked with preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States might have the best interests of the citizens in mind - except when they don't.


NEW YORK — A Marine Corps reservist who was charged in last year’s riot at the U.S. Capitol also schemed with a nurse to steal, forge and sell hundreds of fake coronavirus vaccination cards and destroy vaccine doses to fake inoculations, federal authorities said Thursday.

Cpl. Jia Liu, 26, was released on $250,000 bond to home detention with an ankle monitor after a court appearance Thursday. Nurse Steven Rodriguez, 27, was released on $100,000 bond.

"By deliberately distributing fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination cards to the unvaccinated, the defendants put military and other communities at risk of contracting a virus that has already claimed nearly 1 million lives in this country,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.

Liu’s lawyer, Benjamin Yaster, declined to comment. A message was left for Rodriguez' attorney.

The defendants are charged with conspiring to commit forgery and to defraud the federal government. The charges carry the potential for up to 10 years in prison for Liu, of Queens, and Rodriguez, of suburban Long Beach.

According to an indictment, Rodriguez, who worked at a clinic on Long Island, pilfered blank COVID-19 vaccination cards.

The two men allegedly offered customers the choice of buying blank or fraudulently filled out cards, with a premium-priced option: a fake vaccination record in the New York state and city databases that are used to issue vaccine passes.

A buyer who sprung for the add-on would go to the clinic, where Rodriguez would dispose of a dose of vaccine, forge a card and make a phony entry into the databases, the indictment said.

Covering their tracks by referring to “gift cards,” “Cardi Bs,” “Christmas cards” and “Pokemon cards,” Liu and Rodriguez conducted the scam through encrypted messaging apps and social media and instructed buyers to mask online payments as “consultancy” or “Korean BBQ,” the indictment said.

“I need to make an appointment for you with my buddy who will destroy a vial, scan your ID and give you a Band-Aid,” Liu told one contact in a message last May, the indictment said.

It said some of the fake cards went to Liu's fellow Marine reservists, following a Pentagon order in August that all members of the military be vaccinated.

The scheme ultimately involved over 300 ill-gotten vaccination cards and over 70 fake database entries, according to prosecutors.


It still sickens me to read stories like this. Those involved are actually traitors, and should be treated as such. Tall tree, short rope, wall, firearms, whatever it takes. We are far beyond the point of common sense - but it all goes back to the former President, doesn't it?

I will wrap up today with an overlooked story. Given the Olympics, Ukraine, and a whole host of other stories that happened this past week, it was very easy for everyone to overlook the passing of Gail Halverson. Long ago, he was an ordinary pilot during the Berlin Airlift, but wound up doing something extraordinary that helped to repair the relationship between a defeated Germany and the United States.


DENVER — U.S. military pilot Gail S. Halvorsen — known as the “Candy Bomber” for his candy airdrops during the Berlin Airlift after World War II ended — has died.

Halvorsen was 101 when he died Wednesday following a brief illness in his home state of Utah, surrounded by most of his children, James Stewart, the director of the Gail S. Halvorsen Aviation Education Foundation, said Thursday.

Halvorsen was beloved and venerated in Berlin, which he last visited in 2019 when the city celebrated the 70th anniversary of the day the Soviets lifted their post-War World II blockade cutting off supplies to West Berlin with a big party at the former Tempelhof airport in the German capital.

“Halvorsen’s deeply human act has never been forgotten,” Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey said in a statement.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox also praised Halvorsen, who was born in Salt Lake City but grew up on farms before getting his pilot’s license.

“I know he’s up there, handing out candy behind the pearly gates somewhere," he said.

After the United States entered World War II following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Halvorsen trained as a fighter pilot and served as a transport pilot in the south Atlantic during World War II before flying food and other supplies to West Berlin as part of the airlift.

According to his account on the foundation's website, Halvorsen had mixed feelings about the mission to help the United States' former enemy after losing friends during the war.

But his attitude changed, and his new mission was launched, after meeting a group of children behind a fence at Templehof airport.

He offered them the two pieces of gum that he had, broken in half, and was touched to see those who got the gum sharing pieces of the wrapper with the other children, who smelled the paper. He promised to drop enough for all of them the following day as he flew, wiggling the wings of his plane as he flew over the airport, Halvorsen recalled.

He started doing so regularly, using his own candy ration, with handkerchiefs as parachutes to carry them to the ground. Soon other pilots and crews joined in what would be dubbed “Operation Little Vittles.”

After an Associated Press story appeared under the headline “Lollipop Bomber Flies Over Berlin,” a wave of candy and handkerchief donations, followed.


Fly on, Captain Halvorsen.

https://coffeeordie.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/image3-15.jpg

 

2 comments (Latest Comment: 02/22/2022 14:24:27 by Will in Chicago)
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