My Kiddos & Zeitgeist

I just watched a documentary called called Zeitgeist (see the image and the link above). I've come to question a lot of things in the past decade or so. Things that I used to believe just because it was handed down to me by parents, by adults, by teachers, by our government…these are all now questioned. I watch the news knowing that it's slanted in one direction or another for various agendas. Do I wear a tin hat and think everyone's out to get me…no. I just wanted to bring to light this documentary because it blew my mind! Living outside what I call "The American Bubble" has given me quite a bit of insight into how America is viewed by the rest of the world, which has continued to open my mind.

The documentary is divided into three parts, religion, 9/11, and the Federal Reserve. I was glued to it for the entire film…well except for the introduction, which was quite long. I have to admit I fast forwarded through the 5 minutes of this introduction until the documentary actually started. Ironically it was my kids who brought the documentary to my attention. I guess they watched it with one of their friends and it kind of opened their minds as well. Their grandmother (their mother's mom) called me worried that the kiddos hated America and she didn't know what to do about it. I told her I'd check out the movie and have a talk with them. It took me a while, but on this Columbus Day holiday where I have the day off and have been lounging around the house…I decided to watch the film. I can see why they question everything about their whole outlook on life in America and our politicians.

I then spoke with my kiddos. I let them know there is nothing wrong with questioning things. There is nothing wrong in doing research. I let them know that America is indeed corrupt at all levels to some degree, but so are all the other countries…some more than others. America is controlled by big money, and greed drives almost everything. I also let them know that our standard of living is very good and they are lucky to have been born here. We are a lot better off than many other countries. For now they need to keep questioning and learning…this means yes, they have to keep going to public school!

I look forward to seeing how they grow up and the adults they turn into.

Wrong Side of Heaven

Ever since basic training when my battle buddy nicknamed "PFC Metal" introduced me to a band called "Five Finger Death Punch", I've had a great respect for this band. They are good, hard, & aggressive...something that I've been missing. I heard they were big supporters of the military, and I first saw this in their music video for the remake of "Bad Company". This video shows a lot of footage from their time in Iraq to visit and play for the troops.

Their latest video (shown below) is called "Wrong Side of Heaven" (off the album "The Wrong Side of Heaven & The Righteous Side of Hell, Vol 1") and continues to show their support for our troops. The video is about homeless veterans suffering from PTSD, TBI and depression after serving in the military...and not receiving the help they need. It sends a powerful message. Take a look...

SkillPorts After the Army

 
For any of you that have read any of my "life in the army" journals, you've read on multiple occasions about me doing SkillPorts. These are basically online classes that have an extremely wide variety of subjects to choose from. While in the army, a soldier can work on SkillPorts and as each class is finished, promotion points will be earned and automatically added to the soldier's ERB. This is a great way to learn something new or brush up on a subject.

I personally used it quite a bit both while in the army and now that I'm out of the army to earn CEUs (Continuing Education Units) for my CompTIA certifications (A+, Network+, & Security+). These certifications require a number of CEUs each year in order to keep your certifications active. SkillPorts are a great way to get your requirements done, the service offers quite a bit of technical classes you can do at your own pace.

If you plan on using SkillPorts after you get out of the army, be sure to forward your AKO email to your personal email. Your AKO email is the only address SkillPorts will send your completion certificate to. You'll need this certificate to upload and verify your CEU training to CompTIA's website.

Here are instructions on how to forward your AKO email:

1. Go to www.us.army.mil
2. If  you get any Security Alert screens, respond with Ok or Yes
3. Select Sign In from Army Portal Screen
4. Enter AKO username and password
5. Under My Services click My Account
6. Under Email Information select option to Forward Email
7. Enter your Forwarding Address and Verify Address (ex.  username@gmail.com)
8. Click submit
9. Exit AKO
10. Test forwarding by sending e-mail from a non-AKO account to your AKO account

Here is the link to the army's Skillport website
Here is the link to the army's AKO website
Here is the link to CompTIAs website
Finally here is information on CompTIA's CEU program

Rolling up the Sleeves

My first duty assignment was at a joint base in Korea. While there I learned many things about the army I volunteered for. The first was that common sense doesn't matter in the army. There were many instances, but I'm just going to talk about the army uniform and some of the stupid rules that go along with it. I just read an article from a local television station about soldiers and their "right to bare arms"...meaning the right to roll up their sleeves on hot summer days. During my time in the Korean summer I saw all the other U.S. branches (Navy, Air Force, & Marines) all with their sleeves rolled up. On top of that all the ROK (Republic of Korea) soldiers all had their sleeves rolled up as well. I just shook my head as I had to walk around with my sleeves all the way down.

Another stupid requirement was the rule against carrying an umbrella. One image I'll never forget was during monsoon season in Korea. I saw a navy sailor and an army soldier walking down the street in very heavy rain. The navy sailor was walking along with his black umbrella keeping dry and chatting with the army soldier who was walking along getting totally soaked. I was told we don't need umbrellas because we are issued rain gear. Rain gear is not as practical as an umbrella while just working on base doing an office job, but I figured I would put my gear on while making the walk to work in the rain. I was stopped by an NCO and told to take off my hood...we're not authorized to use the hood here. Just plain stupid! Why have a hood on issued gear if we can't use it...especially while walking alone and not in a formation of any kind.

Here is the link to the story I just read that brought this whole issue up.

Effects of the Drawdown Will Be Felt Soon

I've been hearing rumors and reading stories for quite some time now about the draw-down of our military now that we are ending our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are a lot of people complaining for various reasons, but it's something that has to be done. Our country already spends a crap ton more than any other country on our military war machine. While I was in the army the effects of the draw-down were starting to be felt. I was stationed in Germany and the post I was at, was in the process of shutting down. Rules and regulations that were not really enforced in the past started to get attention in order to start moving people out of the army. Overweight...can't pass your PT test...you'll get processed out. I saw this happen with a few people while in Germany. This particular standard should have been enforced the entire time, but because of necessity it wasn't.

Now we are seeing more rules and regulations not allowing promotions or new recruits depending on the tattoos one bears. This has really pissed of quite a few people I know simply because tattoos and the military seem to go hand in hand. The latest news article I read talks about an entire helicopter squadron that is going to be inactivated at our local army base of JBLM (Joint Base Lewis McChord).

The Kiowa helicopter squadron is set to be inactivated. This consists of 400 soldiers that will no longer be at JBLM. While not a huge loss for the base and the community, it's probably just the start. You can check out the original article I read here.

OutServe-SLDN Re-brands its Mission Statement and Officially Creates "Members"

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Change is inevitable, and in order to stay current, stay relevant and continue to be tuned in to our members, we too must change. In a series of strategic meetings over the past six months, the OutServe-Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) Board of Directors has taken a serious look at our organization. We are excited to announce that OutServe-SLDN has a new mission statement that completely changes our focus, while remaining true to the people we serve. We are excited to share it with you:

OutServe-SLDN represents the U.S. LGBT military community worldwide. Our mission is to: educate the community, provide legal services, advocate for authentic transgender service, provide developmental opportunities, support members and local chapters, communicate effectively, and work towards equality for all.

We have fundamentally changed our organization to be more member-focused while still being faithful to the promises we have made in the past. You can see our complete new organization posted here. This will be evolving as we fine-tune our organization.

By forming committees, each with its own strategic initiatives, our future becomes more connected to each of you. The updates and future plans in each of our new committees are described below.

Education

• Develop training materials for the DoD and DHS to provide to commanders, chapels and equal opportunity offices, just to name a few

• Develop partnerships to teach the entire community about transgenderism and how it affects military service.

• Support pride events worldwide so OutServe-SLDN can pass along information to the greater community  

Advocacy & Legal Services

• Starting in February, we hired the New Orleans law firm, Delaney and Robb, to take on the legal services portion of what we provide. Since then, they have processed 109 clients on a variety on LGBT military issues. Read more about how we gave a marine his dying wish here.

• Developing partnerships to determine a path to authentic transgender service and work to achieve that.  

Professional Development

• Mentor our members to better themselves

• We are in the final stages of determining the location for our annual leadership conference. Be on the lookout for more information soon.  

Chapter and Member Services

• The OutServe-SLDN Board of Directors voted to amend the bylaws to allow members to join the organization. A member is simply defined as someone who supports our cause.

• Just last month the OutServe-SLDN Board of Directors voted to hire Your Membership, a back-end software company. We will be completely redoing our website and for the first time will allow you to join as an official member. There will be ways to connect with other members along with finding online resources and more at our completely redesigned website! We hope to launch this new website by 1 August 2014.  

Public Affairs

• Communicating effectively is key to any organization and we are committed to doing just that. We want to give our members beneficial and timely information. 

How can you help?

Volunteer your time. Right now we have no paid staff and the all-volunteer board of directors, military advisory council and chapter leaders are doing all of the work. If there is an area that interests you, contact the committee chair and get involved! To inquire how you can help please contact us by clicking here.

Become a member. Once we roll out our new membership campaign, become a member. Anyone is welcome and it is FREE! Look for updates on this in the coming months!

Donate to our cause. This can be through optional membership dues, a one time gift or a recurring donation. Please click here if you wish to donate. What does your donation go towards you ask?
Fund our team of lawyers at Delaney and Robb that provide key legal services.
Fund Pride for our local chapters so that we can march in the parades and have booths to pass out information, meet people, answer questions and engage our local communities. Our goal is to be able to fund pride at ten key locations this year. Some of these pride events cost upwards of $1,500 to march in the parade and to have a booth. Banners cost about $85 a piece. As you can see, having a presence at pride is not cheap.
Fund education and training modules to better prepare our military and government to successfully handle LGBT-specific questions and incidents.

Hire a full time staff that can be dedicated to preforming OutServe-SLDN’s missions

This is an exciting time for OutServe-SLDN and we hope you will be as much a part of our future as you have been our past.

Never Giving Up,

John and Jeff

OutServe-SLDN co-chairmen of the board

Afterschool health program, thanks for the great page!

(I was sent the following email and did indeed include the link on my website. I'm always down with helping out kids and promoting health and fitness ~ Brandon)

I found your web page (http://www.mcguires5.com/miscellaneous-links) while searching online for information on health and fitness... there's some great stuff on there; thank you for your information!

I work with a group of students at an afterschool program, and we've recently been focusing on different health topics (some of them don't come from strong family households) so they've learned quite a lot about nutritious foods and taking care of their health. Now that it's getting warmer out we've been focusing more on fitness and they love it!

One of the kids (Andrew) found a great set of calculators that would fit in well with your information: "Fitness, Nutrition, and Lifestyle Calculators for Positive Mental Health" - http://www.morningsiderecovery.com/educational-resources/fitness-nutrition-and-lifestyle-calculators-for-positive-mental-health/

Would you mind including it on your website for me? I'd like to show my student his hard work is helping, and I think others would benefit from the information as well! Let me know if you get the chance to update, and thanks again for the helpful page!

Have a great day,

~Debbie