Breaking news Sunday morning — jihad in Florida:

Omar Mateen of Port Saint Luice, Florida has been identified as the gunman who killed 20 people at a Orlando nightclub, CBS News, the Washington Post, and NBC News report, citing law enforcement officials. Mateen is a U.S. citizen; his parents are from Afghanistan, CBS News reports. FBI Agent Ron Hopper told reporters Mateen may have leanings towards Islamic extremism.

Mateen was armed with an assault rifle, a handgun, and what was feared to be an improvised explosive device. Mateen entered Pulse club around 2 a.m. Sunday morning and began shooting. After most of the 320 people there escaped, Mateen took hostages from a group that was hiding in a bathroom. Shortly before 6 a.m., a SWAT unit breached the club and engaged Mateen in what’s being called a protracted gun battle. Mateen was killed.

This is breaking news as I type this. Normally, I’m not comfortable writing about stories that are still unfolding, but here’s what we know so far: There are 50 people dead at this point (not 20, as written above), with over 42 in the hospital, condition unknown. Mateen started shooting, and then took hostages before the SWAT cops were able to storm the place and end his miserable life.

We will keep you posted. There are rumors of the shooter wearing a suicide vest, among other news slowly trickling out. Three days ago, ISIS released a propaganda video promising a Florida attack. It is not clear if Mateen had ties to them, or merely saw the propaganda on the internet and decided to make it come true.

https://twitter.com/NathanDWilsonFL/status/741992040414773248

We at the SOFREP News Roundup will be thinking of the victims in Florida as this horrifying story continues to unfold. Remember: Radical Islam is the cancer of the human race.

Off-duty Air Force PJ passes away in tragic accident:

MOODY AIR FORCE BASE, GA (WTXL) – Officials have released the identity of the Moody Air Force Base airman who died in Florida over the weekend.

According to base officials, Airman First Class Christopher O’Brien died Saturday near Ginnie Springs.

O’Brien was a pararescue apprentice at the base. Base officials say the 25 year old accidentally drowned while free-diving.

Deputies in Ginnie Springs say O’Brien was found unresponsive underwater. His colleagues told them he was a master diver.

Investigators say there is no evidence of foul play, but they’re still waiting an exact cause of death.

Luckily, the V.A. has solved all other problems:

As debate swirls around who can use what restroom, the Department of Veterans Affairs is placing itself on the side of what makes sense.

It is moving to change regulations so VA hospitals can provide gender confirming, or gender reassignment, surgery. This procedure alters a transgender person’s sexual characteristics in order to match the individual’s sexual identity.

“This rulemaking proposes to remove a restriction… that prohibits VA from providing medical services that are considered gender alteration,” according to a document posted last week on a government regulations website.

The Williams Institute, a University of California at Los Angeles think tank on sexual orientation and identity, estimates there are about 134,000 transgender veterans or retirees from the National Guard or the Reserves. There is no estimate on the number that might seek the surgery at the VA.

Explaining the change in position, the VA document said such procedures previously “were not deemed to be medically necessary. However, increased understanding … and surgical techniques in this area have improved significantly, and surgical procedures are now widely accepted in the medical community.”

In my opinion, this is medical malpractice. Please read a much longer article on my thoughts of transgenderism. I recently re-read it, and I would change nothing. As I explained then, I was on the fence about a grown-ass American who wanted to use their own money to change themselves into something they clearly are not. But now, there are two new developments that are alarming. One is the increase in giving little children hormone therapy and surgeries. This shouldn’t even be a gray area: If a doctor chooses to give a child under 18 hormone therapy and plastic surgery of any kind, he should have his license taken away and he should be put in jail. The parents should be right next to him. This is child abuse. We know that the vast majority of children who think they are transgender eventually grow out of it. The fact that this is going on with the approval of left-leaning individuals is shocking to me.

The second new development, and more relevant to this conversation, is how the state is becoming involved. This is new. This is your tax money. First, we had the state of California approvingly paying for transgender surgeries (take your Orwellian “gender confirmation surgery” phrasing and die), and now we have Veterans Affairs, which can’t even take care of the vets it already has, considering spending billions in tax money. I was worried about the medical ethics of this with someone doing it with their own money, but hey, this is America, after all. But the rest of us having to pay for it? HELL NAH. And Veteran’s Affairs, which can’t even take care of our combat vets, wants to spend hundreds of millions of dollars mutilating an intact man into a man without a penis? GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE.

I’ve been thinking about some things lately. Maybe it’s me, you know? Maybe it’s ME who is the crazy one, and it is everyone else who is sane. From what I’ve seen, there’s been little to no pushback on the sudden all-important topic of transgenderism, so I must be the one who is getting left behind. I’m 41 years old now, and obviously I’m turning into that old guy shaking my cane on my porch, lamenting the shoes that the kids are wearing these days and the playing of their rock and roll records, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31b_70kzfwQ

Because honestly, I don’t want to be that guy. You know the one: The guy who seizes on some perceived outrage, and won’t talk about anything else? But every goddamn week I feel like I’m really living in an alternate universe. For thousands and thousands of years, it was an accepted truth that if you had a penis, you were a boy. If you had a vagina, you were a girl. We taught our kids that before they got out of second grade, right?

Now? Everything was fine until like ten minutes ago, and now our lame-duck president has decided that men not being allowed to shower in the girl’s locker room is JUST LIKE black people not being able to sit down at a lunch counter next to a white woman. With the speed of a hurricane, this new truth, that men with penises can be called women, and vice versa, has swept through the country so fast that much of the land has hardly seemed to even take notice that it’s happening. But happen it did, and to even raise one’s hand and say “This is insane” is to be labeled a bigot.

I don’t care anymore. Call me whatever you want. Because, unlike this doofus columnist from the Washington Post, I am NOT placing myself on the side of what makes sense. As always, this is my opinion, and my opinion only; I’m just some asshole with a keyboard. Gather around, my gender-struggling fellow Americans. I am going to tell you something now that you need to hear, something that not one of our corrupted institutions will tell you. These institutions, including academia, Hollywood, the mainstream media, government, and now, even the military, lack the backbone to tell you what you desperately need to hear:

If you are born a man, you will never be a woman. If you are born a woman, you will never be a man.

That’s it. I do not say this out of hatred, malice, or bigotry. I’m actually trying to do you a favor, because everyone else is to cowed to say otherwise. Because I think you should be able to do whatever you want on your own dime, and in your free time (mostly). Because I will fight to the DEATH to ensure your civil rights of freedom of speech, the freedom to vote, and the right to bear arms are never impeded, and that you can live in dignity. Because I believe that nobody should be persecuted religiously, physically, or mentally. Because I believe that, yes, people are born this way, and that you cannot help what you are and how you feel inside. Because I feel compassion for the inner struggle that people who are born a certain way must go through life. This is why I tell you these things.

In my opinion, men and women who believe they are born in the wrong body will benefit far more from counseling and learning to accept who they are, instead of having a plastic surgeon mutilating their precious body into something it isn’t, and will never be. I wish I was a foot taller, could run like Usain Bolt, and had a tapir penis. But that’s NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Your body is a gift. Learn to be happy with it.

And hey, if you want to wear a dress, makeup, all the rest? I have zero problem with it. I think it’s your right as an American to be whatever kind of person you want. If society sees that as weird, it doesn’t matter. We’re all weird, in a way. And if it’s a sexual thing, I could care less. God knows, my will states that my brother JK must immediately take possession of my hard drive and DESTROY it before my parents see it. But for the love of GOD, do not chop anything off or stuff fake parts into yourself. After all, you may change your goddamn mind. Then you’re screwed.

The reality is this: The vast, vast, VAST majority of post-op transgenders will never resemble anything like a woman. Believe me, I’ve seen them coming out of the VA with high heels and short shorts already. You know what they look like? MEN. Men with inappropriate short pants on. Caitlyn Jenner has spent millions of dollars and countless hours going under the knife, and he still looks like a man from a mile away. Those who do resemble their particular sex needed to fill their bodies with chemicals beyond count, and will for the rest of their lives. Many of those chemicals have side effects that we still don’t understand or can’t counteract. Most transgenders will never have access to those types of resources for that sort of lifetime treatment. And the U.S. government certainly goddamn doesn’t. I firmly stand against the VA on this one.

Follow me on Twitter as I shame soulless corporate America:

https://twitter.com/BKactual/status/739851738279206912

Marine gives life to save kids:

A man credited with saving the lives of two teens, at the cost of his own, was a Marine Corps veteran, purple heart recipient and recent employee of John Jay High School.

Rodney Buentello was spending Wednesday afternoon with his family at Bandera City Park when he saw a teenage girl try to walk across a dam and get swept away. A teenage boy jumped after her and that’s when Buentello sprang into action, saving both of them.

But he was dragged under by the current.

His family said that he didn’t think twice before jumping into the water after the two teens.

“His last breath, he pushed the boy towards EMS,” Buentello’s father said.

“When the boy got up there, the water took him under,” said his brother-in-law, William Vaughn.

That final act of bravery was symbolic of his heroism. Buentello served 20 years in the Marines, including three tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Marines sent KENS 5 a list of nearly 40 military decorations.

It is America’s good fortune that the nation has men of this caliber serving in its military. Buentello didn’t stop to think, he leapt into action because he saw children in trouble. Absolutely extraordinary. The family has set up a GoFundMe campaign, which you can visit right here. They’re still a little short of their goal; let’s help put them over the top.

Former military leaders want your guns, peasants:

The gun safety group founded by former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords has recruited an unlikely ally: a group of former high-level military officials.

The political action committee Americans for Responsible Solutions, co-founded by retired Navy veteran and astronaut Capt. Mark Kelly, has formed a new group composed of military officials who will advocate for stricter gun regulations.

The group includes retired U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, former Coast Guard commander Adm. Thad W. Allen and retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, among others.

The advisory committee was announced Friday in Washington, D.C.

Kelly, a former combat pilot and Giffords’s husband, said he hopes the new group will reach more veterans and inspire more people to act on gun laws.

“They have a lot of firearms training and they know the power and the consequences of firearms, and they understand that easy access to firearms makes our communities less safe and schools less safe and kids less safe,” Kelly told The Associated Press on Friday.

Here’s the thing you have to know about the NRA. For argument’s sake, I will refer to them as conservative-leaning organization. Unlike other conservative-leaning organizations, the NRA fights every “reasonable” change to their worldview tooth and freaking nail. It’s like Reagan, when he pushed for amnesty for illegal immigrants in the 1980s, when everyone assured him that that would be the end of the problem, and they were totally going to super-duper secure the border right after that. A few decades and trillions of dollars later, we have MILLIONS of illegal immigrants in the country. See where I’m going? It’s the old “camel/nose/tent” proverb on steroids.

That’s why people scratch their heads when the NRA refuses to accept even the so-called “common-sense” gun laws, because they know what it leads to. And that, in itself, is a form of defense. Gun-grabbers know that every tiny, innocuous law is going to be fought tooth and nail. That’s why, many times, these laws just die in committee. Even the people who sponsor them know they’re in for a brutal fight, every time.

As a civil liberties advocate, that’s all fine with me. Frankly, the fact that David “Loverboy” Petraeus and Stanley “This is off the record, right?” McChrystal agreed to this blows my mind. There’s something in the water in D.C., I’m convinced. It’s as though once people get there, they turn into ginormous anti-civil rights fucks. The most staunch, fire-breathing right-winger turns into Ruth Bader Ginsberg after a few years in D.C. It’s extraordinary. Is this a fear of not being invited to the right cocktail party, or what?

I’m With Her!

The historic significance of Hillary Clinton’s push towards presidency and an outspoken opponent in Donald Trump could mute sexism amid American voters, a Sydney expert says.

University of Sydney United States Studies Centre history lecturer Rebecca Sheehan said Mrs Clinton was breaking glass ceilings to forge new ground for female politicians.

“For women, this shifts the realm of what’s possible,” Dr Sheehan said.

Mrs Clinton hailed her nomination as a historical “milestone” for women when she became the first woman to claim nomination in a major party.

“Thanks to you, we’ve reached a milestone,” she told cheering supporters at a rally in New York this week.

Dr Sheehan said it was important to look back at history to understand the significance of Mrs Clinton’s achievement.

After annihilating Bernie Sanders in the Roundup two weeks ago, he promptly got cornholed in the California by Hillary Clinton. Coincidence? Probably.

Nevertheless, I promised an unvarnished look at all of the candidates, and that’s what we’ll do. So let’s take Dr. Sheehan’s advice and let’s look back at the history of Mrs. Clinton.

Remember the time that Clinton, with zero trading experience, turned $1,000 into $100,000 trading that totally mainstream and not at all obscure financial vehicle of “cattle futures?” SHE’S A WHIZ.

Remember the time Clinton took all of those women that had accused husband Bill of rape/sexual harassment/groping over the years and dragged their names through the mud? She was front and center as the leader of the defense to tear them down.

Remember when she was acting Secretary of State and accepted tens of millions in bribe money from despotic regimes like Saudi Arabia in exchange for ignoring their many human rights violations? Even left-wingers were calling her out for that bullshit. Oh, and she’s not just in foreign governments’ hip pockets. She likes to help out her friends as well.

Remember when she was taking money from a fugitive and career criminal?

Remember when she had a bunch of long-serving, competent people in the travel office fired so she could install some of her incompetent friends?

Remember when she had her stooges strong-arm the FBI into conducting secret background checks on Republicans that she deemed enemies?

Remember the time that she lied to the faces of the families of the dead contractors and ambassador to Libya, claiming a YouTube video was responsible for their deaths when she knew perfectly well that it was a planned terrorist attack? Oh, and then she lied about lying, and called the families liars. Nice.

Remember when she violated rules concerning the handling of classified material? Violations that would land me, you, and anyone else NOT named Hillary Clinton in a federal penitentiary?

I could go on…and on…and on. You know, a good percentage of the country didn’t even know who Bernie Sanders was like six months ago. But Hillary? She’s been with us for decades now, leaving a trail of slimy goo from Arkansas, to the White House, to New York, and now all over the country as she attempts to take her pantsuit back to the oval office. I know exactly what she is and what she’s all about. I have personal knowledge of how she conducts herself around people she deems “lesser.” My contractor buddies who have been lucky enough to drive her around tell me she’s a raging monster.

And that is backed up by many other stories now coming out. Say what you will about George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and I’ve said plenty about both, but these two men, by all accounts, are gentlemen who mostly treat others with respect and a polite demeanor. Hillary Clinton, by contrast, is a monster. Like I’ve said in the past, I’d vote for Joe Stalin’s rotting corpse before I vote for this corrupt hack. So you know what that means. Next week, it’s Trump’s turn.

Naval ship takes on ginormous wave:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4ca6p6DjjA

DAYUM. Yes, I know it’s New Zealand’s navy. Let them have this one, OK? The only thing that Americans know about New Zealand is that they have a lot of sheep and it’s where hobbits come from. Frankly, I didn’t even know that they had a navy. Kudos to them. That wave would make me poo myself. I hate boats. And storms.

Air Force combat controller receives posthumous Silver Star:

It was about 1 a.m., Aug. 26, 2015. Special Tactics Officer Capt. Matthew Roland was behind the wheel of a small bus, leading a convoy of special forces personnel back to a small camp in Helmand province, Afghanistan, when he stopped 20 meters from an Afghan-run checkpoint along the road.

As the bus idled, the troops’ interpreter got out and started talking to two guards at the checkpoint wearing Afghan National Defense and Security Forces uniforms. After giving the convoy permission to pass, one guard moved toward a bunker fortified with a belt-fed M240B machine gun.

The other guard approached Roland’s door. When the guard was within five feet, he started to raise his M4 rifle to his shoulder.

Roland knew exactly what was happening. He keyed the radio.

“Insider attack! Insider attack!” he shouted to his comrades as he threw the gearshift in reverse.

Within seconds, Roland was shot dead, as was another airman, 31-year-old combat controller Staff Sgt. Forrest Sibley. But Roland’s selfless actions that day bought his fellow troops precious time to counterattack and likely saved many more lives, the Pentagon said.

Roland, who was 27, will be posthumously honored for his bravery June 1 with the Silver Star, the Air Force said in a May 24 release. The medal will be presented to his family in a ceremony at Hurlburt Field, Florida.

Sir, put down the bacon:

RAEFORD, N.C. – A decorated Army Reserve officer left bacon at a mosque and brandished a handgun while threatening to kill Muslims and bury them there, North Carolina authorities said Friday.

Russell Thomas Langford, 36, made death threats against members of the mosque about 20 miles southwest of Fayetteville, authorities said.

“He told people at the mosque that he would kill them and bury them behind the mosque,” said Capt. John Kivett of the Sheriff’s Office. “He brandished a weapon while he was on the property.”

Langford, who lives in Fayetteville, was charged with ethnic intimidation, assault with a deadly weapon, going armed to the terror of the public, communicating threats, stalking and disorderly conduct, the sheriff’s office said.

Bro: You can’t brandish weapons at people and tell them that you are going to disappear their bodies. Although I’ll admit it: I chuckled for a second at the bacon thing. ONLY FOR A SECOND. Racists.

The only crime here is a crime against comedy:

An online video featuring two Qatar-based U.S. soldiers that made international headlines and led to multiple high-level apologies was posted to an official Army social media account by a public affairs contractor without command authorization, an Army spokesman said Friday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sixjN6JoHbs

The 30-second video, which appears to be outtakes from a shoot involving the Army’s birthday celebration, shows two soldiers assigned to Area Support Group-Qatar in front of the U.S. and Qatari flags. At one point, a male soldier jokes about the video emanating from an undisclosed location – he self-censors the name as “Mmm” – then points to the Qatari flag behind him and smiles while a female soldier laughs.

This seems problematic:

The Air Force announced on Friday that it has lost thousands of records belonging to the service’s inspector general due to a database crash.

“We estimate we’ve lost information for 100,000 cases dating back to 2004,” Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told The Hill in an email.

“The database crashed and there is no data,” Stefanek said. “At this time we don’t have any evidence of malicious intent.”
The database, called the Automated Case Tracking System (ACTS), holds all records related to IG complaints, investigations, appeals andFreedom of Information Act requests.

“The exception is senior official data which is maintained in a separate database,” the Air Force said in a statement. “We also use ACTS to track congressional/constituent inquiries.”

The Air Force said it was notified on June 6 by a contractor that administers the database of records that the data within was “corrupted,” according to a statement.

Nude man wants to feed your dogs tacos:

Klamath Falls, Ore. – A Klamath Falls man is jailed after baring it all following an alleged disturbance over feeding tacos to dogs, and much of the bizarre incident was captured on video.

Ben Bliss said he heard his girlfriend and a stranger arguing at around noon on Friday. “I woke up to her arguing with the gentleman that decided to make a big old scene about feeding our dogs tacos.”

Ashley Layne said her boyfriend threw the man out of their yard – and then things got even stranger. “Oh gosh, I had no idea he was going to get naked like that – I thought he was stripping his shirt off to fight, maybe – but no – everything came off,” said Layne.

36-year-old Dustin Lee Rice ran into a mini market when confronted by police, where was eventually handcuffed and arrested.

Feel free to watch the whole video right here. It’s comedy gold.

@BKactual