Category Archives: Motivational

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Memorial Day Memories

Often times on Memorial Day, I take the chance to go to a local cemetery and place flags on the graves of those who have served, honoring them, giving them a chance to tell me their story from their headstone i.e Lieutenant J.G., U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, Army, Coast-Guard, I go through, and I honor the fallen, those who’ve come before me reminding myself of the generations who have served. In my family going back further than the civil war we can count, and having survived the firefight, my family continued to come down the line, producing more war fighters.

As I look upon these war fighters, I think about the flags that are honoring those who have fallen. And I wonder also about the three hundred thousand veterans who died on U.S. soil by VA negligence and the other three hundred and sixty thousand who have died by their own hand by self-inflicted wounds over the past 40 years of fighting Wahhabism.

Who is speaking about those six hundred thousand plus Veterans who served honorably and died because of their war wounds?

Who’s honoring and remembering their loss to our community, to their families, to our country?

Well, today I look at these flags that are draped across a church that’s been here since 1900’s and I look upon this field filled with thousands of flags, and I ask, do we have enough to cover all the lives that have been lost in US soil? And what it would look like to see 600000 flags draped across this field?

I’m honored by their sacrifice, I am honored by their memory. I’m grateful for their selfless giving to our country!

And this day of memorial 2021 I thank God for those who came before me, & those who are still with us fighting 4Freedom!

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“Veterans and their loved ones can call or chat online to receive free, confidential support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, even if they are not registered with VA or enrolled in VA health care.”

For more information see Related Post :

http://www.joshuamacias.com/2020/05/24/for-freedom-not-fashion-memorialday2020/

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For Freedom – Not Fashion MemorialDay2020

I wanted to take a moment to share some thoughts on perhaps our most sacred of all secular holidays.  It’s Memorial Day weekend and this particular Memorial Day is unlike any we have seen in our nation’s history.

As each state begins to relax the restrictions related to the spread of COVID-19, I look out across the nation at our Veteran business owners, the first-responder community, and American patriots in general, and I see a courageous group that has held together and stood together throughout these past few difficult months.  We have all experienced loss.  Some of us have lost our jobs, some of us have lost our businesses, some of us have lost people dear to us.  

As a combat Persian Gulf War Veteran, I can say that our community of Veterans understands loss. Many of us understand the price of freedom as we have watched The flag draped over the casket of a brother or sister in arms. During Memorial Day I take time to remember those in my family and those with whom I served who are no longer with us. 

I wanted to share the story of my cousin, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, of England.  Cousin ADM Ramsay fought bravely in WWII and was a leader during the famous Allied extraction effort known as Dunkirk, and the Admiral for the Allied invasion of Normandy.  Before the invasion of Normandy he stated ‘We shall require all the help that God can give us & I cannot believe that this will not be forthcoming.’ ADM Ramsay trusted God and served with honor the remainder of the War. 

In a cruel turn of fate, just one short year after winning one of the most important victories in the history of  liberty by defeating the evil Nazi empire, ADM Ramsay, my cousin, passed away in a plane crash leaving him with the title of The Forgotten Hero of World War II.  His story is not truly forgotten as it lives on in our family history, and now as I share it, it can live on through each of you. 

Decades later, on 12 October, 2000, an explosion on board the USS Cole took the lives of 17 service members.  Had that explosion happened just one year earlier, I quite possibly could have been of those victims.  Determined to never let those 17 members become “forgotten” like my cousin, Sir ADM Ramsay, I honor their sacrifice during this, and every, Memorial Day weekend.  Any chance I get I attend the Memorial for the USS Cole which now enters its 18th year.

There is no way to repay or bring back those heroes who have fallen or friends and family that we have lost. For many of us during this time we think of those who served alongside us and who have lost their lives not only to the enemy, but to their own hands.  They are just as much a casualty of war as was my cousin Sir ADM Ramsay, or the 17 on the USS Cole.  

It is healthy and enriching to grieve and honor our heroes for their service and dedication.  Their legacy has shown me the way and they inspire me everyday to overcome life‘s struggle.  I honor their sacrifice and willingness to give it all up for the sake of freedom. 

This Memorial Day, as America looks for the courage to reopen for business, I ask all freedom loving Veterans who with honor remember their oath, to join with me and wear your dog tags.  We will wear them for freedom, not for fashion.  It will serve as a reminder to every American as to why we fought.  Hopefully, seeing our tags will inspire others to stand and fight now to reclaim what we have lost over the past few months.  The courage and the resolve of the Veteran is needed now more than it has ever been.   

If you are reading this and you are not a Veteran, but you have the tags of one who has fallen or a relative who passed, I encourage you to put them on this weekend and join us.  It isn’t stolen valor if it’s intended to honor the valor of the man or women who wore the tags.  Honor your loved ones by resurrecting their spirit of service this Memorial Day 2020. 

This weekend, as we wear our tags, share our spirit, and remember those who have fallen, let us also remember that we are not a nation of red states and blue states.  To be sure, we are a nation of red and blue, but those colors are joined with white to represent the greatest nation on earth.  Let’s come together to celebrate and to work together to restore that greatness. 

Not for Fashion for freedom! 

In America and for the world! 

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#ForFreedom for #MemorialDay2020

#Veterans let’s wear our tags #ForFreedom to #honorthesacrifice of our Fallen heroes this #Memorialday2020.

When anyone asks #HonorTheFallen by memorializing their sacrifice for freedom in the world and for America!

I personally will share about those in my family who died in service and about the USS Cole bombing in my next post.

How about you!? Will you join me this #MemorialDay2020 #ForFreedom?

Take ACTION and support your local businesses for Freedom at www.veteransstore.us portion of proceeds goes to fight Veteran causes in Health Care reform.

#Veterans Let’s wear our tags #ForFreedom to #honorthesacrifice of our heroes this #Memorialday2020When anyone asks…

Posted by Joshua Macias on Saturday, May 23, 2020
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Create a Go-to-Work Ritual

Right now people are adjusting to all type of changes at a rapid pace one of which is working from home. Michael Hyatt does a great piece on this which I wanted to share with all of you. – JM

“Due to the complexities of today’s crisis, we’re making an effort to send you daily encouragement and tips to thrive in this season.  

Today’s tip: Create a Go-to-Work Ritual  Working at home offers a lot of advantages, including casual dress and zero commuting time. But there’s a tradeoff.  Getting dressed for work and driving to the office play an important role in getting you psychologically ready to work. Without them, it can be difficult to get your mind to focus.  In the same way, driving home provides time to unwind. Both transitions are important: from home to work and from work to home.  The solution is to add a transitional step to your morning routine. That might be as simple as putting on shoes instead of slippers, or taking a walk around the block. It can be anything that signals, “It’s time to shift into work mode.”  You can create a similar transition from work to home, maybe the same one in reverse.  Try it, and see if it doesn’t boost your focus! ” – Michael Hyatt @ www.MichaelHyatt.com
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Veteran Health Revolution is NOW!

Seeking to help #VeteransFirst we created the #Formula4Protocol (#F4P) to help our Vets experience tremendous health all the time!

Although this program is created with Veterans in mind we know that these protocols will help all humankind!

Join us as we embark on a wellness revolution starting with the Veteran and their family!

#VetHealth #VetWellness #VeteransFirst #END27

>>>> CLICK HERE >>> To be the a part of the next Veteran Health Revolution!

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Promise Kept to Veterans

Trump Signs Order to #END27 VetSuicides a Day : A Personal Response

VetsForTrump Greats Donald J. Trump 2016

During the 2016 Presidential race I decided to set aside most of my other professional endeavors and hit the road to lead the Vets for Trump campaign movement.  Working on the front lines at rallies and behind the scenes in organizing and creating activism, I did everything in my own personal power to help Donald Trump get elected.

Why?

Last Tuesday is why.  On March 5, now President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order called the “National Initiative to Empower Veterans and End Veterans Suicide.”  This is addressing the single most devastating issue in America today; the abandonment of those who have served in our armed forces and allowing them to slip into such an abyss of loneliness that they feel the only rational choice is to take their own life. 

The President said in signing the order “To every veteran, I want you to know that you have an entire nation of more than 300 million people behind you.  You will never be forgotten. We are with you all the way.”

In 2016 we were able to mobilize Veterans to come out and support Donald Trump because we sensed that he was the first candidate from either party to mean it when he said he cared about Veterans and the failed system of Healthcare being managed through the Veteran’s Administration.

Our support made a difference.  Veterans made the difference in electing Donald Trump over Hilary Clinton, a woman who stood at the flag draped caskets of fallen heroes after Benghazi and lied to a nation about the circumstances of their death.

Every politician who runs for office says that they “support our troops” and that they “want to make sure that every veteran gets the care they need.”  Every politician promises it and every politician, even those who have served in the armed forces, ignores it once they get into office.

President Trump is the first President to step forward and try to make a real change.

This Executive Order comes in behind a previous Order issued in January of 2018.  Taken together, these two Orders provide an opportunity and a directive for real progress to be made in providing holistic care for our service men and women.

I am one of the founding members of the Non-Profit collaboration #END27.  That number is the minimum number of suicides our research indicates happen every day among those who serve, or have served, in our armed forces.  These are people who risked their lives deliberately in order to help protect the life of every American, regardless of their race, religion, economic status, political beliefs, or anything else of which you can imagine.

Then they end up losing their own life at their own hand.

As a Service Connected Disabled Veteran, I have been inside the system myself and I have been inside it with my brothers and sisters who have served.  I have watched the bureaucracy operate within a culture of inefficiency.  Previous administrations have paid lip service to reforming this culture but when the time comes for real action and reform, the status quo has “trumped” the willingness to change.  Now, hopefully, there is a new “Trump card.”

The Veteran’s Administration gets all the attention because they are the Federal Agency responsible.  It is always easy to focus people’s view on a single, large object.  The truth is that at the State level everywhere across the country the needs of Veterans are also being ignored.  When our organization talks about the need for holistic care, we are talking in part about the full range of treatments and support groups and activities that need to be in place for service men and women.  We are also talking, however, about how every unit of government at every level needs to be stepping up in support.

This action by President Trump needs to be a call to every member of the military, past and present, to get engaged and show support for him in the next election.  He is the only President to this point to take a stand to help us.  There is absolutely no reason, none, to assume that anyone who might replace him would continue with his efforts.

While people might say they care about us, their interest can be hard to hold.  Witness the reporter from CNN who right after the President’s announcement of the new Executive Order, stepped in to ask a question about Michael Cohen.  Attention being paid to Veteran issues rarely survives the next news cycle.

The most universally recognized symbol of human suffering may well be depiction of the Pieta, that moment when Mother Mary is shown to be holding the lifeless body of her son, Jesus.  Every day, there are approximately 27 non-depicted events of still more human suffering.  They are those of men and women, alone and without hope, doing to themselves what an enemy combatant failed to do.

Nobody is carving a sculpture for them.  Nobody is putting oil to canvass for them.  There is work to do.  Let’s get started.  Let’s support our President and his initiative #PREVENTS and let’s come together to #END27 today!

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About Joshua Macias

Following his honorable discharge from the Navy, Joshua had the same experience as every transitional Veteran – he was a hardworking veteran with a strong résumé but no job.

Now, as an expert in business systems and Veteran housing, with over four generations of family involved in real estate, Joshua is an experienced and creative housing crisis problem-solver.

In addition to 16 years of grassroots, faith-based, and nonprofit service,  Joshua founded Vets For Trump in 2016 to insure the Veteran Voice was heard. In fighting the homeless housing crisis Joshua’s contributions started by volunteering as a Project Manager with the 2011 Virginia Beach Extreme Home Makeover project.

Continuing as Co-Founder of Veterans Homefront whose team was honored as a key instrument in the 100 day governor challenge in 2014.  This success allowed Virginia recognition to be the only one to reach functional zero in Veteran Homelessness.  Most recently Joshua was honored to be designated as Chairman of the Veterans For Trump Coalition growing with his team the largest Veteran Coalition seen since JFK around a President.

Joshua spends his days speaking to business owners, congressmen  and women, cabinet members and their policy makers alike.  Working with the Vets For Trump team he maintains communication with 500,000 grassroots Veterans asking for change in their backyard through numerous Social Media outlets and websites.  Alongside 2nd District Congressman Scott Taylor Joshua looks to create jobs supporting the DOD as well as our Veteran Communities. As a Bio-Technology innovator Joshua continues on his track for PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology working on projects in B.C.I (Brain Computer Interface).

As a father of three young boys, Joshua believes in modeling philanthropy and has devoted his time to creating housing solutions across the country. He hopes to set an example, for both his sons and others in the community, by establishing a legacy of Veteran housing assistance, Veteran Activism, Technology and Social Integration.

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#ClearFlynnNow – The Power of Meme Testing

In this article, I’m going to provide a set of 5 memes all on the topic of our hashtag campaign.  I hope you’ll follow me at Twitter, @ThyConsigliori as well as Joshua Macias @JoshuaMacias, like or retweet your favorite, and invite all your fellow General Flynn supporters to join in as well.  The results coming in are amazing, and the test has only been running a few hours at the time of this writing (February 17, 3:30 PM EST).  Twitter offers incredible tracking power in something called Tweet Activity, so we can know the results of the test with absolute precision.  Following the memes, I’ll discuss the testing process a bit more, look forward to coming stages of our campaign, and paint a crystal clear vision of campaign victory: General Flynn’s 100% exoneration, the complete restoration of his public honor, entirely repaired reputation, and the full return of his strong voice.

Here are the 5 Memes for your consideration:

 

                     Meme 1

 

Meme 2

ClearFlynnNow

 

Meme 3                           

ClearFlynnNow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                           Meme 4

ClearFlynnNow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meme 5

 

If you already have a favorite, please head over to my Twitter profile, where you’ll find the test pinned to the top.  Then, like or retweet your favorite and you’ve joined the campaign by that simple act.

Also, however, don’t be afraid to offer any ideas, or come up with your own contenders if you enjoy making memes yourself.  Once we have the results of this test in and close it down, we’ll go into analysis mode and generate more memes with which to run a second test.  We’ll continue testing as long as the process is fun and interesting, or until we find a true, runaway winner.  One of the most positive parts of this process is that, while we’re engaging in the testing phase, we’re also living up to the mission itself and getting the word out, farther and farther.

If you’ve read the previous articles on our hashtag campaign, you know our goal is to win General Flynn’s full and complete exoneration.  We won’t stop until his reputation has been fully restored from the horrible and criminal attacks perpetrated against him.  The testing phase empowers great growth in our reach.

Once we find our ultimate winner, we will then convert from the Testing Phase to what I call the Concentration of Force Phase.  At that point, our goal will be to come as close to flooding the internet with that one meme as our movement is capable.  Traditional media views social media, rightly, as a competitor and they do not like to report on social media movements for obvious reasons.  But, if our campaign attains true critical mass, our voice will grow so loud that even they will find themselves reporting on us.

This is important because the Washington DC bubble ONLY pays attention to what breaks through into traditional media.  It is also important that our movement find its voice in the halls of power directly, so that our House Representatives and Senators in Congress hear about our will, and grow to fear our presence at the polls in coming elections.  In spite of the fact that those steps obviously in front of us, it is absolutely important for us to build an invincible and unassailable vision of unconditional victory.  We will not stop until General Flynn has been cleared, fully, 100% and has had his full voice, honor and reputation restored.  We can and will achieve this.

Returning to our current testing project, after you’ve selected your own favorite meme, please reach out to your friends and encourage them to join us.  Share this article, and recruit them to join in the testing.  And encourage them to reach forward to their friends as well.  The technical term for this is Network Effect.  If you remember the first fax machines, or the first cell phones, you know that they were very expensive and hardly useful.  They succeeded, however, as more and more Nodes – which is just a single unit, a single fax machine or a single phone – were added to the network.  There is a Tipping Point that occurs when the network itself begins to grow more and more rapidly, unit costs start to drop, and then values begin soaring explosively.  The exact same phenomenon occurs whenever a viral movement occurs in social media.

It is that tipping point that we seek, and the process of testing our memes is one of the most critical steps on the path.  We have every reason to expect that our finalist, the winning meme will attain true viral force.

By Pasquale (Pat) Scopelliti – @ThyConsigliori | Foreward By Joshua Macias @JoshuaMacias

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Testing The Data, How We Moved From #PardonFlynnNow to #ClearFlynnNow

Testing The Data, How We Moved From #PardonFlynnNow to #ClearFlynnNow

By Pat Scopelliti – @ThyConsigliori – and Kate Scopelliti | Foreward by @JoshuaMacias

To get your hashtag right, you must target the broadest number of people while hitting them with the greatest emotional impact. The thing is, if even the slightest nuance is off intellectually, the message will not cut straight to the heart.  For instance, in our current campaign which some of you have been following, the word “pardon” could ONLY entail an admission of guilt.  Many of General Flynn’s friends and supporters will not accept that admission.  And they do not care about his own admission of guilt one iota, as they are 100% certain he was coerced, using fraudulent, felonious evidence was used in pure and completely illegal entrapment.  These patriots will accept nothing less than a full vacating of the charge against him, and no substitution will be tolerated.

What we had to do was re-sight.  Any form of aiming is, in one way or another, always a type of triangulation.  Picture a rifle.  You must line up your eye, the properly aligned sight at the end of the barrel, and the target in front of you.  This is a triangle, which is the source of the word “triangulation”.

A powerful hashtag is also a perfect glass. It holds all the thoughts the user has on the topic, without logical contradiction or compromise.  In our case, the term “clear” is perfect. Calmly, coolly, yet with firmness and unflagging resolution, we may state our request in these simple terms:

#ClearFlynnNow.

A word of recognition must be given to three people. The first is Saul Montes-Bradley @Debradekai. He has done an amazing amount of work on General Flynn’s story, and he flat out contradicted me at every turn over the term “Pardon” and made his case with irresistible force. Second, Barbara Ledeen @BarbaraLedeen not only agreed with Saul, she also identified the new hashtag as spot on. The third is Davd C – @ingeniustech. It was he who explained the logic of how “Pardon” was wrong and gave the recommendation for “Clear” in its place. My respect and gratitude to you all.

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DearFlag Campaign Letter

Dear flag I’ve known you most of my life, I recall the first time we met when my mother brought you home after my grandfather’s funeral. You knew him well as he raised you and defended you in World War II in the Pacific theater of War. At the same time my cousin Sir ADM Ramsey in the Mediterranean was setting his sights on victory at Dunkirk and DDay in order to free Europe from fascism. Little did I know that just a few years later my brother would be carrying you overseas in Korea. I always looked at you with pride knowing how many of my family fought alongside you. My father quickly showed me what the Stars and Stripes meant to our family. My father served in the Korean War and protected numerous Shipmates, he later shared how many of those same flags were given to his friends wives.

All my life I have seen the only time that a man in uniform takes a knee in your presence is when you were given to a family member or a friend for the loss of a soldier or sailor. I knew at eleven years old I wanted to serve for your honor, and glory because of God. At eighteen I gave a Solemn Oath to defend all you represent.  I then followed you across the world and saw how with honor and integrity you represented freedom to other nations.  Our enemies feared you and our allies cheered upon your arrival. Whenever I saw you I knew I was back at home or that I was safe once more.  On the arms of soldiers Quickly I saw you run into battle to save the lives of others without fear.  Men and women carried you through the worst conditions and yet you prevailed.
Today you are under attack but I know it’s no different then everyday you have been under attack.  Since you were born all you represent that is good in this world has been under attack.  I have seen how you run into battle for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Knowing full well you might have to sacrifice all.  So while others may look down on you or disrespect you I will always embrace you and lift you up high in order to stand with you!