Gabbard explains why she keeps spot of gray in hair
The Hill BY JESSICA CAMPISI 09/02/19
The 2020 hopeful took two weeks off the campaign trail for the joint training exercise mission in Indonesia.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), a 2020 presidential candidate, on Monday explained why she hasn’t gotten rid of the gray area in her hair.
“I started going gray in that one spot during and after my first deployment to Iraq,” she said during an Instagram Live video while in Iowa. “And so I keep it as just a remembrance of those who we lost there and the cost of war and why we fight so hard for peace.”
“No, I’m not going to fix [it],” she added. “If you mean dye, no, I’m not going to dye it.” read it here
Gabbard spent two weeks in Indonesia training with the National Guard. You'd think that would be the biggest part of her recent activities but there is more focus on the fact she has some gray hair!
Social media still not taking military women seriously.
Congress is not doing enough to prevent suicides tied to military
Wounded Times Kathie Costos September 2, 2019 Chairman Takano, Your video is far from what is necessary to prevent suicides among citizens who served in the military and are currently serving. The rates prove that. They have gone up since the "suicide awareness" efforts began over a decade ago. How much time do you think Congress should get before before the families show up in Washington or at your offices in your districts? Suicide Prevention actually means they are being prevented...not simply passing bills that pretend to be any different from the ones that have already been written and funded by all other sessions of Congress before your Chairmanship.
What is not clear is why there has been so little effort in finding out what all of you have gotten wrong before it is all repeated. What is not clear is why no one has been held accountable for any of it. Not the military when their suicide rates are at an all time high. Not the VA when more veterans are doing their own suicide awareness by committing suicide on VA property. No one, including members of Congress have ever apologized to the families left behind by for this complete total catastrophe. There are people at the VA who do know what works and why it works, but Congress will not listen to them. There are people in the military who do know what works and why it works, but again, no one listens to them. Why? Because what works does not cost as much as the drugs being given. It does not cost as much as paying for private mental healthcare providers who do not even begin to understand military culture. Oh, not that their track record was any better in the civilian community they used to serve, since according to the CDC civilian suicides have gone up every year too. Stop doing too much of the wrong things and calling it suicide prevention, since results prove you wrong. Given the fact that we have had enough evidence of the rise, we also know about the calls to the Suicide Prevention Hotline going up, more calls to 911 and veterans facing off with police officers. It is futile to continue with all that is being redone now, to have results like these. So please, stop what you are doing long enough to actually listen to different voices. Listen to those who have been out there doing the work that does actually prevent suicides, prevents families from falling apart, prevents veterans from becoming homeless and above all, from losing hope.
Veterans already know how to die. They need to be made aware of reasons to live!
CHAIRMAN TAKANO: VA SHOULD MARK NATIONAL SUICIDE PREVENTION AWARENESS MONTH WITH A NATION-WIDE STAND-DOWN
WASHINGTON, DC –
Today, House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Mark Takano (D-Calif.) released the following Video Statement to mark the beginning of National Suicide Prevention Awareness month and reiterate his Call For A VA Wide Stand-Down to address the crisis of veteran suicide.
VA stand down
Full text of the Video Statement below:
I am Congressman Mark Takano, Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.
Today marks the beginning of National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month-- and with 20 veterans, servicemembers, reservists, and members of the National Guard dying by suicide a day, it’s clear we have a national public health crisis on our hands.
In April, following 3 suicides on VA property in 5 days, I directed this Committee to work in a bipartisan manner to address the national crisis of veteran suicide and made it this Committee’s top priority.
We acted immediately and since then have held hearings, and passed 5 bills to address this crisis.
And yet, with each suicide, it becomes more clear our country is not doing enough. We need new solutions. That’s why I’ve called on VA to institute an immediate nation-wide stand-down to address this crisis.
Over the next 15 days, I’m asking VA to: (1) Ensure all VA staff are fully trained
(2) Assess facility infrastructure
And
(3) Identify gaps in policies, procedures, and resources
We cannot keep delaying action. Americans must know that key policies are already in place, that VA will enforce them, and trust that senior VA leadership will be held accountable.
Until VA has a top suicide prevention official in place to implement these programs, veterans can’t have confidence in VA’s ability to care for them in a crisis. While Americans should take this month to have real conversations about suicide across this country, I’m asking VA to do more than talk. I’m asking them to back up their policies with clear, concise actions.
If you or a veteran you know is in crisis, you can call the Veterans Crisis Line at 1(800) 273-8255 and press 1, or text 838-255.
We must do more to “be there” for our veterans in crisis.
###
Press Contact Jenni Geurink (202-225-9756) Miguel R. Salazar
Wounded Times Kathie Costos September 1, 2019
With all the talk about veterans committing suicide, there doesn't seem to be enough time to talk about reasons to not do it. Doing whatever I can to get to the day when the stigma of PTSD is dead and more of you are still alive. Lately I find myself losing hope that one day it will happen. I search the internet for hours, looking for that one glimmer of hope from the people in charge to finally come to the conclusion that what they are doing has done more harm than good. I end up finding more stories about more veterans committing suicide in state after state and what they leave behind is a burden no family should ever have to carry. Especially a family who prayed for you to return to them and be safe. What do you want to leave behind when you die?
"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others."
Pericles
Most of the time, survivors of attempted suicide say they did not want to be a burden to their families anymore. They were tired of seeing them so sad.
When all they heard about were other veterans giving up, they lost hope to find another way out of the misery they had been living with.
The thing is, when they lived to fight another day, they discovered that nothing was a hopeless as they thought it was. What happens after you decide to leave, is something that you should think about. Your body is found by someone. Most of the time it is a family member or friend. That image will never go away and you have changed them for the rest of their lives. The "burden" you thought you were going to spare them of, has just been put on them for a lifetime. The questions never end because you are not there to answer them. Your body could be found by a Police Officer, firefighter or EMT. Again, that image never leaves them. Most of the time, that person, who would have done everything possible to save your life, including sacrificing their own, happen to also be a veteran. Yet again, your death just changed them for a lifetime as well. People who knew you, or read about your death, will think about the thoughts they had about you before, and then wonder, if you gave up, maybe they should too. If you doubt that one, suicide is actually contagious. Ask a survivor. What if your attempt fails and you end up paralyzed, or your brain stops functioning? What you thought was a bad quality of life was bad enough, you just made it worse. Flip that all around and then wonder what it would be like if you fought like hell to heal the same way you fought like hell to fight the enemy in combat. You are looking for an end to your misery in the wrong place. The place you need to look at is within. All the qualities you had are still there. You just need help to heal PTSD and then you will stop being a burden to your family and start being a blessing to them. When you give up on yourself, you just told all the people who care about you that you gave up on them too.
"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others." Pericles
You wanted to stay alive back then...so why give up now? #BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife
How can you know something existed but never heard about it? There have already been three since he became President, and this is the forth.
Thus Mar-a-Lago went on the market. Three potential sales collapsed before Donald Trump bought it in 1985, paying a reported $8 million for the estate and its furnishings—a small fraction of the original cost, no matter how you calculate it. And after three decades and the most confounding presidential election in living memory, Marjorie Merriweather Post’s wish for her mansion came true.
The highest classification in the scale, Category 5, consists of storms with sustained winds over 156 mph (70 m/s; 136 kn; 251 km/h).
What about all the others? Hurricane Katrina 2005, which he mentioned when talking about Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
"Every death is a horror," Trump said. "But if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you look at what happened here with, really, a storm that was just totally overpowering, nobody's ever seen anything like this."
Since Donald Trump has owned Mar-a-Lago, there were more President Trump should have heard about.
Hurricane Andrew was a powerful and destructive Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that struck the Bahamas, Florida, and Louisiana in August 1992. ... With a barometric pressure of 922 mbar (27.23 inHg) at the time of landfall in Florida, Andrew is the sixth most-intense hurricane to strike the United States.
Can we finally drop the BS of "suicide awareness" so we can start raising "healing awareness?"
Every time I read about the rate of suicides going up after all the "awareness" efforts stated, I have to decide between crying, screaming or hitting something. For the last 37 years I have known what to do for two reasons. The first is that other people became experts on PTSD long before I heard the term. The second reason is that learning all I can about it was a matter of life or death because it involved my family. All these years later, what people are settling for makes me sick to my stomach! Suicide is a serious thing and requires serious efforts to be support, not avoided because it is harder than pulling stunts and showing off. Saving lives is personal involvement and a full knowledge of everything involved in it. Are you willing to make a difference for them, or are you in this for yourself? Take a good, hard, honest look at yourself. If you really care about them, contact me so you will know what has to be done. 407-754-7526 or email woundedtimes@aol.com All calls are confidential, so you can ask any question you want. Maybe then we can prevent more headlines like this one.
Veterans And Active-Duty Service Members Make Up 20% Of All Suicides In Colorado, But They’re Still Reluctant To Seek Help
Colorado Public Radio By Hayley Sanchez August 30, 2019
Nearly 200 Colorado veterans kill themselves every year, according to the report. The number of veteran suicides in the state has been increasing since 2004. It went from 44 suicides per 100,000 that year to 52 by 2017.
David Zalubowski/Associated Press
The exterior of the Veterans Affairs Department hospital is shown in east Denver.
Colorado’s suicide rate is already one of the highest in the country, and research shows veterans are even more likely to die by suicide than non-veterans in the state.
“The deaths by suicide from 2004 to 2017 in Colorado, there were about 13,000 of them, which is a mind-boggling statistic. Nearly 2,600 of them were veterans or active duty service members,” said Karam Ahmad, a policy analyst with the institute, who also wrote the report for Colorado Health Institute.
“Suicide is a major public health problem nationally. Here in Colorado, it’s a major public health problem. We ranked 10th worst in the country,” Ahmad said. read it here
