Note to Adm. Mullen, tap into what we know to stop playing taps for suicides

Adm. Mullen, I really believe you care but it's time you started to talk to people who have been taking care of these veterans all along and stop making the same mistakes. Studies have been done to death. Mistakes repeated because the only people who learned from them are not being heard. If you really want to know what to do, talk to the people who have done it and got it right. Vietnam veterans and their families are ready and willing to help you save the lives of the troops but no one has been interested in what we have to say.

Military Update:
Community effort needed to heal war wounds
By Tom Philpott, Special to Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, September 19, 2009
The profound strain of eight years of war on the volunteer force permeated a day-long conference of military leaders, policymakers, health experts and family advocates as they shared ideas to address the "unseen injuries" of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.

A theme struck by many participants, including Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was that government must seek greater involvement from communities across the country to support wounded warriors, traumatized veterans and damaged military families.

Mullen expressed concern over rising numbers of homeless veterans, slow expansion of a pilot program to streamline the disability evaluation system and a lack of solutions from medical research for timely diagnosis and treatment of PTSD and traumatic brain injury.

Just a week ago, she said, Kevin signaled that he wanted to take his own life by hanging. She called the VA hospital for help.

"Days went by and nobody called me." Finally, she confronted VA doctor at a social event "and said, ‘Look, you guys have to help us … I’m not trained. I’m not a nurse. I’m not a neurosurgeon. I’m not a psychologist. I’m not a therapist. I’m just a mom. And I don’t have any help with this.’"

Leslie told the forum, "It’s a very sad thing that this country — your Army or your VA or whatever — has let us down so incredibly. And I am asking you to step up to the plate and take care of somebody who went over there and did what you asked him to do."

Forum attendees gave her a standing ovation in support for what she and her son have sacrificed and endured. Asked later to list any part of the system that has worked well, Leslie praised the help she has received through her advocate in VA’s Federal Recovery Coordinator Program.
read more here
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=64857

Iraq vet kills himself in Washington, D.C.

Iraq vet kills himself in Washington, D.C.
By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Saturday, September 19, 2009
WASHINGTON — A 19-year-old man who committed suicide on the Washington, D.C., subway system on Sunday was an Iraq war veteran recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Army officials confirmed.

Pfc. Joshua Fueston, a native of Washington state, was killed when he threw himself in front of an oncoming train at a downtown station. Metro officials ruled his death a suicide based on witness reports and video of the incident.

read more here

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=64872

6 Year old son saves Dad's life

Son Helps Save Father's Life
Saturday, September 19, 2009 9:26:01 PM
Reported By Emily Lampa

ALTAMONTE SPRINGS -- With hugs and kisses, Dammion Williams thanks his son Brenden for making the call that saved his life.

"He did save my life and I'm thankful for it," Williams said.

The soft-spoken youngster had little to say to the camera, but he showed us how he called the emergency number after finding his father in bed, not moving.

"He was brave enough to get on the phone and explain what happened," his dad said.
read more here
http://www.cfnews13.com/News/Local/2009/9/19/son_helps_save_father39s_life.html

Report says Philly VA home endangered vets

Report says Philly VA home endangered vets

The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Sep 19, 2009 16:32:25 EDT

PITTSBURGH — An inspection at a Veterans Affairs nursing home in Philadelphia last year found conditions endangering the welfare of residents, a Pittsburgh newspaper reported Saturday.

Inspectors found dried blood and feeding tubes on the floors, and one patient's leg had to be amputated after maggots were seen falling from his foot, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review said, citing a report obtained through a federal Freedom of Information Act request.

The report said no action was taken on one unnamed veteran, even though his toes had turned black, until maggots were observed "falling out of the resident's foot," at which point an amputation was ordered. One inspector reported seeing a nurse use the wrong medication despite a week-old order from a physician changing the prescription, the report said.

An internal investigation was triggered three months before the report was issued when David Allen, 56, a mute and disabled Vietnam veteran, choked to death on solid food although he was supposed to be on a soft-food diet.

read more here

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/09/ap_philly_Va_home_091909/

Bracelet lost in World War II returns home

Bracelet lost in World War II returns home
U.S. pilot wore the silver token on his final mission over Germany

Sept . 19, 2009
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Jack Harold Glenn was a World War II fighter pilot who was killed during a firefight as he flew a mission over Germany in 1944, his body coming to rest in a field in a rural village.

The silver bracelet Glenn was wearing was given to a 16-year-old boy who helped retrieve his body. He held onto the bracelet ever since, a remembrance of the fallen American airman.

Sixty-five years later, the bracelet is returning to Glenn's sister in Alaska thanks to an enterprising World War II veteran who uncovered the relic on a recent trip to the German village.
read more here
Bracelet lost in World War II returns home

Starved girl: Dad came 'to believe I was Satan'

Starved girl: Dad came 'to believe I was Satan'
The tiny, teenage girl stepped to the front of the courtroom Friday, holding a letter she wanted to read to the judge about her father, who was about to be sentenced for failing to stop the girl's stepmother from systematically starving her.
By Steve Miletich

The tiny, teenage girl stepped to the front of the courtroom Friday, holding a letter she wanted to read to the judge about her father, who was about to be sentenced for failing to stop the girl's stepmother from systematically starving her.

Wearing a black skirt, layered sweaters and dark-rimmed glasses, the 15-year-old hesitated as she stood a few feet from her father, then broke into tears and walked from the podium. The judge, William Downing of King County Superior Court, assured her he had read the letter, which had been submitted to him in advance.
read more here
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009897327_starvation19m.html

Related
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Statement by Jon Pomeroy (PDF)
Archive Carnation couple plead not guilty in 14-year-old girl's starving
Archive CPS reviewing case of starved 14-year-old in Carnation
Archive Carnation girl, 14, found starved to 48 pounds

Fort Lewis solider acquitted

Fort Lewis solider acquitted
A former Fort Lewis soldier charged with robbing University of Washington students at gunpoint in January has been acquitted by a jury in King County Superior Court.

Raymond Burrows, 22, of Central Falls, R.I., had been charged with two counts of first-degree robbery and one count of rendering of criminal assistance.

Defense attorney Ramona Brandes said the case had difficulties from the start because witnesses described two of the robbers as being white and the third as black. Burrows is white, as were his two co-defendants Robert Lucas Jr. of Murfreesboro, Tenn.; and Chad Braden, of Etna, Ohio.
read more here
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009897405_fortlewissolideracquitted.html

Florida boys live to tell the tale of Mack's Fishing Camp

JEFF KLINKENBERG Times
Keith Jones is not afraid of a big alligator in the Everglades. Keith and his brother, Marshall, were raised by their grandparents and now run Mack’s Fishing Camp on the Miami Canal in the Everglades

In the Everglades, two Florida boys live to tell the tale of Mack's Fishing Camp
By Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Sunday, September 20, 2009
Marshall Jones and his brother, Keith, who operate historic Mack's Fishing Camp in the Everglades, are barefoot boys in the tradition of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. The 30-year-old twins wear shoes only if necessary, perhaps because buying proper footwear is a challenge.

Marshall squeezes his ample paws into size 13s. Keith's feet measure a sawgrass-stomping 15EEE.

go here for more and for video
Macks fishing camp

Men cut man in wheelchair, stepson with machete in Daytona home invasion

Men cut man in wheelchair, stepson with machete in Daytona home invasion
Keith W. Kohn

Sentinel Staff Writer

1:35 p.m. EDT, September 19, 2009
DAYTONA BEACH - A man using a wheelchair and his teenage stepson were attacked and cut overnight by home invaders using a machete, Daytona Beach police said today.

The attack on Byron Street early Saturday morning sent the man to the hospital, a report from police spokesman Jimmie Flynt said.

According to the report, the victim had just arrived home and was in his wheelchair when four to six men ambushed him, asking, "Where's the stuff?" The victim told police he responded that he didn't have anything and he was told the men would go into his house and kill his wife.

Moments later, three of the men cut the homeowner with a machete as the other three used his keys to get into the house.
read more here
Men cut man in wheelchair stepson with machete

Former Army chaplain helps homeless veterans

KAINAZ AMARIA Times
The Rev. Morson Livingston, center, founder of St. Jude’s Homeless Veterans Resource Center, stops Thursday at the Salvation Army Center of Hope in Port Richey. Livingston, a former U.S. Army chaplain, left the military in 2001.

Former Army chaplain helps homeless veterans in Pasco
By Mindy Rubenstein, Times Correspondent
In Print: Saturday, September 19, 2009
NEW PORT RICHEY — The Rev. Morson Livingston was stopped at a red light at State Road 54 and Little Road last year when he saw a couple of homeless men standing on the side of the road, wearing parts of their military uniforms. Livingston, who served as a U.S. Army chaplain in Bosnia before leaving the priesthood a few years ago, stopped and asked where they had served.

Vietnam, the men responded.

"I just imagined them in their uniforms, how strong and macho they were, and how desperate they are now in contrast," Livingston recalled.

He felt the need to help.

read more here

Former Army chaplain helps homeless veterans

Two Iraq War Veterans receive pro bono HBO treatments for brain injuries

Two Iraq War Veterans receive pro bono HBO treatments for brain injuries
September 19, 2:05 AM
Veterans Affairs Examiner Valerie Halaby

September 17, 2009, Delray Beach, FL

So Why isn’t the military using this technology to help all of our medically challenged veterans? Perhaps that will be the question raised by many Americans in the days ahead as the story of two Iraqi war Veterans continues to make headline news. Purple Heart recipient Adam Burke, a 32 year-old U.S. Army Veteran with nine years of service was once a young man with a bright and shiny future. He excelled in school with a 3.9 grade average possessing the opportunity to become anything he wanted to be, though having chosen a life of service to his country he found himself deployed to Iraq in 2003 where fate would change the course of his dreams.
While traveling along patrol with fellow soldiers in the city of Balad, their humvee hit an IED – Adam was so severely wounded it left him 90% disabled and earned him a Purple Heart, an honor that marked the beginning of a new kind of battle - PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) among other conditions. Having lost all short-term memory threatening his intellectual capacity, he also has trouble speaking, is hard to understand, has black outs and vertigo, and wears a GPS device because he gets lost very easily.
read more here
Two Iraq War Veterans receive pro bono
linked from
http://www.icasualties.org/Iraq/index.aspx

Wildlife officials charge owner of Delilah, the 18-foot python

A python named Delilah was moved by Florida Wildlife officials to a temporary home when his cage near Lake Apopka, Fla., was deemed unsuitable on Friday, Sept., 11, 2009. Brother of the owner, Melvin Cheever, left, and snake man Sam Floyd, right, wrestle the snake out into a carrying cage. She had escaped in the past. The 16 year old snake was measured at 18' long and 30" around. She will be moved to a snake handler in Bushnell, Fla. (GEORGE SKENE, ORLANDO SENTINEL / September 11, 2009)

Anthony Colarossi

Sentinel Staff Writer

5:48 p.m. EDT, September 18, 2009
APOPKA - Officials with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission have criminally charged the owner of Delilah, the 18-foot-python removed from an Apopka area backyard enclosure last week.

Robert David Cheever, 39, has been charged with unsafe housing of a reptile of concern, a second degree misdemeanor, according to Joy Hill, an FWC spokeswoman. Within 30 days Cheever can either pay a mail-in fine of $316 to the Orange County Clerk of Courts or request a day in court, Hill said in a statement.

He was also issued a warning for failing to have a reptile of concern permit and no PIT Tag, the identifying microchips inserted into such snakes.
read more here
Wildlife officials charge owner of Delilah, the 18-foot python

Rick Sanchez takes on FOX for sake of truth

CNN anchor calls out Fox News: ‘You lie’
By Muriel Kane

Published: September 18, 2009
When Fox News ran a full-page ad in the Washington Post — as well as in two newspapers owned by Fox’s parent company — claiming that it had been the only network to cover the 9.12 tea party rally in Washington, DC, it was more than one CNN anchor was willing to take.

“I usually don’t suffer fools gladly,” CNN’s Rick Sanchez began. “Especially when it comes to the fools who perpetuate falsehoods. Well, today thousands of you flipped through the pages of the Washington Post, only to come up a lie so bold and so upsetting that frankly I’m just not going to sit here in silence and allow my craft or my news operation to be unfairly maligned.”

Over a large photo of the rally, the ad asks, “How Did ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and CNN Miss This Story?”

“Enough is enough,” Sanchez went on, sounding as though he had been taking lessons in righteous indignation from Keith Olbermann. “And yes, I’m talking to you, Fox News. You, who claim to be fair and balanced. At what, I wonder? … They are saying we did not cover this story. They are using a lie to try and divide people into camps. … That’s an offense to myself and my colleagues, who risked their lives in Iran and Afghanistan and around the world to bring the news.”
read more here
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/09/18/cnn-anchor-calls-out-fox-news-you-lie/

For anyone reading this blog thinking I've gotten soft when it comes to the truth, most of my holding back has been because I quit smoking and my anger level is a bit too easy to reach. Last Saturday I tossed out my cigarettes, as a notice to infrequent readers. It's been a monkey on my back for 32 years. I've been going thru hell with this, crying jags, sleeping binges and not wanting to get up out of bed. For the most part, I am pretty sure I met the devil face to face. Because of this, I've been trying really hard to not blow my top on a post. Hasn't worked out too well but I've tried.

In this case, Rick Sanchez deserves all the hell I can put into this post because he spoke out for the truth. What has been going on has nothing to do with being Republican or Democratic, right or left, straight or gay, poor or rich. This has everything to do with power and that's all that matters. The truth, in other words, be damned, because it was getting in the way of power.

Stop and listen to the talk show freaks screaming, crying, blowing their stack, changing color when their blood pressure rises out of control. What are they talking about? Are they talking about what happened in Iraq or Afghanistan today? Are they talking about what happened to the wounded troops coming back? How about the unemployed men and women who were serving this country last year but out of jobs and homes this year?

Do they ever talk about the millions of veterans going to the VA and having to pay for their healthcare because they don't have an approved claim? Yes, this has been going on for years, but you'll never hear it out of any of them. If you have an approved claim for a lost limb, they take of it and anything else that was part of your losing a limb. Otherwise they want you to have another kind of insurance, including Medicare or Medicaid so they can bill for treatment not connected to an approved claim. In the case when you have a claim denied or in process, that is a claim that is still considered "not service connected" and they bill you. Your insurance company does not have to pay if the diagnosis is attaching your required medical care to your military service. With an approved claim of 100%, for example, they will charge your insurance company for anything not attached to your claim, but if they turn down the charges, the VA will not bill you. Without an approved claim, they want their money.

But you won't hear any of this on FOX on talk radio. You won't hear any veteran being interviewed over what they've been through all along or how much they are suffering. If you hear anything at all, it will be tied to the Obama administration instead of anything that has been happening all along. They also won't bother to mention the fact that since the Democrats took control over the committees, things started to change for the better and you began to hear more testimonies on PTSD, as well as news coverage.

Wake up if you still think FOX cable is news because they've been lying to you all along. It's not about the nation, especially when they make statements about how they want the Obama administration to fail, because that means they don't care the American people suffer in the process as long as they retain control over you and manipulate you into believing the lies. It's time to stand up for the truth and demand it from the people you trusted to report real news.

I watch CNN and MSNBC. I don't watch FOX because I got tired of being treated like an idiot.

Stanford Study Finds Staggering Rates of PTSD

Just to give you an idea, here are some posts from the past.

Percentage of Veterans with Mental Health Problems

About 37% of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have mental health problems, a nearly 50% increase from the last time the prevalence was calculated, according to a new study published today analyzing national Department of Veterans Affairs data. 7/16/09

148,000 Vietnam Veterans Sought Help in 18 Months

In the past 18 months, 148,000 Vietnam veterans have gone to VA centers reporting symptoms of PTSD "30 years after the war," said Brig. Gen. Michael S. Tucker, deputy commanding general of the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command and Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He recently visited El Paso. 10/08/07

934,925 Veterans being treated by VA for PTSD
September 17, 2007

As you can see, the researchers are getting closer but I said over a year ago we're looking at a million. They are getting closer but no one is prepared for any of this. At the same time we have Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seeking help, plus learning they need it, we have older veterans doing the same thing. No one is ready or even close to it yet.

Stanford Study Finds Staggering Rates of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Among Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans

A recent study conducted by Stanford University found that rates of PTSD among service members deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan may be as high as 35%. With two million troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, we can expect that an astounding 700,000 veterans will suffer from PTSD.

San Fransisco, CA (Vocus/PRWEB ) September 18, 2009 -- A recent study conducted by Stanford University found that rates of PTSD among service members deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan may be as high as 35%. With two million troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, we can expect that an astounding 700,000 veterans will suffer from PTSD.



These numbers are double previously projected numbers because unlike other projections, this study factors in delayed onset of PTSD, which is common. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense (DoD) must increase staff and resources to accommodate the mental health care needs of Iraq and Afghanistan active duty service members and veterans. The DoD claims that the transition to VA services is a seamless one for veterans, but evidence shows otherwise. Both DoD and VA lack a sufficient number of mental health professionals on staff to diagnose, treat and provide compensation to patients with PTSD. The staff shortage can be attributed to a lack of funding and a national shortage of mental health professionals, however the shortages continue to cause delays in treatment and compensation. In California alone there are 59,659 VA claims that are currently pending process and this number will continue to rise as more troops return home.
read more here
Stanford Study Finds Staggering Rates of PTSD

Funeral held for Clermont police officer killed in motorcycle crash

Funeral service
( GEORGE SKENE, ORLANDO SENTINEL / September 18, 2009 )
The family of Clermont police officer Rob Sayers attend his funeral service at Celebration of Praise Church in Clermont. He died in a motorcycle accident on Sept. 9, on his way home from work to Spring Hill. Officers from many agencies came to the funeral. Left to right are his mother Lesley Ann Taylor, son Luke, wife Sally (Sarah) holding son Toby and Clermont Police Chief Steve Graham.

Funeral held for Clermont police officer killed in motorcycle crash
By Martin E. Comas

Sentinel Staff Writer

10:28 a.m. EDT, September 18, 2009
CLERMONT - The funeral for Clermont police Officer Robert Sayers at Celebration Praise Church is over and a large contingent of law-enforcement officers will lead a procession to Oakhill Cemetery, where Sayers will be buried.

Sayers was killed Sept. 9 after crashing his motorcycle while returning to his home in Spring Hill.

A reception will be held later at Jenkins Auditorium, 691 W. Montrose St.

Sayers, 39, who lived with his wife, Sarah, and two young boys, was driving home from work, heading west on State Road 50 at about 4:30 pm Sept. 16 on his 2006 Triumph motorcycle when the crash occurred.
read more here
Funeral held for Clermont police officer killed in motorcycle crash