Daytona residents, city commission at odds over pot dispensaries
Daytona Beach News Journal By Eileen Zaffiro-Kean Posted Aug 5, 2017
“I think that’s ridiculous,” said 37-year-old Josh Whitney, an Iraq war veteran who was tormented with post traumatic stress disorder for 11 years until he started using cannabis oil every day.
“I don’t want people walking out and lighting up,” said City Commissioner Dannette Henry, who worries about pot smokers hanging around businesses and places kids could be.
The vast majority of Daytona Beach voters approved allowing more people to get medical marijuana. But a majority of city commissioners are leaning toward banning dispensaries in the city.
DAYTONA BEACH — Last fall, 71 percent of state voters supported making medical marijuana available to more Floridians battling excruciating illnesses like cancer and Parkinson’s disease.
In Daytona Beach, the support was even stronger. Twelve of the city’s 15 precincts had 76-90 percent of their voters backing the proposal to make pot legally available for far more medical reasons. The other three precincts weighed in with yes votes from 69-74 percent of voters. A total of 22,040 Daytona Beach residents checked the “yes” box, more than three times the 6,104 who checked “no.”
Commissioners haven’t taken a final vote yet. But if at least one of the four commissioners opposed to dispensaries doesn’t have a change of heart by the time they do vote in the next month or two, people fighting everything from multiple sclerosis to epilepsy will have to road trip to other parts of Volusia County to get their medical marijuana. read more here
OMG! I need to stay out of social media. Yet again I was reading about someone ignoring the fact that all the problems the OEF and OIF veterans have with their claims and treatment from the VA is new. "The VA has betrayed our veterans." Paul Sullivan Veterans For Common Sense said after his group filed a lawsuit because veteran were waiting too long for medical care and compensation. Here is a little history lesson, because if we ignore it, nothing will change.
Frustrated by delays in health care, injured Iraq war veterans accused VA Secretary Jim Nicholson in a lawsuit of breaking the law by denying them disability pay and mental health treatment.
The class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, filed Monday in federal court in San Francisco, seeks broad changes in the agency as it struggles to meet growing demands from veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Suing on behalf of hundreds of thousands of veterans, it charges that the VA has failed warriors on numerous fronts. It contends the VA failed to provide prompt disability benefits, failed to add staff to reduce wait times for medical care and failed to boost services for post-traumatic stress disorder.
The lawsuit also accuses the VA of deliberately cheating some veterans by allegedly working with the Pentagon to misclassify PTSD claims as pre-existing personality disorders to avoid paying benefits. The VA and Pentagon have generally denied such charges.
"When one of our combat veterans walks into a VA hospital, then they must see a doctor that day," said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, which filed the lawsuit. "When a war veteran needs disability benefits because he or she can't work, then they must get a disability check in a few weeks."
You may think that just happened. You need to think again because if you just started to pay attention to all of this, you're wrong.That report came out July 23, 2007. There was a budget crisis.
Yet, the lawsuit says, Nicholson and other officials still insisted on a budget in 2005 that fell $1 billion short, and they made "a mockery of the rule of law" by awarding senior officials $3.8 million in bonuses despite their role in the budget foul-up.
And while our veterans and families were suffering after decades of promises from members of Congress, they never once apologized for any of it.
"The performance of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs has contributed substantially to our sense of national shame," the opinion from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals read.Nicholson abruptly announced last week he would step down by Oct. 1 to return to the private sector.
He has repeatedly defended the agency during his 2½-year tenure while acknowledging there was room for improvement.More recently, following high-profile suicide incidents in which families of veterans say the VA did not provide adequate care, Nicholson pledged to add mental health services and hire more suicide-prevention coordinators.
Now that may seem as if that was new but it happened to Vietnam veterans in the 80's and 90's. Not that it mattered since Congress did nothing about it. After all, when it reached the point where President Bush had to fight against veterans in court, no one put the blame on Congress.
During an interview given in November for the original CBS story, Dr. Katz told reporter Armen Keteyian that "There is no epidemic in suicide in the VA, but suicide is a major problem." When pressed for an answer to explain the VA's inability to come up with any suicide statistics among veterans, Katz replied "That research is ongoing."
However, "After a public records request, the VA provided CBS News with data that showed there were a total of 790 attempted suicides by VA patients in the entire year of 2007." This number does not match up at all with a private email sent by Dr. Katz to a colleague in which he states that the VA has identified "about 1000 suicide attempts a month in patients we see at are medical facilities," a far cry from his public estimate of 790 a year.
PS, that really hasn't changed either. As you can see, not much has changed.
Gulf War vet becomes first woman in 25 years to lead a major veterans organization Navy Times By: Leo Shane III 4 hours ago
The largest veterans organizations have long been seen as dominated by men, especially before the recent wars dramatically increased the number of women with military and combat service. Army vet Mary Stout served as commander of Vietnam Veterans of America from 1987 to 1991, but none have followed in the last 25 years.
Army veteran Delphine Metcalf-Foster was named national commander of Disabled American Veterans on Aug. 1, 2017. (Courtesy of DAV)
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Vietnam Veterans of America had a female commander in the 1980s.
WASHINGTON — Nine years ago, when Army veteran Delphine Metcalf-Foster went to her local Veterans Affairs hospital for a knee replacement, she asked her doctors if they would use a female-specific prosthesis.
They said they never considered getting any.
“I realized then there needed to be more education,” she said. “Women don’t have the same bone structure as men. But they just always used a unisex knee. Maybe if (the injury) hadn’t happened to me, I would have just assumed that it wasn’t a problem.”
Now Metcalf-Foster is hoping to shine a bigger spotlight on those types of overlooked women veteran issues as the first female commander of Disabled American Veterans. She was sworn into the post on Aug. 1, becoming the first woman to lead one of the major American veterans organizations since 1991.
read more here
Navy identifies Stethem sailor who went missing in South China Sea
STARS AND STRIPES By MATTHEW M. BURKE Published: August 4, 2017
Lt. Steven D. Hopkins is shown here with his wife, Patty Hopkins, and their two children in this undated Facebook photo. On Saturday, the Navy identified Hopkins as the USS Stethem sailor who was reported overboard from the guided-missile destroyer in the South China Sea on Aug. 1, 2017.
VIA FACEBOOK
The Navy has identified Lt. Steven D. Hopkins as the USS Stethem sailor who was reported overboard from the guided-missile destroyer in the South China Sea on Aug. 1.
On Friday, the Navy announced it had suspended its search for Hopkins.
Hopkins was reported missing about 9 a.m. as the ship transited 140 miles west of Subic Bay, Philippines, a Navy statement said. An investigation into the disappearance is underway. read more here
"The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps suspended the rescue operation and launched a recovery effort instead, the Marine base Camp Butler in Japan said in a statement, essentially confirming the military does not expect to find the missing Marines alive."
3 US Marines missing after aircraft crashes off Australia
By ASSOCIATED PRESSPublished: August 5, 2017
SYDNEY — Search and rescue operations were underway for three U.S. Marines who were missing after their Osprey aircraft crashed into the sea off the east coast of Australia on Saturday while trying to land.
Twenty-three of 26 personnel aboard the aircraft have been rescued, the Marine base Camp Butler in Japan said in a statement.
The MV-22 Osprey involved in the mishap had launched from the USS Bonhomme Richard and was conducting regularly scheduled operations when it crashed into the water, the statement said. The ship's small boats and aircraft immediately responded in the search and rescue efforts.
Combat PTSD Wounded Times Kathie Costos August 5, 2017 I was listening to a countdown of American Top 40 and heard our wedding song. I cried. There are certain songs we hear about lives we are living and we find comfort, reassurance and, if we're lucky, hope. When I met my husband, one of my favorite songs was "A One In A Million" and we picked it for our first dance. This picture was taken while that song was playing.
It was the second chance for both of us to find happiness. He was divorced and so was I. No one would have guessed we would end up being married this long. I never would have guessed that our life together would have started the war I had to fight standing by his side. Yes, a war. He went to war in Vietnam. I went to war in Massachusetts. I saw what PTSD was doing to him and needed to know what I was getting into before I took those lifetime vows again. How could I understand something I never lived through? My life up that point was actually the reason why I could understand what combat did to him. I survived enough times when I could have lost my life, including the day my ex-husband came home and decided I needed to die. He couldn't understand what all those times were like for me anymore than I could understand what it was like to risk my life for strangers. Now all I risk is my ego. The thing is, back then, the only way to learn about war and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, was to go to the library or college. I went to the library with a dictionary and a stack of books on psychology and Vietnam because of my Dad. He was a Korean War veteran and my uncles were WWII veterans. It was my Dad saying the words "shell shock" that sent me on this mission of my lifetime. At first, it was about discovering what I was getting into before it was too late to end it, but then it was about how I could help him find happiness and know that he was loved.
My Dad tried to get him to go to the VA for help. He had the same attitude his Dad had. My father-in-law was a WWII veteran, and so were his three brothers. They believed that the VA was for veterans who couldn't work and they'd be taking their place in line.
So, we just accepted the nightmares, flashbacks, mood swings and everything else that came with mild PTSD. It all became normal for us just as it became normal for me to help other veterans and their wives understand what I learned at the library.
It was not until something happened and his mild PTSD took over our lives, that I knew it was my war to fight. By 1993, when I got my first computer, the fight went online. If we were going through this, then I knew there were a lot of other people out there feeling as lost and alone as I was. I won't bore you with the details since I already wrote our story back in 2003 and self published it because of September 11th. I couldn't find a publisher to get interested in 2000 but I kept trying until that day this country was attacked. A couple of psychologists I knew were sent to Washington and New York and we talked about what was coming in Vietnam veterans before sending troops into Afghanistan made the news. I did some editing on the manuscript and kept trying for a while until I gave up and went the self-publishing route, praying it would help someone. Then I was encouraged to start a website to reach more people. Fast forward past countless websites up to this one, and it is all vindication of what I've been saying all along. This is a war about love because it is based on the love they have to the point where they are willing to die for it. In 2006 I started to make videos on PTSD and put them up on Youtube took them down and put them back up again. By 2009, I knew enough about all of this to predict a rise in military suicides when they should have been going down. After all, there was never another time in this country when so much was being done to help our service people and veterans heal. It should have worked and we should have seen more living and thriving but we saw more suicides. We saw more divorces as more and more families fell apart and more veterans existing on the streets. Men and women just like my husband. For a long time I blamed the families for walking away but ended up being shocked by the fact they stayed that long without know how to understand it. It was almost impossible for us, and I knew everything I needed to know. How could they have done it for so long without knowing anything other than the fact they loved them? Combat PTSD Wounded Times is ten years old this month but knowing these men and women, completely blown away by what they have inside, behind the pain in their eyes, is the reason I keep doing this. I remember 35 years ago when I was just as lost as everyone else. Listen to the words of this song and then maybe your tears will cause you to start your own battle for love. They are worth it!
Larry Graham - One in a million you
UPDATE August 6, 2017 I stay out of blogs and simply do not have enough times to read website threads. Every once in a while, I'll get something in my email that I am compelled to read. It happened this morning. It is a comment on Michigan Medical Marijuana. The author is "Garrett" and well worth the read. Here is part of it.
How can we explain, how can we help our loved ones to understand ... when we don't understand ... There are times, lives, like mine, when wives simply cannot understand ... and decide they don't want to be with us ... we're erratic, we withdraw, we need to protect ourselves, we fear leaving our homes, we have fears that we can't articulate, can't express in words that will help a loved one understand ... Yet we live ... every day, every minute, with thoughts no one should ever know ... A terrible outcome of our struggle is we can't talk to our wives ... we can't explain the things we "see" ... again and again, moment after moment, day after day ... but we never share those visions ... which of us would want our wives to know the true terrors that we see ... to let them honestly "feel" what we always feel ... how can we condemn them to our fate ... knowing the pain of understanding ... of knowing ... what we truly feel ... So they leave us ... and we know, somewhere inside, that it's for the best, for their health, for them to continue living ... That leaves us alone which may seem like an answer ... to know the terrors that we see is something we pray others never know ... never, ever, experience ...The problem with that logic is that we isolate ourselves ... we do save others from our terrible struggles ... but we leave ourselves alone ... that often feels best to us .. but it is wrong We need love more than most because we can't find self-acceptance, self-worth, self-hope ... within ourselves There is no perfect world ... we have only this one ... We need to support each other because only we can understand the horrors we face ... I pray for each of us ... I understand the pain of a wife leaving ... mine left me ... Please stay with me ... let's live together ... share our lives ... work to build something we can live within ... We are never alone no matter how bad it feels ... we always have each other ... we are the only people that understand the terrors ...
If you want to stay, then you better be prepared to fight for them with everything available.
Manhunt for suspect extends from Colorado to Virginia NBC 9 News Colorado KUSA Jacob Rodriguez and Allison Sytte August 4, 2017
Roberts is a MARSOC Marine - a highly trained branch of the Special Forces and is believed to be armed and dangerous, Dillon Police say. Roberts' family is working with authorities to try and resolve the situation.
The manhunt for a veteran suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder has extended from Colorado to Kansas and now Virginia over the past week.
William Roberts, 34, reportedly slammed into a Dillon Police car back on Tuesday after officers tried to arrest him at the Dillon Dam Brewery. A SWAT team entered the hotel room he was supposed to be staying in, but by the time they arrived, he'd already gone, police say.
Then, later that night, Roberts was pulled over for speeding in North Newton, Kansas - 557 miles from Dillon. When the officer that pulled him over learned he was wanted for hitting a police car, Roberts sped off, prompting a high-speed chase that spanned two counties.
Even though his tires had been damaged by spike strips, he got away and is believed to have fled in a stolen truck all the way to Virginia.
Police in Botetourt County, Virginia, 1,700 miles from Dillon on the west side of the Appalachian mountains are currently conducting a manhunt for Roberts. read more here
Courage when it counts Northwest Florida Daily News Annie Blanks Updated Aug 4, 2017
Abby Schroeder wants people to know her husband was courageous up until his last breath.
Abby Schroeder and her sons, Mason, center and Noah, right, lean over Lt. Col. Bill Schroeder's casket at his funeral last June. Schroeder as killed in a workplace violence indident at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland on April 8 2016. (Abby Schroeder/special to the Daily News)
Lt. Col. Bill Schroeder, an airman who spent time at Hurlburt Field, was killed last April in his office at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland when a disgruntled tech sergeant opened fire and shot him before turning the gun on himself. Investigators believe Bill’s actions that day saved countless lives. And this weekend, he is being posthumously honored at the 10th annual Portraits in Courage program in Washington, D.C., which honors service members for their heroics. His wife, Abby, is attending the program this weekend to accept the distinguished award on his behalf. “It’s a way to honor all of these Air Force personnel for their actions that go above and beyond,” Abby said over the phone from Washington, D.C. Friday. “They put themselves in danger in acts of courage both in combat and within their communities.”
read more here
What You Don't Know Is Killing Them Combat PTSD Wounded Times Kathie Costos August 4, 2017 Problem Veteran Suicide Data This is the report that started all the new charities screaming about raising awareness on "22" veterans committing suicide.
"To date, data from twenty-one (21) states have been cleaned and
entered into a single integrated file containing information on more than 147,000 suicides and
27,062 reported Veterans.
In addition to the issues identified above, barriers to full project implementation include
inconsistent availability of requested information in all states, barriers to providing non-resident
data and sending preference to provide de-identified data due to conflicting interpretations of
Social Security laws. Negotiations with states are continuing as we begin requesting more
recent years’ data as well as renewing or revising previously completed Data Use Agreements." That was from the VA Suicide Report released in 2012.
That report was followed up in 2016 that was from all states and the CDC. "As part of the Call to Action, VA has undertaken the most comprehensive analysis of Veteran suicide in
our nation’s history, examining more than 55 million Veteran records from 1979 to 2014 from all 50 states
and four territories. This report describes the results of this effort. It builds on data from previous VA
Suicide Data Reports, which were primarily limited to information on Veterans who used VHA health
services or from mortality records obtained directly from a small number 20 of states and approximately 3
million records." The problem with both reports is, some states do not have military service as a category on their Death Certificates. States like California do not have military service on their certificates.
"...A proposal for new state legislation seeks to help confront the issue by requiring certificates of death to show if a deceased person was ever a member of the United States Armed Forces. In addition, it requires the state Department of Health to access death records and compile a report on veteran suicides beginning in 2019.
Richard Sawyer of Marysville, a service officer with Disabled American Veterans, American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, said the proposed legislation would be useful.
“They should have been keeping those records a long time ago,” said Sawyer. “If a vet commits suicide, it would be nice to back it up. Was he a veteran? Was he in combat? Could it possibly be related to that combat?”
Conclusion: If military service is not on the death certificate, then the CDC would not be able to include them in anything other that cause of death as "suicide" among the civilian population. Problem, Age Ignored Both reports state the largest percentage of veterans committing suicide are over the age of 50.
Key findings from this year’s report include:
In 2014, an average of 20 Veterans died by suicide each day. Six of the 20 were users of VHA
services.
In 2014, Veterans accounted for 18 percent of all deaths by suicide among U.S. adults and
constituted 8.5 percent of the U.S. adult population (ages 18+). In 2010, Veterans accounted for
20.2 percent of all deaths by suicide and represented 9.7 percent of the U.S. adult population.
The burden of suicide resulting from firearm injuries remains high. In 2014, about 67 percent of all
Veteran deaths by suicide were the result of firearm injuries.
There is continued evidence of a high burden of suicide among middle-aged and older Veterans.
In 2014, about 65 percent of all Veterans who died by suicide were age 50 or older.
After adjusting for differences in age and gender, risk for suicide was 21 percent higher among
Veterans when compared with U.S. civilian adults. (2014)
After adjusting for differences in age, risk for suicide was 18 percent higher among male
Veterans when compared with U.S. civilian adult males. (2014)
After adjusting for differences in age, risk for suicide was 2.4 times higher among female Veterans
when compared with U.S. civilian adult females. (2014)
In 2014, rates of suicide were highest among younger Veterans (ages 18–29) and lowest among
older Veterans (ages 60+)."
Conclusion: If all the new charities really cared about this, they would have read both reports and would not have forgotten about the majority of veterans taking their own lives everyday...according to them! Keep pretending to count them and show them they cannot count on you to care enough to read the reports! This is from a video I did back in 2007 on the OEF and OIF generation. We can care about the newer veterans committing suicide and manage to care about the older generation, if you pay enough respect to them and report facts. We can actually change the outcome but only if we open our eyes to the fact that talking about something without knowing what you're talking about is deadly.
5-Year-Old Makes Care Bags For Homeless Baltimore Veterans
CBS Baltimmore By Mike Schuh August 3, 2017
“Almost everybody in our family is a veteran,” he says. Including his grandfather, Alfred Blackstone.
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — In the age of social media, it’s easier than ever to be exposed the world’s problems, even if it’s not an issue that affects you directly.
That’s what happened to 5-year-old Tyler Stallings.
“Well, I saw a YouTube video, and I thought it wasn’t right,” he says. That video was about veteran homelessness.
On any given night in the U.S., it is estimated that some 200,000 veterans call the streets home.
Those facts got Tyler thinking, which is why when WJZ’s Mike Schuh visited him, Tyler was strapped into a seat in the back of his mom’s car navigating rush hour traffic in downtown Baltimore.
“We are headed to the Community Resource and Referral Center,” says his mom, Andrea Blackstone.
It’s a place most 5-year-olds will never see, where homeless vets can get help from the VA.
Tyler and Andrea were loaded up with bags and backpacks filled with the stuff homeless veterans need to survive on the streets. read more here
