Friday Follies

Russian has actually had two nuclear disasters.

Love no matter what.

Apparently we need to start recording everything we do.

Republicans hate government so much that they are startled to learn they might want to show voters they can govern.

Paul Krugman takes apart libertarian economics and Ayn Rand fantasies.

The over-militarization of our police. Steve Bates discusses. Officer Friendly.

Singing opera may save your life.

Why funny people kill themselves.

Jeffrey Smith Challenge to Neil deGrasse Tyson on GMO food.

Life, wind and fuck ups.

Why it's worth it to live.

A US wind map.

The Koch brothers very bad no good week.

Georgia.  Yet another state I will not visit nor support if I am able.

The Supreme Court fucks up again.

Women need to recognize verbal sabotage and manipulation.

Curveball.  The excuse created by the neocons to attack Iraq.

Headlines

The Republicans Are Like Frat Boys in 'Animal House'. Quote:

However, they soon fall in line after the fraternity's leader, the far more respectable, presentable, all-round-cad, Otter (Tim Matheson), backs Bluto's call to arms against the university authorities. "Bluto's right," he says. "Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards … I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part."

The Republican party, in particular, and American conservatism in general, have taken to operating in a similar manner to the Delta fraternity – increasingly reckless, anarchic and strident. Faced with defeat they respond with desperation. Only where the Deltas were motivated by ribaldry, conservatives are driven by rage.

Budget deficit shrink. Quote:

You know that staggeringly huge budget deficit bequeathed to the Obama administration by George W. Bush's and the rotten Bush recession? Don't look now, but that deficit is getting smaller.

The Ghost of Bobby Lee. Quote:

What undergirds all of this alleged honoring of the Confederacy, is a kind of ancestor-worship that isn't. The Lost Cause is necromancy--it summons the dead and enslaves them to the need of their vainglorious, self-styled descendants. Its greatest crime is how it denies, even in death, the humanity of the very people it claims to venerate. This isn't about "honoring" the past--it's about an inability to cope with the present.

Report: Palin Has Earned An Estimated $12M Since July. Quote:

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's speaking engagements may have earned her $12 million since she resigned in July, ABC News estimates.

Palin has been making the media rounds for the past few months, and is raking it in from her estimated six- to seven-figure appearance fees, according to a "conservative estimate" by ABC News.

Aside from becoming a Fox News contributor, Palin also toured the country to promote her book, "Going Rogue: An American Life."

The cash flow won't stop there, either: She will reportedly make $1 million for each episode of her Alaska travel show.

ZAZI PLOT DETAILS EMERGE. Quote:

I realize conservatives don't want to talk about this story, which is probably why major media outlets aren't paying much attention to it.

But that's a shame because when it comes to counter-terrorism, this is a big f'in deal. Here we had a serious terrorist threat -- arguably the most important since 9/11 -- and an al Qaeda recruit who was poised to kill a lot of people. Obama administration officials thwarted Zazi's plan, took him into custody, read him his rights, and gave him a lawyer.

And the results couldn't have been better for the United States. Zazi will spend the rest of his life behind bars, but only after cooperating with federal officials and becoming a valuable source of intelligence.

If Republicans really want to debate the efficacy of Obama's counter-terrorism policies, we can start right here.

DNA On Envelopes Identifies World War II Sailor. Quote:

Gerald Lehman is going home to Michigan, 68 years after he was killed at Pearl Harbor. The young sailor's remains were thought to be among the hundreds trapped under the water when the USS Oklahoma was torpedoed. But his remains were recovered and buried with the remains of four other "unknowns." Lehman's remains were finally identified by using DNA collected from the letters he sent home — Lehman had licked the envelopes to seal them.

Michelle Obama Visits Haiti: First Lady Makes Unannounced Trip. Quote:

Obama and Biden's visit is intended to underscore U.S. commitment to the Haitian reconstruction effort and to thank American officials who have worked in the country for the past three months, the administration said in a statement.

It is Obama's first solo trip as first lady, and she will visit Mexico next, spokeswoman Katherine McCormick-Lelyveld said. Haiti was included when the trip was planned a month ago but not announced for security reasons.

Is the U.S. Army Losing Its War on Suicide? Quote:

From the invasion of Afghanistan until last summer, the U.S. military had lost 761 soldiers in combat there. But a higher number in the service — 817 — had taken their own lives over the same period. The surge in suicides, which have risen five years in a row, has become a vexing problem for which the Army's highest levels of command have yet to find a solution despite deploying hundreds of mental-health experts and investing millions of dollars. And the elephant in the room in much of the formal discussion of the problem is the burden of repeated tours of combat duty on a soldier's battered psyche.

RRS James Cook Voyage 44. Quote:

Join our team of scientists and engineers exploring the Cayman Trough, a three-mile deep rift in the seafloor of the Caribbean, in search of the world's deepest volcanic vents and new species of deep-sea creatures.

The White House Blog "An Opportunity -- Not Simply to Talk, But to Act". Quote:

Today the President and delegations from 46 other nations are working to address the most dire threat of our time: nuclear terrorism. It is the second day of the Nuclear Security Summit, following a first day during which several nations made significant commitments which will strengthen the global effort to maintain nuclear security and nonproliferation. For instance:

* Chile has shipped its highly enriched uranium to the United States; Ukraine has agreed to ship its highly enriched uranium out of the country within two years; and Canada has agreed to ship its used highly enriched uranium to the United States.
* The United States and Russia have reached an agreement on plutonium disposal, a deal that has been stalled since 2000, and which commits both countries to eliminate enough total plutonium for approximately 17,000 nuclear weapons.
* Recognizing the importance of this summit, and that its goals require a long-term commitment, South Korea has agreed to host the next Nuclear Security Summit in 2012.

What was that statistic?

When you have easy access to guns, you're in more danger of your own guns being used against you than not?

LEBANON, Pa. -- Police in Pennsylvania Dutch country plan to release additional details about a suburban mother who last year shocked other parents by openly carrying a loaded handgun at her daughter's youth soccer game and this week was found shot dead with her husband in an apparent murder-suicide.

Meleanie Hain and Scott Hain were found dead Wednesday inside their home in Lebanon, a small city 80 miles west of Philadelphia. Their three children were unharmed.

Military is trying to figure out why there is a surge in suicides

In 2008, 140 soldiers on active duty took their own lives, continuing a trend in which the number of suicides has increased more than 60 percent since 2003, surpassing the rate for the general U.S. population.

To deal with the problem, the Army has added to the ranks of mental health and substance abuse counselors. The service also required all units to cease operations for two to four hours to talk about suicide prevention in February and March.

Chiarelli's monthly meetings are the Army's way of sleuthing out patterns and identifying new policies to deal with the trend.

The answer to this puzzling problem is found within the same article. To help, I've bolded it.:

The Army's biggest challenge is that its volunteer force is in uncharted territory. Many soldiers are now in the midst of their third or fourth combat tour, and Army surveys show that mental health deteriorates with each one. Senior Army officials said they are focusing more resources, including extra mental health counselors, where troops are returning from multiple deployments. This year, Fort Campbell, Ky., which is home to the frequently deployed 101st Airborne Division, has had 14 suicides.

"We probably don't know how many mental health care providers we need after eight years of war and three and four deployments," Chiarelli said.

Um... guys. The military is broken. Soldiers are people and they are used up and tired. You can't have an Eternal War on a Noun and expect only a small percentage of the American population to fight it ... forever. You can't extend tours, use stop-loss, badger and harass soldiers into reenlisting, lie to get potential recruits to sign up, ignore signs of mental stress and ptsd, provide crappy veteran's care and not have a backlash.

How about this? Stop the wars. Bring the soldiers home. Focus the attentions of the mental health care providers on our troops at home who will need assistance in fitting back into society. It just might work!

Update: Remembered this post a little more than a year ago about the estimate of attempted suicides.... 12,000.

Meanwhile, back at the farm...

Another impact of global warming, bad government planning, and corporate heartlessness:

Over 1,500 farmers in an Indian state committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure, it was reported today.

The agricultural state of Chattisgarh was hit by falling water levels.

"The water level has gone down below 250 feet here. It used to be at 40 feet a few years ago," Shatrughan Sahu, a villager in one of the districts, told Down To Earth magazine

"Most of the farmers here are indebted and only God can save the ones who do not have a bore well."

Mr Sahu lives in a district that recorded 206 farmer suicides last year. Police records for the district add that many deaths occur due to debt and economic distress.

Support our troops

And stop this madness:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- One week after the U.S. Army announced record suicide rates among its soldiers last year, the service is worried about a spike in possible suicides in the new year.

The Army said 24 soldiers are believed to have committed suicide in January alone -- six times as many as killed themselves in January 2008, according to statistics released Thursday.

The Army said it already has confirmed seven suicides, with 17 additional cases pending that it believes investigators will confirm as suicides for January.

If those prove true, more soldiers will have killed themselves than died in combat last month. According to Pentagon statistics, there were 16 U.S. combat deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq in January.

"This is terrifying," an Army official said. "We do not know what is going on."

Col. Kathy Platoni, chief clinical psychologist for the Army Reserve and National Guard, said that the long, cold months of winter could be a major contributor to the January spike.

"There is more hopelessness and helplessness because everything is so dreary and cold," she said.

But Platoni said she sees the multiple deployments, stigma associated with seeking treatment and the excessive use of anti-depressants as ongoing concerns for mental-health professionals who work with soldiers.

Those who are seeking mental-health care often have their treatment disrupted by deployments. Deployed soldiers also have to deal with the stress of separations from families

(Via the Sailor of SteveAudio).

Supporting the troops

My ass.

More active-duty Marines committed suicide last year than any year since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, although the suicide rate remained virtually unchanged because the Marine Corps is increasing in size, according to a report issued Tuesday.

Forty-one Marines are listed as possible or confirmed suicides in 2008, or 16.8 per 100,000 troops, the Marine Corps report said. Nearly all were enlisted and under 24, and about two-thirds had deployed overseas.

In 2007, 33 Marines committed suicide -- a rate of 16.5 per 100,000 troops. The Marine Corps is adding troops and calling in reservists to serve in in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other foreign bases and stateside.

Trying to save the troops

One soldier at a time:

In 2007, at least 115 active-duty soldiers and National Guard and Reserve troops committed suicide, the highest rate since the Army began keeping records in 1980. IAVA estimates that between 30 percent and 40 percent of returning war veterans will face “serious mental health injury” — especially post-traumatic stress disorder — and that those numbers are exacerbated by long tours and frequent redeployments.

[snip]

"When these guys go [into battle], they learn to shut down their emotions,” said Campbell. “What helps you in Iraq is now hurting you at home.”

During a particularly rough patch earlier this year, Campbell said, the sergeant received a letter notifying him that his unit would be going back to Iraq.

“It was just too much,” said Campbell. “[The sergeant] sent a text message to someone at the armory, and they sent the police to go find him. They found him in a boat a couple days later. He had shot himself.”

[snip]

Campbell said that the transition from military to civilian life often hits Guard and Reserve troops particularly hard. He experienced it firsthand. After returning from Iraq, he said, it took a full year of his own reckless behavior and an ultimatum from his best friend before he admitted that he needed counseling for combat stress.

Even then, Campbell said he didn’t fully break down until days later, when a preview for an Iraq war film sent him over the edge. He said he spent hours in the theater, crying.

At IAVA, Campbell is helping to push for legislation that would provide returning soldiers with mandatory one-on-one screenings with mental health professionals within six months of returning from combat. He is also working toward increased access to mental health services in rural areas, a particular problem for some of the soldiers in his unit from remote parts of Louisiana.

Campbell wants Congress to lead the charge for a holistic approach to veterans’ mental health, including help for family members and targeted advertising campaigns to reduce the stigma that soldiers attach to counseling.

We need to listen to those who have been there. We need to honor their service and give those that need help the assistance they need. No one should stand by and let another generation of homeless and lost veterans wander the streets.

12,000? Twelve THOUSAND??

WASHINGTON – The Department of Veterans Affairs lied about the number of veterans who have tried to kill themselves, Sen. Patty Murray said Wednesday, citing internal e-mails that put the number at 12,000 a year while the department was publicly saying it was fewer than 800.

“The suicide rate is a red alarm bell to all of us,” the Washington state Democrat said. She added that the VA’s mental health programs are overwhelmed by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans even as the department seeks to downplay the situation.

“We are not your enemy, we are your support team, and unless we get accurate information we can’t be there to do our jobs,” Murray said.

VA deputy secretary Gordon Mansfield acknowledged the numbers discrepancy and apologized during a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing, telling Murray and other senators he didn’t think there was any deliberate attempt to mislead Congress or the public.

But Murray remained skeptical, saying the VA has shown a pattern of misleading Congress when it comes to the increasing number of soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan seeking help and putting a strain on Defense Department and VA facilities and programs.

This is supporting the troops in what way, exactly?

Supporting the troops

By breaking the military?: (my bold)

Suicide rates among US soldiers are heading for a record high, army data released on Thursday shows.

Eighty-nine suicides were confirmed in 2007, and if 32 suspected suicides are also confirmed, the total will rise above the 2006 figure of 102. The 2006 suicide rate was the highest since US army records began in 1980.

"I think it's a marker of the stress on the force," said army psychiatric consultant Colonel Elsbeth Ritchie. "Families are tired".

Ya think? How about being forced into a war that has an ever-changing reason for being there, no end in sight, no draft to alleviate the repeated deployments, and no way to win over the mistreated and furious inhabitants?

The data, released at a news conference, also showed that more than 2,000 soldiers had tried to take their own lives or injure themselves in 2007, compared with fewer than 1,500 the previous year.

About 34 of the total 2007 deaths were soldiers who died while serving a tour of duty in Iraq, an increase from 27 in Iraq the previous year, the preliminary figures showed.

Army suicide rates have risen in recent years, coinciding with the US-led military action in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With military resources stretched, last year the Pentagon extended tours of duty from 12 months to 15. It has also sent some troops back to the wars several times.

How casually the Bush administration throws away lives. How indicative of the rot at the center that they then try to cut veteran's benefits and deny PTSD. How many more brave soldiers are we going to lose before the military says enough?

Update: How many Iraqis have to die in this Bush Quagmire?

LONDON (Reuters) - More than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to research conducted by one of Britain's leading polling groups.

The survey, conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB) with 2,414 adults in face-to-face interviews, found that 20 percent of people had had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, rather than natural causes.

The last complete census in Iraq conducted in 1997 found 4.05 million households in the country, a figure ORB used to calculate that approximately 1.03 million people had died as a result of the war, the researchers found.

The margin of error in the survey, conducted in August and September 2007, was 1.7 percent, giving a range of deaths of 946,258 to 1.12 million.

You can judge a government

By the way they treat those in need, in their employ, in their military. Pale Rider of Blue Girl, Red State quotes a study:

A new military study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine says soldiers who suffered concussions in Iraq were not only at higher risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, but also that the depression and PTSD, not the head injuries, may be the cause of ongoing physical symptoms.

And then cites a story of how the military declares 'personality disorders' and denies medical claims of those soldiers who were wounded:

It is the use of the 5-13 discharge to cull injured troops from service and deny them future benefits through the VA.A 5-13 is a psych discharge.It brands the veteran as having a personality disorder, an Axis II disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychological Association. Personality disorders are deemed pre-existing conditions, and therefore the military is absolved of all future responsibility to those veterans.

As if this is not horrible enough, here are some even worse statistics via Paul of Byzigenous Buddhapalian, John Cory of Hoffmania:

The folks who see profit and growth in the numbers of veterans of this war, the Health Care Insurers know an opportunity when they see one. In her December 2007 report Emily Berry for American Medical News gives us a tour by the numbers:

30,000 troops have been wounded in action.
39,000 have been diagnosed with PTSD.
84,000 vets suffer a mental health disorder.
229,000 veterans have sought VA care.
1.4 million troops (active duty and reserves) deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan so far.
Estimates run between $350 billion to $700 billion needed for lifetime care and benefits for veterans.

And now, making the rounds in Washington is a plan that has become known as “The Psychological Kevlar Act of 2007” which reaches out to the pharmaceutical industry to partner with the Department of Defense to use the drug Propranalol to treat symptoms of PTSD even before a soldier succumbs to full blown PTSD. An ounce of prevention after all is worth funding for experimentation, I mean research. A numb soldier is a happy soldier.

If you haven’t visited Penny Coleman you really ought to drop by and read up on her articles. Thanks to Penny and people like my friend Miss Remy, we learn the truth about the terrible sweet beauty we call war. The price – human toll – and numbers.

A CBS study of 45 states over the past 12 years reveals disturbing and tragic patterns of suffering veterans whether Korean War, Vietnam, or the newer versions, Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2005 alone, there were 6,256 veteran suicides. That’s 120 every week or an average of 17 suicides every day.

The Bush administration has no waiting period to go to war, only waiting lines that take months to treat veterans and provide the health care they need. It is an amazing irony that Bush has presided over the longest delays and waiting periods for veterans in VA history and yet he has generated more veterans faster than most any other administration. As the Democratic Policy Committee pointed out in 2004: “During Bush's four years in office, the average millionaire has received a tax break of $123,000. In contrast, President Bush has broken all previous records for fees paid by veterans - proposing to collect $1.3 billion from veterans themselves in 2005, a 478 percent increase during his time in office.”

Be grateful for what NTodd and friends are doing to stop kids from signing up . If sources for the volunteer army dry up, there will have to be a draft. Politicians know that it is career suicide to activate it and will immediately focus the wrath of 70+% of Americans who are against this war. Because it does not weigh equally on all of us, the war grinds on and grinds up lives and treasury, but bring back the draft and this war will end.

Update: Molly Ivors of Whiskey Fire notes that the VA is being encouraged not to help vets with their paperwork:

One of the things they do--or at least have done historically, is help wounded vets apply to the DoD for the benefits they have coming. But here in upstate New York, that's no longer the case.

Army officials in upstate New York instructed representatives from the Department of Veterans Affairs not to help disabled soldiers at Fort Drum Army base with their military disability paperwork last year. That paperwork can be crucial because it helps determine whether soldiers will get annual disability payments and health care after they're discharged.

Now soldiers at Fort Drum say they feel betrayed by the institutions that are supposed to support them. The soldiers want to know why the Army would want to stop them from getting help with their disability paperwork and why the VA— whose mission is to help veterans — would agree to the Army's request.

Demanding the right to die

With dignity:

While many politicians are reluctant even to associate their names with the issue, it is even more striking for Gardner, who during his governorship constantly frustrated fellow Democrats with his reluctance to lobby for any particular measure.

Last weekend, however, he stood before a convention of social workers, beating the drum.

"I feel that God gave me a mission in life, and he also gave me the ability to think -- that includes thinking about when I want to leave early," he told the 150 caregivers. "Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of a pinhead politician who can't pass ninth-grade biology."

His quips won the expected chuckles, and afterward several attendees gave him a standing ovation. One asked where she could sign up to help. It was not surprising, as the National Association of Social Workers was among the first groups in Washington to endorse aid-in-dying 16 years ago, during its last go-round as a voters initiative.

[snip]

But the years since Washington voters first rejected physician-assisted suicide may have made the difference. Oregon, for example, has not been flooded with elderly patients seeking to die. Nor were any of those who used the Death With Dignity Act disabled before being pronounced terminal. And aging baby boomers say their growing numbers could finally tip the scales.

While the Washington State Medical Association opposed the practice 16 years ago, the group's president, W. Hugh Maloney, acknowledged that his 9,000 members are "passionately split."

Amazing how an imminent and unpleasant death makes one finally realize what all the noise was about over the Death with Dignity acts introduced to state assemblies about the country.

Nobody wants to be Terry Schiavoed.

They can't escape any other way

So why on earth would we be surprised that the military is having a hard time with binge drinking?:

Despite the military’s ban on all alcoholic beverages — and strict Islamic prohibitions against drinking and drug use — liquor is cheap and ever easier to find for soldiers looking to self-medicate the effects of combat stress, depression or the frustrations of extended deployments, said military defense lawyers, commanders and doctors who treat soldiers’ emotional problems.

“It’s clear that we’ve got a lot of significant alcohol problems that are pervasive across the military,” said Dr. Thomas R. Kosten, a psychiatrist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston. He traces their drinking and drug use to the stress of working in a war zone. “The treatment that they take for it is the same treatment that they took after Vietnam,” Dr. Kosten said. “They turn to alcohol and drugs.”

The use of alcohol and drugs in war zones appears to reflect a broader trend toward heavier and more frequent drinking among all military personnel, but especially in the Army and Marine Corps, the two services doing most of the fighting, Pentagon officials and military health experts said.

A Pentagon health study released in January, for instance, found that the rate of binge drinking in the Army shot up by 30 percent from 2002 to 2005, and “may signal an increasing pattern of heavy alcohol use in the Army.”

[snip]

“I think the real story here is in the suicide and stress, and the drinking is just a symptom of it,” said Charles P. O’Brien, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine who served as a Navy doctor during the Vietnam War. There is a high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder among Iraq veterans, he said, adding that “there’s been a lot of suicide in the active-duty servicemen.”

Don't be surprised if we get a lot of heroin and opium addicts as well, what with the bumper crop of poppies in Afghanistan nowadays.

What Bush's war is doing to the soldiers

" Pentagon doctors estimate that 12 percent of the 1.5 million veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from PTSD. Newly revised Defence Department guidelines for service-members with "a psychiatric disorder in remission, or whose residual symptoms do not impair duty performance" say they may be considered for duty downrange. It lists post-traumatic stress disorder as a "treatable" problem.

Many believe President George W. Bush's newly announced plan to send 21,500 additional U.S. soldiers to Iraq will involve the redeployment of soldiers suffering from severe trauma. Press reports indicate Bush wants to implement his "surge" by speeding up previously scheduled redeployments and extending the tours of soldiers already in the field of battle.

That reality has increasing numbers of soldiers taking matters into their own hands.

Between Christmas and New Year's 2006, five U.S. soldiers committed suicide after being informed they'd been ordered to serve an additional tour in Iraq. In Iraq itself, the military announced on Dec. 30 that soldier Michael Crutchfield of Stockton, California killed himself north of the capital, Baghdad.

The day of his death, he e-mailed his foster brother and confidant, Johnny Sotello, to relate his pain to the remnants of his family still living in the area.

"As you know, there are more people waiting for me to pull this trigger than there are waiting on my return to the states," Crutchfield wrote in a portion of the message, quoted by the Stockton Record.

"I'm done hurting. All my life I've been hurting... end this pain," Crutchfield wrote at the end of his two-page message. "