The widening gulf between those who hold all the wealth in our various societies, those who manipulate the strings of power and the mass of people who produce that wealth with their sweat and labor, has widened to a point that has become intolerable even among the normally complaisant.
If Giffords does end up receiving it, she’ll be getting a treatment that many troops don’t. As we’ve reported [7], the Pentagon’s health program, Tricare, has refused to cover [8] cognitive rehabilitation therapy for the tens of thousands of service members who have suffered brain injuries in the line of duty. Tricare, which provides insurance-style coverage to troops and many veterans, does cover speech and occupational therapy, which are often part of cognitive rehabilitation.
It wasn’t always this way. Although not required to report to congress in person, George Washington set the precedent by inflicting a speech. Taciturn by nature, John Adams’ address was less than 2000 words but Jefferson had the good grace and gentle mercy to deliver his address to the congress in writing. That method was deemed adequate by every subsequent president until Wilson resumed the inhumane practice of formal speechifying with which we are mutually afflicted every January.
Once again a country that experiences more violent gun deaths than any other country on Earth has been shocked by a maliciously motivated madman with a gun. The talk all week from the various electronic chatterboxes has been guns, their control, their abuse, the somehow sacred right to possess them…guns.
In the pantheon of America’s gods, none is more powerful or worshiped with greater fervor than the god of violence. Its colleagues or brother gods of greed, sex, touchdown, slam dunk and bacon cheeseburgers all genuflect and grovel before the god of violence.
The mid term elections of 2010 have been memorable for sheer goofiness as well as for the corporate funded blanket of ugly, false and misleading advertising that has been lowered over the public airwaves. With the addition of a mountainous heap of money provided by greedy plutocrats, election cycles have become national holidays from reason and sanity that fall between their mates, Halloween and Thanksgiving.
The Citizens United case was a game changer in terms of money being spent by outside groups on the 2010 elections—but the question is, how much? This primer (included below) provides a detailed explanation of the before and after, and also includes Sunlight’s policy recommendations for new disclosures needed to ensure that that the midterms don’t become a practice run for even more massive spending in 2012.
Thousands of our kids are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan carrying the enormous weight of the emotional baggage picked up during their experience of war. This is nothing new, we brought back the same cargo from Vietnam, Korea and WW2. All wars provide their participants with a dismal tide of dark memories, the material of a lifetime of tortured nightmares.
PG&E, the merry folks who recently blew up a quiet residential neighborhood in San Bruno, California have, for years, like public utilities everywhere, requested money from state regulators for repairs and maintenance on infrastructure in the form of rate increases.
The current hoo-hah over President Obama’s public statement of the obvious, that Muslims have the same rights as everyone else, to worship, to speak, to petition the government for redress, to get jiggy, and just about whatever, Dude, has had the media, the Republicans and a few chicken shit Democrats obsessing through the weekend and deep into today, with no end in sight.
Sharron Angle, the Tea Bagger running against Harry Reid for the Senate in Nevada says that we should use Augusto Pinochet’s model of privatization as a guide for reforming our social security system. Yes, Pinochet, the infamous fascist dictator and Nixon/Kissinger ally who engineered the subjugation of Chilean democracy in the 1970s.
On some level I have a feeling that we’ve poisoned the oceans to a point that the fish, many of them, have said “the hell with it” and simply decided to move on in a kind of reverse “dust bowl” desperation and to try the landlubber’s life.
This shocking news came from Lieutenant General Babaker Zerbari and therein lies the crux of the problem. Zerbari is a Lieutenant General and Iraq’s most senior military officer.
We send Lieutenant Generals out for coffee and donuts in the morning. We have Bird Colonels sharpening pencils and Major Generals escorting defense lobbyists to strip clubs.
I turned on the news this morning and instantly received my first commercial message of the day. You’ve probably seen it, it’s a pitch from Time Warner which offers up well scrubbed “employees” who spend thirty seconds or so reading a script designed to convince us that they are “Moms,” “Dads,” and regular working schleps, just like us… pardon that – just like me.
The ad is an attempt to put a face on the faceless, to create the illusion that the giant soulless organization is really warm and fuzzy with a friendly beating heart and smells like fresh baked cookies.
Since the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank on April 20 killing 11 workers the NOAA estimates that 206 million gallons of “light sweet crude” spewed from BP’s Macondo well field, fouling the waters of the Gulf, shutting down much of the commerce of the surrounding region and creating a giant toxic bouillabaisse in which now swim whatever critters managed to survive poisoning, suffocation, or being roasted alive.
The lawyers who have run interference for the U.S. Navy Veterans Association for months now say they can no longer represent the charity because all its directors have quit or disappeared.
In court papers filed Wednesday in Ohio, attorney Shaun K. Petersen said his firm must withdraw as counsel for the Navy Veterans because the charity’s board has dwindled to a single member — founder Bobby Thompson — and he has been impossible to find for more than three weeks.
I read a brief story yesterday from the AP about a restaurant in Phoenix, Mesa actually, .. that’s in Arizona … an upscale Mediterranean eatery, that in celebration of, or as a tribute to the Wold Cup of Football … that’s soccer… began serving Lion Burgers on their Mediterranean menu.
Sickening? Yes, this oil, this poison brings a sickness of the senses, of sight and touch and smell … it poisons air and water, killing all it contacts, but it also brings a sickness of the soul, of the heart which many will not survive.
Oil giant Chevron, in the wake of one of the world’s worst environmental disasters in the Gulf of Mexico is dragging its corporate feet over Canadian requests for increased safety procedures at a deep water well off the coast of Newfoundland. The company’s Lona O-55 exploratory well is about 258 miles northeast of St. John’s, in the Orphan Basin.
BP’s ‘Prince of Public Relations’ Tony Hayward left his reluctant witness chair in Washington and headed (by private jet I assume) for the Isle of Wight for a typical family weekend of … yachting or more correctly ‘yacht racing.’
The Guardian reports that according to figures provided by BP ‘Weasel in Chief’ Tony Hayward, the Macondo field reservoir now emptying into the Gulf of Mexico contains enough oil to continue spewing at the current rate for more than two years.
* A St. Petersburg Times Editorial * Three months after questions were first raised about the validity of the U.S. Navy Veterans Association, Florida’s commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Charles Bronson, is poised to ban the shady enterprise from raising money here. Now the state needs to pursue criminal charges against the group that [...]
A year ago, the children at the Academy of Saints Peter and Paul in Minnesota wrote letters to American troops overseas, including a U.S. sailor stationed in Iraq named Vivian N. Kamara.
After receiving the children’s letters, Kamara posted her thanks to them in a message on anysoldier.com, a website that connects deployed U.S. troops with Americans who want to send mail or care packages.
“Trees cause more pollution than automobiles,” declared Reagan; then, in a classic example of leading from the front, he had the solar panels removed from his roof. It was a clear statement that would set the tone for future energy policy and place control of the game in the hands of the energy moguls.
Among today’s top stories is yesterday’s sudden flushing of the Little Missouri and Caddo rivers in Arkansas. Flash flooding caused by unusually torrential rains swept through the river course raising the level from a normal of three feet to twenty-three feet in a few hours. Reports from the scene are that at least 7.5 inches of rain fell during a three or four hour period and the river near Caddo Gap rose at the rate of 8.5 feet per hour.
Iran’s Green Movement is one year old this Sunday, the anniversary of its first massive demonstrations in the streets of Tehran. Greeted with great hope in much of the world, a year later it’s weaker, the country is more repressive, and its hardliners are in a far stronger position — and some of their success can be credited to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and sanctions hawks in the Obama administration.
From The VA VA’s The American Veteran Wins Two Emmy Awards VA’s video magazine, The American Veteran, recently received two Emmy Awards at the 52nd Annual Chesapeake Bay Area Emmy Awards in Washington, DC. Watch the two winning segments: Parrot Sanctuary and Project Compassion Top Veterans Stories in Today’s News Celebrate Independence Day with Disabled [...]
Regional stories on veterans’ health, education and other benefits and issues today from Meridith, Vermont, Atlanta, Georgia, Monterey, California, Reading, Pennsylvania, Elmira, New York, Winter Springs, Florida, San Rafael, California, Salt Lake City, Utah, andCharlotte, North Carolina.
Jack Harrison, who survived the Great Escape plot by Allied prisoners in a German prison in the Second World War, has died at age 97, his family said. Harrison died on Friday at Erskine veterans’ home in Bishopton, Scotland.
The Department of Veterans Affairs announced an $80 million competition Monday that asks the private sector to address some of the department’s biggest challenges.
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