I sat around for 90 minutes this morning, trying to stir my brain noodles into something resembling a finished pasta dish, but bleh. Thought I’d go pump some iron and return improved, but it’s no better.
Instead, here’s a story to give you an icky thrill: NYC cop says he tested positive for cocaine through “passive ingestion,” via his girlfriend. While we admire the policeman for being, er, sensitive to a woman’s needs, we also think he’s a big ol’ liar.
So you guys take it away, today. I already feel myself sliding into a holiday-weekend head. Back later, mebbe.
alex said on April 9, 2009 at 11:41 am
Ah. So people bang crack whores for the buzz, not the booty. Who knew?
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Sue said on April 9, 2009 at 11:46 am
Any of you veterans out there want to weigh in on the ongoing Salon series on vets affairs? Salon highlighted the Walter Reed scandal; recently they highlighted suicide issues and yesterday came out with information on an Army investigation regarding possible pressure to under-diagnose PTSD. Any opinions? I don’t see this anywhere but Salon but it seems like they’ve done their research, so I’m not sure why it hasn’t taken off.
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harrison said on April 9, 2009 at 11:51 am
using his tongue
in more ways
that one —
first for licking,
then for lying.
and that, folks, if your off-rhymed free verse of the day.
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jeff borden said on April 9, 2009 at 11:57 am
Sue,
The story probably hasn’t gotten much play because so many other vital, critical things need media attention.
1.) Did Barack Obama bow?
2.) Who’s a liar? Levi Johnston or Sarah Palin?
3.) Was Simon Cowell mean last night?
I’m sure we’ll see a lot more stories about the issue confronting our veterans as soon as these critical stories have run their course.
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LA Mary said on April 9, 2009 at 11:58 am
Sue, NPR has had quite a few stories on underdiagnosing PTSD and on suicides. In January, there were actually more American soldiers who died of suicide in Iraq, than from the war.
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Sue said on April 9, 2009 at 12:11 pm
The story doesn’t seem to be taking hold. A few days ago the President visited troops and promised care for them, and coverage was…nothing. I hate to ask this, because we have a glut of reactions out there, but – where’s the outrage? Why isn’t this a bigger issue? These folks are coming home in emotional pieces and we’re trying to find a way to save bucks on treatment and disability payments by refusing to diagnose the condition, at least according to what I’m reading. This isn’t WWII, PTSD is a recognized, diagnosable and at least somewhat treatable (expensively) medical condition. Why are so many vets fighting it alone and being humiliated in the process?
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Jim said on April 9, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Sue, I am a Soldier on active duty. I can tell you that these issues are very “hot” in the Army today. Part of the issue is internal, in that Soldiers are very reluctant to admit they might have PTSD and need help. However, one major general (two stars) recently stepped up and admitted that he needed help after a recent tour in Iraq and that the therapy he received was very helpful to him. That took a lot of courage and is almost unheard-of. Just a few weeks ago, every Soldier had to participate in suicide prevention training geared at identifying and helping those considering such a terrible step. These issues have received coverage and certainly the Army has tried to draw attention to what it’s doing. But Soldiers with PTSD can’t compete with coverage of other things, as Jeff noted above.
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Christy said on April 9, 2009 at 1:07 pm
My understanding was that you didn’t hear much about mental illness because the VA was covering it up. It got a little coverage last year due to Harkin addressing it; a google for “Harkin” and “VA” will give some old news.
http://iowavetsblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/harkin-vows-to-break-vas-silence-on.html
http://beta.sling.com/video/show/55390/24/Harkin:-%27Cover-Up%27-At-VA
Of course, it’s now a year later, and the story never really got wings for some reason.
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Sue said on April 9, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Thanks Jim. This really bothers me, and I appreciate the info.
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Rana said on April 9, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Why isn’t this a bigger issue?
My guess is that it’s the combination of mental illness – something people feel uneasy discussing – and our collective tendency to think of “the troops” as a yardstick of patriotism, not individual human beings. Maybe there’s also some lingering guilt that these soldiers are paying a price that the rest of us don’t have to pay.
Doesn’t make it right, of course.
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alex said on April 9, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Why is anyone surprised? This is standard military protocol. Deny, deny, deny.
Remember Gulf War Syndrome? Agent Orange? Soldiers who had adverse reactions to the “anthrax vaccine”?
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beb said on April 9, 2009 at 3:36 pm
I was shocked to read the headline “Harry Potter Actor arrested for drugs!” but when I licked on the link to find out who, Yahoo crashed my browser. It does that a lot lately. I’m forced to use Mozilla 1.7 at work but always thought that was modern enough for web browsing. And I’ve read complaints about how hard it is to design web sites because there are so many different browsers and each renders the page different. Funny, I thought the idea was for the web to be written on one common standard and it was up to the browser manufacturers to get their products standard compliant.
By the way, the answer is the kid who plays the bully Doyle. And it was for pot.
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MichaelG said on April 9, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Dexter, time to identify the people in the picture. Who were they?
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Hexdecimal said on April 9, 2009 at 6:16 pm
beb 12 – I’m sure you ment “clicked on the link to find out who”, but ‘licked on the link to find out who’ is so much more fitting to Nance’s storie. Either way, thank you for supplying my daily chuckle.
And no, not all web pages play well with all browsers, so it’s best to have several installed. I have both IE and Mozilla and switch as needed.
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Jolene said on April 9, 2009 at 6:43 pm
TIME has an an article about suicide among army recruiters. It’s a small number of cases, but, I think, another tip-of-the-iceberg indicator of the stress on military personnel.
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Gasman said on April 9, 2009 at 9:10 pm
The Porcine Oracle got taken to the woodshed by one of his own dittoheads!
There are several YouTube links with audio only, but Olbermann’s take includes some of Limbaugh’s own camera footage. If this is any indicator of what his supporters feel, what is in store for the Jiggly Tyrant? It appears that anybody exercising anything other than absolute fealty toward Lord Lardass is “stupid and ignorant.”
Sounds like Limbaugh has been reading Carnegie and is trying to win friends and influence people. Now he’s even lashing out at his own camp.
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MichaelG said on April 10, 2009 at 12:25 am
Thanks, Dexter. I got Herter but it was Mary who got Lodge.
My son in law was in line to be assigned as a recruiter a couple of years ago and was scared to death at the prospect. He told me some horror stories about the duty. He dodged that one but now he’s on one of his six week training and eval trips to Iraq. He should be home by the end of the month.
Sue’s questions relate to the lack of outrage on the part of the general public concerning the Army’s treatment of some of its wounded soldiers. There have been stories here and there about it, particularly in the WAPO and, even worse, stories about how reserve soldiers have been treated like red headed step children compared to RA soldiers.
I think part of the answer is the draft. During the Vietnam war a large number of people were drafted from all over the social and geographic map of the US. There was widespread participation in a much bigger war. Something like 50,000 Americans died in Vietnam. The death toll in Iraq is something over 4,000 Americans. Further, the Americans participating in Iraq are relatively very small in number. Instead of large numbers of people doing one tour in Vietnam, we have a small number of people pulling multiple tours in Iraq. The personal and social cost of the Iraq war is concentrated in a very small group of professional soldiers and their families and their communities and their tendency is to keep their grief and their feelings within the group rather than air it in public. The Vietnam war was much larger and the participation was much wider and everybody had a friend, neighbor or relative who was involved and the impulse to go public was much greater.
Last, medical advances, even over the Vietnam war that so occupied my youth, and the types of wounds incurred by the fighters in the Iraq war have left us with a group of survivors who are battling the horrible effects of shattered limbs, amputations and brain injuries that we just did not see in the Vietnam war.
PTSD? You mean like the time I took a swing at my mother when she woke me up one morning while I was home on leave from Vietnam? You mean how it was almost twenty years before I could go camping? How I couldn’t bring myself to go sleep in the woods? What can you say about PTSD? I’m sure it’s been a part of the aftermath of every war in the history of mankind. Some people don’t get over it, most do. It’s always been there.
Anyway, some thoughts. I don’t know if this helps you, Sue. In the end war is a very serious, very messy and very non-romantic activity. I’ll be goddamned if I can see any little bit of any good at all that this Iraq affair has done us or anybody else.
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Dexter said on April 10, 2009 at 12:49 am
The photo included Christian Herter, henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Khrushchev, Nixon, and Ike.
Looks like my post ID-ing them vanished.
nance’s friend Eric Zorn seems to be another famous person who’s A-OK. He emailed me back “pronto” about my problem trying to recall former Trib columnist Bill Stokes.
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mark said on April 10, 2009 at 9:13 am
Well, if our host ever doubted her value, the dismal results when she leaves the playpen unsupervised should be comforting. Good to see that Gasman continues his efforts to be the leading authority on all things Olberman/Limbaugh. Couldn’t we all die happy with an accomplishment like that for the eulogist to work with?
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Deggjr said on April 10, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Gregory Helle of the PTSD Alliance made the statement that 40% of the homeless are veterans. Historian Gwynne Dyer wrote that “the US Army concluded during WWII that almost every soldier, if he escaped death or wounds, would break down after 200 to 240 ‘combat days’; the British, who rotated their troops out of the front line more often, reckoned 400 days, but they agreed that breakdown was inevitable.”
My guess is there is alot of PTSD problems among Iraq veterans, given the multiple tours, that is not being discussed. After all, the surge was a success.
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