Monday, January 5, 2009

Wounded warriors in Beetlejuice altered universe



Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin played the parts of a newlywed couple that discover they died in the movie Beetlejuice. No one told them. It took a while before they understood it. A ghostly woman playing the part of a social worker from hell didn't seem interested in helping them understand they have just arrived into a world they never thought existed. When they tried to get out of the house being taken over by a nutty family, the door opened into an altered universe. This is what the veterans in this country are discovering as well.


They do what is asked of them and if they come home the way they went into combat, wonderful. The government is done with them. They get on with their lives. When they are members of the National Guards, they go back to their families and jobs. Yet if they are wounded that's when they arrive in a world they never thought existed.

They come up against rules and regulations in a system that is supposed to be there to help them. They run into one nightmare situation after another as the rest of the nation is obliviously walking past them as if they were not there. Much like the ghosts of Beetlejuice, no one sees them while they do whatever they can think of to get the help they need to move on.

Staff Sgt. Ian LeJeune made a lot more money working than he can collect as a disabled veteran. No one wants to see this. Aside from the wounds he has to live with for the rest of his life, financially he is suffering topped off with having to fight for every dime he's entitled to.

We live in a world where we never want to see what goes on in the lives of the men and women we depend on for what we enjoy. No one wants to see the price they pay or how hard they have to fight in combat we send them into or the nightmare they have to go through trying to move on with their lives. It's easier to ignore them as if they weren't there.


Vets fight for benefits
Portsmouth Herald News - Portsmouth,NH,USA
By Susan Morse
smorse@seacoastonline.com
January 04, 2009 6:00 AM
Retired Marine Staff Sgt. Ian LeJeune and others wounded in Iraq say they now are fighting a battle at home for veterans benefits.

The system penalizes veterans who are working and is overwhelmed by the large number of returning wounded, according to LeJeune, 30, of Brentwood.

If he had served in World War II or Korea and been wounded as severely as he was in Iraq, he said, he'd probably be dead. He would have at least undergone an amputation.

"World War I, World War II, Korea, if you got hurt, you got an amputation and that's it," LeJeune said. "Today an amputee gets a prosthetic limb and can be out running a marathon."

The system gives additional benefits to veterans who have lost a limb.

Getting benefits for post-traumatic stress, for losing flexibility, for being in the kind of shape in which you want to work but can't do what you once did — these are the kinds of injuries backlogging the system.

"We're combating an archaic VA system," said LeJeune, who has been in contact with the state's congressional delegation about his concerns.

Congress introduced a bill signed into law in December 2007 that increased veterans' funding to help reduce the 400,0000 backlogged claims and 177-day average wait, according to information from U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter's office.

"It has become an adversarial system," said Shea-Porter. "It certainly isn't supposed to be that way. The frustration we're hearing is accurate. Congress is aware of it. Part of the problem is, we didn't have resources; we were forced to make these terrible unfair decisions."

LeJeune has been fighting to get his disability rating at 100 percent. It is now at 90 percent.
"Two-thousand seven hundred dollars a month total disability," Worrall said. "That ain't a lot to live on, (along with) Social Security. I used to make $85,000 a year on the job. I'll be fine because I've planned for retirement. My ability to make that kind of money is gone. What happens to these kids who never had a career? You're going to make them live on three grand a month?" click link above for more

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Shafted, the 8th deadly sin for veterans

Seven Deadly Sins
The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, are a classification of the most objectionable vices that were originally used in early Christian teachings to educate and instruct followers concerning (immoral) fallen man's tendency to sin. They are: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride.



Shafted, the 8th deadly sin for veterans.
by Chaplain Kathie
When you do what you're supposed to do and there is the perception others will do the same, it's shocking when you find out you've just been used. Well that's exactly what's been happening everyday right here in America. Over 1.8 million men and women joined the ranks of combat veterans from other military actions. That is, they joined those who are still living despite the best efforts of a disconnected government bureaucracy to have them drop off the face of the earth. That is exactly how they feel.
When there was a military draft, they were forced to go, follow orders, stay until told to leave and then, well they were handed a piece of paper, then sent off to fend for themselves. Pretty neat trick when you think about it.
They served right next to men and women willing to risk their lives for the sake of the nation, but yet again, they were also handed a piece of paper then just sent on to live the rest of their lives by a nation hoping they would never hear from them ever again. After all, they did their time being fed, given clothes, shelter and medical care while they were serving. What more could they want? Well for starters an actual grateful nation would have been just the beginning of what they not only wanted but fully deserved.
See, we've inherited a streak in all of us that conditions us to wave the good ole red, white and blue flag, slap on a bumper sticker and sing the songs most of us can't even manage to carry the tune of while feeling oh so patriotic. We can then live out the rest of our days feeling as if we have deserved the bounty of this land paid for by the blood of the generations of those willing to fight and die for it beginning with the Patriots themselves. We didn't do so well by them either. Ever hear about how Washington had a hard time feeding them and keeping shoes on their feet?
When the men and women we cheer come home, naturally after hearing all the speeches from politicians about how we�re the ones that are supposed to be supporting them end up falling for that line of crap hook, line and sinker, it�s easy for us to just walk away and ignore them. We never seem to manage the same politicians telling us how much we need to support the troops consistently and continually fail them when they are no longer of any use to the nation. God forbid they manage to come home wounded needing the care, compensation and compassion from the government after the government can no longer use them. A burden is a burden no matter what! Some even view the VA as a welfare program for veterans expecting to be taken care of just because they have wounds preventing them from working for a living.
We have half the National Guards coming home with PTSD eating them up alive. It's a slow, agonizing death of character and hope. This insidious enemy does not stop with claiming the warrior. Oh no, it's never happy with just one. This goes after the whole family in this generation and then is carried over into the next by the children of veterans. We witnessed this in the children of veterans from all wars when Daddy came home "different" and he was angry, drank too much along with being inattentive. They angry outburst, rash decisions, unexplained mood swings became a plague, breaking up families with far reaching affects on families.
go here for more
http://www.namguardianangel.com/

Bowling with orbs

I took a few days off for New Year's to spend with my brother's widow and daughters along with a son-in-law. They came down from Massachusetts. We did the usual tourist things of Animal Kingdom and Universal along with Jungle Adventure in Christmas Florida. On New Year's Day, we decided to go bowling. I was telling a story of how we had gone bowling with some friends and I was more like watching a comedy show because I am really bad at bowling with the large balls. Back in Massachusetts its called candlepin with small balls, not that I was much better at it.

Anyway, my niece took a picture of me bowling. When she went to look back at the picture, she spotted the huge orb on my sister-in-law's back and a tiny one on my other niece. We took a look at the picture before and after. There was nothing unusual on the other frames. Then I uploaded the picture to get a better view of the orbs. The tiny one is not that colorful but the large one is speckled with all different colors and a white dot in the center.

I truly believe that our lives do not end, that we retain the love we felt here on earth when we return to God. Knowing how hard it has been after my brother passed away, I have a feeling he paid them a visit. My sister-in-law and niece in the photograph were the last ones to see him. Carol had gone upstairs to just long enough to take a shower. By the time she came down, he was gone. My niece in the picture tried to do CPR. I feel that somehow it was intended this picture was taken to comfort them and me.

My brother was only 56. He was laid off from his job in October and less than a week later, he had a massive heart attack. He was the last natural family member I had left.

If any of my readers know anything about orbs, I'd love to hear from you. We are all hopeful this is what we think it is but we want to be realistic.

Missing soldier's body found


Soldier's body found in bay near Corpus Christi
Houston Chronicle - United States
© 2009 The Associated Press
Jan. 3, 2009, 12:45PM
ROCKPORT, Texas — The body of a soldier missing since he apparently drove his car off a pier the day after Christmas was found along a shoreline Saturday morning.

Aransas County Sheriff Bill Mills said his office received a call just after 9 a.m. Saturday and recovered the body of Pfc. Jamie Wagner Sengvanhpheng from Copano Bay, near Corpus Christi and a few miles inland from the Texas Gulf Coast.
click above link for more

Healing the Wounds of War Downtown

Healing the Wounds of War Downtown
Tribeca Trib - New York,NY,USA

By Carl Glassman
POSTED JANURARY 2, 2009


One flight up, just above the hubbub of lower Broadway, men and women who have gone to war come to seek peace.

There, behind closed doors and amid wall maps and memorabilia of American conflicts, counselors help to dress the emotional wounds of vets, some untreated for more than 40 years.

The Vet Center, at 32 Broadway, is where combat veterans—many of whom live or work Downtown—are provided with free counseling. One of two centers in Manhattan and more than 200 around the country, it is also a treatment center for victims of sexual trauma in the military.

In the soothing dimness of her office, Michelle Mullany, 34, a social worker and former Marine, sees many of those veterans.

“A lot of them come with a sense of guilt, remorse, questioning of authority, questioning of their reason for doing what they did in combat,” said Mullany, who heads a team of four counselors, all vets. “They are looking for a place where they can talk about that openly and not feel judged.”

Last month, the Trib talked to Iraq and Vietnam combat veterans about the Vet Center, and what it means to those whose lives are scarred by war.

“Once you go through an experience like [combat] you are permanently changed,” said Iraq war vet Eduard H.R. Gluck, a Worth Street resident and photojournalist who receives counseling at the Vet Center. “But you don’t have to allow it to change you just in a negative way. You have to work towards trying to find balance and peace.”

The Vet Center program began in 1979, a recognition by the government that Vietnam veterans still faced adjustment problems years after the war had ended.

Even today, Vietnam veterans are two-thirds of the clients coming to the Manhattan center. But an increasing number of Iraq war vets are finding their way there as well.

Luis Montalvan, discharged in September 2007 after two tours in Iraq, describes himself as having “the whole gamut” of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) symptoms: difficulty leaving his apartment, hypervigilence in public places, anxiety, panic attacks and flashbacks. This, in addition to physical wounds that he is reluctant to discuss—including a stabbing, traumatic brain injury and three fractured vertebrae.

The Veterans Administration Health Center in Brooklyn was his first stop after returning home. Unhappy with the counseling there, after eight months he switched to the Vet Center.

“Like night and day,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like it’s an us-against-them mentality, a sterile approach to dealing with mental health.”

“If I didn’t get therapy,” added Montalvan, 35, now a graduate journalism student at Columbia University, “I would be sadly locked away in my apartment, not able to function.”

Many combat vets find it difficult to share their experiences. Mullany said she reassures her clients that she can “hold” their painful emotions, that she has the training and her own emotional outlets to handle it.

“I’m going down to that dark place with you, to hold your hand, to allow you to sit with me and feel safe with me,” she said she tells them.

“Safety is the number one thing in treating trauma,” Mullany said. “Feeling safe in the world.”

John Dugan, 27, is a former Marine infantryman whose fresh face and gentle presence bely the awful memories and deep sorrows he carries with him from combat in Iraq.

Now a waiter at two Downtown restaurants, Dugan was one of three two-man teams of Marines to first enter Fallujah in what was to be one of the bloodiest battles of the war. These days he fights the symptoms of PTSD that are common among vets seeking help at the center, including sleeplessness, anger, depression and guilt.

“Better people who lived their lives a lot different than I did died and they really shouldn’t have,” said Dugan.

Near the end of his tour, Dugan was boarding a helicopter bound for the next mission, to guard polling stations during the nation’s elections.

“I followed my lieutenant getting on to the helicopter. He turns around and tells me, ‘This is too full. Go to the next one.’ They’re in the air 15 minutes, then the helicopter crashes and they’re all dead.”


“Thirty-one guys, like that,” he adds, snapping his fingers. “The guys would have been at my f---ing wedding.”


Some 40 years ago Doug Fristoe, now 62 and a resident of Independence Plaza in Tribeca, needed that same hope. His life would have taken a different course, he said, if a Vet Center had been around after he fought in the jungles of Vietnam, where friends died and he was seriously wounded.

There were failed marriages, depression, difficulty focusing on the job and a bankruptcy. It was only during a visit to a VA hospital, after losing his health insurance, that he was finally tested for PTSD, and scored high.

At the Vet Center, Fistoe receives individual counseling and attends group sessions with fellow Vietnam vets.

“It’s put me back in focus and helped me a lot,” said Fristoe. “Tell these kids from Iraq and Afghanistan to take advantage of it, even if they think they don’t need help.”

click above link for more

Returning combat troops, new vets, families targeted

Half of the National Guards men and women have PTSD but local help is not there. Over and over again we read reports of guardsmen/women, coming back and not getting the help they need.

There are too many people in this country with the assumption the VA is supposed to take care of them. While it is a proper assumption to make considering most of the population of this country simply assume it is being done, not feeling equally obligated is not helping the situation too many face. We need to step up until the government gets it's act together because the veterans are suffering.

The other part that really gets to me is most of the groups forming now have little interest in helping the older veterans and their families. At this time when PTSD reported by the media has finally begun to sink into the brains of the older veterans that have been suffering without a clue why, no one seems to be willing to step up for their sake. We have a sub-class of wounded walking around feeling yet again abandoned and ignored by the rest of the nation. We need to stop this attitude as well. They all served the under the same flag and should be taken care of equally.

Raising an army of counselors
San Diego Union Tribune - San Diego,CA,USA
Returning combat troops, new vets, families targeted
By Rick Rogers (Contact) Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. January 2, 2009

Locally and across the country, grass-roots groups and major organizations are launching or expanding mental health services for returning combat troops, new veterans and their families.
They hope the free or low-cost counseling, mentoring and other forms of outreach will fill in gaps left by the military and Department of Veterans Affairs. The goal is to prevent combat stress, post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries from causing long-term depression, alcoholism, homelessness, criminal activity and marital or parenting problems.
“(We) want to preclude what happened with many of the Vietnam War vets,” said Bob Zimmerman, president of the nonprofit group We Thank Our Troops and a self-described “house dad” to Marines and soldiers recovering from war wounds at the San Diego Naval Medical Center.
Increased corporate donations are helping his charity broaden its work, which includes assembling care packages, visiting patients and coordinating special outings for service members and their loved ones.
Statistics suggest that a significant number of combat veterans suffer from mental problems, particularly as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars persist and repeated deployments become standard issue.
In the past few years, independent studies and reports from the Pentagon have concluded that service members need more pre-and post-deployment mental screenings, greater access to counseling and drug treatment in the war zone, a better realization that it's good to seek post-combat therapy and a smoother transition of mental health services between the active-duty military and the VA.
A 2007 study by the Pentagon found that 38 percent of soldiers, 31 percent of Marines, 49 percent of Army National Guard members and 43 percent of Marine reservists reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression or other mental problems.
click link above for more

Man's final lotto ticket wins widow $10 million

Man's final lotto ticket wins widow $10 million
Conn. retiree, 79, purchased winner the day he suffered fatal heart attack
updated 9:13 p.m. ET, Sat., Jan. 3, 2009
DANBURY, Conn. - On the day that Donald Peters died, he unknowingly provided financial security for his wife of 59 years and their family.

Peters bought two Connecticut Lottery tickets at a local 7-Eleven store on Nov. 1 as part of a 20-year tradition he shared with his wife Charlotte. Later that day, the 79-year-old retired hat factory worker suffered a fatal heart attack while working in his yard in Danbury.

On Friday, his widow cashed in one of the tickets: a $10 million winner which, in her grief over her husband's death, she had put aside and almost discarded before recently checking the numbers.
click link above for more

Saturday, January 3, 2009

When Jeffrey Taggart came home from Iraq, what did your "support" really mean?

A report by the Government Accountability Office this year says there are 392,000 pending appeals. The average takes 657 days, according to the GAO. Jeffrey Taggart’s has taken more than two years.


When you hear about the backlog of claims, those are just the claims and not the appeals. Then again, some people think they are just "claims" and not wounded veterans waiting for the government to live up to their part of the deal for their willingness to go where they were sent, do what they were sent to do and return when they were told to come home. Would be really nice if someone had the VA live by the same rules, but they don't. They never have. Again, let me remind you, when I write about the VA, it means the way it is run and not about the people working for the VA. They don't get to make the rules or decide how fast or slowly they move. The bosses do. Congress does.

Too many veterans are falling into the chasm that used to be a crack. With all of the numbers of them realize and finally understand most of the time there is a family suffering right along with them in a system that is more adversarial than advocacy. While this story is about one of them, Jeffrey Taggart, there are another 391,999 stories just like his. One thing that Jeffery said in the interview you can watch at the link below is that we don't have a clue and he's right. Two thirds of the American people don't even know what PTSD is. Until they do know, take the time to learn as fast as they managed to slap a magnetic bumper sticker on the back of their car, too many will pay the price for the kind of support the American people have been willing to give. Are you finally starting to wonder what support really should mean?

Wounded veterans battle for treatment at home
02:34 PM CST on Thursday, January 1, 2009
By BYRON HARRIS / WFAA-TV
For tens of thousands of American families, the holidays this year are not the same as they were five years ago.

They are the families of men and women wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For many, when the war ended for their military loved ones, it only began again when they came home.

Painfully, families are learning that it’s up to them to support the former warriors, and to wrestle with the system to get the benefits their loved ones deserve.

Jeffrey Taggart of The Colony fought in Iraq.

Now his parents are fighting the war’s aftermath in their home. Sitting at a kitchen counter with a stack of paperwork in front of her, Jeffrey’s mom sums up her frustration.

“It’s totally, totally wrong,” she says. “I think it’s time that someone woke up and realized the way vets are being treated today. And the harassment that they’re being given.”

Jeffrey is a compact man, now who now sports a red goatee since his discharge from the Army two years ago. His wounds are physical and financial: a traumatic brain injury, a stroke, the consuming terror of post traumatic stress disorder, and just trying to get by.

He says society doesn’t have a clue of what wounded veterans are going through. “They worry more about saving the banks and the big three unions,” he says, “than saving soldiers that are suffering."

Jeffrey was a medic during his six years in the Army. He served a year in Iraq, and potentially more stressful as a medic, nearly two years at Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany, where the most severely injured servicemen and women from Iraq and Afghanistan are brought for treatment.

In Iraq, Taggart was usually the first on the scene after a mortar strike, firefight, or roadside bomb, trying to keep his comrades alive. Tough duty. But Landstuhl, he says, was worse. “The first time I walked into and ICU room and saw one of my former medics as a double amputee with an open head injury, I went weak in the knees and passed out,” he says. “No words can describe how that feels.”

click link above for more

Iraq veteran accused as movie theater shooter

Iraq vet held in movie shooting

The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Jan 2, 2009 6:32:02 EST

PHILADELPHIA — The alleged gunman involved in a Christmas night shooting over noisy moviegoers is an Iraq war veteran, a churchgoer and a newlywed who fired in self-defense, his lawyer said.

James Joseph Cialella, 29, of Philadelphia, is charged with firing a shot that broke the arm of Woffard Lomax Jr. inside a movie theater during a screening of the film “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”

Lomax, 31, described the shooting for the first time in public Wednesday at a preliminary hearing, when a judge ordered Cialella held for trial on aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and related charges. The judge tossed out an attempted murder charge over a prosecutor’s objections.

According to Lomax, he was at the movie with his girlfriend and her three teenagers, enjoying the film and laughing, when a man in front of him — not Cialella — told him to quiet down.

“We can’t laugh?” Lomax recalled asking.

A second man threw popcorn at the family, and a brawl ensued. Lomax said he was fighting with the first man when the second man pulled out a gun and fired, striking him in the left arm.

A defense lawyer argued that Cialella was being choked and punched as he tried to break up the fight and fired in self-defense.

“He’s a marksman,” lawyer Greg Pagano said. “If he wanted to shoot to kill, he would have.”
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Feb First, new day coming and videos are going

Effective February 1st, my videos will no longer be available on YouTube or Google. It doesn't matter to them that the videos I do are done as a non-profit, for educational use only and I have a license under Creative Commons. It doesn't matter that these videos are made for the sake of the troops and our veterans, as well as their families, or the fact I do all of these for free. Nothing matters when you don't have the money or the power in this country any more to fight giants. You cannot even speak to a live person at either site to get them to understand that blocking these videos does a lot of harm.

If you want to download these videos, you better do it between now and then. After the 1st if February, they will only be available via my web site, www.namguardianangel.com and from this blog. I am not sure if I will offer them for downloading or not but as always, they will be available in DVD form for a donation.

Folks let's face it. I'm broke. I spent the last year doing this work instead of working for a pay check and I can't keep waiting, praying for miracles that have not come. I need to start charging for the work I do when it comes to my book and the Power Points. They are being used by professionals and pretty much I'm done being used by them as well. My work is working for them and they are getting paid, but I'm not. I need to find a job. My family cannot afford to suffer for what I do. Not sure where this is going or how much I'll be able to work online but I'll give it my best as always.

What brought this on is over the last few days while I was trying to get some rest, two videos were blocked by YouTube. Women at War and then Hero After War. It's gone beyond where I can put up with any of this. If this makes you angry, then contact them. Hero After War has been disputed and they are allowing it to be viewed for now, but the last time I disputed one of the claims, I lost.