Friday, November 26, 2010

A Topric of little notice by public - BUT it should be a concern beyond just military families.

Civilian soldiers' suicide rate alarming

Members of the Iowa Army National Guard who will be deployed to Iraq march in front of family and friends this week at a sendoff ceremony.

National Guard soldiers who are not on active duty killed themselves this year at nearly twice the rate of 2009, marring a year when suicides among Army soldiers on active duty appear to be leveling off, new Army statistics show.
Eighty-six non-active-duty Guard soldiers have killed themselves in the first 10 months of 2010, compared with 48 such suicides in all of 2009.

The reason for the rise in suicides among these "citizen soldiers" is not known. It may be linked to the recession, says Army Col. Chris Philbrick, deputy commander of an Army task force working to reduce suicides.

Philbrick said investigations into the suicides of soldiers not on full-time-active status have found that some were facing stressful situations such as home foreclosures, debt and the loss of a job.

Other factors have played a role in the suicides, including relationship problems, depression, substance abuse, combat stress and mild brain injuries, Philbrick says.

The rise comes as the rate of suicides leveled among full-time active-duty Army soldiers, National Guard members and reservists following years of increases, Philbrick says. Among that group, there were 132 confirmed or suspected suicides in the first 10 months of this year compared with 140 such suicides for the same period in 2009.

That positive trend among active-duty troops was more than offset by the rise in suicides among non-active-duty National Guard members.

There were 252 confirmed or suspected suicides among active and non-active Army members through October of this year. There were 242 such deaths in all of 2009.

Active-duty soldiers have greater access to programs and mental health resources, Philbrick says. New efforts aimed at reducing suicides among that group may be beginning to have an effect. "We do whatever we can to drive down these numbers," Philbrick says. "But it doesn't happen overnight."

The Army has launched a series of programs aimed at breaking down a stigma among soldiers against seeking mental health treatment. It has also initiated two studies — a $50 million, five-year investigation by the National Institute of Mental Health in 2009 and this year, a $17 million research consortium — aimed at understanding why the suicides are happening and how to stop them.

Army suicides have been climbing since 2007, bringing the rate to 22 per 100,000 soldiers. The rate among civilians within the same age group is 20 per 100,000. The Marine Corps has seen an increase since 2008 and its rate is 24 per 100,000. But there, too, the trend may be downward.

There were 45 confirmed or suspected cases of suicides among Marines through October of this year compared with 53 suicides for the same period last year, Marine Corps statistics show.

STUPID WATCH!

SC Man Planned to Assassinate Obama

A nurse at a Veterans Affairs clinic tipped off authorities that Michael Stephen Bowden, 78, of Woodruff, South Carolina, told her he was thinking of killing the president. Secret Service agents found three handguns and a rifle under his bed and over a dozen more guns in the house.

Bowden served four years in the Navy and was formerly a New York City police officer. He was arrested earlier this month and will be given a psychiatric evaluation.

STUPID WATCH: FOX NEWS? CHANNEL - Stupid is as stupid does!!

Apparently Fox Nation Doesn't Know The Onion Is Fake News
And neither do their commenters.

The Fox Nation editors were apparently so enamored with an Onion piece from today entitled “Frustrated Obama Sends Nation Rambling 75,000-Word E-Mail” that they reposted the first two paragraphs in their culture section with nary a sign as to its fictional nature.

The only clue that this wasn’t real (besides a quick peek at your inbox to confirm that Barack Obama hasn’t been emailing you) was a link at the bottom instructing readers to go to TheOnion.com for the real story. This tiny link was, unfortunately, not enough for the vast majority of FN readers.

They've since tweaked the headline to say "The Onion: Frustrated Obama Sends Nation Rambling 75,000-Word E-Mail" but nothing has been added to the excerpt to clue non-Onion readers into the fact the story is fake.

From Mediaite

Little SARAH uses a three old child excuse for her stupidity!! BoooWoooooLittle Girly!

Sarah Palin Refudiates Press Over North Korea Gaffe, Obama Says Dumb Things Too!

Happy Thanksgiving from Sarah Palin! Palin left a scathing Thanksgiving note on her Facebook page yesterday in response to the furor over Wednesday's North Korean flub pointing out that President Obama has uttered many a stupid statement too.
And then she lists them (and tacks on a Shep Smith shoutout for good measure).

Of course, the paragraph above is based on a series of misstatements and verbal gaffes made by Barack Obama (I didn’t have enough time to do one for Joe Biden). YouTube links are provided just in case you doubt the accuracy of these all too human slips-of-the-tongue. If you can’t remember hearing about them, that’s because for the most part the media didn’t consider them newsworthy. I have no complaint about that. Everybody makes the occasional verbal gaffe – even news anchors.

Get out your hanky.

Obviously, I would have been even more impressed if the media showed some consistency on this issue. Unfortunately, it seems they couldn’t resist the temptation to turn a simple one word slip-of-the-tongue of mine into a major political headline. [ed note: imagine!] The one word slip occurred yesterday during one of my seven back-to-back interviews wherein I was privileged to speak to the American public about the important, world-changing issues before us.

If the media had bothered to actually listen to all of my remarks on Glenn Beck’s radio show, they would have noticed that I refer to South Korea as our ally throughout, that I corrected myself seconds after my slip-of-the-tongue, and that I made it abundantly clear that pressure should be put on China to restrict energy exports to the North Korean regime.

Sarah Palin, foreign policy expert. She also notes that rumors she has been stumping for Christine O'Donnell to appear on DWTS are (alas) untrue. So yeah, Palin was tired and said something dumb, everyone has been there. The problem with Sarah Palin in this case, however, is twofold. On the one hand she has turned herself into such a compelling circus act that practically anything she says is guaranteed to be clicked on (after which the story often takes on a life of its own).

On the other, she has, since quitting her governorship, made herself entirely unavailable to the press except in the most controlled situations. So when she slams the press (or in this case, essentially the blogosphere) for not letting the facts "get in the way of a good story?" one has to wonder how Palin expects the press to fact-check someone who fundamentally refuses to engage with them. Answer: she doesn't. Facebook rants are far more self-serving.