Veterans Need to Enroll in VA Healthcare Before January 17

As another brilliant example of the Bush Administration supporting our troops, hidden in one of the many bills passed during the Republican-controlled Congress was a little-noticed provision to cut off VA Health Care for millions of veterans from all our wars of aggression.

Under this provision, any veteran who is 0% service-connected (not disabled by being wounded or otherwise injured during their service) will be unable to enroll in VA Health Care after January 17, 2008. This ends a promise made to vets that has stood since WWII, that their health care needs would be taken care of in perpetuity.

ALL VETERANS: Take a copy of your DD214 and RUN do not walk to your nearest VA Clinic and enroll in VA Health Care - even if you don’t need it right now! If you lose your civilian health insurance and need to fall back on VA Health Care - you will not be able to unless you enroll now.

IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN WAR VETS: This applies to you as well - only the news is actually worse. In the last military appropriation bill, your “free” health care was extended from two years to five. Yes, you heard right - you are currently only entitled to two years of free health care - even if you have seen combat. After Bush vetoed the military spending bill, which contained another three years, you are back to TWO WHOLE YEARS!

EVERYONE: Write to your Congresscritters and protest this asinine policy. I am a veteran - who never saw combat during the Vietnam era. I am enrolled, and as such, am entitled to whatever healthcare I need for the rest of my life. I have no other health insurance (due to pre-existing conditions and past medical problems) so the VA system is my lifeline. But why in the world are the combat veterans of our latest idiotic wars being told they can only have TWO YEARS? Some ailments do not become apparent until much later. For instance - Vietnam vets exposed to Agent Orange develop diabetes at a rate that has resulted in an automatic assignment to a special group for care. However, this diabetes does not develop in some cases for 10-20 years later. Another example - Gulf War vets from the first time who suffer from Gulf War Syndrome develop strange cancers and other problems - but much later than two years after the fact - and many are still fighting to get their diagnoses confirmed.

This is totally nuts - and is yet another example of the Bush Administration’s support of the valiant fighting men and women - NOT!

So…if you are a vet - or you know one - urge them all to go sign up. Even if they don’t need it. Right now. Even if they have heard horror stories. Even if they never use it. Sign up anyway. We need to send a message that VA Health Care is a right for ALL VETERANS as compensation for their service. (The pay certainly isn’t much!)

Navy JAG Andrew Williams Resigns Over Torture

Lt. Cmdr. Andrew Williams, a JAG officer with the U.S. Naval Reserve, recently resigned his commission over the alleged use of torture by the United States and the destruction of video tapes said to contain instances of that torture.

As ThinkProgress reported in December, Brigadier General Thomas W. Hartmann, the legal adviser at Guantanamo Bay, repeatedly refused to call the hypothetical waterboarding of an American pilot by the Iranian military torture.

Explaining his resignation in a letter to his Gig Harbor, WA, newspaper — the Peninsula Gateway — Williams said Hartmann’s testimony was “the final straw”:

The final straw for me was listening to General Hartmann, the highest-ranking military lawyer in charge of the military commissions, testify that he refused to say that waterboarding captured U.S. soldiers by Iranian operatives would be torture.

His testimony had just sold all the soldiers and sailors at risk of capture and subsequent torture down the river. Indeed, he would not rule out waterboarding as torture when done by the United States and indeed felt evidence obtained by such methods could be used in future trials.

Thank you, General Hartmann, for finally admitting the United States is now part of a long tradition of torturers going back to the Inquisition.

In the middle ages, the Inquisition called waterboarding “toca” and used it with great success. In colonial times, it was used by the Dutch East India Company during the Amboyna Massacre of 1623.

Waterboarding was used by the Nazi Gestapo and the feared Japanese Kempeitai. In World War II, our grandfathers had the wisdom to convict Japanese Officer Yukio Asano of waterboarding and other torture practices in 1947, giving him 15 years hard labor.

Waterboarding was practiced by the Khmer Rouge at the infamous Tuol Sleng prison. Most recently, the U.S. Army court martialed a soldier for the practice in 1968 during the Vietnam conflict.

General Hartmann, following orders was not an excuse for anyone put on trial in Nuremberg, and it will not be an excuse for you or your superiors, either.

Despite the CIA and the administration attempting to cover up the practice by destroying interrogation tapes, in direct violation of a court order, and congressional requests, the truth about torture, illegal spying on Americans and secret renditions is coming out.

Williams’ resignation follows on the heels of several high profile issues relating to the JAG corps. In 2006, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift was passed over for promotion and forced out of the Navy after he vigorously defended Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s driver. And just this month, the Bush administration planned to take control of the promotion system for military lawyers, a plan which was dropped due to the uproar it caused in the military and in Congress.

The Stillborn God
By Zachary Karabell, Truthdig. Posted December 29, 2007.

Is separation of church and state a myth in America?

One of the bedrock assumptions of our society is that we have, after centuries of struggle, finally achieved an enviable balance that allows individuals to have their own religious beliefs but does not permit religion to dictate public life and thereby enflame passions and generate deadly conflict. That balance was hardly easy to create, and only after many years of two steps forward and one step back did we in the West finally — supposedly — arrive at the right formula. But arrive we did, says Mark Lilla in “The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics and the Modern West,” his provocative, passionate essay on what he calls “the Great Separation.”

With the rise of a virulent strain of radical fundamentalism in the Muslim world, that separation is being assailed, and we seem bewildered that anyone could argue against it. Lilla, however, contends that it is not the fundamentalists — Muslim, Christian and Jewish — who are seeing the world askew; it is Western culture and its defenders. “We must remind ourselves,” he writes, “that we are living in an experiment, that we are the exceptions. We have little reason to expect other civilizations to follow our unusual path, which was opened up by a unique theological-political crisis within Christendom.” In short, Lilla believes that we> have gotten one thing utterly wrong: We are not us. We are them. We are not the rule; we are the exception.

LINK »

Pope’s exorcist squads will wage war on Satan

The Pope has ordered his bishops to set up exorcism squads to tackle the rise of Satanism.

Vatican chiefs are concerned at what they see as an increased interest in the occult.

They have introduced courses for priests to combat what they call the most extreme form of “Godlessness.”

Each bishop is to be told to have in his diocese a number of priests trained to fight demonic possession.

The initiative was revealed by 82-year-old Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican “exorcistinchief,” to the online Catholic news service Petrus.

“Thanks be to God, we have a Pope who has decided to fight the Devil head-on,” he said.

“Too many bishops are not taking this seriously and are not delegating their priests in the fight against the Devil. You have to hunt high and low for a properly trained exorcist.

“Thankfully, Benedict XVI believes in the existence and danger of evil - going back to the time he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.” The CDF is the oldest Vatican department and was headed by Benedict from 1982, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, until he became Pope in 2005.

Father Amorth said that during his time at the department Benedict had not lost the chance to warn humanity of the risk from the Devil.

He said the Pope wants to restore a prayer seen as protection against evil that was traditionally recited at the end of Catholic Masses. The prayer, to St Michael the Archangel, was dropped in the 1960s by Pope John XXIII.

[More »]

Benazir Bhutto Has Been Assassinated

Ex-Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has died, according to media reports. Bhutto’s husband said she was shot at a rally where a suicide bomber detonated, killing several of her supporters.

I’m not the least bit surprised, but still - what a fucked up thing to wake up to.

We left home on Saturday morning and made a beeline for Atlanta to see my dear friend Yellow. Shortly after arriving I presented her with all of her birthday/giftmas loot and we sat around while she opened her presents. Damien left before too long to go and spend some time with so I could have time with Yellow, just the two of us. It worked out well considering that Yellow and I on our own can each really fill a room - together, we tend to be a bit overwhelming - and wholly inappropriate. We went to Taqueria Del Sol for lunch at Yellow’s insistance, and since she also insisted on buying me lunch I insisted that she order for me. When asked what I would like to drink by the counterperson, I replied “Whatever she says I should have, I’m her bitch” - much to everyone’s amusement. We (Yellow, myself, her friend Jessie, and Jessie’s other half Jason) had some of the best fish tacos I have ever had along with a shrimp-corn chowder, a trio os salsas (fresca, asada, & roasted tomatillo) and feathery light corn chips that I couldn’t get enough of. Very good sweet tea as well!

Spent some time after taking Jessie & Jason to the airport for their trip to NH driving around the ATL, both of us revisiting old stomping grounds and being gobsmacked at the staggering level of gentrification that has swallowed Atlanta whole, it appears. Actually, instead of a stroll down memory lane, it ended up a sad tour of places I barely even recognize anymore. Both of us kept exclaiming “OH MY GOD, SHUT THE FUCK UP!” at every turn in every neighborhood. The once might White Dot, where I saw Yellow’s former band Insane Jane play amazing sets and was the scene of many interesting nights out on the town is now a Chinese restaurant, after serving several years as a dry cleaners. Little 5 Points has a fucking Best Buy, Target, Kroger, and a shitload of other sore thumb McConsumer pornshops arranged in a bastardization of the goddamned French Quarter - it was nauseating. She’d prepped me for that one before driving me to it, and we sat there in the car - mouths agape and disgustipated, and she summed it up perfectly with “Remember when we were afraid to walk past this area alone?” At the other end of L5P, the newest eyesore is the still-under-construction Urban Outfitters just down the strip mall from The Majestic on Ponce. Pathetic, I tell you. Perhaps the only area that unnerved me more was Cabbagetown - or rather, what once WAS Cabbagetown. On Sunday we went into Midtown to get some art supplies for Yellow and I had to stand and stare at the parking lot that once was Backstreet/The Armory, where I had spent many a night until morning in complete debauchery along with Yellow and other friends at different times. The bar that I spent my 21st birthday in, The Cove, is now a police precinct. Which is funny, considering the number of laws that were broken on that lot in those years - I dented in my own fair share as well, but that’s neither here nor there. Stuff that is part of my history that’s just… GONE. The Stein Club, The Beer Mug, Rumors, The Gallus, Oxford Books, Rupert’s, The Point, The L5P Pub, Bridgetown Grill (L5P) The Oddyssey, The Cavern Club, Somber Reptile, and OMG the bands - Insane Jane, The Jody Grind, Opal Foxx Quartet/Smoke, Deacon Lunchbox, So Inclined, Blood Poets, The Mirthmakers, tons more…

Sunday the three of us (Yellow, Damien, & myself) went to the farmer’s market, one of my most favorite places on earth, and got things to eat for the day. In the afternoon, we all piled into bed and watched the Don Cheadle film “Talk To Me“, which is based on the life of DC radio jock Petey Greene, a legendary character. It’s a fantastic film, hilariously funny and at times heartbreakingly sad. I recommend it.

Got up at the buttcrack of predawn on Monday to begin the long trek from Atlanta to Ohio, had coffee with Yellow and gave goodbye smooches to Juno the German Shepherd (who is just a giant puppy in a ferocious looking dog costume) before leaving, having given up a tear inducing goodbye in favor of a quick “I love you and I’ll talk to you later on this evening” kind of thing. There was little traffic on the road, and once the sun came up we had beautiful weather for the duration of the trip - until we crossed the state line into Ohio and the happy got sucked out of everything - gray skies, dirty landscape, just general feh. I’m getting ahead of myself. North Georgia is a sleepy place on a still dark winter’s morning, and it you pay close attention to it jsut before the sun comes up you can actually see everything yawning and coming awake. By the time we got to Tennessee, the sun was mostly up and throwing shadows on the cliff walls where the roads had been cut into the mountains. Icicles were streaming in the light, and we laughed at the juxtaposition of the huge porn shops under the shadow of the 3 story cross made of aluminum siding, as well as the pairing of signs that sat next to one another - “Jesus Saves” next to “Let’s Hear It For The 1st Amendment!” Ah, democracy… High in the mountains we went into a series of dips in the highway that were nestled in forest fauna and then swallowed whole by a thick blanket of fog like I had never seen before. The sunlight coming in from the east threw an ethereal glow into the deadwood that made it alive again and it all felt very comforting, even enchanting. Then it disappeared in a flash after about 2-3 miles and we were back to looking over the guard rails at the little towns with their quaint homes several hundred feet below the highway, nestled in like little village figurines.

Kentucky is a very strange place when you’re taking it in as it rushes by you at 80 MPH in a swank rental car, but I dig it. The best part about Kentucky, aside from how beautiful it is, is that 5 mile stretch that runs parallel to 75N just before Lexington, where if you’re lucky you’ll catch the days where the bacon producers are smoking, the air is perfumed with the redolent tincture of hickory smoke and cured bacon. You’ll encounter it again and again in the endless parade of smokehouse barbecue joints strung along the highway as well. No matter what time of day, no matter how recently I’ve eaten - the moment my senses lock on to pit roasted, well smoked pork - I want barbecue and all the trimmings.

Got to Columbus at 2PM-ish, and settled in for family time. All of Damien’s family had gathered at his sister’s place, and we spent Giftmas Eve & Giftmas day eating excellent food, laughing and playing games, exchanging presents (I scored some EXCELLENT loot), and even an occasional shot of Jagermeister. Met our newest addition to that side of the family, the adventurous 2 year old Elise, who greeted us immediately with an enthusiastic “RARR!!!!!”, complete with bared teeth and claw hands. She was henceforth christened “Baby Raptor”. She and Damien warmed up to one another relatively quickly, which is exceptional as Damien tends to be a bt standoffish with children - but the two of them played and interacted consistently the entire time we were there. I got to catch up on things with family I rarely get to see/spend time with, and it was a great time all in all. Left there this morning at the buttcrack of predawn again, and made a beeline for home. Having now gotten everything unpacked and laundry ready for washing tomorrow, I’m pretty exhausted but deleriously happy to be back home.

I hope everyone had as great a Giftmas as we did!

Settling down for the night, getting up again at 0:dark30 and hitting the road to come back home to my beloved Southland.

The trip in all has been great and I’m just wrung out and getting to the point of being emotionally taxed from the general stress of travel. Which me no likey. Stress, that is.

I’ve seen pictures of my babies and have been missing them terribly, and I feel guilty for not being home with them yesterday and today - first time in years that I wasn’t there, and this was Willow’s first Christmas. I’m a big boy though and am not dwelling on it or anything, I just really miss my family and am eager to be back in my own home and my own bed.

Also, being able to eat a full meal and being able to have regular bathroom functions again will be nice - travelling royally fucks my system up.

Anyway, next time I post will be in my own living room, 8 hours until departure time!!!

Got to Ohio this afternoon, made REALLY good time. Excellent weather and there was hardly any traffic on the entire drive, surprisingly.

So yeah, we’re here. Have procured Jagermeiser, and all is well. If anyone gets out of line, murder will be done.

EDIT:
Okay, so maybe not murder, but offending parties will be mocked mercilessly or at the very least well ostracized. I’m already thinking I may have to shave Damien’s Dad’s eyebrows off in his sleep….