Obama's Nev. campaign director dies at 44

Family: Obama's Nev. campaign director dies at 44
By KAREN MATTHEWS, Associated Press Writer

Monday, November 3, 2008


A family spokesman says the Nevada campaign director for Barack Obama's campaign and a former top aide to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has died at 44.

Family spokesman Basil Smikle said Monday that Terence Tolbert died of a heart attack Sunday in Las Vegas.
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Killings in homeless camp stun relatives

Killings in homeless camp stun relatives
By Louis Sahagun 1:01 p.m

Relatives of one of five people found shot to death Sunday gather to pray at the crime scene. Although the site was considered a homeless campsite, authorities say not all the victims were homeless.

By Louis Sahagun
2:14 PM PST, November 3, 2008
As investigators continued today to search for clues into the fatal shootings of five people at a homeless campsite in Long Beach, relatives of one of the victims gathered at the secluded site to light candles and pray.

"It's sad, real sad," said Fauamoa Palaita, a relative of one of the victims, Vanessa Malaepule. "I feel hurt. We can't believe it."

At a news conference today, authorities released the names of Malaepule, 34, of Long Beach, and of Lorenzo Perez Villacana, 44. The names of the other victims were being withheld pending notification of next of kin. They were described as a man of Middle Eastern descent in his 40s, a white male in his 50s and a Latino female in her 20s.

Los Angels County coroner Assistant Chief Ed Winter said that autopsies would be conducted Tuesday but that it appeared that all five "died of multiple gunshot wounds."

Obama's grandmother dies hours before election

Obama's grandmother dies hours before election
Barack Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died following a bout with cancer, Obama and his sister said today. She was 86. Obama, who spoke about his grandmother often on the stump, left the campaign trail for two days in late October to visit Dunham in Hawaii. developing story

Retired Gen. Bernard W. Rogers, Former Army chief of staff dies

Former Army chief of staff dies

By Jim Tice - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Nov 3, 2008 14:46:31 EST

Retired Gen. Bernard W. Rogers, one of the most accomplished senior Army leaders of the post-World War II era, died Oct. 27 at Falls Church, Va.

Rogers, 87, began his military career as an enlisted soldier with the Kansas National Guard. He subsequently was commissioned at the U.S. Military Academy in 1943 after serving as the first captain of the Corps of Cadets.

A Rhodes Scholar and graduate of the Command and General Staff College and Army War College, Rogers retired in 1987 after serving two four-year tours as the supreme allied commander, Europe, and command-in-chief, U.S. European Command.

Previous to his service in Europe, Rogers oversaw the creation of a 24-division force as Army chief of staff, and was a prime mover in establishing the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif.

Previous to his tour as chief of staff, Rogers commanded Army Forces Command, and previous to that was Army personnel chief just as the all-volunteer force was being established.

Rogers was a veteran of combat, having served in Korea as a battalion commander with the 9th Infantry, and as an assistant division commander of the 1st Infantry Division during Vietnam, where he earned the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star, three Distinguished Flying Crosses, the Bronze Star for Valor and 36 Air Medals with “V” device.
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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/11/army_rogers_110308w/

McCain draws just 1,000 at Tampa event

McCain draws just 1,000 at Tampa event
RAW STORY
Published: Monday November 3, 2008


Only 1,000 people showed up to see Sen. John McCain at a Tampa rally Monday -- leaving even Fox News scratching their heads.

"Kicking off the last day of the election in Tampa, Florida, John McCain was welcomed by a roughly 1,000 voters," penned Huffington Post's Sam Stein. "Compare that to the 15,000 people that President Bush drew to a rally in Tampa on the eve of the 2004 election. 'What's up with that?' wrote Adam Smith at the St. Petersburg Times."
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If you can stand in line for tickets, you can stand in line to vote

If you can stand in line for tickets to a movie, you can stand in line to vote.

If you can stand in line for tickets to a sports event, you can stand in line to vote.

If you can stand in line for a concert, you can stand in line to vote.

If you can stand in line waiting to get on a ride at an amusement park, you can stand in line to vote.

There are plenty of excuse to not vote but when you think about it, we all too often prove that when we really want to do something, we are willing to do what it takes to do it. Think of black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and all the times you got up at 4:00 am to get to the mall for the best sales. Black Friday became a family tradition all across America. So why isn't it that we make it a family tradition to vote?

I've heard some people complain when they call in talk radio stations about the long wait. We can't do anything about the wait time this year. The turn out is amazing and there are not very many states prepared for it ahead of time. This is for the direction of this country and all our days to come. We saw what happened when people didn't do whatever it took to go vote 4 years ago. We saw what happened when people were turned away and didn't get the chance to vote. Don't let that happen this time. It's too important. No excuses will ever take away the damage done because you didn't vote.

Good-bye Travis Air Force Base, Hello Vietnam

Winning hearts and minds in Vietnam


By Martin Bell



In my 46 years of experience in journalism, I have often found that the most remarkable material surfaces by accident.

So it is with the Saigon Songs, recordings made in the Vietnam War, which have never been broadcast before.

They are among the most moving mementoes of war I have ever heard.

Their edge is sharpened, it seems to me, by a special relevance to the wars of today.

The Saigon Songs date from the Americans' hearts and minds campaign, between 1965 and 1967, as they poured their ground troops into Vietnam in support of the South Vietnamese government.

Hearts and minds

The campaign was run by Maj Gen Ed Lansdale of the US Army, who by all accounts was a most remarkable man.

His weapons were not guns but words and music, through which he hoped to persuade the people in the villages to resist the North Vietnamese communists and the home-grown insurgents, the Viet Cong.



Maj Gen Lansdale gathered round him a group of singers and performers including Pham Duy, the most noted Vietnamese folk singer of the time, and Hershel Gober, a young lieutenant from Arkansas who was as handy with a guitar as he was with a rifle, and was serving with Vietnamese forces in the Mekong Delta.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7698055.stm

Chief Master Sgt. Richard Etchberger, was awarded the Medal of Honor

Memorial for Vietnam War heroes may get upgrade
Spot left for Medal of Honor marking could get use soon
By Michael Hoffman Air Force Times • and John Andrew Prime jprime@gannett.com • November 2, 2008 2:00 am


A recently rededicated memorial to overlooked heroes of the Indochina War could get a significant overhaul soon.

A marker at the 8th Air Force Museum honoring the sacrifice of 19 airmen who served with the Barksdale-based 1st Combat Evaluation Group, also known as Combat Skyspot, soon could bear a symbol denoting that one of the lost airmen, Chief Master Sgt. Richard Etchberger, was awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for bravery.

Etchberger lost his life saving three fellow service members fighting off waves of North Vietnamese commandos advancing on a top-secret U.S. radar station in the Laotian mountains in March 1968, but those details were omitted.

Instead, Pentagon officials told Cory Etchberger, then 9, that his father died in a helicopter accident. But he knew something was wrong when he and his family were secretly whisked into the Pentagon to accept the Air Force Cross his father was awarded posthumously.

But the United States wasn't openly fighting a war outside the Vietnams at that time, and so an act of bravery that clearly merited the Medal of Honor was downgraded, and efforts over the year to restore the request for the highest honor ran into bureaucratic roadblocks, including a statutory deadline on how long after an event a request can be made.

But last month, the House and Senate passed, and President George W. Bush signed, a Defense bill that waived the militations in this instance. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley has recommended Etchberger's Air Force Cross be upgraded to the Medal of Honor. Now it is up to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Bush to approve a renomination for the medal, first recommended in 1968 but denied by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson, said Col. Gerald H. Clayton, then the commander of 1043rd Radar Evaluation Squadron, Detachment 1.
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PTSD Virtual Reality Therapy:Fraudulent High-Priced Boondoggle

Nov-02-2008 18:59
PTSD Virtual Reality Therapy:
Fraudulent High-Priced Boondoggle
Dr. Phil Leveque Salem-News.com
Phillip Leveque has spent his life as a Combat Infantryman, Physician Pharmacologist and Toxicologist.
(MOLALLA, Ore.) - I was abjectly stunned and stupefied when I first read of Virtual Reality Therapy for PTSD Veteran victims. What it first suggested to me was that the VA Psychologists (and Social Workers) didn’t have the slightest comprehension of who and what they were presumed to be treating.

In the first place, the terms surrounding the definition of PTSD are ambiguities and arcane with battle fatigue, shellshock, homesickness, “miss their mothers”, war neurosis, psychoneurosis, sexual repression, battle anxiety, eight balls and malingerer terms. There are probably a few other terms but most require explanation.

Battle fatigue is inexact.

By definition, Infantry soldiers are always exhausted. They work our butts off with little sleep to make us TOUGH. "Terror fatigue" or "horror fatigue" is more appropriate. If your buddy at your side is blown apart you may feel horror and terror that the next shot is for you.

"Shellshock" is concussion from mortar or artillery. Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is probably the current term. Psychoneurosis was invented in World War Two and is a general inclusive term. Dr. Freud said all neurosis were from sexual repression. (He never was in a barrage).

"Battle anxiety" – hell yes – who wants to get wounded or killed? Eight balls and malingerers? Some people just didn’t want to be in the service, especially most of the Army Infantry – 8 million of us draftees.

The Draft Boards rejected about 15 percent. Basic training rejected about 7 percent. Good, I wouldn’t want those guys near me in battle.

Ok, lets get to PTSD.

These Shrinkologists seem to think this is a specific entity. IT IS NOT. PTSD is on a Bell Curve like IQ’s – Intelligence Quotients – with a standard deviation of about 3. Some guys pee their pants in basic training. These are the most sensitive or grade ONE.

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The elusiveness of PTSD diagnoses argues for more flexibility, not less.

Service issue: The elusiveness of PTSD diagnoses argues for more flexibility, not less.

If ex-Sgt. Frank Wheeler has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, his less-than-honorable discharge from the Army won’t make him better.

That’s one reason officials at Womack Army Medical Center should take another look at Wheeler’s case, outlined in an Oct. 26 news story by Observer reporter Michael N. Graff.

They might also usefully revisit the idea of ignoring diagnoses by off-post providers. If the hospital had Wheeler pegged right the first time, his troubles will continue or even worsen until the condition and the diagnosis catch up with him and Womack gets a shiner for its handling of a decorated war veteran.

Another reason is an e-mail in which the hospital’s ranking officer overturned the PTSD profile issued by a Womack behavioral health psychologist. That action came five days after Wheeler was arrested for a violent incident involving his wife.

Whether it was intended that way or not, the e-mail came across as boastful. The colonel who wrote it said a miscoded diagnosis enabled her to stop his transfer to the Warrior Transition Battalion, where he would have enjoyed “not working and being heralded as a War Hero.”
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http://www.fayobserver.com/article?id=309280