Pair came to Marine pilot's aid

Pair came to Marine pilot's aid
Teen, grandfather found pilot who ejected from jet in woods

By Joe Callahan
Staff writer


Published: Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 6:30 a.m.


SALT SPRINGS - Brandon Coon was raking leaves at his grandfather's home Sunday evening when he saw that a passing military jet was in trouble.

The teenager ran to get his grandfather, Gerald Sherrer, 59, and the two jumped into a pickup truck and raced toward the area where the plane had disappeared.

At the end of Northeast 77th Street, where it meets State Road 19, Brandon spotted a plume of smoke. Then he saw the pilot drifting toward the ground in a parachute.

The pilot appeared motionless, his chin drooped against his chest, as the wind began carrying him west of SR 19.

Sherrer told Brandon to keep an eye on the pilot. They turned west on Forest Road 46, which used to be called Forest Road 10, and drove down the clay road until Brandon lost sight of the pilot.

The pair walked 100 yards and found Marine Corps Capt. Jarrod L. Klement, 29, who was still in his parachute harness. He was alive and alert. "Who are you?" Klement asked them. Brandon and Sherrer helped Klement back to the pickup, where the pilot sat down on the tailgate and called his wife to let her know he was OK.

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Pair came to Marine pilot aid

Man says son allegedly killed by fellow US Marine

Man says son allegedly killed by fellow US Marine
(AP) – 11 hours ago

ROTA, Northern Mariana Islands — The father of a U.S. Marine killed in Afghanistan says he was devastated to learn that a fellow Marine was allegedly responsible.

David Mundo Santos is quoting a military representative who carried the news of Cpl. Dave M. Santos' death as saying another Marine is accused in the fatal stabbing.
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Man says son allegedly killed by fellow US Marine

SF Clinic Eases Veterans' PTSD With Acupuncture

Don't laugh at this. PTSD is an assault against the emotional part of the brain and the rest of the parts of the brain kick into high gear to defend the wounded part. The mind is a wondrous thing and we are all programmed to live within ourselves very well. A baby learns how to comfort himself at a very young age. They learn when they cry they are responded to but at times, they are just a bit uncomfortable and they comfort themselves. We are programmed with all we need to heal ourselves but we need help to get it all to work right again at times.

Medication helps correct some things, like the chemicals in our brains, but it can't heal a soul and that's where things like this come into play. I told Marines to take Yoga. I told National Guardsmen to go for a walk with soft music in their headphones. They all thought I was crazy but then thanked me when they made faster progress with their therapists. There is no one size fits all healing with PTSD. All things should be considered to find the right thing for you.

Jul 19, 2010 3:23 pm US/Pacific
SF Clinic Eases Veterans' PTSD With Acupuncture
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5)

"People in the military are taught, suck it up," explained Army veteran Marshall Perry. "Get over it. Don't go to sick call. Don't ask for help. Man up."

So that's Perry did, suffering alone with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

"I get everything from my muscles seizing up and my body twisting like a pretzel to associated depression," he explained.

"He was limping and he used a cain. And he wasn't smiling," reported Carla Cassler, an acupuncturist with 25 years experience.

Cassler met Perry when he finally found help at BAYVAC - the Bay Area Veterans' Acupuncture Clinic.

"I focused on general relaxation with the ear points and then I did some neck work and some massage work on his neck and back and jaw," Cassler said.

In January, Cassler helped launch BAYVAC to provide veterans with a PTSD treatment that compliments the primary Western focus of drugs and therapy.
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SF Clinic Eases Veterans' PTSD With Acupuncture

Paul Krugman must read White House chat room

UPDATE July 22, 2010
So far I have not heard from the publisher of the New York Times and doubt I will. It is just astonishing to think that a brilliant man like Krugman, so informed on the economy and the workings of government, would suddenly think it was important to share the fact the budget is done a year ahead of time and raise the fact TARP was done before Obama became President, a day after I did. Now I seriously doubt that Krugman would need take anything off a chat room, so I'm thinking it was more a case of someone giving him the idea to do it. The question is, where did the "idea" come from? Who would have said, "Hey Paul here's a subject that needs to be raised." and then gave him the information? Was it a friend of his? Was it a White House Staffer? I doubt we'll ever know.

This happens all the time when bloggers spend hours on end thinking, reading and searching, putting it all together and then have someone read what they say, then take it as their own. Bloggers have no power because we have no one watching out for us. Our rights to intellectual property cannot be protected unless we track every single piece of reporting done, including other blogs. We have no way of knowing what someone else just took away from us and even when we do know, we just can't do anything about it. It's really depressing to be a blogger sometimes.

I was shocked when I clicked the link from Raw Story on

Republicans 'think we're idiots' NYT columnist takes Republicans to task for blatant economic lie.

Why? Because he copied what I wrote yesterday on the Linked in site. I find it really strange that no one was talking about this and now, well the New York Times has printed it the day after I wrote about it.

About an hour ago I went into the Linkedin White House site and posted this. I also emailed the publisher of the New York Times.

Looks like someone is reading this message thread,,,,suddenly someone is talking about the budget and TARP........I was asking about this since yesterday.

Kathie "Costos" DiCesare • I lost a post I just put up so it may show up later. I was looking over some figures and found something very telling. Look at the VA budget and notice the years.

Bush
2006 $68.4 billion
2007 $72.6 billion
2008 $39.4 billion
2009 $44.8 billion

Two wars going on and Bush had a huge jump in funding for 2007, but this was followed by a huge cut the next year. Still two wars going on and more wounded, but he cut it almost in half. The key is the year. The budget for 2007 was done in 2006, which he ran for re-election. We were reading about more and more wounded, less care for them and the media didn't bother to mention any of this.

(**Ok, messed up on saying "he" ran for re-election and meant to write it was an election year.)




Obama
2010 $52.5 billion
2011 $57 billion

Builds on the Historic Past Increase in
Funding for VA. The Budget provides $57
billion
in funding for a 20 percent total increase
since 2009. This significant increase contributes
to the President’s pledge to increase funding for
the VA, providing a foundation to transform the
Department and better serve veterans and their
families today.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2011/assets/veterans.pdf

The other thing I noticed is that while this is Obama's second year in office, it is really the first year for his budget to be used. For 2009 it was done by Bush in 2008. This is something else we just don't talk about. TARP, the thing most people love to hate was not done by Obama, but Bush. Obama does not have clean hands in this either because he expanded on it. If you want to complain about this then remember it come election time and who did what when.

Troubled Asset Relief Program
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"TARP" redirects here. For other uses, see Tarp.
This article is about the Treasury fund. For the legislative bill and subsequent law, see Public Law 110-343. For the legislative history and the events leading to the law, see Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.
The Troubled Asset Relief Program, commonly referred to as TARP or RCP, is a program of the United States government to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions to strengthen its financial sector which was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008. It is the largest component of the government's measures in 2008 to address the subprime mortgage crisis.

Originally expected to cost the U.S. Government $356 billion, the most recent estimates of the cost, as of April 12, 2010, is down to $89 billion, which is 42% less than the taxpayers' cost of the Savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s.[1] The cost of that crisis amounted to 3.2% of GDP during the Reagan/Bush era, while the GDP percentage of the current crisis' cost is estimated at less than 1%.[2] While it was once feared the government would be holding companies like GM, AIG and Citigroup for several years, those companies are preparing to buy back the Treasury's stake and emerge from TARP within a year.[3] Of the $245 billion invested in U.S. banks, over $169 billion has been paid back, including $13.7 billion in dividends, interest and other income, along with $4 billion in warrant proceeds as of April 2010. AIG is considered "on track" to pay back $51 billion from divestitures of two units and another $32 billion in securities.[4] In March 2010, GM repaid more than $2 billion to the U.S. and Canadian governments and on April 21 GM announced the entire loan portion of the U.S. and Canadian governments' investments had been paid back in full, with interest, for a total of $8.1 billion. [5] This was however subject to contention because it was argued that the automaker simply shuffled federal bailout funds to pay back taxpayers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program

1 day ago

Kathie "Costos" DiCesare • Charles,
President Obama has been talking to Warren Buffet and President Clinton for ideas. Do you remember how Clinton got the economy ticking and how long it took to do it? I remember when Bush 41 ran for re-election and how much in denial he was over the state of the economy. I also remember it was pretty bad and that is what cost Bush the re-election. What did Clinton do?

Why is Obama being blamed for the TARP when it started before him?

9 hours ago

Kathie "Costos" DiCesare • Charles,
I agree but how does he get people to understand that we are now working with his first budget? The 2009 budget was done by Bush since they do them a year ahead of time. This gives congress the time to do what they have to.

He also has a problem with the veterans. While the service groups have praised him on what he has done for veterans, there are members of these groups refusing to give him any credit at all. How does he change their attitudes if even the commanders can't get their message across to them?

8 hours ago

This is by Paul Krugman today at 1:45......

The Bush Deficit Bamboozle
OK, even by contemporary standards, this is rich: the official Republican stance is now apparently that Bush left behind a budget that was in pretty good shape. Mitch McConnell:

The last year of the Bush administration, the deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product was 3.2 percent, well within the range of what most economists think is manageable. A year and a half later, it’s almost 10 percent.

They really do think that we’re idiots.

So, that 3.2 percent number comes from here (pdf). Where’s the bamboozle? Let me count the ways.

First, they’re hoping that you won’t know that standard budget data is presented for fiscal years, which start on October 1 of the previous calendar year. So this isn’t the “last year of the Bush administration” — they’ve conveniently lopped off everything that happened post-Lehman — TARP and all.

Second, they’re hoping you won’t look at what was happening quarter by quarter. Here’s net federal borrowing as a percentage of GDP, quarter by quarter, since 2007

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/the-bush-deficit-bamboozle/

The day after I publicly connected the dots, Krugman follows them but never said a word about where the idea came from. Either he has been reading the chat or someone else gave it to him. I don't know but I do know that I am really tired of seeing my work being used by someone else. I'll let you know if the publisher emails me back but I really doubt that will happen.

Veterans Service Officer thinks Vietnam Vets will cheat on PTSD claims?

During the Vietnam War, it was not so much what an MOS was, just like now, because depending on where you were and when you were there, you could have been a cook and exposed to combat trauma. Clerks with duties that only lasted a couple of hours a day, went back to their hooch, picked up their helmet and weapons, then went on patrol. Members of the "band" pulled bunker guard duty and when the base was attacked or mortared, they all fought back.

There were Marines in the last battle of the Vietnam War who died while trying to rescue the crew of the Mayaquez.

The Mayaguez incident involving the Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia on May 12–15, 1975, marked the last official battle of the United States (U.S.) involvement in the Vietnam War. The names of the Americans killed are the last names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, as well as those of three Marines who were left behind on the island of Koh Tang after the battle and who were subsequently executed by the Khmer Rouge while in captivity. The merchant ship's crew, whose seizure at sea had prompted the U.S. attack, had been released in good health, unknown to the U.S. Marines or the U.S. command of the operation, before the Marines attacked. It was the only known engagement between U.S. ground forces and the Khmer Rouge.

read more here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayaguez_incident

The problem is, for the Marines and all others involved with this, they have been accused of not being real Vietnam Veterans. Claims have been turned down because of when it happened and how little some people know about the Vietnam War. Yet for others, the Vietnam Vets are once again a target. It doesn't matter how many years they have waited for the support to get help, the programs to be there, the staff to be there or any sign of hope enough to even try again, because to some, Vietnam veterans are nothing to be proud of. Reading this it makes me ill to think that once again they would be the target of people who assume the worst about these men and women. They can understand Iraq and Afghanistan, how there are no safe zones and assume only the best of them but when it comes to the Vietnam veterans, they will be "coming out of the woodwork" to make false claims. Did it ever dawn on these people that had it not been for Vietnam Vets fighting to have PTSD treated there would be nothing ready for these new veterans?

Female Vietnam vets have been turned down even if they were in Vietnam!

Vets cheer change on PTSD claims

STEVEN VERBURG 608-252-6118 sverburg@madison.com
July 19, 2010
Even after a Madison Veterans Hospital doctor diagnosed Army veteran Stephen Jackson with post-traumatic stress disorder, the Veterans Administration refused to grant him disability compensation.

“This is the problem, that they don’t see a person who wasn’t directly in combat as being exposed to an event that would have caused PTSD,” said Jackson, who served in Vietnam from 1972 to 1973, and saw a friend shot to death, smelled decomposing corpses and faced the constant danger of being robbed while transporting money as a courier. “I have to prove the exact incident that caused the PTSD to make it service connected — that’s not always possible.”

Jackson, 61, of Oregon, has been frustrated for four years by VA rejections of his claim. He is one of thousands now seeing a ray of hope in changes announced last week to make it easier for military veterans suffering from PTSD to obtain monthly benefit checks.

Veterans advocates praised the rule change, which went into effect Tuesday, but added they expect it will lead to more attempts to make fraudulent claims.

Greatest effect on recent vets
Dane County Veterans Service Officer Michael Jackson said he expects claims from Vietnam-era and earlier veterans “will be coming out of the woodwork, grasping at straws,” and unrealistic claims will be denied.

The rule change will have its greatest effect on Iraq and Afghanistan veterans because so many non-combat personnel encounter roadside bombs, and because there are few places not in danger of mortar attacks or suicide bombs.

Even Wisconsin National Guard troops performing administrative jobs in Baghdad’s Green Zone were within range of mortar rounds that insurgents occasionally lobbed in blindly, said Bob Evans, the state Guard’s director of psychological health.

read more here

Vets cheer change on PTSD claims

PTSD rule change from WLFI news

Tippecanoe County Veterans Services Officer Randy Fairchild discussed benefits for veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.

4-year-old hit, killed on beach in New Smyrna

4-year-old hit, killed on beach in New Smyrna

By Sandra Pedicini, ORLANDO SENTINEL

10:57 p.m. EDT, July 18, 2010


For the second time in four months, a 4-year-old child has died after being struck by a vehicle driving on Volusia County's beaches.

A 2003 Dodge pickup truck rolled over Aiden Patrick of Daytona Beach a little after 3 p.m. Sunday on New Smyrna Beach, said Sgt. Kim Montes of the Florida Highway Patrol. (The victim earlier was identified by authorities as "Aden Ball.")

Aiden was on the beach with his parents near Crawford Road when he ran toward the water and into the path of the red truck, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. The front right tire ran over the boy.

Aiden did not have a pulse and was not breathing when emergency workers arrived, said Mark O'Keefe, a spokesman for the EVAC ambulance service. The child was pronounced dead at Bert Fish Medical Center.
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4 year old hit killed on beach in New Smyrna

President Obama fights for unemployed

This does nothing for me personally. I've been out of work for 2 1/2 years, (or should I say a paying job) and did not receive unemployment benefits. I worked for a church and they didn't pay into the system. Aside from temp jobs here and there, that's all I've had coming in. I worked all my life and have been on unemployment once, maybe twice, but I remember what it was like and it isn't fun living off unemployment. Now that is cleared up, I am wondering how heartless these politicians are finding it so impossible to do the right thing for so many out of work?

They don't have a problem cutting taxes for the wealthy, yet even when Greenspan said these tax cuts should end, they fight like hell to keep them going on without paying for them. They have seen that these tax cuts still left average people out in the cold, didn't do anything to put people back to work but they want the unemployed to just do without any money coming in and no jobs.

Don't they think people notice exactly who it is they are fighting for? We noticed! But this is beyond backing the rich, this is about conscience. I doubt they have any left. For heaven's sake veterans are unemployed and this includes them too!

Obama calls for extension of jobless benefits, criticizes Republicans
By the CNN Wire Staff
July 19, 2010 11:48 a.m. EDT

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
President Obama criticizes Senate Republicans for blocking jobless benefits

Obama makes his plea at a Rose Garden appearance

Obama: People "aren't looking for a handout. They desperately want to work"

(CNN) -- President Barack Obama urged Congress on Monday to pass an extension of unemployment benefits, saying that Senate Republicans have allowed short-term political concerns to trump the needs of the jobless.

During an appearance in the Rose Garden, Obama argued that that the federal government has "a responsibility to offer emergency assistance to people who desperately need it" and an obligation to help families "make ends meet."

The Senate is set to consider a bill Tuesday that would extend the deadline to file for unemployment benefits through the end of November. The bill would cost $33 billion in additional deficit spending, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Senate GOP leaders have blocked a vote several times, highlighting deficit concerns by arguing that any benefits extension should be offset by spending cuts. Democrats are counting on the seating of the replacement for Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia on Tuesday to break the logjam.
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Obama calls for extension of jobless benefits

A hidden world, growing beyond control

A hidden world, growing beyond control

by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin

Monday, July 19, 2010; 1:53 AM

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.


These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation's other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

These are not academic issues; lack of focus, not lack of resources, was at the heart of the Fort Hood shooting that left 13 dead, as well as the Christmas Day bomb attempt thwarted not by the thousands of analysts employed to find lone terrorists but by an alert airline passenger who saw smoke coming from his seatmate.

They are also issues that greatly concern some of the people in charge of the nation's security.

"There has been so much growth since 9/11 that getting your arms around that - not just for the DNI [Director of National Intelligence], but for any individual, for the director of the CIA, for the secretary of defense - is a challenge," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in an interview with The Post last week.

In the Department of Defense, where more than two-thirds of the intelligence programs reside, only a handful of senior officials - called Super Users - have the ability to even know about all the department's activities. But as two of the Super Users indicated in interviews, there is simply no way they can keep up with the nation's most sensitive work.

"I'm not going to live long enough to be briefed on everything" was how one Super User put it. The other recounted that for his initial briefing, he was escorted into a tiny, dark room, seated at a small table and told he couldn't take notes. Program after program began flashing on a screen, he said, until he yelled ''Stop!" in frustration.

"I wasn't remembering any of it," he said.
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A hidden world growing beyond control

Little League Coach Died As A Hero

First-Class Little League Coach Meets Tragic End

David Whitley
National Columnist
Darin McGahey did not intend to die a hero. He was just a regular guy who liked to do regular things.

That's how he ended up at the beach that day. McGahey was a youth-league baseball coach, and his team had traveled from Georgia to Florida for a big tournament.

A few kids got caught in the Navarre Beach surf and started yelling for help. McGahey couldn't have known what would happen next. He just did what came naturally and dived right in.

"He loved to help kids," his brother, Jeff, said.

He helped pluck them out of the water. Then the waves swept him away.

"Man, I can't tell you what a tragedy this has been," said Bubba Smith, a USSSA tournament director.

It's been tragic for McGahey's family, of course. And tragic for all his friends around McDonough, Ga.

It hasn't been tragic for the rest of us. It is a shame that it takes a hero's death to appreciate people like McGahey.

"He was just a simple guy," Jeff McGahey said.
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First Class Little League Coach Meets Tragic End