Marines Catch ‘Deserter’ … 5 Years After His Honorable Discharge

Marines Catch ‘Deserter’ … 5 Years After His Honorable Discharge
By Dave Maass
July 30, 2012

SAN DIEGO, California — On Jan. 26, 2011, a pair of U.S. Marines put Alan Gourgue in handcuffs and a restraint belt and hauled him across the country to face trial as a deserter. Gourgue was distraught and completely confused; he had been honorably discharged in 2006 and finished his reserve obligation four months earlier.

Gourgue’s ordeal provides a glimpse into a rarely seen, slow-moving, stiflingly bureaucratic world of military desertions, where one administrative mistake can result in a catch-22 that Joseph Heller couldn’t have invented.

In the military, there are two types of unauthorized absence: Absent without leave (AWOL) and desertion. The key difference between them is that AWOL is a misdemeanor, while desertion is a felony that assumes the missing soldier abandoned the service with the intent never to return. To employ a school analogy: AWOL is like cutting classes, while desertion is dropping out altogether. If a soldier is gone for more than 30 days, the charge is automatically converted to deserter status, according to Victor Hansen, a professor specializing in military law at New England Law, Boston. It’s like a teacher striking a missing kid from the rolls after a few absent weeks to make room for another student.
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This is what happened to soldier

9 years after leaving Army, veteran mistakenly declared AWOL is arrested, jailed

Air Force chaplain quits Southern Baptist Convention over gay wedding

Air Force chaplain quits Southern Baptist Convention over gay wedding
July 29, 2012
Justin Griffith

On Friday, The Associated Press ran a story chronicling the fallout over the first gay wedding on a military base, at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. Chaplain Col. Timothy Wagoner has abruptly left the Southern Baptist Convention, even though he didn’t conduct the ceremony.

A few days before the wedding, Col. Wagoner decided to attend as a show of support to the base community, and to Tech. Sgt. Erwynn Umali.

Umali no longer has to hide his sexual orientation from his peers in the Air Force. He’s also paving the way for many other gay and lesbians in the military to demand a similar level of equality. He met his partner in a church that now considers them apostates. They both remain religious, and having a chaplain’s presence was very important to them.
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Maine VA employee suspected in murder-suicide

Former Jacksonville resident killed girlfriend, then himself, Maine State Police say
Posted: July 29, 2012
By Associated Press

HAMPDEN, Maine — Maine State Police identified the man who shot his girlfriend and then killed himself at a Hampden house where a state police SWAT team had assembled.

The shooter was identified Saturday as 53-year-old Lawrence Beaute, who had lived in Jacksonville.

Police say Beaute was a medical technician at a Veterans Affairs facility in Bangor. read more here

McCain jumping on "it's Obama's fault" when Republicans pushed for it.

McCain jumping on "it's Obama's fault" when Republicans pushed for it.

This line of attack has angered Democrats, who argue it is hypocritical for Romney to blame Obama when congressional Republicans were the driving force behind a compromise to cut $1.2 trillion from the budget, split evenly between defense and domestic non-defense programs.

We've all seen the ads on TV with politicians making all kinds of claims to score points hoping the American people don't really know what is going on. They count on our ignorance.

The ad by Romney and company say that Obama cut $500 billion from Medicare but they left this part out.

Obama administration claims record $4.1 billion in Medicare fraud savings
By Julian Pecquet
02/14/12

The Obama administration saved the federal Medicare program $4.1 billion last year thanks to its investments in efforts to prevent fraud, waste and abuse, according to a new report from the Justice and Health and Human Services departments.

That's almost twice the $2.14 billion in fraudulent claims recouped in 2008, according to the report, while the number of individuals charged with fraud increased 75 percent — to 1,403 — over the same time period.

The report credits investments made in the healthcare reform law, including tougher sentencing guidelines, enhanced screening for Medicare providers and suppliers, better coordination between health and law enforcement officials and technological investments.

So where did the $500 billion claim come from? This.

Q. So Medicare will remain untouched at least until next year?

No. The 2010 health law made some potentially important money-saving changes to the program. It saved $500 billion in Medicare spending over 10 years, in part by cutting rates to private Medicare Advantage plans and by reducing payments to hospitals and other medical providers. It also requires higher-income seniors to pay more for their care. In addition, the law created a yet-to-be-constituted panel of experts, called the Independent Payment Advisory Board, to cap federal spending on Medicare at no more than the growth rate of gross domestic product plus 1 percent.

Does McCain explain why he wanted Sarah Palin over Romney when he had to pick the person he'd most like to see take his place?

Where is McCain who constantly claims to be all about veterans on any of this? Does he know most Vietnam veterans are on Medicare now? They are paying attention to what is real and they know McCain has voted against them most of the time.

Barack Obama/Jim Webb vs John Mccain - Veteran GI Bill



At 1:50, then Senator Obama took on McCain and President Bush because they said the GI bill was too good and would cause the troops to leave the military.

Is anyone in Washington honest anymore? For heaven's sake, this country has enough differences on what is real. Why do they have to make stuff up when they are the ones who caused it in the first place? How can they expect us to trust them enough to elect them after they lie to us? If they don't respect us now enough to tell the truth, they sure won't do it after they get what they want!

Doctors often miss PTSD if they don't look for trauma

I read a lot of mental health news reports that do not get posted here because they do not involve veterans. This one is something anyone living with PTSD should know about. Psychiatrists can and often do misdiagnose PTSD as something else. If they are are not looking for a traumatic event in a life, they usually diagnose it as something else. The only way to end up with PTSD is after trauma but the symptoms can look like other forms of illness. This is the story of a woman diagnosed by different doctors.

DIAGNOSIS ROULETTE

Psychiatric patients can be labeled with numerous conditions during their treatment, labels that come to define them and their insurance status. Now psychiatry is revamping the mental-disorder book, further jumbling the picture.
By Stacey Burling
Inquirer Staff Writer

Over her life, June Sams has been told she has schizophrenia and four mental health disorders: bipolar, post-traumatic stress, major depressive, and personality. The 60-year-old Chester woman's current diagnoses - she thinks these fit - are major depressive and generalized anxiety disorders plus PTSD due to childhood trauma.

A doctor told Elisa-Beth Gardner, 51, of Swarthmore, that she had borderline personality disorder (BPD) in 1996. Three months later, she was told she had bipolar disorder. Then a doctor said she had both. Her current doctor thinks she has BPD and PTSD, but not bipolar.

When Sonia Weaver, now a 43-year-old Lancaster resident, got sick in 1997 - as a new mother and University of Chicago divinity school student - a psychiatrist said she had postpartum depression.
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