Mangini is also a veteran, as he served with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in the late 1970s. In his own way, living up on the roof during Christmastime is a way to pay tribute to those in the military who are currently stationed in Afghanistan, Iraq or other far-flung places. Mangini himself never served overseas, but said his tent is “a mansion” compared to what he lived in while training. He’s willing to bet his current living conditions are miles better than active-duty troops.
ELKTON — He has eyes that twinkle and a beard as white as snow. But unlike the Santa Claus described in “The Night Before Christmas” that shimmies down chimneys to leave presents, Bruce Mangini, of Landenberg, Pa., plans on staying on his rooftop until he can rally enough people to fill his “sleigh” with toys for families of veterans in need.
Mangini, 58, started living on the roof of the Elkton Veterans of Foreign Wars Elkton Memorial Post No. 8175 on Dec. 2 in a fundraising and awareness campaign called #BruceOnTheRoof To protect himself from the wind and rain, he built a tent out of tarp and a blue gazebo and sleeps under an electric blanket on a cot his grandson chose for him. He comes down on occasion to walk around, per his doctor’s orders, and to go into the VFW to use the bathroom.
But for the most part, Mangini stays on the roof — and he’ll come down for good when his 12 days are up or when his trailer, parked nearby, is filled with toys, coats and non-perishable food donations.
“People say I’m crazy,” he said. “Well, I’ve been called that a lot in my life.”
Mangini likes to participate and organize charity events in the tristate region, like a motorcycle ride to fundraise for the Domestic Violence Center of Chester County, Pa., or coordinating with his cousin on a cookie baking and giveaway for veterans. But he’s always gravitated to Elkton after he established a friendship with Commissioner Mary Jo Jablonski and her family. After working with the Elkton VFW for other toy drives with the Steel Horse Guardians, a nonprofit charitable group of motorcyclists, he’s felt the need to continue paying it forward to Elkton.
“I don’t like talking negatively about nobody, but Elkton is a very small town, and it’s a struggling town that’s trying to do better,” Mangini said. “When I see a small town trying to do better, I want to jump in and help. Everybody needs a helping hand once in a while.” read more here
Police Officers should learn from Vietnam Veterans
Combat PTSD Wounded Times Kathie Costos December 6, 2018 Yesterday I read an article that broke my heart. Then I thought about how it happened to other heroes that I spend most of my time with. They do not see themselves as heroes, but they are to me, especially my own husband.
Who wants to be a police officer? Job applications plummet at most US departments
The Washington Post By Tom Jackman December 4, 2018 Chuck Wexler talks to police chiefs frequently, as head of the Police Executive Research Forum think tank in Washington. Recently, he asked a roomful of chiefs to raise their hands if they wanted their children to follow them into a law enforcement career. Not one hand went up, he said.
Across the country, interest in becoming a police officer is down dramatically. In Nashville, job applications dropped from 4,700 in 2010 to 1,900 last year. In Seattle, applications have declined by nearly 50 percent, in a department where the starting salary is $79,000. Even the FBI saw a sharp drop, from 21,000 applications per year to 13,000 last year, before a new marketing campaign brought an upswing.
And retaining officers once they’ve joined is getting harder too. In a PERF survey of nearly 400 police departments about voluntary resignations, 29 percent of those who left their police job voluntarily had been on the force less than a year, and another 40 percent had been on the job less than five years. At a PERF gathering of police chiefs and commanders from across the country in Washington Tuesday, many attributed their declining numbers to a diminished perception of police in the years after the shooting and unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and an increase in public and media scrutiny of police made possible by technology and social media. read more here
If you want to become involved in this kind of work, here are some things to consider. First the obvious risk to your life followed by the actions of a few, being taken out on you. The second thing to consider is there is a valuable lesson you can learn from Vietnam veterans. You may be too young to remember this, but you need to know so that you'll understand the rest of what you need to hear.
This is what most people heard about Vietnam veterans.
This was just part of Vietnam veterans being attacked when they came home, called baby killers an oh, so many other horrible things.
What they did not hear, was the other part of this story.
— March 16, 1968, 50 years ago — but not many know about the man who stopped it: Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot. When he arrived, American soldiers had already killed 504 Vietnamese civilians (that's the Vietnamese count; the U.S. Army said 347). They were going to kill more, but they didn't — because of what Thompson did.
For the most part, Vietnam veterans knew what they did and were honorable in horrible conditions.
They ended up hearing that Afghanistan is the longest war this country fought, but here is the truth on that part.
Not that what was going on in 1968 excuses what happened, but you get the idea. This video is with MOH Sammy Davis Jr. and his wife Dixie. He is talking about what happened to him when he came home, just out of the hospital, after his actions were worthy of the Medal of Honor. It is cut in between one of the Nam Knights reading his citation, so that you can know the full power of his story, against what he came home to.
What I am getting at is simply, no matter how they were treated, they were always honorable, and like Sammy, did not give up on the American people, or themselves. Many went on to serve in other ways. Many more fought to make sure that no other veteran would ever, ever be treated like they were. Because of their efforts, courage and dignity, they managed to provide such a powerful force for good that the government finally had to do something about PTSD. Everything that came afterwards, was due to them. The thing is, they knew what was in their core and it was good. It was a desire to serve and a will to do whatever they could to prove who they really were inside. Today, they are cherished for obvious reasons, and now you know what the not so obvious ones are. So, if you are a member of Law Enforcement already, thank you for what you do for us everyday, no matter how you are treated in return. You show up everyday knowing it could be your last day. You save people from criminals, rush toward gunfire, respond to accidents and ever increasing mental health crisis situations.
ORLANDO, Fla. - An Orlando police officer is being honored for saving the life of a veteran who was threatening to commit suicide.On Sept. 3, Officer Wesley Cook responded to the report of an armed, suicidal man who was holding a knife to his throat in the 400 block of West Amelia Street.
This is not a job that people do because they do not care. It is a job you do because they care so much. It comes with a heavy price, so please, make sure that if you need help you ask for it. After all, you must know how important that is since you made it your career to help others.
Looking back over the reports from the last few days, it was stunning to see five living presidents, with their wives, gathered together to say farewell to one. Wonder what they were thinking? Wonder if they thought about their own funerals and what will be said by those who knew them, and what history told us about them? Somehow, I think that President Bush knew what would be said about him, that in the end, was the most important thing that can be said of anyone. He was a good man! The following is a great article but I pulled out a couple of things that stood out for me. At George H.W. Bush funeral, hope for a kinder, gentler America Chicago Tribune Dahleen Glanton December 5, 2018
President Donald Trump, from left, first lady Melania Trump, former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter attend the funeral of George H.W. Bush. (Alex Brandon/Getty-AFP)
"At this moment, we are desperately clinging to the promise that America once represented, hoping that somehow we can begin to live up to the greatness the world has come to expect of us and that we once expected of ourselves."
"Meacham called Bush “America’s last great soldier-statesman, a 20th-century founding father.”
But Bush’s Texas minister, the Rev. Russell Levenson, told us not to consider this the end to an era.“It doesn’t have to be,” he said. “ Perhaps it is an invitation to fill the hole that has been left behind.”
“My hunch is heaven, as perfect as it must be, just got a bit kinder and gentler,” he said in closing.
I don’t know about heaven. But maybe America can be."
Combat PTSD Wounded Times Kathie Costos December 5, 2018
Yet again, a report came out about how bad it is for our veterans when they come home. Younger veterans are committing suicide in higher percentages, but the facts are missing. The awful truth is they did not just fail this year, or last year, or five years ago, or even a decade ago. They failed for over 4 of them. Billions spent every year and billions made by businesses and charities making a profit off of suicides. That should have been a clue but contracts continued to be written and paid for, along with funerals. Police end up having to respond to someone finding a dead body, as well as respond when one of them is in a mental health crisis and someone called to get them help, only to have to draw their weapons against a veteran they came to help. That happened at least every week in 2017. This year, there were 22 public suicides where veterans ended their private hell while making a point to let people be aware of what they had driven them to that point. Hoping like hell that someone would pay attention and do something before another veteran lost their life to suicide.
They saw more and more kicked out of the military. 2,300,000 at last count, right after more speeches about how the DOD claimed they were ready to help them heal. Billions spent on "prevention training" that every member of the military had to take, yet every branch, every rank, every sex, every age group, lives though combat but dies afterwards by their own hands. We see National Guards and Reservists, return home without a clue they can heal, so they lose hope before they even try to take control of their lives again. How much are we willing to see while so many are oblivious to the charade? What expert has been fired for incompetence? What business has had to pay back the money they made off what they failed to deliver on? What charity has been held accountable for passing a slogan off as anything but something to benefit themselves? It isn't as if they had no way of knowing. Here is a direct quote from Wounded Times posted on May 29, 2009 about how it should have been known that if the DOD pushed resilience training, suicides would increase.
If you promote this program the way Battlemind was promoted, count on the numbers of suicides and attempted suicides to go up instead of down. It's just one more deadly mistake after another and just as dangerous as sending them into Iraq without the armor needed to protect them.
Yes, I predicted all this because I paid attention. I read reports and I listened to the veterans. No, I was not foolish enough to think the DOD or any of the "experts" would ever listen to someone like me, so not shocked this was ignored. The shocking thing is, they still have not figured it out!!! It didn't matter that the experts over at RAND Corp investigated this "training" in 2013 and showed why it would not work. Not bad enough that in 2012, suicides hit over 500, or even bad enough they have remained an average of 500 a year since then. It was not even bad enough for them to grasp the concept these men and women were ready to die to save someone else, but did not seek help to save their own lives. No, none of it was bad enough and today, we have a report where the VA and the DOD still say they have no clue!
Rising Suicide Rates Among Younger Veterans Trigger Alarm Bells at VA
Military.com By Richard Sisk December 4, 2018 Suicide rates among veterans 34 and younger have spiked in the last two years, leading the Department of Veterans Affairs to focus more on the 18-to-34-year-old age group than civilian programs for suicide prevention do, a top VA official said Tuesday.
She said another factor that has emerged in analyzing recent statistics has been the suicide rate among National Guard and Reserve veterans who never deployed to a combat zone.
Nearly four of the 20 veteran suicides a day were among National Guard and Reserve members who may have experienced trauma in national disaster duty, but were never in a combat zone, she added.
The number of suicides by veterans of all generations averages 22 each day. But "when we break down the numbers, the national numbers for veterans suicides, we're seeing an increased rate within 18-to-34-year-olds," said Dr. Keita Franklin, the VA's national director of suicide prevention.read the rest here
The thing to pay close attention to is this part
Franklin, who previously served as the Pentagon's Defense Suicide Prevention Office director, also noted that her civilian counterparts in suicide prevention are not facing the same rates of female suicides. "The fact that the female [veteran] rate is 1.8 times higher than their non-veteran counterpart is something we're concerned about."
I won a damn award back in 2008 for a video I did about National Guards and Reservists trying to deal with PTSD! So, if I knew, then why the hell didn't they know and do something about it? Like maybe what people like me had been doing for decades? Did anyone ask her about how suicides increased within the military and in the veterans' community and they still do not know why? Did anyone ask how it is that after over a decade of "efforts" by the DOD and the VA, this is the outcome?
Notice the number of veterans living has dropped by over 4 million, but the rate went up? Now consider how many years, how many times we have heard "one too many" and how they were focused on doing something about it. This is from the DOD up to June of this year.
And it is projected to remain about 500 for this year too when you look at the report, then factor in they have revised the numbers in the latest release.
Did anyone ask how it is there were thousands of "awareness raisers" running around the country collected over a billion per year and the suicides still happen even though the veterans are fully aware of all of it? It is time for us to demand answers, since Congress won't and reporters will not. How much longer are we going to all all of this to go on? When do we actually stand up and fight for the men and women who fight all of our battles? I am tired of having to try to explain all of this to families when it is too late to do them any good, and then have some "experts" say they still do not know what the hell to do!!! We've known for over 4 decades! When will they? They won't as long as we just let them get away with saying whatever they want.
Apple launches dedicated store for military and veterans with discounted iPhones, iPads, and more
9 to 5 Mac Michael Potuck Dec. 3rd 2018
Apple has today opened up a new online store for active military personnel and veterans to make purchasing its products at a discount more accessible. Different from its education pricing, eligible military customers will receive 10% off Apple products, and the new discounted pricing even includes iPhones, Apple Watch, accessories, and more.
Apple previously offered active military and veteran discounts in Apple Stores, but didn’t have a dedicated online store. It also mirrored the discounted education pricing, which meant no deals on products like iPhone, Apple Watch, Apple TV, accessories, and much more.
As reported by Steven Aquino, Apple’s new Veterans and Military Store webpage offers 10% off on what looks like all of its products. The new storefront comes just in time for the holiday season.
Apple shared the following statement with Aquino:
At Apple we are deeply grateful to the men and women of our armed forces. We’re proud to offer active military and veterans a new dedicated online store with special pricing as an expression of our gratitude for their brave service. One great aspect to this military discount is that immediate family members can take advantage of it, proving especially useful for active military who are currently deployed. The Veterans and Military Purchase Program (“Program”) is a benefit provided by Apple Inc. (“Apple”) to current and Veteran members of the U.S. Military, National Guard and Reserve. The Program is also offered to their immediate family members who also reside in their same household. The Program is intended for personal use only.read more here
