Happiness is a warm gun, bang bang, shoot shoot

A quick round up of Veteran's issues:

GOP amendment allows ‘mentally incapacitated’ vets to buy guns

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A press release issued by Republican North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr explained his reasoning
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"Currently, when the Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA) appoints a fiduciary to assist a veteran with managing their financial affairs, VA also deems the veteran mentally incompetent and reports him or her to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)," Burr's release wrote. "The Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act would require a judicial body to deem a veteran, surviving spouse, or child as a danger to himself or others before being listed in NICS, which would prohibit the veteran from being able to purchase certain firearms.

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Camp Lejeune whistle-blower fired
A psychiatrist who tried to prevent Fort Hood-style violence among Marines about to "lose it" instead loses his job

Last April, two Marines at Camp Lejeune predicted to a psychiatrist that some Marine back from war was going to "lose it." Concerned, the psychiatrist asked what that meant. One of the Marines responded, "One of these guys is liable to come back with a loaded weapon and open fire."
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Upon returning home, troops suffering mental health problems were getting dumped into an overwhelmed healthcare system that responded ineptly to their crises, the men reported, and they also faced harassment from Marine Corps superiors ignorant of the severity of their problems and disdainful of those who sought psychiatric help.

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God, the Army, and PTSD

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“God doesn’t like ugly,” one political appointee told Paul Sullivan, an analyst in the VA’s Veterans Benefits Administration, in a clumsy attempt to reduce the cost of caring for psychologically traumatized veterans. “You need to make the numbers lower.”
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Sullivan was working as an analyst at the Veterans Benefits Administration in Washington in early 2005 when he was called to a meeting with a top political appointee at the VA, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Michael McLendon. McLendon, an intensely focused man in a neatly pressed suit, kept a Bible on his desk at the office. Sullivan explained to McLendon and the other attendees that the rise in benefits claims the VA was noticing was caused partly by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who were suffering from PTSD. “That’s too many,” McLendon said, then hit his hand on the table. “They are too young” to be filing claims, and they are doing it “too soon.” He hit the table again. The claims, he said, are “costing us too much money,” and if the veterans “believed in God and country . . . they would not come home with PTSD.”

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GOP senator slammed for being lone holdout blocking veterans’ health bill

And why, for dog's sake, why would he block the bill? Senator Coburn said he will remove the hold if Senators approve amendments he has proposed.

So this moron threatens to take his ball and go home if the other 99 senators don't pass his amendments. (Senate - n. definition: A dysfunctional political body that is elected by the people and controlled by lobbyists and obstructed by one f**king moron.)

I'd like to say I'm outraged, but the truth is that nothing these people do or say anymore shocks me. The lies, the hypocrisy, the hate mongering have become SOP for the GOP.

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak