Man shoots and kills himself outside of White House. Don't get too excited, it wasn't him.

BREAKING: Secret Service personnel are responding to reports of a person who allegedly suffered a self-inflicted gun shot wound along the north fence line of @WhiteHouse.

— U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) March 3, 2018

Courtesy of NBC News:  

The Secret Service said Saturday afternoon that it was responding to reports of a man who "allegedly suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound" along the White House's north lawn fence. 

The security agency said that medical personnel had been called to respond to the male victim, but he was declared dead at the scene. His body remained there as of 2:15 p.m, according to the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. 

"The subject approached the vicinity of the North White House fence line and removed a concealed handgun and fired several rounds, none of which appear at this time to have been directed towards the White House," the Secret Service said in a statement. 

The agency said they had identified the shooter but were withholding his name until they could notify next of kin. The Metropolitan Police Department will lead an investigation into the shooting with the support of the Secret Service. 

The agency alerted the public to the incident following reports of a lock down at the White House. They added that there were no other reported injuries relating to the incident.

If you were like me you probably heard this story and for just one second you actually had hope.

But no it wasn't Donald Trump, it was just some poor bastard tired of living in Donald Trump's America.

I think we all know that Donald Trump's life will not end with a bullet, it will end when he reaches down to pick up a Chicken McNugget and the exertion causes his heart to explode.

And for those who may have actually worried about Trump's life, put your mind at ease. He was almost a thousand miles away in Mar-a-Lago avoiding the possibility of having to do his job, as usual.

To be honest I really do not want any harm to befall Donald Trump.

I would much rather have him hale and hearty when they drag him away in handcuffs.

I also think that we should mourn the fact that yet another life has been taken by the very constitutional right that so many conservatives want to convince us exists solely to protect us.

We almost had another mass school shooting the other day, but the young man decided only to take one life. His own.

Since Parkland, there have been two school shootings. One, a teacher had a gun. Two, a 7th grader had an assault rifle. The teacher hit no one, the 7th grader, at the last second, killed himself instead. Just FYI @Emma4Change, @davidhogg111 Words of the 7th grader below: pic.twitter.com/nRiuysiwUt

— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) March 2, 2018

Courtesy of the AP: 

A seventh-grader who shot and killed himself inside an Ohio middle school restroom last week was planning to shoot others at the school before changing his mind at the last second, a police chief said Thursday. 

The boy, 13-year-old Keith Simons, came out of the bathroom holding a semi-automatic rifle just before classes began and then abruptly went back inside and shot himself in the head, said Jackson Township Police Chief Mark Brink. 

Police don’t know why Simons didn’t carry out the attack and probably never will, the police chief said. “We should thank God every day, whatever made him change his mind,” Brink said. 

Investigators found messages on his cellphone that showed the teen had been planning an attack for at least a week at Jackson Middle School, near Massillon. He also showed admiration for the two students who carried out the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado nearly 19 years ago. 

“I’d hurt and destroy something bigger but my schools an easy target,” Simons wrote in one message found on his phone. 

“I want to leave a lasting impression on the world,” he said in another message written days before he took the.22-caliber gun to school on Feb. 20. “I’m going to die doing it.” 

The messages indicating he was planning a school shooting began a week earlier, the same day that 17 people died in the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Brink said.

That tweet up above is beyond chilling, and it reminds us that these school shooters often have no expectation of surviving their attack, so the idea of having armed teachers, or even more police, on site does not indicate that it would deter any of them.

I think it is hard for any of us of a certain age to remember what it was like to be an adolescent, but since I work with them all of the time I can tell you that they experience EVERY emotion more profoundly then we do as adults.

So crushes can quickly turn to obsessions. Depressions feel like the end of the world. And anger is all encompassing.

Most of us will navigate these emotional extremes without doing anything too disruptive to our lives.

But provided access to a deadly firearm, and suddenly a momentary emotional crisis can metastasize to an explosion of violence which can end multiple lives.

I hate when people call these shooters "evil" or "crazy."

No, they were likely mentally unstable or emotionally upset. Or a combination of the two.

In other words they are treatable just so long as you do not have to navigate a hail of bullets to reach them.

Widow of Kentucky politician who committed suicide in response to allegations of sexual misconduct will run for his now vacated seat.

Courtesy of Fox News: 

The wife of Kentucky State Rep. Dan Johnson, who killed himself on Wednesday amid a bombshell report's accusations of sexual assault, announced Thursday that she would pursue her husband’s seat, saying “his fight will go on.” 

Dan Johnson, a preacher and a Republican, committed suicide Wednesday on a bridge in Mt. Washington, according to Bullitt County Sheriff Donnie Tinnell. The coroner confirmed that Johnson died of a single gunshot wound to the head, and the weapon was found near the 57-year-old's body. 

The statement from Johnson’s widow, Rebecca, said she was running for the position because “these high-tech lynchings based on lies and half-truths can’t be allowed to win the day.” 

“Dan is gone but the story of his life is far from over,” she said.

I think the story of his life is that he was yet another over privileged white guy who hid behind religion while preying on young girls and when he got caught killed himself.

Seems pretty cut and dried to me.

Kentucky state representative commits suicide after denying allegations that he sexually molested a 17 year old girl.

Courtesy of WDRB: 

Kentucky State Rep. Dan Johnson, who was under investigation for alleged sexual molestation, died of a "probable suicide," the Bullitt County coroner said Wednesday night. 

Bullitt County Sheriff Donnie Tinnell said Johnson drove onto the bridge over the Salt River on Greenwell Ford Road in Mt. Washington, parked on the north side of it and shot himself in front of his car. His body was found on the bank of the river, just past the bridge. 

Just before 5 p.m. Wednesday, Johnson posted the following message on his Facebook page: 

"The accusations from NPR are false GOD and only GOD knows the truth, nothing is the way they make it out to be. AMERICA will not survive this type of judge and jury fake news . Conservatives take a stand. I LOVE GOD and I LOVE MY WIFE, who is the best WIFE in the world,My Love Forever ! My Mom and Dad my FAMILY and all five of my kids and Nine grandchildren two in tummies and many more to come each of you or a total gift from GOD stay strong, REBECCA needs YOU . 9-11-2001 NYC/WTC, PTSD 24/7 16 years is a sickness that will take my life, I cannot handle it any longer. IT Has Won This Life . BUT HEAVEN IS MY HOME. “PLEASE LISTEN CLOSELY, Only Three things I ask of you to do,if you love me is (1)blame no person,Satan is the accuser, so blame the Devil himself. (2) Forgive and Love everyone especially yourself .(3)most importantly LOVE GOD. P.S. I LOVE MY FRIENDS YOU ARE FAMILY ! GOD LOVES ALL PEOPLE NO MATTER WHAT !"

The coroner said police were alerted after someone saw that Facebook post by Johnson. Officers then pinged Johnson's phone and found his body.

Johnson was found dead of a bullet wound, and it appears that his Facebook post is a suicide note, so I do not think that the word "probable" is especially necessary in this case. 

Johnson, who called himself the "Pope," was known to post racist images of President Obama and his family on Facebook, and he originally addressed these allegations by denying them and then busting out a Christmas carol.

Former Fox News host Eric Bolling's son has died.

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

The 19-year-old son of former Fox News host Eric Bolling was found dead Friday. 

The cause of Eric Chase Bolling’s death remained unknown as of Saturday afternoon. 

The younger Bolling died hours after Fox News announced it was parting ways “amicably” with his father. The Fox personality came under fire after HuffPost published a report in August revealing that he had sent inappropriate text messages to current and former female colleagues.

The Huffington Post did not identify the cause of death, perhaps out of respect, but TMZ did:  

Well placed FNC sources tell TMZ ... Eric Chase died from a drug overdose. We're told he was having a hard time dealing with the trouble his dad was having at the network. Our sources say he was extremely embarrassed by the stories and was "emotionally upset."

If this is accurate, and I am pretty sure it must be or I don't think TMZ would have written it, this is incredibly sad news.

I almost did not post this today because I worried that people who do not like Bolling would say hateful things.

I also really do not like Eric Bolling, but he is a parent who just lost his only child.

Right now there is nothing that matters at all except for that. Not the fact that he worked for a cable station that has worked to destroy journalism in this country, not the hateful things he has said about President Obama, not even the fact that he sexually harassed the women who worked with him.

The ONE thing that matters is that this man just lost his only child.

I think the majority of us here are parents so I know you can imagine what that must feel like.

There is literally NO pain I can imagine that would hurt as much as the pain he must be feeling right now.

And if TMZ is right, and the suicide was the result of Bolling's behaviors at work and the loss of that job,......well....there are simply no words to express what that must feel like.

So as one human being to another, I am deeply sorry for Mr. Bolling's loss and only want to express my most heartfelt condolences.

People are literally dying to get out of Alaska.

(Statistics provided by the American foundation for Suicide Prevention.) 

We have been a leader in this unfortunate category for as long as I can remember.

I personally have never had any suicidal thoughts and remain untouched by SAD, or any other  depression causing maladies.

In fact I am typically a little too chipper, which often irritates those around me.

I DID once briefly work on a suicide hotline, but I was unable to empathize with their situation and kept wanting to say "Get over it slugger, tomorrow will be better day," which was not one of the sanctioned responses we were supposed to provide.

Simply put, I just don't get it. 

Of course suicide is not the only unfortunate circumstance where Alaska leads the nation, we also have three times the number of rapes per capita than the national average, and we are in the top ten states with the highest homicide rate per capita.

When people say they want to move to Alaska I always say "Are you positive?"

This place is gorgeous and awe inspiring to be sure, but it is also often harsh and unforgiving. So if you are not a fairly tough person, with a positive outlook, you are undoubtedly about to become a statistic.

And not one of the good ones. 

Republican operative who reached out to Russia for Hillary Clinton hacked emails committed suicide.

Courtesy of TPM: 

Peter W. Smith, the Republican operative who sought to obtain and publicize emails he thought were stolen from Hillary Clinton’s private server, committed suicide days after he told a reporter about his efforts, according to the Chicago Tribune. 

The Chicago Tribune reported Thursday night, citing a Minnesota state death record filed in Olmsted County, that Smith killed himself on May 14 days after he talked to the Wall Street Journal about his hunt for Clinton’s emails. That account was also included in a medical examiner’s report and a Rochester police report, according to the Tribune. 

Smith left a statement police referred to as a suicide note, according to the report, in which he said there was “NO FOUL PLAY WHATSOEVER” involved in his death.

"No Foul Play Whatsoever." Who leaves a suicide note like that?

Yeah nothing suspicious about THAT.

This would have been the big story today, if not for that revelation about additional Russians involved in the Trump Junior meeting.

And as far as I'm concerned he certainly deserves more attention from the media.

Man kills wife, child, and himself with handgun. Just another day in the NRA's America.

Courtesy of Yahoo News:  

A man shot and killed his wife and 8-year-old daughter before turning the gun on himself at a luxury high-rise apartment building, authorities said. 

The bodies of Michael Stasko, Melissa Stasko and 8-year-old Mellie Stasko were found Friday night at the Windsor at Mariners Tower, an apartment building on the bank of the Hudson River in Edgewater, Bergen County prosecutor John Molinelli said. 

Authorities said a .45-caliber handgun with hollow-point bullets was found where 53-year-old watch salesman Michael Stasko shot and killed his 49-year-old wife and their daughter before killing himself. 

Michael Stasko had a gunshot wound under his chin. His wife and daughter had been shot in the backs of their heads. The shootings could have happened as long ago as Tuesday or Wednesday, and a possible motive was under investigation, authorities said.

If a gun is used in a America it is used for something like THIS far, far more often than it is used to keep a person safe or defend property.

Owning a gun means that domestic conflicts, depression, or jealousy often leads to the shooting death of somebody that in other circumstances would lead a long and productive life.

The reason so many white men are dying might be directly tied to the 2nd Amendment that they believe in so fervently.

I found this to be a very interesting, and very informative video.

It is also just another example to prove that easy access to guns means death is always just moments away.

Remember that "hero" cop that was supposedly shot and killed in the line of duty in Illinois? Well as it turns out he was not a hero, and he took his own life.

Lt. "GI Joe" Gliniewicz

So I am sure that many of you remember this story of the cop who was found shot to death with his own weapon after radioing into his precinct that he was supposedly getting ready to confront three "suspects," two white, one black.


There were some questions even at the beginning of the investigation that some things simply did not add up.

And as it turns out that was an understatement.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

Investigators never found the men suspected of killing Lt. “GI Joe” Gliniewicz. Not for lack of effort, not for lack of evidence, and not for enough tips. 

The men didn’t exist. 

The three vaguely described suspects, “two male white, one male black,” were apparently a product of Gliniewicz’s imagination, ginned up to make himself go out like a hero. 

Fox Lake police on Wednesday said Gliniewicz’s death was a “carefully staged suicide.” Gliniewicz had been stealing and laundering thousands of dollars from the police department’s youth auxiliary program for personal purchases, the department said. The purchases included gym memberships, porn websites, and mortgage payments. 

Perhaps Gliniewicz believed his alleged theft was in danger of being uncovered. If he was caught, his life as he knew it—gung ho cop, patriotic Army veteran, spectacular father, loving husband—would be over.

Now while it is important to note that this one guy faking his own murder does not mean that there are not police officers out there who are in actual danger of being killed in the line of duty, it is interesting to note that many in the conservative media used the death of Lt. Gliniewicz to illustrate what has being called the "war on cops" that they were blaming on President Obama and the protest group "Black Live Matter."

Even though statistics prove that this narrative is false, it is still being promoted all across the internet.

So what does this one faked death tell us?

Well nothing really, except that one should always wait for the evidence before jumping on the "Blame Obama" bandwagon.

But honestly, is there any chance of THAT ever happening?

New research sticks a pin in the conceal carry fantasy embraced by so many Ammosexuals.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

The more that sensational gun violence afflicts the nation, the more that the myth of the vigilant citizen packing a legally permitted concealed weapon, fully prepared to stop the next mass shooter in his tracks, is promoted. 

This foolhardy notion of quick-draw resistance, however, is dramatically contradicted by a research project showing that, since 2007, at least 763 people have been killed in 579 shootings that did not involve self-defense. Tellingly, the vast majority of these concealed-carry, licensed shooters killed themselves or others rather than taking down a perpetrator. 

The death toll includes 29 mass killings of three or more people by concealed carry shooters who took 139 lives; 17 police officers shot to death, and — in the ultimate contradiction of concealed carry as a personal safety factor — 223 suicides. Compared with the 579 non-self-defense, concealed-carry shootings, there were only 21 cases in which self-defense was determined to be a factor. 

Clearly, concealed carry does not transform ordinary citizens into superheroes. Rather, it compounds the risks to innocent lives, particularly as state legislatures, bowing to the gun lobby, invite more citizens to venture out naïvely with firearms in more and more public places, including restaurants, churches and schools. 

Of course this conceal carry mythology is also supported by the entertainment industry which features celebrities like Tom Cruise,  Keanu Reeves, and Jason Stratham producing and firing their weapons with lightning speed and unerring accuracy.

In reality even supposedly well trained law enforcement professionals often cannot unholster their weapons fast enough to protect themselves or to fire it accurately once in their hands.

You can see a little of what I am talking about by watching this video of martial artist Dan Insanto attacking actual police officers in training against knife attacks.

Another problem with the conceal carry folks is the false sense of invulnerability that they often assume while armed. In truth they are still incredibly vulnerable to attack, perhaps in some cases even more so, with the added bonus of being able to fire bullets into the air and endangering all of those in their immediate vicinity.

No, as virtually ALL research demonstrates the best way to protect ourselves against being shot, is to restrict access to guns and to limit the number of firearms in our communities.

I know that goes against virtually everything we are taught about our shoot first ask questions later  American mythology, but that does not make it any less of a fact.

This is what some Christians consider courage in the face of gun violence in this country.

Of course Sarah Palin never had an original idea in her life, so this one seems to have come from presidential hopeful Ben Carson.

It is shameful that Palin and Carson would use this tragedy to further the myth of Christan persecution instead of addressing the actual problem.

And speaking of the actual problem Carson has something incredibly ignorant to say about that as well.

Courtesy of Breitbart: 

“Well, obviously, there are going to be those who are going to be calling for gun control,” Carson said in an interview with Hugh Hewitt on Thursday. “But you know, that happens every time we have one of these incidents. Obviously, that’s not the issue. The issue is the mentality of these people. And we need to be looking at the mentality of these individuals and seeing if there are any early warning clues that we can gather that will help us as a society to be able to identify these people ahead of time.”

Okay let me lay a little truth on this moron.

The VAST MAJORITY of gun deaths are not perpetrated by individuals with a diagnosed mental illness, and in fact most of them would easily pass a mental health screening.

The fact is that people get angry, sad, jealous, and scared.

Most often these are a temporary state of mind. And eventually this person will get over it and live a relatively healthy and long life.

However when firearms are readily available it provides the means to turn what is a minor glitch in a person's state of mind into a life altering event.

When Australia was confronted with their own gun massacre, they did not dick around talking about mental health, they passed some comprehensive laws. Which included the following:

At the heart of the push was a massive buyback of more than 600,000 semi-automatic shotguns and rifles, or about one-fifth of all firearms in circulation in Australia. The country’s new gun laws prohibited private sales, required that all weapons be individually registered to their owners, and required that gun buyers present a “genuine reason” for needing each weapon at the time of the purchase. (Self-defense did not count.) In the wake of the tragedy, polls showed public support for these measures at upwards of 90 percent.

The end result was a dramatic decrease in gun related deaths, including by suicide. And perhaps most dramatic of all is that there has not been ONE mass shooting since the laws were put in place.

So if Sarah Palin and Ben Carson want to show their courage, then they should put down those ridiculous signs and instead call on their followers to defy the NRA and write to their Representatives to tell them to start working on some comprehensive legislation that will keep students safe in their classrooms, movie goers safe in their seats, and Americans safe while walking down the streets of their own neighborhoods.

This is the country we live in today. 

Source

 And if we want to change that, we need to stop being such candy asses and get serious about taking on a lobby that cares more about selling guns than it does about human lives.

Gun massacres garner all of the headlines, but statistically gun suicides account for far more fatalities.

Courtesy of The New York Times:  

The grisly carnage from mass shootings regularly attracts the nation’s focus as a public safety issue, if only fleetingly. But the highest death toll from guns by far continues to be the far less noticed wave of suicides — nearly 20,000 a year — by Americans whose easy access to guns presents an irresistible temptation in a critical moment of despair. 

Suicide accounts for two-thirds of the 30,000-plus gun deaths each year, as more than half of all suicides are carried out by firearms, according to the latest federal data. 

If it takes a sensational statistic to spur national concern about such self-destruction, consider the latest research showing that 82 percent of teenage suicides by firearms involve guns left poorly secured or foolishly unprotected by members of their families. These young lives are impulsively lost in supposedly safe home environments, where just the presence of a gun has been found to increase the risk of suicide three times, according to a new report by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun safety organization. 

The report also notes that 85 percent of people attempting suicide by gun succeed, while drug overdose, the main method chosen for suicide attempts, is fatal only 2 percent of the time. Ninety percent of those who fail in a suicide attempt embrace their second chance at life and do not eventually die by suicide.

As somebody who has worked the hotline and dealt with people going through depression, I can certainly attest to the fact that surviving suicide has less to do with access to therapeutic intervention than it does to the lack of access to guns.

I have taken the call from a person who took prescription medication and needed help. They lived.

But the person with the gun rarely takes the time to call. And if they do it is often only so that somebody can listen to bang as they end their pain.

I knew a young woman whose first and last day manning the phones involved such an incident.

I am all for making it harder to get assault style weapons (What kind of idiot needs one of those anyhow?), and increasing the number and effectiveness of background checks, but I also would like to see laws passed that held people accountable for injuries and deaths caused by guns that they own.

If you have a gun laying around your house, easily accessible, and somebody uses it to take a life, even their own, then you do jail time. Period.

And yes I know that when people talk suicide that the knee jerk reaction from gun nuts is to start talking for the need to increase mental health services. But let me explain that most gun suicides are due to temporary depression, and NOT long term mental illness.

You could throw trillions of dollars into funding mental illness (And I wish they would because I could use a raise.), and it will do NOTHING to stop people from killing themselves or others with guns.

No you stop gun deaths by reducing the number of guns, and holding gun owners accountable for the violence caused by their guns. In my opinion it is as simple as that.

It looks like between two or three people have committed suicide in response to the Ashly Madison hack.

Courtesy of the BBC: 

Two individuals associated with the leak of Ashley Madison customer details are reported to have taken their lives, according to police in Canada. 

The police revealed the news at a press conference in Toronto but gave no further information about the deaths. 

Ashley Madison's Canadian parent company Avid Life Media is offering a C$500,000 (£240,000) reward for information about the hackers, they added. 

Over 33m account details were stolen.

There is also a report that a Texas police officer has also taken his own life in repose to the hack: 

Meanwhile, another report said a US police officer from Texas had also taken his life, days after his name was linked to the website. 

Captain Michael Gorhum, who had served for 25 years with the San Antonio Police Department, killed himself last week.

There are also reports that some people with accounts are being blackmailed.

I think it's time to stop gloating over the hypocrites who have been outed by this hack, and start worrying about those who let their fantasies get the best of them. 

Uh oh! it looks like Bristol Palin's fiance has some 'spalining to do.

I just want to wish the best mother I know a Happy Mothers Day! Thank you for being the amazing woman that you are! @bsmp2 #mother #futurewife #outpfmyleague #shesthebest #13days #NeverOutGunned

A photo posted by Dakota (@dakotameyer0317) on May 10, 2015 at 6:40pm PDT

So this was the Mother's Day post put up by Dakota yesterday.

Sweet, right?

Boy that Bristol is one lucky gal. She is about to marry an honest to goodness war hero who has been saving himself until she came along.

Though it is kind of odd that he waited until his late twenties to finally tie the knot.

What's that you say? He didn't wait?

Nope he sure didn't.

Let's see Dakota married a Cassandra Marie Wain, a woman two years his senior, in May of 2008, when Dakota was only nineteen years old. And they were married in the Shiloh Cumberland Presbyterian Church near Campbellsville, KY.

Hmm, now though there is a record of the actual marriage, I have as yet been unable to find any record of a divorce.

I'm not saying there isn't one, just that there is no online information to confirm that there's one.

Meyer's Wikipedia page does not even mention the marriage, though of course it has been updated to include his recent engagement to Bristol. (By the way that engagement ring really was bought by Sarah.)

I located a Facebook page for Cassandra Marie Wain, and she is a beautiful young lady so one can only imagine what caused the breakup. However it was a year after they were married that Dakota recovered those bodies in Afghanistan that earned him the Medal of Honor, and of course triggered his PTSD. So that might have been it.

Okay so now we know that Bristol's fiance is a suicidal, PTSD suffering, ex-soldier, whose previous marriage failed.

Sounding better and better all of the time, don't you think?

Ted Nugent claims that veterans are committing suicide because President Obama is the "enemy."

Courtesy of Mediaite:  

Speaking at the Lincoln Day Dinner of the Republican Party of Maricopa County, Arizona this past week, the conservative rocker shared this charming message with the crowd in attendance. 

“Here’s your job, Republican Party,” Nugent said. “20-25 of those guys kill themselves every day, and they haven’t told you why, and they haven’t told anybody else why, but they told me why: because the Commander-in-Chief is the enemy.”

First off the dramatic uptick in veteran suicides was a problem even back during the Bush administration, so it clearly cannot be blamed on President Obama. 

Secondly does anybody truly belief that anybody contemplating taking their own life would share their reason with this corpulent mound of fecal material?

No this is yet another unwarranted attack on Presdient Obama, callously using the suicides of our veterans as a bludgeon, from the an individual who was such a coward that he chose to soil himself rather than risk injury or death while serving his country.

Apparently Bristol's new fiance Dakota Meyer has never sought treatment for his PTSD, despite a heavily publicized suicide attempt.

So in the above video, if you go to the 10:57, Meyers describes the suicide attempt:

"I was going down, and I was drinking probably a bottle, to a bottle and  half of Crown a day. Just living my life that way. I didn't care about anything. I felt like I was becoming a burden on everybody else. I just pulled my car over one day and I was like 'You know what I'm done. I'm done.' I always keep a gun in my vehicle, and I always keep my guns loaded, all of them are always loaded, so I don't have to worry about it. And you know I pulled the gun out, put it to my head, and squeezed the trigger and it went 'click.'"

Meyer goes on to claim that somebody must have unloaded his gun the day before, which is the only thing that saved him.

He goes on to claim that he made a deal with himself that if he did not try it again in that car, and drove away instead, that he would never do it again. (And of course as we know we simply never break deals we make with ourselves.)

I have to say that if Meyer is accurate as to how quickly he pulled the gun, placed it to his head, and pulled the trigger, that indicates that he was serious and did not even stop to question his actions until AFTER the gun failed to fire.

That gives every indication of a person who is a serious suicide risk and requires a serious invention.

However it appears that he did not get that intervention.

At the 12:26 mark the female host, Cristina Ferrare, straight out asks Meyer if he received any psychiatric help or counseling after the suicide attempt or is receiving any now:

" No, no I don't. You know I don't ahh. When they sent me back fro Afghanistan  I was sent to a PTSD rehab center for precautionary measures. Um I was in there and..uh..you know it gave me knowledge on it, but I've never seeked (sic) help." 

Okay first off if he was sent to a PTSD rehab center then there was very likely something in his psychological profile which suggested that he needed counseling. And of course the suicide attempt essentially proves that.

Secondly surviving one attempt at suicide, in no way inoculates you from future attempts. It's not like catching the measles.

Thirdly if there was significant alcohol use back when he made that first attempt, and there has been no counseling of any kind, then it is quite likely that alcohol may still play a significant role in his life.

And fourthly he is about to marry a Palin!

I'm sorry but if you were not prone to alcoholism or suicide before......

Okay all that I'm saying is that there are so many red flags here that I can barely see past them.

In my opinion if Sarah were serious about putting her children first, and not simply using them to attract favorable publicity, she would be counseling Bristol to slow down and plan on a long engagement instead of rushing to the altar.

Project uses shocking images of veterans to illustrate the dangers of PTSD.

Courtesy of Addicting Info:  

There are 21.8 million veterans living in the United States. Out of those millions, about 1.3 million are living without insurance, and 60,000 of them are homeless. However, the struggles of veterans don’t end there – as photographer Devin Mitchell points out in a series called the Veteran Vision Project, which sets out to reveal the struggles of America’s veterans with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). 

Some of these images may be difficult to view, as Mitchell captures the raw emotions of what some veterans deal with on a daily basis. Throughout the series, it’s clear that even if a veteran returns home unscathed, the emotional scars are sometimes far deeper and more painful. 

To execute this project, Mitchell went to every participating veterans’ home and allowed them to have free rein on how they expressed what PTSD feels like to them. From their clothing to their props, each veteran’s photo resulted in a deeply personal look into their lives and how they’ve been affected. 

Here is a short documentary featuring some of the subjects feelings on PTSD and suicide.

This is what the photographer Devin Mitchell had to say to Buzzfeed about PTSD and suicide:“From the beginning of the project, it was my mission to let veterans say whatever they want through my photographs,” Mitchell told BuzzFeed News. “Many people who do projects on veterans only want to take a particular angle. I want to explore all of the issues, all of the darkness.”

“I think I can safely say that every person in the military has been affected by suicide,” Mitchell said. “Whether it’s something they’ve tried, or considered, or has impacted someone close to them.”

What I know about PTSD is that it often goes undiagnosed, and that if it remains hidden it is quite literally like a time bomb waiting to go off. And even if diagnosed, if there is no appropriate treatment, the timer keeps right on counting down.

Now that's not to say that Bristol Palin's new fiance is necessarily in the category. I mean it's not like his eyes betray any significant lack of sanity or anything.

    Of course I could be wrong about that.

Radar Online, who are usually all pro-Palin, are not at all sure that Bristol should marry Dakota Meyer.

Courtesy of Radar Online:

RadarOnline.com can reveal that the heroic former Marine and 2009 Medal of Honor recipient has detailed his battle with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and all it’s complications. 

Meyer revealed his PTSD and depression worsened after he returned from battle and began thinking about his fellow soldiers who had lost their lives in Afghanistan. 

“I would question things. It was a lack of confidence,” he said during one interview with Fox News. “I was second-guessing myself, thinking ‘I’m just not normal,’ and I’m trying to figure thing out. I’m trying to make reason of what happened and how to go on from this point forward.” 

He grew so despondent that he nearly committed suicide. 

“I was going down the road, and I was tired of being a burden on my family,” he said in 2012. “I was just tired of it all, and it just seemed like the easy way out. I pulled over to the side of the road and I pulled one of my guns out. I just put it to my head and squeezed the trigger. How there wasn’t a round there, I don’t know.”

So according to Meyer he not only thought about committing suicide, he actually attempted it, and would have succeeded if the gun had been loaded. 

I can tell you as somebody who has counseled people considering suicide that this is usually when somebody is hospitalized or enters long term therapy. 

It is also an indication that this person might make a similar choice in the future, if they get depressed again. And let's face it, we know that's coming.

Meyer also claims that he doesn't buy that PTSD is a valid defense against murder. His exact words were: 

“PTSD does not put you in the mind set to go out and kill innocent people,” continued Meyer, noting his own experiences with the disorder. “The media label this shooting PTSD, but if what that man did is PTSD, then I don’t have it.”

Well he is wrong there.  People with PTSD have definitely acted out in violence against others, more often than not a loved one. Besides I think Meyer is failing to recognize that wanting to kill yourself is just on the other side of the coin from wanting to kill others. 

Personally I can tell you that if I had a patient with PTSD, and a history of suicidal tendencies, I would strongly suggest that they remove all of their guns from the home and avoid drinking more than a beer or two a night. Forever.

I have to say that as much as dislike Bristol, I certainly do not want her to become just another statistic. However to be honest, it is really Tripp that I am the most concerned about right now.

Former Guantanamo Bay guard claims that CIA murdered three detainees and made it look like suicide.

Courtesy of News.com.au:  

A Former Guantanamo Bay guard has spoken for the first time about what he claims was a CIA murder of detainees, covered up as a triple suicide. 

Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman was on guard at the Cuban prison camp on the night they died, and calls the official version of events “impossible”. 

“They would have had to all three tie their hands and feet together, shove rags down their throats, put a mask over their face, made a noose, hung it from the ceiling on the side of the cellblock, jumped into the noose and hung themselves simultaneously,” the ex-Marine told Vice News in an explosive video interview. 

“In a cellblock where guards are ordered to check on detainees every four minutes.” 

There had also been an inspection of the cellblock only a few hours earlier, Hickman said, and guards had found nothing detainees might use to make the nooses and rags. 

Hickman tried for years to put the nightmare of his time at Guantanamo behind him, but eventually he was forced to confront his past. 

He has now written a book, Murder at Camp Delta, which he hopes will be a step towards finding out the truth.

And just when I thought I could not be any more disturbed by what the CIA did with terrorism suspects. 

If this is not disturbing enough for you trust me it gets worse.  

The three men were Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, 37, from Yemen, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, 30, from Saudi Arabia, and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, 22, also from Saudi Arabia. 

Al-Zahrani had been imprisoned at Guantanamo since he was captured at 17. None of the men had been charged with a crime.

Now you may be asking yourself WHY the CIA would do such a thing, the answer is both simple and horrifying.

But why would the authorities want to kill these men and make their deaths look like suicide? 

Hickman says it’s because the three were regular hunger strikers, who incited others to do the same. 

“They had a policy that if a detainee is hunger-striking, he cannot be interrogated,” said Hickman. “In 2006, they were doing roughly 200 interrogations a week, so any massive hunger-strike would, what they consider, cripple the intelligence value. 

“I believe the number-one mission in JTF-GTMO (Joint Task Force Guantanamo) at the time was, stop the hunger strikes at all costs. 

“I think you get rid of the people that provoked the hunger strikes and you get rid of the problem. 

“After the deaths there were no hunger strikes for a long period of time.”

You know as much as I don't want to think that our government agencies are capable of this kind of thing, from what we have learned this last decade  they are capable of not only this but much, much more.