Krugman on Hillary: The country doesn't want another leader with an infallibility complex

Spot on.

For the last six years we have been ruled by men who are pathologically incapable of owning up to mistakes. And this pathology has had real, disastrous consequences. The situation in Iraq might not be quite so dire — and we might even have succeeded in stabilizing Afghanistan — if Mr. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney had been willing to admit early on that things weren’t going well or that their handpicked appointees weren’t the right people for the job....

The base is remarkably forgiving toward Democrats who supported the war. But the base and, I believe, the country want someone in the White House who doesn’t sound like another George Bush. That is, they want someone who doesn’t suffer from an infallibility complex, who can admit mistakes and learn from them....

Mrs. Clinton’s problem. For some reason she and her advisers failed to grasp just how fed up the country is with arrogant politicians who can do no wrong. I don’t think she falls in that category; but her campaign somehow thought it was still a good idea to follow Karl Rove’s playbook, which says that you should never, ever admit to a mistake. And that playbook has led them into a political trap.

Read the rest of this post...

Anglican bigots

Anglican leaders have sided with a backward, bigoted Nigerian bishop in a battle with the US Episcopal church over what to do about gays. They just threw the gays, and the US Episcopal Church, to the lions.

Who would Jesus hate? Read the rest of this post...

Army now claims it's fixing Walter Reed mess. Yeah, right. Abuse me once, shame you...

Yeah, right. We're to believe that "now" the Army is getting serious about helping the Iraq and Afghanistan war vets, only because the Army has been terribly embarrassed by a series of articles in the Washington Post and the Army Times over the past couple days. I don't buy it for a minute. These bastards didn't give a damn about our troops. George Bush, the Republican congress, and the highest levels of the military abused our injured and maimed troops for over five years now, and suddenly after the media embarrasses the hell out of them, now we're to believe that they suddenly care about the same men and women they've been outright and serially abusing? Bull. These people have proven time and again how little care they have for our war veterans. The hell we're going to trust them now. And in any case, just how are they going to catch up on their inept backlog of 600,000 disability claims? With spitballs?

Congress needs to intervene now. We need hearings, we need legislation. We need to know who did this, and how it's going to be fixed. We need to hear from our leaders in Congress about this now. Read the rest of this post...

Pentagon intentionally hiding 1/2 of Iraq injured and wounded -- no wonder the health care budget for those troops isn't enough

I've been asking myself the last two days why the Pentagon and George Bush's White House dont seem to have asked for enough money to provide for the health care needs of all of our injured and wounded vets coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Did they not know how many of our soldiers would be hurt and live? Or, did they know the number of injured and wounded who would return, but didn't tell congress because that would require admitting that the "real" cost of the war is, at the very least, several times more expensive than what we've already spent? Or is it that the Pentagon and White House folks handling all of this are simply inept morons?

It seems to be option 2, cover-up.

First, here is what Harvard Professor Linda Bilmes uncovered:

The central argument of the new Bilmes paper is that so many soldiers are being injured that the costs of caring for them over their lifetimes is likely to be $350 billion, or up to twice that, depending on how long the war lasts. The high cost is the result of huge advances in military medicine that have greatly reduced the chances that a soldier injured in Iraq will die. As a result, the ratio of injuries to deaths — 16:1 by her estimate — is higher than in any other war in U.S. history. (By comparison, in Vietnam the ratio was 2.8:1 and in World War II the ratio was 1.6:1.)

Wonkette explains what happened next:

Turns out the VA “misunderstood” the DoD numbers, because the Pentagon doesn’t want anybody adding up the 25,000 or so troops hurt in “non combat” situations to the 22,000 or so it admits have been injured in battle.

Blimes says it hardly matters if somebody falls off a ladder or gets blown apart by insurgents — if they survive, they will be in the VA health-care system for the rest of their lives. A soldier shot by “friendly fire” is no less hurt than one hit by whoever it is we’re supposedly fighting over there.

As for the Pentagon, it has ensured Blimes will never find those numbers on DoD websites again, because all the damning evidence has just been changed on the military websites.

The publication Insider Higher Ed then nails the Pentagon to the wall about their lies:

Smith, the Pentagon spokeswoman, does not dispute Bilmes on the point that soldiers are entitled to health care regardless of how they are injured. “They are all cared for,” she said. So if Bilmes is correct that she’s counting injured veterans who are entitled to health care and the source for her data is the U.S. government (before the Pentagon had the public data changed), why is Smith issuing statements saying that Bilmes is engaging in “gross distortion,” as she said in an e-mail? And why is a top Pentagon official calling Harvard suggesting that numbers are erroneous when they are just not the numbers the Pentagon wants out?

So there you have it. The Pentagon and the White House know perfectly well how many wounded and injured we have and how much it's going to cost. They're simply lying about the numbers so as to keep the public in the dark, and buck up support for the war. Sure, it screws our injured and maimed vets because there's now not enough money to provide them with the health care they need and deserve. But hey, no one ever said the Pentagon and the White House really gave a damn about the troops, so why start now? Read the rest of this post...

Civil Unions start in NJ

We can't let today pass without noting that it's the first day same-sex couples could sign up for civil unions in New Jersey. Lots of coverage in the traditional media. Here's the NY Times article. But, the best coverage I've seen has been over at Blue Jersey including video of the first civil union in the state.

Also, check out Blue Jersey's Think Equal campaign. They've got some of the best -- and only -- ads on the issue of gay marriage. Says a lot that a couple of young straight guys, Juan Melli and Jack Bohrer, have come up with some of the most compelling arguments for same sex marriage equality. Read the rest of this post...

Congressional oversight on Iran

Several commenters and emails asked me, in response to the ongoing Iran discussion, What can be done? I was doing some research to address the question when, as often happens, I stumbled across a piece that already does what I was attempting, in this case laying out a way to deal appropriately with the accusations that Iran is significantly and purposefully contributing to the deaths of U.S. troops in Iraq.

It's not that I don't think it's a big deal that Iran is wreaking havoc; rather, I don't think Iran is actually having a huge negative effect in Iraq. I'm extremely skeptical of the administration's honesty in these matters, and I'm disinclined to believe sketchy reports that just happen to provide basis for crazy neocon goals and theories (that hasn't gone so well in the past). Still, just because the accusations seem ridiculous doesn't mean they're definitely false, but we shouldn't just take the administration's word for it. And if Iran really is such a huge factor in Iraq, I want Congress in on the response, rather than ceding this whole issue to the president.

Thankfully, we have a Democratic-controlled Congress to take action, and Jim Henley over at Unqualified Offerings offers guidelines, giving specific details and saying, in part:

The Administration is making specific testable claims about Iranian arming of Iraqi militias. Congress needs to announce that, as part of its constitutional authority to declare, or not declare, war, it will audit those claims independently . . . a unilateral executive decision to attack Iran on the basis of unaudited claims merits nothing but opposition. So does a Congressional decision to shirk its responsibilities under the constitution by taking the word of another branch of government, especially in light of the sad history of the last five years.

The details of how this would work are explicated quite well -- the whole post is very much worth reading -- and the necessity for Congressional leadership and oversight on this is crucial. Read the rest of this post...

3 suicide car-bombers launch coordinated attack against US base in Iraq

We know these are lies, all lies since George Bush and his cronies just told us the surge was working. Read the rest of this post...

Novak: House GOP fired Veterans-friendly committee chair in order to "save money"

We now know how the Bush administration got away with years of providing such paltry support to our injured and maimed veterans from the Iraq war and Afghanistan. The Republican congressional leadership forcibly removed the GOP House committee chair in charge of overseeing veterans. Why? He was too vet-friendly, too interested in meeting the growing needs of our war veterans, and the Republicans wanted to save money at the expense of our injured and maimed veterans.

And I quote Robert Novak, one of the most conservative Republican columnists in existence:

[T]he House Republican leadership had removed [GOP] Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey as chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. The extraordinary purge buttressed the growing impression of arrogance as Republicans enter their second decade of power in the House.

The party's House leaders purportedly removed Smith, a tireless promoter of spending for veterans, to save money....

The leadership's problem with Smith has been his insatiable desire to make life better for veterans during 24 years on the Veterans Affairs committee (six years as vice chairman, four years as chairman).

Next up on AMERICAblog: Where was Maine GOP Senator Susan Collins all these years while the Bush administration was abusing our veterans and she was in charge of Senate oversight of the Bush administration? Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

For obvious reasons, we're doing a lot of veterans' coverage this week. But we'll still fit in the other news. Feel free to use this open thread as you wish. JOHN Read the rest of this post...

Veterans abuse: The stories in the news just the past few days

- "Concerns Mount Over Waiting Lists at Veterans Affairs Mental Health Centers: Marine Jonathan Schulze, who hanged himself Jan 16. His family says four days earlier, Schulze had called doctors at the veteran's hospital in St. Cloud, Minn., and told them he was suicidal. They told The Associated Press that he was turned away on account of a waiting list for beds at the hospital. As a rule, the VA does not put off veterans with suicidal tendencies, say VA officials." - FOX News, 2/13/07

- "Veterans Have Reduced Access to Mental Health Care at Department of Veterans Affairs Facilities, Investigation Finds: Veterans with mental illnesses on average had almost one-third fewer visits with mental health professionals in 2005 than they did in 1995, according to an investigation conducted by McClatchy Newspapers, McClatchy/Miami Herald reports.... almost 100 VA clinics 'provided virtually no mental health care in 2005,' McClatchy/Herald reports." - Kaiser, 2/12/07

- "There are two troubling reports, one out today, that point to serious problems affecting the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' ability to treat military personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.... Our veterans' mental and physical health is not something to play games with. They have served their country, and their country has an absolute obligation to return the favor." - Macon Telegraph, 2/14/07

- "Bush budget cuts veterans health care in 2009: The Bush administration's budget assumes cuts to veterans' health care two years from now -- even as badly wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system." - AP, 2/13/07

- [I]t is the invisible psychological harm - primarily post-traumatic stress disorder - that is the most pervasive and pernicious injury from this war and that is emerging as its signature disability. Veterans' advocates say it is the number-one issue facing soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The scope of the problem is daunting: 35 percent of Iraq veterans sought psychological counseling within a year of coming home, according to the Department of Defense....

Many VA PTSD programs are too full to accept new patients.... A survey of VA and Defense mental-health providers conducted by VA psychologist Steven Silver found that 90 percent had no training in the four therapies. Many said they did not treat PTSD at all because they did not know how. - Philadelphia Inquirer, 2/19/07

- Veterans Affairs to end some medical research after computer data breach, AP, 2/16/07

- Veterans clinic cancels routine appointments: Understaffed center seeks staff physician, Texarkana Gazette, 2/18/07

- Growing Claims Backlog Frustrates Veterans: a growing backlog of disability compensation claims at the Department of Veterans Affairs has left many veterans waiting years for benefits they expected and needed much sooner.... VA workload reports for early February 2007 show that more than 600,000 disability compensation claims are waiting to be answered. - KFox TV, 2007.

- A year ago on Thanksgiving morning, in the corrugated metal pole barn that housed his family’s electrical business, Timothy Bowman put a handgun to his head and pulled the trigger. The bullet only grazed his forehead. So he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger again.

He had been home from the Iraq war for eight months. Once a fun-loving, life-ofthe-party type, Bowman had slipped into an abyss, tormented by things he’d been ordered to do in war....

But an investigation by McClatchy Newspapers has found that even by its own measures, the VA isn’t prepared to give returning vets the care that could best help them overcome destructive, and sometimes fatal, mental-health ailments. - Columbus Dispatch, 2/11/07 Read the rest of this post...

Military doc weighs in on vets scandal

A military doctor weighs in, anonymously, about why so many of our injured troops are discharged with so little support from the military:

I just want to say, on behalf of Army physicians, the Physical Evaluation Board (PEB) often has only ONE medical person on it (and sometimes, that one person is a nurse.)

[NOTE FROM JOHN: The PEB determines who much disability income the injured troops receive from the military once they're discharged. Often, our troops get little to nothing because the military determines that they aren't disabled or have pre-existing conditions, even though it simply isn't true.]

So, these soldiers are evaluated by physicians who say that he/she can't do their duty, and they are referred to a group of non-physicians who make the determination of disability.

We, the doctors, are instructed to explain everything in our documentation in layman's terms...because otherwise, the board won't understand.

Even when we do that, the soldiers often get screwed because even layman's terms can't get the impact and implications of a soldier's condition across to a paperpusher.

Note: I can't swear that this is a real military doctor, but I did some searching and believe that this is real. And in any case, this is an important enough scandal that I'm willing to post this and invite discussion from other military doctors, in order that we can ascertain the truth. Read the rest of this post...

Another Walter Reed horror story, from the Army Times

This is a national disgrace. From the Army Times:

A pale scar creates a deep furrow connecting [Pvt. Robert Van Antwerp] Van Antwerp’s eyebrows. Doctors replaced bone with titanium after he fractured his skull. Bare-chested as he trimmed, Van Antwerp has a deep, laddered line from beneath his sternum to at least the top of his sweatpants. A blast ruptured his spleen and ripped out his colon. Pushing up his left pant leg as he told his battle story, Van Antwerp showed where three ligaments tore away from his knee, and then pointed out the scar from his broken tibia.

Above his heart, the ranks and last names of two dead friends are etched in ink. But he calls a friend to ask their first names. Short-term memory loss arrived for Van Antwerp in the same [suicide] attack that killed his buddies....

Yet when it was time for the Army to take care of him, one of its wounded warriors, Van Antwerp gave up before he even began. Rather than fight for a higher disability rating, he quietly signed for 20 percent — and no medical benefits — saying he knew he couldn’t do better. He inherited his father’s stubbornness, he said, and refused to ask anyone to pull strings based on his dad’s rank. Then his first medical board counselor, the person who would help him make his way through the medical evaluation board system, left. The second, he said, “wasn’t on the ball.”

“The Army is trying to give you the lowest amount of money possible,” he said....

And the Veterans Administration is backlogged 400,000 cases.

Soldiers go to VA to try for more benefits, but the department had a staggering 400,000-case backup on new claims in fiscal 2006, according to VA.

Then there's the soldier with the brain tumor who the military screwed.

In August 2004, as Spc. Karl Unbehagan, 29, reported to his new unit at Fort Benning, Ga., he developed intense migraine headaches. Doctors told the infantry soldier he was not used to the humid weather. A couple of months later, they ran a CAT scan.

“I had a tumor in the third ventricle of my brain,” Unbehagan explained, pointing to the shunt that runs from the scar on his head down to his stomach to relieve the pressure in his brain. “They realized it had nothing to do with the weather.”

The physical evaluation board rated him at zero percent, saying the tumor was a pre-existing condition. Unbehagan has been in the Army for four years, and his doctors found no proof the tumor existed before he joined, he said.

In order to appreciate what this means, read what the board does.

A soldier goes before a physical evaluation board if a medical evaluation board — a team of doctors — determines he is not able to do his job because of his injury. The physical evaluation board then determines again if the soldier should stay in the military and, if not, how much the Defense Department will compensate the soldier. If the soldier receives a disability rating of 30 percent or higher, he gets a disability retirement check based on years of service, rank and the rating percentage. He and his family will also receive medical benefits for life. If the rating is lower than 30 percent, he gets a one-time severance payment.

So basically, we have our soldiers dealing with the equivalent of State Farm - people whose job it is to screw you out of any possible benefit you might get. Read the rest of this post...

"If Iraq don't kill you, Walter Reed will."

This is the second of a two-part series from the Washington Post about the horrendous treatment our injured Iraq vets are receiving back in the US at the hands of the Bush administration (this is the first part, published Sunday). Read these snippets, or better yet, read the entire article online. It's horrifying.

While Mologne House [one of the places recuperating soldiers are housed] has a full bar, there is not one counselor or psychologist assigned there to assist soldiers and families in crisis -- an idea proposed by Walter Reed social workers but rejected by the military command that runs the post....

Then check out the treatment they gave this vet:

"They said, 'Well, he was in Title I math,' like he was retarded," Annette says. "Well, y'all took him, didn't you?"...

Dell and Annette's closest friend at Mologne House is a 47-year-old Guard member who was driving an Army vehicle through the Iraqi night when a flash of light blinded him and he crashed into a ditch with an eight-foot drop. Among his many injuries was a broken foot that didn't heal properly. Army doctors decided that "late life atrophy" was responsible for the foot, not the truck wreck in Iraq.

When Dell sees his medical records, he explodes. "Special ed is for the mentally retarded, and I'm not mentally retarded, right, babe?" he asks Annette. "I graduated from high school. I did some college. I worked in a steel mill."

Yes, God forbid someone puts his life down for our country and then gets ill. Who cares if he has a pre-existing condition? Here's a crazy idea - if you serve in a war we cover your medical care, PERIOD. I swear, these people are actually like money-grubbing insurance companies dealing with thieves. These are our solders, people. Jesus Christ.

Then there's what they did to this guy:

Sgt. David Thomas, a gunner with the Tennessee National Guard, spent his first three months at Walter Reed with no decent clothes; medics in Samarra had cut off his uniform. Heavily drugged, missing one leg and suffering from traumatic brain injury, David, 42, was finally told by a physical therapist to go to the Red Cross office, where he was given a T-shirt and sweat pants. He was awarded a Purple Heart but had no underwear.

And then this:

His voice is oddly flat as he recalls the day his friend died in a Humvee accident. The friend was driving with another soldier when they flipped off the road into a swamp. They were trapped upside down and submerged. Steve helped pull them out and gave CPR, but it was too late. The swamp water kept pushing back into his own mouth. He rode in the helicopter with the wet bodies.

After he finished his tour, everything was fine back home in Pennsylvania for about 10 months, and then a strange bout of insomnia started. After four days without sleep, he burst into full-out mania and was hospitalized in restraints.

Did anything trigger the insomnia? "Not really," Steve says calmly, sitting in his chair.

His mother overhears this from the kitchen and comes into the living room. "His sergeant had called saying that the unit was looking for volunteers to go back to Iraq," Cindy Justi says. "This is what triggered his snap."...

He was on the ward for the sixth time when he was notified that he was being discharged from the Army, with only a few days to clear out and a disability rating of zero percent.

On some level, Steve expected the zero rating. During his senior year of college, he suffered a nervous breakdown and for several months was treated with antidepressants. He disclosed this to the National Guard recruiter, who said it was a nonissue. It became an issue when he told doctors at Walter Reed. The Army decided that his condition was not aggravated by his time in Iraq. The only help he would get would come from Veterans Affairs.

"We have no idea if what he endured over there had a worsening effect on him," says his mother.

His father gets home from the office. Ron Justi sits on the couch across from his son. "He was okay to sacrifice his body, but now that it's time he needs some help, they are not here," Ron says.

Read the rest of this post...

Monday Morning Open Thread

Let's do a quick review of news from the weekend: Republicans in the Senate won't even allow a debate on the Iraq war; under George Bush's command, wounded soldiers are living in squalor without the necessary care at the Army's premiere medical facility, which is just a couple miles from the White House and Capitol; and, under George Bush's watchful eye, Al Qaeda is reconstituting with Bin Laden reasserting his leadership role.

The GOP claims to be the party of national security and the party that supports the troops. Neither are true and haven't been for awhile. Yet, in just one weekend, we see the graphic evidence that we're not safer and they don't support the troops. The next time any Republican claims either of those mantles, they must be mocked. And, note to the media: just because the Republicans say something, doesn't make it true.

Happy President's Day. Read the rest of this post...

Customer data stolen from checkout-lane keypad

I've heard about a number of rigged ATM machines where crooks find new ways to steal card data but this new horror story from Shop & Stop stores is really outrageous. How in the world did they tamper with checkout keypads? It has been a few months since the "security experts" have been wheeled out and splashed into the media, telling us how there's really nothing to worry about, that stolen data is a problem with your uncle Bob and cousin Sue but hardly ever any one of the countless data leaks that have impacted over 100,000,000 Americans in just the last few years. Sure, uh huh. So the theft from TJ Maxx, Marshalls and now this are all just random losses that amount to nothing?

From my own IT discussions with banks not to mention conversations with friends working in the industry, I am aware of plenty of these stories, most of which never get published. When I hear the Shop & Stop team telling people that "it does not necessarily mean that the information was compromised" I only hear typical PR spin. Just because nothing has happened since yesterday does not mean that the problem does not exist.

Isn't it time someone decides to take this issues seriously? The businesses that are losing this data need to be accountable and customers should not be paying the price for corporate stupidity. Read the rest of this post...

Train bombs kill 66 in India

A train en route to Pakistan exploded into flames leaving dozens dead and wounded. Reports are indicating additional explosives and gasoline in other train carriages were discovered unexploded. Read the rest of this post...