Monthly Archives: February 2010

We have all heard the reasons why people should not smoke; lung and mouth and throat cancers, heart problems, prematurely aged skin, smelly clothes...

Robert Scheer writes that if Glass Steagal worked for 60 years, it probably ain't broken. A book on evolution to help kids get through the confusion caused by the flat Earthers. Where's all that damn oil? is the quetion at Tomgram. Vets urge close of Gitmo at Huff Post, Objectivity is not the Holy Grail at Truthdig and the sad news of our losses in Pakistan in today's picks.

Today's news takes us away from our tunnel vision of domestic political woes and shows us how deeply disturbed our world is and how...

Top 10 Veterans news from around the country features the top stories on Veterns Benefits,Health, Education and other issues in summary form from the Veterans Administration.

In Viet Nam, for example, U.S. leaders caused the deaths of thousands of their own men and several million Vietnamese after they already knew they had made probably the worst mistake in American history. Velvel writes, “Our top military men create(d) free fire zones where civilians are killed on sight, and bomb and defoliate to the nth degree.” In Iraq, our leaders unleashed “a horrendous reign of terror from the skies, create a thus far thoroughly destabilized post-war society, and then, when all their other myths have shown to be myths, retroactively justify the war by saying that we got rid of an admittedly horrible dictator, his equally horrible sons, and his entirely horrible government.”

Update: Soldiers’ Deaths in Pakistan Raise Questions on U.S. Presence - The deaths of three American soldiers in a Taliban suicide attack Wednesday lifted the...

By Bob Cox | The Fort Worth Star-Telegram Secretary of Defense Robert Gates voiced strong dissatisfaction Monday with a lack of progress on the F-35...

By Joby Warrick The Obama administration's top intelligence officials on Tuesday described it as "certain" that al-Qaeda or its allies will try to attack the...

Today's regional stories on veterans affairs, health, benefits and education from: Fargo, North Dakota, Gainesville, Georgia, Seattle, Washington, Madison, Wisconsin, Tallahassee, Florida, Des Moines, Iowa, Sacramento, California, Washington, DC, Wagner, Souh Dakota, Roseburg, Oregon, Omaha, Nebraska, and Starkville, Mississippi.

What the hell goes through the minds of these evangelicals who think they can tell other religions—at a military academy no less—what to believe?

Deficit hysteria has reached new levels, yet where is the attention to an out of control defense budget that is now the largest since World War II? While the Obama Admistration's three-year freeze on discretionary spending is a bad idea, it's made even worse because unprecedented Pentagon spending is exempted from it.

First, Rush Limbaugh makes a bone-headed statement about Jews and bankers correctly drawing condemnation from the ADL. "Rush Limbaugh reached a new low with his borderline...

By Hope Hodge --- A Jacksonville (NC)  resident who is suing the Department of Defense for using experimental drugs on him during the Vietnam war...

Since World War Two, an indisputably necessary conflict, Velvel points out the U.S. has fought the Korean War, the Viet Nam War, secret wars in Laos and Cambodia, the First Gulf War, Afghanistan, and the Second Gulf War in Iraq. It has also invaded, bombed or “quarantined” Panama, Grenada, Cuba, Haiti, Somalia, the Sudan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia and Libya, and has “declared” a global war on terrorists.

No. 086-10 ------------------------------- CONTRACTS: NAVY                   The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc., Cambridge, Mass., is being awarded a $131,107,546 cost-plus-incentive-fee contract for the Trident II (D5) MK6...

In the past few years Pashtun villagers in Afghanistan's rugged heartland have begun to lose faith in the American project. Many of them can point to the precise moment of this transformation, and it usually took place in the dead of night, when most of the country was fast asleep. In its attempt to stamp out the growing Taliban insurgency and Al Qaeda, the US military has been arresting suspects and sending them to one of a number of secret detention areas on military bases, often on the slightest suspicion and without the knowledge of their families.

In today's Washington Post there is an article entitled On debt, Canada shows us the way out in which we see that Canada has produced...

Mounting budget deficits for the foreseeable future may "greatly hamper" the U.S.' ability to wage pointless wars, a leading Pentagon general says. According to Gen. Blanton Creegan, "The days of our invading a country for no reason whatsoever may be at an end." Gen. Creegan adds, "In the past, we were able to start a war with a country simply because we said they might have WMD - now, we may actually have to check first."

Day by day a growing chorus of voices is heard saying that the tribes are the solution in Afghanistan. This very powerful grassroots movement is blossoming; and it can give the Afghan people new hope, self-esteem and a sense of belonging. As Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) told the news media Russia Today; "For about one billion dollars we could…(obtain)... the good will of all the tribal leaders and all the ethnic leaders in Afghanistan, and for another billion dollars, we could put nice projects in local villages." But, to make sure that there is success to this notion, an effective bottom-up approach tool is required to match the existing top-down approach so that jointly both approaches can rescue the nation.

Find out What's Inside Today's Local News for Veterans VA Website Offers Detail On IT Projects. Workout Helps Iraq Vet Regain Strength. Hospice Receives Grant Funding...

Multiple recipient of Fortune Magazine’s 100’s Award-winning, Best-in-Class Global Company CH2M Hill is Seeking to Hire Veterans for Their Problem-Solving Skills, Integrity and Team Spirit

While most of the DC military press is focused down on the Pentagon today, the Department of Veterans Affairs is also unveiling its fiscal 2011 spending plans and ambitious goals for the near future. Secretary Eric Shinseki will hold a press conference at 315, and we'll have a full story later this afternoon. But even though the $125 billion VA budget proposal is only a fraction of the proposed Defense Department budget, the plans could have wide-reaching ramifications for current service members as well as veterans.

Schwarzenegger Appoints Nation's First African-American, Female NG Ad-Gen

Yes Magazine's Brooke Jarvis brings tells an entertaining and timely story of Murray Hill Inc, the first corporation to run for political office; proving, I suppose, that some Corps retain a sense of the absurd. Haiti's thoroughly inept government is taking increasing fire from her beleaguered citizens and Jim Hightower is back firing away at Corporate personhood in today's picks.

Last December I posted an article Military Divorces continue to increase, a  spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) said that, "Every marriage has...

The year, 1960: It had been over a decade since that damn Harry Truman integrated the armed forces when the Greenboro Four decided to...

Here is a short and really neat video (included in the piece) from the BBC showing the basic flight characteristics of Russia's new stealth fighter. ...

On a blog that is named Wired we have a story reported today entitled Pentagon’s Black Budget Tops $56 Billion .  That is a...

China is flexing her rather large and ready-to-use muscles warning the USA that if our leaders meet with the Dali Lama, they will make...

The Obama administration’s pact to use seven Colombian military bases accelerates “a dangerous trend in U.S. hemispheric policy,” an article in The Nation magazine warns. Although much of Latin America is in the vanguard of the “anti-corporate and anti-militarist global democracy movement,” Grandin writes, the Obama administration is “disappointing potential regional allies by continuing to promote a volatile mix of militarism and free-trade orthodoxy in a corridor running from Mexico to Colombia.” Grandin’s article in The Nation’s February 8th issue is titled, “Muscling Latin America.”

In the past two years we at VT have been following and reporting on Department of Veterans Affairs attempts to cut costs by shredding...

Today's regional stories on veterans, health education, other benefits and issues from: Baltimore, Maryland, Fort Worth, Texas, Spokane, Washingon, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Melbourne, Florida, Jefferson City, Missouri, Huntington, West Virginia, Madison, Wisconsin, Greenville, Texas, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Winfield, Kansas, Watertown, New York, and Klamath Falls, Oregon

Economically, we are apparently on our way out, barring some miracle.  We are now so deeply in debt to China and other lenders, that there...

AOL News is reporting in a piece entitled Obama Proposes Another Surge in Military Spending that we are once again engaged in group insanity. ...

Bob Krause, Democratic Candidate for U.S. Senate, said today that Republican collusion against Veterans' spouse unemployment compensation in the Iowa House is part of...

To expand health care to a record-number of Veterans, reduce the number of homeless Veterans and process a dramatically increased number of new disability compensation claims, the White House has announced a proposed $125 billion budget next year for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

So it was, undoubtedly, with New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller, who accompanied Secretary of Defense Robert Gates as he stumbled through a challenge-filled, error-prone two-day trip to Pakistan. Gates must have felt a little like a punching bag by the time he boarded his plane for home having, as Juan Cole pointed out, managed to signal “that the U.S. is now increasingly tilting to India and wants to put it in charge of Afghanistan security; that Pakistan is isolated… and that Pakistani conspiracy theories about Blackwater were perfectly correct and he had admitted it. In baseball terms, Gates struck out.”

Yes, my daughter has a Barbie doll. And not just any Barbie doll: It's a Republican Convention Delegate Barbie. Really. She's wearing a business suit and has a little delegate credential around her neck. In other respects she's a regular Barbie, by which I mean she has an anatomically impossible figure and enough hair to be a fire hazard.

# VFW Head Lauds Shinseki, Sees Improvements In Vets' Health Care. # NY Governor: Keep Aid To Local Vets' Agencies At Current Level. # Vets Cemetery In Kentucky On Track For Fall Opening. # Acute Psychiatric Unit Proposed For Vermont VAMC. # Ohio County Hard Hit By Veteran Suicides.

Third Republican announces run for McIntyre's House seat Published: Friday, January 29, 2010 at 11:24 a.m. Last Modified: Friday, January 29, 2010 at 11:24 a.m. The Republican...

Incumbent Rush Challenged by Three in 1st District (Bronzeville) January 28, 2010 By Susan S. Stevens Bobby Rush The 1st Congressional District, which forks from Bronzeville to...