Five veteran suicide rescues in a two-hour period in one Oregon city—so John McCain blocks suicide prevention

A small crisis group gets calls all the time from veterans in crisis. Considering these men and women know what it is like to face death on a daily basis, reaching the point where all seems hopeless indicates a crisis itself; we fail to grasp how serious this is. Yet on one night this same small crisis group had to rescue 5 suicidal veterans!

How this vampire Sen. John McCain keeps getting elected only proves he’s a good liar and veterans hate to think they’ve been betrayed by one of their own.

Suicide Prevention Workers See Spike In Calls
Oregon Partnership Reports Five Suicide Rescues In Two Hours
PORTLAND, Ore. — Workers with Oregon Partnership are calling on the public to get educated on the warning signs of suicide following an increase in the need for suicide rescues.

A suicide rescue is when crisis line workers have to intervene in a suicide attempt by sending police to the person’s house, said Leslie Storm, Crisis Line Supervisor.

Last Wednesday, Storm said they had five suicide rescues in a two-hour period; an amount she calls unprecedented.
“We’ve never done five in one evening. I’ve been here four years, we don’t do five a week generally so this is very alarming to us,” Storm said.

Oregon Partnership is a non-profit organization that provides drug and alcohol awareness, drug prevention programs and a 24-hour crisis lines for suicide intervention. The organization also operates a crisis line for military members and their families, as well as a treatment referral line.
Suicide Prevention Workers See Spike In Calls

Now you can try to pass all of this off the way Senator John McCain does as the veteran politician playing the role of veteran’s hero, but this man passes off everything veterans need instead of passing it on. He always loves to play up to veterans for their votes but then votes against them.

Rep. Holt: Sen. McCain Objected To My Military Suicide Prevention Bill
Amanda Terkel
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WASHINGTON — In 2008, a young sergeant named Coleman S. Bean took his life. After completing his first tour of duty in Iraq, he had come home and been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Nevertheless, he was deployed to Iraq a second time. Bean had sought treatment for PTSD but as a member of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), he found fewer resources available to him than to veterans and active-duty members.

In April, Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) introduced legislation named after the late soldier meant to provide more resources for suicide prevention to Reserve members. The House in May incorporated it into the National Defense Authorization Act for 2011, but it was stripped from the final version, and Holt is pointing the finger at the lead Republican negotiator on the Senate legislation, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

“Twice now, the Senate has stripped this legislation from our defense bill,” Holt told The Huffington Post Tuesday. “It’s hard to understand why. I know for a fact, because he told me, that Sen. McCain doesn’t support it. Whether he’s the only one, I don’t know. But there was no effort to try to improve the language or negotiate changes; it was just rejected, and I think that is not only bad policy, but it’s cruel. It’s cruel to the families that are struggling with catastrophic mental health problems.”

“He [McCain] said having these counselors check in with the Reservists every few months this way overreaching,” continued Holt, relaying a phone conversation he had had with the senator. “I asked him in what sense it was overreaching. Surely he didn’t think there wasn’t a problem, did he? I must say I don’t understand it.”

Read more here: John McCain blocks suicide prevention bill.

I ask veterans all the time why they vote for him or support him. They say he’s a Vietnam Vet, but they can’t say what he’s done for any Vietnam vet. They say he’s was a POW but they can’t say what he did for other POW’s like the ones from the Gulf War when they tried to sue Iraq for what Saddam did to them and he went against it. They hear the words come out of his mouth saying he cares and that is all they need to know. The real issue is they are suffering for the support they give to men like him. They never bother to look up his voting record.

So now we have troops committing suicide more and more every year along with veterans killing themselves yet McCain doesn’t care just like every other bill he has either tried to stop or voted against.

These lives matter to us but they don’t matter to him. The numbers coming into suicide prevention hotlines reflect how serious this has been but this one story on 5 rescues in one night out of Oregon Partnership should have everyone in congress running around like the House is falling down to get this done but McCain leads the way on running away from the veterans he loves to suck the life out of for their votes. How this vampire keeps getting elected only proves he’s a good liar and veterans hate to think they’ve been betrayed by one of their own.

UPDATE on this

Lawrence O’Donnell, The Last Word on MSNBC talked to Congressman Holt about this bill. Holt said that McCain called it “overreach” and said that “Maybe you need this in New Jersey but we don’t need this in Arizona.” You can watch the video and read more on my blog McCain blocks suicide prevention bill

This came on the heals of the report saying that;

Civilian soldiers’ suicide rate alarming By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
National Guard soldiers who are not on active duty killed themselves this year at nearly twice the rate of 2009, marring a year when suicides among Army soldiers on active duty appear to be leveling off, new Army statistics show.

Eighty-six non-active-duty Guard soldiers have killed themselves in the first 10 months of 2010, compared with 48 such suicides in all of 2009.