UPDATE:

The Huffington Post has published a piece on the Associated Press report that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are filing for disability benefits at a historic rate.

As of this writing, there are already 618 comments (with 34 more pending).

I realize that many of our readers would not “be caught dead” visiting the HuffPost.

However, I would recommend that you take a chance this Memorial Day and venture to that site and browse through those comments.

Skip the ones that blame Bush for the Iraq disaster and that blame Obama for the continuing carnage in Afghanistan.

Skip the ones that reflect a twisted political or anti-war agenda.

And especially skip the callous and cynical comments such as “Great—-just what the USA needs—-more entitlements!!!” and ”Those are the things you need to think about before you sign up to go to foreign countries to kill the local inhabitants.”

Some will say, “That doesn’t leave many.” Perhaps, but those that “are left” are the heart wrenching accounts by widows, wives, sons and daughters of our veterans from our many wars, that tell us that these wounds and injuries — physical and mental — are real, are horrendous and debilitating and must be adequately addressed by the nation and the people who sent these brave men and women into battle.

And while our readers are at it, perhaps they may also want to read an opinion piece in the New York Times, written by a former U.S. Marine who, in 2001, was part of the initial force of Marines who landed in Afghanistan and who, in 2003, took part in the heavy fighting of the first wave of the invasion of Iraq, and who writes about the hell he has been through since coming home.

==

Original Post:

As we remember and honor those who have fought and died in all our wars, let us not forget the hundreds of thousands who have been injured and continue to be injured — physically and mentally — in our two most recent wars.

This sad reality is poignantly brought home this Memorial Day weekend by an Associated Press report, published in the Stars and Stripes which tells us that an astounding “45 percent of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related.”

According to the Stars and Stripes:

That is more than double the estimated 21 percent who filed such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials told the AP.

These new veterans are claiming eight to nine ailments on average, and the most recent ones over the last year are claiming 11 to 14. By comparison, Vietnam veterans are currently receiving compensation for fewer than four, on average, and those from World War II and Korea, just two.”

In its report, the Associated Press postulates that there may be many factors that drive up these figures: “[T]he weak economy, more troops surviving wounds, and more awareness of problems such as concussions and PTSD.”

Other factors and circumstances pointed out by the Associated Press which “spent three months reviewing records and talking with doctors, government officials and former troops to take stock of the new veterans” :

More — 28 percent of those filing disability claims — are from the Reserves and National Guard rather than career military.

“More of the new veterans are women, accounting for 12 percent of those who have sought care through the VA… Some female veterans are claiming PTSD due to military sexual trauma…”

The different types of injuries incurred by the new veterans, such as those caused by improvised bombs and the fact that improved body armor and improved battlefield care has “allowed many of them to survive wounds that in past wars proved fatal.”

Please read more about these somber statistics and the horrific injuries adding up to some staggering numbers here.

Image: www.shutterstock.com

Back in September 2009, when the Navy was seriously considering allowing women to serve aboard its nuclear submarines, I posted an article titled, “Should Women Serve on Submarines?” and, at the end, asked, “What do you think?”

With a couple of exceptions, most of the readers saw no problem with this change in policy or had some reasonable, practical reasons for opposing women serving on our submarines.

One woman gave several reasons for her opposition. In addition to bringing up the cost (in dollars and in space) to separate the men and women and the “sexual tension” factor, she suggested, perhaps playfully:

As a woman I know it is very hard for women to get along. Women are catty. Women get jealous. This would be ten times worse if they were on cramped close quarters unable to get away from each other. No work would get done.

One of the main reasons men go submarines is to get away from women. How are they going to do that if we let women on them? That is just a random point that may not make a lot of sense to the argument but it is valid for those who really make it a point is choosing where to go with their Navy Career.

There was one reader — no longer with us — who not only strongly opposed women serving on submarines (“Suck it up folks, war is serious. Who really gives a darn if 500 or so women get to tell their grand kids they rode around in a submarine in the Navy? So we do this just for the sake of equality?”), but who also took the opportunity to launch into one of his tirades against gays in the military: “We have no homosexuals in the military what-so-ever. If you know one, post his name here please. He has lied to the military upon joining and that is a crime and must be reported.”

Another reader declared: ‘Suck it up, folks. We have women – and homosexuals – who serve with honor in our military. The ignorance of holding people back from reflexive objections needs to stop.”

In a related event, in April 2010, the Navy announced that a smoking ban would go into effect on submarines no later than December 31, 2010.

The reason why I bring up “gays in the military” and smoking aboard submarines should become obvious shortly.

But back to the present.

Today, May 2012, Navy women are serving successfully on our fleet ballistic missile submarines.

Just as with gays serving openly in the military, the sky has not fallen because of this.

According to Vice Adm. John Richardson, commander of submarine forces, the integration process has been “very successful.” The Stars and Stripes adds:

Twenty-four women have already reported to guided missile and fleet ballistic missile submarines and about 20 more will report each year. Fast-attack submarines, which are smaller and would require more modifications to allow women aboard, are still men-only.

The Navy is moving very deliberately with the integration process and will gather information from the first gender-integrated submarines before determining whether to modify submarines to allow enlisted female sailors to serve aboard, or to allow women on fast-attack submarines.

“We want to open this opportunity as widely as we can, but we want to make sure it’s sustainable,” Richardson said.

As a matter of fact, one of the first women to serve on U.S. submarines — delicious irony — is Lt. Rebecca Dremann, who is an openly gay naval officer and a smoker.

The Stars and Stripes:

As an openly gay naval officer, a smoker and one of the first women to serve on a submarine, Lt. Rebecca Dremann joked she was “the triple trifecta coming onto the submarine.”

“I’m a total culture shock to the submarine force and they handled me just fine,” Dremann said Thursday after a roundtable hosted by the Navy to discuss the integration of women into the submarine force.

Other women — and men — who are completing their qualifications and have already spent time underway aboard submarines echoed Dremann’s sentiments, saying the biggest “problem” they’ve faced is sibling-like squabbles over the bathroom.

If this is one of the bigger problems we have in our “gender-integrated submarines,” I say that we are doing pretty good.

Now, let me ask again: What do you think?

—————-
Photo credit: Courtesy ssp.navy.mil

With a couple of exceptions, most of the readers saw no problem with this change in policy or had some reasonable, practical reasons for opposing women serving on our submarines.

One woman gave several reasons for her opposition. In addition to bringing up the cost (in dollars and in space) to separate the men and women and the “sexual tension” factor, she suggested, perhaps playfully:

As a woman I know it is very hard for women to get along. Women are catty. Women get jealous. This would be ten times worse if they were on cramped close quarters unable to get away from each other. No work would get done.

One of the main reasons men go submarines is to get away from women. How are they going to do that if we let women on them? That is just a random point that may not make a lot of sense to the argument but it is valid for those who really make it a point is choosing where to go with their Navy Career.

There was one reader — no longer with us — who not only strongly opposed women serving on submarines (“Suck it up folks, war is serious. Who really gives a darn if 500 or so women get to tell their grand kids they rode around in a submarine in the Navy? So we do this just for the sake of equality?”), but who also took the opportunity to launch into one of his tirades against gays in the military: “We have no homosexuals in the military what-so-ever. If you know one, post his name here please. He has lied to the military upon joining and that is a crime and must be reported.”

Another reader declared: ‘Suck it up, folks. We have women – and homosexuals – who serve with honor in our military. The ignorance of holding people back from reflexive objections needs to stop.”

In a related event, in April 2010, the Navy announced that a smoking ban would go into effect on submarines no later than December 31, 2010.

The reason why I bring up “gays in the military” and smoking aboard submarines should become obvious shortly.

But back to the present.

Today, May 2012, Navy women are serving successfully on our fleet ballistic missile submarines.

Just as with gays serving openly in the military, the sky has not fallen because of this.

According to Vice Adm. John Richardson, commander of submarine forces, the integration process has been “very successful.” The Stars and Stripes adds:

Twenty-four women have already reported to guided missile and fleet ballistic missile submarines and about 20 more will report each year. Fast-attack submarines, which are smaller and would require more modifications to allow women aboard, are still men-only.

The Navy is moving very deliberately with the integration process and will gather information from the first gender-integrated submarines before determining whether to modify submarines to allow enlisted female sailors to serve aboard, or to allow women on fast-attack submarines.

“We want to open this opportunity as widely as we can, but we want to make sure it’s sustainable,” Richardson said.

As a matter of fact, one of the first women to serve on U.S. submarines — delicious irony — is Lt. Rebecca Dremann, who is an openly gay naval officer and a smoker.

The Stars and Stripes:

As an openly gay naval officer, a smoker and one of the first women to serve on a submarine, Lt. Rebecca Dremann joked she was “the triple trifecta coming onto the submarine.”

“I’m a total culture shock to the submarine force and they handled me just fine,” Dremann said Thursday after a roundtable hosted by the Navy to discuss the integration of women into the submarine force.

Other women — and men — who are completing their qualifications and have already spent time underway aboard submarines echoed Dremann’s sentiments, saying the biggest “problem” they’ve faced is sibling-like squabbles over the bathroom.

If this is one of the bigger problems we have in our “gender-integrated submarines,” I say that we are doing pretty good.

Now, let me ask again: What do you think?

[T]he MIT team, led by Ian Hunter, the George N. Hatsopoulos Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has engineered a jet-injection system that delivers a range of doses to variable depths in a highly controlled manner. The design is built around a mechanism called a Lorentz-force actuator — a small, powerful magnet surrounded by a coil of wire that’s attached to a piston inside a drug ampoule. When current is applied, it interacts with the magnetic field to produce a force that pushes the piston forward, ejecting the drug at very high pressure and velocity (almost the speed of sound in air) out through the ampoule’s nozzle — an opening as wide as a mosquito’s proboscis.

The video is more interesting than you might think… WATCH:

The New York Times has an interesting and, I am sure, controversial opinion piece, which from the beginning (Title: “G.O.P. Nightmare Charts”) to its conclusion (see below) suggests that present trends “do not bode well for Republicans.”

All sarcasm aside and keeping in mind that the Times is called a “liberal newspaper” and worse, that it is written in “a place for opinionated political thinkers from all over the United States to make their arguments about everything connected to the 2012 election”, that polls and surveys are meaningless, unless they support one’s position; that it is still a long time before the elections and that the writer bringing this to your attention is a biased Democrat, here is a thumbnail.

The author, Charles Blow, has selected two questions “tucked away” in two polls that caught his eye but do not grab the headlines.

Questions that, according to Blow, “get us away from the presidential race, both of which highlight just how much trouble the Republican brand continues to find itself in despite the party’s many legislative and statehouse victories in 2010.” Blow adds: “Public sentiment is slowly drifting away from the Republicans in a way that must be giving the party’s long-range strategists sleepless nights.”

What are the two questions?

The first question comes from the NBC News/Wall Street Journal Survey released on Tuesday (question number 27). It read:

“When it comes to (READ ITEM), which party do you feel is most attuned and sensitive to issues that affect this group.”

Among the “Items” are groups such as religious conservatives, men and women in the military, retirees, stay-at-home moms, Hispanics or Latinos, Gays and Lesbians.

You can analyze the responses and charts yourself. Blow summarizes:

The chart illustrates just how narrow Republican support is. Respondents viewed Republicans as more sensitive to religious conservatives, people in the military and small business owners. That’s not enough for a winning coalition. For everyone else — including the middle class, young adults and Hispanics — Democrats won out. Democrats even scored higher than Republicans among some groups that conventional wisdom associates with supporting Republicans, like retirees and stay-at-home moms. (I wish that the pollsters had also asked about men and racial groups, but unfortunately they did not.)

The second question comes from a Gallup morality poll that was also released on Tuesday. The question read:

“Next, I’m going to read you a list of issues. Regardless of whether or not you think it should be legal, for each one, please tell me whether you personally believe that in general it is morally acceptable or morally wrong.”

Some of the issues in the list are divorce, gambling, sex between an unmarried man and a woman, birth control, medical research using embryonic stem cells, gay or lesbian relations, abortion, pornography, the death penalty and suicide.

Again you can do your own analysis. Among Blow’s comments:

Of the 18 moral issues, Democrats were more permissive than Republicans on 14. No surprise there. But what was a bit surprising was that on seven issues, independents eked out a small margin of permissiveness over Democrats. (This may be due in part to the fact that some devout Democrats like blacks are rather conservative, socially speaking.)

Republicans were only more permissive than Democrats and independents on three measures and they all had to do with the killing of people and animals — the death penalty, buying and wearing clothing made of animal fur and medical testing on animals. Interpret that as you will.

Independents were closer to Democrats than to Republicans on 13 of the 18 issues outlined. The only exceptions were medical research using embryonic stem cells, the death penalty, suicide and human cloning. (On cloning animals, Democrats and Republicans were both less permissive than independents, and in equal measure).

When people are asked to identify themselves by political ideology, Americans may appear to be center-right, but independents look more like Democrats than Republicans on moral issues.

Ergo, Blow’s verdict that all this does not bode well for Republicans “as the composition and conscience of the country continues to change” and as “we are slowly becoming less religious, more diverse and increasingly open-minded.”

Analyze it all for yourself here.

Image: www.shutterstock.com

Let us pray for all those of our world who are walking this path today. There are millions. And meanwhile let us not let the petty pass for the far more deadly monumental and egregious human rights violations of our worlds.

Today would be a good day to contribute to the human rights protective organizations of our choice. Every day would be so.

CODA
This little one is being reunited with his father, held in separate camp corrals. The father wanted to hold his child one more time, not knowing what was to come next.

One in three women like her “have been raped or have experienced an attempted rape,” says the New York Times.

According to a survey, the rate of sexual violence in rural villages like the one where the above-mentioned rape took place is as much as 12 times the national rate in the U.S.

If one wonders in what rural village, in which foreign country this could happen, the reader is in for a very unpleasant surprise, as I was, albeit the title of the Times article I was reading already gave it away.

Yes, the young woman whose ordeal the New York Times describes is an American Indian woman — a Native American woman — in Emmonak, Alaska, the United States of America.

While the rate of sexual assault for American Indian women is more than twice the national average, “no place, women’s advocates say, is more dangerous than Alaska’s isolated villages, where there are no roads in or out, and where people are further cut off by undependable telephone, electrical and Internet service,” according to the Times.

Some more unpleasant reports and statistics by the Times:

…[I]nterviews with Native American women here and across the nation’s tribal reservations suggest an even grimmer reality: They say few, if any, female relatives or close friends have escaped sexual violence.

[::]

The difficulties facing American Indian women who have been raped are myriad, and include a shortage of sexual assault kits at Indian Health Service hospitals, where there is also a lack of access to birth control and sexually transmitted disease testing. There are also too few nurses trained to perform rape examinations, which are generally necessary to bring cases to trial.

Women say the tribal police often discourage them from reporting sexual assaults, and Indian Health Service hospitals complain they lack cameras to document injuries.

[::]

In the Navajo Nation, which encompasses parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, 329 rape cases were reported in 2007 among a population of about 180,000. Five years later, there have been only 17 arrests. Women’s advocates on the reservation say only about 10 percent of sexual assaults are reported.

[::]

Nationwide, an arrest is made in just 13 percent of the sexual assaults reported by American Indian women, according to the Justice Department, compared with 35 percent for black women and 32 percent for whites.

In South Dakota, Indians make up 10 percent of the population, but account for 40 percent of the victims of sexual assault. Alaska Natives are 15 percent of that state’s population, but constitute 61 percent of its victims of sexual assault.

The Justice Department did not prosecute 65 percent of the rape cases on Indian reservations in 2011.

For many more grim statistics, please read here.

The question, of course, is what is being done about it.

Sadly, an issue that should unite our lawmakers in serious attempts to bring justice and security to Native American women “has become one of the major sources of discord in the current debate between the White House and the House of Representatives over the latest reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act of 1994.”

The Times:

A Senate version, passed with broad bipartisan support, would grant new powers to tribal courts to prosecute non-Indians suspected of sexually assaulting their Indian spouses or domestic partners. But House Republicans, and some Senate Republicans, oppose the provision as a dangerous expansion of the tribal courts’ authority, and it was excluded from the version that the House passed last Wednesday. The House and Senate are seeking to negotiate a compromise.

In the meantime, back in Emmonak, Alaska, “the overmatched police have failed to keep statistics related to rape” and the young woman who was raped there — she is now 22 — has asked, “that her name not be used because she fears retaliation from her attacker, whom she still sees in the village.” The Times adds, “She said she knew of five other women he had raped, though she is the only one who reported the crime.”

I collect and look at black and white photos, garage sale cast offs, collections of oddities of our world that someone chose to immortalize in what used to be called ‘film.’

This is a photo of two men piling spent howitzer shells at a sandbagged gun emplacement at Song Be. On the back of the photo is writ: Song Be, less than a hundred miles from Siagon, near the Cambodian border… US 1st infantry.

What is not written is these gunners on the ground who have direct contact with gunfire, inhabit one of the most dangerous places in war: infantry, on the ground, without wings…. other than their own angels.

I’ve a dear cousin who went to Nam, a Marine. He came back. But he wasnt able to carry all of his young self back. Part of him still lies on the ground, dead, with the rest of his squadron, from near 40 years ago.

I’ve been a military wife for 21 years. My hubby, 21 years USAF (ret.) and working now at VA helping old soldiers and young soldiers with prostheses. Once you have a prosthesis, whether for hearing or for a limb, the fittings and refittings go on for life.

I’ve worked in post trauma recovery with vets returned from war since 1965 when I began at Hines VA, with an entire ward of brave Italiano boys who were reeling from two things; abandonment by sweethearts and wives– and loss of two or more limbs in war. Not one, two or more limbs.

Had I been able, I would have gathered them all up and taken them home with me forever. Brave beyond brave to endure, they all were, each in his own way. In my care, I could see in their hearts they still were wanting to walk the perimeters in life for all vulnerable others. They didnt want to come home with me to be taken care of. They wanted to come home with me to watch over me. Still, even though so deeply injured.

They were souls who loved children, a pretty woman, a loyal friend. And they poured their stories of mayhem and monsters in war out where we both could hold those images and see and validate the reality, mend the burned eyes of their images, help mend the ears of their unbearable sounds…. and move slowly forward on the way back to the true home of the heart broken open.

I’ve been a poet, a painter, and a woman all my life. When I look at these old black and whites of war, I see several things: the intense beauty of the young males who here in all their muscles and grace could often as easily be in a ballet as they move and arc and leap, as on a battlefield. But there the similarity ends. Ballet and battlefield both begin with B. But then, so does Blood.

Every time I look at these old pictures of men and women in war, civilians and forces, I often put my hand over the image, and pray different prayers over each: This is one…

I so dearly hope you came home.
I hope you are now in your 60s and 70s,
fat and happy, eating bar-b-que,
enjoying your fishing, your buddies,
your grandchildren, the sunrise and the stars …
that you can still see beauty through your stars and scars.

And for those who did not make it home,
from any and all– I say
as long as I and others.
who know your stories up close,
remain alive,
your young years on earth
will never be forgotten.

[Some say such is sentiment,
foolish, and soft in the head.
I say it is a requirement,
to thank the young and the dead.]

CODA
Different soldiers remind me of siblings all in the same family. They often, at the same engagement/gathering, have different stories to tell, each from their own vantage point, each from their own heart. I hope we ever will listen. It is never too late to listen to any and all sides, never too late to listen to the living… and to the stories of the dead told by the living.

If you have black and white pictures to share of Viet Nam from any side, during the 1960s and 1970s: projectscreener@aol.com I’ll be glad to hear from you.

dr. clarissa pinkola estés
certified psychoanalyst, post-trauma recovery specialist, author, teacher of writing.

Isn’t it obvious? This study finds 96% of restaurant entrees exceed USDA limits:

[R]esearchers looked at the nutritional content of 30,923 menu items, including those from children’s menus, from 245 brands of restaurants. They found that 96% of them failed to meet recommendations for the combination of calories, sodium, fat and saturated fat set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The restaurants included fast-food, buffet, takeout, family style and upscale restaurants, said Helen Wu, one of the authors and an assistant policy analyst at the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica. The study was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The majority of the entrees did not exceed 667 calories – one-third of the calories the USDA estimates the average adult needs each day, said Wu and Roland Sturm, senior economist at Rand. They looked at restaurants’ websites from February to May 2010.

But they found that few of the entrees met recommended limits when considering calories, sodium, saturated fat, and fat combined.

“Many items may appear healthy based on calories, but actually can be very unhealthy when you consider other important nutrition criteria,” Wu said.

Beware the appetizer:

•Appetizers can be calorie bombs. Appetizers — while often shared — averaged 813 calories, compared with main entrees, which averaged 674 calories per serving, Wu says.

•Family restaurants fared worse than fast-food. Entrees at family-style restaurants on average have more calories, fat and sodium than fast-food restaurants. Entrees at family-style eateries posted 271 more calories, 435 more milligrams of sodium and 16 more grams of fat than fast-food restaurants, Wu says.

•Kid “specialty” drinks often aren’t healthy. Many drinks offered on kids’ menus have more fat and saturated fat on average than regular drinks. While regular menu drinks had a median of 360 calories, the median number of calories in kid specialty drinks, such as shakes and floats, was 430. The message to parents, Wu says: “It’s the little extras you order that add up.”

Photo via shutterstock.com

The model for it, a 26-year-old woman, reacts to the uproar about the photo with her three-year-old son to observe that breast-feeding advocates “are actually upset” because it doesn’t “show the nurturing side to attachment parenting. This isn’t how we breastfeed at home.

“It’s more of a cradling, nurturing situation. And I understand what they’re saying, but I do understand why Time chose this picture because it…did create such a media craze.”

In 1923, Henry Luce started the magazine to save readers from being confused by “the million little chaoses of raw news” and give them a Voice from Above to explain what it all means. Now, in the Drudge age, journalism has gone downhill from fake omniscience to injecting a 24/7 stream of “news” on steroids into the public bloodstream.

Like Drudge, Luce pursued his own political agenda but had to recognize some bounds in pushing it.

“Isn’t good editing,” he once asked me, “figuring out what’s going to happen and then advocating it before it does?” I wish I could report that there was a mischievous gleam in Luce’s eye when he said it, but there wasn’t.

MORE.

Does Buzz Bissinger score a touchdown with you, or do you find him personally foul?

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist (author of the 1988 bestseller and cautionary tale “Friday Night Lights”) has stirred up quite a firestorm with a recent Wall Street Journal article declaring “Why College Football Should Be Banned.”

Yes, he advocates a “scorched earth, cold turkey” approach, rather than attempts to rein in abuses and nudge athletics into the proper perspective. He finds college football to be “antithetical to the primary purpose of higher education”, bringing with it high costs, low benefits (for the average student), a high price for academics and (he’s still researching this) probably a bunch of polar bears floating haplessly on ice chunks.

(And in case you didn’t notice, not a single overpaid coach had the guts to order the hit on bin Laden!)

I don’t follow any college football programs, but I don’t like raining on anyone else’s parade, either; so I’ve enjoyed just sitting back and watching the arguments unfold.

College football supporters have a vague notion that the sport is a revenue cash cow, but Bissinger cites NCAA studies showing that maybe 20 schools earn money from football; two-thirds lose money. Supporters of the status quo are quick to point out the INTANGIBLE benefits of football. (“Football has a certain je ne sais…je ne sais…Dude! Now I wish they hadn’t cut the Foreign Language Department budget to buy the coach’s new Ferrari!”)

Bissinger fails to factor in the value of having a favorite team as a rallying point, as something for students and alumni to IDENTIFY with in this crazy world. (“Yes, sir, bolstered by tuition increases and nefarious recruiting violations, my alma mater has boasted a 2-and-11 season every year for the past…Hey, could somebody please STEAL my identity?”)

Bissinger decries the brutal exploitation of players who have little chance of graduation, even with watered-down requirements. He has no problem with bone-crushing NFL encounters but is protective of the health of college students. Perhaps the schools should do more to enhance retention, with a “Come For The Head Trauma, Stay For The Quadratic Equations” ad campaign.

Bissinger is relentless in hammering home the point that football takes away from the “core mission” of colleges and universities. I wonder how this “purity of purpose” mantra works in other aspects of life? (“Come on, honestly, what does the windshield really contribute to the core mission of the car’s getting you from one place to another? I think we should…bugs between the teeth…mmmmm…”)

At first I dismissed Bissinger as an ineffectual voice crying in the wilderness, demanding unrealistic cultural changes; but we’ve seen smokers become pariahs and the definition of marriage change, so maybe it’s time for everyone to take this seriously.

Football has a proud tradition of giving students a respite from the daily grind; but Bissinger thinks there is too much emphasis on fun in college, anyway. He feels students need to focus on studies so they can “compete in the brutal realities of the global economy.” For his sake, I hope the brutal realities leave room for paying a curmudgeonly journalist who sounds like your cranky neighbor on STEROIDS. (“Hey, you kids get off’a my 20-yard line! But leave the mascot. Them’s good eatin’!”)

©2012 Danny Tyree. Danny welcomes reader e-mail responses at tyreetyrades@aol.com and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades”. Danny’s’ weekly column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons Inc. newspaper syndicate and is licensed to run on TMV.

Manny Francisco, Manila, The Phillippines

This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

(Photo by Sgt. Michael S. Cifuentes)

A large color photo on the front page of the May 2 Stars and Stripes caught my attention and stirred my emotions.

The photo was of members of the Marines and Air Force sitting volleyball teams in action during the 2012 Warrior Games at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

Except for the fact that the players sit while they play and the net is much lower than in a regular volleyball game, there appears to be no difference, especially when it comes to the spirit, competitiveness, skills and enthusiasm of these players.

(Photo by Tony Lazzaro)

Among the players in the various Warrior Games events are amputees, cancer survivors, partially paralyzed men and women and those recovering from traumatic brain injuries and post traumatic stress.

The 2012 Warrior Games, hosted by the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Paralympics Military Program, started on April 30, with over 200 wounded, injured and ill service members and veterans from the U.S. Army, Marines, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force, Special Operations Command and from the British armed forces participating.

They will be competing for gold medals in cycling, swimming, track and field, archery, wheelchair basketball and, yes, sitting volleyball.

(Photo by Lance Cpl. Daniel Wetzel)

The Warrior Games were first convened in 2010 “through a joint endeavor between the U.S. Olympic Committee and the U.S. Department of Defense. Founders of the games created the competition to highlight the role of adaptive or disabled sports in the recovery of wounded, injured and ill soldiers.”

(Photo by Sgt. Mark Fayloga)

During the opening ceremonies this year, First Lady Michelle Obama commended the athletes as a source of inspiration for all Americans:

No matter how seriously you are injured, no matter what obstacles or setbacks you face, you just keep moving forward. You just keep pushing yourselves to succeed in ways that mystify and leave us in awe.

(Photo by Sgt. Michael S. Cifuentes)

I started this commentary by saying that the photo of these heroes and athletes “stirred my emotions.” I would not be totally honest if I denied that I felt some sympathy for these men and women who have given so much for us. But very quickly that sympathy turned to pride and — as the First Lady says — awe.

And, in fact, these soldiers don’t want our sympathy.

As the Warrior Transition Command head, brigadier general Darryl Williams, says about the Warrior Games:

[They are] not some sorry story that’s happening this week. This isn’t a bad-news story. … None of these soldiers, whether they have spinal cord injuries or amputations, want anybody feeling sorry for them. This is about them seizing the day and celebrating and being the best. They signed up to be Army soldiers, and they are still Army soldiers.

The Warrior Games end tomorrow, May 5.

When you look at the images of our troops participating in various sports, I know that you will share the awe, respect and gratitude for these magnificent men and women and the feeling of inspiration they are for all of us.

You can see many more photos of the Warrior Games here.

All photos courtesy U.S. Marine Corps

Edited to add photos bylines

Predators and vultures play important roles in both natural and economic systems. Herds of animals, for example, have to be regularly culled to improve the herd’s overall health and viability. Predators do the job. They kill the weak, the diseased, the careless, the inadequately protected young. Then vultures, hyenas and other members of nature’s clean up crew consume the mess and “refashion it” in the form of their own waste, which helps fertilize fields where healthy members of the herd feed.

Things work much the same way in the economic realm. Companies, industries, entire nations show signs of weakness and predators of various kinds attack (think bond vigilantes in world markets). Then the market’s vultures move in to clean up the mess. The result is a healthier economic “herd,” a healthier Main Street, that can grow in healthier ways having been culled of its unproductive or no longer desirable elements.

Mitt Romney’s major business experience, what he is putting forth as his major qualification to reanimate the economy as President, is his work at Bain Capital, a Wall Street vulture fund. In spite of the unflattering image the word “vulture” evokes, as is true in natural economies, these funds play an important and valuable role in keeping economies healthy.

Based on the above, one might suppose that Romney’s history with Bain was something he could truthfully claim qualifies him to get America back on its feet economically. Look a little closer, however, and its easy to see this is actually a work history guaranteed to point a new President Romney in the wrong economic directions.

The reason? Because what was described above is the way things work in a properly functioning natural ecology or environment — one in which the various parts, the herds (whatever they might consist of), the predators, the vultures, are all in balance.

If you come upon a natural ecology where herds have been overly culled, while at the same time lions and leopards are overly well fed, and the numbers and size of vultures and hyenas are enormous, you’ve got a sick ecosystem. If you see an economy in which Main Street is wobbly and anguished, while the predators and vultures of Wall Street wax fatter and fatter, you’ve got a sick economy.

Our own economy today is over-Bained, over-Citied, badly under-Main Streeted. The main economic problem here isn’t the cast of economic players and what each is supposed to do to keep things healthy. It’s that the balance wrought by some of these players, the predators and vultures, has made things very, very out-of-whack.

Culling this herd, culling Main Street more than it has already been culled, won’t improve our economic health. Doing so might not always be the wrong prescription. But it is certainly the wrong prescription for the wrong disease today.

Expecting this reality to be appreciated and acted upon appropriately by a former partner in a vulture fund backed by Wall Street predators is thus a very silly political choice for a mighty sick Main Street herd.

Based on this column from China’s state mouthpiece, the Global Times, Beijing seems oblivious to how heroes are made. Why is it that Chen Guangcheng, who began as a local activist battling forced abortion and sterilization, has become a worldwide concern? Whether Beijing is willfully ignoring the obvious, or just seeking to discredit a brave man standing up for his principles, this article by columnist Shan Renping suggests that Western media is making much ado about nothing.

For China’s state-run Global Times, Shan Renping writes in part:

Chen’s case stems from a grassroots disputes in Linyi, Shandong Province. But due to interference from Western media and even diplomats, the case evolved into a far more complex situation. The issue has boosted Chen’s stature as a human rights advocate in the West and among some online activists. The political role he has now taken on is far from what it was when he began. The West and its supporters in China always need a tool to work against China’s political system. Those who become such tools [are pawns] with few choices of their own.

Using Chen’s case to criticize China on human rights is futile. China’s progress on human rights over recent years has been noticeable and will not be beleaguered by attacks like this. The stability of the nation lies in its grassroots. Although many problems have emerged at this level, development is moving in the right direction. Due to China’s immense scale, confrontations may occasionally take place, but they have not and will not dominate society – and will be diminished by the optimism of the wider population.

It is to be hoped that the U.S. Embassy in China is able to distance itself from activities that don’t match its functions. It should try and win a favorable impression from the Chinese public rather than offering an escape route for additional extreme elements. For if it does take on such a role, it will be too much for it to bear. It should adopt a pragmatic attitude toward its capabilities and functions as well as their roles within the Sino-US relationship.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

Given the two candidates for the U.S. presidency, what do Europeans and in this case, Germans, have to look forward to? According to Die Welt columnist Alan Posener, “The good news for Europeans is also the bad news: it won’t make much of a difference who wins.” To put it another way, American leadership as Europeans have come to expect it is over – and weary-sounding Germans will have to pick up the slack.

For Die Welt, Alan Posener writes in part:

The first lesson drawn from Romney’s victory in the primaries is: The Tea Party revolution against the establishment is over. If one bears in mind those who were at times considered favorites – among them a businessman whose program consisted solely of a nine percent flat tax, and a Catholic fundamentalist who questioned the separation of church and state – then Romney, despite his right turn on health care reform and tax cuts, seems like a return to “business as usual.”

When George W. Bush – elected as the advocate of a “humble” foreign policy – announced after 9/11 an agenda that would use America’s position as sole superpower to bring peace to the world through democracy, continental Europeans were appalled. Many longed for a multi-polar world in which the E.U. would have greater influence.

In the eyes of the European public, Obama has mutated from a shining figure to a lesser one. And it turns out that there is only thing worse than aggressive leadership by the United States: the absence of such leadership. Might Romney succeed where Obama has been denied? Could he, like Reagan after the “malaise” noted by Jimmy Carter, infuse America with new confidence and help it gain new global importance? Could Obama accomplish this in a second term?

It’s doubtful on both counts. Whoever leads America during the next four years must above all try and get the economy back on its feet, reform the welfare system and end the bomb-throwing in the domestic political trenches. In foreign policy, the greatest challenge remains relations with the second most powerful country in the world – China. The good news for Europeans is also the bad news: it won’t make much of a difference who wins the 2102 election. Either way, we’re home alone, and not only must we get our house in order, but we have to pay more attention to the neighborhood than ever before.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR GERMAN AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

Actually, Boehner has it backward.

For haters of government bailouts, Republicans in general are doing a nifty job of saving the President from his biggest mistakes in office.

In 2009, instead of going all out on job creation, Obama overrode advisers and went all in on health care . Worse than that, instead of asking for up-or-down votes on preferred provisions, he threw it all into a Congressional pit to see a 2000-page bill emerge larded with a sickening display of tradeoffs for their own constituents by Democratic lawmakers. (The public saw, too, and thus was the Tea Party born to take over the House next year.)

The President’s mistakes did not end there. Apparently insensitive to charges of care rationing and death panels, he continued to stress the altruism of covering millions of uninsured, apparently expecting Americans to respond with empathy rather than fear of less care for themselves.

So much miscalculation, so much political damage. When it was all over, health care reform was a partisan disaster for Democrats. Voters don’t understand most of it, don’t like what they do and have been sold a bill of goods that Obamacare is an expensive goverment takeover. Even keeping children covered until 26 and barring disqualification for pre-existing conditions have been lost in the shuffle as Obama pluses.

But wait! What do we hear over the horizon, leading the cavalry charge to save the President? Social Conservatives are riding to his rescue labeling unmarried women who want contraception coverage as sluts and pulling the party to the right of the Vatican, leaving Mitt Romney with a huge gap in polls among young women voters.

This cycle it is the Catholic branch of the Right, led by St. Santorum, that is pushing for theocratic correctness in other people’s lives, the kind of intrusion that would have made JFK puke.

MORE.

The future is grim, if you can believe where advertisers are placing their bets on the bed-bound who watch TV screens all day. For these select viewers, the commercials are specially chosen. 

For the more fortunate, there are lovable codgers like former Presidential candidate Fred Thomson and Wilfred Brimley of “Cocoon” to warmly endorse cashing in the value of the home you own, without mentioning the ugly fact that in a number of years, you lose the home and will be looking for other sources to scrounge up money to pay for food. But you’ll still have memories of that Vegas vacation paid for by the reverse mortgage to keep you warm. 

 You don’t even need a home, if you watch an infomercial that tells you how to buy a foreclosed one cheap and fix it up for a fabulous profit. No details about the money, energy and skills you’ll need to make a huge profit. 

But elderly dreams are not all financial. There are commercials featuring models half their age tightening their abs and flirting with silver-haired male models. 

Yet if you really want to risk a seizure for the old folks…

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To fund government subsidies for student loans, House Republicans could either have come up with the money from eliminating some tax breaks for oil companies or eliminating a program that allows poor women to get breast cancer tests. And they opted to eliminate the latter.

The Republican dominated House also had to choose between cutting funding for the military or for food stamps. And opted for a food stamp trimming.

So subsidies for oil companies making near-record profits are more important that breast cancer screening. And another few tanks are more important than food for children, the prime beneficiaries of food stamp programs. Gotcha. Now I understand “family values.”

But I’m still trying to work through the relationship between the term “conservative” as used these days and some past meanings of the term. Herbert Hoover, before becoming President, was generally acknowledged to be one of the greatest humanitarians in history. This was due to his magnificent management of post-World I food programs in Western Europe and Russia.

Hoover, the proto-typical conservative, feed millions abroad. These days, though, “conservatives” in this country seem to have it out for food stamps that feed our own children.

Odd. Seems I have to think this one through a bit more.