Political Insider

By Tom Ga Hunter

July 25, 2008 10:29 AM | Link to this

If Saxby signs off on Earmarks where will the $5,000,000.00 war chest come from?? How will his son “make” a living???

By Ga Values

July 25, 2008 11:10 AM | Link to this

Would 1 of you Saxby guys please post the link to Saxby’s 250 earmarks, I can’t find it on his web page & would like to compare it to Common Causes list.

By Ga Values

July 25, 2008 11:18 AM | Link to this

Why did the Draft Dodger Saxby Chambliss vote to cut spending on VA Hospitals??

Wounded Warriors, Empty Promises : July 25, 2008 The bad news about the Army’s treatment of wounded soldiers keeps coming. The generals keep apologizing and insisting that things are getting better, but they are not. The latest low moment for Army brass came on Tuesday in Washington, where a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee held a hearing to examine the sorry state of the Army Medical Action Plan. That’s the plan to prevent the kind of systematic neglect and mistreatment exposed by The Washington Post last year at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

After a flurry of apologies, firings, investigations and reports, the Army resolved to streamline and improve case management for wounded soldiers. Under the plan, “warrior transition units” would swiftly deliver excellent care to troops so they could return to duty or be discharged into the veterans’ medical system. Each soldier would be assigned a team to look over his or her care: a physician, a nurse and a squad leader. It all sounded sensible and comprehensive.

It has not worked out so well. Staff members of the House subcommittee who visited numerous warrior transition units June 2007 to February found a significant gap between the Army leadership’s optimistic promises and reality.

Among other things, the Army failed to anticipate a flood of wounded soldiers. Some transition units have been overwhelmed and are thus severely understaffed. At Fort Hood, Tex., last month, staff members found 1,362 patients in a unit authorized for 649 — and more than 350 on a waiting list. Of the total, 311 were identified as being at high risk of drug overdose, suicide or other dangerous behavior. There were 38 nurse case managers when there should have been 74. Some soldiers have had to languish two months to a year before the Army decided what to do with them, far longer than the goal the Army set last year.

Under skeptical questioning during a hearing in February, Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army surgeon general, told the subcommittee that “for all intents and purposes, we are entirely staffed at the point we need to be staffed.” He also said: “The Army’s unwavering commitment and a key element of our warrior ethos is that we never leave a soldier behind on the battlefield — or lost in a bureaucracy.”

That was thousands of wounded, neglected soldiers ago. There are now about 12,500 soldiers assigned to the warrior transition units — more than twice as many as a year ago. The number is expected to reach 20,000 by this time next year.

The nation’s responsibility to care for the wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan will extend for decades. After Tuesday’s hearing, we are left pondering the simple questions asked at the outset by Representative Susan Davis, the California Democrat who is chairwoman of the military personnel subcommittee: Why did the Army fail to adequately staff its warrior transition units? Why did it fail to predict the surge in demand? And why did it take visits from a Congressional subcommittee to prod the Army into recognizing and promising — yet again — to fix the problem?

By Fruitless Objections

July 25, 2008 12:00 PM | Link to this

People have thrown in the towel on cigarette smoking. They believe that “when my time comes, my time comes” about death.

People dont believe that you can affect longevity one way or ta’other. I just saw a 50 something lady, thin, who looked 60 something, (yeah, I thought about it, but somebody would stop me, they always do), buy a carton of marlboros. I was actually jealous. I love marlboro reds in the box.

But I honestly believe that if I quit my smoking ban of 25 years now, (and drinking ban of 20 years), and of course the ban of injecting LSD into my temples every four hours, then I know that I wouldn’t last as long as I will last if I kept the ban in play.

Besides, my wife wont let me have any beer in the house. I need someone to step forward and save me from my marriage. My wife is mean to me.

Help.

By Tom Paine

July 25, 2008 12:07 PM | Link to this

The Secretary of State situation is VERY interesting. Ms. Handel previously had prominently displayed on her web site the initial response to the AJC’s first editorial. That response has now been removed and doesn’t appear to be found anywhere on the site. I really do recall that this intial response claimed that all she did was adopt the administrative judge’s decision finding that Powell wasn’t a resident of the district. Why was the response removed from her web site and isn’t even found in the archived releases?

By Bullfrog Johnson

July 25, 2008 6:40 PM | Link to this

Yall’s a sad bunch of mofo’s