Please Tell The GOP, No Man Is An Island.

AP IMPACT: Suicides are surging among US troops

By ROBERT BURNS | Associated Press 

http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-suicides-surging-among-us-troops-204148055.html

EXCERPT: Kim Ruocco, widow of Marine Maj. John Ruocco, a helicopter pilot who hanged himself in 2005 between Iraq deployments, said he was unable to bring himself to go for help.

"He was so afraid of how people would view him once he went for help," she said in an interview at her home in suburban Boston. "He thought that people would think he was weak, that people would think he was just trying to get out of redeploying or trying to get out of service, or that he just couldn't hack it - when, in reality, he was sick. He had suffered injury in combat and he had also suffered from depression and let it go untreated for years. And because of that, he's dead today."

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Suicides are surging among America's troops, averaging nearly one a day this year — the fastest pace in the nation's decade of war.

The 154 suicides for active-duty troops in the first 155 days of the year far outdistance the U.S. forces killed in action in Afghanistan — about 50 percent more — according to Pentagon statistics obtained by The Associated Press.

The numbers reflect a military burdened with wartime demands from Iraq and Afghanistan that have taken a greater toll than foreseen a decade ago. The military also is struggling with increased sexual assaults, alcohol abuse, domestic violence and other misbehavior.

Because suicides had leveled off in 2010 and 2011, this year's upswing has caught some officials by surprise.

The reasons for the increase are not fully understood. Among explanations, studies have pointed to combat exposure, post-traumatic stress, misuse of prescription medications and personal financial problems. Army data suggest soldiers with multiple combat tours are at greater risk of committing suicide, although a substantial proportion of Army suicides are committed by soldiers who never deployed. MORE HERE http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-suicides-surging-among-us-troops-204148055.html

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Media should be talking about this overwhelming cataclysm but they are not. It seems it is one of those quandaries that those in power positions would rather sweep under the carpet. I blame many of our societal ills on the GOP conservative frame of mind and again I place responsibility for these military suicides smack dab on the GOP ideology of… women are weak, gays are an abomination, government is not and should not be responsible for its citizenry, human beings ARE ISLANDS, therefore each individual has no one to blame but themselves for humankind breakdowns; And the GOP attitude on mental illness, especially within the military is, ITS ALWAYS FEIGNED AND ALWAYS A COVER FOR COWARDLINESS. They disperse this indifferent, calloused and unrealistic credo, as if it were something to be proud of. It’s a false pride because all of us together are only as strong as our weakest link. John Donne, wrote a poignant poem many years ago that 'rings' true today.

 No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee. John Donne( born between 24 January and 19 June 1572 – died 31 March 1631)

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The best explained critique for this passionate poem came from this site: http://isu.indstate.edu/ilnprof/ENG451/ISLAND

John Donne

Meditation XVII: No man is an island...

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

This famous meditation of Donne's puts forth two essential ideas which are representative of the Renaissance era in which it was written:    No man is an island, entire of itself...The idea that people are not isolated from one another, but that mankind is interconnected; and…   Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee The vivid awareness of mortality that seems a natural outgrowth of a time when death was the constant companion of life.

Donne brings these two themes together to affirm that any one man's death diminishes all of mankind, since all mankind is connected; yet that death itself is not so much to be feared as it at first seems. Join us in exploring these two main themes, which we have associated with the two controlling images of the meditation...the island and the bell.

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If I had only a smidgeon of universal power, I would put forth a proclamation that these words of wisdom shall become required reading and study for all who believe we are NOT, every last one of us, in the SAME boat; And Common Sense would tell you quite blatantly… it’s not UNSINKABLE. thinkingblue

PS: Now as a Case in Point of the GOP's absurd creed: GOP To Women: Equal Pay, No Way!

Many more examples of GOP callousness at thinkingblue.blogspot.com

GOP TO WOMEN: Equal Pay, No Way!

If women are paid equal for equal work, Businesses Will Fail!

This is so convoluted, it's hard to... NO IMPOSSIBLE TO understand, that is, if you possess average to genius aptitude or INTELLIGENCE. (or even if you were a few peas short of a casserole! )

23% of all American children live in poverty
Published: 31 May, 2012,

­Anyone who doubts the United States has been in an economic free fall for the last three decades should check out the new United Nations Children’s Fund report on child poverty. OF the 34 wealthiest nations looked at by UNICEF – the United States has the second highest child poverty rate of all of them – with a staggering 23% of all American children living in poverty.

Only two nations – United States and Romania have child poverty rates above 20%. That number would be even higher except for federal life lines like food stamps – which reduced the number of children in extreme poverty by half last year. Unfortunately – with unemployment benefits expiring around the nation – and Republicans gutting the food stamp programs – things could get a lot tougher for children in America. http://rt.com/usa/blogs/thom-hartmann-blog/poverty-united-child-states/


But I guess none of this "malarkey" on poverty is true and I am doing my usual Whistle In The Dark. Just remember what Presidential Hopeful, Herman Cain, once told us, "BLAME YOURSELF if you're not rich!".

When will it end? thinkingblue

Republican GOP Tea Party's War On Women (continued)

Excerpt From This Link: The more Republican candidates pitch for social conservative votes, the more we see the misogyny of America's religious right

Rick Santorum... has cast America as fighting a spiritual struggle against secularism and Satan.
Republicans and their Tea Party shock troops say they want to "take America back". Progressives think they mean back to the 1950s, back to when men were men, women were ladies, and black folks only got into the White House by the back door. But Republicans are thinking big: they actually want to take us back to the Middle Ages, back to the "good old days" of sexual repression, regulation (ON SOCIAL ISSUES) and punishment.
Forget the economy: this election is becoming a referendum on women's bodies, since it's women (according to the Republicans' Book of Holy Misogyny) who like to have sex without wanting to get pregnant, and, if they do get pregnant, might want to have an abortion; women who demand, as former Senator Rick Santorum says, a "license to do things in the sexual realm that is [sic] counter to how things are supposed to be."
You know, "sluts".
Republicans in Congress have launched a dubious investigation of Planned Parenthood, the century-old women's health organization, and tried to take away its funding. The Senate narrowly defeated an amendment that would have allowed employers to deny insurance coverage for anything the employer found morally or religiously objectionable: contraception, certainly, but perhaps also lung cancer treatment ("you should have stopped smoking"), HIV/Aids testing ("homosexuality is an abomination"), and pre-natal care for single women ("nice girls get themselves a husband before they get themselves a baby").
When I stumbled across this article I thought GOOD SUPERNATURAL GUY, this is a remarkable dissertation of what the GOP Tea Party is all about in plain English AND it came from the objectivity of another country, The United Kingdom, (Leave it to the Brits to call it like it is). This WAR ON WOMEN (and it's not SO CALLED it IS) made me think... (Which I do quite frequently... I don't know why, maybe because I have a few BRAIN CELLS hanging around with nothing to do) what about all the unwanted little babies that the GOP Tea Party supposedly are trying to SAVE... (All the unwanted pregnancies that the male-chowder-heads inside the GOP Tea Party wish to force to term, so they can become a bunch of impoverished lazy bums – as the same GOP Tea Party would ascribe to them, once born) ...what about those tiny little guys who were FORCED into existence even though no one wanted them. With a few KEY words typed in to Google, the on-line search machine gave me back ‘VOILA’ this link:
http://users.resist.ca/~kirstena/machallinstitutionhistory.html
Here is a heart wrenching EXCERPT: American Child Institution History

The history of child welfare for neglected and dependent children in the United States traces its roots to Elizabethan Poor Laws from the 1600's and British common law that came to America via the colonists. Up until the 1800's, abandoned and neglected children were placed in workhouses, and sold into indentured servitude or industrial labor, alongside destitute adults. Poor children often also ended up in poorhouses/almshouses alongside adults. In Robert L. Geiser's book, The Illusion of Caring, (1973: Beacon Press, Boston), he says in 1795, there were 622 paupers in the New York City Almshouse and 259 of them, over 40 percent, were children under the age of nine. He goes on to write, "In 1821, in the Boston Almshouse were 78 sick persons, 77 children, 9 maniacs and idiots, and 155 unclassified inmates, mostly old and decrepit…In 1834, the Boston Almshouse (originally intended to be a workhouse for the able-bodied poor) now contained 134 sick persons, 132 children (104 of school age and 28 at nurse), and a distressing 61 persons insane or idiotic…" (p. 152). Eventually public outrage over conditions for poor children in adult work and poverty institutions removed children into specialized child institutions, which eventually gave way to a foster care revolution, ushered in by Charles Loring Brace, in the mid-1840's. The 1800's saw an economic depression, and the U.S. government began getting involved in child welfare, in addition to existing religious and private organizations devoted to the cause for differing reasons. By the mid-1900's, foster care had begun to replace institutional care for dependent children. Yet even in 2008, we are experiencing what some call a "broken foster care system," with children dying in foster care regularly, without proper state supervision. Hundreds of thousands of children have gone through American child institutions and foster care placements. The problem of what to do with abandoned, impoverished children is one as old as America herself. http://users.resist.ca/~kirstena/machallinstitutionhistory.html

HEY FOLKS, that's the America the Republican GOP Tea Party wishes to take us back to... I just can't help but wonder, (another past-time for those pesky BRAIN CELLS with not much to do) WHO ARE OUR LEADERS? Are they the educated folk that we elect OR are THEY the unenlightened, scared to death, small minded ignorants who complain and throw hissy-fits because we have come a long way from the puritanical pathetic people of yesteryear (YOU KNOW THE ONES WHO USE TO BURN OLD LADIES AT THE STAKE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_burning )? thinkingblue

GOP War On Women - continued

War On Women? Poppycock!

Billionaire has spilled the beans
on the 1%'s dirty little secret.

Why The Rightwing Have No Compassion

 Please forgive me but I must re-blog this video, it shows the GOP Tea Party misogyny and their lack of Public Morality so thoroughly with honesty. Thank you Robert Reich.

A War On Women? Poppycock!

A War On Women? Poppycock!
Hypocrisy To The Highest Degree.

Despite the persistent gender gap in opinion polls and mounting criticism of their hostility to women’s rights, Republicans are not backing off their assault on women’s equality and well-being.

The GOP is still trying to deny that they are waging a WAR ON WOMEN even though everything they do, every word that comes from their lips, every bill they try to push, affirms otherwise. A few examples in my own words below but don't take my arrogant opinion of anger towards the SOB... Oops I mean GOP, just read the article The Campaign Against Women for REAL HARD EVIDENCE that proves, indeed the GOP/TP Republicans are waging a political war on all us W-O-M-E-N. (only those of us who are either low income or middle income because wealthy women will be able to override the GOP's unfair laws against females, with M-O-N-E-Y.)

ABORTION - GOP is whittling away at Roe v. Wade until it no longer exists.

ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE - GOP wishes to defund Planned Parenthood, denying low income women life saving medical treatment.

EQUAL PAY- GOP does not believe women deserve the same wages as men for the same jobs.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE - The GOP wishes to omit new protections for gay, Indian, student and immigrant abuse victims ... GOP also wish to roll back protections for immigrant women whose status is dependent on a spouse, making it more likely that they will stay with their abusers, at real personal risk... AND THE GOP IS STILL INSISTING THAT 'THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A WAR ON WOMEN...

Say What?

NOW TURN ON YOUR TV AND TUNE IN TO FOX NEWS TO HEAR, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Neil Cavuto et.al. clamor,

“Par-don My French, Folks… ‘A WAR ON WOMEN’ Poppycock and Fiddlesticks!!  IT’S JUST A LIBERAL PLOT PERPETRATED BY DEMOCRATS”.  

You Decide? thinkingblue

The Campaign Against Women
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/opinion/sunday/the-attack-on-women-is-real.html

Despite the persistent gender gap in opinion polls and mounting criticism of their hostility to women’s rights, Republicans are not backing off their assault on women’s equality and well-being. New laws in some states could mean a death sentence for a pregnant woman who suffers a life-threatening condition. But the attack goes well beyond abortion, into birth control, access to health care, equal pay and domestic violence.

Republicans seem immune to criticism. In an angry speech last month, John Boehner, the House speaker, said claims that his party was damaging the welfare of women were “entirely created” by Democrats. Earlier, the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, sneered that any suggestion of a G.O.P. “war on women” was as big a fiction as a “war on caterpillars.”

But just last Wednesday, Mr. Boehner refuted his own argument by ramming through the House a bill that seriously weakens the Violence Against Women Act. That followed the Republican push in Virginia and elsewhere to require medically unnecessary and physically invasive sonograms before an abortion, and Senate Republicans’ persistent blocking of a measure to better address the entrenched problem of sex-based wage discrimination.

On Capitol Hill and in state legislatures, Republicans are attacking women’s rights in four broad areas.
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