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Author: TriSec    Date: 05/03/2022 02:18:04

Good Morning.

There's a long-running problem that has been plaguing our veterans for decades. It is indeed military suicide.


The Veteran's suicide rate is nearly twice the civilian - according to one online source, it's 30 per 100,000 vs. the 13 per 100k for those that never wore the uniform.

Currently, a string of suicides is affecting the USS George Washington. To the point where it's deployment is delayed, and sailors are being moved ashore.


The commanding officer of the USS George Washington told his crew Thursday that the Navy will begin to move sailors off of the aircraft carrier following a string of suicides and complaints from service members about conditions aboard the ship, whose projected departure from the shipyards has been pushed back once again.

Capt. Brent Gaut announced that the ship will move 260 sailors "to an offsite barracks-type living arrangement on Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth" -- specifically, a Navy Gateway Inn and Suites -- starting Monday, according to a recording of the announcement reviewed by Military.com.

"We'll be able to expand that number at about 50 additional beds per week as we figure out exactly what is needed," Gaut continued.

The Navy confirmed the plan when asked by Military.com and a spokesperson added that the moves will continue “until all Sailors who wish to move off-ship have done so.”

The moves comes at the end of a month that saw three sailors aboard the ship die via suicide, after a previously undisclosed string of suicides going back to at least July of last year.

Military.com has been able to confirm at least five suicides by sailors assigned to the ship in the last 10 months -- the Navy has disputed the cause of death for one of those sailors -- and eight in total since November 2019.

It also follows an April 22 visit to the ship by the Navy's top enlisted official, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Russell Smith, in which the crew was told the service is largely powerless to improve conditions.

Smith told a sailor who had asked about living conditions that the Navy "probably could have done better to manage your expectations coming in here" before informing the crew that raising concerns should be done "with reasonable expectations and then understanding what ... what this is like."

"What you're not doing is sleeping in a foxhole like a Marine might be doing," he added.

According to the commanding officer, the ship currently has 422 sailors living on board. Since sailors typically do not receive an allowance for housing until the E-5 rank, those living on board a ship while it's in a shipyard tend to be the most junior crew members.


It's unclear what the issue is. The Navy is trying to do something about it, but only time will tell. But indeed, this never goes away. Just a few lines down at my source, there's another story about military suicide - this one affecting overseas bases.


Troops stationed at remote and overseas bases attempted suicide at slightly higher rates but were less often successful compared to the general active-duty military population, according to findings in a new Government Accountability Office report.

Nearly 19% of all suicide attempts occured at those bases, but only 10% of suicide deaths, the federal watchdog found. The remote facilities may have higher suicide risk factors, such as social isolation and less access to mental health services, but troops at overseas bases also often lack the same access to personal firearms, which are used in the majority of military suicides.

However, the Pentagon has not fully assessed those suicide risks, and that process could help reduce such deaths, the GAO said in the report mandated by Congress. The report listed more than 50 installations that are overseas or considered remote, including Fort Wainwright, Alaska; Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and Naval Air Facility Misawa, Japan.

The findings come amid a spike in troops taking their own lives at isolated bases in Alaska, as well as a string of suicides among the crew of the dry-docked aircraft carrier USS George Washington.

In March, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered an independent commission to look at suicides at three Alaska bases; Camp Humphreys, South Korea, the largest overseas U.S. military base; and other key bases inside the U.S., such as Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

Lawmakers ordered the GAO to look into suicides at remote and overseas bases in 2020 following a 33.5% increase in the deaths over the previous four years.

Between 2016 and 2020, 1,806 active-duty troops took their own lives across all duty stations, while an additional 7,178 attempted suicide, according to the GAO.


Military life is hard - and it is a specific choice, by virtue of us having an all-volunteer force these days. But maybe, possibly....we wouldn't have this sort of conundrum if we weren't always at war?
 

14 comments (Latest Comment: 05/03/2022 18:08:51 by Raine)
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Comment by Will_in_LA on 05/03/2022 13:32:13
Good morning, bloggers!!!

I will comment first on the blog. It seems that the military brass have not addressed the causes of the increase in suicides among military personnel. This is a crisis and needs to be addressed. Sadly, I am not sure that it will be.

Now for the big news overnight, as revealed in a scoop by Politico:

Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Justice Alito writes in an initial majority draft circulated inside the court.

The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO.

The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v. Casey – that largely maintained the right. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes.


“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” he writes in the document, labeled as the “Opinion of the Court.” “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”


I am surprised by the link but not by the draft of the opinion. Once three conservative justices were installed in the court, after the denial of any hearing for Merrick Garland, I expected some sort of action to at least gravely limit Roe v. Wade. Now, it is time for everyone to act to preserve abortion rights, contraception rights, and the rights of the LGBT community.

The Daily Kos has an article that shows that Roe v. Wade is not the only target of this ruling.

Leaked draft opinion shows Supreme Court striking down 50 years of precedent on abortion rights

Laura Clawson for Daily Kos
Daily Kos Staff

Reproductive rights are not the only ones in danger from this court, packed by Donald Trump and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell with three justices during Trump’s term. Alito’s draft opinion also takes aim at LGBT rights, criticizing Lawrence v. Texas, the case that legalized sodomy, and Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark marriage equality decision. Republicans have also been increasingly open about their desire to overturn Griswold v. Connecticut, the case that legalized contraception for married couples. “The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions,” Alito wrote—and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to come up with other rights he doesn’t think are deeply rooted enough to deserve protection.

But reproductive rights are the ones that will be struck down in the coming weeks, if this draft opinion holds. And when that happens, it will be already vulnerable people who suffer: ones without the money to get on an airplane and fly to a state where their rights will be protected—at least until Republicans take Congress and pass a national abortion ban, as they hope to do.

“Several of these conservative Justices, who are in no way accountable to the American people, have lied to the U.S. Senate, ripped up the Constitution and defiled both precedent and the Supreme Court’s reputation – all at the expense of tens of millions of women who could soon be stripped of their bodily autonomy and the constitutional rights they’ve relied on for half a century,” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement Tuesday night. “The party of Lincoln and Eisenhower has now completely devolved into the party of Trump. Every Republican Senator who supported Senator McConnell and voted for Trump Justices pretending that this day would never come will now have to explain themselves to the American people.”


There is a saying that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. Clearly, we must be vigilant and get everyone we can to vote this year and in 2024.

Comment by Raine on 05/03/2022 13:36:04
Comment by Raine on 05/03/2022 13:42:54
Good Morning.

Comment by wickedpam on 05/03/2022 13:45:54
Morning



So - yeah - fuck everything

Comment by Raine on 05/03/2022 13:50:27
Amendment XIV
Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2.
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.

Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4.
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5.
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Comment by Will_in_LA on 05/03/2022 13:59:55
Sadly, Raine, this will be a long struggle.

if there is anything good in this morning, it is that the mask is off and we now have every reason to take a stand and oppose what seems to be the Supreme Court's decision. It is time to get everyone we know who cares about privacy rights to the polls. So, much for settled law. The current justices may undermine a court that has lost the confidence of the public in recent decades, going back to at least Bush v. Gore. Considering all the justices who stated that Roe v. Wade was settle law, how do we not conclude that Supreme Court justices are just politicians in robes.

The GOP may regret this decision as this will likely mobilize millions of voters. They have sown into the wind but may reap the whirlwind.

Comment by Scoopster on 05/03/2022 14:46:54
Mornin' all..

In the segment talking about this on NPR's Morning Edition today, they focused mostly on the fact that this draft opinion was leaked to the press, and confirmed by at least four sources. While there have been small information leaks before from SCOTUS about upcoming opinions and whatnot, this is the first time an entire draft opinion has been leaked. The reporters mentioned the fact that this would cause the justices not to trust each other for a very long time.

As far as I see it, that trust between the justices was actually broken years ago when reactionary activist judges like Thomas and Alito joined the court, and has only grown worse with the addition of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett. To this group, stare decisis is a total myth and they will go to every possible end to dial back the Constitutional protections that the court has previously granted to citizens and to laws of Congress. They did it with the Voting Rights Act already.

The only thing I'm wondering is just how far this decision will go. Will it also strike at Griswold v Connecticut, which is the much more powerful opinion in regard to privacy and abortion rights?

Comment by Raine on 05/03/2022 15:03:48
Quote by Scoopster:
Mornin' all..

In the segment talking about this on NPR's Morning Edition today, they focused mostly on the fact that this draft opinion was leaked to the press, and confirmed by at least four sources. While there have been small information leaks before from SCOTUS about upcoming opinions and whatnot, this is the first time an entire draft opinion has been leaked. The reporters mentioned the fact that this would cause the justices not to trust each other for a very long time.

As far as I see it, that trust between the justices was actually broken years ago when reactionary activist judges like Thomas and Alito joined the court, and has only grown worse with the addition of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett. To this group, stare decisis is a total myth and they will go to every possible end to dial back the Constitutional protections that the court has previously granted to citizens and to laws of Congress. They did it with the Voting Rights Act already.

The only thing I'm wondering is just how far this decision will go. Will it also strike at Griswold v Connecticut, which is the much more powerful opinion in regard to privacy and abortion rights?

Short answer is Yes.

this draft signals to the far right they can bring more cases to SCOTUS.

and that is why the draft was leaked in my opinion. This is nearing the endgame.

I am horrified, angry disgusted and pissed that no one who mattered listened to all of us.



Comment by Raine on 05/03/2022 15:04:23
Comment by shelaghc on 05/03/2022 15:12:07
This needs to be shared - particularly with women in states that are banning abortions now.

How to Give Yourself an Abortion with Misoprostol Pills

Comment by Raine on 05/03/2022 15:23:48
Roberts has lost control.




Comment by shelaghc on 05/03/2022 16:34:59
Quote by Raine:
Roberts has lost control.




Someone suggested the possibility that Breyer, since he's on his way out anyway, may have been the leak.


Comment by wickedpam on 05/03/2022 17:52:02
Quote by shelaghc:
Quote by Raine:
Roberts has lost control.




Someone suggested the possibility that Breyer, since he's on his way out anyway, may have been the leak.



Well he would have no F's left to give.

Comment by Raine on 05/03/2022 18:08:51
Quote by wickedpam:
Quote by shelaghc:
Quote by Raine:
Roberts has lost control.




Someone suggested the possibility that Breyer, since he's on his way out anyway, may have been the leak.



Well he would have no F's left to give.
The timing of the memo and Breyer announcing his retirement is curious.

I don't think Breyer would destroy what little trust the justices had in each other, tho. I think whatever this is, whoever this is, did this to punish Roberts. I have a strong feeling he would side to not overturning Roe v. Wade