17 October 2014 Congress demands Ebola action

          We now know of three cases of Ebola that were diagnosed in thes Unites States.  One was a visitor from Africa.  The other two are nurses who worked with th primary patient.  300, 000,000 Americans are now panicking about a disease that they will most likely never acquire. 

          Congress, guardians of the people, so they say, has been stumbling all over itself to make it appear that they are doing something to provide for the health and well being of Americans.  They held a high profile, televise conference yesterday whit each member asking essentially the same questions that they failed to listen to as the various agency doctors tried to answer.  It was apparent that the elected, exalted members had no ghost of an idea about virology, epidemiology, logistics as related to delivering health care, or a host of other things that determine whether or not we can properly diagnose and treat a virulent hemorrhagic fever caused by a virus that has a very high mortality rate. 

          Over the last decade, Congress has refused to adequately fund CDC, NIH, and other research treatment facilities and program.  They spent much time insisting that we should have a single medical person overseeing and guiding the various effots to handle a potential Ebola outbreak similar in nature to the Spanish influenza that followed WWI and killed millions.  However, Congress still continues to block the appointment of  very highly qualified candidate for Surgeon General because he made an anti-gun comment. 

          Yesterday, some of the GOP insisted that Obama should use the National guard to contain and control ebola patients and ebola quarantined citizens in some sort of isolation camp.  Sound like black helicopter? 

          The various hospitals are more or less prepared but the corporate nature of most of our hospitals will result in inadequate and dangerous work safety for health care workers when the MBA goons start buying cheaper, inadequate personal protective gear for employees to use. 

          Then, of course, the  rumors are bound to emerge.  After all, we’ve already seen countless claims that Obama is a Kenyan socialist determined to destroy America and hand it over to Islamic fundamentalists.  Is it, then, so difficult to believe that he might secretly bring in Islamic terror babies infected with ebola at birth so that Sharia law can replace our existing laws?  After all, Ebola is an African virus.

15 October 2014 blackmail photo

          I’ve been looking for this photograph for a long time.  I recalled its existence but not as many of the details as I thought.   A visit with my mother and sister, Suzanne, led to an afternoon spent prowling through old photo albums.  This little gem popped out, and I jumped on it, secured it, and now intend to use it for my own nefarious purposes. 

          Every family seems to generate blackmail photos.  I spent a fair amount of energy avoiding all photography events.  On the other hand, my mother has quite a large collection of photos taken during her high school days and during her nurses training at Jewish Hospital in St. Louis MO where she was a member of the Army Cadet Nurse Corps during WWII.  Generational gaps narrow down quite a bit when the younger folks get to see the older ones when the older ones were younger. 

          While I didn’t discover any blackmail photos, I got to see her as she was when she was young, single, and in the pipeline for service in a combat theater.  That’s somewhat of a unique view, one that we early Boomers should try to establish for all the families who had members in similar situations.  There’s really not an equal opportunity for Gen X and Millenials as there is no large national effort such as WWII that involves the entire populace in a common effort.  Korea and VietNam differ due to the smaller numbers of men and women who wound up in those wars while the nation largely ignored the troops unless directly related. 

          I promised some of my Compendiot friends that I would post this photo if I ever located it.  So, here I was about 1972 along with older daughter Caitlin. 

2 October 2014 Xin Loi Dau Tieng

The mail today included a notice that the Army has rejected my attempt to have my records corrected to reflect wounds received in August 1969 while serving with the 1^st Infantry Division in Dau Tieng VietNam.  This effort was refused despite the description of the event by a former soldier in the same unit.

           When I first asked for the record mod in  2002 I had no knowledge that anyone else could partially corroborate my claim.  This summer I stumbled across a book written by my former comrade in arms.  He wrote about the event in a book published in 2011.  I was able to contact him and he agreed to provide what support he could in reopening the claim. 

          Since then, I’ve also made contact with the unit’s former XO.  He remembers me but was not present on site that day.  He and I talked by phone and he provided a lot of information to fill in blanks and illuminate situations. 

          I intend to meet with the author sometime before year’s end. 

          While my medical records indicate shrapnel injuries, visible on X-ray, there is no documentation that I acquired the shrapnel in-country. 

          I’ve no further reason to pursue the matter any further.