Bush's Next Firing

Mr. President, send out the letter today canning this guy. He's Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, and from what I can tell, he's using our troops to wrangle some more money from his programs.

How else can you explain this?

The number of suicides among veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may exceed the combat death toll because of inadequate mental health care, the U.S. government's top psychiatric researcher said.

Community mental health centers, hobbled by financial limits, haven't provided enough scientifically sound care, especially in rural areas, said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He briefed reporters today at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in Washington.

Really? These are numbers we can believe?

Let's see. There have been about 4,500 deaths of US troops on both fronts and 430 suicides among the 1.7 million US troops that have served in the two combat theaters.

For Insel's prediction to come true, suicide frequency will have to grow ten-fold. While that seems unlikely at first blush, you have to remember that when the war ends, the number of combat fatalities will stop growing, but suicides will continue for years afterwards. Insel is obviously figuring that over time, the suicide stats will slowly build until one day they pass combat fatalities.

But how long will have to pass before Insel will say that war was not the primary factor in the suicide? Two? Ten? Twenty? It is improbable that even without enough mental health clinics in rural areas that Insel's prediction will come true within a reasonable number of years.

Besides, will every suicide of a war vet be attributed to the war even when there are obviously other more significant factors?

Finally, in blaming the lack of government-funded mental health facilities, Insel overlooks other sources of counseling: health insurance funded programs, a guy whipping out his wallet and paying for it himself, families taking care of their own, or counseling through churches and other caring organizations.

It couldn't be more obvious that Insel is trolling for dollars and has figured out a way to cook the stats to justify the argument.

Look, I think anything less than first class care for returning vets stinks, especially since the cost differential between so-so care and stellar care is inconsequential. A lot of returning vets will need counseling and they should be able to get it. If they're living far out in the sticks, they may have to go somewhere other than a neat little clinic funded by NIMH. C'est la vie. People who live in the country understand this phenomenon and choose to live there nonetheless; it doesn't mean every West Virginia holler and Oklahoma crossroads needs an NIMH crew at the ready.

What I don't like is a federal bucks-hunter distorting the problem, then riding it into the budget gladiator arena, hoping it's the right weapon to take money away from some other deserving program -- especially when his weapon of choice reflects badly on on war effort and the valiant men and women who are fighting it.

One suicide is too many ... especially when someone is exploiting it.

Department Of Homeland Insanity

Sometimes I wonder how we've made it since 9/11 without a terrorist attack on our shores, given the incredible incompetence of some of those tasked with protecting us. As reported in WashTimes:

Some federal air marshals have been denied entry to flights they are assigned to protect when their names matched those on the terrorist no-fly list, and the agency says it's now taking steps to make sure their agents are allowed to board in the future.

The problem with federal air marshals (FAM) names matching those of suspected terrorists on the no-fly list has persisted for years, say air marshals familiar with the situation.

One air marshal said it has been “a major problem, where guys are denied boarding by the airline.”

“In some cases, planes have departed without any coverage because the airline employees were adamant they would not fly,” the air marshal said. “I've seen guys actually being denied boarding.”

A second air marshal says one agent “has been getting harassed for six years because his exact name is on the no-fly list.”

Well, gee. They've only had six years to work out this thorny problem so maybe we should cut them some slack ... hey wait! That's longer than it took al-Qaeda to plan and carry out 9/11.

hat-tip: Urgent Agenda via Jim

Finally, Some Fiscal Responsibility in California!

The California Citizens Compensation Commission -- who would expect revolutionary work out of such a group, appointed as it is by the governor, and therefore hardly answerable to the people?

But the six commissioners took a look at officials whose salaries they have jurisdiction over through a vote of the people in the passage of Prop. 112 in 1989, and they didn't like what they saw. Here are those salaries (source):

Elected Officials	Monthly Salary	Annual Salary
Governor	$17,681.56	$212,179
Lieutenant Governor	$13,261.17	$159,134
Attorney General	$15,358.43	$184,301
Secretary of State	$13,261.17	$159,134
Controller	$14,145.25	$169,743
Treasurer	$14,145.25	$169,743
Superintendent of Public Instruction	$15,358.43	$184,301
Insurance Commissioner	$14,145.25	$169,743
Members, Board of Equalization	$13,261.17	$159,134
Speaker of the Assembly	$11,136.56	$133,639
President Pro Tem of the Senate	$11,136.56	$133,639
Minority Floor Leader	$11,136.56	$133,639
Majority Floor Leader	$10,410.29	$124,923
Second Ranking Minority Leader	$10,410.29	$124,923
All Other Legislators	$9,684.01	$116,208

Today, they said, "No more!" and voted against raising any of these salaries. Here's a bit of the SacBee report:

"We have a deficit of $7 billion" that news reports say will double by this summer, [Charles] Murray, of San Marino, said during the short meeting. "Everybody has to take a cut."

[Kathy] Sands, a retired banker and former mayor of Auburn, said a vote to reduce top government officials' salaries would send a message about their performance.

"We don't have a budget and they're not working any overtime to get it done," she said. "People have said that to me. They're not doing their job."

Not only that, but two members of the committee asked for an opinion on whether they have the authority to cut salaries. The decision, presumably to be rendered by the $184,301 a year Attorney General Moonbeam, will be coming along shortly.

There are two labor representatives on the six-person commission. So guess: How many votes there were against freezing the salaries? That's right. Two.

Thank You, Sputnik!

When Ronald Reagan launched the Star Wars missile defense system initiative, the Soviet Union responded by collapsing.

Thirty years earlier, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, the United States responded by creating DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

What a good deal we got!

DARPA is turning 50 this year, and it's been a productive half-century, as Stephen Barr at WaPo points out today.

If we went no farther than the Internet, DARPA would have been successful enough. Lawrence G. Roberts led a small DARPA team that in 1967 designed the network that evolved into the Internet. He describes it as:

"Putting A and B together and getting Z. Taking obscure things and seeing there is an intersection there."

That doesn't seem like the normal way government agencies do things, but DARPA isn't like other government agencies, which is why it has given us much more -- the fundamental technology behind the computer mouse, the Saturn booster rocket, stealth technology and pilotless drones. On the drawing boards: two-way speech translation systems, artificial limbs controlled by the brain with dexterity and sensation feedback, and who knows what else.

All of which begs the question: How can this government agency be so darned effective when most wallow in bureaucracy, lack of inspiration and waste. There is a reason: DARPA isn't like other government bureaucracies:

Unlike most federal agencies, DARPA operates with little red tape. It has only two management layers, encouraging the rapid flow of ideas and decisions.

About 240 people work at DARPA, and 120 of them are program managers and office directors on appointments of four to six years. The agency does not own or operate labs, but sponsors research carried out by industry and universities.

By rotating technical professionals every few years, DARPA has "a constant freshness of people and energy," [agency director Anthony J.] Tether said. "Everything else we do stems from that."

Small, compact, outsourced, fresh. Imagine what could happen if we DARPAtized all levels of government!

Perhaps they could do so research in that area ... and given the nature of government, by the time DARPA's centennial comes around, nothing will have gotten better.

Yeah, Let's Hand Health Care Over To These Guys!

As the great health care debate rages, and Dems continue to demand that we entrust our nation's health care system to some sort of national iteration of the Department of Motor Vehicles, consider this very brief clip:



Yes indeed! The government bureaucrats did in fact fire the seasoned supervisors who couldn't speak Spanish instead of the untrained recruits who couldn't speak English.

Will this bizarre turn of events make Oregonians feel safer when the fires start burning?

Extrapolating, will you feel safer going into surgery, knowing the best surgeons were fired because they didn't speak the Spanish, Romanian, Urdu or Tagalog spoken by the scrub nurse?

hat-tip: Jim

Short Victory For Snot-Nosed Secularist

In a bit o' power to the people, I wrote Cong. Ron Packard, a good GOP man who represents Riverside, when I heard that a complaint from a single, solitary slime-ball secularist had brought an end to the solemn "13-Fold Recital" flag ceremony at funerals at Riverside National Cemetery and other Veterans Administration cemeteries across the country. (Here's my post on the matter.)

Yesterday I got a response, and I just have to say ... YIPPEE!

Thank you for contacting my office regarding the Department of Veterans Affairs policy on the 13-fold recital ceremony. I appreciate the opportunity to update you on this situation: good sense and common cultural values have prevailed.

On October 25, 2007, an article in the Press Enterprise brought to my attention that a memo from the National Cemetery Administration (NCA) banned the recitation of a common flag-folding ceremony sometimes used by cemetery employees and volunteers at 125 national cemeteries. The change in policy was prompted by one complaint which originated at Riverside National Cemetery.

Freedom of speech and religion are American freedoms that I strongly support, and I believe that the rights granted to all citizens through the First Amendment are instrumental to democracy. Therefore, on October 29, 2007, I sent a letter to the Acting Secretary of Veterans' Affairs, along with 127 of my colleagues expressing our frustration with the policy of disallowing employees and volunteers from providing the 13-fold recital to families if they request the ceremony.

In addition, I introduced H.Res. 783, along with Rep. Steven LaTourette, which expresses the sense of the House of Representatives that the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration employees, volunteers, and veterans' service organizations that perform funeral honors and memorial honor details should be permitted to recite the 13 steps to fold an American flag (known as the "13-fold recital") at any national cemetery if requested by the family of the deceased.

You may be happy to know that the Department of Veterans Affairs instituted a different policy on November 1, 2007, which stated that NCA employees, including VA-sponsored Volunteer Honor Guards, can read the "13-fold recital" if requested by the deceased's survivors. In addition, they will not be selective in determining which recitations on the meaning of the thirteen folds will be read.

However, the VA will not accept for reading any texts that would have an adverse impact on the dignity and solemnity of a cemetery honoring those who served the Nation. Among the texts that would not be read would be those that are obscene, racist, are "fighting words," or are coarse, abusive, or politically partisan.

While our system of government can sometimes be slow and unwieldy, in this case strong reaction by the people and quick action by interested Representatives yielded a speedy "about face" by the Department of Veterans' Affairs.

So today, somewhere in America, volunteer vets are once again folding the flag that had draped the coffin of a vet who has passed on, reciting the pledge, honoring his service, respecting his family ... and letting secularists know that we Americans will stand strong in support of our freedoms.

p.s.: Flopping Aces has the text of the 13-fold recital here.

p.p.s.: Please see the site from which the photo came; it honors a fallen hero you should remember, Johnny Michael Spann.

Greenie Insanity And The Santiago Fire

Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse, who's opinions I value, has called me a idiot. I'm not sure if I still value his opinions quite as much ...

Here's what he said, writing of the rush to score political points as the SoCal wildfires burned:

It didn’t used to be like this. No one would have dreamed of trying to politicize tragedy prior to the presidency of George Bush. But we’re in a different political ballgame now with no boundaries and few rules to live by. So we can expect this kind of idiocy from both sides from now on.

Mea culpa. I did work to score a political point or two by (very gingerly) comparing the situation faced by the Superdome evacuees to the experience of the evacuees at Qualcomm. Says Moran of that:

First of all, anyone who tries to draw parallels between a Hurricane and a fire is an idiot.

There's that "idiot" word again. But there were differences between Qualcomm and Superdome that cannot be explained by the differences between a hurricane and a firestorm, which I admitted were profound.

And it's not about rich or poor, or the width of streets or the availability of transportation. It's about an effective local government in San Diego, and how sharply that contrasted with a seriously dysfunctional (and since re-elected!) local government in New Orleans. (To his credit, Moran also make this point.)

Ray Nagin's re-election stands as the most racist political act in this country in all the years since the Civil Rights Act was passed.

Moran took a shot or two at folks who harped on the enviros during the current fire, saying it was too early to cast those stones. I haven't thrown those stones ... yet ... even though you can attribute at least some of the blame for the recent ferocity of fires on them.

Now, here comes the end of "not yet;" here come the stones.

It turns out, enshrined bureaucratic environmentalism did play a role in making the fire that threatened our home harder to fight. My friend Jim eagle-eyed this, way down in an OC Register story today:

Concerns over contaminated water supplies due to runoff from an abandoned silver mine kept helicopters from dropping water on flames along the top ridge along the northeast corner of the blaze.

Regulation run amok! Bureaucrats gone wild!

Because there is an old silver mine up on Saddleback Mountain, one can assume, can't we, that silver is a naturally occurring element in our local environment?

And if the water were to be dropped, it would land on ground that was parched bone-dry -- because that's why we're having a fire, right?

And if the soil is bone dry, what water that isn't evaporated by the flames and happens to pick up a silver atom or two will be sucked up by the now-bare soil, right?

So if the ridiculously tiny counts of silver are back in the soil, aren't they right back where they came from?

And if it rains like cats and dogs (Puhleeze God!) soon, and all that soil washes down the mountain, won't it be diluted by cat-and-dog volumes of water, until it's so diluted you could barely measure it?

In case you're confused, the answer to all those questions is "YES!" In the face of towering flames, bureaucratic idiots (to borrow a term from Moran) are enforcing regulations about parts per trillion instead of facing realities about burning homes in the hundreds (well, not here at least, thank God, but it's a nice turn of phrase).

So, dear bureaucrat, how many more tons of greenhouse gases were belched into the atmosphere because you denied the helicopters their water? And, in case you forgot that there are real human beings involved here, how many more hours will firefighters be placed at risk -- all because you're worried about concentrations of silver that are surely smaller than what Incredible Wife picks up through her skin when she slips on a silver bracelet?

So, Rick, all apologies, but I'm not waiting another moment. All barrels blazing here!

Snot-Nosed Secularist Defeats Vets

Vets like these two gentlemen, Bobby Castillo and Rees Lloyd, have conducted a flag-folding ceremony for the funerals of vets at the Riverside National Cemetery, as have others throughout the country.

And they're spittin' mad:

Through thousands of military burials, Memorial Honor Detail volunteers at Riverside National Cemetery have folded the American flag 13 times and recited the significance of every fold to survivors of those being laid to rest.

The first fold, a narrator tells relatives, represents life, the second a belief in eternal life.

The 11th fold celebrates Jewish war veterans and "glorifies the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob."

A single complaint lodged against the words for the 11th fold recently prompted the National Cemetery Administration to ban the entire recital at all 125 national cemeteries.

It turns out that complaint came from just one person, a selfish, bitter, vicious subhuman who heard the dreadful word "God" at that very cemetery. Rees Lloyd actually spun together some better adjectives than I did:

"That the actions of one disgruntled, whining, narcissistic and intolerant individual is preventing veterans from getting the honors they deserve is truly an outrage. This is another attempt by secularist fanatics to cleanse any reference to God."

The bureaucrats at that most august and valiant agency, the National Cemetery Administration, followed standard bureaucratic protocol and simply folded in the face of one sludge-synapsed, self-aggrandizing sorry soul -- the bizarre flipside of their characteristic bureaucratic inability to list a finger to simplify their byzantine processes for good people in need.

Mike Nacincik, paper clip chain maker for the Cemeterians, thinks we're a stupid bunch that aren't much worth his taxpayer-funded time:

"We are looking at consistency. We think that's important."

Yeah, but are we? Do we think it's important to have a consistently soulless ceremony or a memorable and appropriately solemn one? Whatever -- just don't read anything into their action to imply that these secularist wimps public servants showed any bias against religion by their action.

"People are going to have their own views on that."

You mean, Nacinicik, that there's no Federal Manual for Raging Impotently at the Bureaucracy we can pull out, flip to subsection 7(A) 4.7c and read the proper procedures for flippin' our stacks over the power placed in the hands of little people looking for ways to impose their twisted, minority will on everyone?

The bureaucrats are by far the worse secular intolerants in this story, not the unnamed -- Oh, how I wish they had named the faceless coward! -- whiner who initiated the action.

Ken Calvert is a fine conservative Republican Congressman who represents Riverside. I'm going to drop him an email to ask for an investigation and regulatory fix to this situation. Won't you, too?

Hat-tip: Jim