I have been carefully following all the news about Walter Reed and the VA as I have a brother heading for Afghanistan. All I can say at this point is that I hope and pray that he does not require any care at Walter Reed or even the VA upon his return. The military health care system has been broken for years and nothing that Bush is doing is going to fix it. I used to work as a civilian clerk-typist in the medical field and even then it was broken. They did not have enough qualified doctors to take care of the patients they had at that time which included dependents, retired military, and active duty military. Due to the incompentence of some of the doctors, the hospital was getting sued for malpractice at least a couple of times a year if not more. Now that hospital does not even have an emergency room despite being a basic training base and it sends even active duty military to civilian hospitals in town. And, let's not forget the retired and dependents who are forced to use civilian doctors despite being entitled to military medical care. I have said I would never send a sick snake to that hospital and I mean it.

A woman who has carried a child within her body for 9 months and then have the child die for one reason or the other should be allowed to have a birth certificate for that child if she so desires. She will be receiving a death certificate but the two pieces of paper are entirely different in the information required. Another child after the stillborn child, as he or she gets older, may have questions about older siblings and to have a birth certificate can help. It also documents that there was another child in the family who died and other siblings would know this instead of having it hidden away. When doing genealogy, you want to know how many children a family had and a stillborn child is just as important as any other child who lived. It might also help future generations who might have medical questions when the same thing happens to them.

Well, Lindsey Graham has done it again. First he went to Iraq and said it was military service and now he is saying he will walk the streets of Ramadi. If he manages that then he will have better luck then some of our military. Just opening his mouth and letting out hot air is all he is doing.

The way I see it, BOTH the oil companies and George W. Bush are to blame for the price of gas. First the oil companies are not building refineries to meet the demand because they think that ethanol will be the future fuel. But ethanol cannot be the fuel for all the cars on the roads of this country. There are too many cars that cannot run on ethanol due to their age and people are not going to get rid of them for one reason or the other with one reason being the price of new cars that keep going up and up and up. Remember when a new house was $10,000!! I do! But now new cars are fast approaching the $40,000 price range. George W. Bush is also to blame in that he is not encouraging the oil companies to build new refineries or to find ways to keep the price of gas, diesel fuel, fuel oil, etc. down. He also is not encouraging the towns and cities of this country to look into and invest in mass transit. Instead people are using their cars to commute to work where they sit all day taking up parking spaces that could be used by the public. Then the oil companies get to write off lord only knows how much to keep from paying taxes on the excess profits they are raking in instead of investing in refineries.

You also have excuses why refineries are off-line such as change from one season to another season fuel, fires (but how were they caused? No one knows), etc. From what I see, there needs to be an investigation into how the oil companies are spending all the money they are raking in. Plus, do away with these multi-million bonuses to CEOs and give the money back to the people.

I cannot understand why all the witnesses to the rape did absolutely nothing to help the victim. If I had been a witness I would at least have tried to do something to help the victim and subdue the perpetrator even if it meant hitting the perpetrator with my wooden cane. There is no excuse for someone who is able bodied not to help someone in this situation. I hear of situations every day where someone needs help and no one will help them. This country didn't used to be that way but, unfortunately, it is now. What I have heard is that people do not want to get involved with criminal cases but how else can a perpetrator be prosecuted and convicted if witnesses do not come forward. I will do everything in my power to assist a victim of a criminal act and then assist law enforcement by being a witness in a trial. It is only common decency to assist to the best of your ability.