Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

White supremacy is terrorism.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Come on, man.

Giving up is unforgivable.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Trump should be leading, not lying.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Racial Justice / This Week In Blackness / Obama Sucks so Hard, Soldiers are Killing Themselves?

Obama Sucks so Hard, Soldiers are Killing Themselves?

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In 2012 suicide surpassed combat deaths in the U.S. military. While there have been multiple studies done on this tragic fact one man in a silly hat has done what those liberal scientist and mental health professionals are afraid to tell you.

But I’ll tell you why more and more warrior heroes of the military are killing themselves: because they are in absolute frustration and heartbreak that their boss, their commander in chief violates the Constitution that he has made an oath to, while their hero warrior blood brothers are being blown to smithereens and blown up while executing their oath to the same Constitution that the president, the vice president and the attorney general violate. – Ted Nugent

Thanks a lot Obama! Soldiers have to deal with PTSD, depression and the grief of losing their fellow soldiers but what really pushes them over the edge is President Obama using our constitution like a $2 floozy. Ted Nugent should know because he was almost drafted in Vietnam.

On today’s #TWiBRadio we discuss Ted Nugent’s facts, ESPN’s Chris Broussard tells openly gay NBA player Jason Collins he’s not a real Christian, and a Florida teen is expelled and arrested after a science experiment goes awry. Listen here:

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And on #amTWiB, political strategist L. Joy Williams and the morning crew take on the NYPD using Stop and Frisk to stop ‘lazy’ cops’, Ireland’s historic abortion legislation, and Mountain Dew’s problematic goat commercials.

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Reader Interactions

43Comments

  1. 1.

    WereBear

    I love you guys.

    I’ve recently gotten back into podcasts because I got a new iPod touch and it’s possible!

    When I hear “the horns” I start smiling and laughing.

    Ya’ll rock.

  2. 2.

    WereBear

    I love you guys.

    I’ve recently gotten back into podcasts because I got a new iPod touch and it’s possible!

    When I hear “the horns” I start smiling and laughing.

    Ya’ll rock.

  3. 3.

    The prophet Nostradumbass

    Nugent has a wealth of military experience upon which to draw. Oh, wait, no, he’s actually a draft dodging chicken hawk.

  4. 4.

    Keith G

    The suicide problem is a tragedy. I have been a bit puzzled by the slowness and opaqueness of Obama’s V.A. on this issue.

  5. 5.

    scav

    Speaking of a possible sea change, there are some secondary people not backing down on the sports v. bible-bullying front: Wis. church rejects Packers’ Butler for Jason Collins tweet

    A congratulatory tweet to Jason Collins cost former Green Bay Packers’ safety LeRoy Butler $8,500 and a speaking engagement (about bullying, no less) at a Wisconsin church.
    . . .
    In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Butler said he remains driven to be a role model and disagrees wih the church’s position because “Only God can judge.” He repeated the statements to the church and said his tweet was not about religion or politics, but congratulations for a major decision in a man’s life.

  6. 6.

    MikeJ

    In 2012 suicide surpassed combat deaths in the U.S. military.

    That’s as it should be. When we finish getting out of Afghanistan it will certainly be true.

  8. 8.

    Chris

    their hero warrior blood brothers

    Fucking Christ, they really do think it’s all a movie. Who the fuck talks like that?

  9. 9.

    ranchandsyrup

    ICP is from detroit and they didn’t understand how magnets work. Ted is from detroit and he doesn’t understand causation. Therefore: all people from detroit do not understand anything. Am i doing this right?

  10. 10.

    Dacia

    @Keith G: That is valid as all hell. Maddow reported that higher ups at Veterans Affairs are quietly stepping down. Could be back-end politicking, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. The administration needs to fix it and fix it now. At the same time, it’s clear The Nuge is making this argument in blaming Obama at all, because that would require nuance, and … well, thinking.

  13. 13.

    Bruce S

    Ted Nugent should do what he asserts a real “warrior hero” frustrated by alleged misdeeds of the n…uh…commander-in-chief would do and commit suicide. I’ll chip in to give him a Viking funeral on Lake Michigan.

  14. 14.

    jl

    I’m not surprised some one would pump out this hateful bilge, but Ted Nugent!? Really!? The readily self-admitted pants-pooing draft dodger? Wow.

    Oops, see that The prophet Nostradumbass beat me too it, but I’ll post comment anyway, since it has some interesting trivia on how he did it for Nugent fans out there.

    I guess inhumane punishing and callous repeated lengthy deployments in war zones that are (as far as I know) unprecedented in U.S. history. Maybe the feds did this to the military when we occupied Central America? I dunno.

    And then you come home and you got nothing, just another hapless person looking for job in a lousy job market.

    At least if you survived, I think 20 years, in the Roman Legions you retired and got a damn farm.

  16. 16.

    Keith G

    @Dacia: He can make that argument because that is how we assess blame for an ongoing problem during any president’s administration. If such allocation of blame is wished to be minmized, address the problem ASAFP.

  17. 17.

    Bruce S

    @The prophet Nostradumbass:

    “draft-dodging chicken hawk” – aww, c’mon! He had the balls to publicly threaten Hillary Clinton and President Obama with his AR15. And lived to tell about it.

    (Of course, if he wasn’t a has-been rocker with friends in Congress, a seat on the NRA board and an open liine to GOPer presidential candidates, the Secret Service would probably have had him committed to a mental hospital.)

  19. 19.

    GxB

    @hamletta: he’s actually a pants-shitting, statutory rapist, draft dodging chicken hawk – who can’t even keep a simple promise – Dead or in jail Theo, dead or in jail, be a man for once in your craven life.

    Further FTFY.

  20. 20.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Like Ted “I shit my pants to avoid the draft” Nugent has the slightest fucking idea what it’s like to be a soldier in combat.

    Or in peace time, for that matter…

  21. 21.

    scav

    so they start noticing it now? this is from 10 months ago. Army Suicides: The Most Alarming and Tragically Hidden Secret in America and Forbes wrote the whole thing off at the time, maybe in part to annoy the Guardian, so this must be the next go-round.

    “More U.S. military personnel have died by suicide since the war in Afghanistan began, than those who have died during combat. The rate jumped 80% from 2004 to 2008, and while it leveled off in 2010 and 2011, it has soared 18% this year. Suicide has passed road accidents as the leading non­combat cause of death among U.S. troops.” (from first link)

  22. 22.

    belieber

    All I gotta do is see mention of the words Ted Nugent to know a post is a waste of my time. If it’s an actual quote from the draft dodging fuk then multiply x10.

  23. 23.

    Roger Moore

    @MikeJ:

    That’s as it should be.

    So says a wimpy liberal. A conservative knows that a year without hundreds, or preferably thousands, of combat deaths is a year we haven’t been killing enough brown people.

  24. 24.

    Gravenstone

    @Bruce S: Fuck no! We don’t need to be polluting the drinking water source of several million midwesterners with the fetid corpse of that pant shitting draft dodging chickenhawk.

    Y U NO DED TED?

  25. 25.

    jl

    The story about the girl arrested for her science experiment, or goofing around, or whatever it was, gone awry is pathetic.

    I hope she beats the felony rap.

    Too many idiots are in charge of things in this country.

    Edit: we need a zero tolerance policy for some of these idiots running things in this country. I would run it a bit stricter than for the kids. For the bigshot idiots it would go like this: “You are a zero, buddy. We have no tolerance for that. You’re history so beat it.” Why wait for an incident or violation from these grown up infants? That is too lax and set the standards for getting rid of them too high.

  27. 27.

    Mandalay

    @scav: Your first link was excellent, and one poster there came up with a really interesting explanation for the military suicides:

    “I think the underlying reason is that our troops now realize THERE IS NO CAUSE.”.

    Maybe that is blindingly obvious to some, but it had never occurred to me, and I wonder if that idea may be really important.

    The problem is that it will be tough to get meaningful statistics on suicides when troops believed that our military intervention truly was for a valid cause. Perhaps WW2 may be the most recent example?

  29. 29.

    raven

    @Mandalay: A fifth of the US deaths in Vietnam were non-combat related. Wanna start adding up suicides? Count up the alcohol and drug related deaths.

  30. 30.

    Chris

    @Mandalay:

    Probably matters a lot. I don’t think the fury over Vietnam was as simple as “we don’t want to be drafted;” it was the fact that no one could coherently explain what people were being drafted to fight for, or what the endgame was. No “cause,” as it were.

    Don’t know how much that affects suicides by the troops, but I’d be shocked if it didn’t.

  31. 31.

    Robert

    Just saying I’m friends with a few NYPD officers and they all refused to do stop and frisk. They met their ILLEGAL quotas anyway.

    The quotas aren’t a secret, either. No one bothers to ask the NYPD officers about them so they don’t just stand on the corner screaming about it like crazy people.

    But I digress. Stop and frisk made the good officers realize how much harder they’d have to work to keep their jobs and not violate peoples’ rights.

  32. 32.

    Mandalay

    @raven:

    A fifth of the US deaths in Vietnam were non-combat related. Wanna start adding up suicides? Count up the alcohol and drug related deaths.

    Well it appears to be tricky to learn about suicide among Vietnam vets; the problem is that there is so much data out there, and the data presented and the conclusions given are mostly agenda-driven (including government sites of course). Can you recommend any impartial sources?

  34. 34.

    Mandalay

    @Chris:

    I don’t think the fury over Vietnam was as simple as “we don’t want to be drafted;”

    I’m trying to find reputable stats on suicides for those who were drafted to Vietnam vs. those who weren’t.

    Nobody could have predicted that there would be a lot of untrustworthy BS on this out there on teh intertrons…

  35. 35.

    raven

    @Mandalay: Here’s something inconclusive:

    “Postservice Mortality Among Vietnam Veterans,” a Centers for Disease Control study (Journal of the American Medical Association, Feb. 13, 1987, pages 790-95), indicated 1.7 suicides among Vietnam veterans for every one suicide by non-Vietnam veterans for the first five years after discharge. Beyond five years, there were fewer suicides in the Vietnam veterans’ group than in the non-Vietnam veterans’ group.

    “Proportionate Mortality Study of U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps Veterans of the Vietnam War” by Breslan, Kang, Lee and others (Journal of Occupational Medicine, May 1988, pages 412-19) found that suicides were not higher among Vietnam veterans compared with non-Vietnam veterans.

    Suicides among Vietnam veterans have been said to be 50,000 to 100,000. At any time during the Vietnam conflict, there were 37 million males aged 18 through 35. Of this group approximately 2.6 million served in Vietnam. Of the entire 37 million male population there have been approximately 152,000 suicides.

  37. 37.

    Kay

    We just got a big grant for veterans for our local rehab, sadly, IMO, our rehab is not that good. The people who work there are fine, it’s just probably not a great place to live for 30 or 60 or 90 days.

    I think they would be better off doing addiction inpatient further away from home, because this rehab residence is located on what may be the most depressing stretch of road and buildings I have ever seen. You can’t even really call it a “town.”

  38. 38.

    Mandalay

    @raven:

    So you wouldn’t want to count the people like me who joined?

    Sure I would. I was taken with that idea that some vets might be driven to kill themselves because they don’t believe in “the cause” they are fighting for, so I wondered if those who were drafted were less likely to believe in that cause than those who volunteered to go.

  39. 39.

    scav

    Hauling comparisions back to earlier wars could be illuminating, but what I saw in the data I posted was a general trend with ties to Afghanistan and since, not a clear spike after the hypothesized traitorous non-blood brother Kenyan (well, duh). Concerns didn’t come up during the reign of error, didn’t come up with Walter Reed kerfuffle during sme period, but do somehow come up now and somehow don’t mention Obama’s executive order on military suicide prevention dated Aug 31 2012 here for exact thing.

    And this is from quick googling and vaguely paying attention over the last decade. Fucking low rent conspiracy theorists using soldiers as props. Data is going to be a problem esp over the longer timeline though.

  40. 40.

    Mandalay

    @raven: Thx. There sure is a lot of conflicting data out there. One point that appears to be consistent though is that Vietnam vets who commit suicide apparently do so fairly soon after leaving the military, and your link also supports that:

    …indicated 1.7 suicides among Vietnam veterans for every one suicide by non-Vietnam veterans for the first five years after discharge. Beyond five years, there were fewer suicides in the Vietnam veterans’ group than in the non-Vietnam veterans’ group

    It makes you or breaks you?

  41. 41.

    rikyrah

    How come Black Children don’t get THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT?

    Maybe it’s the cynic in me, but I just doubt this would be happening to this young woman if she were WHITE. The thought that these people are actively destroying this young life just bothers me.

    Where the hell is the ‘judgment calls’ from the ADULTS in this situation? From the grown folks that went to school, and education to become Administrators. What the hell good are Administrators if their judgment is THIS?

    this is absolutely ridiculous.
    ridiculous.
    ruining this baby’s life for WHAT?

    This young woman has curiosity that involves science. She should be ENCOURAGED..

    Not made into a criminal.

    When did being YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK BECOME A CRIMINAL OFFENSE?

  42. 42.

    Another Halocene Human

    @rikyrah: Administrative judgment went out the window when they started paying the top dogs the big buxx. Now they’re paid too much to lose their job b/c they would lose their mortgage, too, so they eliminate with extreme prejudice any student or employee (especially student, they’re powerless) who threatens their good job.

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