Huffington Post has the story of Army National Guard SSG Tracy Dice Johnson, who has received notification by the Department of Veterans Affairs that she will receive VA survivors benefits, dated retroactively to the death in combat of her wife, ANG SSG Donna Johnson, who was killed by an Afghan suicide bomber on October 1, 2012. This was before the Supreme Court ruled the Defense Of Marriage Act unconstitutional, which happened in June of last year.
Dice Johnson, an outspoken critic of DOMA, was informed of the decision on Saturday at the American Military Partner Association’s gala, where she received the organization’s 2014 Community Hero Award. She called the VA’s announcement “an important step toward our end goal of achieving equal treatment for all military families.”
srv
Good for her. Although:
Does this Andrew Dice was a thing 30 years ago?
Also, too, why can’t we have real accountability like this in America?
If you can’t fix it, just get rid of it!
Elizabelle
Sad, but excellent news. A step towards parity, in death.
Betty Cracker
A sad loss but an important equality milestone. Kudos to the Obama Administration for making this happen. Everyone says healthcare will be the president’s signature accomplishment, and it’s obviously an enormous achievement, but his leadership on equal rights has resulted in an amazing amount of progress too.
ruemara
I hate that such progress comes with such loss.
Elizabelle
@srv:
Yeah, interesting approach.
Can you imagine the trauma and outrage if that tragedy happened in the US? The crew and rescuers failed hundreds of children, who had been taught to respect their elders.
Then we hear how corruption led to lack of regulations that would have kept the ferry and passengers safer.
Lesson to learn in there, should anyone want to learn it.
PurpleGirl
@srv:
Please rewrite for clarification:
Does this Andrew Dice was a thing 30 years ago?
I’m not sure what you are trying to say here and I’m not a mind reader.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, another reason why Eric Shinseki should be forced to resign.
/wingnut
Schlemizel
@srv:
And replace it with what? The people with the knowledge and experience to do the job where probably there and not out wandering the streets of Muju. Disbanding it must just be for show. The question is how will they remove the corrupt, inefficient parts and replace them with efficient, incorruptible ones.
raven
Good
Villago Delenda Est
@Elizabelle:
The National Ferry Association would insist that there’s no need for any regulation at all, because FREEDUMB!
Mary G
So glad to read the pension news, makes it more real somehow.
“Disbanding it to make it more efficient” so often turns out to be “firing the last administration’s corrupt, useless patronage recipients and replacing them with my corrupt, useless patronage recipients.”
raven
An important moment like this and ya’ll want to talk about the fucking Korean Coast Guard? Sheesh.
Seanly
That’s great news for the widow.
srv
@PurpleGirl: Does this mean Andrew Dice was a thing 30 years ago?
RaflW
@Betty Cracker:
Absolutely agree! While I am sad for Mrs. Johnson’s loss, the opportunity for the Obama admin and the VA to take this step is big. I’m sure there are some right wing heads exploding over this. But it is hard to imagine that even – shudder – if the presidency goes Goop next time, that these kinds of policies can be rolled back without huge controversy by then.
And once the military is fully marriage-equalized (at least in policy, if not in all attitudes), the ripples will be lasting and significant. It ain’t nothing that the military is also one of our more integrated institutions. We hear all the time that black Americans are less LGBT-affirming (and certainly black pastors continue to spout off), but I think a generation of military service alongside out, married gay and lesbian soldiers, sailors and airmen will matter.
scav
One of the many soldiers still out doing their duty despite the army not having their back and the backs of their loved ones. And yet some believe it is exactly these soldiers and their loved ones that are the problem. pish. We as a collective and nation need to continue to advance the frontiers of fairness and justice and not relax in the laziboyness of assumed moral perfection.
Villago Delenda Est
@srv: Yes, he was a thing about that time ago. A thing that I had forgotten about until you mentioned it.
/shakefist
Elizabelle
@Villago Delenda Est:
Oh yeah. Those poor, embattled ship owners. Job creatorz!
Have we talked about the “VA Scandal” CNN is breathlessly promoting?
How much of it is malfeasance, and how much is driven by inadequate funding of the VA?
There’s always money for wars and defense contractors (jobs, jobs, jobs), but paying for healthcare?
Dana Milbank opined that Shinseki should resign, but I am not so sure about that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Elizabelle: How much of it is an imagined wrong by assholes in the media out to slam the administration for something, anything?
I don’t trust the mainstream media to report the truth anymore. They’re so eager to appease the teatards at all times.
srv
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, I had too until the media started throwing middle names around.
What’s up with that? Pretty soon we’ll be hearing about kids named Rush, Ronald or Oliver. Sadly, I already know a kid named Rush.
raven
@Elizabelle: All these fawning motherfuckers talking about “heroes” and shit makes me puke.
Elizabelle
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yeah. Picking up a whiff of that, with CNN trying to stay relevant.
Have not followed the story (family stuff intervened), but is there a scandal there, beyond Americans not wanting to fund our government adequately?
Why would veterans healthcare needs be shuffled around as alleged, if their needs could be met without the subterfuge?
And why should I believe much of anything from a news source that can’t follow more than 3 or 4 stories at a time, one or two of them involving a celebrity?
Amir Khalid
@Schlemizel:
CNN reports the President said that the Coast Guard’s functions will be split between the police and a new national safety agency.
scav
@Villago Delenda Est: Earliest Dice I can pick up without even trying hard are already back to the 1820 census, so they needn’t all be traced back to he that shall not be rolled out of the cup.There’s even an Aquilla Dice in KY and a Reuben and John Dice Esquire (!) in VA. With last name in first name migration being a Southern thing, there is reason for hope.
Iowa Old Lady
The Arc of Justice appears to be bending in the right direction on marriage equality. That’s a comfort.
libarbarian
Oh no!
It’s a slippery slope. First this. Then THIS.
I weep for the future of Rocket Cadet School.
Soonergrunt
@scav: Well, in this case, SSG Dice Johnson’s maiden name (for lack of my knowing a better term) was Dice. That is to say her original last name prior to her marriage was Dice.
I assume that since she got married before the federal government recognized same sex marriage, that she had to keep Dice as her last name in the military.
Villago Delenda Est
@srv: My brother’s name was pretty deliberately chosen in honor of a Confederate traitor who I shall not mention. Let’s just say his property was converted to other uses and leave it at that.
Soonergrunt
@libarbarian: interesting how the uniform of the dominant female military member includes shorts, heels, and fishnet stockings.
Villago Delenda Est
@Soonergrunt: Condi Rice’s role model, no doubt.
SatanicPanic
That’s great news, except for the fact that she’s a widow. Pretty amazed at how quickly things are changing. I like to remind people of this every time people start saying Americans are getting dumber/meaner, etc.
scav
@Soonergrunt: Will admit that the lack of hyphenation probably permanently confuzzled me as to which of the names was a last, first or double last name. At least we can probable keep the dreaded Andrew safely interred where he belongs among the detritus and wreckage.
And as this is slightly more apt of the non-open threads, what the OT fuck is still up with AK? Alaska village turns to banishments in case of shot state troopers
all hail Moosegirl’s wonderland I guess. Too cheap to pay for law enforcement, too cheap to pay for backing up what little they do have (even after they’re killed), won’t let others have the authority to do anything, but keeps sending out oil checks.
Another Holocene Human
@PurpleGirl: I’ve noticed that srv trolls threads, at least that is hir MO for the last couple of months, with varying degrees of success. Ambiguity is key to the good troll.
Another Holocene Human
@scav: Looks like actually less to do with oil welfare and more to do with tribal/state authority conflicts that have forced the village into a very ancient form of peacekeeping–kicking people out. Anthropologically this is probably the most ancient form of punishment for anti-social behavior.
Remember that big fight over VAWA and the rape of Native American women by non-Native men on reservations?
I applaud what these tribal leaders are doing. Now, if appropriate law enforcement powers could be vested in the appropriate way then such measures would become unnecessary. They are antithetical to our notions of law. But we take for granted that there is a clear flow of state authority down to police officers with police powers. And that is what is lacking in this village in any PRACTICAL way.
burnspbesq
@Villago Delenda Est:
On this story, alas, at least one mainstream media outlet is to be trusted. The LA Times, which broke the story yesterday, is really, really good at researching and reporting this kind of stuff. This is what they win Pulitzers for.
Their work will get twisted out of shape and sensationalized by the RWNM, but if the LAT says there are major, systemic problems in the VA health care system, I am inclined to think there are major, systemic problems in the VA health care system.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-va-delays-20140518-story.html#page=1
Another Holocene Human
@burnspbesq: Well, how could there not be with a huge influx of injured and traumatized vets from Bush’s wars and a GOP congress that has refused and refused and refused to properly fund the VA?
Again the GOP tries to put the consequences of their actions on someone else’s head–Shinseki or Obama, as it was Clinton or Obama in the case of Benghazi after they cut funds–and the question is will the public fall for this 3-card monte once again?
scav
@Another Holocene Human: The tribal thing in AK does seem to more complicated than in the south / 48. No clear “reservations” and the entire state is divided up, plus a census “area” for Alaska natives living elsewhere? Never quite figured it out. But, I think the cheapness accusation still holds, as I don’t have the impression they’re really doing much to improve the law enforcement situation, just letting the villages flounder. Good luck to them indeed.
lol
And why didn’t this poor woman receive widow’s benefits on January 21st, 2009?
Just the latest slap in the face from the most homophobic administration in the history of the United States.
#ThanksObama
Tommy
@Elizabelle: Yes it is sad, but as a military brat stellar news. Living on or near a military base my entire life I was taught equality of both race and sex. That this final thing is being made a reality is heart warming.
Tommy
@burnspbesq: Things are clearly not right with the VA. I live near a huge military base. Near a major metro area where there are huge VA hospitals. I know a lot of vets and ask them and they love the care they get. You know as a civilian I want what they have, Amazing care. But it is clear in other parts of this nation things are not what they are here. They are FUBAR. That needs to change yesterday.
I am a military brat. You enter into a social contract with this nation when you serve. Part of that is your health care is paid for. Get it done.
Schlemizel
@Villago Delenda Est:
Back in the early ’90’s I was on a listserv for Civil War research and discussion. It was the first time I had run into a couple of very sad pathologies. But one guy (I wish I could remember his name – in these days of google I bet I could learn a lot more about him) regaled us regularly with the explanation of how his genetic code came from the same branch as a particularly famous treasonous bastard’s whose land now serves a purpose for the US military.
He lets us know explicitly that made him better than us and implicitly that it made his opinion on the ACW correct. I enjoyed poking holes in the pompous ass and his arguments.
Schlemizel
@Soonergrunt:
Come on, you know why! All women want to dress in hot pants, fishnets and heels, at least thats the lesson I got about them from comic books. This is just the perfect combat outfit.
If women really did run the world all the men in comics would be in tank tops and assless chaps I guess.
Tommy
@Schlemizel: That is kind of sad. My father’s PhD is in civil war history. I guess most summers kids went to Disney World. I went to Civil War battlefields. My dad would walk me through the place, animated, telling us what happened. What happened was horrifying. It isn’t anything folks should be happy about.
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy: Me too. Antietam and Shiloh. But my parents were Midwestern like yours. My mother got heat exhaustion at Six Flags Over Texas in the 60s (I guess it was the 60s) so no amusement parks for us.
raven
@Schlemizel: My quest to find my confederate ancestor’s grave included communicating on some of the civil war discussion boards. For the most part the conversations are pretty positive but all the “what would have happened if the South had won” thread quickly degenerate. I’m now convinced that Jason was killed in the Battle of Atlanta and is in an unmarked grave, probably in the Oakland Cemetery.
raven
@Another Holocene Human: Ever go to Picacho Peak?
Another Holocene Human
@scav: Oh, I agree with you about money. Basically AK is saying “we have a monopoly on police power” and then says “we refuse to fund a FT officer for your village”. So in the power vacuum they are stuck taking such measures. That they choose to do this rather than engage in mob violence I think speaks well towards their governance in general.
Another Holocene Human
@raven: The last time I was in AZ I was four years old and literally my only memory is snow at Grand Canyon and how the cold burned my hands when I picked up the pretty fluff.
Tommy
@Another Holocene Human: @raven: We’ve done the history, and honestly my family owned slaves and fought with the Confederates. IL was a split state. The southern part of the state, not so free.
Schlemizel
@Tommy:
I’m more upset that there is a class of people who think the ACW didn’t need to happen, that is was not solely about slavery and/or that the wrong side won.
Yes, I wish it had not come to that but one side refused compromise because it refused to see humanity when it was presented in a different color and could be so easily manipulated by a small handful of wealthy people whose entire fortunes were based on the misery of millions of humans into defending a system of economics and governance that injured them personally and were willing to fight and die for those 1%ers of the day.
That last part is the most annoying. I could not see how a tiny band of oligarchs could convince an army of people to fight to the death for a system that enriched and benefited only the few and actually hurt the ones fighting and dying. I take no joy in seeing this played out today in the US but it is fascinating.
AS an adult I would love to have summer vacations like yours, as a kid probably not so much.
raven
@Tommy: Mine were split as well. Jason was with the 11th Tennessee Infantry and killed on July 22, 1864 in Atlanta. Robert, the other brother was with the 1st Tennessee Cavalry and survived the war to become a Chicago Policeman. The father, James J Figg was with the Union in a unit from Illinois that I am still trying to confirm. As far as the state, my mom was from Du Quoin and there was no shortage of Confederate sympathy in Little Egypt.
raven
@Schlemizel: My bride is from Appomattox and we found and interesting book “A Place Called Appomattox” that documented who and who did not actually fight.
scav
@Tommy: Split state indeed. All mine that took up arms seem to have done so for the North, but we’ve a wing-dinger of a letter from one of the soldier’s father berating him for doing so. Also just identified yesterday which ancestress definitely inherited a slave. On the upside, I can imagine all my ancestors in the Mormon wars hunting down everyone trying to retroactively baptize them using remote means.
Tommy
@raven: I got my dad a DNA test He sent me the results. Then sent me like stuff 500 years back.
raven
@Tommy: Cool, I had one on Bohdi and learned he was a husky/samoyed!
Schlemizel
@raven: Burial was very haphazard during the war. Battles took place in the summer & nobody wanted bodies left sitting around in the heat. You can see how bad it was in some of the old photos even as fast as they tried to work. Records were not kept.
After the war Northern families pooled their money and made a great effort to locate many graves and identify as many Union soldiers as they could. Your odds of finding a Union gave by interd name is better than Confederate but still not great.
No such effort was made for Confederate dead, the Federal gov put some money into the project but little of it went to work on Confederate dead. There was still a lot of anger and I don’t personally blame them for that even though it was an awful thing to do.
The South could never have “won” the Civil War. I can see 2 possible outcomes Had active hostilities ended without a Union victory.
The West would have become a series of replays of Kansas/Nebraska. There would have been repeated firefights along the boarders as CSA bounty hunters tried reclaiming slaves from the North. The constant bleeding would have had to lead to larger combat at some point. The constant raiding and uncertainty would have stunted US growth and WWI would have found us a poor semi-industrialized country incapable of breaking the stalemate.
or
The South agrees to borders with in their current states and pursues the policy of attacking Central American and Caribbean nations to annex slave plantation. It would have been “fun” to see if Spain followed through on their threat and invaded the South had it tried yet another invasion of Cuba. Could they have finally held Honduras or Costa Rica if they knew that was their only hope? They had taken countries on several occasion but always ended up getting tossed out when the locals banded together. Meanwhile the US would have complete the industrial revolution it was undergoing and its impoverished twin would still be a backwards serfdom. Eventually the black population would have been so large and the land for cotton and tobacco so small it would have collapsed under its own stupidity and evil.
Schlemizel
@scav:
Mine all fought on the North with units from upstate New York. I am not aware of any writings from any that has survived til today. I wish there were. That area was something of a hotbed of abolitionism and asylum. I have no idea how they felt of what they wanted when they joined.
raven
@Schlemizel: Yea, I made the mistake of saying here a couple of weeks ago tha 10,000 were killed on July 22, 1864 when it was only 9000 casualties.
Schlemizel
@raven:
And you know those numbers are super accurate! It used to surprise me that casualty numbers are given in ranges. I mean these were army, certainly they know how many men went in & how many came back out & the names of those that didn’t, right?
Then you start to read about how casually they kept books and how some men just had enough & decided to wander off and nobody collected all the information into once central location. Heck, it might have only been 8500 or 10,000 might be a tad low. Nobody really knows. We know Hood lost 50% of his force in two days but the exact numbers are uncertain.
raven
@Schlemizel: Yea, just googling it gave me different numbers. I just finished “The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta” and found it very interesting. My uncle did some pretty intense genealogical but on the family tree he has Jason being killed at “The Battle of Peachtree Creek” on July 22 when EVERYONE knows that was on the 20th!
Soonergrunt
@Schlemizel: “If women really did run the world all the men in comics would be in tank tops and assless chaps I guess.”
Would that be so bad? I like a nice breeze under my…armpits.
scav
@Schlemizel: Packrat gene must be strong in the House of Scav. I’ve got Civil War letters from ancestress siblings I haven’t read yet (granted that family line was essentially wiped out by losing both of them, Go IL 78th Inf!?)
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: That was my guess as to part of his ancestry from his pictures, but of course you already knew what he was. I want to get mine done to see my % of Neanderthal genetic material. James Fallows said his was pretty high.
Origuy
My great-great grandfather joined the 145th Indiana Regiment, which mustered in February 1865. He was about 28 at the time, so I wonder why he waited so long? The war was almost over; the 145th had a few skirmishes, but spent most of the next year guarding railroads in Georgia. A few of the rebels didn’t give up right away.
ETA: All I know about him is from his tombstone and regiment records online.
raven
@scav: The 78th was part of the awful assault on the “dead angle” at Cheatham Hill in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. My ancestor was with “Cheatham’s Rifles” on the right flank of the dead angle.This is the Illinois Monument at at that battlefield.
raven
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I’m Irish, Norske and English.
boatboy_srq
@Elizabelle:
Never happen in the US. Nobody takes public transit.
/snark
Seriously, though: the idea that the public sector would step in and obviate the Invisible Hand of the Free Market™, when there are thousands of likely injured parties all too ready to file lawsuits and engage Capitalism As It Should Be™, is unthinkable in the US environment. The US would be far more likely to limit the liability of the carrier – and cap the court-approved awards for the plaintiffs, because the business would be shut down if they had to face meaningful compensation demands. Look at PG&E, BP, ExxonMobil et al for prior similar cases, and at the hoopla over GM currently in the press, and you’ll see the pattern plainly drawn.
Gene108
@Elizabelle:
I am reading this at a local Subway, with CNN on.
Wolf has a CNN reporter on about the VA scandal. They are citing a Washington Times “report” about how Obam knew about the wait times for 5 years.
The back-and-forth they stated in 2007 that then Sen. Obama was campaigning on ending VA wait times, so he slept on this for years.
Wolf then asks the reporter “do we have our own reporting on this?”
Reporte:”No we are solely citing the Washington Times”
Wolf : ” Has our press room seen the documents the Washington Times used for this article?”
Reporter: “No they have not given us any documents”
I then left because I finished my meal.
Tl;dr: Wolf Blitzer and CNN reporter discuss Washington Times article about how Obama knew about the delays and then discuss how the WT has no documents and CNN reporting has not corroborated the report.
Belafon
@Gene108: How far down in the crapper do you have to be for Wolf Blitzer to be questioning your sources?
scav
@raven: Looks to overlap with my direct gggrandaddy’s tenure (the siblings were lost around or in Chickamauga). Hello and thanks for the help in keeping the genome in a condition to be passed down in!
Soonergrunt
@Belafon: Somebody should check to see if the magnetic poles have switched.
raven
@scav: The oddity for me is that Jason was with the Grey’s and most of my family is from Illinois. When I first visited Kennesaw 30 years ago I didn’t know about my southern heritage, only my Illinois.
scav
@raven: Things were muddled. I’m surprised I haven’t found kin shooting at kin yet, especially given the southern bent of that side. They fought often enough without backup. I think I vaguely knew that I had relatives that fought the time I was on Kennesaw. Certainly didn’t know the details at the time either.
scav
@raven: I’m still thanking you for the aim, good or bad, by the by.
Roger Moore
@Tommy:
The DNA ancestry stuff is interesting, though it has the potential problem of all ancestry stuff of turning up facts that people don’t want to know about. Mine didn’t turn up anything unexpected. I’m just about 50% Ashkenazi, all in whole chromosomes, and my mitochondrial DNA is from a common Ashkenazi haplotype, so you can tell that my mother is pretty much straight Ashkenazi. The rest of my genes, including my Y chromosome, are a grab-bag of Northern European stuff, with the strongest sub-regional stuff in the British Isles. Both of these things match the family history more or less perfectly.
Elizabelle
@Gene108:
Jeebus. Thank you for informing us.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq: The wingtards hate Shinseki for two reasons: funny eyes, and he had the outright disrespect and temerity to call the shots on Iraq in a professional manner contrary to neocon fantasy.
For that he must be punished, and the problems in Arizona are as good an excuse as any to go after him. Pretty much how BENGHAZI! is a great pretext for going after that Clinton woman who might clean the clock of whatever fool the GOP nominates in 2016.
The LA Times might be on to something about systemic problems in the VA health care system (anyone who’s used them knows there are problems…I’ve had to wait four months to see them about a non-functional hearing aid) but a lot of the systemic problems would be solved by adequate funding which the scum of the GOP are unwilling to provide, because taking care of our veterans properly might negatively impact the already obscene incomes of the parasites of the 1%..
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: Mine would reveal that I am of mixed Scots-Irish-English-Dutch-German extraction, and that I had ancestors fight on both sides of the Civil War, that somewhere back there in the 19th century there was a horse thief, that one of my maternal ancestors was a member of the Continental Congress, that someone on my mother’s side got involved with some native Americans, and that my great-great-great-great grandmother on my father’s side smelt of elderberries.
OK, the horse thief and the elderberries are pure snark, but the rest is true according to documentation and family legend (the Native American part…I tan easy..as did my maternal grandfather, who passed the legend on to me.)
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
Wow, those genetic tests are getting way more sophisticated than I realized.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gene108: But Leslie presented it anyways.
Typical. The man is a menace to fact.
Baud
@Tommy:
So was he your real dad? :-)
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: Turns out his real dad was Frank Sinatra.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
Not bad. Not bad at all.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: Fried smelt?
scav
@Roger Moore: I’m jealous. All mine did is definitively establish “somewhere in Europe and apparently not a solitary shred of anything interesting” (embarrassingly seemingly homogenous) although I’ve heard rumors of squeezing more information out. Neanderthal seems to be the only other contribution to the tree.
eta @Villago Delenda Est: horse thief is our legend! well, that and buyer of hair.
Baud
I put this in the next thread, but it actually belongs here: Gay marriage ok in OR.
scav
@Baud: Belongs Everywhere. I mean OR?! Catch up coasty.
Baud
@scav:
Yeah, apparently a judge had to do it. A little surprised Oregon wasn’t ahead of the curve on that one.
Roger Moore
@Schlemizel:
I assume a lot of this is wishful thinking and unwillingness to accept history as it actually was. That seems less pernicious for the people who think it could have been avoided, since it is at least a hypothetical about what could have happened rather than outright historical revisionism and/or extremely ugly racism.