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According to the Louisiana regional news website, The Town Talk, the Alexandria V.A.M.C., the only Louisiana V.A. hospital between the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and Shreveport, has reported that it's Urgent Care Clinic will be changing it's hours of operation, from a 24-hour operation, to the hours of 8 A.M. to 8 P.M., Monday through Friday, and 8A.M. to 6P.M., on weekends and holidays. The line given, now, is: "The Urgent Care Clinic offers care for cold and flu symptons, high and low blood pressure/blood sugar, and stitches." A few weeks ago, I had a low blood sugar...

The U.S. is planning to train veterans to become solar panel installers in the next six years, the White House said Thursday. The jobs training program is among a host of initiatives the White House says will cut carbon dioxide emissions by more than 300 million tons through 2030, plus save billions of dollars on energy bills for homeowners and businesses. It will launch this fall at one or more military bases and train a total of at least 50,000, including veterans....

I'm sharing this here because there isn't a single grunt who doesn't appreciate these loyal, faithful friends and guardians. I also know there are some reasonably high ranked grunts here, and a heck of a lot still hooked into the system who can spread the word. This is truly a vile act. They are not disposable sensor packages with teeth. They are friends. Colleagues. I don't even like dogs much, but having 90 lbs of warm fur and teeth watching over you is immensely reassuring.

Oak Creek Army Ranger Justin Slaby to graduate from FBI training in October Friday, August 29, 2014 10:34 a.m. CDT OAK CREEK, WI (WTAQ) - A wounded Army Ranger from Oak Creek will graduate from the FBI's training academy in October. Justin Slaby won a federal lawsuit last year, after he claimed he was wrongly dismissed from the FBI academy because he lost his left hand while serving in Iraq. This week, the Justice Department's inspector general found that former Milwaukee FBI office director Teresa Carlson urged agent Mark Crider to commit perjury, by testifying that Slaby wasn't qualified to...

Okay. I'm not sure how I missed the updates/reports other than the fact that they appear not to have been posted here at FR. Principal source link is the PDF report to Congress in regards to a prior post here:("Final Report to the Congressional Defense Committees in Response to the Joint Explanatory Statement Accompanying the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2014, page 90, “Radiation Exposure” "). (link will open/download the PDF) An update on the USS Ronald Reagan crew lawsuit re their mysterious illnesses in the wake of Operation Tomodachi is here: ("USS Reagan Sailors’ Lawsuit Found ‘Lacking’ Nuclear Expert...

A Marine veteran says he was denied entry into a Six Flags theme park in New Jersey after being told that the shirt he was wearing would offend people. Mario Alejandro, 33, had been given the shirt (shown above) for Father's Day and he was attempting to take his family to Six Flags Great Adventure last weekend for a child's birthday party. Proceeds from the Fourth of July-themed shirt go to the Marine Reconnaissance Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports recon Marines and their families. Alejandro served four years in the Marines, including at the start of the Iraq war. He is classified...

A World War II veteran cried today as he said good-bye to his buddy - a 3-year-old boy who became his pal, but is moving away with this family. “It’s going to be tough,” Erling Kindem, 89, said between tears while speaking to ABC News today. Kindem's friendship with his next door neighbor Emmett Rychner, 3, in Farmington, Minnesota, became a heartwarming story that went viral. But the boy is moving today to Northfield, Minnesota, and the veteran is moving with his ailing wife to a retirement center next month.

Some people will do anything to satisfy a craving. One of those people is this man, who rode his bed through the McDonald’s drive through. A couple spotted the man, strapped face down down to an electrical gurney, driving himself across a busy street towards McDonald’s.

Hoping some Freepers might take interest in this local race in west Kentucky. My candidate is running for judge executive in Marshall County, Kentucky. His name is Kevin Neal, and he's a decorated U.S. Marine. During his 20 years of service he served security tours in Bosnia and Haiti and three combat tours in Iraq. During his time in Iraq he led five 6-man sniper teams on 50 Guardian Angel missions as a Scout Sniper Sergeant. He was wounded in a mortar attack in 2004. He returned to Iraq in 2006. His medals include the Purple Heart and the USO...

The last surviving crewman of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, died overnight at his Stone Mountain home. Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, 93, was the navigator on the Aug. 6, 1945 flight that dropped the “Little Boy” atomic bomb. With the 2010 death of Morris Jeppson, Van Kirk became the only one of the dozen crew members left. For a number of years, he lived at a retirement community in Stone Mountain where by chance he found himself sharing the place with James Starnes, an Atlantan who had a front-row seat at history. Starnes...

Grommet is trying to get his dog back. Don Grommet was able to track Matty to Fort Bragg, where Vet Services was treating the K9 for a torn ACL, and preparing him for separation from service and adoption. The Grommets said they submitted and re-submitted adoption paperwork, and were told the first set of documents were lost. “We were told several times not to worry about it; that everyone knew that Brent was going to adopt Matty” said Don Grommet. But after months of weekly calls to check on the adoption status, Grommet said his son received a call in...

A veteran is extremely disappointed with the Veterans Administration after he says he was locked inside a community clinic for hours on Monday. Jeffrey Duck explained that he arrived at the clinic located on South Volusia Ave. at 1 p.m. as a “walk in” patient. The Marine veteran sat in a consultation room for more than three hours before he realized he was the only one left in the building. “I was apparently left there and forgotten,” Duck told WKMG. Duck began taking video of him walking around the lobby with his cellphone to show that he wasn’t trying to...

An explosive video posted online on Sunday shows two U.S. Marines confronting a man who they accuse of impersonating a military veteran at a funeral in Florida. The Marines first suspected the man was likely an imposer because his uniform featured a mix of mismatched medals and ribbons. After the service they approached the man, who identified himself as a ‘sergeant major’. His name badge states his surname as Davis. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2702355/Is-fraud-U-S-marines-confront-fake-sergeant-major-military-funeral-Florida.html#ixzz38K3eVdDH Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

When justifying the release of five vicious Taliban terrorists detained at “Gitmo” in exchange for U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl, the president said, “We don’t leave our people behind.” Sergeant Tahmooressi completed two combat tours and received two meritorious promotions for battlefield service in Afghanistan. This spring, the honorably discharged 26-year-old veteran was planning to relocate from his home in Florida to California. Late on March 31, disoriented by poorly-lighted, graffiti-covered traffic signs, he inadvertently drove his pick-up truck, loaded with all his possessions – including three legally purchased firearms -- into Mexico at the San Ysidro, Calif., Port of Entry...

Above: Employees of the nightshift at Lowe’s in Staten Island, New York - David, Marcus and Souleyman - get to work.by Gina Cassini | Top Right NewsVeteran Michael Sulsona had been waiting on a new wheelchair from the VA for years. But as with so many vets suffering under scandalous conditions in the VA system, he got nowhere. His wheelchair was rickety and always seemed on the verge of collapse. Then one day it did exactly that-- right when he was shopping in a Staten Island-area Lowe's. But what happened next That’s when three strangers stepped right in to help...

The VA scandal continues to unfold, although primarily through local and regional reporting, demonstrating that the issues of corruption and bureaucratic fraud go beyond just wait lists. Today, Congress will make public the testimony from an Inspector General agent, and it’s not pretty. The IG found that mail and claims were hidden in two separate VA systems, and in Philadelphia the postmarks go back to 2011, and claims were redated to hide their age:

Veteran Looses It On Protester Who Has US Flag Turned Upside-Down (Very NSFW Languag Video only on link

Issac Sims left Iraq alive, but not unscathed. The lingering effects of a serious head injury and the emotional trauma wrought by the sights and sounds of war never left him. On Sunday, with the demons of untreated post-traumatic stress disorder roiling his mind, Sims grabbed a rifle and started firing off shots in and outside his family’s modest home on Kansas City’s East Side. ******* Officers summoned tactical teams to surround the area. After a standoff of about five hours, police said, Sims emerged and pointed the rifle at officers. They fired. And Sims was dead at the age...

As Mickiel opened fire on the group, the veteran took cover near the vehicle’s front fender, according to assistant state attorney Mary Hain, the Chicago Tribune reports. The veteran fired two shots, hitting Mickiel both times.

<p>While it is just a tragic anecdote, the latest story surrounding the chronic and too often fatal inefficiency of Veterans Affairs hospitals is illustrative of a much larger problem.</p> <p>“A veteran who collapsed in an Albuquerque Veteran Affairs hospital cafeteria, 500 yards from the emergency room, died after waiting 30 minutes for an ambulance,” the Associated Press reported on Thursday. “Officials at the hospital Thursday confirmed it took a half an hour for the ambulance to be dispatched and take the man from one building to the other, which is about a five minute walk.”</p>