Serving in the latest round of wars in America has not helped our returning troops when it comes to keeping their own homes. And now the news on the job front makes their lives even harder than before:

Unemployment among recently returned veterans, already in double digits, is poised to get worse as more soldiers return from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The jobless rate for veterans who served at any time since September 2001 — called Gulf War-era II veterans — was 13.3% in June, up from 12.1% the month before, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In June 2010 it was 11.5%.
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"It just so happens that there are a lot of people out there and there aren't enough jobs," said Pavel Ksendz, a 25-year-old Culver City resident who joined the Army in 2003, right after graduating from high school. After serving for four years, including 14 months in Iraq, Ksendz recently applied for a job as a janitor in Santa Monica, only to be told there were 59 other applicants.

Veterans face a unique set of obstacles when they start to look for work, said Lance Holbrook, a veterans representative at the One-Stop Career Center in Lancaster. Many went into service straight out of high school, and although they may have experience fixing airplanes or leading people, they don't have the college degrees that employers are seeking, Holbrook said. "Most employers won't even consider them without a degree," said Holbrook, who said he's seen a surge in newly returned veterans looking for jobs in the last two months.

Unemployment among veterans could rise even more in upcoming months as more troops return from overseas. President Obama announced plans last month to pull 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by year's end and a total of 33,000 by September 2012. And the number of U.S. troops in Iraq is about 46,000 now, down from the peak of 166,000 in 2007. Most of the remaining troops will leave Iraq by year's end.

The GOP has disappeared when it comes to creating jobs for all Americans since they took back the House, so I wonder how our veterans feel about the party that says they are pro-military?

JP Morgan Chase Supports The Troops By Overcharging Them On Mortgages, And By Foreclosure Fraud

Do troops without jobs believe reducing the debt is the most important thing in America? Or is having a job?

(h/t Russ, S&R)

I love love love Google Earth. I can easily spend hours swooping all over the globe, looking at satellite pictures of the homes of friends and family, favorite vacation spots and dream destinations.

Sean, part of the content design team for Google Earth, has put together a special application for the program that is perfect for this Memorial Day: Map the Fallen.

This Memorial Day I would like to share with you a personal project of mine that uses Google Earth to honor the more than 5,700 American and Coalition servicemen and women that have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have created a map for Google Earth that will connect you with each of their stories—you can see photos, learn about how they died, visit memorial websites with comments from friends and families, and explore the places they called home and where they died. [..]

For this project I collected information from a number of sources, including the Department of Defense's Statistical Information Analysis Division, icasualties.org, MilitaryTimes.com's Honor the Fallen, Washington Post's Faces of the Fallen, the Iraq and Afghanistan Pages, and Legacy.com. I used the Google Maps and GeoNames.org geocoding services to get coordinates for each person's home of record and approximate place of death. The map includes data through March 2009. I'd like to point out the incredible time commitment the above organizations invest in maintaining this information; as I've learned, it is not an easy task. All of the data I have assembled and generated for this project will be made freely available for download in the near future.

During this project, I have sought the advice and perspectives of several groups directly tied to these losses, including Gold Star families, veterans' groups, active-duty servicemen and women, and leadership in the United States Army. I've done my best to incorporate their feedback and suggestions in creating something that pays tribute to the memory and service of these fallen heroes. Out of respect for the families of those people on this map who have taken their own lives, I have chosen to describe these deaths as coming from "non-combat" related causes. This is a broad category used by the Department of Defense to define other causes of death resulting from accidents or illness.

I recognize that this map is just a slice of the story in these conflicts. The Iraqi and Afghani people have incurred substantial civilian losses through these wars; there are also U.S. and Coalition civilians, contractors, and reporters who have died as well. For this project, I've chosen to focus on the U.S. and Coalition military casualties, but I recognize that the losses extend beyond what is mapped in this project.

Each figure on the map denotes a servicemember lost during the last six years. Tied to their hometown, each figure pops up a screen that gives information about that fallen troop. In addition, families can add photos, audio and a guestbook for others to give their remembrance and honor their service.

Please, take some time to look through Map the Fallen and honor the sad sacrifice these men and women have made.

If these veterans courts are anywhere near as effective as the drug courts (which produce much better results than the regular court system), this is good news.

But this progam will have to be balanced with legitimate legal questions. The ACLU has opposed it in Nevada, saying it creates a separate class of people charged with crimes who get different treatment because they're veterans:

Reporting from Tulsa, Okla. -- U.S. military veterans from three decades pass through Judge Sarah Smith's courtroom here, reporting on their battles with drug addiction, alcoholism and despair. Those who find jobs and stabilize their lives are rewarded with candy bars and applause. Those who backslide go to jail.

Smith radiates an air of maternal care from the bench. As the veterans come before her, she softly asks: "How are you doing? Do you need anything?" But if a veteran fails random drug tests, she doesn't flinch at invoking his sentence. She keeps a drill sergeant's cap in her office.

Her court is part of a new approach in the criminal justice system: specialized courts for veterans who have broken the law. Judges have been spurred by a wave of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, battling post-traumatic stress disorder and brain injuries and stumbling into trouble with the law. But advocates of the courts say they also address a problem as old as combat itself.

"Some families give their sons or daughters to service for their country, and they're perfectly good kids. And they come back from war and just disintegrate before our eyes," said Robert Alvarez, a counselor at Ft. Carson in Colorado who is advocating for a veterans court in the surrounding county. "Is it fair to put these kids in prison because they served and got injured?"

The few veterans courts in the nation are modeled on drug courts that allow defendants to avoid prison in exchange for strict monitoring. Most are only a couple of months old, and it is difficult to track their effectiveness, but the results from the first court, which opened in Buffalo, N.Y., in January 2008, are striking.

Of the more than 100 veterans who have passed through, only two had to be returned to the traditional criminal court system because they could not shake narcotics or criminal behavior, said Judge Robert Russell. That is a far lower rate of recidivism than in drug courts.

They're looking at adding this program in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Connecticut, Nevada and Eau Claire, WI. It's already operating in Tulsa.

The Democratic Daily Blog: Round 2 of "Who's Minding Our Ports"...BUSHCO hiring Chinese Co. to scan for nukes. Somebody really should do it since these incompetent asshats have weakened export controls on highly enriched uranium.

Paul Rieckhoff is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Executive Director and Founder of IAVA (Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America), the country's first and largest Iraq Veterans group. He writes, "If you are looking for good news stories in a war zone, you are looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place. It is like looking for virgins at the Playboy mansion."

MaxSpeak, You Listen!: The Brit Hume chair of mathematical statistics

The Reality-Based Community: The founding fathers didn't trust George Washington with unlimited power. Why should we trust George Bush? And the Old Fashioned Patriot notes that with Milosevic dead, there's room at the Hague for another war criminal.

Pam's House Blend: An unhinged Tennessee legislator on who's "dysfunctional." This kind of GOP demagoguery may be in it's last throes The Brit Hume chair of mathematical statistics

The Reality-Based Community: The founding fathers didn't trust George Washington with unlimited power. Why should we trust George Bush? And the Old Fashioned Patriot notes that with Milosevic dead, there's room at the Hague for another war criminal.

Pam's House Blend: An unhinged Tennessee legislator on who's "dysfunctional." This kind of GOP demagoguery may be in it's last throes as an effective campaign tactic.

I recently attended a screening of my friend, Bann Roy's, inspiring film TAKING THE HEAT, the story of the first women firefighter's in NYC and the price they had to pay to serve their community. It will be shown on most PBS stations on March 28. Dates and times may vary, so check the program guide.
as an effective campaign tactic.

I recently attended a screening of my friend, Bann Roy's, inspiring film TAKING THE HEAT, the story of the first women firefighter's in NYC and the price they had to pay to serve their community. It will be shown on most PBS stations on March 28. Dates and times may vary, so check the program guide.

Maj. L. Tammy Duckworth of the Illinois National Guard, is running for Congress after losing both her legs flying a Black Hawk helicopter in Iraq. NY Times: "Ms. Duckworth, who was discharged from Walter Reed on Wednesday and from active duty the day before, decided to run for Congress, joining a growing group of a dozen Iraq veterans running next year-most, like her, as Democrats." "My role in the Army gives me the courage to make the tough decisions." "Those of us who've served on the ground have a unique perspective on the war and on what it means to serve in combat."

Download | play -WMP low res Download | play -QT

George: President Bush, for the last couple of weeks has been talking about his plan for victory. Do you think he's laid out a plan for victory?

Tammy: No, but I think he's got some great banners...

The NY Times has a great article posted here. The Archpundit has an interview with Tammy posted as well