northshorebamaman

Story is a mix of two things that have nothing to do with each other it's trying to conflate, First is a couple pics of shitty meals on a single ship.

The second is a delay in care packages which is completely normal in situations like this. When we went into Iraq in 2003 it took until July to receive my first care package- and it was mailed to me in February.

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10% of vets were actively engaged in combat 28% receiver PTSD disability???

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Also, OP is complete bullshite. He mixed categories and still fricked it up. Or did it intentionally.

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I worked with several and NONE of them had a disability that prevented them from working. For sure, there are very legitimate disabilities, but a guy who hurt his knee during training and limped for two months should not get $1000/month for life after leaving the military.

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First off, I’ll concede the obvious. Some people game the system. That happens in every large program. But these threads are always full of exaggeration and basic misunderstandings of how VA compensation actually works, so that's what I'm addressing.

No one is getting $1,000 a month because they “limped for two months.” That’s not how it works. The VA doesn’t just eyeball a case and hand out money. It runs on a rating schedule with specific diagnostic codes and defined criteria. Each condition maps to a percentage based on measurable limitations:

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Diagnostic Code 5258 – Cartilage, semilunar, dislocated, with frequent episodes of “locking,” pain, and effusion into the joint:

20%

Diagnostic Code 5259 – Cartilage, semilunar, removal of, symptomatic:

10%

Diagnostic Code 5260 – Leg, limitation of flexion of:

Flexion limited to 15° — 30%
Flexion limited to 30° — 20%
Flexion limited to 45° — 10%
Flexion limited to 60° — 0%

Diagnostic Code 5261 – Leg, limitation of extension of:

Extension limited to 45° — 50%
Extension limited to 30° — 40%
Extension limited to 20° — 30%
Extension limited to 15° — 20%
Extension limited to 10° — 10%
Extension limited to 5° — 0%

Diagnostic Code 5262 – Tibia and fibula, impairment of:

Nonunion, with loose motion, requiring brace — 40%
Malunion, marked knee or ankle disability — 30%
Malunion, moderate knee or ankle disability — 20%
Malunion, slight knee or ankle disability — 10%

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Notice "limped for two months" isn't on the list. Much less at a percentage that would get you close to $1000 a month.

The bigger confusion is people mixing up VA disability compensation with Social Security disability. They share a word, but they’re fundamentally different programs. Social Security disability is a means-tested safety net. You qualify by being unable to work. VA compensation is not that. It’s exactly what the name says: compensation for service-connected injury or impairment. There is no requirement that you be unable to work, and no income cap.

If you don't understand the difference between compensation and insurance think of it this way: If you're enjoying a day at the park and a drunk city employee runs you over with a trash cart and cracks your ribs, the city owes you compensation for the injury. That obligation doesn’t disappear because you’re back at work next week or because your ribs will heal. The payment is tied to the harm, not your employment status.

You can disagree with the program. That’s a separate argument. But at least argue against what it actually is. Every time this comes up, people point to vets who “can work” and treat that as proof of fraud. It isn’t. Working while receiving VA compensation is normal and allowed. Calling someone out as a fraud on that basis just signals you don’t even understand the system you’re criticizing.

And also, dude....

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I worked with several and NONE of them had a disability that prevented them from working.

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Yeah, no shite. How would you be able to work with them if they couldn't work? Kind of a self-evident point there. :lol:

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Sorry, Audiophiles, your expensive gear is a waste of money . ESPECIALLY the cables.

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The article only seems to be about the cables. How did you arrive at this thread title? Seems like this would be more accurate:

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Sorry, Audiophiles, your expensive cables are a waste of money

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As far as other gear, it's up to the person to decide if it's a waste of money but it would be silly to pretend there can't be significant differences between different tiers of things like turntables, amps, or speakers.

As for cables there are also differences but mostly in things like build quality and shielding, but you can get those attributes at reasonable prices (like under 20 or 30 bucks a cable). Paying premium prices for some fancy conductor material is a waste of money though.

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Yeah, my little brother joined in late 1999, to avoid some criminal charges, re-upped to get housing for his wife and child, then got sent to Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. Certainly not his choice but changed his life for the better with structure and discipline. Now a NP on the GI Bill.

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Sounds familiar. When I started the process I told my recruiter I’d been in “a little trouble" (I'd actually spent 16–17 in a juvenile detention center:lol:). He sent me to my probation officer to pull my record. I brought it back, sat down and watched as his eyes got wider with every page, figured I was cooked.

He finished, stood up, walked to the trashcan, threw the whole file in, and said, “Look. I can get you in, but if this ever comes up later they're kicking you out, and I will say I never saw this.” I said understood. It never came back on me.

That was 28 years ago. Since then, not even a single traffic ticket (had my share of article 15's early on though). Went from a dropout headed to prison to a stable life, college education, and a productive tax-paying member of society.

I also had a pretty kick arse time.

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Again the Pope said nothing about queers and transgenders mocking the Last Supper of Christ,

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What the frick is this whataboutism? One is a group of random eurotrash Rocky Horror queers and one is the President of the United States of America. :lol:

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This started in the early 2000's.

The country hadn't been in a real fight since Vietnam and most of the enlistees looked at it like a soft landing spot to get paid a little and not have to really work. Get some college funding.

Basically asking what the country could do for them instead of what they could doo for the country.

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That was me. I joined in ’98. Growing up when I did, “war” to me was watching Desert Storm on TV as a kid and seeing what looked like a quick trip to kick some arse followed by victory parades. I wasn’t scared to fight, it just didn’t seem like something that was actually going to happen. Cold War was over, the USSR had collapsed, everything in my frame of reference said war wasn’t in my future.

I was right for my first enlistment. My first tour was with 2ID in Area 1 Korea, which at the time felt like about as “hardcore” as it got outside SOF, and even that was pretty chill. Chill enough that I reenlisted for six years in Kuwait on August 10th, 2001 to lock in a $40k tax-free bonus.:pimp:

Thought I was playing it smart.

A month later I’m sitting in a chow hall watching the towers fall and realizing, in real time, what I just signed up for.

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When little Bush went to war (specifically expanding operation to Iraq) and more units started getting pulled in, you first started hearing the cries, "I joined to get an education, not to go to war".. blah, blah.

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Yeah, there were always a few guys bitching. There always are. But the part you left out is what actually happened when shite hit the fan. Early Iraq and Afghanistan, we didn’t fold, we didn’t hesitate, we went and did the job. And you know who made up 90% of that force? Guys like me. Guys who joined for college money, bonuses, whatever you want to call “selfish,” who never truly expected war.

Didn’t matter. When it flipped, we flipped with it.

We followed orders. We completed missions. We rolled out in chem gear fully expecting gas attacks. We fought, over and over again. A lot of us stacked more days in combat than any generation before us. A lot of us didn’t come home.

So yeah, I’m pretty fricking tired of people obsessing over why people joined like it’s some kind of purity test, while completely ignoring how they served when it actually mattered.

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Studies have also found that poor kids out of high school join the military for medical insurance they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten working as min wage laborers.

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Link these studies. Because i'm pretty sure what they actually say is that when it even sort of comes up as a primary driver, which is still only mentioned in less than a third of the respondents, they’re, at best, referenced broadly as "for the benefits" bundled with pay, training, and the GI Bill. Almost no one lists 'health insurance' as a standalone motivation.

I was in basic. We had this conversation constantly. I never heard anyone say they joined for health insurance. Not once. What I did hear: guys buying an F150 with their enlistment bonuses, guys trying to get college paid for, and a lot of guys,like me, who felt like they didn't have much going on, and felt were just spinning their wheels in whatever shite town they came from.

And think about the logic. The kind of person who is forward-thinking enough to prioritize health insurance for a primary life decision at 18 isn’t the same person who joins the army out of desperation.

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My God, that’s horrifying! I’ve been praying for the last few weeks for God to take him out of the prison he’s been locked in. We are ready to let him go so he can go to God and rest in peace.

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I thought about softening what I described because of your situation, but I didn’t. People tend to picture coma as passive and peaceful, and that assumption drives a lot of moral judgment about “pulling the plug.” That picture isn’t always accurate. Sometimes it’s the opposite, and I think people should understand that before they speak with certainty.

If it gives you any reassurance, I’ve looked into this a lot since then, and what I experienced is an edge case. It’s not the norm. The odds that your brother is going through something like that are low.

For me, if I take the coma as a given, the nightmare state was net positive. Once you get into multiple weeks, the odds of coming out without meaningful and significant cognitive decline drop fast. And the fact I was also fighting sepsis makes it even more likely. When you wake up, one of the first things they do is run you through a series of tests and puzzles to gauge that. My family had already been warned to expect damage.

Instead, I came out with little to no measurable decline. I was told I retained my cognitive abilities to a surprising degree.

The experience itself was brutal, and it still fricks with me ten years later. But I credit the lack of damage to the fact that my brain never shut off. It was fully engaged the entire time, even if the engagement was awful.

Now my body was another story. The combination of the coma and sepsis resulted in extreme loss of muscle and nerve and I could only move my hands for the first couple weeks and it took half a decade to fully regain the ability to walk.

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Sure there is a reason. War profits made by the out smuggling of cotton.

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I understand the planters reasoning. It's that poster's reasoning that doesn't make sense.