War Wounded and Real Estate

The Baltimore Examiner is a free paper that comes out every day but Sunday. It's a quick browse-through, but sometimes they actually have stories that are worth reading.

In today's paper, there is a story about how the Iraq war began four years ago today. There are short interviews with the families of the dead, the still serving, and with those who were wounded in combat.

The piece that caught my eye was the one about Michael Wolcott, who hurt his back and leg in 2004 while ducking for cover while under fire. He's home now, and unable to walk more than two blocks at a time without being in "excruciating" pain. He has two young sons, and can no longer play outside with them. What really threw me was how he's now pulling in a whopping $200-300/month in disability. He used to work as a corrections officer before serving, and now he's living off of his wife's income as a nurse.

So, that's what you're worth with a bad back and leg for serving your country--$200-$300/month. Talk about cheap labor. The man is pictured leaning heavily on a walking stick. He says he'd do it all again.

He shouldn't have had to do it a first time. They never, ever should have had to go over there to begin with. And the way they're treated when they come home--Walter Reed Medical Center was just one example. What about the men and women with PTSDs?

All those people dead for absolutely no reason. None. Our current president is religious, but I can't imagine any God who would forgive him for doing what he's done these past several years. I hope Bush is drinking lots and lots of ice water while he still can.

Every Friday, the Examiner has a special Real Estate section. There is always one "special" house featured--usually some country manse with all the trimmings. This Friday's was a house in Baltimore City's Roland Park section. The featured house was OK, but nowhere near as "special" as some of the houses they've featured before. Yet the description was dripping with superlatives--like Poe himself had lived there and written "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," or something.

After puzzling over the house for a minute, I moved on. Laura Vozzella of The Baltimore Sun didn't, though. She found out that this house was indeed owned by Michael Phelps, who was the Examiner's publisher until he got promoted and moved.

No wonder the house was featured. He was getting a little (make that a lot) of free publicity. And he's had to lower the price of the house, too. There's a contract out on the house, but hell, you never know--sometimes contracts fall through.

That explains why the house was indeed so "special." Its owner was trying to offload it. He's having to sell it for less than the price he paid for it--about $50,000 or so.

Serves him right for being such a toady to our ex-governor, Robert Ehrlich. The Examiner was nothing but an Ehrlich ass-kiss machine while the Helmet Haired One was still in office.

Too bad the "special" house wasn't located in Annapolis. That way Ehrlich could have bought it from him when he got kicked out of the governor's mansion in January.