Bush Opts For Time Off Rather Than Honor Veterans

I'm not surprised that president Bush is down in Texas spending most of the day at his ranch on a day that America honors it veterans. Despite his brief appearance at a Veterans' Day speech in Waco Texas, he plans to veto $3.5 billion for veteran's benefits Democrats had to insert into the latest defense appropriations bill.

When it comes to honoring military veterans all he gives them is lip service, but today he's barely making the effort to do that. It seems that he thinks of them as a great backdrop for a speech, or as fodder in his neocon approach to international relations, but not enough to spend a whole day honoring them publicly.

As our military is currently overstretched, overworked, underpaid, and under-rested, he's well rested, under worked, and overpaid.
Bush is not even trying to appear interested in the welfare or the sacrifices of those who served our nation.

If Bush wants to truly honor our veterans he should start by keeping them out of unnecessary wars, providing them with adequate equipment when deployed, giving them the required time between deployments, and taking care of (and fully funding) all their medical/psychological needs.

To me this says about all you need to know about what George Bush thinks of those who wear the military uniform (and actually serve).

Tough Questioning From Tim Russert. Too Bad It's To The Wrong man

Tim Russert is interviewing Presidential candidate Chris Dodd on Meet the Press and he's asking him "Do you believe the troops have died in vain?". After slightly dodging the question by giving the 'political' answer, Russert again pressed him "But answer that question, all that loss for what, what did they die for?".

As soon as I heard that question, and how forcefully it was asked my thoughts shot back to Russert's numerous sessions with Vice President Cheney. I seem to recall those were mostly congenial affairs with Tim smiling and avoiding the tough questioning like I'm hearing today.
Why won't he ask the man most responsible for the war and it's thousands of dead the same damn question? And in the same tone.

Sure, Russert framed the question referring to a quote Dodd made the other day, "All that loss, for what?",which is an excellent question that should be honestly answered by Cheney and President Bush, but what stopped Russert from asking Cheney that same question when he's had the chance? He's had Cheney on his show multiple times since the beginning of the "war".

And if/when Cheney gives him the same 'political' reply only in a much more sanctimonious way as he does so well, would Mr. Russert pursue an answer in the same way? We would hope so, but I seriously doubt it. Maybe Russert is afraid that Cheney would somehow choke him with his mind.

If you think about it, that could be closer to the truth than you know.

Mika Brzezinski's at it again on MSNBC's "Morning Joe"

Mika Brzezinski's at it again on MSNBC's "Morning Joe", spreading FUD and assisting the administration and the terrorists with her coverage of shoes found with blasting caps in the hollowed out heels. What she fails to also mention which would add a little bit of context to the viewer's understanding of the issue are the news reports citing a report that states airport screeners "failed to spot 70% of the knives, 30% of the guns and 60% of the dummy explosives carried by secret investigators in the months after September 11."

This recent catch, despite how it was hyped, is nothing new and barely 'news'. I'm trying to figure out if it was 'filler' for the show, TV 'hype', or intentional right-wing FUD. Maybe I'm being overly cynical, but either way you slice it the story was poorly done. News should be about getting stories to the viewers with little to no personal bias evident, putting the issue in the correct context, and providing the basic who - where - when - why - and how of the story. Even those basics are woefully missing from so much of the 'news' we see these days in the main stream media.

Newspapers and online news sites do a much better job of covering these basics but there's no good reason that twenty four hour news channels can't do the same if they chose to. I don't want to hear the same old excuse that blames the attention span of the 'average viewer'. That might be partially true, but only because they've been trained that way by the very same institutions that use this as an excuse.

News shouldn't be presented the same way advertising is. Maybe the marketing industry's techniques have been co-opted by the big media owners for news coverage, filtering down to the producers over time but the end result is a shorter attention span of the average viewer and diminishing the end product, which should be news that educates the viewer rather than just entertaining them or lazily parroting the talking points the White House sends out.

It has contributed to the 'dumbing-down' of viewers and to a certain extent contributed to our country being misled into supporting the Iraq quagmire.

[Edited for clarity on 10/27/07 1:15 PM]

Impending War with Iran - What The White House Doesn't Want You To Know

I just came across this article over at Crooks and Liars. If you haven't already read about this you need to and so do your friends. Please pass it around.

Few labs can test 'dirty bomb' exposure - Yahoo! News

The way this administration talks you'd think they were on top of things like this, but unfortunately that's all it is -- talk. Just a superficial sugar coating (that's what the main stream media "reports"), with a dank dangerous filling. (The following is a clip from the article with a link to the full story below) - TRD

By EILEEN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The U.S. has a shortage of laboratories to test the thousands of people who might be exposed to radiation if a "dirty bomb" detonated in a major city, according to a recent congressional investigation.

The federal government established 15 disaster scenarios for federal, state and local officials to plan for, including one in which a dirty bomb goes off in a major downtown area and potentially exposes 100,000 people to radioactive materials.

A dirty bomb would contain some radioactive material that could cause contamination over a limited area but not create actual nuclear explosions. Should this happen in real life, the nation would not be able to quickly conduct tests for these people, because there are few labs capable of doing so in the country; and the tests available only address six of the 13 radiological isotopes that would likely be used in a dirty bomb, according to the report prepared for the House Committee on Science and Technology. Instead, it would take four years to complete all these tests, according to the report to be released Thursday.

"I had hoped since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that our government had smart people lying awake at 3 o'clock in the morning, trying to think through everything that terrorists could be dreaming of, every kind of attack they could be dreaming of, and trying to think of ways to prevent it and to respond to it if it does happen," said Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C. "Learning how poorly prepared we are for a dirty bomb, a radiological attack, makes me think that that's not happened."

Miller is chairman of the subcommittee holding a hearing on the report's findings.

The report acknowledges that this type of dirty-bomb scenario would probably not cause massive casualties, but Miller said four years is too long to wait for results of whether people are contaminated.

"I can't imagine a parent, who is told that their child can be tested for cesium in two-and-a-half more years, is going to be reassured to hear that their child probably won't die," Miller said.

- Article continues... (follow link below)

Source: Few labs can test 'dirty bomb' exposure - Yahoo! News