To all that risked their lives

so ours could be free.

Happy Veteran's Day...

Are you kidding me?

Sen. McCain, in an interview on NBC’s Today Show, told host Matt Lauer about his support for the war in Iraq.

Lauer: “If it’s working, senator, do you now have a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq?”

McCain: “No, but that’s not too important…”

Are you fucking kidding me??

Having an estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq is “not too important”???

Even though the media continues to give McCain a free pass, a few of his peers in the Senate aren’t…

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) remarks; “McCain’s statement today that withdrawing troops doesn’t matter is a crystal clear indicator that he just doesn’t get the grave national-security consequences of staying the course -- Osama bin Laden is freely plotting attacks, our efforts in Afghanistan are undermanned, and our military readiness has been dangerously diminished. We need a smart change in strategy to make America more secure, not a commitment to indefinitely keep our troops in an intractable civil war.”

And Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) added; “I think many of our brave soldiers and their families would disagree that it’s ‘not too important’ when they come home.”
This is the man who wants to run the country?

Katz is on notice

Earlier this week I wrote a post (‘Sad and Pathetic’) about the Department of Veterans Affairs deliberately withholding information about the suicide risk among veterans by giving false numbers staggeringly lower than the true numbers.

The post also described how the head of the department, Dr. Ira Katz, sent emails to others in the department in a desperate attempt to hide the truth from not only the media, but the American public as well.

The plan didn’t work as the emails were discovered/leaked to CBS news… and now the Karma is coming back to kick Katz in the ass as Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Daniel Akaka (D-HI) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) are now calling for his resignation.

Akaka wrote to Michael Kussman, the Undersecretary for Health;

“Dr. Katz’s personal conduct and professional judgment have been called into question by his response to the mental health needs of veterans, and in particular to veteran suicides. I believe veterans, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, would be best served by his immediate resignation.”

Sen. Murray asked VA Deputy Secretary Gordon Mansfield;

“How do we trust what you’re saying when every time we turn around we find out that what you’re saying publicly is different from what you’re saying privately? How can we trust what you’re saying today?”

Katz behavior is, again, sad and pathetic. For someone who supposedly took the Hippocratic Oath when he became a doctor, Katz isn’t acting the part.

Says the Oath;

“I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.”

He seems to have forgotten it, hasn’t he?
Dr. Katz… you’re on notice. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

On second thought; let it. Hard.

Sad and pathetic

Yesterday in a federal court in San Francisco, attorneys for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans accused the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs of covering-up the epidemic of suicides among veterans.

At first blush it seems as though the department had indeed covered this information up… and emails written by Dr. Ira Katz, the VA's head of Mental Health, support this accusation.

Much of this stemmed from a CBS News investigation of veterans suicides late last year, at that time CBS reported that there were 6,200 veteran suicides in 2005.
At that time Katz claimed that the number “is not, in fact, an accurate reflection of the rate” and said that there “is no epidemic in suicide in VA” and that the number of attempts were 790 and NOT as high as CBS News had suggested.

Now emails that Katz had sent about the problem have been leaked, and it’s an absolutely disgusting display from someone who is allegedly in charge of looking out for veteran’s interests.

Three days after Katz appeared on CBS News, he sent an e-mail that acknowledged that there were “about 18 suicides today among America’s 25 million veterans,” a fact which he said “is supported by the CBS numbers.”

In another email from February 2008, Katz said to his top media adviser; “Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among veterans we see in our medical facilities.”

But it gets worse… Katz not only titled that email ‘Not for the CBS News Interview Request’ but opened it with “Shh!” and ended it by asking a question that someone in his position should not even have to ask; “Is this something we should (carefully) address … before someone stumbles on it?”

Stay classy Ira…

This past Monday, CBS News showed the e-mail to Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA) who was visibly pissed and said; “This is disgraceful. This is a crime against our nation, our nation's veterans. […] They do not want to come to grips with the reality, with the truth.”

What does this mean? That the head of Veterans Affairs purposefully withheld information because he was worried more about being embarrassed then he was about veterans… a sad statement from an administration that has used them like they were their own personal toy soldiers.

The case is now in trial and, according to an article in The San Francisco Chronicle; “U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti is presiding over the nonjury trial, scheduled to last two weeks. Conti, a conservative jurist and World War II veteran appointed to the bench by former President Richard Nixon, ruled in January that the case could go to trial. In doing so, he rejected the government's argument that civil courts have no authority over the VA's medical decisions or how it handles grievances. If the advocates can prove their claims, Conti said in his ruling, they would show that ‘thousands of veterans, if not more, are suffering grievous injuries as the result of their inability to procure desperately needed and obviously deserved health care.’”

This is criminal… to ignore the problems of veterans who have risked their lives for the freedom of this country is not only pathetic and sad, but extremely disgusting. Katz needs to be criminally charged, Congress needs to launch an independent investigation and someone needs to be held accountable.

This isn’t the end of this story…

The Weekly Rewind

It's the end of the week! What does that mean? Football? sure... drinking to an excess? ok for some of you perhaps.... However for us at The "Bush"-Whacked Administration it means a look back at some of the things that you may have missed this past week, both good and bad. Hence the Applauds (good) and Heckles (bad). Ok, let's get to it.....

Applaud: to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for a soundbite from this past week’s democratic debate. The bit isn’t nearly getting the amount of airtime it should, but it is a classic. Biden described gop candidate Rudy Giuliani thusly; “There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11.” (Nicely said Mr. Biden, well done)

Heckle: to poor campaign practices. Waking potential voters up at 2 in the morning to ask them to vote for you is probably gonna have an opposite effect. Just ask Westchester (NY) County Legislature hopeful Domenic Volpe. A firm his campaign hired, and I would imagine later fired, to dispatch recorded calls asking for their support accidentally was programmed to call voters at 2 a.m. instead of 2 p.m… oops

Applaud: to Dennis Kucinich (did I really just write that?) for saying what many others are surely thinking, that Bush may need his racket restrung.

Heckle: to Vice President Dick “President” Cheney and his Dan Quayle impression this morning. During a speech in Dallas, a reporter asked Cheney about his views on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Cheney responded that the people of Peru “deserve better” leadership than Chavez… um, okay. Last time I looked, Chavez was the president of Venezuela and the president of Peru was Alan Garcia… but I could be wrong.

Heckle: to avoiding the US like we have a plague. The number of foreign visitors to the United States has plummeted since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington because foreigners don’t feel welcome,” according to tourism professionals. The decline has cost America “94 billion dollars in lost visitor spending, nearly 200,000 jobs and 16 billion dollars in lost tax revenue.” Ok, just for the record, we like visitors, we don’t like illegal immigrants.

Heckle: to knowing that almost everyone saw this coming. While there are pockets of security where life in Baghdad is starting to get back to normal, it’s not normal by most standards. Across the city Sunnis and Shiites live in sectarian enclaves, many walled off. Sunnis fear visiting Shiite areas and vice versa, even if it is just a few blocks away. Trust has broken down so much that a stranger in a neighborhood can arouse enough suspicion to warrant an attack. Nice, someone walking to the market takes a wrong turn and ends up getting killed because they are wearing the wrong scarf…sounds like what….. that’s right, major gang areas in the US. We can’t control them here, so what makes us think we could do it in Iraq?

Heckle: to proving that he needed to go. As Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld wrote 20 to 60 “snowflakes” — his trademark missives for developing policy — each day. In a sampling of them obtained by the Washington Post, Rumsfeld “argued that Muslims avoid ‘physical labor’ and wrote of the need to ‘keep elevating the threat,’ ‘link Iraq to Iran’ and develop ‘bumper sticker statements’ to rally public support. As if we didn’t already know that the administration was burning to expand our real estate holdings in the region…oh and by the way Don, no one takes anything on a bumper sticker seriously.

Heckle: to a sad reality. The number of Americans without health insurance “rose by nearly 8.6 million to 47 million from 2000 to 2006, with children and workers from every income level losing coverage,” according to the Economic Policy Institute. The increase was “driven primarily by the continued erosion in employer-provided health insurance.” I wonder how many of those 47 million voted republican in the last 2 elections. And you hope they will be smart enough to vote democrat next year. Remember the only values that the republicans care about are the values that their corporate handlers tell them to care about.

Applaud: to 67 percent: Which is the number of Americans who “support giving contraceptives to students”, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll. About as many - 62 percent - said they believe providing birth control “reduces the number of teenage pregnancies.” Thank you for exhibiting common sense.

Heckle: to One in eight: Which is the number of veterans under the age of 65 who are uninsured, a finding that contradicts the assumption many have that all vets qualify for free health care through the Department of Veterans Affairs. Approximately 1.8 million veterans overall lack health coverage, a jump of 290,000 since 2000. This is unacceptable. These men and women risked life and limb for this nation and this nation owes them a debt of gratitude, which includes the health care promised to them.

Heckle: to being just so damned hippocritical. Lawmakers have increasingly steered federal funds to overtly religious organizations — many of which claim proselytizing or religious conversions as their primary function — using earmarks. For instance, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) tried to earmark $100,000 for a creationist organization. Since when do we get to pick and choose when church and state are separate.

Heckle: to Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Who, according to a new book on Blair’s tenure, “turned down a last-minute offer from President George Bush for Britain to stay out of the Iraq war because he thought it would look ‘pathetic,’. Well Tony, now your position looks as pathetic as ours. Nicely played.

And finally-

Applaud: to a financial wizardseeing the light. Warren Buffett this week told CNBC that he believes there is a “fairly significant” chance that the United States is headed toward a recession. Maybe Warren should take over for Bernake for a while.

Ok, all these heckles have left me tired and depressed. That’s it for this week.

Be good, stay informed….later.

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!

Random Political Thoughts for a Wednesday

Short collection of random thoughts today… must be my lack of coffee, which I have given-up for Lent… which leads me to ask; ‘What the hell was I thinking’???

Anyway… enjoy some random political thoughts…

Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics. According to a CNN poll, 9% of Americans believe things are going well in Iraq with 46% thinking that the United States will win. (First of all, who the HELL are these 9% that think things are going well?? I would really like to meet them so I could either ask them what the hell is wrong with them or, at the least, smack them over the head with a 2 X 4 to slap some sense into them…)

Running Mates. Dick Cheney’s favorability rating is 18%… as Ana Marie Cox, the original Wonkette, said: “If he had feelings, I’m sure they’d be hurt by this.” Tom DeFrank of the NY Daily News puts an interesting spin on the story when he wrote that “Cheney may be an overall net political minus, but he’s a huge asset where it counts most for Bush: the Republican base, which adores Cheney. Bush’s approval numbers are at 30%, roughly the same size as his base. If Cheney left, this weakened President couldn’t absorb the backlash. They’re all he has left.” (Hmmmmmm…verrrrryyyy interesting…)

War Crimes. According to a new CBS/NY Times poll, 78% of Americans don’t think that the Bush(whacked) Administration has “done enough to care for [Iraq war] veterans,”, with a majority of polled republicans “agreeing with all Americans overall on this issue.” (And this should come as a surprise….why?)

Posse Comitatus. The Pentagon has (finally!) started on plans on a “fallback strategy for Iraq” that includes a gradual withdrawal of forces with a renewed emphasis on training Iraqi fighters… all this just in case the President’s escalation strategy fails (which I believe is a pretty safe bet) Military experts say the new strategy is in line with the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and partially based on the “U.S. experience in El Salvador” in the 1980s… cuz that went oh, so well…

The Fall’s Gonna Kill You. Let’s see… AG Alberto Gonzales’ chief of staff Kyle Sampson resigns as he was involved in generating the list of prosecutors that got the axe… Gonzales admits mistakes but insists he will not resign… unless Dubya decides otherwise… all the while ignoring calls for his resignation or dismissal… the White House is trying to spin the story to break their way… (Is it just me, or does this sound like it was written by a group of bad soap opera writers??)

The War At Home. A new federal rule aimed at keeping illegal immigrants from receiving Medicaid has instead prevented thousands of US citizens getting Medicaid because they’ve had difficulty providing birth certificates or other documents that would prove their citizenship… (Too bad there wasn’t a group of people who could have said that that would happen ’if this bill was passed… oh, wait… there was. The key to stopping illegal immigration is not to cut off funding of certain things because, as history has told us many, many, many times… it NEVER works. Mo. Rons.)

Gone Quiet. Salon is reporting that the US military is “deploying troops with serious injuries” and other medical problems (all because of Bush’s escalation plan). Some of the GIs are medically unfit for battle according to their doctors, and some are too injured to even wear their body armor… reading all this, and yet it’s the Democrat’s that are always accused of not caring about or respecting our military… to that I say; give me a fucking break. This is more proof of how little the Bush(whacked) Administration cares about our military… and yet no one is reporting about it… I wonder why??

Internal Displacement. How about that… a glimmer of hope from within the White House. It seems some internal White House staffers are calling on President Bush to uphold his pledge to “have the highest of high standards” when it comes to granting pardons. One former White House staffer told Newsweek, “What you saw was a vice president’s office that was out of control.”

Privateers. We all know that Halliburton is moving their base of operations from the U.S. to Dubai, and while many people have questions, Senate Commerce Committee member Byron Dorgan (D-ND) is actually asking them. “I want to know, is Halliburton trying to run away from bad publicity on their contracts? Are they trying to run away from the obligation to pay U.S. taxes? Or are they trying to set up a corporate presence in Dubai so that they can avoid the restrictions that currently exist on doing business with prohibited countries like Iran?” (I think there is only one possible answer; all of the above Something needs to be done in regards to this latest move by a company that has screwed the country with its pants on many times… but, with Cheney still being in bed with the company – nothing will… and that’s just sad…)

All I have, take ‘em as you will…