Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Care for our veterans

A little more than a day ago, one of the right-wing yak-yak-yakkers on Los Angeles talk radio station KFI (Konservative Fools & Idiots, or so I call it) tried to make the case that the Walter Reed scandal can be traced to the "fact" that liberals do not care about the folks who serve in the military.

Yep, it's our fault. Don't blame the Bush administration.

Today, we learn that Fox News has devoted twelve times more coverage to the death of Anna Nichol Smith than to the Walter Reed scandal.

And I've yet to encounter any right-wing pundit willing to discuss the scandals that grabbed the attention of Randi Rhodes this afternoon. She described the plight of certain Iraq war veterans who had signed away their rights to disability recompense, despite being unable to look after their own affairs, due to brain injury or heavy pain medication.

The Bush administration is, in fact, directly and solely responsible for this mess. Ideologues have deliberately gutted the Veterans Administration in order to "prove" to the public that government-provided health care cannot work. They want to privatize the system, which means placing it into place the hands of cronies.

I hope the wounded and sick veterans now facing homelessness are reconsidering their votes for the Republican party.

My Dad served in Korea. Anyone who thinks I don't care about veterans is a fool.

(By the way, as long as we are discussing veterans' issues, perhaps someone will one day reveal just what a certain "Jolly" doctor at UCLA was doing over at the nearby Veterans' hospital? I've heard some rather bizarre rumors...)

2 comments:

gary said...

Bizarre rumors? Let's hear them. I live for bizarre rumors.

Anonymous said...

I used to work with some folks at Disney in Burbank who now work at Fox. a few of them listens to Rush everyday for the past 12 years--it is no wonder that one of them ended up at Fox ?

anyway, I bring this up because at our social gatherings there is just no way to even raise any points about the lies that Rush and Hannity spew. We have to completely avoid any talk of politics to have any kind of a conversation.

My old acquaintance has just made up his mind like so many of rush's and fox's audience and they just feed on anything to reinforce their existing rightwing views--i.e. liberals are like commies, homos should be jailed, minorities on welfare should be exiled back to the country of their origin to avoid being a tax burden, etc. and ad nauseum.

There have been studies about these folks who have their minds made up and refuse to listen to anyone or anything that contradicts what they already believe.

Rightwing talk radio has done alot of damage over the past few decades because there are more of these well financed radio shows and DJ's owned by Clear Channel for example than there are of struggling air america affiliates and independent radio stations.

so, anyone who doesn't see the world as rush, Hannity, and coutler sees it, is just completely screwed, a sitting duck, in my opinion for the final coup d'grace with Cheney directing us into a secret war with Iran --he's doing this RIGHT NOW using outsourced PRIVATE CONTRACTORS--and then once the "secret war" gets big enough and public enough he can use it to declare martial law.

just my 2 cents.