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Thursday, July 26, 2007
Today the focus is on health.
I'll tell you how gag orders and censorship seem to be the preferred right-wing prescription for improving the health of the American public.
It all relates to recent revelations by Bush's former Surgeon General.
Dr. Richard H. Carmona recently testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that he felt his duty as surgeon general was to address even the nation's most controversial health topics and to issue balanced reports on them. Just like his job description requires.
And there's the root of the problem. Carmona wanted to actually perform his statutory duties. But hetold a Congressional panel...that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations The areas included global warming, stem cells, sex education, prison health care, and second hand smoke.
Let's examine the right-wing wrong-doing in each area...
Beyond the direct harm to public health caused by the Bush administration's gagging and otherwise impeding the efforts of the nation's surgeon general, was the insistence that Dr. Carmona play the role of political cheerleader.
He was ordered to make speeches supporting Republicans running for office, as well as to attend political briefings.
Most bizarrely -- this is really a doozy --Dr. Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. Three times, huh? Why three times? Why not just twice? Or why not a bit more often, four times? I wonder, did Frank Luntz conduct focus group studies to determine how many times is the optimal amount to mention the president in each page of a speech?
Listen to the podcast for more details.
(PS: Right-wingers, if you want to write in to me, fine, but at least do me the courtesy of listening to the podcast first. Please don't respond just on the basis of the brief preview above. Thanks!!)
For those who aren't familiar with podcasts, podcasts are a series of mp3 audio files that you download to your computer or portable music device (iPod or other) and then can listen to whenever you want.
You don't need an iPod to listen to podcasts.
Podcast software like iTunes will automatically check a podcast at intervals you specify, and download any new installments.
iTunes is free and very easy to use. http://www.apple.com/itunes/
In iTunes, if you want to subscribe to my podcast, just click on Advanced at the top right, then choose Subscribe to Podcast, and paste in the URL http://feeds.feedburner.com/blasttheright
That's the URL to use for other podcast-friendly software programs as well.
Alternatively, you can just manually download new episodes from my podcast home page as they become available. Here is a link to my podcast's home page: http://www.therationalradical.com/podcast.html
Enjoy!!
Jack Clark 9:29 PM [+]
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