musing minds

Sandy Berger was sentenced today to 100 hours community service and two years probation. He will also pay $6,905 to cover the administrative costs associated with his probation. (CNN)

In addition Sandy Berger must give up access to classified government materials for a three year period and pay a fine five times more than what prosecutors asked for.

Judge Deborah Robinson set the fine at $50,000 saying:

The court finds the fine is inadequate because it doesn’t reflect the seriousness of the offense.

(FOX News)

Please read both news stories. Note that CNN mentions nothing about the increase in the fine or why it was increased…

Welcome Blogs for Bush readers! Please look around…

I don’t have a transcript (anyone know where one might be?) but there were a couple questions yesterday from the press that seemed a little, well, off…

One reporter asked Mike Brown what he had to say about Nancy Pelosi’s call for his resignation and/or firing. He said that it was up to the President. A second reporter asked if he had submitted his resignation. He said that he serves at the pleasure of the President of the United States.

Then we get to what was really off:

A reporter asked him why Operation Blessing was on the FEMA list of approved charities on their website. Mr. Brown said that apparently, one of his staffers had checked it out and added it. The reporter then went on to say (paraphrase) : Operation Blessing is run by Pat Robertson, do you think it should be there?

It seems to me that the reporter was “suggesting” that because of Pat Robertson’s admittedly stupid remarks about Hugo Chavez, the charity, Operation Blessing, (on whose board Pat Robertson sits) should not be approved to assist in the relief effort.

In the words of General Honore, “That’s B.S.”

Pat Robertson is on the Board. That’s it. One member. That doesn’t disqualify the charity.

The About Us section (first graf):

Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation (OBI) is a non-profit 501 (c) (3) humanitarian organization based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA. Since 1978, Operation Blessing International has touched the lives of more than 179.7 million people in 96 countries and all 50 states, providing goods and services valued at more than $1.1 billion. Operation Blessing is governed by a national board of directors that includes founder M.G. “Pat” Robertson.

Greed in the face of adversity is a post I just found at the Jawa Report.

Planned Parenthood has a link on their main page that says “Help those affected by hurricane” but when you click the link, the page it takes you has the disclaimer:

Support Planned Parenthood and their patients during this time of great need. By clicking here, 100% of your tax-deductible contribution will go directly to helping Planned Parenthood affiliates and health centers in this region serve women and families who have nowhere else to turn.

(bold mine)

Further down it says “Click here to donate to Planned Parenthood’s Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. And you can send a check to Hurricane Katrina Relief, PPFA etc, etc.

Although their disclaimer is pretty prominent, Hurricane Relief should apply to everyone affected. They seem more interested in getting their clinics set back up instead of helping people get their lives set back up.

Via One Big Swede

Hurricane Katrina: Blog for Relief Weekend
Thursday, September 1 – Monday, September 5
$ 1,175,554
in contributions so far

American Red Cross, 1111 Contributors $ 258,005 Contributed

Please continue to contribute

The American Red Cross. Clicking the Donate Now button will bring you right to the Red Cross site.

If you do donate, please go here and log your donation at the Truth Laid Bear. Thank you.

What happens to a nation with a two party system, where one of the parties moves away from rational policy and reverts to base gutteral emotion? What happens when that party’s leaders fall back on the rhetoric of hate, anger and bitterness rather than offering viable policy alternatives? And what happens when the mainstream media ideologically supports that party and therefore fails to provide any meaningful scrutiny of it?

You end up with a country with a two party system in name only. One party continues to be actively engaged in governance, while the other party moves further and further away from the playing field content to shout insults from the sidelines. Insults that simplify, easily assign blame, that are aided by hindsight and insulated from accountability while being cloaked with the impression that a utopic solution has been forgone.

Facilitated by an irresponsible media content to engage in agenda journalism we end up with political discourse of the rediculous. To be sure, the ruling party is making mistakes. Policies can be improved. Viable alternatives exist. But real solutions are lost in a discourse of the absurd.

We saw it happen in Iraq, and regrettably we are seeing it occur with Katrina. Healthy discourse, open, honest debate, and an objective media which holds both sides accountable in the process, are essential to a functioning democracy. At the moment it appears that America has none of these.

Lorie at PoliPundit notes that Katrina is the new Iraq. Couldn’t agree more. The most glaring example in my mind is the hindsight-aided blaming, which could be directed at everyone but is only directed at Bush. Everybody and their dog believed that Iraq possessed WMD’s prior to the war – the French, the Germans, the UN, Clinton, Kerry, most members of Congress and Senate (at least the ones that spoke on the subject) – they all made proclamations of Iraq’s WMD danger. But it was Bush, and Bush alone, that “lied” to the public.

Similarly, the possibility of cataclysmic consequences arising from a cat 4 or 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans given its low sea level has been known by local, state, and federal policy makers for much of the last century. Get that – three levels of government, and the various officials and policy makers over the last century who occupied those posts. But where is the finger being pointed by the MSM?

When the rescuing stops and the clean-up begins (which in my opinion is the appropriate time to start focusing efforts on how this could have happened) a sober assessment on preparedness will be required. It’s regrettable that the MSM’s agenda journalism will in many ways thwart this process by limiting the scrutiny to Bush and Bush alone. Not only is this an abuse of the media’s position as public informers, it will have real negative effects. Such politically driven scrutiny, rather than reality based scrutiny, will no doubt detract from efforts to improve the system going forward and may potentially cost lives in the future.

Still waiting for baby. Tons of contractions but still more waiting to go. I’ll keep you posted.

Here’s new site set up just today by Deacon Dan (found in a comment at Blogs for Bush):

New site I’m trying to promote – www.katrinafinder.us. I built it today as a way, I hope, to help folks find loved ones in the disaster area. My sister was in Gulfport, Mississippi, when Katrina hit, and we haven’t heard from her. We’re hoping, but I needed to do something more, and that site was built today over my lunch hour.

I’d appreciate it if you could include a word about it when you’re out n’ about and blogging. And if you have any suggestions or want to help with the code, I’d gladly give out the “keys to the kingdom” to the FTP part of the site, and you can help me jimmy the code so it works better. Or if you run across people who want to help, point ’em my way, and we’ll get it set up.

I’m going to also put out some press releases tonight, and noise it about on the blogs, so hopefully people will find it useful.

Thanks, folks!

Dan, our prayers are with you and your family.

Thank you for setting this up.

If anyone can help out, please do.

Trackback to Basil’s Blog Covered Dish Supper.

Another new Katrina Aid site: Hurricaid.com set up by Kevin Aylward at Wizbang

Dish Network’s new ad campaign consists of people whose T.V. “sucks”. Their T.V.’s act like vacuums, things fly, and stick, to the T.V. set. The guest says something like, “What’s going on?”, the homeowner says, “My T.V. sucks, doesn’t yours?” The guest says, “No, I have Dish Network, it doesn’t suck.”

Now my four year old is asking if things suck. I really don’t need my four year old doing that, or using that word.

In my opinion, the new Dish Network ad campaign sucks.