“He’s a liar. The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But, he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. The attack is psychological, Damien, and powerful. So don’t listen. Remember that, do not listen.”

Am I referring to Assange, or the governments that oppose him?

Good question.

Must there must be purpose in transparency?

Only a crazy person would attempt such a thing. An egomaniac. But this type of activity is often left to the overly ostentatious, is it not?

I want the transparency. I need to know the horrors and crimes committed in my name, and if when my government bargains with pimps murderers and rapists for wealth or diplomacy I want to know.

Though there is much geopolitical gossip we can live without, we should no longer be allowed to cover our eyes while our ears are plastered to our cell phones. Still, there has to be some accountability at the other end. If all lives are equal, treasured, if humanity is to be saved and all of humanity matter, then for the horrors subsequent to, and directly caused by WikiLeaks, there must also be accountability.

This WikiLeaks needs some finesse, n’est-ce pas. It is irresponsible to let lose incomplete information upon a (sometimes), moronic public and an increasingly desperate media, because truth can only be determined with any certainty when the whole picture is clear. It’s why we investigate, dissolve compounds, survey, verify, parse and separate.

Wiki Leak Rating

5 OUT OF 10 stars, needs work. xxxxx xxxxx

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The media’s excuse is that people don’t watch stories on health care, and there is little in the way of compensation for such reporting. By that FOX was right to eschew Obama’s health care press conference, they won the ratings in that time frame, but from the standpoint of being a news organization with some responsibility to put significant content in front of the public, they lost.

I loathe that Congress works in such a way that if some kind of plan on health care isn’t rushed through this year it’s bound to be unaddressed for some time. There is something wrong with a system that works that way, especially when the issue is so complicated that I doubt most of Congress understand anything but the political ramifications of it. I don’t have confidence in this process, or the people in charge of it, and I’d like to see some real investigative reporting on the health care issue.

Much of what I read/watch from major news services is nothing more than reports on the political implications of passing, or not passing, a health care bill. I want to see real life reporting on how systems in other countries work, not vague statistical comparatives. What I see is “reporters” making their point with any of the various points you can make with statistics, depending on which ones you choose for your particular agenda. As I’ve said here before, facts of omission are a greater part of our news these days, and with health care it is even more so because it is a complicated issue, probably takes time to investigate, might even take time and concentration to understand, and brings little in monetary rewards. But the public needs to hear some good reporting on this issue.

In a note to Trudy Lieberman (director of the health and medicine reporting program at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism who covers health reform for the Columbia Journalism Review’s cjr.org, and regular contributor to The Nation), Sarah Varney, one of the few really decent health care/health reporters out of LA (I lump her with Kelley Weiss, Joe Barr and Paul Conley at Capital Public Radio), who was inside Canada working on a report about their system, said….

“I would say as an American health reporter there is a lot of pressure inside news rooms to give the Canadian horror stories equal footing with what my reporting actually found—-which was that the Canadian system is by-and-large a functioning system that covers everyone for half the cost with enviable health outcomes”

According to cjr.org’s Health Reform Too Boring for Broadcast?

“Varney told a compelling and interesting story that directly contradicts the ads now running on U.S. television. She also conducted a round table conversation with some of the best Canadian health experts, including leading health economists Robert Evans and Morris Barer. They explained that their system is not socialized medicine — doctors don’t work for the state; they are independent and run their own practices. What is socialized is the insurance pool— every Canadian is in it— which powers the country’s lower cost, not-for-profit health insurance system.”

Trudy Lieberman’s Health Care pieces at at cjr.org

At the Nation

We need real health care reporting, whether we want it or not, and it is all but non-existent.

If you have a favorite reporter who is currently covering health care, I mean really covering it, let me know.

Peace

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To no one’s surprise, our best interest were not at the heart of the High Way Traffic and Safety Administrations decision to withhold data that implied talking on cell phones, even hands free devices, while driving, is killing us. The NYT reported that the information was withheld so as not to “anger Congress”, and for “larger political considerations.” Maybe that means donations to congress people from the almighty telecoms, maybe it doesn’t. My bet is on the former, though there is no proof the “industry” caused this 6 year delay in publication. But for the Freedom of Information Act we’d have never seen this report. It is nothing but perverse practice that keeps something like this unpublished. Who pays these people anyway? Oh, the same people who pay the National Transportation Safety Board, the people in charge of the Metro Safety in D.C., and the same people who pay the salaries of Congress. Us.

Clearly our government agencies are not here to protect us, they are here to keep themselves employed by whatever means, and with as little hassle as possible. However, it’s not that we didn’t know that talking on a cell phone is dangerous, probably as dangerous as driving drunk, we’d have to been in a coma for the last 6 years not to have known, but what we now know, thanks to the report, and years after billions have been made by the telecoms selling hands free devices, is that hands free is no better. Now that it’s public what are they going to do?

Many people fear government rules about this kind of thing, so where I’d personally go for a law demanding we deactivate all cell phones in automobiles others would complain. I’d settle for people taking responsibility for their own actions. We should hold cell phone users as liable as drunk drivers for the accidents they cause, and the people they kill. So let’s just turn the phones off while driving, because if you kill someone while talking on a cell phone you are as liable for manslaughter, maybe even Murder 2, as the drunk who knowingly gets behind the wheel of the mobile lethal weapon known as the automobile.

Peace

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