Daily Kos

Write Jim Lehrer

by opus

Sun Sep 26, 2004 at 07:09:06 AM PDT

Jim Lehrer (onlinenewshour@newshour.org) is moderating the first Presidential debate this Thursdsay. This is the issue I'd like him to address (crossposted from my blog):
Is our President uninformed, or lying? If he were my student, it wouldn't matter. He'd flunk.
Bush on Saturday also touted efforts to train Iraqi security forces. He said nearly 100,000 "fully trained and equipped" Iraqi soldiers, police officers and other security personnel were already working and that the Iraqi government was on track to build a force of over 200,000 security personnel by the end of 2005.

Documents prepared by Defense Department officials and given to lawmakers showed fewer than 100,000 would be trained by the end of this year. They also showed that of the nearly 90,000 now in the police force, only 8,169 had the full eight-week academy training. It will be July 2006 before the administration's new goal of 135,000 fully trained police is met.

If I ask one of my therapy students questions regarding a client and her answers are that far off? That's a zero. And a meeting in my office. If she does it again? She doesn't stay in my program. That client's life is in her hands and it is her moral and professional obligation to know -- and accurately report -- the details of the client's abilities and disabilities. Our President has the hundreds of thousands of lives in his hands and he either doesn't know about their security, or is lying about it. Why is this acceptable to anyone?

I wrote Jim Lehrer with a short version of this. It's probable that he isn't going to read individual e-mails and derive his questions from them -- but why not try anyway? It's better than doing nothing.

And by the way, now that Kerry is pulling ads out of Missouri, does that mean that he thinks it's useless for me to travel there and GOTV?

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Permalink | 7 comments

  •  I'm a teacher and your analogy is perfect. (none / 0)

    It's appalling that anyone puts up with the level of incompetence, lying and misrepresentation coming out of Bush's mouth.  People dance around it or sidestep it, because they don't know what the hell to do about it.  But if he were one of my students, I would have had several "in the hallway" and "with the department chair" talks with him about his wretched and deceptive behavior and work, and if that didn't work, would have dropped him from the course and reported him to the academic integrity office of our institution as a menace.  I can't imagine any students in a class with such a lying, wrongheaded, callous member tolerating this behavior from their peer.

    by concernedamerican on Sun Sep 26, 2004 at 07:25:06 AM PDT

  •  Also... (none / 0)

    For anyone who decides to e-mail him, Jim Lehrer has moderated previous presidential debates and is very good at it. So, don't be mean to him; he's a good, fair moderator. Suggestions for topics are good, rants or shouting are not.

    -4.25, -6.56

    by fwiffo on Sun Sep 26, 2004 at 08:05:05 AM PDT

  •  Bush ads in MO (none / 0)

    I was under the impression that Moveon et al would be running ads. Though Kerry can't "coordinate" so long as he knows where the 527's (did I get that right?) are running ads, it's a smart thing to pull out from an area when he notices redundancy. More effective to do ad buys in places that aren't being covered.

    I'm in St. Louis and I've seen the ads - shows Bush holding hands with Saudi's straight our of F9/11. I have no idea how effective they are since they don't change my anti-Bush mind one bit, but can testify that they're running on local stations.

    (Missouri 2nd Congressional District)

    The Universe is a big place ... perhaps the biggest. -Kilgore Trout

    by fugitive on Sun Sep 26, 2004 at 08:52:12 AM PDT

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