Yes, but if the press focused on this, then how could they say, "No one could have predicted that terrorists would attack our chemical plants" after the first one explodes?

Damn!

to read in Salon about the scandalous activities of the Bush/Cheney cabal and then turn on CNN/MSNBC/CBS/ABC and see Anna Nicole Smith or a missing white woman as the "top story." I will get no satisfaction from reading a Joe Conason "I told you so" article after the fact of a terrorist induced toxic cloud over one of our cities. As I see it, the problem is that the people are able to be willfully ignorant. The question is what is Salon or Joe Conason really able to do to inform the willfully ignorant masses? The answer, I'm still working on that part, but suggestions are appreciated.

I can't keep all the corporate mergers straight, but probably most of the companies that make up "the chemical industry" are just another arm of the same beast corporations that own the major media companies. This isn't conspiracy theory, it's common sense, and good for business from their point of view. Look at GE/NBC and their history of not reporting bad news about any of their industries. Same goes for CBS/Westinghouse, ABC/Disney, Time Warner Yoyodine and all the other corporations with fingers in the entertainment/"news" pie. The bottom line, read as $$, is truly all these corporate greedheads care about. It's not in their financial interest to run stories on the safety risk to American chemical plants. Remember, these corporations are above such quaint notions as patriotism or even national borders. The corporate bottom line is more important than safety of just one of the many markets they have across the globe.

So we keep getting inundated with all this Anna Nicole/ Britney/lesbian daughter/To Catch A Predator nonsense to keep our eyes off what's really going on.

Stuff like this story and the fact that we have huge tax cuts to the wealthy and to corporations during wartime make me question our country's future. Crap like this wouldn't have flown during WWII. Some CEOs would have found themselves up on charges. But that was back when we had an independent press, and business leaders who cared about their fellow citizens and our shared quality of life here in the US, along of course with making as much $ as possible. These supernational corporations (most of whom started out as stateside businesses), who don't necessarily see their own and America's best interests as one and the same any longer could be the death of this experiment we've been having here for the last 230 years. I mean tax cuts during wartime?! And putting it all on credit?!

Dude, where's my country, indeed.

You seem to feel that Mary Cheney should accept her private life is an open book because she chose to market Coors beer.

Well -for six years I marketed beer for a major US brewer. Does that give you the righ to know I'm heterosexual? That I had a miscarriage? That reasons I chose not to have children? That I like to be spanked?

You're a journalist who thinks he has the right, by dint of his profession, to pry into the private lives of citizens merely because of what they do. Mary Cheney's job does not make her a public figure in the understood usage of that term. Your job DOES, far more than hers. So what of it - any sexual pecadilloes hiding in your closet that we can trot to, if not discredit you, at least humilate you? I mean - that would be fair, right?

Mary Cheney holds herself out as being ABOVE the controversy of being gay. She supports a party that demonizes other gay people while going on her merry little way...living life as openly gay and doing as she damn well pleases. She gets a way with it because she has a powerful Daddy and could care less about 'lesser' gay people. She'll use her 'gayness' to get a job but don't expect her to actually care about anyone other than herself and her family. In other words she is a HYPOCRITE and that makes her and her gayness an okay topic of discussion.

P.S. Sorry about the miscarriage. That really hurts.

Just as the President's brother Neil(Remember Silverado) and sister (needs episode on 'Intervention') should get at least as much press as Billy Carter and Roger Clinton received.

But we don't anymore. At least not the mainstream that reaches the majority through the boob tube that's affixed directly to its brains.

Look, Homeland Security is a joke for two closely related reasons. One, it's very unlikely that terrorists are going to blow up a chemical plant. The warmongers don't want you to know that because your fear helps them monger war and enrich the MIC. 9/11 was an anomaly; most Muslims are peaceful people and the few extremists (and yes, numerically they are very few) are very limited in what they can accomplish. So the chemical industry doesn't want to spend all that money on safety; they know it's not a smart bet. And second, the warmongers and the Military Industrial Complex, rock bottom, wouldn't mind another devastating attack anyway, should one come. Look what 9/11 did for them, transforming a soon-to-be one-term administration into heaven on Earth for the rich, the connected and, yes, the MIC.

The great tragedy of our age is mega-corporate ownership of the media. Congress and the Supreme court destroyed the movie studios' system of "vertical integration" in the first half of the last century; it's not too late to unravel "vertical integration" of the media but it's going to be considerably harder since the media can make or break a politician. It doesn't look good for the home team, but if enough people wake up and demand a change, just maybe...

I would. After all these cockroaches are doing what coackroaches do. So the next time someone comes up to me and says 'here man, go steal a few million bucks from the government, it's all good.' I think I will. And if anyone complains, which they probably won't, I'll just point them to the general sense that the government is proud to be for sale and we as a nation proudly support it.