[Ilaubuas]

.I can See It Now ... someday this thread will be relabeled: "Tim Russert Died; 'Meet the Press' Lives."
.

[SueveDobe]

NBC: Tom Brokaw gets "Meet the Press" through election

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sunday, June 22nd 2008, 12:23 PM

Veteran news anchor Tom Brokaw has agreed to moderate NBC's "Meet the Press" through the November election to fill the vacancy created by the death of Tim Russert.

Brokaw will start next week, the network announced Sunday. Anchor Brian Williams did the show this week and announced the decision at its end.

Brokaw first talked to NBC News President Steve Capus about what the network would do when the two men rode a train back to New York from Washington following Russert's funeral and memorial service on Wednesday.

Brokaw told him Saturday that he would do it, Capus said.

"I'm just thrilled that Tom has agreed to do this," Capus told The Associated Press.

The decision gives NBC a well-known, authoritative presence at the helm of the broadcast in an election year. "Meet the Press" dominated the Sunday morning ratings under Russert, reportedly earning $60 million in revenue, and Brokaw's presence could blunt any effort by ABC's second-place "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos to cut into the edge.


Tom Brokaw


Brokaw was the nation's most popular news anchor when he stepped down from "Nightly News" following the 2004 election. He has continued to make documentaries for NBC News and was a frequent commentator on MSNBC during primary night coverage this year.

He said he volunteered for the job in part as a tribute to Russert, who died of a heart attack on June 13. The two men were close friends who spoke almost daily and Brokaw gave the opening speech at Russert's Kennedy Center memorial.

"Tim was the first to say that ‘Meet the Press' was a national treasure and he was a temporary custodian," Brokaw said by phone from Montana. "We both understood the importance of it to the country and to NBC News and he took it to an entirely new level."

He intends to follow Russert's template of aggressive questioning based on research of a guest's public record. The show will continue to be
Washington-based, with Betsy Fischer as executive producer.

"Many people have described this election as the election as a lifetime and we're in the thick of it," Capus said. "It just logically makes sense to have someone that the nation knows and the nation trusts with a steady hand."

It also gives NBC News time to study its options before deciding on a successor. Brokaw joked during Russert's memorial service that the Kennedy Center was filled with people interested in the job. David Gregory, Andrea Mitchell and Chris Matthews are considered the top in-house candidates.

Brokaw, 68, wouldn't be the oldest Sunday morning anchor if he decided to stick with it: CBS News' "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer is 71.

However, Brokaw has made it clear the move is temporary, Capus said.
"The plan is for me to be in place until they can find somebody who can take it over on a permanent basis," Brokaw said.

Brokaw had already planned to be a "utility player" in NBC News' convention and election coverage, and is the most likely choice to take the analyst's role beside Williams that Russert once filled. He's already emerged as a voice of caution during opinionated MSNBC coverage with Matthews and Keith Olbermann.

NBC News must also find someone for Russert's job as Washington bureau chief.

Williams' announcement Sunday followed a package of highlights from Wednesday's memorial service. Brokaw last week anchored a "Meet the Press" that was entirely a Russert tribute.

Some critics have accused NBC News of being excessive in its Russert memorializing, but Capus said he's received condolence letters from world leaders and that it was clear Russert had touched people more than typical journalists do. He noted that other networks covered Russert's death extensively and that CBS News placed a full-page condolence ad in The New York Times last week.

"I offer no apologies," he said.

Copyright 2008 New York Daily News

[Amoniustauns]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/he...gewanted=print

June 24, 2008
SECOND OPINION
From a Prominent Death, Some Painful Truths

By DENISE GRADY
Apart from its sadness, Tim Russert’s death this month at 58 was deeply unsettling to many people who, like him, had been earnestly following their doctors’ advice on drugs, diet and exercise in hopes of avoiding a heart attack.

Mr. Russert, the moderator of “Meet the Press” on NBC News, took blood pressure and cholesterol pills and aspirin, rode an exercise bike, had yearly stress tests and other exams and was dutifully trying to lose weight. But he died of a heart attack anyway.

An article in The New York Times last week about his medical care led to e-mail from dozens of readers insisting that something must have been missed, that if only he had been given this test or that, his doctors would have realized how sick he was and prescribed more medicine or recommended bypass surgery.

Clearly, there was sorrow for Mr. Russert’s passing, but also nervous indignation. Many people are in the same boat he was in, struggling with weight, blood pressure and other risk factors — 16 million Americans have coronary artery disease — and his death threatened the collective sense of well-being. People are not supposed to die this way anymore, especially not smart, well-educated professionals under the care of doctors.

Mr. Russert’s fate underlines some painful truths. A doctor’s care is not a protective bubble, and cardiology is not the exact science that many people wish it to be. A person’s risk of a heart attack can only be estimated, and although drugs, diet and exercise may lower that risk, they cannot eliminate it entirely. True, the death rate from heart disease has declined, but it is still the leading cause of death in the United States, killing 650,000 people a year. About 300,000 die suddenly, and about half, like Mr. Russert, have no symptoms.

Cardiologists say that although they can identify people who have heart disease or risk factors for it, they are not so good at figuring out which are in real danger of having an attack soon, say in the next year or so. If those patients could be pinpointed, doctors say, they would feel justified in treating them aggressively with drugs and, possibly, surgery.

“It’s the real dilemma we have in cardiology today,” said Dr. Sidney Smith, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina and a past president of the American Heart Association. “Is it possible to identify the group at higher short-term risk?”

What killed Mr. Russert was a plaque rupture. A fatty, pimplelike lesion in a coronary artery burst, and a blood clot formed that closed the vessel and cut off circulation to part of the heart muscle. It was a typical heart attack, or myocardial infarction, an event that occurs 1.2 million times a year in the United States, killing 456,000 people.

In Mr. Russert’s case, the heart attack led to a second catastrophe, an abnormal heart rhythm that caused cardiac arrest and quickly killed him. An electric shock from a defibrillator might have restarted his heart if it had been given promptly when he collapsed at his desk. But it was apparently delayed.

Dr. Smith and other cardiologists say the main problem is that there is no way to figure out who has “vulnerable plaques,” those prone to rupture. Researchers are trying to find biomarkers, substances in the blood that can show the presence of these dangerous, ticking time-bomb plaques. So far, no biomarker has proved very accurate.

Mr. Russert’s heart disease was a mixed picture. Some factors looked favorable. There was no family history of heart attacks. Though he had high blood pressure, drugs lowered it pretty well, said his internist, Dr. Michael A. Newman. His total cholesterol was not high, nor was his LDL, the bad type of cholesterol, or his C-reactive protein, a measure of inflammation that is thought to contribute to plaque rupture. He did not smoke. At his last physical, in April, he passed a stress test, and his heart function was good. Dr. Newman estimated his risk of a heart attack in the next 10 years at 5 percent, based on a widely used calculator.

On the negative side, Mr. Russert had low HDL, the protective cholesterol, and high triglycerides. He was quite overweight; a waist more than 40 inches in men increases heart risk. A CT scan of his coronary arteries in 1998 gave a calcium score of 210, indicating artery disease — healthy arteries do not have calcium deposits — and a moderate to high risk of a heart attack. An echocardiogram in April found that the main heart pumping chamber had thickened, his ability to exercise had decreased slightly, and his blood pressure had increased a bit. Dr. Newman and his cardiologist, Dr. George Bren, changed his blood pressure medicines, and the pressure lowered to 120/80, Dr. Newman said.

Another blood test, for a substance called apoB, might have been a better measure of risk than LDL, some doctors say. Others disagree.

Some doctors say people like Mr. Russert, with no symptoms but risk factors like a thickened heart, should have angiograms, in which a catheter is threaded into the coronary arteries, dye is injected, and X-rays are taken to look for blockages. Some advocate less invasive CT angiograms. Both types of angiogram can identify plaque deposits, and if extensive disease or blockages at critical points are found, a bypass is usually recommended. But the tests still cannot tell if plaques are likely to rupture, Dr. Smith and other cardiologists say. And Mr. Russert’s doctors did not think that an angiogram was needed.

An autopsy found, in addition to the plaque rupture, extensive disease in Mr. Russert’s coronary arteries, enough to surprise his doctors, they said. Had they found it before, Dr Newman said, a bypass would have been recommended. Dr. Bren differed, saying many cardiologists would still not have advised surgery.

Given all the uncertainties, what’s a patient to do?

“You want to be sure your blood pressure and lipids are controlled, that you’re not smoking, and you have the right waist circumference,” Dr. Smith said.

Statins can reduce the risk of dying from a heart attack by 30 percent, he said.

“But what about the other 70 percent?” Dr. Smith asked. “There are other things we need to understand. There’s tremendous promise, but miles to go before we sleep.”


Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS First Look Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map

[chuecfafresslds]

The Hedonists of Power


Posted on Jun 23, 2008
By Chris Hedges

Washington has become Versailles. We are ruled, entertained and informed by courtiers. The popular media are courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are courtiers. Our pundits and experts are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games. We are being had.

The past week was a good one if you were a courtier. We were instructed by the high priests on television over the past few days to mourn a Sunday morning talk show host, who made $5 million a year and who gave a platform to the powerful and the famous so they could spin, equivocate and lie to the nation. We were repeatedly told by these television courtiers, people like Tom Brokaw and Wolf Blitzer, that this talk show host was one of our nation’s greatest journalists, as if sitting in a studio, putting on makeup and chatting with Dick Cheney or George W. Bush have much to do with journalism.

No journalist makes $5 million a year. No journalist has a comfortable, cozy relationship with the powerful. No journalist believes that acting as a conduit, or a stenographer, for the powerful is a primary part of his or her calling. Those in power fear and dislike real journalists. Ask Seymour Hersh and Amy Goodman how often Bush or Cheney has invited them to dinner at the White House or offered them an interview.

All governments lie, as I.F. Stone pointed out, and it is the job of the journalist to do the hard, tedious reporting to shine a light on these lies. It is the job of courtiers, those on television playing the role of journalists, to feed off the scraps tossed to them by the powerful and never question the system. In the slang of the profession, these television courtiers are “throats.” These courtiers, including the late Tim Russert, never gave a voice to credible critics in the buildup to the war against Iraq. They were too busy playing their roles as red-blooded American patriots. They never fought back in their public forums against the steady erosion of our civil liberties and the trashing of our Constitution. These courtiers blindly accept the administration’s current propaganda to justify an attack on Iran. They parrot this propaganda. They dare not defy the corporate state. The corporations that employ them make them famous and rich. It is their Faustian pact. No class of courtiers, from the eunuchs behind Manchus in the 19th century to the Baghdad caliphs of the Abbasid caliphate, has ever transformed itself into a responsible elite. Courtiers are hedonists of power.

Our Versailles was busy this past week. The Democrats passed the FISA bill, which provides immunity for the telecoms that cooperated with the National Security Agency’s illegal surveillance over the past six years. This bill, which when signed means we will never know the extent of the Bush White House’s violation of our civil liberties, is expected to be adopted by the Senate. Barack Obama has promised to sign it in the name of national security. The bill gives the U.S. government a license to eavesdrop on our phone calls and e-mails. It demolishes our right to privacy. It endangers the work of journalists, human rights workers, crusading lawyers and whistle-blowers who attempt to expose abuses the government seeks to hide. These private communications can be stored indefinitely and disseminated, not just to the U.S. government but to other governments as well. The bill, once signed into law, will make it possible for those in power to identify and silence anyone who dares to make public information that defies the official narrative.

Being a courtier, and Obama is one of the best, requires agility and eloquence. The most talented of them can be lauded as persuasive actors. They entertain us. They make us feel good. They convince us they are our friends. We would like to have dinner with them. They are the smiley faces of a corporate state that has hijacked the government and is raping the nation. When the corporations make their iron demands, these courtiers drop to their knees, whether to placate the telecommunications companies that fund their campaigns and want to be protected from lawsuits, or to permit oil and gas companies to rake in obscene profits and keep in place the vast subsidies of corporate welfare doled out by the state.

We cannot differentiate between illusion and reality. We trust courtiers wearing face powder who deceive us in the name of journalism. We trust courtiers in our political parties who promise to fight for our interests and then pass bill after bill to further corporate fraud and abuse. We confuse how we feel about courtiers like Obama and Russert with real information, facts and knowledge. We chant in unison with Obama that we want change, we yell “yes we can,” and then stand dumbly by as he coldly votes away our civil liberties. The Democratic Party, including Obama, continues to fund the war. It refuses to impeach Bush and Cheney. It allows the government to spy on us without warrants or cause. And then it tells us it is our salvation. This is a form of collective domestic abuse. And, as so often happens in the weird pathology of victim and victimizer, we keep coming back for more.

Chris Hedges, who was a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times, says he will vote for Ralph Nader for president.

[Kokomoxddcvcv]

Drudge

Huffington

Truly dogged independent reporting of the facts and questioning the exercise of power

*thinks carefully*

Somehow Russerts name doesnt fit in there.