Kate:I live about 8 miles South of Gettysburg. I was sitting on my front porch a little while ago and Sarah Palin's tour bus drove by. Talk about perfect timing. I knew she was making a stop there on her way to New Hampshire. I guess you could say that was my Memorial Day highlight. I served in the United States Navy many years ago, and I won't forget all the brave veterans who have served and are now fighting on three fronts: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Barbeques and parades are fine, but the true essence of this day is remembrance of those heroes who payed the ultimate price for our freedoms. The beat still cintinues with our current offensives. We honor them today!

I said a prayer today: Lord, if it be Your will, please don't let Sarah Palin EVER become our president.

Good Evening Kate, A fine broadcast this evening! Great job filling in for Mr.Williams this Memorial Day. Today we Honor All those Men and Women Who Served Our Country So Bravely. We Salute All the Fallen Soldiers Who Payed the Ultimate Sacrifice. God Bless All the Brave Men And Women in the Military.

Now on to the broadcast. First of all the report by Mr.Allen from Joplin which showed the Veterans continuing to serve by helping the people of Joplin recover and rebuild after the devastating tornado. So many people from other States coming to help and neighbors helping neighbors is heartwarming. One hopes the people of Joplin can rebuild quickly and be even better. Thoughts and prayers go out to all the people of Joplin.

Always wonderful to see Richard on the broadast. Richard's report about Yemen told of how the government crackdown against demontrators is resulting in deadly consequences. The crackdown of water cannons, tear gas, tanks and gunfire is horrible and it is tragic 20 lives were lost. The president refusing to step down and using al-qaeda to stay in power is frightening. A tense situation for the United States since the country borders Saudi Arabia. One hopes something can be done to have the president step down. Only time will tell.

The piece by Mr.Maceda from the series, "Far from Home" about the Amercian soldier Nick Lewis told of a soldier who has great command of his fellow soldiers. Enduring intense fighting with the taliban in this extremely remote area is scary and shows such bravery by the soldiers. Nick Lewis is truly honoring our country by serving with such dedication. God Bless All of Them!

The piece by Mr.Almaguer about the canines being trained to serve alongside the soldiers showed how invaluable these dogs are to the soldiers. Truly devoted to the soldiers!

Nice Piece!

Thank You for the broadcast Kate! Peace to You and to All!

Be Well Everyone!

Stay Extra,Extra Safe and Well Richard!

Take Extra Good Care Richard and Crew!

Lisa

Let me make sure I understand this. On Friday, Brian complained about not having had enough time to air all the important news stories from the past week. Is this some kind of sick joke? Every night, Brian pads his broadcast with irrelevant faux "news stories" whose only purpose is to pander to his audience and increase his ratings. Here are some of the important stories Brian DID air last week (before complaining about not having enough time for real news): On Wednesday, we saw a one-minute story about Oprah's last show. On Thursday, we were treated to a 25-second piece about otters swimming at the San Diego Zoo. That same day, Brian took 45 seconds to shamelessly promote the new Nightly News iPad app and he took 25 seconds to tell us that on Memorial Day, we should remember those who died. (Since when does the job description of a newsreader include telling the viewers what to think?) There was also an inexplicable story about a man who became disoriented while flying a small plane. With help from his wife and the control tower, he landed safely. No one was hurt. Nothing happened. It was a non-event. But this story was given 2:25 of air time. And on Friday, there was a 2:10 story about the Blue Angels flying team not participating in the Naval Academy graduation ceremony. So? In what alternate universe is this news? There was also a Friday "Making A Difference" story about Woodstock personality Wavy Gravy (2:45). Altogether, these stories took up 10 minutes of news time. But Brian has the nerve to complain that there wasn't enough time this week to show all the news?

First of all, Brian is the one who determines what airs on Nightly News. So if Nightly News missed out on stories last week, it's no one's fault but Brian's. He said, "Because we had to devote so much coverage to (Joplin), a lot of other news happened that we didn't have time to mention." But that's not true. No one at Nightly News had to do anything. The choice was fully Brian's. He's the one who clogged up Nightly News with all those unnecessary Joplin stories. Reporting the facts is fine, but he spent way too much time milking the story for emotional value. He did that for the sensationalist ratings of course, but also because he once lived there (as he mentioned several dozen times last week). Brian's intro to the "week's missed stories" story included another shameless plug for the Nightly News iPad app. The app is just a way to deliver Nightly News to a larger audience so they can get higher ratings. It's a ratings gimmick and nothing else. And when we finally got to see these "missed" stories, they were presented to us as if they were on an iPad! How unbelievably shameless! Some of these stories were legitimate: Pres. Obama in Europe, Bill Clinton chatting with Paul Ryan, the democratic congressional victory in upstate New York, the Supreme Court determination of overcrowding in California prisons. Fair enough. But here are the other stories that Brian felt were so important they had to be reported: A dog in Alabama found its way home three weeks after being carried away in a tornado. News? I don't think so. A Medal of Honor winner died. This is not news to anyone except Brian. He serves on the Medal of Honor Foundation Board of Directors, so this is just a way for him to promote his organization and shamelessly try to encourage donations. (And what a huge conflict of interest--an anchor reporting on an organization on whose board he sits!) Then Brian said, "And mind you, we chose not to show you the YouTube video of the mother cat hugging her kitten who was having a nightmare or the guy practicing a speech that was ruined by his cat or the beagle that can catch a ball because this is a serious broadcast, after all." Naturally, Brian showed those YouTube videos as he was saying this. Apparently, Brian thought he was being funny. But by calling Nightly News a serious broadcast, he was actually being ironic. These are the important stories Brian didn't get to report this week? Here are some more important stories Brian absolutely had to catch us up on: George W. Bush nearly getting hit with a foul ball at a Texas Rangers game and Pres. Obama drinking a Guinness in Ireland. Is Brian serious? His newscast certainly isn't.

During the 5/20 story about how the Louisiana Dept. of Wildlife and Fisheries is handling the flooding in that state, we saw an interview with someone who was identified in a Nightly News graphic as "Randy Pausinn". His name is actually Randy Pausina, and he's the Asst. Secretary of the DWF. On the 5/21 story about Pres. Obama's attempt to mediate the Israel-Palestine conflict, Martin Indyk was described in a graphic as a "Former U.S. Anbassador". So how does one get appointed as an "anbassador"? I guess you have to know some very "inportant" people. On Saturday's story about the summer movie blockbusters (a breaking news story if ever there was one), a Nightly News graphic identified Dave Karger from Entertainment Weekly as Dave "Krager". It would take an average ten-year-old about 20 seconds on Google to find the correct spelling of Karger's name (he has over 300,000 results). Unfortunately, Nightly News doesn't have a ten-year-old on the payroll. What would happen if the Nightly News producers actually cared about getting things right? I shudder to think.

Meanwhile, it was just last Friday that Brian was complaining about not having enough time to cover all the week's important news stories. Yet, on Saturday, Nightly News saw fit to devote two full minutes to a story about the hottest summer movie blockbusters. Why on earth would a "respectable" news broadcast air a story like this? One reason is for pure entertainment value. 83% of this story (1:40 out of 2:00) was comprised of movie clips. This was just a way for the Nightly News producers to feed entertainment fodder to their viewers. One more example of how Nightly News is morphing into Access Hollywood. The producers know that the viewers would rather watch movie previews than actual news stories (who cares about Ratko Mladic?). If the producers give the viewers what they want, Nightly News gets more viewers and higher ratings. But there is a more important reason why the producers aired this story. A total of seven movies were featured. Two of them--"Fast & Furious 5" and "Bridesmaids"--are Universal releases. And the other five movies all have a connection to Universal Studios theme parks. Universal Studios Hollywood features the monkey from "The Hangover Part II", and a display of some of the sets from the new "Pirates of the Caribbean 4" (which was partly filmed there). A "Transformers" ride is scheduled to open at Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Studios Singapore later this year. The Singapore park also features Po from "Kung Fu Panda". And of course, Universal Studios Orlando is making tons of money from their "Wizarding World of Harry Potter" theme park. So every single movie featured in this "news story" has some promotional value to NBC Universal. Are we supposed to think this is a coincidence? Of course not. The Nightly News producers created this story as a way to promote their parent company's films and rides. Too bad Universal Studios doesn't have a "Horrible War Crimes of Ratko Mladic" ride. Then Nightly News might actually spend some time promoting--I mean reporting--that story.

Meanwhile, Brian should win a Clio Award for his unintentionally hilarious fifteen-second self-promoting spot that ran during last Tuesday's broadcast. The spot begins with a shot of Brian, who, in his most earnest and anchorly voice, tells us, "We're given a half-hour every night and we're handed the world, we're handed the nation, we're handed everything that went on today. It's a global conversation." As he says this, we see images of the Japanese earthquake, Osama bin Laden, President Obama, Savannah Guthrie, Richard Engel, Lester Holt, Stephanie Gosk, Khaddafy and others. And Brian. Lots of shots of Brian. I'm curious: Why weren't Jim Miklaszewski, Andrea Mitchell or Mark Potter included in this spot? I guess they just weren't important enough.

A half-hour every night? Does Brian ever watch his own broadcast? When the commercials are removed, Nightly News is a 22-minute broadcast. How on earth does Brian come up with "a half-hour every night"? And is he kidding about being "handed the world"? Brian hates reporting foreign news. He rarely covers anything that goes on outside the U.S. The reason for that is obvious: Ratings. As Brian well knows, sappy, tear-jerker domestic stories bring in much higher ratings than foreign stories. For example, Brian knows that his shameless exploitation of the tornado in Joplin will give him much higher ratings than reporting about Ratko Mladic. Mladic is one of the worst war criminals in recent history. He killed 10 times as many people as Osama bin Laden. But Brian knows that most Americans aren't interested in hearing about someone whose name they can't pronounce who comes from a region that most Americans can't even find on a map. That's why the Mladic story was buried in the second half of Thursday's broadcast. And that's why Brian did not even bother to mention Mladic on Friday's broadcast. Fortunately, there are responsible news sources like CBS, BBC World News and Deutsche Welle News. All of these networks led with the Mladic story on Thursday and reported it again on Friday. Not Nightly News. For Brian, it's one and done on Mladic. By the way, Brian really should take a few minutes before the broadcast to familiarize himself with the reports that will be airing that night. In a promo before the Thursday Mladic story, Brian told us that "he gave up without a struggle, without even reaching for his weapon." But moments later, Martin Fletcher said, "At dawn, Serb SWAT teams move in on a village house two hours from the capital. Inside, Ratko Mladic with two pistols." Maybe Brian doesn't think that pistols count as weapons. He should check with his pal Jack Sparrow.

Enough already with the Palin groupie show. She has you media people eating out of the palm of her hand. There is no news here -- it's just a show to generate attention, and you're obliging her perfectly. You all must be really proud of the big "S" on your foreheads. Where is your sense of journalistic integrity? What piece of "real" news do you think that you are reporting here? You look like fools.