"Bob Ackley -> Ross Sauer"  wrote in news:19698
$MATZDOBRE{at}JamNNTPd:

 RS>> Just how desperate is the right-wing?

 RS>> Well, Michael Goldfarb, a blogger at the Weekly Standard
 RS>> simply made up a story, about Senator Ben Nelson losing a
 RS>> military base in his state, unless he supported Obama's
 RS>> health care bill.

 BA> There is precisely one active military installation in the state of
 BA> Nebraska, Offutt AFB.  Note that the base has been significantly
 BA> downsized over the past decade or so - one can now see vacant
 BA> parking spaces on it (it usedta was that 75% of the parking
 BA> spaces on the base were reserved for 25% of the vehicles using
 BA> them).  The base hospital at Offutt was closed in 2004 and
 BA> replaced by a clinic, and that clinic is slowly being downsized -
 BA> one has to make an appointment to be seen at the former walk-in
 BA> Urgent Care Center (which usedtawas the hospital's Emergency Room);
 BA> there are very few AF physicians there now, nearly all are civilians
 BA> or contractors.

 BA> Note that the University of Nebraska Medical Center is building
 BA> a brand spanking new 25 inpatient bed hospital about one mile
 BA> north of the former AF hospital.  Specifically for patients who
 BA> were formerly seen at the AF facility (the next nearest hospital,
 BA> not run by the UNMC, is about seven miles from the base and has
 BA> been getting AF patients since 2004).

The thing is, this Goldfarb blogger made up the closing that base
entirely story totally out of whole cloth, and even after the White
House, Senator Nelson and the Pentagon said it isn't true, Limbaugh and
Beck still ran with it, announcing the story as true.

The president can't unilaterally close a base entirely, it has to be
through a committee at the Pentagon.

This process is subject to pressure from the House and Senate, that's
why every time there is a round of un-needed base closings, the
congressmen and senators in that area raise heck.

I saw this first hand when the SAC base in the UP closed.
You'd think that closing that base would have destroyed the country, the
way the local politicians were throwing fits.

--- Xnews/5.04.25