We went to a fundraiser for injured soldiers Saturday

[cpamomfromtexas]

Gary Sinise and his band were there, the band was wonderful and we had a nice time.
Because of the weather, it was held in a Southlake church, we had a power outage for about an hour and a half and the band improvised without electricity.

The radio station KLIF however was there and one of their radio people (jeff bolton) was the announcer. He made several statements that I would call totally inappropriate. His first inappropriate statement was that he was a little hoarse due to getting cooties at the Democratic Convention. His attitude was clearly one of division and he seemed to be totally clueless that the evening was not about him or his politics.

When the sponsor announcements were made the top of the list was a pilot union, yet he continued to make statements with the intent of dividing. The most egregious example was when a check was presented to a soldier to purchase the $28,000 ibot wheelchair, Gary Sinise was there to make the presentation, the radio announcer (Jeff Bolton from KLIF in Dallas) said when he first heard about these events he just thought "Gary was just one of those Hollywood types out to glom onto the event"-I couldn't believe what I had heard!!!! It was tacky and insensitive at the same time.

As I was sitting there in a row of veterans, most of them UNION DEMOCRATS, whose union and union officials(the Allied Pilots Association) had helped sponsor the event, I just wanted to scream. As we all spoke about it later, one of the leaders said that if it had been anything other than a union sponsored event for injured soldiers he would have walked out.

I also wondered why our government couldn't provide these wheelchairs as well.

Mr Sinise, your band was wonderful and we appreciate you coming and doing what you do.

(edited for grammar)

[Cid_B]

1. LT Dan Band...

Good Times...

[Captain Hilts]

2. To be honest...

while there are some gaps in the care for our veterans, a lot of the publicized stuff was just that. For example, there was NEVER a need for long-distance phone cards at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval.

The veterans system is hard to work and the Bush Admin. has actually made it more difficult, but a lot of these fundraisers are a function of wanting to do SOMETHING.

For example, get in touch with the Marine Corps liason office at Bethesda Naval or contribute directly to them. Fisher House is up to its butt in money, which is good.

The folks that really hurt are the families of wounded - parents, for example - that have to take off large chunks of time to visit their kin. A lot can't afford to do that.