Here's a typical fawning, gag-inducing
CNN puff covering yet another of Bush's Rolling Bullshit Tours. Yeah, they're `spontaneous' -- you betcha. The point of this one of course, is to equate Democrats --or anyone at all who disagrees with anything Bush does -- as treasonous.
Move over, Oprah. President Bush is making himself into television's newest talk show host by featuring audience participation in his appearances.
Bush has been taking questions from audience members in recent speeches, and the White House says none has been prescreened even though the sessions are limited to invited groups. It's a throwback to the folksy style on the campaign trail that helped him win re-election and a departure from the heavily scripted speeches that were the norm last year.
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He told another audience member in Philadelphia that an estimated 30,000 Iraqis had died in the war, the first time he publicly put a number on the high toll Iraqis have paid for freedom. In response to another question in Louisville, Kentucky, he signaled that after initial reservations, he was resigned to congressional hearings into his domestic spying program as long as they don't aid the enemy.
Yes, as long as they don't `aid the enemy' indeed. There's that language again. Betcha a million bucks it's in the State of the Union speech, too. But Mr. Bush considers mere questioning of himself as `aiding the enemy' doesn't he? So doubt if these hearings dig real deep, hmm?
What the Bushites are trying to do, over the next couple of weeks, [aside from painting the Snippy Little Prince as `folksy'] is to create the impression that Dems are `soft on terror' by being against spying on al-Queda, rather than against warrantless fishing expeditions on all Americans. Notice the way poll questions on this issue are set up, the whole framing of it in the media.
What Dems need to do immediately is talk about the whole picture. This isn't about terrorism, or even civil rights. Make it clear that the problem is not spying on terrorists. It's about the privacy of American citizens, the Constitution and the right to be `secure in their own persons'. It's about Big Brother and Big Government. The warrantless spying is just one aspect of it. The administration routinely attempts to grab more and more power by seizing personal data they have no right to.
There was the case not long ago where the Justice Department tried to seize the medical records of young women who'd had an abortion. What were they going to do with that? And of course, the new attempt to force Google to turn over the records of millions of random online searches. And that had nothing to do with `terror' either - the lame excuse being it was about pornography. But how does anyone know to what use an out-of-control kleptocracy might put it? They don't.
John Kerry, Howard Dean and anyone with access to a microphone out there - respond. Please set the record straight before this false meme becomes implanted in the collective unconsciousness, like the Saddam/Osama connection and so many, many other outrageous lies, deceptions and slander that the wingers, enabled by the credulous media, have foisted upon us.