BS: Smoke and Mirrors

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 May 03 - 10:40 PM

Well, Kat, I'm beginnin' to think that maybe I want off this planet anyway. . . .

Don Firth :-@

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: katlaughing
Date: 20 May 03 - 06:15 PM

The Aliens are ready for you now, Don.:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 May 03 - 05:32 PM

DG, your ignorance is exceeded only by your paranoia. You are a persistent sucker, though, I'll give you that. I've said all I need to say. I've wasted too much time with you, so from here on, I'm devoting my energies to real issues.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: GUEST
Date: 20 May 03 - 04:39 PM

Geez, Don. Don Firth. Get over it. I'm not trashing your city or state. I'm just relating history. History will show precedent for using maritime law against US citizens on US soil had to be set, and that precedent was created at Seattle's WTO protests. I have video of incredulous newscasters with telephoto lenses reporting 'Apparently the Sand Point Naval Brig has been re-opened. Whay are they taking them there?' It was so maritime law could be brought into play.

Which led directly to Jose Padilla, the 'dirty bomber'. Bush decided Padilla 'might be thinking about' building a dirty bomb and ordered him arrested and imprisoned in a naval brig in South Carolina. It's all about precedent.

The 'terrorism' laws are so contrary to the US Constitution, the Organized Criminals running the US have to find a way around the Constitution, and they're using maritime and military law to do it.

And that's why you need to buy guns. When the people charged with enforcing the laws seek to circumvent them, all bets are off. And hell yes there are concentration camps in Texas. I've posted links to pictures of them here before. None of this stuff is hidden.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 May 03 - 04:10 PM

Well, lemme see, now. In this state we have such places as the Walla Walla prison in, oddly enough, Walla Walla (the place they like so much they named it twice), Twin Rivers near Monroe, and—ah! Here's a goodie! McNeil Island prison. It's on an island in Puget Sound, which makes it kind of like Alcatraz. In Seattle itself, we have the King County jail. But then, we mustn't forget about Discovery Park. Big area just north of Magnolia Bluff (one of Seattle's lush "high rent districts" because of the views of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains). Discovery Park (site of the Daybreak Star Indian Center) used to be Fort Lawton, and was given to the City of Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation when it was decommissioned, the same way the Sand Point Naval Air Station was. Also, not far form Tacoma there's Western State Hospital (mental hospital, security fences, the whole bit). All this, in addition to the eight cells at the former Sand Point brig, where, miraculously, they incarcerated tens of thousands of peaceful protesters from the WTO demonstrations (cramming all those people in so small a space is kind of up there with "feeding the five thousand with five loaves and a couple of fishes," right?). By the way, the Navy no longer owns Sand Point. It's owned by the City of Seattle.   

Actually, they were not part of the 40,000 peaceful WTO protesters, they were among the 500 or so who were arrested for starting fires, smashing windows, and generally rioting. The two bus-loads were overflow from the King County Jail. They stayed on the buses, and were taken off in small groups to be charged and processed for later court appearance, then released the following morning. And everybody around here knew about it because it was on the news, complete with live footage. No deep, dark secret.

Now it seems to me that if the Bushy Boys want to set up concentration camps in this area, they have plenty of places to choose from. But Discovery Park and Magnuson Park (Sand Point) are both adjacent to residential areas, and both are perpetually overrun with people making use of the facilities. Unlikely places, considering all the alternatives. There are areas in eastern Washington that are essentially uninhabited where concentration camps could be set up and not all that many people would be aware that anything unusual is going on.

That's a gift, DG. I've just give you a lot of material. Take it and run with it. Have fun.

Oh! By the way! There are some lovely places in Texas for concentration camps.

Don Firth
Gotta get back to the stalag. I'm on guard duty tonight.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Bill D
Date: 20 May 03 - 12:50 PM

DG lives near Austin, Texas, I believe someone posted in an old thread..must be scary living near the most liberal city in Texas!

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 May 03 - 12:41 PM

It would have been nice if some of those Residents had kept running.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: katlaughing
Date: 20 May 03 - 01:08 AM

DG lives in Texas and by the sound of it, doesn't get out much. Maybe s/he will run for Resident, then...

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 May 03 - 12:43 AM

..."areas within Fort Lewis, south of Tacoma, would be more likely. Now you've done it, Don Firth. If DG follows his usual pattern, he'll snatch this bit of "information" as he has done with some I've given and the next thing you know, Fort Lewis, south of Tacoma, will be crammed with suspect Americans. DG lives in Texas and by the sound of it, doesn't get out much.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: GUEST
Date: 19 May 03 - 07:08 PM

Here you go...the type of resistance which will be the salvation of America. Everyone needs to do it.

Illegal to comply with Patriot Act

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 May 03 - 05:54 PM

Sure, TIA, be happy to..no problem about credit. I just think it's important to get the info out there. It's going to take me a little bit of time, though. Holler, if you think I've forgotten, okay?:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: TIA
Date: 19 May 03 - 05:42 PM

Kat;

Could you post or email me you synopsis when complete? I'd be happy to spread it around too (with full credit to the author of course).

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 May 03 - 05:35 PM

Don Firth, doncha just love getting advice from a no-name? Can you imagine an anon. doctor making like pronouncements about a person's health? OH! And, it would have to be a masked doc who knew nothing about your condition! LMAO!

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: GUEST
Date: 19 May 03 - 04:56 PM

The Sand Point Naval Brig was used to process and detain protestors during Seattle's WTO riots. Anyplace could have served the purpose, but the old brig was used because of it's questionable real-estate status. Is navy real estate subject to US law or maritime law? Since that time, the more despicable unconstitutional laws passed in the US have referred to maritime law, not US law. The people illegally imprisoned in the US as suspected 'terrorists' and at Guantanamo...well they can be denied lawyers and be 'interrogated' to death under maritime law, can't they? I pointed this out to Don Firth, and for some reason he can't get over it. Says Sand Point is just an adult fun center where they make daisy chains or something. Don't take it so personally, Don. You couldn't have known what was going on at the time. It caught us all off guard. Fascism was taking baby steps in America and then took a giant step in your city. So it goes.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 May 03 - 04:42 PM

I got to fiddling around on the Magnuson Park Sand Point web site to see what events they had scheduled for this summer and made an interesting discovery. Click HERE and scroll down to 6/29/2003. If this is a government maintained concentration camp, then I would say that this particular event is pretty peculiar, n'est-ce pas?

(Check the http://www.seapeace.org link. I didn't even know about this until now! Seattle is one helluva town!)

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 May 03 - 03:02 PM

Don Meixner, hope you are feeling better, now.

Don Firth, thanks for the Straight Stuff, again!! :-)

FWIW, I am putting together a newsletter/synopsis of high points about all of this that shurb and his cronies are doing, to pass out to family and friends who are not online or who don't have the time to study all of this the way we do. I think this is a good idea to help motivate and educate more people and maybe get them interested in getting out to VOTE, again. At least it might help to wake some of them up, there are so many who just aren't savvy enough to find all of the info on the web, or cannot connect for whatever reason.

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: UB Ed
Date: 19 May 03 - 01:51 PM

Don, the Johnson years is very funny.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 May 03 - 01:30 PM

Don M, I'm sure GUEST was referring to me. GUEST is actually our belovéd, bewildered Dreaded Guest, passionate lover of deep-laid conspiracies—in fact, never met a conspiracy he/she/it didn't believe in—who is trying to separate his/her/its association with previous expressions of nincompoopery by abandoning the "Dreaded Guest" sobriquet and attempting to become even more anonymous by identifying him-/her-/itself merely as "GUEST." But writing style and form of excessive assertion are as precise identifiers as fingerprints.

Obviously Dreaded Guest (aka as merely "GUEST") is still smarting over my comments some threads ago about the Magnuson Park "concentration camp" issue.

Seattle's Magnuson Park is the former Sand Point Naval Air Station, donated to the City of Seattle by the Navy when the air station was decommissioned a few years back. The City of Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation administers the area, and it has turned it into a very pleasant park on the shores of Lake Washington, replete with play fields, picnic areas, a "sculpture garden," and other recreational areas and activities. The numerous buildings are now housing classrooms, meeting rooms, and halls that can be rented for parties, dances, and other events (a couple of years ago, one of my wife's friends had her wedding reception in one of the halls). It is now a combination park and community center. The nearest thing to a Federal Government agency that still resides there is the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They have offices and facilities there. Many other organizations have offices and facilities there. See links below.

What has Dreaded Guest still smarting is that he/she/it maintains that the government is using the former Sand Point Naval Air Station as a concentration camp for dissidents, protesters, peace activists, and other "political prisoners." The nearest thing there is to a concentration camp at Sand Point is an eight-cell brig where naval personnel who went out on the town and got a bit over-enthusiastic while in their cups could sleep it off after being hauled in by the shore patrol or the Seattle Police. The brig is no longer used as a brig, and even if the government wanted to, it's much to small to be used as a "concentration camp."

I live here, I've been to Magnuson Park many times, and I've seen the facilities. Dreaded Guest, not a resident of this region (thereby knowing all about it), has not. But on a previous thread or two, Dreaded Guest tried to support a conspiracy theory by claiming that the government maintained a concentration at Sand Point in Seattle. And naughty me, I had the bad grace to pee in his/her/its beer by providing links showing that the "concentration camp" (adjacent to a residential area, by the way) does not exist. If the government actually did maintain a concentration camp around here, areas within Fort Lewis, south of Tacoma, would be more likely.

Here's the pertinent poop on Magnusen Park / Sand Point—(Seattle's Infamous Concentration Camp):—

Seattle Historylink file
A sampling of the activities at this "concentration camp."

Have a nice day.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: GUEST
Date: 19 May 03 - 12:34 PM

Exactly. They can't enforce all this stuff. But they WILL be able to enforce it in 10 years if these illegal laws aren't challenged. Challenged constantly. Everyone wants to wait for 'judicial review' before deciding whether to follow a law...Bushit. Challenge the laws by arguing about them. On day 59 before an election, tell everyone about the McCain-Feingold atrocity. Remind your neighbors that your Senator voted this way or that way, and you could be jailed for even talking about it. And thumbscanners...soon you'll have to thumbscan to buy and sell. Refuse to do it and argue for an hour in the checkout line. Screw 'em. Encourage the people in line with you to boycott the store. It's either argue and challenge now or pay the price later with concentration camps. We saw the 'new' SARS virus appear after Americans refused to take the smallpox vaccine. That refusal absolutely blocked the next act of terrorism the CIA planned to unleash on us...a bioterrorism attack in the form of smallpox. Resistance works, but you have to do it yourself. Choke down the fear and anxiety and argue with people violating your rights. Your RIGHTS. You're born with them and no one can take them away...oh, unless we're at 'war', which is why we're now in a 'perpetual war'. Human rights are the enemy of the Organized Crime syndicate running the govts of the world, and each little skirmish in defense of individual rights matters. It really does. Your example inspires those who observe it. So argue.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: DonMeixner
Date: 19 May 03 - 07:54 AM

Re-read my last paragraph.

Don Meixner, still proud of my own name and not afraud to sign it where even John Ashcroft can read should he wish too.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: GUEST
Date: 19 May 03 - 07:45 AM

You can't air views on an incumbent's voting record 60 days before an election now. From now on in the US, if you belong to any group which has given money to political candidates, you can be jailed for bringing up a voting record in print or on the public airwaves. The McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill. 'The Incumbent Protection Act'. These monsters have seized control and they aren't letting go. Mention that they voted for the Patriot Act and go to jail. What are you going to do with a system like that? Reform it? Nope. Trash it. It is corrupt to the core. And this isn't airy theory about some old 'principles' contained in some old document. This is criminal. Anti-constitutional and anti-freedom. Oh, but they've allowed the Leno/Letterman loophole. Those two can continue to make jokes before elections, just so you don't know anything is wrong. If someone mentions the McCain-Feingold restriction, people will think it's BS because Jay Leno made jokes about Bush the night before.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Amos
Date: 18 May 03 - 11:46 PM

One of Jefferson's losing battles was actually opposing the party-based system. He knew it would mess things up.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: DonMeixner
Date: 18 May 03 - 11:36 PM

Guest,

Since I don't know which Don you are talking to Guest, Me or the venerable Don Firth, I'll offer my opinion here. The constitution is still strong and still viable. You mistake the democratic voting process as The two Party system. It is only the two party system because of tradition. There is space on the ballot for as many parties as can meet the rule of petition. The system itself is no more flawed now than it was 228 years ago. It is the people who use and abuse the system who are flawed. It is because the two parties carry the most voters that members of these partieds are in power.

The constitution was written to be understood by all who could read. And the words were meant to be understood as to their common usage. Not redefined and parsed down to the most arcane meaning for a single word or phrase.

We don't need a better constitution or system of laws, we need a better crop of people to administer the laws and interpret the constitution which should need no interpretation.

Don

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 May 03 - 09:07 PM

I had a hunch that was you.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: GUEST
Date: 18 May 03 - 09:01 PM

All I know is you have to die to be reborn, Don, and the American two-party system needs to die. It has been bought by Organized Crime. Fortunately, I don't need to advocate revolution to replace our current form of govt. All I need to do is advocate a return to our Constitution. Simple as that. Start at the local level, and when some pissant wants to deny you a 'permit' to put up a doghouse in your back yard, ask him or her where that power is granted in the Constitution. Permits are the ultimate form of tyranny, and more and more we have small governmental agencies asserting their 'right' to issue permits. Start there. Tear up the permit and tell the inspector to get off your private property. There you go. That's a solution. And when they lock up your neighbors in the Sand Point Naval Brig, write a letter to the editor about fascism.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 May 03 - 03:15 PM

GUEST, all you ever do is piss and moan. What's your solution? Or do you even have one?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: GUEST
Date: 18 May 03 - 12:37 PM

It's four more years for GW, then 8 for Hillary, then 8 for Jeb. While Goober Clinton becomes Sec Gen of the U.N. and Blair becomes Prez of the EU. The Clintons, Bushes and Blair will oversee the collapse of the Dollar/Pound monetary system and reassure us that things are 'under control' as we assume our places in the soup lines.

Votes mean nothing in America now. Just electrons to be manipulated into a pre-programmed outcome. These organized criminals running the world are BANKERS, and they don't leave anything to chance.

If you buy into the diversion in any way...if you even THINK there is a true opposition party in America...you are cutting your own throat. One of the benefits to the 'Lewinsky thing' was that it covered the fact Ossama bin Laden (CIA operative) began the Balkans crisis. The World Bank has to crush independence, and it did so in Yugoslavia with Clinton/Bush/bin Laden's help. Damn people. Dems/Reps are in it together. Kerry is a whore. The Clintons are whores. Dukakis is a whore. JFK tried to throw off his pimp and look what it got him. GW might have tried the same, but he caved in when the 'pretzel' beat the crap out of him.

There is no statute of limitations on treason, and until the US tries ALL current and former politicians who violated their oaths to the Constitution, things will just get worse.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Peg
Date: 18 May 03 - 11:56 AM

I hope you're wrong, Don (for the sake of the country, naturally). I do agree, though, that the Democrats have been as politically unimpressive as the Republicans in recent years (they have really become indistinguishable which is one reason I voted for Nader).

Some people say they like Howard Dean from Vermont. I don't know enough about him yet.

Michael Dukakis is still around; he goes jogging in the park near my old stomping grounds in Brookline, and picks up trash there too. I'd vote for him.

I'd vote for ex-governor Weld, too; calls himself a Republican but is a very open-minded and progressive one.

I wish Paul Tsongas were still alive...

Kerry? I have mixed feelings. He'd be better than the shrub though.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: DonMeixner
Date: 18 May 03 - 11:52 AM

I hear Bill Clinton has published his presidential memoirs, he calls them "The Johnson Years".

Don

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: DonMeixner
Date: 18 May 03 - 11:46 AM

Peg,

This Bozo will get re-elected because the Democrats are in such a disarray that they(My party remember) look like a Key Stone Kops reunion. I think Tom Daschle is just as big an idiot as Bush if for no other reason than his lack of troop support during the late unpleasantness.

I am surprised that some of my very conservative friends are capable of believing that Clinton would would go into the Balkans to deflect the country fom the Lewinsky thing. A thing he couldn't control. And yet they won't accept the notion that Bush could and would take us into a world war to deflect us away from his inability to control the economy. I'll even accept the War On Terrorism as a motivator but when it gets down to it, they both was playin' politics and nothing more.



Most of the front runners are unheard of by most of the population outside their own districts. The smart ones aren't running. Joe Biden I'd support in a heart beat. Ben NightHorse Campbell, once a Democrat and now a Republican as I have been lead to believe, would still get my vote. The only other Democrat I may consider is John Kerry. I get a chuckle out of Rush Limbaugh saying what a un-American guy Kerry is, he always fails to mention Kerry's three purple hears and his bronze star. The last I heard those were given for heroism and selflessness in battle. Something Rush lacks in his resume.

I realise I have given no answers here and maybe made up just more questions but I've been pretty sick lately and I'm just pissy enough to rant on and on and on.

Remember it is just as Patriotic to dissent as it is to comply! Speak your mind.

Don

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Peg
Date: 18 May 03 - 11:10 AM

How on earth could this bozo get re-elected? (actually that presupposes he was elected in the first place, a conclusion which is up for debate).

Things are only getting worse; our economy is in the crapper and our nation gets more prohibitive and militant as the days go by. The war in Iraq achieved WHAT exactly???

NO WAY can this goon get elected again. My money's on any Democrat hopeful who looks good in a grey suit.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Bill D
Date: 18 May 03 - 10:49 AM

"some reporter on staff"   and since he's not ON staff anymore, Doug, it's ok to read the Times again, huh?

Don Meixner said: " I think we'll be under the Republican thumb for several years to come and losing civilrights every step of the way. ..and I suspect he is right. In a post in another thread I made a point that Democrats and Republicans operate not only from different political philosophies, but also from different moral attitudes about what is fair/expedient/legal to do to GET and KEEP power.

.......The point being, whether you like or DON'T like the detailed results of a Democratic administration, you don't find your basic personal freedoms and abilty to be heard being eaten away under them.

You may or may not pay higher taxes under Democrats and some of them do have trouble keeping their pants zipped, but you won't find the current type of blatent **attempts** to sabotage the other party and to crank up a propaganda machine worthy of foreign dictators!

Nixon tried to do it himself, Reagan had advisors doing most of the thinking...but Bush takes it a step further and is fully aware of what Rove, Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others are doing, even if they are the brains behind it all.

Now, having just sounded like doomsayer, I hasten to add that I am fairly confident that the mechanisms built into the US constitution can probably prevent any 'takeover' and I do NOT foresee a Bush 'dynasty' or dictatorship....but I am aghast at the trends and terribly afraid of what the landscape will look like in 5-6 years if Bush is re-elected.

I'm afraid that "smoke and mirrors" DO fool all too many.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 03 - 02:37 AM

Yeah, "The (exalted) New York Times." All the news that's fit to print even if some reporter on staff does make it all up.

That's pretty ironic coming from someone who regards FoxNews as one of the more "credible" news sources.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: DonMeixner
Date: 17 May 03 - 08:11 AM

That should read, "All the news that fits the print."

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Mudlark
Date: 17 May 03 - 01:15 AM

"Imbedded" journalists...always makes me think of fat ticks.

George Bush and "all the world's a stage"...gag me with a spoon.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Amos
Date: 16 May 03 - 07:37 PM

G'wan, DougR -- he's a windbag of false premises...always has been.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: DougR
Date: 16 May 03 - 07:20 PM

Yeah, "The (exalted) New York Times." All the news that's fit to print even if some reporter on staff does make it all up.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Greg F.
Date: 16 May 03 - 04:48 PM

Sorcha & others:

RE: NY Times access without registering, you'll find if you use 'mudcatter' as username and password you can access it- anonymous account set up some time ago. To avoid getting a cookie, just un-chek the box at the sign-in screen. Hey, Presto!

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: artbrooks
Date: 16 May 03 - 04:15 PM

I understand that our illustrious leader (snicker) declared himself a candidate for reelection as of today, May 16th. I wonder how much of the taxpayers' money (i.e., ours) he has spent so far on stunts that have no purpose other than political eyewash/PR? And yes, don't tell me every other President has done the same. Does that make it right?

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: TIA
Date: 16 May 03 - 04:03 PM

"Americans are leading busy lives, and sometimes they don't have the opportunity to read a story or listen to an entire broadcast. But if they can have an instant understanding of what the president is talking about by seeing 60 seconds of television, you accomplish your goals as communicators."

-Dan Bartlett, White House Communications Director (from pdc's first link)


"It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion."

-Josef Goebbels

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: GUEST,pdc
Date: 16 May 03 - 02:16 PM

And while the smoke and mirrors piece reflects the illusion, the link below reflects the frightening reality.

Rumsfeld's Doctor Strangelove

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: GUEST,pdc
Date: 16 May 03 - 01:53 PM

Sorry 'bout that -- here's the same story with no registration required.

The illusion of a Presidency


I keep having visions of aides running up to Bush and saying "Mr. President! Mr. President! A nuclear war has started in ****!" and his response "Hey, how does my hair look?"

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Kim C
Date: 16 May 03 - 01:46 PM

Didn't Al Gore stage some canoe trip or something? I don't remember exactly. I'm just remembering something about kayaks and water...

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: DonMeixner
Date: 16 May 03 - 01:36 PM

With the exception of Gearald Ford's, every presidential arrival is staged. Gerry just tripped and fell down too often to be staged.   Bill clinton walking on Normandy beach and arranging nearby stones in a cross was staged. I don't care that George Jet landed on a carrier, so what. He has done more thsan enough questionable things for this little bit of showmanship to raise anyones ire.

Fact of the matter is until recently the Democrats have playe the publicity game better than the clueless Republicans. Now the Democrats(Of which I am one) couldn't organize a mudpuddle and build it under budget. And the Republicans are showing a solid political front and getting their agenda out, looking solid, while the Dems are fractured and divided. I think we'll be under the Republican thumb for several years to come and losing civilrights every step of the way. Not because they are the better choice philosophically. But because the two parties are reacting in such a polarized fashion that there is no allowable middle ground out of which a decent functional compromize can be developed.

These two groups remind me of the southern steel industry in the 60's.
The foundry owners and the unions couldn't agree on a wage and benefit plan so between the two of them the plants either were struck out of existence or the plant just decided to close rather than give anyone a break. Whole communites were dismantled and cities where depressed and jobless for years as a result.

Don

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 May 03 - 01:28 PM

And boy, do they ever stage!

To stage the event, Mr. DeServi went so far as to rent Musco lights in Britain, which were then shipped across the English Channel and driven across Europe to Romania, where they lighted Mr. Bush and the giant stage across from the country's former Communist headquarters.

A third crucial player is Greg Jenkins, a former Fox News television producer in Washington who is now the director of presidential advance. Mr. Jenkins manages the small army of staff members and volunteers who move days ahead of Mr. Bush and his entourage to set up the staging of all White House events.

And, here's that nasty "embedded" word, again, used in a whole new way!

White House officials say that a variety of people, including the president, came up with the idea, and that Mr. Sforza embedded himself on the carrier to make preparations days before Mr. Bush's landing in a flight suit and his early evening speech.

Media strategists noted afterward that Mr. Sforza and his aides had choreographed every aspect of the event, even down to the members of the Lincoln crew arrayed in coordinated shirt colors over Mr. Bush's right shoulder and the "Mission Accomplished" banner placed to perfectly capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot. The speech was specifically timed for what image makers call "magic hour light," which cast a golden glow on Mr. Bush.

As someone else said to me in an email, "The implications make me twitch ... Why do I keep seeing those crowd shots of the masses giving der Fuhrer the old 'sieg heil'?"

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: CarolC
Date: 16 May 03 - 01:15 PM

It's the New York Times site they can't get into without signing up, PoppaGator, not the Mudcat. You must already have a member ID for the NYT site, or you wouldn't have been able to get in.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: CarolC
Date: 16 May 03 - 01:14 PM

PoppaGator, the person who started this thread provided the link. I provided some copy-paste because it was requested by someone who couldn't get into the site without signing up to it.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: PoppaGator
Date: 16 May 03 - 01:11 PM

MMario: The operative phrase in your question is "to some degree." It's one thing to televise a speech or other event with an eye to presenting the boss in a flattering light, and something else entirely to design an event from the ground up as a campaign commericial, which is what the aircraft carrier visit looked like to me (and many others). All style, no substance, or worse. Many of these Bush photo-ops show him praising and expressing support for social programs at the very same time that his administration is trying to cut their funds.

CarolC: If you paste in the actual text of a URL -- either as a "blue cliky" or simply "as-is" -- any reader, including non-members, members away from home, etc., will have the option to copy and paste it into their browser's address line. Might be better than writing a descriptive phrase, like a title for the article or "Click here."

Sorcha: *Would* a complete URL have solved your problem? I don't understand why you weren't able to activate the link, or what you meant by "I really don't want to sign up..." You're not shown as "GUEST," but as a member (??) Just wondering....

TH

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 May 03 - 01:05 PM

This takes it to entirely new depths, though, MMario, and costs! It is also blatantly cynical:

On Tuesday, at a speech promoting his economic plan in Indianapolis, White House aides went so far as to ask people in the crowd behind Mr. Bush to take off their ties, WISH-TV in Indianapolis reported, so they would look more like the ordinary folk the president said would benefit from his tax cut.

Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director: "Americans are leading busy lives, and sometimes they don't have the opportunity to read a story or listen to an entire broadcast. But if they can have an instant understanding of what the president is talking about by seeing 60 seconds of television, you accomplish your goals as communicators. So we take it seriously."

But even this White House makes mistakes. One of the more notable ones occurred in January, when Mr. Bush delivered a speech about his economic plan at a St. Louis trucking company. Volunteers for the White House covered "Made in China" stamps with white stickers on boxes arrayed on either side of the president. Behind Mr. Bush was a printed backdrop of faux boxes that read "Made in U.S.A.," the message the administration wanted to convey to the television audience.

They seem to approach an event site like it's a TV set," said Chris Carlson, an ABC cameraman who covers the White House. "They dress it up really nicely. It looks like a million bucks."

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: MMario
Date: 16 May 03 - 12:51 PM

I've been seeing presidents arriving and departing places since the '60s on TV. not to mention speeches, etc, etc, etc. Does anyone hosestly believe most of them weren't staged to some degree?

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Sorcha
Date: 16 May 03 - 12:40 PM

Oh good grief.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: CarolC
Date: 16 May 03 - 12:37 PM

Oops. Hit the wrong button.

Here's part of it. I highly recommend reading the whole thing. You don't have to give your real information to get in. You can give them fake information. Just remember your member ID and password, or write them down somewhere. I've found the time and trouble I took to do this to be worthwhile, because there have been several very interesting articles from this source posted here in the Mudcat lately:

WASHINGTON, May 15 — George W. Bush's "Top Gun" landing on the deck of the carrier Abraham Lincoln will be remembered as one of the most audacious moments of presidential theater in American history. But it was only the latest example of how the Bush administration, going far beyond the foundations in stagecraft set by the Reagan White House, is using the powers of television and technology to promote a presidency like never before.

Officials of past Democratic and Republican administrations marvel at how the White House does not seem to miss an opportunity to showcase Mr. Bush in dramatic and perfectly lighted settings. It is all by design: the White House has stocked its communications operation with people from network television who have expertise in lighting, camera angles and the importance of backdrops...

...The White House efforts have been ambitious — and costly. For the prime-time television address that Mr. Bush delivered to the nation on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House rented three barges of giant Musco lights, the kind used to illuminate sports stadiums and rock concerts, sent them across New York Harbor, tethered them in the water around the base of the Statue of Liberty and then blasted them upward to illuminate all 305 feet of America's symbol of freedom. It was the ultimate patriotic backdrop for Mr. Bush, who spoke from Ellis Island.

For a speech that Mr. Bush delivered last summer at Mount Rushmore, the White House positioned the best platform for television crews off to one side, not head on as other White Houses have done, so that the cameras caught Mr. Bush in profile, his face perfectly aligned with the four presidents carved in stone.

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: CarolC
Date: 16 May 03 - 12:36 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: MMario
Date: 16 May 03 - 12:24 PM

or at least summerize?

Subject: RE: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: Sorcha
Date: 16 May 03 - 12:21 PM

Can you copy/paste? I really don't want to sign up just to read an article.

Subject: BS: Smoke and Mirrors
From: GUEST,pdc
Date: 16 May 03 - 12:08 PM

This nauseating report has direct ties to the Jessica Lynch story, I believe.

The illusion of a Presidency