BS: Bush team fabricating news reports

Subject: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: freda underhill
Date: 16 Mar 04 - 05:21 PM

From the Guardian...US government faked Bush news reports
Chris Tryhorn, Tuesday March 16, 2004

TV news reports in America that showed President George Bush getting a standing ovation from potential voters have been exposed as fake, it has emerged. US government admitted it paid actors to pose as journalists in video news releases sent to TV stations intending to convey support for new laws about health benefits.

Investigators are examining the film segments, in which actors pretending to be journalists praise the benefits of the new law passed last year by President Bush, to see if they could be construed as propaganda. Two of the films are signed off by "Karen Ryan", who was an actor hired to read a script prepared by the government, according to production company Home Front Communications.

Another video, intended for Hispanic viewers, shows a government official being interviewed in Spanish by a actor posing as a reporter with the name "Alberto Garcia". One segment shows a pharmacist telling an elderly customer the new law "helps you better afford your medications". ......

etc

sounds almost as good as an opinion poll about how happy the Iraqis are now.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Mar 04 - 05:39 PM

http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/nyminute.jpg

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Mar 04 - 05:43 PM

Sorry I meant to post this version
http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/nyminute1.jpg

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: Bobert
Date: 16 Mar 04 - 05:46 PM

Well gol danged, freda! You don't really expect me to believe that Bush or his handlers would fabricate a story, do ya? I mean, like is this fir real. I am in total shock! I've got to go lie down and regain my composure...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: Rapparee
Date: 16 Mar 04 - 05:56 PM

So what else is new?

ALL politicians do it. Doesn't make it right, just ubiquitous.

Sorry if I sound cynical, but I am.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: Allan C.
Date: 16 Mar 04 - 05:58 PM

Before you know it, other politicians might start doing the same sort of thing! And then someone will coin the term, "spin doctor".

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: DougR
Date: 16 Mar 04 - 06:01 PM

Zounds!

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: Gareth
Date: 16 Mar 04 - 07:27 PM

Nothing New this side of the Atlantic - Thatcher did it, in cohesion with an adverising agency.

And just to proove its not one sided I am slowly working thru 70 photos for our local elections here in Caerphilly making them more printable.

The diffference is those B*****s in Sachi and Sachi got paid for it!

Gareth

Ps The photo in my election address of me shaking hand with Rhodri Morgan - First Minister of Wales, in genuine - all I had to do was remove the "No Parking Sign" from the background.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Mar 04 - 07:37 PM

There's the famous Tory poster from the 1979 Election, "Labour Isn't Working", with a "dole queue" photo made up of Tory volunteers, to point up the fact that unemployment under Labour was higher than it had been, and higher than it should have been.

It worked too, and soon Magggie Tatcher was in Downing Street - and unemployment was three times as high, and far higher than it had been since the 1930s. People were cross - but then the Falkland War came along and won her the next election.

So these dirty tricks do work.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Mar 04 - 07:48 PM

Ha! Ha! Ha! (gasp!) Who would be surprised by this story?

As I have said before, read Tim Dorsey's book "Orange Crush" about a fictional gubernatorial election in Florida, probably the most corrupt state in the entire USA. The amazing thing is only this: occasionally...very occasionally...campaigning politicians tell the truth, and nothing but the truth...but they NEVER tell the whole truth! If you hold your breath waiting for it to happen your chances of survival are very, very slim. :-)

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Mar 04 - 08:07 PM

It's all Blarney, folks. People who vote for either the Democrats or the Republicans are, sad to say, deserving of the government they get. But what are you gonna do? The Sy$tem is rigged so that no other party could ever take power in the USA anyway.

It's all Blarney. Be good little boys and girls and just swallow it with your morning coffee.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: michaelr
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 01:55 AM

Yes, okay, so us progressives get to be cynically bored (and so does Doug!). A cute little affectation, but unfortunately unproductive.

Freda points out what has been this administration's tactic from the beginning: Lies, lies, hyperbole, misrepresentations, fabrications, and more lies.

Thank you for calling attention to this! We cannot afford to become cynical about this shit until after the November election. The Bu**shit needs to be countered at every step by people exposing it for what it is and telling the true story.

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: freda underhill
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 02:04 AM

..thanks Michael!

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: michaelr
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 02:25 AM

PS: A good example of this spirit is Amy Goodman's live coverage of Haitian President Bertrand Aristide's return to the Caribbean yesterday. Bertrand Aristide is Haiti's first democratically elected leader. He received more votes for his second term than his first, which made some people suspicious, but the fact is that he represents a democratic change after decades of petty tyrants and Saddam-like bullies who were propped up by both the French and US governments.

Amy, reporting for Democracy Now! on Pacifica Radio and Free Speech Radio News, was one of only two US journalists who accompanied a US delegation (headed by Congressmember Maxine Waters) to the Central African Republic, and from there flew back with Aristide and his US-born wife to Jamaica.

Amy Goodman conducted interviews with both Aristide and his chief of security, in which both clearly assert that they were kidnapped by US officials, possibly acting in concert with French government, on pretext of a press conference at the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince. Instead of the embassy, they were taken to the airport and forced an board an American plane by US Marines.

They were told they were going to South Africa, but were in fact taken to the Central African Republic, which, like Haiti, is a former (read: failed -- remember Korea? Vietnam?) French colony.

Aristide is heard clearly to say :"This was a kidnapping under cover of a coup d`etat". His security chief confirms that there were menacing, combat-ready Marines on the scene.

But Rumsfeld, Powell et al keep lying about US involvement in this outrageous attempt at "regime change". Powell even had the nerve to say about an elected head of a country "He has outworn his welcome".

We cannot let this sort of rhetoric become commonplace. Haiti, like Iraq, is a sovereign nation. Forced regime change, US style, is an international crime, and nothing the lying bastards say can change that.

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: Sorcha
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 02:42 AM

Well, no shit Sherlock. So who do we vote for now? Nader? I don't think so.....

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: Nerd
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 10:15 AM

Hey, could someone post a link to the original story in the Guardian?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: CarolC
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 11:34 AM

I like this part:

Investigators are examining the film segments, in which actors pretending to be journalists praise the benefits of the new law passed last year by President Bush, to see if they could be construed as propaganda.

I'd like to see all of our news media investigated to see if what they put out could be construed as propaganda. I think what we call "news" here in the US passed from the realm of journalism into the realm of propaganda a looonnnngggg time ago. I suspect that Walter Cronkite may have been the last actual "journalist" we've had in this country.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 11:51 AM

Thanks for your posting, freda. I say the more we call attention to it, the more it doesn't become a Ho Hum issue. Keep at it, 'cause I'll read it and pass it on!..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: Amos
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 11:53 AM

CarolC:

Stunning idea!!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 02:11 PM



Well if Bush doesn't manage that in November he's in dead trouble isn't he? (And if he does it'll be highly suspicious...)

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: kendall
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 04:32 PM

More suspicious that the last one?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: Peace
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 06:06 PM

Good one, Freda. Hard to believe apolitician would fudge the truth, huh?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: freda underhill
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 06:12 PM

i'm shattered, devastating, isn't it?

no politician would do this in oz..

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: JennyO
Date: 17 Mar 04 - 08:47 PM

Especially our own little Johnnie Howard!

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: freda underhill
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 12:00 AM

particularly...

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 11:43 AM

And now this:

Much as an army travels on its stomach, lawmakers operate on facts to get their work done. When the oratory is done, the facts provide the substance of sound public policy. That's why it is dismaying to learn that Richard S. Foster, a veteran actuary trusted by both parties for his independence, may have been muzzled when he sought to provide information that the Bush administration was underestimating the cost of the massive prescription drug benefit added to Medicare. He says he was prevented from telling Congress what the Bush team already knew privately -- they were underestimating the cost of the new benefit by some $150 billion.


More of the article:click here It seems Foster was threatened with job loss, etc. if he told the Truth.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 06:57 PM

Slight thread drift: in addition to fabricating news reports, they've been sitting on numbers. This is from the New York Times

Mysterious Fax Adds to Intrigue Over the Medicare Bill's Cost
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and ROBERT PEAR

Published: March 18, 2004


WASHINGTON, March 17 — Late one Friday afternoon in January, after the House of Representatives had adjourned for the week, Cybele Bjorklund, a House Democratic health policy aide, heard the buzz of the fax machine at her desk. Coming over the transom, with no hint of the sender, was a document she had been seeking for months: an estimate by Medicare's chief actuary showing the cost of prescription drug benefits for the elderly.

Dated June 11, 2003, the document put the cost at $551.5 billion over 10 years. It appeared to confirm what Ms. Bjorklund and her bosses on the House Ways and Means Committee had long suspected: the actuary, Richard S. Foster, had concluded the legislation would be far more expensive than Congress's $400 billion estimate — and had kept quiet while lawmakers voted on the bill and President Bush signed it into law.

Ms. Bjorklund had been pressing Mr. Foster for his numbers since June. When he refused, telling her he could be fired, she said, she confronted his boss, Thomas A. Scully, then the Medicare administrator. "If Rick Foster gives that to you," Ms. Bjorklund remembered Mr. Scully telling her, "I'll fire him so fast his head will spin." Mr. Scully denies making such threats.

These conversations among three government employees — an obscure Congressional aide, a little-known actuary and a high-level official — remained secret until now, and Ms. Bjorklund still does not know who sent the fax. But Mr. Foster went public last week, and details of his struggle for independence within the Bush administration are now emerging, raising questions about whether the White House intentionally withheld crucial data from lawmakers.

see the rest of the article online.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: Amos
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 07:13 PM

The falsification of truth by the Bush machine continues as documented in this article conerning campaign assertions, from Slate.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Bush team fabricating news reports
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Mar 04 - 07:15 PM

I think your comments regarding the media are very apt, CarolC. It was perceived by the US administration that negative media coverage swung public opinion in the USA against the Vietnam War. They decided they weren't going to let that happen again. Now you have what amounts to a controlled media which says mostly what it is told to say, sees what it is allowed to see, and ignores mostly what it is told to ignore. Kind of like in Germany after 1933...

This kind of a media stands meekly aside while a large country invades a small country, without provocation, on the basis that that small country might someday attack the large country. Rather like the attack on Poland in 1939, but much easier to win on the battlefield than Germany's assault was. The Poles in '39 were reasonably well armed and reasonably well organized, unlike the Iraquis. The Germans were far better armed and organized than the Poles, however, so they won it handily. If they had been the only military Superpower in the World at the time, as the USA is now, they could have done so with absolute impunity...Hitler's mistake was hubris and miscalculation regarding the British and French response. America's mistake is hubris and miscalculation regarding almost everybody's response, but America is so powerful that no one can risk going to war. Thus, the illusion of righteousness can be maintained by an administration that led the country to outright aggression. But for how long?

- LH