Undermining the Free Press

[UncleVinny]

Last week we heard that Bush way paying journalists and newpaper columnists to push the Bush agenda and make it look like news. Kind of dishonest use of taxpayer funds.

Now, in today's newspaper (Feb.11) we see a report where Bush secured press credentials for an arch-concervative writer, made him look like a reporter, then planted him and his loaded question at a White House news conference, so he could smear the Democrats and make it look like a legitimate news story.

I find that manipulative and deceptive, and a near-criminal contamination of the free press. When I see such massive public relations style deception, it makes me wonder if we have been duped by this fellow in the past, in such important subject areas as weapons of mass destruction and the need to invade Iraq!

Thank God there are news watchdogs and organizations like the ACLU to keep these crooks more honest.

[UncleVinny]

Mmm!

It's a new low in depravity when the White House uses a gay hustler to ask questions at a White House press conference just to curse the Democrats!

I'm talking about James Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon.
Surprised the conserviates are not up in arms over this one.

www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5247237.html

[Ian]

Hmm, I rather remember seeing this post in another thread...

[Crash]

Manipulative! Deceptive! Near-criminal! Ha! This is an impeachable offense!
This is a breach of presidential security, and whoever is responsible needs to be prosecuted and sent to jail along with the gay guy that they set up as a so called 'reporter'.
Let's not forget about the traitor in the White House who outed a CIA operative, or the criminals who sent anthrax thru the mail to Democratic leaders during the week that congress was voting on the Patriot Act, these traitors and terrorists are still at large in this administration and need to be identified, tried and jailed.

Vinny...notice how the neo-cons here won't touch this because they know it is indefensible. They know this is un-American and maybe they are starting to see thru Bush's veil of propaganda and are starting to see the truth about him..... naaaaa....seeing the truth about this administration is too much for them to handle.

[Ian]

Dearest Crash and Patriot,

The multiple personalities and Vonnegut impersonation are growing weary. I beg of you, for the sake of civil discourse, cease.

[Patriot]

Ian:

I'm not Crash. I can assure you of that.

[GregoryA]

UncleVinny said:

Last week we heard that Bush way paying journalists and newpaper columnists to push the Bush agenda and make it look like news. Kind of dishonest use of taxpayer funds.

Now, in today's newspaper (Feb.11) we see a report where Bush secured press credentials for an arch-concervative writer, made him look like a reporter, then planted him and his loaded question at a White House news conference, so he could smear the Democrats and make it look like a legitimate news story.

I find that manipulative and deceptive, and a near-criminal contamination of the free press. When I see such massive public relations style deception, it makes me wonder if we have been duped by this fellow in the past, in such important subject areas as weapons of mass destruction and the need to invade Iraq!

Thank God there are news watchdogs and organizations like the ACLU to keep these crooks more honest.

Free press? Free Press? That is so cute. You actuallly believe we have a Freeee Presss!

Wow, that is precsious!

And the watch dog ACLU. More like the lap dog of liberal/socialist i traitorous interests in this country.

What parrellel universe do you exist in?

[Crash]

1. Ian, I am Crash, therefore I Am. Although I am a patriot I am not Patriot.
2. Greg, I'm glad you realize that there is no free press in this country anymore. I'm glad you realize that investigative journalism in this country is dead, killed by the fear and neo-fascist tendencies of the Bush regime. And I'm glad you understand that the people in this country can not live in a democracy when the press is controlled by the multi-national corporations who blindly print the lies and half-truths of war profiteers, imperialists and self serving corporatist politicians. Good for you!
3. Yep, that ACLU gets my goat too. Especially when they help wealthy, oxycontin junkies stay out of jail.
4. As far as your hatred for liberals/socialists... you must realize that if you are part of the American middle class, that you owe your way of life and the great wealth of this country to the liberals/socialists/progressives who fought for your rights against the corporatists over the last 100 years. Most things you take for granted were scratched out and fought over for years before they became the norm. (like overtime, 40 hr. work week, womens right to vote, child labor laws, all environmental laws, min. wages laws, G.I. Bill and on and on).
Yes, the liberal progressives have been fighting this battle vs the regressives for a lot longer than you have been alive, and if they hadn't fought this battle there would be 2 classes of people in this country today, the ultra-wealthy(2-5%) who controll everything including the govt., and the utterly impoverished which would include everybody else.
It's great to see you are not another one of those goose-stepping, diddo-headed, my leader-right or wrong, I'll believe anything you tell me to believe, idiots. Good for you.

[GregoryA]

Crash said:

1. Ian, I am Crash, therefore I Am. Although I am a patriot I am not Patriot.
2. Greg, I'm glad you realize that there is no free press in this country anymore. I'm glad you realize that investigative journalism in this country is dead, killed by the fear and neo-fascist tendencies of the Bush regime. And I'm glad you understand that the people in this country can not live in a democracy when the press is controlled by the multi-national corporations who blindly print the lies and half-truths of war profiteers, imperialists and self serving corporatist politicians. Good for you!
3. Yep, that ACLU gets my goat too. Especially when they help wealthy, oxycontin junkies stay out of jail.
4. As far as your hatred for liberals/socialists... you must realize that if you are part of the American middle class, that you owe your way of life and the great wealth of this country to the liberals/socialists/progressives who fought for your rights against the corporatists over the last 100 years. Most things you take for granted were scratched out and fought over for years before they became the norm. (like overtime, 40 hr. work week, womens right to vote, child labor laws, all environmental laws, min. wages laws, G.I. Bill and on and on).
Yes, the liberal progressives have been fighting this battle vs the regressives for a lot longer than you have been alive, and if they hadn't fought this battle there would be 2 classes of people in this country today, the ultra-wealthy(2-5%) who controll everything including the govt., and the utterly impoverished which would include everybody else.
It's great to see you are not another one of those goose-stepping, diddo-headed, my leader-right or wrong, I'll believe anything you tell me to believe, idiots. Good for you.

Crash:
I disagree with liberals and socialists, I do not hate them.

I owe any socio-economic success to my parent's work and education ethic not to the collective.

I also had to do some of the work.

And thank you for the compliment concerning being free minded and free willed...that came from my parents as well. So I thank them.

[TNRighty]

Crash, where do I start?

First of all, the people we refer to as wealthy in this country would call a 40-hr work week a vacation. Contrary to what you believe, wealthy people don't just fall over backwards and land in a pile of money. They aren't "lucky". They often are in the right place at the right time, but they had the foresight to know where to be and when to be there. Liberals love to claim that wealthy people earn their money off the backs of the "little man", but nothing could be further from the truth. The majority of the wealthy people in this country are small business owners. They provide the jobs that employ about 70% of all working Americans. Without small businesses, the American economy comes to a screeching halt. How many poor people have signed your paycheck? How many workers rights activists have signed your paycheck?

Overtime pay seems like a good idea on the surface, but in all actuality its not. Your hourly wage is based on your market value to your employer per hour you work. Overtime laws force employers to pay their employees above their market value. It circumvents logical economic principles. What you do at your job during the ninth and tenth hours are worth no more than what you do during the first eight. Do you become a man and a half after 8 hours? You don't, and for that reason most employers will send you home after 8 hrs because it is not profitable for them to pay you time and a half for something you can do at base pay tomorrow. Most employers would gladly pay you your base wage for ten hours, but they can't. They are forced by overtime laws to pay you more than you're worth, and thus send you home. In the end you lose money. Overtime laws cost people who are willing to work.

Your wage and the hours you work should be negociated between you and your employer. If you want to work 40 hours a week and no more, negociate that with your boss. If you want to be paid extra for working more than 40 hours a week, negociate that with your boss. I'm not saying you shouldn't receive overtime pay, but that should be negociated between you and your boss, not the government. In a private ecomomy the government should have no control over wages.

[groucho]

Crash said:

..... naaaaa....seeing the truth about this administration is too much for them to handle.

Yeah.
Guess that's why they were brought back for an ENCORE!!!!

Viva Etats-Rouge!!

[MO]

REPUBLICANS, BLOGGERS AND GAYS, OH MY!
February 23, 2005



In response to the public disgrace and ruin of New York Times editor Howell Raines, CBS anchor Dan Rather and CNN news director Eason Jordan, liberals are directing their fury at the blogs. Once derided as people sitting around their living rooms in pajamas, now obscure writers for unknown Web sites are coming under more intensive background checks than CIA agents.

The heretofore-unknown Jeff Gannon of the heretofore-unknown "Talon News" service was caught red-handed asking friendly questions at a White House press briefing. Now the media is hot on the trail of a gay escort service that Gannon may have run some years ago. Are we supposed to like gay people now, or hate them? Is there a Web site where I can go to and find out how the Democrats want me to feel about gay people on a moment-to-moment basis?

Liberals keep rolling out a scrolling series of attacks on Gannon for their Two Minutes Hate, but all their other charges against him fall apart after three seconds of scrutiny. Gannon's only offense is that he may be gay.

First, liberals claimed Gannon was a White House plant who received a press pass so that he could ask softball questions — a perk reserved for New York Times reporters during the Clinton years. Their proof was that while "real" journalists (like Jayson Blair) were being denied press passes, Gannon had one, even though he writes for a Web site that no one has ever heard of — but still big enough to be a target of liberal hatred! (By the way, if writing for a news organization with no viewers is grounds for being denied a press pass, why do MSNBC reporters have them?)

On the op-ed page of The New York Times, Maureen Dowd openly lied about the press pass, saying: "I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the 'Barberini Faun' is credentialed?"

Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president. Still, it would be suspicious if Dowd were denied a press pass while someone from "Talon News" got one, even if he is a better reporter.

But Dowd was talking about two different passes without telling her readers (a process now known in journalism schools as "Dowdification"). Gannon didn't have a permanent pass; he had only a daily pass. Almost anyone can get a daily pass — even famed Times fantasist Maureen Dowd could have gotten one of those. A daily pass and a permanent pass are altogether different animals. The entire linchpin of Dowd's column was a lie. (And I'm sure the Times' public editor will get right on Dowd's deception.)

Finally, liberals expressed shock and dismay that Gannon's real name is "James Guckert." On MSNBC's "Hardball," Chris Matthews introduced the Gannon scandal this way: "Coming up, how did a fake news reporter from a right-wing Web site get inside the White House press briefings and presidential news conferences?"

Reporter David Shuster then gave a report on "the phony alias Guckert used to play journalist" — as opposed to the real name Shuster uses to play journalist. (You can tell Schuster is a crackerjack journalist because he uses phrases like "phony alias.") With all the subtlety of a gay-bashing skinhead, Matthews spent the rest of the segment seeing how many times he could smear Gannon by mentioning "HotMilitaryStuds.com" and laughing.

Any day now, Matthews will devote entire shows to exposing Larry Zeigler, Gerald Riviera and Michael Weiner — aka Larry King, Geraldo Rivera and Matthews' former MSNBC colleague Michael Savage. As a newspaper reporter, Wolf Blitzer has written under the names Ze'ev Blitzer and Ze'ev Barak. The greatest essayist of modern times was Eric Blair, aka George Orwell. The worst essayist of modern times is "TRB" of The New Republic.

Air America radio host and "Nanny" impersonator "Randi Rhodes" goes by a fake name, and she won't even tell people what her real last name is. (She says for "privacy reasons." That name must be a real doozy.) As Insideradio.com describes Rhodes, she refuses "to withhold anything from her listeners" and says conservatives "are less likely to share such things." How about sharing your name, Randi? We promise not to laugh.

Democrats in Congress actually demanded that an independent prosecutor investigate how Gannon got into White House press conferences while writing under an invented name. How did Gary Hartpence, Billy Blythe and John Kohn (Gary Hart, Bill Clinton and John Kerry) run for president under invented names? Admittedly, these men were not reporters for the prestigious "Talon News" service; they were merely Democrats running for president.

Liberals keep telling us the media isn't liberal, but in order to retaliate for the decimation of major news organizations like The New York Times, CBS News and CNN, all they can do is produce the scalp of an obscure writer for an unknown conservative Web page. And unlike Raines, Rather and Jordan, they can't even get Gannon for incompetence on the job. (Also unlike Raines, Rather and Jordan, Gannon has appeared on TV and given a series of creditable interviews in his own defense, proving our gays are more macho than their straights.)

Gannon didn't write about gays. No "hypocrisy" is being exposed. Liberals' hateful, frothing-at-the-mouth campaign against Gannon consists solely of their claim that he is gay.
Ann Coulter
www.anncoulter.com/

[UncleVinny]

Good trick, there Mo, to make up in volume what is lacking in substance.

Talk about "traditional values" - do you call planting a conservative "reporter" in White House press conferences (Jeff Gannon) to ask Democrat-bashing softball questions a "value" that you support? Meanwhile the guy has his body exposed on the Internet for gay sex escort services?!! How did he get is Secret Service clearance with such "credentials?" What a joke!

Senator McCain and his wife adopted a Bangladeshi child. During the Bush vs. McCain run for the Republican nomination, KKKarl Rove, Bush's street fighter, smears McCain with an ad campaign saying they "have a black child" suggesting Mrs. Mc Cain slept around. Traditional Christian values? And which one of the two served his country int he military? What a Joke!

[Ian]

UncleVinny said:

And which one of the two served his country int he military? What a Joke!

John McCain a.k.a King Rat? Don't you find it interesting that you never saw John McCain with Admiral Stockdale or anyone else from the Hanoi Hilton while on his 2000 campaign or at any other time for that matter? McCain looked like a movie star when he got back for Christ's sake.

[Crash]

Sorry for the delay in answering, deadlines ya know.

GregoryA wrote:
"I owe any socio-economic success to my parent's work and education ethic not to the collective."

Very true, but you have to realize that your parents had the opportunity to earn a good living because progressives/liberals fought and scratched out concessions with the corporatists (FDR called them 'economic royalists', Eisenhower called them the 'military industrial complex'). Without these battles we (the American middle class) would not exist. We would live in Bush's perfect world - 5% of the population would controll 95% of the wealth and the govt. and the rest of us would be serfs working for bread. This is the world the neo-con radicals and their corporatists backers want to create in America. But I dont want to hijack this tread. This thread is about the Orwellian way that Bush/Rove manipulate the news media. Greg, I take it that you are a young guy. Please read '1984' by George Orwell if you want to get an understanding about how easy it is to manipulate the news, history and how to use fear to brainwash the masses.

Mo...
quoting Ann Coulter!!!! LoL Hahahahahaah... nexxxt.
You'll be quoting that junkie Limbaugh next, hahahahah too much.
Bashing Democrats does not change the fact that giving this imposter credentials is a serious breach of security and ehtics and somebody should go to jail for this. Bush obviously knew about him because he used this guy during press conferences, so Bush is as guilty as whoever handed out the pass.

TNRighty...
Take your fascist-corporatist rant that you probably heard from Limbaugh and tell it to my friends and family who counted on that overtime pay to get by. It's gone now for a few of them and they are looking at tight times. Again, this thread is about neo-con propaganda/fear and how they spread it. It's not about how they are sucking the wealth out of the middle class and laughing at us for not taking a united stand to defend ourselves.