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Politics : Bush Administration's Media Manipulation--MediaGate? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (3347)	5/24/2005 9:40:51 PM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 9838

you just have to spend some time with the one person that can't take ANY criticism....BUSH How Bush Makes Sure They Agree # A memo illustrates the way the White House is selectively casting members of the under-30 set to promote its Social Security plan. By Warren Vieth, Times Staff Writer MILWAUKEE — As President Bush resumes his cross-country campaign to promote his vision of Social Security restructuring, it's no secret that he is relying on outside organizations to help provide the supporting cast. Yet a memo circulated this week among members of one group, Women Impacting Public Policy, illustrates the lengths to which the White House has gone to make sure the right points are made at the president's public appearances. ADVERTISEMENT "President Bush will be in Rochester, N.Y., for an upcoming event and has called on WIPP for help," said the memo to New York-area members, from one of the group's leaders. "He would like to visit with local workers about their views on Social Security." The memo went on to solicit several types of people "who he would like to visit with" — including a young worker who "knows that [Social Security] could run out before they retire," a young couple with children who like "the idea of leaving something behind to the family" and a single parent who believes Bush's proposal for individual investment accounts "would provide more retirement options and security" than the current system. The people solicited appeared to represent various arguments that Bush has been making for why Social Security should be overhauled. The memo requested an immediate response, because "we will need to get names to the White House." Bush has proposed letting younger workers divert a portion of their payroll taxes into individual investment accounts that they would control. He has said the accounts should be part of a broader restructuring plan that would slow the growth of benefits to ensure Social Security's solvency. The women's group memo said the White House was seeking only people younger than 29. It reflected the latest refinement of the White House strategy for promoting its Social Security plan: highlighting the benefits Bush sees for younger workers. The theme was on full display Thursday as Bush took his campaign to Wisconsin, the 26th state he has visited to promote Social Security restructuring. "You got any thoughts about Social Security?" Bush asked 22-year-old Concordia University senior Christy Paavola, one of five younger workers who appeared on stage with him at the Milwaukee Art Museum. "Yes," Paavola said. "I don't think it's going to be there when I retire, which is really scary." Many young people, the president commented, think they are paying into a retirement system that will never pay them back. He asked Paavola: "Got anything else you want to say?" "I really like the idea of personal savings accounts," Paavola said. "You did a heck of a job," Bush told her. "You deserve an A." The participants in Thursday's event in Wisconsin appeared to mirror the criteria outlined in the memo to members of WIPP. In addition to Paavola, Bush was joined in Wisconsin by a preschool teacher, a small business owner, and a dairy farmer and his wife, who worked as a bookkeeper in a bank. None was older than 27. WIPP describes itself as a bipartisan organization representing about 500,000 female business owners and employees. White House spokesman Trent Duffy declined to discuss the group's e-mail to prospective participants in the Rochester forum, an event that the White House has not announced. Duffy said it was not unusual for the White House to work with such groups to identify people who could help Bush make the case for restructuring. "Yes, the president is promoting his agenda," Duffy said. "Every president that preceded this one has used the bully pulpit to talk about their agenda. This president is doing the same." But critics of the president's plan contended that the choreography of Bush's Social Security events deprived the public, and Bush, of the opportunity to weigh alternative approaches for dealing with the retirement system's financial needs. "He's going around listening to people who agree with him," said Barbara Kennelly, a former House Democrat who heads the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, that opposes Bush's investment account plan. "It's unfortunate that this president never hears any opposition to a plan that has a lot of opposition." Bush's Social Security events typically feature one policy expert and several workers or retirees who sit on stools next to the president and explain why they think personal accounts would be a good idea.

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (3347)	5/24/2005 9:46:56 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 9838

no I don't go to the demounderground site.... go to the facist sites of crazed republicans...most Democrats are TRULY WORRIED ABOUT THE DIRECTION OF THIS PRESIDENT AND HIS FOLLOWERS......EVIDENCE HERE: Off We Go, Into the Christian Yonder # Air Force Academy situation shows the real agenda of evangelicals. Conservatives have been arguing for years that the religious right is simply misunderstood. These vilified godly folks don't want to impose their beliefs on anybody else, we're told. They simply want to defend their traditional beliefs and practices against the aggressive impositions of a secular culture. Therefore any suggestion to the contrary is liberal hysteria or, worse, discrimination against "people of faith." So how do conservatives explain what's been going on at the Air Force Academy? ADVERTISEMENT Rail Europe As a number of newspapers have documented, the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., has essentially established evangelical Christianity as its official religion. The examples are legion. Last season, the football coach hung a banner in the locker room laying out a "Competitor's Creed," including the lines "I am a Christian first and last" and "I am a member of Team Jesus Christ." And here are other examples among those noted in an April report by the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State: Campus chaplains have encouraged proselytizing among the students, and younger cadets who skipped out on prayer services have been forced by their seniors to march back to their dorms in a ritual called "heathen flight." On one occasion, every seat in the dining hall was covered with a flier advertising a showing of "The Passion of the Christ," including the tagline, "This is an officially sponsored USAFA event." These are just a few examples among many. Non-evangelicals have described an atmosphere of pervasive religious pressure. A top academy chaplain was discharged for speaking out against this state of affairs. So, again, what do the conservatives have to say about this? Not very much. I searched three major conservative publications — the Washington Times, National Review and the Weekly Standard. I found only one article referring to the Air Force scandal: a Web-only column by conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt in the Standard decrying the Air Force's promised internal investigation as an unnecessary inquisition and devoting one sentence to summarizing the charges. And no wonder the conservative press, normally obsessed with the role of religion in public life, would have so little to say about this scandal. It undercuts its long-standing effort to portray the religious right as merely defending itself. A notable subset of this effort consists of pleas by politically conservative Jews to their moderate and liberal brethren to stop worrying about the religious right. "All right, enough, already. The Christians aren't coming to get you," writes National Review's Jonah Goldberg in a typical salvo. Now, it's easy to get carried away by one extreme example, just as conservatives do when some school principal somewhere doesn't let a kid wear a Santa Claus hat or some such nonsense. But the situation at the Air Force Academy, though atypical of the United States, does not represent random excess by the religious right. It's an embodiment of the religious right's vision of America. When asked about the allegations, a spokesman for Focus on the Family replied, "If 90% of cadets identify themselves as Christian, it is common sense that Christianity will be in evidence on the campus…. I think a witch hunt is underway to root out Christian beliefs." This comment is telling, because it basically jibes with what religious conservatives have been saying for a long time. Most Americans are Christian, therefore the United States is a Christian country. Therefore, the institutions of the state ought to promote the religious views of the majority, and everybody else ought to shut up and take it. To be sure, I do think liberals can get carried away exaggerating the threat of the religious right. The truth is that the religious right does not have a great deal of influence at the national level — certainly not proportional to its share of the Republican base. President Bush hasn't even made the slightest effort to push a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, for instance — even though he says he supports it. The influence of the religious right mostly remains confined to isolated strongholds, such as Colorado Springs and Kansas. But although the religious right doesn't have the capacity to impose its views on the rest of the country, it certainly has the intent to do so. Conservatives may dismiss fears of a Christian theocracy as liberal hysteria. Theocracy, though, is not an inaccurate description of life at the Air Force Academy.