America, no longer the Land of the Free?

[ck4829]

Bush's Chummy RW Reporter

"Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the

U.S. economy. Harry Reid was talking about soup lines, and Hillary

Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse.

Yet, in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock-solid

and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work -- you said

you're going to reach out to these people -- how are you going to work

with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?" - Jeff

Gannon

Jeff Gannon is the Washington Bureau Chief for Talon News

(http://www.talonnews.com/). His bio has been deleted from their web

pages, so the following was copied from the Google

(http://www.google.com) cache. The Google cache page containing the

unscrubbed Gannon bio was updated very quickly and is no longer

available.

Jeff lives on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC and covers the White House

for Talon News. He writes a syndicated column, Jeff Gannon's

Washington, that appears on his website: www.jeffgannon.com.

He is a frequent guest on talk radio appearing on nationally syndicated

and local shows.

Jeff is a graduate of the Pennsylvania State University System and

holds a Bachelor of Science in Education. He is also a graduate of the

Leadership Institute Broadcast School of Journalism.

Some bloggers (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/1/233534/4806) have

determined that the Leadership Institute Broadcast School of Journalism

is a right-wing $50 two-day-seminar-cum-diploma-mill.

Jeff Gannon is a pseudonym, he is the only member of the Whitehouse

press corps allowed to use a name other than his own legal name

(including married female members who wish to use their maiden names).

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/Jeff_Gannon

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Paid Pundits I

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.

The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during the show in 2004.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-01-06-williams-whitehouse_x.htm

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Paid Pundits II

In 2002, syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher repeatedly defended President Bush's push for a $300 million initiative encouraging marriage as a way of strengthening families.

"The Bush marriage initiative would emphasize the importance of marriage to poor couples" and "educate teens on the value of delaying childbearing until marriage," she wrote in National Review Online, for example, adding that this could "carry big payoffs down the road for taxpayers and children."

But Gallagher failed to mention that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the president's proposal. Her work under the contract, which ran from January through October 2002, included drafting a magazine article for the HHS official overseeing the initiative, writing brochures for the program and conducting a briefing for department officials.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2002160792_gallagher26.html

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Fear Mongering at the RNC

Right on schedule, the New York Daily News has begun its "anti-anarchist" fear mongering in the run-up the the RNC, this time with a front page "exclusive." (You would think that the Gephardt-Post incident would cue New Yorkers in to the bogusness of many "exclusives.")

"Fringe elements are hoping to spark major disruptions at the Republican National Convention with a series of sneaky tricks - including fooling bomb-sniffing dogs on trains bound for Penn Station, the Daily News has learned."

Patrice O'Shaughnessy is the lucky Daily News writer who gets the inside dirt on the "evil anarchists" from police commish Ray Kelly. Among other things, the article points to "internet postings" that urge protesters to cover their clothes in gunpowder to throw off bomb-sniffing dogs. No url for this mysterious website is provided.

http://rncwatch.typepad.com/rncwatch/2004/07/right_on_time_m.html

I personally remember hearing about how the RNC said a terrorist group that was known as the Weathermen that was active decades ago had supposedly decided to unite and cause terrorist attacks just to disrupt the 2004 RNC. No Weathermen were arrested, nobody was hurt, and not a single terrorist bomb went off.

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Was the CEO of a Voting Machine Company committed to helping Bush

win and not committed to counting the votes of people in Ohio?

The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told

Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to

helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

Walden O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold, attended a strategy pow-wow with

wealthy Bush benefactors - known as Rangers and Pioneers - at the

president's Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier this month. The next week,

he penned invitations to a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser to benefit the

Ohio Republican Party's federal campaign fund - partially benefiting

Bush - at his mansion in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington.

Ohio GOP spokesman Jason Mauk said the party approached O'Dell about

hosting the event at his home, the historic Cotswold Manor, and not the

other way around. Mauk said that under federal campaign finance rules,

the party cannot use any money from its federal account for state-

level candidates.

"To think that Diebold is somehow tainted because they have a couple

folks on their board who support the president is just unfair," Mauk

said.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4573.htm

Republicans tried to make a case for Diebold, but there is proof that

it is tainted.

A paper which appears in the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 2004 and is known as 'Analysis of an Electronic Voting System' was a report which came to the conclusion that Diebold had significant security flaws.

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. kick

[ananda]

2. no longer!

It's not a question, it's a fact on the ground.

America has never been the land of the free because some people have always been considered more 'free' than others.

However, for the last three and a half years, America gave up its right to be called anything close to the land of the free.

911 took care of that pesky problem of having to ensure rights and protections for everyone not rich.

Sue