Bullshitpalooza™: The Road Show Continues

Speaking of the fake town-halls, as we have been for longer than we should have had to, Pravda has more fun facts about them:

The mostly white audience in this mostly black southern city clapped wildly as Bush took what he called the "presidential roadshow" to its 14th state Friday. He was greeted like Elvis -- adoring fans hooting and hollering, and hanging on his every word.

Quick, someone get him a peanut-butter-and-bacon sandwich and a bottle of Vicodin, stat!

The few dissenting voices in the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts were quickly silenced or escorted out by security. One woman with a soft voice but firm opposition to Bush was asked to leave, even though her protests were barely audible beyond her section in the back corner of the auditorium.

Because he really, really wants to hear your concerns, so long as you agree with him. Don't agree? Well, tough titty, because it's not like he knows his stuff well enough to actually debate it.

The carefully screened panelists spoke admiringly about Bush, his ideas, his "bold" leadership on Social Security.

If the presentations sound well rehearsed, it's because they often are. The guests at these "Oprah"-style conversations trumpet the very points Bush wants to make.

....

These meticulously staged "conversations on Social Security," as they are called, replicate a strategy that Bush used to great effect on the campaign trail. But instead of appealing to his political base in hopes of driving up turnout, Bush this time is targeting a far narrower audience of swing voters in the Senate -- centrists who so far appear unswayed by the president's public salesmanship.

People keep talking about how "bold" Bush's "vision" is, whether it's remaking the Middle East, or remaking Social Security. I think they are mistaking boldness for fecklessness and insouciance. No matter how many facts and figures you pummel the guy with, he just plugs along, la la la la I CAN'T HEEEEAAR YOU!

And his usual chorus of iconodules would rather commit seppuku than admit that Dear Cheerleader was selling snake-oil to the rubes, using the time-tested huckster method of pre-screened shills and ringers. "Bold" means you can defend your ideas in an honest fashion; Bush deliberately avoided bringing all this up before his "accountablility moment" last November, and has spent most of the last two months pimping this thing, and has yet to debate any of the fine points -- or even the broad strokes -- with anybody.

This should tell even the most slavish bootlicker something, but again, I think they already know; admitting it would make their heads explode. They would undergo the mental anguish of a Dungeons & Dragons character changing alignment.

The White House follows a practiced formula for each of the meetings. First it picks a state in which generally it can pressure a lawmaker or two, and then it lines up panelists who will sing the praises of the president's plan. Finally, it loads the audience with Republicans and other supporters.

To help make its case, the White House recruits people such as Mark Darr, 31, an insurance agent from Benton, Ark., who joined the president on stage at a forum in Little Rock last month. In a subsequent interview, Darr said he believes he was chosen because he went to college with one son of Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee and provided insurance for another.

After the governor's office called, Darr said, he began receiving one call after another from the White House, quizzing him on his thoughts on Social Security and his family history, just as they did all the other candidates. "I'm sure they wanted to . . . make sure they weren't going to embarrass the president," Darr said.

Not so his mother. At first when he mentioned that she receives Social Security, he said, White House aides seemed eager to add her to the panel. Then they called her. "She wasn't really for the private accounts, so they didn't decide to use her," Darr said.

It doesn't even seem to occur to Mr. Darr that his mother might know something about this issue that he doesn't. At any rate, good thing they weren't so rash as to include Mother Darr and her silly concerns to the "conversation".

The night before the event, the chosen participants gathered for a rehearsal in the hall in which the president would appear the next day. An official dispatched by the White House played the president and asked questions. "We ran through it five times before the president got there," Darr said.

You really have to wonder about people who so un-self-aware, so utterly lacking in self-reflection, that they'll just go along with this stupid shit. Game shows and sitcoms are more spontaneous than these "conversations".

Erma Fingers Hendrix, 74, a retired nurse who also participated in the Little Rock event, said she believes she was picked because she has been active for years in Republican women's clubs in Arkansas and campaigned for Bush in 2000 and 2004 -- once even introducing him at a campaign rally just before he was elected president. "The ones who contacted me in 2000 probably said, 'Erma's easy to work with,' " she said.

Hendrix said the administration official who helped them practice educated the panelists on the plan without scripting them.

"It was just a matter of learning," she said. "We just really talked about what was going on, what the president was proposing and what did we think about it. . . . They didn't prompt me what to say or how to say it."

Don Farnsworth, 74, a retired pilot and Air Force major, described a similar session before Thursday's event in Montgomery, Ala.

"They had a couple people on the staff come down and introduce us all," he recalled. "We all went into a small room, and they told us what they were looking for was what our ideas were on the president's Social Security plan." By then, he said, the interview process had thinned out the group. "They found out how we felt about it, and I guess that's how we got chosen."

Well, I guess that makes it all better. Mrs. Hendrix and Mr. Farnsworth weren't actually handed scripts per se and made to rehearse, they just made the cut of interviewees based on their endorsement of Dear Leader and His Plan, which, according to Tom DeLay, hasn't been written yet.

With signs saying "Protecting our Seniors" flanking him, the president talks at length at these events about his desire for bipartisanship and a solution to save a troubled system for future generations. Nothing is said of the benefit cuts White House officials privately acknowledge will be part of any Social Security deal.

....

Unlike the seniors at these events, most older Americans, when polled, express deep skepticism about private accounts. And many Republicans are dubious. Bush, who continues to calibrate his pitch, told the audience here the solution is simple: Members from both parties should lay down their arms, come to the table and hammer out a compromise.

"There's still people saying, 'I'm not so sure I want to get involved,' " Bush said. "Now is the time to put aside our political differences and focus on solving this problem for generations to come."

Uh, no, asshole -- you show your hand first. Seniors may enjoy hopping the occasional charter to Atlantic City or Reno to play a few slots, but they're not usually into playing Texas Hold 'em over whether or not they get to live on cat food. At a certain point, you have to just assume that any sentient being realizes this, and that Bush's obvious reluctance to talk about facts and figures and plans is deliberate, that it would be tantamount to a con man explaining the mechanics of his grift.