Paying for Bush's Campaigning
Belief:
What if People Actually Treated Religion as Just a Metaphor (Like Trekkies and Secular Jews)?
Greta Christina
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
15 Signs American Society Is Coming Apart at the Seams
David DeGraw
DrugReporter:
When It’s Crunch Time at College, Students Turn to Adderall
Erik Hayden
Environment:
20 Weird, Crazy Ideas for Helping the Earth
Food:
The War on Soy: Why the 'Miracle Food' May Be a Health Risk and Environmental Nightmare
Tara Lohan
Health and Wellness:
Pharmaceutical Giant Paid $500,000 to Psychiatrist Who Used Chicago's Poor as Guinea Pigs
Christina Jewett and Sam Roe
Immigration:
Dobbs' Resignation Was Long Overdue
Janet Murguía
Media and Technology:
Is Right-Wing Media Hustler Trying to "Blackmail" Obama's Attorney General over ACORN Videos?
David Edwards, Muriel Kane
Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler
Politics:
New Right-Wing Craze: Using Bible Quote to Pray That Obama’s 'Days Be Few'
Amanda Terkel
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Hey Guys, Don't Want Kids? A Vascetomy Is Probably the Way to Go
Anna Clark
Rights and Liberties:
Economic Crisis Is Getting Bloody -- Violent Deaths Are Now Following Evictions, Foreclosures and Job Losses
Nick Turse
Sex and Relationships:
How Abstinence-Only Programs Perpetuate Dangerous Stereotypes
Martha Kempner
Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders
Water:
Poseidon's Financial Shell Game: Why Is a Private Desalination Plant Asking for Public Money?
Peter Gleick
World:
Army Sends Mom to Afghanistan, Infant to Protective Services
Dahr Jamail
I wonder -- is there anything that White House political operative Karl Rove won't try to turn into a political ad?
I'm not even counting the big P.T. Barnum stunts, like posing George in a Top-Gun costume on that aircraft carrier last year, or secretly flying Bush all the way to Iraq last Thanksgiving so he could be photographed holding a turkey.
For these guys, everything is a prop paid for by us taxpayers. Take the federal budget, which usually is crammed with statistics and charts detailing the seriousness of the government's business. But this year, for the first time ever, the document includes 27 glossy photos of our boy George in various heroic poses -- here he is in front of a giant American flag, here he is talking with an old woman in a wheelchair, here he is helping a child learn to read. One expects to find a centerfold pop-up of Bush hugging a puppy.
Speaking of popping up, His Georgeness popped up at the famous Daytona 500 NASCAR race, posturing before 180,000 racing fans and a huge TV audience. If he wants to make a campaign appearance there, fine. But Rove put him in Air Force One, costing us taxpayers about $57,000 an hour for the flight, and they used the plane itself as a prop, dramatically swooping over the racetrack as he departed -- a priceless publicity shot dutifully covered by NBC, which broke away from coverage of the race itself to show the prez soaring up and away.
Bush even uses taxpayer funds for literally making TV ads. His new Medicare prescription drug law, which actually will deliver more to the profiteering drug companies than to senior citizens, has been turned into a glowing 30-second TV ad by the White House. The ad, which softly (and falsely) says, "Same Medicare, More Benefits," cost us taxpayers $9.5 million to air, but it is so grossly political that CBS stopped running it.
For the Bushites, all the world is a stage, and we're merely the people who have to pay for their show.
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