Kos had a post yesterday about 3 people in Colorado who got kicked out of one of Bu$h's Bamboozlepalooza tour stops. The reason? They had a "No Blood for Oil" sticker on the car they pulled up in.
A Colorado Springs paper has an article about this, and there's a good column in the Denver Post. And Scott McClellan was asked about it in yesterday's press briefing (scroll down to "tickets").
As usual, McClellan dodged the question posed to him, which was whether volunteers at the event were given guidelines about who to let in. As Kos and others point out, these are publicly funded events, and the fact that citizens are being kicked out for exercising their right to free speech on their cars is ridiculous and possibly illegal.
Q Are you concerned that the President is not hearing a lot of different viewpoints in these conversations?
MR. McCLELLAN: I think the President hears a lot of different viewpoints every day, when we follow the news. I mean, there's plenty of viewpoints being expressed on this issue. As I said, these conversations are about educating the American people about the problems facing Social Security. That's what they're designed for, to talk about the problems that we face and to talk about possible ideas for solving it. I think the American people expect that when members of Congress and their elected officials in Washington, D.C., see problems, that they work together to find ways to solve those problems.
The whole Bamboozlepalooza tour is such a disingenuous concept. If Bush really wanted to have a "conversation" about "possible ideas" for solving Social Security's problems, these events wouldn't be phony little stage shows where he "educates" the "public" (meaning puts forth his propaganda and scare tactics about Social Security's Imminent Demise to audiences of devout followers) but rather real discussions where citizens with a variety of viewpoints would actually be allowed to attend and to speak.
(It's all very reminiscent of the run-up to the war on Iraq... scare the public into thinking that there is an imminent threat so that Bu$h can push his agenda forth. And do so while saying that those darn liberals don't think there's a problem. In fact, just like with Iraq, most people recognize that there is/was a problem... the issue is how best to solve the problem.)
No, these "discussion" are clearly marketing photo opps for the prez... a chance to call on some people who will throw him some softballs and make it seem as though he a) really cares about saving Social Security and b) actually has viable plans for saving it. And rather than being honest about why citizens are being expelled from public events, McClellan chose to reinforce the idea that the "liberal media" is out there trying to misinform the public about the issue.
Let's see... who has more to gain from privatizing Social Security... the media, or Bu$h and his corporate cronies? And who might be more likely to be BSing the public about Social Security?
