BUSHIT IN CIA - Brand Bush

Whoa! Bushevik Political Tsunami Alert: Head of CIA, Porter Goss, Resigns.

Of Course, the Question is Why Was Bush's Enforcer at Langley Dumped So Quickly?

So Far, Just the Usual Bush B.S. on the Bombshell.
There's a BIG Kahuna of a Story Here.

Look at archive links for background; HERE!

Is the Republican party a criminal cult, or what?

UPDATE: Flight 93 The Movie - WHY?

As reported by wayne madsen a week ago:

April 29, 2006 -- The cresting wave of major scandals in Washington. At week's end, there is every indication that the Bush White House is bracing for additional scandals.

A sex scandal involving the rented suites at the Watergate Hotel (the GOP just can't stay away from that place), female and male prostitutes and male GOP members of Congress and top CIA officials, including Director Porter Goss, and GOP-connected contractors is simmering but is expected to blow wide open in the next few weeks.

Goss's warnings about ex-CIA officers speaking to the media have more to do with curtailing information about the growing sex and bribery scandal than in tracking down leaks about pre-Iraq war intelligence.

Also, George W. Bush's top assistant Karl Rove appears to be facing at least two criminal charges that could be brought by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the next few weeks. The former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Lester Crawford is the subject of a federal grand jury for financial improprieties involving pharmaceutical companies and making false statements to Congress. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, along with GOP Chairman Ken Mehlman, have been implicated in a GOP phone jamming criminal case in New Hampshire.

The lack of federal response to Katrina and dissatisfaction with Barbour is causing Mississippi - once a solidly "red" state -- to turn pale blue and that means Trent Lott's re-election chances may not be as secure as Republican pollsters seem to believe.

Bush's recent staff changes were largely made in anticipation of a summer of widening scandals.

WMR's GOP scandal scorecard has been updated to show the current scandals.

The shake-up began with the resignation of Andrew Card as chief of staff and his replacement by Joshua Bolten.

Other changes have included the replacement of press secretary Scott McClellan with Fox News commentator Tony Snow. The move means that an experienced conservative television personality, who at times has been critical of the president, is the public face of the White House.

McClellan's last briefing at the White House was Friday. His final day isn't until next week, but the president is traveling in Florida the first part of the week, meaning McClellan would brief from the road.

Bush political aide Karl Rove kept his deputy chief of staff title, but was stripped of day-to-day oversight of policy coordination. That job was given to Joel Kaplan, Bolten's former No. 2 when he was budget director. Bush also named Rob Portman, a former six-term Republican congressman from Ohio who now serves as U.S. trade representative, to replace Bolten at the head of the Office of Management and Budget.

The vacant job of domestic policy adviser has not yet filled.

Other changes that have been expected included changes in the White House lobbying shop run by Candida Wolff, the expected departure of communications chief Nicolle Wallace, whose husband recently moved to New York. Officials have also done little to discourage speculation that Treasury Secretary John Snow is leaving.

Responding to one protester who accused him of lying, Rumsfeld said: "People need to trust each other and their government.
The idea that people in government are lying is fundamentally destructive of that trust."

***

"The Democrats are looking to appeal to the brain; the Republicans to the manipulation of emotions that race through the heart -- and are subject to the strategic use of television 'stories' and photo ops.

The parties are targeting two different body organs.

And in a world dominated by trivial news that appeals to the emotions -- and sensational celebrity gaffes, romantic entanglements and crimes -- the appeal to the brain has but the shortest of shelf lives.

It's barely but a blip on the radar screen of the evening news."

The editorial was entitled, "Governing by 'Soap Opera': The GOP Fine Art of Demagoguery vs. the Dazed and Confused Democratic Leadership Appeal to Reason."

We promised a second part, which we are posting today, because for the Republicans the medium is the message.

We live in a culture of brands. We buy products that are supposed to make us feel better, brighter, sexier, happier, not because they do; but because advertising tells us they will.

Coca-Cola was, perhaps, the most well known harbinger of the "brand" culture that has become America. It was a carbonated beverage that was supposed to refresh us, make us more popular, make us more hip.

Now, television news has merged with advertising and entertainment to become one big grinder for selling "brands" and the fantasy associations attributed to them.

Bush, given this context, has been a "brand" created by Karl Rove and sold by big media to the American public. No matter what Bush does, how he fails, the media picks him up in the morning and re-bestows his "brand" virtues of alleged honesty, compassion and leadership.

It's like squeezing dog food into a box of Wheaties every morning, but the media does it. Because the news media is now just part of one big branding machine.

The Republicans get this. The Democrats don't.

What Rove and FOX GOP News did was create the characteristics of the "Bush Brand" and write the mythology of the brand background. The rest of the media and the GOP echo chamber then became billboards and television and radio advertisements for "Brand Bush." Their job wasn't to report the news; their job was to sell the brand.

That explains why the Washington "correspondents" yukked it up when Bush did a sophomoric skit, but gave Stephen Colbert's lacerating lesson in truth the cold shoulder. Correspondents, as we have noted, were there with their producers who were there with the big media owners.

The big media owners don't want to upset Bush. The producers don't want to upset the owners. And the so-called "correspondents" don't want to upset the producers.

And what the big media owners want from "Brand Bush" is regulations and legislation that increase their corporate profits. News is now about keeping the owners of news companies highly profitable, not about the truth.

In the 2004 election, the head of Viacom (owner of CBS) said that he personally might be for Kerry but he would vote for Bush because Bush was good for Viacom's bottom line. News divisions on television now are just part of larger entertainment and business conglomerates that are depdendent on Republican administrations to do them big corporate favors, in a variety of ways.

This is just a fact. It's not speculation.

And so it is the easiest thing in the world for an ABC news program to move from plugging a Disney movie to promoting "Brand Bush." It's all sales, including not reporting news that might tarnish the "brand" of advertisers or the "brand" of the corporate parent.

Yes, the Democrats keeping plugging away trying to peddle public policy.

The Republicans are out selling "Brand Bush" through every television set in the nation -- and an army of radio stations -- along with most of the print media.

The Republicans have made most elections a referendum on character or "brands," even if it's horse meat you get when you open the box.

And the mainstream news media knows how to peddle horse meat.

They just call it "Brand Bush."

In Harpers:

The two defense contractors who allegedly bribed Cunningham, said the Journal, were Brent Wilkes, the founder of ADCS Inc., and Mitchell Wade, the founder of MZM Inc.; both firms profited greatly from their connections with Cunningham. The Journal also suggested that other lawmakers might be implicated. I've learned from a well-connected source that those under intense scrutiny by the FBI are current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence committees--including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post.

Hmmmmmmm. Powerful intelligence post?

I wonder who that could be?
Just more friendly corruption from the Republican(we can do anything we want, we're driving the bus)Party.

One Word: Snakeoil: The OIL-DRUG-GAS WAR

By: mondoconthumper on May 05, 2006 at 05:50pm

***

Color me confused. Everyone on TV seems to be buying the line that the Goss resignation has been planned for weeks. No natural curiosity about the fact that it takes effect immediately, or that there is no replacement, or that he had a meeting scheduled this afternoon he didn’t show up for. Not to mention the fact that as Professor Foland pointed out in the comments, the White House would’ve probably sacrificed its collective left nut to avoid stepping on a drunk Kennedy story.

But has the entire press corps turned into such a pile of humorless prudes that they can’t connect the dots in the Brent Wilkes hooker scandal?

HOOKERGATE

Washington Babylon

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