{"id":3605,"date":"2005-02-24T09:38:46","date_gmt":"2005-02-24T14:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3605.html"},"modified":"2005-02-24T09:38:46","modified_gmt":"2005-02-24T14:38:46","slug":"crowd-control-international-addition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/crowd-control-international-addition\/","title":{"rendered":"Crowd Control — international addition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Throughout every step of Bush’s presidency, his audiences have been carefully scrutinized to make sure he’s only exposed to loyal, sycophantic fans. With this in mind, it’s hardly a surprise the Bush gang would insist on the same policy overseas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bush was originally scheduled to hold a town-hall meeting with regular German citizens today in Mainz. But when the German government couldn’t guarantee friendly questions, that became a small, carefully-screened roundtable discussion with young Germans who have visited the U.S. on exchange programs.<\/p>\n

And only part of it was even made public.<\/p>\n

Somewhat ironically, according to the transcript<\/a> of the public part, the first question was about free speech — in Russia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s upsetting enough to have a president who won’t address his own constituents if they might disagree with his policies, but the fact that he follows the same example overseas is an embarrassment to the country.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind, this wasn’t just another brief stop on Bush’s tour. According to a report in Der Speigel<\/a> (via Kos<\/a>), this town hall meeting was supposed to be a key component of Bush’s German trip.<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, the Bush administration had declared that the chat — which could have brought together tradesmen, butchers, bank employees, students and all other types to discuss trans-Atlantic relations — would be the cornerstone of President George W. Bush’s brief trip to Germany […] <\/p>\n

The Germans, though, insisted that a free forum should be exactly that. Wolfgang Ischinger, Germany’s Ambassador to the United States, explained to the New York Times last week: “We told them, don’t get upset with us if they ask angry questions.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Bush gang won’t get upset; they just won’t show up. There’s a firm “Sycophants Only” policy in place — and there are no exceptions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Throughout every step of Bush’s presidency, his audiences have been carefully scrutinized to make sure he’s only exposed to loyal, sycophantic fans. With this in mind, it’s hardly a surprise the Bush gang would insist on the same policy overseas. Bush was originally scheduled to hold a town-hall meeting with regular German citizens today in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}