{"id":7190,"date":"2006-04-20T10:40:10","date_gmt":"2006-04-20T14:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7190"},"modified":"2006-04-20T10:40:10","modified_gmt":"2006-04-20T14:40:10","slug":"two-presidents-zero-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/two-presidents-zero-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Two presidents, zero questions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[tag]China[\/tag]&#8217;s [tag]Hu Jintao[\/tag] will receive a warm welcome at the Bush White House today, complete with a 21-gun salute the on the South lawn. [tag]Bush[\/tag] and [tag]Hu[\/tag] will then discuss international affairs, followed by the traditional news conference that always accompanies meetings between the U.S. presidents and foreign leaders.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/04\/19\/AR2006041902318.html\">never mind that last part<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Contrary to the standard protocol for visiting heads of state, there will be no news conference at which American and [tag]Chinese[\/tag] [tag]journalists[\/tag] can ask unscripted [tag]questions[\/tag].<\/p>\n<p>The [tag]White House[\/tag]&#8217;s acquiescence to a Chinese demand that Mr. Hu not be subjected to possibly embarrassing queries about political prisoners, religious freedom or censorship of the Internet symbolizes a major element of Mr. Bush&#8217;s policy &#8212; his willingness to relegate China&#8217;s worsening performance on political freedom and human rights to a back burner.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I guess Hu isn&#8217;t exactly taking a &#8220;when in Rome&#8221; attitude.<\/p>\n<p>The WaPo <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/04\/19\/AR2006041902318.html\">slams Bush&#8217;s decision<\/a> to go along with this press-squelching policy and notes the pressing questions that the Chinese leader should face. But then again, I question whether Bush really has the standing and credibility to raise the point. After all, Hu avoids unscripted questions for fear of embarrassment and to avoid uncomfortable subjects. Doesn&#8217;t that sound a little familiar?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[tag]China[\/tag]&#8217;s [tag]Hu Jintao[\/tag] will receive a warm welcome at the Bush White House today, complete with a 21-gun salute the on the South lawn. [tag]Bush[\/tag] and [tag]Hu[\/tag] will then discuss international affairs, followed by the traditional news conference that always accompanies meetings between the U.S. presidents and foreign leaders. Actually, never mind that last part. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7190","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=7190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}