Years ago we sat and eagerly awaited Saturday Night Live, today we wait for Bill Mahr on HBO and this past Friday night was well worth the wait. Bill Mahr was flanked by Robin Williams, Tommy Thompson and Joe Biden. The male prostitute story led the show.

Tommy Thompson was like a robot, any chance he was given to speak it was the same mantra....We have to give the President his due over how great the vote went in Iraq, or, Our soldiers are the best military of any in the world. He had no thoughts of his own, in fact he looked scared sitting next to Robin Williams. Robin Williams is not only brilliant in comedy but by far surpases Thompson's understanding of anything relating to the U.S..

Biden was great, but made clear, the male prostitute story will only be investigated if a senate majority member of a committee orders an investigation. We all know that there is no republican that is going to ask for that. Biden also lay blame with the news media. If this were Bill Clinton we would be looking at impeachment proceedings. Biden is right. The press is dropping the ball on this.

We all need to pressure the media for more investigative reporting on this. After all this man obtained a rare interview with Karl Rove. How did that happen? How could a $200 per hour male hooker get an interview with George W. Bush's brain?

We will have to make the noise. We cannot be silent on this story. The American people have been restricted from visiting the White House, yet a $200 per hour male hooker has sat in the West Wing of the White House since April 2003. What is going on?

Pete Newcome

Manipulation in politics is even worse than outright lying. Why? Because it's so INSIDIUOUS. It's calculated - methodical - complete duplicity.

This Jeff Gannon - aka/Jim-Jeff Guckert - was led by White House Staffers into the White House Briefing Room. What outright fraud & deceit.

This should be a MAJOR STORY. When the powers-that-be are fully intent on completely rehaping our reality - it's time to pull the plug - big-time!!!

Let's keep on this Jeff GannonGate Story and see where it leads to - Karl Rove, Scott McClellan - George Bush!

Bartcop.com has a couple of very telling photos of George W. Bush with Gannon - in a little innocent hug, kind of like the Monica photo that drifted around with Bill Clinton. You can see it at http://www.bartcop.com/gannon-bush.jpg

When people see these pics they'll be asking, Mr. President, did you have sex with that man? Bush has never had much of a poker face. He's easy to read... like when he was in the classroom getting the news that the World Trade Center had been attacked for the 2nd time... you could tell he knew exactly what was going on... well, in these photos, it looks like there's a little something going on with these two rakes.

nydailynews
ILCA
wnd

NYTimes
The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show'

Published: February 20, 2005

HE prayers of those hoping that real television news might take its cues from Jon Stewart were finally answered on Feb. 9, 2005. A real newsman borrowed a technique from fake news to deliver real news about fake news in prime time.

Let me explain.

On "Countdown," a nightly news hour on MSNBC, the anchor, Keith Olbermann, led off with a classic "Daily Show"-style bit: a rapid-fire montage of sharply edited video bites illustrating the apparent idiocy of those in Washington. In this case, the eight clips stretched over a year in the White House briefing room - from February 2004 to late last month - and all featured a reporter named "Jeff." In most of them, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, says "Go ahead, Jeff," and "Jeff" responds with a softball question intended not to elicit information but to boost President Bush and smear his political opponents. In the last clip, "Jeff" is quizzing the president himself, in his first post-inaugural press conference of Jan. 26. Referring to Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton, "Jeff" asks, "How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"

"And then, of course, there's the 'Jeff Gannon' scandal. Someone high up in the Administration, either in Scott McClellan's office or even higher -- and you know who I mean -- moved 'Jeff Gannon' (real name James Guckert) into the White House press corps, fed him scoops, enlisted him in dirty-tricks against Dem candidates, and made sure he was always there to throw puffball questions to McClellan and Bush.
"Apparently, this non-journalist GOP propagandist -- and given his night-job as a paid male escort for gay men, a potential national security risk -- received his credentials without having been vetted by the FBI and Secret Service. He even was given access to the White House press room before Talon News, his ostensible employer, even existed. Who made all that happen for him?
"I'm not sure Guckert was receiving subsidies directly from the White House -- it probably was more subtle, his salary and bonuses coming from cutaway Republican outfits like GOPUSA & Talon News, financed by wealthy Texas GOP operatives. Guckert, a true believer, probably did it for ideological reasons and for the White House press-pass prestige. But I'd try to see if there was a money trail there anyway; there often is. (Who paid Guckert when he was sliming Daschle in South Dakota, for example? Who was Guckert working for when he got involved in the Valerie Plame scandal?)
MOLTO DESTRUCTO POLITICS
"The Bushies aren't averse to playing molto destructo against Democrats; give them a taste of their own medicine. Stick to the high ground, but don't let them get away with a thing. If Pelosi and Reid and Dean want to play politics against this crew, they're going to have to mix it up in the streets; when they win a few victories (Social Security, denying extremist judges, etc.), the playing field will be a bit more level, and more rank-and-file Dem trying to shield greedy corporations and malpracticing doctors, for example, from being awarded big bucks by juries for their crimes ocrats, and moderate Republicans, will find they can have spines, too." Independent Media

• “I think it is bad for Republicans to be kicking gays.” Told that one conservative supporter was saying he had pledged not to hire gay people, Bush said sharply: “No, what I said was, I wouldn't fire gays.”

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/politics/10957839.htm?1c

Fake News Watch

Poseur or plant? Here's a quick overview of some of the coverage of the Jeff Gannon/James Guckert story:
Here's Guckert in a long interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper .
"COOPER: Was anyone at the White House aware of your private activities?
"GANNON: I would say that -- I would say no, absolutely, categorically no.
"COOPER: There are many questions that have been raised about whether or not -- people raising the specter that you are somehow a White House plant. Are you a White House plant? . . .
"GANNON: Absolutely not."
And as for the allegation that Guckert got access to a secret CIA memo about Valerie Plame, Guckert confirmed that he had just read about it in the Wall Street Journal.
"I was given no special information by the White House or by anybody else, for that matter," he told Cooper.
But Paul Harris writes in the Observer: "Suddenly, his 'softball' questions to White House officials looked less like eccentricities and more like plotting by an administration which has frequently displayed a dark mastery of the arts of press control."
Dotty Lynch writes for CBS News that "the leap to a possible [Karl] Rove connection was unavoidable."
Hendrik Hertzberg writes in the New Yorker: "The non-Fox cable news outlets began to pick up on it last week; MSNBC even assayed a special logo, 'Gannongate.' A better name for it, though, would be 'Nothinggate,' because nothing is what is likely to come of it. What all the memorable scandals of the past thirty years -- real and fake alike, from Watergate to the Clinton impeachment -- have had in common is that the opposition party controlled at least one house of Congress, which gave it the power to hold hearings and issue subpoenas. If Bush ends up having an easier time of it in his second term than any of his two-term predecessors since F.D.R., it won't be because the scandals aren't there. It'll be because the tools to excavate them are under lock and key."
Joe Strupp writes in Editor & Publisher that Guckert "obtained his first White House press credentials as a representative of the pro-Republican Web site, GOPUSA, not as a Talon News reporter, as previously believed, Press Secretary Scott McClellan told E&P today.
"McClellan said White House Press Office staffers considered the openly partisan site to be a legitimate news organization when they gave Guckert, a.k.a. Jeff Gannon, the first of numerous day passes in February 2003."
Ralph Blumenthal writes in the New York Times that Guckert's former boss denies that Guckert was an administration plant or was given preferential treatment.
Blumenthal also spoke to Guckert. "Asked why he did not, in his function as a White House reporter, even try to interview White House officials, he said, 'I thought there was a lot of meat that came out of the press briefings.
" 'You may say that lacks some kind of journalistic ambition,' he added."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44219-2005Feb22.html?nav=...

New Yorker

You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God! the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there’s no occasion to.
...
The unusually blatant sycophancy of the question naturally drew attention to the questioner, and in the weeks since a curious story has emerged. Jeff Gannon, the reporter for the news service called Talon News, turns out to be “Jeff Gannon,” a “reporter” for a “news service” called “Talon News.”
...
Last Thursday, Bush had another press conference, to announce the appointment of a director of national intelligence, and he made an elaborate show of familiarity with his interlocutors. A dozen of them got to ask questions, and the President called upon all but one by name. Perhaps he was simply letting the world know that from now on the reporters who are vouchsafed the privilege of asking questions at Presidential press conferences will actually be reporters. But be careful, White House correspondents. He knows who you are.

E&P
"I found out that he worked for a GOP site, and I didn't think it was my place to call on him because he worked for something that was related to the party," Fleischer said in a phone interview. "He had the editor call me and made the case that they were not related to the Republican Party. He said they used the GOP name for marketing purposes only."

Before engaging Mr. Guckert on "a volunteer basis," Mr. Eberle said he himself got temporary press credentials to attend a White House briefing. "I think I asked a question about a U.N. resolution on Iraq," Mr. Eberle said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/national/20gannon.html?oref=login

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40508-2005Feb20.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/politics/20talk.html?pagewanted=all&po...