Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Trotsky who?
Remember the opening scene of 1984? Winston Smith is at work changing old newspapers so that history will match the current policies of the regime. That was sure over the top. I mean, nothing like that could happen in real life. No government could be so convinced of their own invulnerability or of the public's gullibility and short memory as to think that they could get away with that. Could they?
There is a brewing controversy about what exactly was said at the White House press conference on October 31. Everyone agrees NBC’s Dick Gregory said this:

"Q Whether there’s a question of legality, we know for a fact that there was involvement. We know that Karl Rove, based on what he and his lawyer have said, did have a conversation about somebody who Patrick Fitzgerald said was a covert officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. We know that Scooter Libby also had conversations."

Congressional Quarterly and FNS both transcribed Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s answer as “That’s accurate.” The White House transcript lists McClellan’s answer as “I don’t think that’s accurate.”

[...]

If you listened to the clip, it’s clear McClellan says “that’s accurate.” Nevertheless, the White House is trying to get CQ and FNS to change their transcripts. They’ve refused.

Under Stalin, Soviet publishers were famous for airbrushing away disgraced and executed party members. During the Reagan presidency, it was a common event for each press conference to be followed by a second press conference that began with the words "what the president meant to say was..." The Reagan post press conference press conferences were necessary because Reagan was likely to say almost any damn thing when he appeared without a script. Stalin was a sinster control freak who couldn't be content dominating the present; he had to extend his control into the past. So, which one best describes the Bush White House?

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