I think Dennis Miller said it best (before his unfortunate attack of 9/11 psychosis…)
“President Bush surrounds himself with intelligent men the way a doughnut hole surrounds itself with doughnut.”
Apparently, too much Elmo and Mr. Noodle affects the brain. The United States is not a fascist dictatorship, by any definition.
I won’t deny my brain’s affected. And I’m grateful to live in this country; I wouldn’t dare presume to compare my lifestyle with that of persons living under a true fascist regime.
But that son of a bitch lying pondscum narcissistic delusional bastard in the White House is sure doing his damndest to behave as a dictator. He and the rest of his evil cronies ought to be run out of town on a rail.
Well, your casual use of the “fascist” tag calls into doubt all of your other epithets, just so you know.
It wasn’t casual.
Oh, I must have misunderstood. If it wasn’t casual, it must have been considered, at least.
So what, in your considered opinion, leads you to believe that we are living under a fascist regime?
Bingo! This is exactly the case. Bush is the folksy frontman. He is not and has never been the actual decision-maker.
Okay, Updike, I withdraw my intentional but uneducated use of “fascist” to describe Dubya. Should’ve checked with my Hubby first, he’s better educated on the subject. Although he agrees with me that Bush’s tendency to respond first with military action does head in that direction.
Perhaps someone better read can come up with an appropriate term for a President who stomps all over civil liberties, flat out lies to his constituents, blurs the line between Church and State, and initiates a war because a Bad Man threatened his Daddy.
Mr. Noodle would’ve made a better President.
Hey, at least you admit when you don’t know what you’re talking about. Kudos to you then!
Oh wait, I forgot the smiley! 
In all seriousness, the answer to your question is pretty much “yes”. I can remember when it had to be subtle. But the standard has now reached the point where all politicians just state their talking points regardless of the question, and this is accepted. It has to be accepted because, as I say, all politicians do it, so you can’t change the behaviour by voting against it.
More on Sgt Long. A quote from his blog:
Another page of his blog has him praying.
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a picture of this man, bright and clear.
Bingo.
Who is smarter, a few guys who figure out that the Emporer is naked on parade, or the Emporer who fools many into thinking he’s wearing clothes?
I don’t think we should ever lose sight of the fact Clinton got a blow-job.
Double bingo!
It’s still the same group of people that put King Reagan on the throne, you know.
The Clinton period was just an interlude they had to sit out, grinding their teeth.
Hey DtC, I don’t believe what ANYONE tells me, let alone the Pentagon.
You think Bush is responsible for fooling the electorate? Do you really think that without his team of Svengalis that Bush would be able to convince anyone that he should be president? I think you give the man too much credit if you think Bush is the one doing the tricking.
Remember that in the story the Emperor was just as convinced as the public that he was wearing clothes. George “I have a mandate” Bush is naked but doesn’t know it. He insulates himself from bad press so he doesn’t have to hear anything but praise. He thinks being a “war president” should automatically earn him points, even though he earned that title by starting an unnecessary war. He values loyalty above all other things, because loyal people don’t tell him anything that he doesn’t want to hear. Like the word no.
I think this “craftiness” that people attribute to Bush is imagined. There ain’t nothing crafty about this man. Sure, he’s smart enough to surround himself with intelligent people. But even the high school jock who never learned how to read is smart enough to know that if he wants to keep playing ball, he needs to pay a few brainiacs to do his homework for him.
I’m not sure that i’m quite as pessimistic about the possibility of changing things. If the voters let all their elected representatives know that this sort of obfuscation is not acceptable, then it’s possible we might see some changes.
Also, if the media did a better job of pointing out the discrepancies between the bullshit that these people say in their daily press briefings, on the one hand, and the reality of things as they actually are, on the other, then maybe the politicians might actually start to become embarrassed enough to answer some questions properly.
We can’t just blame the politicians for this shit. It happens because the media lets it happen and because we, in a general sense, don’t complain about it loudly enough or often enough. And i think that the first step in doing this needs to be a willingness to complain about lying and obfuscation even when it’s our guy up on the podium, and not just when it’s the opposition.
Not to worry, folks! Pravda, I mean FOX News, reports a Pentagon denial of the rehearsal.
President Noodle, how would you tackle Al Qaida?
No, that’s Iraq. Al Qaida!
That puts her ahead of this administration.
The thing that stuck me the most upon hearing the clips, was Mr. Bush’s stumbling through the comments and questions. It was a very striking contrast to the confidence I could hear in his speech recently as six months ago. It is becoming painful to hear him speak, rather it’s becoming painful for a new reason.
The US is not a dictatorship. But the amount of political influence that corporations have and the deference that politicians and the public give to corporations is immense. The definition of fascism is a state run for corporations. As radical/silly as it sounds to call someone or a country fascist, the US has many fascist tendencies and continues to move towards fascism. The nazis didn’t start out with genocide, they gained power with socialist promises and then turned to a corporate state while consolidating AH’s dictatorship.
Does anyone have a media link or transcript to the event so that I can decide for myself whether the soldiers were told what responses to give or what questions to ask? Scripting a photo op is normal and expected… I’m not going to say Clinton did it, I’ll say practically every public figure with the luxury of a press department does it. You can’t have a bunch of people verbally trampling over each other, redirecting questions, or fumbling because they have no knowledge of what they’ve been asked about.
What honesty demands is that is people aren’t being stuffed with phony questions or phony answers. So did that happen in this case, or not?