{"id":1309,"date":"2006-02-15T08:14:06","date_gmt":"2006-02-15T12:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=1309"},"modified":"2006-02-15T08:14:06","modified_gmt":"2006-02-15T12:14:06","slug":"these-dogs-dont-hunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=1309","title":{"rendered":"These Dogs Don’t Hunt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michelle Chen reports<\/a> on the GAO study requested by the House Democrat leadership one year ago when it was revealed the Bush administration was paying journalists to say nice things about pet projects. <\/p>\n

The study finds that the Bush administration slavered $1.4 billion of taxpayer dollars on various agencies from 2003 to mid-2005 to promote its agendas. Millions more went to PR agencies, towards building better connections with the media, and $100,000 to “individual members of the press,” for a total of $1.6 billion. <\/p>\n

The bulk of the money, $1billion, went to the Dept. of Defence. <\/p>\n

In this Committee on Government Reform Minority Office press release<\/a>, Rep. George Miller called the extent of the Bush administration’s propaganda effort “unprecedented and disturbing.”<\/p>\n

I wonder how much they’ve stolen to promote the plan<\/a> to “let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government.”<\/p>\n

The Republicans certainly have time to investigate this since Cheney, hardly skipping a beat upon hearing the news that the hunting companion he riddled with “more than 5 but ‘probably less than 150 to 200’ pellets<\/a>” had suffered a “heart ailment<\/a>,” took his misfiring self to the Capitol and apparently convinced his buddies<\/a> not to investigate illegal NSA wiretapping<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But his conscience is clear, after all, it was the victim’s fault for getting in his way.<\/p>\n

Maureen Dowd<\/a> (via<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Private citizens have been enlisted to blame the victim. Maybe poor Mr. Whittington put himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. But he was, after all, behind Vice, not in front of him. And the hunter pulling the trigger is supposed to make sure he has a clear shot. Wouldn’t it be, well, classy for Shooter to express just a bit of contrition and humility?<\/p>\n

Instead, the usual sliming has begun, with the Cheney camp trying to protect the vice president by casting a veteran hunter as Elmer Dud.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the press keeps laughing. How much is that laughter costing the taxpayer?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Chen reports on the GAO study requested by the House Democrat leadership one year ago when it was revealed the Bush administration was paying journalists to say nice things about pet projects. The study finds that the Bush administration … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-l7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}