Yet another clear sign that the Republican administration is pulling out the stops and lying through their teeth to the American voters surfaced this morning.
Not content with just editing testimony from the Director of the Center for Disease Control earlier this week, this time officials in the administration's FEMA division held a news conference last Tuesday regarding the Southern California fires but instead of reporters asking questions they used their own FEMA employees posing as reporters.
No one had any hard questions for the deputy administrator of FEMA, an agency deeply tarnished by its delayed action after Hurricane Katrina, when he held a news conference Tuesday to talk about the California wildfires."Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?" someone asked.
Indeed, the deputy administrator was. "I am very happy with FEMA's response so far," responded Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson Jr.The news conference looked like a success in the Bush administration's effort this week to demonstrate it could respond competently to a disaster.
On Friday, however, the agency admitted that the softball questions were posed by FEMA employees, not reporters.
Following the Katrina debacle FEMA needed a PR home run -- so they had their employees pose as reporters and gave themselves a great big pat on the back for doing a heckuva job. They announced the news conference with 15 minutes notice, so of course no reporters were able to be there, and FEMA employees posed as reporters and asked FEMA-supplied questions and used FEMA-supplied video cameras and then offered the video feed to television stations, representing the event as a legitimate news conference.
This hot on the heels of the White House "evisceration" of the CDC testimony... if you're not mad as hell you're not paying close enough attention. Your government is flat-out lying to you in a desperate attempt to influence the 2008 elections.
