10/15/2004 12:49:00 PM|||Joe|||Go read this Salon article. Check this quote:“When you go into a place to check for bugs, every frequency in the spectrum is suspect until you can identify it — and there are thousands of frequencies. I have found wireless mike signals transmitted during [White House] press briefings, with multiple subject advisors. You'll hear the speaker, and another voice will cut in, like ‘It's 28 million’ — and the speaker will repeat, ‘It's 28 million.’ The speaker will institute certain delays or will ask the question again, and will receive a prompt.”
This is apparently done quite often. Clinton and Reno did this, apparently.
Ok. So run with it for a second. How many times have we had members of the Bush administration deny saying things? They're either lying or they have incredible memory problems. Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush have all made these bizarre denials. Some (unkind) people have suggested that Bush is still drinking. Were that true (and I don't think it is), that doesn't really explain the behavior of the rest of his administration. Unless they're all evil, liars and/or alcoholics.
But what if they're all being prompted?
Think about it. It's gotta be weird to be prompted like this. I sometimes have a hard time reading aloud to people because I'm concentrating on not mispronouncing words, speaking clearly, not getting tongue-tied or stumbling over words, etc. Sometimes I can read a paragraph out loud and not really absorb it. Make sense? Now imagine that you're being prompted — you're repeating things being spoken to you a split-second later. You're trying not to look mesmerized. Trying to make it sound natural.
All that combined with the possibility that you maybe don't totally believe what your being prompted to say may lead you to wildly contradict yourself later.
Kerry sometimes mis-speaks and then clarifies later, but he hasn't (so far) exhibited this frustrating and bizarre contradictory behavior.
But I could be totally off. I've never used one of those things. Something to wonder about, though.|||109786973785388786|||Bush Admin Prompted?