Patting the wrists, rolling the eyes.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by Gattigap
I really wish that GWB would stop this shit.

E.J. Dionne in WaPo:

• Lately the president has been chastising Democrats for not sitting down with him to fashion a solution. "I think there is a political price for not getting involved in the process," Bush said in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Wednesday. "I think there is a political price for saying, 'It's not a problem, I'm going to stay away from the table.' " But when Bush's critics show up at the president's taxpayer-financed events, they are often told there is no place at the table for dissenters.
  
  Just ask Karen Bauer, who tried to attend Bush's Social Security event in Denver last week with her friends Leslie Weise and Alex Young. They were given tickets by the office of Rep. Bob Beauprez (R-Colo.). "We had on suits; we didn't have any buttons or pins," Bauer said in a telephone interview. Beneath their sober attire, they wore T-shirts that read "Stop the Lies," but decided to keep them covered.
  
  Before the three could enter, they were stopped and directed toward "a man wearing a smiley-face tie," Bauer says. The man in the tie told them that the Secret Service was coming to see them. Someone "in a suit wearing an earpiece and a lapel pin" came along to say that "we had been ID'd" and "that if we had any ill intentions, we would be arrested and jailed." They were initially seated, she said, but the organizers had second thoughts and escorted them out.
  
  According to the Secret Service, the man they spoke with was not a government agent but a local Republican volunteer. It appears they were "ID'd" by a bumper sticker on their car that read: "No More Blood for Oil." So don't dare display a controversial bumper sticker if you want to hear your president. The Republican Party is watching you.
  
  This was not an isolated case. The Bush Social Security tour consists of strictly controlled political meetings similar in spirit to the authoritarian style of Bush rallies during the 2004 campaign. In a famous instance last September, a distraught mother whose son was killed in Iraq was arrested for protesting at a New Jersey rally for first lady Laura Bush. The charges were later dropped, which makes you ask why she was charged in the first place.

It was uncool to see him doing this crap during the campaign, but now it's just ludicrous. If he wants to do nothing but revivals, he should simply call them that, and bring his own damned tent.

Gattigap

You'd think that they'd just frisk us for salad dressing, no?

I'm probably on some FBI/Secret Service watch list. I notice a few extra black cars on my street every now and then. I hope they gave me a good nickname.