There’s one thing that’s certain about Bu$hCo and the Republican Party: when people start figuring out their game, and begin speaking up about the Emperor’s invisible suit, the apparatchiki start a coordinated pushback. The key factors are public awareness of the fraud of “compassionate conservatism,” which is dedicated to separating the middle and lower classes from their money as quickly and as viciously as possible, and the public discussion of this by any media entity or figure, and any public portrayal of the inherent falseness and fakery of the whole thing.

As long as the media faithfully toes the Bu$hCo line and repeats the storyline preferred by the ideological gurus of the high maintenance think tanks, everything is wonderful. As soon as some original thought creeps into a public presentation the entire well-oiled machinery of the VRWNM swings into action to destroy the dissenting voice and squash the heresy of honest reporting.

Case in point: the media has been reporting the truth about Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the start of the Bu$hCo campaign that Iran is an immediate danger to America. The media must be whipped back into line. The last week has seen pushback by several top faces of Bu$hCo expressing concern that the media is unfair, and reporting only the bad news from Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran, has been left alone since all the preparations haven’t been completed yet.

Jeff Huber has written about the appearance of viral email marketing of “good news,” following the official story line that the media will report IEDs, bomb attacks and assassinations of Iraqis and US troops, but never talk about the school that has been repainted, or the water plant that is back in operation, or the electric plant that has been repaired. (That electric plant, of course, is only generating electricity 3 hours a day, but – Hey! That’s progress, because it used to only generate electricity one hour a day.) It’s interesting to note that the viral email Jeff is discussing contains mostly photos from Afghanistan, which is only dangerous outside Kabul, rather than Iraq, which is dangerous only outside the Green Zone, except for when there are rocket or mortar attacks, or the occasional IED inside the Green Zone.

The media, which is corporately owned, obediently started to broadcast a few minor good news stories along with the daily recitation of all the death, maiming and catastrophe of a Bu$hCo boondoggle which is now costing $200 Billion-with-a-B per DAY. Instructions from plush corporate offices in skyscrapers high over Manhattan and Los Angeles went out: “Get out of the Green Zone, and report about some good news.”

Bureau chiefs and independent reporters wired back: “Please send more money. It is so dangerous here we need fully armored SUVs and three chase cars filled with bodyguards to go outside the Green Zone.” The Corporate empty suits read these wires, gulped, looked at the cost estimates, compared them to advertising income, and suggested “Do what you can; cut and paste CENTCOM press releases.”

There is a new theme in Bu$hCo’s propaganda: the good news is out there; we’re repairing and repainting schools; troops are buying crayons and coloring books with their own funds (Halliburton decided not to compete with Binney & Smith) but we can’t tell you about them because the “insurgents” will immediate go and blow them up, because after all, the “insurgents” watch our news broadcasts.

“Dr” Laura Ingraham was on the Today Show on March 21st, complaining that the “media” prefers to report news from Baghdad hotel balconies, rather than from out in Injun country, where people are dying. David Gregory, one of the few reporters who has not yet handed his testicles to Bu$hCo for safekeeping, discusses the matter with her here, and it’s well worth watching.

Howard Kurtz, who allegedly reports on the media for CNN- did you know he’s married to a Republican Party political operative? – has a live conversation with Lara Logan, who reports from Baghdad for CBS News, here and she straightens his tie for him, as well as discussing “Dr” Laura’s ridiculous hate speech about reporters who don’t want to risk their lives to provide video of Bu$hCo’s propaganda.

But when all else fails, Bu$hCo is quite capable of invoking the “state secret” page of their playbook. That’s where you hear that the good news is out there, but the Iraqis al Quaeda foreign fighters terrorists ”insurgents“ hate our freedoms and if we tell you where the great stuff is, they’ll just blow it up. This play seems to fly in the face of many polls that show Iraqis overwhelmingly want our asses out of their country, are tired of the occupation, and agree that the insurgency is both right, and is winning. This theme was first field tested late last year, and no one immediately laughed at it, so Bu$hCo figures it’s a winner.

An AP story from last November, originally published in a Kansas City paper and repeated on Daily Kos, discusses a Congressional fact-finding mission to Iraq, and the injuring of two of them in what was reported as a traffic accident on the way to the Baghdad Airport. The problem is that the road from BIA to Baghdad is so frickin’ dangerous that vehicles travel at full speed and damn the torpedoes. Now, even in the US, where roads are well-lit, and not pockmarked with craters from RPGs and IEDs, authorities will tell you full speed at night is not a wise thing to do.

Right around that time, I printed out something I found somewhere in the internet. I have no idea where I found it, but obviously it was a seminal moment for me, the first time I’d heard of this fertilizer:

I have heard it all now. Clicking through the channels, I stopped briefly on Fox News to listen to Rep Tim Murphy (R-PA) talking about his recent trip to Iraq. He said things were improving daily, and that the reason we don’t hear anything about the successful reconstruction effort is that if we announce the successes, al Quaeda will seek to destroy them. NEW TALKING POINT: “Can’t talk about the successful projects because insurgents will blow them up, so you’ll just have to trust us.” New spin on an old talking point. Instead of blaming the press for not covering success stories, they blame the insurgents for not being able to tell people about success stories. Hey, don’t we pay journalists in Iraq good money to talk about success stories? Armed with this talking point they will no longer be necessary

The test marketing was successful, and now we’re seeing the new spring lineup.