Benghazi

[B-Man]

This how the media approaches it:

 

 

Washington Post Breaks Benghazi Scandal Wide Open

 

You're weird and fringe if you're tweeting about Benghazi, a study shows.

Thanks to Demographics Pro, a Twitter analysis firm, we have some vague idea of who’s tweeting the most: According to their report, #Benghazi tweeters are 58.3% male, with an average age of 52.6 years and a median income of $61,800 (“within the top 20 percent of overall Twitter distribution,” the report adds).

The tweeters are also overwhelmingly white and married, according to Demographics Pro; they also like Chick-fil-A and Walmart — two brands most often associated with conservatives.

 

 

I wonder what Demographics Pro would say about people tweeting about gay marriage or gun control?

 

This is an extremely obvious and odious media tactic -- to portray those on its political side as Just Like You, and those on the opposite side as Not Like You. The Other.

 

Whenever the media covers an anti-war protest or a pro-choice rally, they throw out a diverse rainbow of descriptions of attendees.

 

You've seen this sentence a thousand times before: "They come from all walks of life -- grandmothers, young mothers, carpet installation workers, policemen, soldiers, teachers, doctors, retirees, college students, and the occasional activist."

 

Note that what that description of the attendees of a leftwing event is attempting to do -- by throwing out a very broad spectrum of the human experience and associating it with the cause, it is attempting to make you see yourself in the people there, to trigger some feeling of empathy, of sympatico, to see that these people are your neighbors, your coworkers, your family and your friends.

 

They're Just Like You.

 

But when the media is hostile to a cause, it attempts the exact opposite. It attempts to paint the supporters of a cause to which it is hostile in the most reductivist and restricted demographic terms possible. They attempt to paint these people as a very narrow sliver of the human experience, so that as few people as possible will see themselves in it.

 

This is the Not Like You treatment.

 

This is how they describe the Tea Party -- "overwhelmingly white and older, and poorer than the average." Actually that's how they first reported the Tea Party, assuming that they were poor (because of the liberal bias in the assumption, as first announced by the Washington Post, that the Christian right was "poor, uneducated, and easily led").

 

Once they discovered that the Tea Party was wealthier than average, the standard description became "overwelmingly white, older, and richer than the average American."

"Poorer" just disappeared from the narrative. Why? Because noting that the Tea Party was represented by those from a range of economic situations would be the Just Like You treatment -- casting a wide net -- and the media was determined to give them the Not Like You treatment, with as small a net as possible.

http://ace.mu.nu/

 

 

 

 

For those who don't like Conservative sites........from the NATIONAL JOURNAL:

 

The High Cost to the White House of Stonewalling on Benghazi.

“When asked about the upcoming hearing, White House spokesman Jay Carney largely deflected. Curiously, the Obama administration also won’t talk about the footage that they have from the compound – video that some people who have seen it argue could clear up questions about whether the incident was a premeditated terrorist attack or something less. They just really don’t want to talk about this. But the last time the administration played keep-away on a security issue was drones, and that didn’t work out so well for the White House. Benghazi has already cost the president his first choice for secretary of State. What could stonewalling cost the White House this time?”

 

UPDATE: Hicks: Higher-ups at State told me not to talk to GOP congressman about Benghazi; Update: “Effectively demoted.” “Cheryl Mills is no run-of-the-mill State Department apparatchik, even among the top tier. She’s been one of the Clintons’ right-hand men for decades. She worked in Bill’s White House legal office, then as counsel to Hillary’s presidential campaign, then became chief of staff at State when Hillary was appointed secretary. If she’s the right-hand man, what other conclusion is there than that Hillary’s the one who wanted Hicks to keep his mouth shut when meeting with Chaffetz?”

 

.

[1billsfan]

My guess is that there will be a few articles that pertain to Benghazi tomorrow, with a few follow up questions during the press briefings and that will be that regarding Benghazi from the traditional media outlets.

 

There are two important lingering questions, who gave the stand down command on the night of the attack and who was the author of Rice's flat out lies to the American people on that Sunday morning. After today's solid testimony, these questions are not going to go away that easily. This may become a "who's more powerful" battle between the long standing "liberal" media helping covering up the truth and new media attempting to uncover the truth. I'm sure there will be a couple of scapegoats at the ready, but will these scapegoats be even plausible at this point?

[/dev/null]

There are two important lingering questions, who gave the stand down command on the night of the attack and who was the author of Rice's flat out lies to the American people on that Sunday morning. After today's solid testimony, these questions are not going to go away that easily. This may become a "who's more powerful" battle between the long standing "liberal" media helping covering up the truth and new media attempting to uncover the truth. I'm sure there will be a couple of scapegoats at the ready, but will these scapegoats be even plausible at this point?

 

It's quite obvious who gave the stand-down. Dick Cheney

And Faux Snooze orchestrated the whole media coverup

 

Wow, CurrenTV is like LSD. Sure it seemed like it'd be good for giggles just that once. But the Flashbacks man

 

The flashbacks

[Magox]

This how the media approaches it:

 

 

 

http://ace.mu.nu/

 

 

 

 

For those who don't like Conservative sites........from the NATIONAL JOURNAL:

 

The High Cost to the White House of Stonewalling on Benghazi.

 

 

 

 

.

 

Here is what I have observed from the W.H press corps:

 

When an issue arises that they care about, they will hound the W.H press secretary so much so that it becomes the predominant political topic in the country, and that they apply so much pressure on the W.H that they are forced to give a real explanation or in some cases force them to shake things that causes and creates meaningful action regarding that particular topic. (Remember Valerie Plame?) or (Biden got in front of the president on gay Marriage?)

 

Obviously finding scandal with a conservative president tops the list. Or pushing the president on gay marriage issues, simply because that is a cause they believe is worth pushing.

 

So in this instance, this is a potential scandal with a Liberal president. The desire to seek the truth on this issue, isn't quite at the vociferous level that it would be with a conservative president. But, they have to at least pretend that they are doing their duty. So what they do is they will ask the standard questions, to sort of the check the box that they are, you know, doing their job, and then that's it. No follow up. Nothing. They've done their job.

 

The W.H understands this, they know that the W.H press corps is one of their allies, but they also realize that they have a duty to perform, so what they do is they send out prebuttals and talking points and attempt to create a narrative so that the media reports it with the narrative that they wish for them to report it as.

 

Here is an example:

 

White House press secretary Jay Carney charged Wednesday that the continued scrutiny of the administration's behavior around last year's attack in Benghazi is little more than yet another of Republicans' "attempts to politicize" the issue.

 

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2013/05/white-house-slams-attempts-to-politicize-benghazi-163504.html?hp=r2

 

Now of course you have seen this "politicization" charge mimicked from Cummings and other liberal politicians. This is the narrative that they want everyone to follow to muddy the waters.

 

 

So here is the first paragraph in the lead article in Politico today regarding Benghazi:

 

 

The dramatic and personal stories of State Department staffers — one of whom was in Libya at the time of attacks on the U.S. consulate — injected real emotion on Wednesday into a very political hearing on Benghazi.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/benghazi-hearing-house-oversight-committee-91066.html#ixzz2Sk5UkdFK

 

 

This is just a small example, I could literally bring up many many instances. To begin the paragraph, this particular journalist, wanted to pass along the core message from the W.H.

 

Which is that this was a "Political" hearing. Not just a political hearing, but a "very political" one.

 

 

I have very little respect for the media. They are so in the tank for progressive causes and politics that it's pretty much a crock of ****.

[3rdnlng]

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/05/08/report-cbs-news-bosses-irked-by-correspondents-thorough-benghazi-reporting-n1591242

 

 

"Attkisson, who holds a third-degree black belt in taekwondo, takes a fighting stance when she feels she’s being stonewalled. Which is exactly what she thinks the White House has done to her on Benghazi," Farhi writes. But from where Attkisson is sitting, there are actually two Goliaths, one of which is almost entirely absent from the Post profile. The second Goliath is CBS News, which has grown increasingly frustrated with Attkisson's Benghazi campaign. CBS News executives see Attkisson wading dangerously close to advocacy on the issue, network sources have told POLITICO. Attkisson can't get some of her stories on the air, and is thus left feeling marginalized and underutilized. That, in part, is why Attkisson is in talks to leave CBS ahead of contract, as POLITICO reported in April. Farhi mentions "internal conflicts" in the final paragraph, though he seems to dismiss them. The "internal conflicts" are indeed real -- Attkisson is still eyeing an exit, according to sources -- and provide important context for today's piece. Today, CBS News is celebrating Attkisson's commitment to the Benghazi story. It's good press. But that support is an aberration.

 

 

[The media establishment and liberals] can’t stop conservative media from existing, but they can ghettoize it as illegitimate and “partisan” in a way that their own partisan garbage isn’t....Skepticism about Benghazi is fine for the wingnuts at Fox, but bringing such unhelpful nonsense into an “impartial,” i.e. pro-Obama, outlet like CBS risks lending credence to the GOP’s accusations. The proper line to take on Benghazi is to dismiss the new hearings with a sneer, a la Joe Klein, or, in the case of “impartial” news coverage, to dismiss them more lightly by referencing Hillary’s long-ago whining about a “vast right-wing conspiracy” to discredit the Clintons. “Going where the story leads” is unhelpful to liberalism in this case, ergo it’s advocacy by definition.

 

 

[B-Man]

This terror attack on the September 11th anniversary immediately brought many questions and concerns from the GOP and others, and those concerns continued through out the campaign and the following months

 

So this fanciful attempt at a narrative, that this is just a "stop Hillary for 2016" event, is really transparent politics at its worst.

 

 

So..........let's forget Hillary then,

 

 

'Where Was the Commander-in-Chief For All of This?'

 

Charles Krauthammer discussed today’s House Oversight Committee hearing on the Benghazi attack on tonight’s edition of Special Report, arguing that the key question left unasked and unanswered remains where the president was as events unfolded.

 

“Where was the commander-in-chief in all of this? The one man who could authorize and order troops to move above everybody and instantly is the commander-in-chief. Where was he for these hours when the fight was raging? Has anybody asked that? Has anybody answered that?”

 

Krauthammer also said that it’s clear now the State Department’s job in the wake of the attack was to cover for the administration, and that if any intimidation of officials occurred — and whistleblower Gregory Hicks alleges — that in itself is evidence of a cover-up on the part of the administration.

 

 

 

Where was President Obama and what was he doing? ................................................As commander-in-chief, the president is ultimately responsible for any U.S. response to attacks on our missions and personnel overseas. According to official schedules and White House answers after the fact, President Obama held a regularly scheduled meeting at 5 pm Washington time with his then Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, around the time that the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi began. No photos from that meeting have been released.

 

The American people have been told very little about the president’s activities that night. He held the meeting, the attack began and would unfold for several hours, and the president reportedly went to bed that night in the White House. By the time he went to bed, news had already broken that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens was missing. Obama went to bed not knowing his ambassador’s fate, and reportedly learned the next morning that Stevens had been killed. No photos of the president being present or in command during the attack have ever been released by the White House.

 

This in itself is strange behavior from a White House that even released a photo of the president, by himself, holding a moment of silence for the victims of the Boston bombing.

 

In February, Panetta testified that he had no communication with Obama after their September 11 meeting, and in fact had no communication with anyone at the White House at all during the attack, raising the question of whether anyone was in the White House Situation Room monitoring the attack. It’s implausible that the secretary of Defense and president of the United States would not communicate at all during an attack on a U.S. facility overseas, but that is Panetta’s testimony. That mystery deepens when we consider then Secretary of State Clinton’s actions during the attack.

 

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/05/07/five-benghazi-mysteries-that-must-be-solved/

[3rdnlng]

You know, I thought, what with the hearings this thread would like really go viral here today, but it's just conservatives posting further damning articles directed towards this administration. The liberals here are taking the unstated advice of the MSM and just keeping their mouths shut. They know Obama and Clinton are devastatingly wrong here, but the fact that they are so tied to the "union label" it won't allow them to agree with condemning this awful affair. Liberals are just pusssies spelled a different way.

[meazza]

You know, I thought, what with the hearings this thread would like really go viral here today, but it's just conservatives posting further damning articles directed towards this administration. The liberals here are taking the unstated advice of the MSM and just keeping their mouths shut. They know Obama and Clinton are devastatingly wrong here, but the fact that they are so tied to the "union label" it won't allow them to agree with condemning this awful affair. Liberals are just pusssies spelled a different way.

 

There are like 3 liberals left in PPP if I'm not mistaken.

[B-Man]

Well....lets have a "lighter" side look at the Benghazi hearings then;

 

over on Twitchy they have a "Guess the Benghazi headline" site.....place your bets on the "lapdog" media spin

 

Some entries:

 

#GuessTheBenghaziHeadline No Smoking Gun In Benghazi. Survivors "Just Glad To Be Here."

 

#GuessTheBenghaziHeadline *Crickets*

 

#GuessTheBenghaziHeadline Jody Arias Voted Republican

 

#GuessTheBenghaziHeadline Repub Budget Cuts, Offensive Video Likely Cause For Surprise Riot In Benghazi

 

#GuessTheBenghaziHeadline "Mother's Day on Sunday: Here are 10 Great Gift Ideas"

 

#GuessTheBenghaziHeadline Partisan Congressional Witchhunt Pre-empts FNC Jason Collins Coverage

 

#GuessTheBenghaziHeadline As Obama Maintains Laser-Like Focus on Jobs, GOP Wastes Time on Something That Happened a Long Time Ago

 

#GuessTheBenghaziHeadline Dianne Feinstein To Introduce Legislation Banning Consulate Burning

 

 

 

 

#GuessTheBenghaziHeadline Al Qaeda no longer a threat

 

 

 

.

[3rdnlng]

 

 

There are like 3 liberals left in PPP if I'm not mistaken.

 

Depends on how you define "left in PPP". When was their last post? Today? A week ago? A month ago?

 

I'll start a list and others can add to it if they so desire:

 

1. Birdog

2. TPS

3. The Old Bills

4. The New Bills

5. Numbnutz (BFBF)

6. The toll collector (EiI)

7. Pasta Joe (he showed up today)

8. Adam (but he also counts as a righty 50% of the time)

9. Juan Guzman--somebodies alias

10. Fan in SD (the one who wanted Romney killed before the election)

 

There are many more of the Connors, PBrains, Duck Dodgers, RI guy but why elevate them?

[Jim in Anchorage]

 

 

Depends on how you define "left in PPP". When was their last post? Today? A week ago? A month ago?

 

I'll start a list and others can add to it if they so desire:

 

1. Birdog

2. TPS

3. The Old Bills

4. The New Bills

5. Numbnutz (BFBF)

6. The toll collector (EiI)

7. Pasta Joe (he showed up today)

8. Adam (but he also counts as a righty 50% of the time)

9. Juan Guzman--somebodies alias

10. Fan in SD (the one who wanted Romney killed before the election)

 

There are many more of the Connors, PBrains, Duck Dodgers, RI guy but why elevate them?

JT6P

Birdog

Gene

[DC Tom]

JT6P

Birdog

Gene

 

JTSP's not left. He's just out there.

[3rdnlng]

Birdog was first on my list. I picture him as the rural doctor with the poneytail trying to convince aunt em of her medical condition. He's harmless.

[IDBillzFan]

It's weird. An end-of-career never-really-that-good basketball player says he's gay, and he gets a call from the president. A no-name lifetime college student gets called a slut, and she gets a call from the president.

 

Four people die in Benghazi, and it's a bump in the road caused by a Youtube video.

 

Tells you all you need to know about the commander in chief.

 

The reason you don't see many libs here is because they are, without question, as embarrassed as they can be for supporting this muppet of a man.

[3rdnlng]

Gene's just a lefty, atheist clown who will never gain any status here. His cowbells are his best possession.

 

It's weird. An end-of-career never-really-that-good basketball player says he's gay, and he gets a call from the president. A no-name lifetime college student gets called a slut, and she gets a call from the president.

 

Four people die in Benghazi, and it's a bump in the road caused by a Youtube video.

 

Tells you all you need to know about the commander in chief.

 

The reason you don't see many libs here is because they are, without question, as embarrassed as they can be for supporting this muppet of a man.

 

Thought I covered that earlier, but wtf is this person doing running the world?

Edited May 9, 2013 by 3rdnlng

[DC Tom]

It's weird. An end-of-career never-really-that-good basketball player says he's gay, and he gets a call from the president. A no-name lifetime college student gets called a slut, and she gets a call from the president.

 

Four people die in Benghazi, and it's a bump in the road caused by a Youtube video.

 

Tells you all you need to know about the commander in chief.

 

The reason you don't see many libs here is because they are, without question, as embarrassed as they can be for supporting this muppet of a man.

 

Dead people don't vote.

 

Even if they look just like the son Obama doesn't have.

[Joe Miner]

There are like 3 liberals left in PPP if I'm not mistaken.

 

If you say Hillary 3 times in a post, Pasta Joe will appear.

[RI Bills Fan]

Depends on how you define "left in PPP". When was their last post? Today? A week ago? A month ago?

 

I'll start a list and others can add to it if they so desire:

 

1. Birdog

2. TPS

3. The Old Bills

4. The New Bills

5. Numbnutz (BFBF)

6. The toll collector (EiI)

7. Pasta Joe (he showed up today)

8. Adam (but he also counts as a righty 50% of the time)

9. Juan Guzman--somebodies alias

10. Fan in SD (the one who wanted Romney killed before the election)

 

There are many more of the Connors, PBrains, Duck Dodgers, RI guy but why elevate them?

 

Just a thought, 3rdloser, but since I OWN you, why would you be dumb enough to call me out?

 

Oh, wait... I forgot for a moment just how lame-brained you actually are.

 

Carry on, I'll go back to laughing at the endless right-wing circle jerk that is PPP.

 

(You really should clean some of that... stuff... off of you.)

[GG]

Partisan bickering aside, why is no one asking the basic question that if Pentagon felt it was necessary to establish an emergency response team, why was that team based in the US? I'm reading that since Bengazi, Pentagon has stepped up the quick strike teams in Africa & Europe, but why wasn't it obvious to them 2 years ago? 10 years ago?

[birdog1960]

Birdog was first on my list. I picture him as the rural doctor with the poneytail trying to convince aunt em of her medical condition. He's harmless.

wrong picture. except that do no harm is rule number 1 in my job and i abide it...i better be harmless. never had a ponytail and never will. here's your picture: short, informally parted hair, chinos, checked oxford shirt, comfortable shoes and a decent watch. (hmmm, i can even picture me,maybe i can write a novel when i retire).