Comments

<i>Republicans on a witch hunt</i>… — 45 Comments

1. As before, everything hinges upon the question, What did they know and when did they know it?

   Evidence and testimony are critical to getting to the heart of both Benghazi and the IRS scandal because those are the most resistant to MSM spin.

2. Geoffrey,

   You’re skipping the most important step. In terms of spin, frame, and narrative, the ‘Why’ must be established first and foremost.

   Why does this matter?

   Activism 101: Defining the problem frames the solution.

3. The Republicans are handicapped in holding the Obama administration to account over the Benghazi incident because they won’t advance the needed ccontext for the incident, correlating the Benghazi incident to Obama’s Libya policy as a symptom. However, to criticize Obama’s Libya policy is to invite the GOP to offer an alternative ME policy. But the only realistic alternative to Obama’s ME policy is Bush’s ME policy, which the Republicans have run away from.

   If the Republicans are unable to place the Benghazi incident in a larger context of a failed foreign policy, then it’s just the GOP making noise about an isolated, tragic incident.

   If the GOP hold up Obama’s Libya and ME policy in the critical light of Bush’s ME policy, then the GOP will have the basis to do something about Benghazi.

4. Chris Mathews demands to know who gave the stand-down order. This serves 2 purposes. First, it frames the entire Benghazi affair down to finding some mid level scapegoat in the Pentagon, who will duly be discovered. Poor Obama! Poor Hillary! Let down so!! Second, the press shines up its rather tarnished reputation as the fearless pusuer of the truth in advance of the 2014 season. And then it’s back to business.

5. I guess you missed th salon piece that put this stuff in with other crackpot theories and crazy conspiracies

6. The left has been practicing for this since the Army-McCarthy hearings, and HUAC. 60 years.

   Mean little bastards.

7. Pres. Obama, at today’s event with David Cameron:
   I did not have talking point relations with that woman … Susan Rice. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time. Never! These allegations are false. And I need to go back to being a historic agent of change for the American people. Thank you!

8. “I guess you missed th salon piece that put this stuff in with other crackpot theories and crazy conspiracies”

   This is why setting the proper contextual frame at the outset is critical. Puzzle pieces are meaningless, easily dismissed as ‘crackpot’ or ‘crazy’, unless and until the pieces are fit together to form the big picture on the box.

   As I said, the GOP is handicapped in establishing the proper context for the Benghazi incident because they won’t challenge Obama’s ME policy, because they’ve run away from Bush’s ME policy.

9. gcotharn,

   Susan Rice is notable, of course, for decisions to withhold action on the unfolding genocide in Rwanda while prioritizing domestic partisan political concerns. Serving under one Clinton to the next, her SOP stayed the same.

10. And Obama just called the whole thing a “sideshow”. I imagine the families of the 4 killed in the attack appreciate their sons reduced to the level of a carney barker.

11. Front page headline on local newspaper yesterday: “GOP sees potential scandal in Benghazi”. Medium-sized provincial conservative southern city, roughly centrist p.o.v. in the paper as a whole. I.e., the MSM’s strategy *works*.

12. Any criticism of the Obama administration is automatically racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. The evil Republicans hate Obama who, as we know fron the MSM, is not responsible for any of the awful things that have happened. The crappy economy of the last four years was all Bush’s fault and the next four years the bad stuff will be Boehners and the Republicans fault. Obama is just an innocent bystander.

13. Immediately, the Dems and their public relations allies will focus the spotlight on the GOP as the target, as the accused party to be judged on trial.

    It’s critical to set the proper frame and keep the spotlight on the proper parties.

    http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/communism/alinsky.htm

    13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. In conflict tactics there are certain rules that [should be regarded] as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and ‘frozen.’…

    “…any target can always say, ‘Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?’ When your ‘freeze the target,’ you disregard these [rational but distracting] arguments…. Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all the ‘others’ come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target…’

    “One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.” (pps.127-134)

14. The res of the story has yet to be unfurled. Maybe it will be, maybe not. If so, the story will take off, nobody in the MFM will be able to stop it, nor will it need any wingnut bloggers to flog it forward.

15. If not, it’ll all stay where it is.

16. What’s needed is weaving the Benghazi controversy into a big-picture narrative, with a easily grasped pattern. Paint the Obama admin’s actions and responses as a cover-up of a bigger problem. Define the problem.

17. Females, compared with males, had a significantly increased incident-rate ratio for becoming a [disease or noncombat] casualty,” the doctors found.

    Of 47 female soldiers evacuated from the brigade and sent home, 35 – or 74 percent – were for “pregnancy-related issues.”

18. “Paint the Obama admin’s actions and responses as a cover-up of a bigger problem. Define the problem.”

    And that’s where the MSM, and its legacy power, comes in. They still own the center of gravity that puts a story over the top. When it’s in their interest (i.e. it will make a Republican look bad) they whip out their paints and have at that canvas right away. Does anyone really think the Valerie Plame affair deserved all that ink?

    But if it will make a Democrat look bad it’s always an isolated, unimportant incident that they don’t have time for, and frankly, barely notice. “Haven’t you heard? The president said it’s a sideshow. That’s how we’ll cover it.” And so the bigger picture never gets painted even if the facts that come out are all entirely true, because they aren’t woven together into a big picture.

    For an example of that “barely notice” mindset, read Megan McCardle. She’s not a far lefty but she recently issued a mea culpa on the IRS story.

    “Conservative groups have been complaining for a few years that they’re being harassed by the IRS, forced to endure an inordinate amount of scrutiny. I’ve been ignoring those complaints, because it just seemed so unlikely.”

    See that? Ignoring these complaints. Not, I checked into them but didn’t see any truth to it. Rather, I ignored them. When you’ve got people like her ignoring things based not on facts but on feeling is it any wonder that the predominately left-leaning feelings of the MSM override the facts that support the conservative side?

19. Name a story that made a Democrat look bad that the MSM didn’t have to be dragged kicking and screaming to.

    Now name one that they had to be dragged to:

    – Monica Lewinsky is a famous example
    – John Edwards is high up there
    – They’re still not particularly interest in Fast and Furious, despite multiple deaths
    – Ditto on Benghazi
    – They ignored the Anthony Weiner story until it was unignorable (yet the moment a Republican gets in a sex scandal they flock like locusts)
    – They’ve shown little interest in the megamillions thrown away on Solyndra and the hinky backroom deals involved
    – When independent inspectors get illegally fired after exposing Obama-linked corruption they can’t be bothered to care

    As Neo says, the fourth estate is a real problem in the ago of Obama. Democracy depends not only on a free press, but on an independent press. Trading an independent press for a lapdog press every time we elect a Democrat is not a formula for national success.

20. I have been as down in the MSM and the LIV as any, and sooner than many. But I am somewhat of a contrarian. And as the stories get out, in detail upon detail, doubts enough will seep into the brains of enough. Everyone hates and fears the IRS-everyone. No one except the hardened Left is OK with sitting on one’s hands while people die in Benghazi. These stories will trickle through people’s consciousness and consciences. It took the Bosnell jury one week- 7 days!- to find him guilty of 1st degree murder. Look at the lifesavers the media celebrates as heroes. The Volk is not going to do a 180 on the wanton deaths in Benghazi.

21. Eric…

    You left out that Rice was the key official in charge of the Africa desk — when the field crews were screaming for more security — in the days immediately before the twin embassy bombings.

    She’s another ‘Gorelick’ — everywhere she turns up… it’s a disaster.

    Consequently, she’s promoted.

22. At least the press made Obama cry today (per Drudge).

23. “You’re skipping the most important step. In terms of spin, frame, and narrative, the ‘Why’ must be established first and foremost. Why does this matter?” Eric

    That’s often not how it works in political cover-ups Eric. The ‘Why’ of Benghazi will only emerge if enough evidence and testimony see the light of day that denial and bargaining are no longer possible. Ultimately, it’s the ‘Why’ that’s being covered-up, the secondary cover-up of what actually happened within the administration after the attack began is to prevent the ‘Why’ from emerging.

    But the multitude of Obama and Clinton’s actions in regard to Benghazi provide sufficient insight into the why. Whatever Amb. Stevens may actually have been involved with, once the attack began and the WH received almost immediate word that an al Qaeda attack on 9/11 in Libya was occurring 7 weeks before the election, Obama’s reelection hung in the balance. Obama, Clinton, Panetta and Dempsey purposely sacrificed those men and ensured that no help would arrive in time. That screams a decision to prevent exposure at any cost.

    As for the IRS, the why is inherent to the crime. The IRS targeting conservative groups was done to provide political advantage to the Obama administration.

    There’s simply no chance that bureaucrats, at any level, act with unilateral initiative. The Cincinnati IRS branch held purview over non-profit applications, so naturally that is where the operational focus lay. In the current cover-up, the IRS and WH are now trying to assert that it was a ‘rogue’ operation as damage control.

    It went to the top of the IRS and the WH not only knew but gave tacit encouragement.

    This is coming out now to distract from Benghazi. That is how desperate the WH is right now. They’re trying to avoid the ‘silver bullet’. Not of impeachment, as Obama is NOT going to be impeached. Under no conceivable scenario will democrats in the Senate vote for impeachment.

    The ‘silver bullet’ they are trying to avoid is the severe damage to his reputation among low-information voters, the derailing of his agenda, Republican’s holding on to the House in 2014 and the end of Clinton’s 2016 Presidential ambitions.

    That would be a profound psychological shock to the left and a strategic defeat.

24. Don Carlos: “No one except the hardened Left is OK with sitting on one’s hands while people die in Benghazi.”

    Lots of our people have died in the War on Terror as victims of terrorist or “rebel” or “insurgent” attacks. The death of a serving ambassador stands out, but 4 American KIAs is paltry compared to the thousands of Americans that have been killed and maimed in Iraq and Afghanistan over 10+ years.

    Likely mistakes and regretable command decisions and/or oversights have been involved in many of the incidents.

    Why is the GOP blaming Obama and not the terrorists?

    Again, setting the proper context at the outset is critical to hold Obama officials to proper account. Why does this particular incident matter? Why should this incident be treated differently compared to all the terrorist attacks since 9/11?

    It would also help to clarify the timeline and sequence of events so we know what was happening surrounding Geoffrey’s questions of What did they know and when did they know it?

25. Don Carlos said…
    Everyone hates and fears the IRS-everyone. No one except the hardened Left is OK with sitting on one’s hands while people die in Benghazi. These stories will trickle through people’s consciousness and consciences.

    I have this sense, as well. But then I thought, along with people like Bill Kristol, that Bill Clinton would resign over Monica because it was so shameful, etc.

    NRO has posted a video of Fox’s Jeanine Pirro presenting a very powerful indictment of what happened with Benghazi. She didn’t hold back one bit — for example:

    Fact: The president knew at 5:00 P.M. his consulate and ambassador were under attack. He simply told Joint Chiefs Chairman Dempsey and Defense Secretary Panetta to take care of it. He simply went to bed. He didn’t even bother to call, never checking with them again. Fact: The next morning, the President takes Air Force One to fly to a Las Vegas fundraiser for himself, while Americans burn in the Middle East. He can take Air Force One for a campaign fundraiser, but he can’t send fighter jets to save Americans.

    Maybe if this goes viral, a lot of that trickling into people’s consciousness will actually happen.

26. There’s a hole in the middle of this story. We don’t know what we don’t know. Why did Hillary want Stevens in Benghazi? What was so special about Benghazi? What was the State Department’s relationship with the various “Arab Spring” factions there?

27. Ann (quoting Pirro): “He simply told Joint Chiefs Chairman Dempsey and Defense Secretary Panetta to take care of it.”

    That’s not damning. Sure, it would look better for Obama to be more hands-on, but strictly by Pirro’s account, Obama apparently acted to at least a minimum standard in his echelon.

    By Pirro’s account, the CinC gave an instruction to “take care of it” to his JCS and SecDef. That should be sufficient, assuming there was a clear understanding of the task/conditions/standard and no ulterior instruction limiting the military response.

    If we adopt the premise Obama should have been more hands-on than simply instructing the JCS and SecDef to “take care of it”, aren’t we then obligating the CinC to micromanage every protracted hostile engagement involving US personnel overseas? If the CinC can’t trust the top US Military leaders to solve a terrorist attack on a diplomatic compound and ambassador, then who can he trust with that job?

    If there isn’t more evidence than Pirro offers, such as ulterior instructions to limit the military response, then I’m not convinced fault for the real-time response lies with the President.

    By the same token, in the absence of presidential guidance limiting his subordinates, I didn’t blame Bush for shortcomings of FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina or post-war setbacks for our military in Iraq or Afghanistan.

    Of course, separate from the real-time response to the attack, the Obama administration can be separately faulted for their post-attack political response.

28. Add: Per G Joubert’s comment a May 13th, 2013 at 8:04 pm, in addition to their post-attack political response, the Obama administration can also be faulted for Obama’s greater Libya/ME/Arab Spring policy as far as it set the stage for the attack. If the security was inadequate, if risks were heightened, if Libya’s conditions were more dangerous, and/or the military response to the Benghazi attack was limited in order to uphold Obama’s greater Libya/ME/Arab Spring policy – apart from real-time limiting instructions – then that context should be amplified and criticized hard.

29. It’s the two sentences that come after that — “He simply went to bed. He didn’t even bother to call, never checking with them again.” — that are damning for those who, unlike the “hardened Left”, are not “OK with sitting on one’s hands while people die in Benghazi,” as Don Carlos said.

30. Neocon, as I watch the Benghazi revelations along with the IRS probe of Tea Party groups and the Gosnell horror story that the MSM had to be shamed into covering, it occurs to me that these kinds of revelations are similar to the sort of media malfeasance that first made you doubt your own favorite news sources and ultimately led to your disillusionment with the left. Surely any fair-minded liberal has to see by now how the media has protected this administration, made excuses for it, openly idolized Obama and simply failed to do their job of holding government officials accountable to the electorate. The single advantage and the only hope I see in this eight-year reign is that the fundamental nature of this power-hungry narcissistic president and of the misanthropic progressive agenda will become obvious to the electorate and the people will want their country back in 2016.

31. Ann,

    But Obama didn’t sit on his hands – by Pirro’s account, he told the JCS and SecDef to take care of it. Again, sure, he could have followed up better, but that’s optics more than substance if Obama met the minimum standard of his command position. (Admittedly, the same level of optics would have been more than enough to fuel a BDS gang attack.)

    My understanding of the military mission to guard diplomats is limited to former Marine embassy guards who were my college classmates and the Samuel Jackson, Tommy Lee Jones movie, “Rules of Engagement”. As far as my understanding goes, there are QRF protocols in case of attack. If Obama said “take care of it”, that instruction should have activated those protocols.

    Why then the military response to the attack was so poor is a fair question. Was there a pre-existing reason military leaders felt restrained in response? Did a member of Obama’s staff give an ulterior instruction limiting the military response? The lack of a follow-up phone call is worth mentioning, but I would look for better arguments to lay the foundation. If the stronger criticisms are pre-attack policy and post-attack spin, then focus there.

32. Turns out the DoJ was secretly getting phone records of about twenty AP reporters. Didn’t tell any of them, of course.
    Might get the MSM interested now.
    Like Stalin; no sycophant is sycophantic enough to escape punishment.

33. I’m sorry but Obama telling Panetta and Dempsey “to handle it” (Benghazi) going to bed and then the next morning learning that his Ambassador and 3 other Americans are dead and that we did NOTHING to prevent it or even attempt to assist, cannot possibly be spun as acceptable to a President who was actually serious about protecting American lives. This smells to high heaven and smelly always indicates something rotten.

    No, this doesn’t in any shape or form, pass the smell test.

    When Obama told them “to handle it”, he meant to make it go away.

34. Geoffrey,

    Something went wrong undoubtedly, but what Pirro offers isn’t enough to blame Obama strictly in terms of the real-time response.

    If Obama meant “make it go away”, that doesn’t imply he meant the US Military should abandon the US Ambassador.

    Yet they did. Why?

    Again, I see points to criticize in setting the stage pre-attack (eg, Obama v Bush ME policy), which may have also restrained military response to the attack, and the craven post-attack political spin, but not enough in Pirro’s account. Something went wrong in the real-time response, but I don’t know enough to say what.

    If this was Bush, yeah, “take care of it”, lack of follow-up call, and a campaign event would be more than enough to attack, but this is Obama, not Bush.

35. Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.–Ronald Reagan

    Ironic that this quote of the greatest President of the 20th century could have the meaning it does for us now. Who has replaced the “evil empire” from which information seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire?

    We are surely in that inner war which we have been warned about, that war which is the only one which can topple the United States of America. It is not a war we can win without God’s help. Just as in the first, at the founding, when there was a humble recognition of the need for God’s blessing, and a dedication to act to incur it, now, even more than then, the humility of prayer is essential. Without it, we will lack a center; with it, the breath of freedom resulting from self-discipline and reliance on traditional virtue will continue to have a place in this world.

36. Obama’s campaign to win Islam’s hearts and minds did not win their hearts and minds. The Muslim world hates and disdains Obama more than Bush.

    http://nation.foxnews.com/president-obama/2013/03/22/muslims-hate-obama-more-bush

    Obama’s campaign has cost American blood. This is the simple context: Obama tried. People died.

    http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/how-many-americans-has-obama-killed/

37. With the AP revelations coming out on top of continuing layers of IRS leaks, perhaps a critical mass of reportage can be summoned to begin to turn this battleship back into the channel.

    I have never seen any press corps as completely in the bag as this one, but with some sense of solidarity and foreboding related to the AP matter, we may get a more significant portion of the media class to turn away from keeping the narrative sacrosanct to begin doing their job again. Even democrat operatives with press credentials have their limits, don’t they?

    Or, will they stick with the narrative and cut their brethren loose, knowing that the NSA already has all the same records on their own activity (as they do mine and yours) and the only thing that keeps it “private” is lack of interest. We shall see.

    A contemporary stasi has much more information available than they could have had even in the 80s.

    Thoughts?

38. “If Obama meant “make it go away”, that doesn’t imply he meant the US Military should abandon the US Ambassador.” Eric

    It most certainly did and here’s why. A successful al Qaeda attack in Libya, just 7 weeks before the election was a mortal threat to Obama’s reelection prospects. They were not confident of victory.

    Obama ousted Libya’s Khaddafi both through his European proxies and his no fly zone. Obama publicly gave his support to the ouster of Khaddafi.

    Libya consequentially turning into a hotbed of al Qaeda activity, given his pronouncements that with the death of Bin Ladin the War on Terror was essentially over, would have provided Romney with tremendous political ammunition.

    The US military rushing to the defense of an American Ambassador to Libya, under attack from al Qaeda would have made clear that al Qaeda was not defeated and that Khaddafi’s ouster had had highly negative consequences, leaving Obama’s foreign policy credentials in tatters.

    That is Why Obama, Clinton, Panetta and Dempsey sacrificed those men. Obama’s reelection was more important than American lives. Their ideology and self-promotion come first, last and always.

39. Witch Hunts are exactly the thing to do when there are witches.

    Democrats are witches. The MSM are a witch. They cast spells and do evil. Hunting? By all means.

40. Mezzrow @ 10:57 pm

    “Thoughts?”

    You beat me to it, but I was just about to add the same thought. At least some in the Main Stream Media may begin to think “First they came for the Jews.” At least some may think “First Fox News, then the AP, then …” And seizing AP phone records is likely more disturbing than verbal attacks against Fox.

41. GB, I think you’re on the right track.

    Here’s part of a comment I made on a previous thread: “Remember when Bubba Clinton went on TV to tell the the voters about the major risks to his presidency Obama had run when he gave the go ahead to the bin Laden raid? How bad it would have been for his legacy if the raid had failed? That is the thinking on the progressive side. You cannot risk a failed military operation that will make your decision making look bad. Bad for the legacy, and all that. It’s my opinion that Obama’s instructions to Panetta that evening were: “Do what you can, but take no risks of a failed operation.” Thus, Panetta and Dempsey (Head of the Joint Chiefs) were extremely conservative and took no risks — even though they knew there might be major casualties or hostages taken.”

    When it turned out there were major casualties, a story had to be spun that would protect the State Department’s imprudent (or should I say criminal?) failure to maintain a proper level of security. Thus, the cover story that this was a spontaneous demonstration against an anti-Islam video that just got out of hand. They wanted to put the focus on the video and Islamophobes rather than improper security in Benghazi, a lack of military forehandedness in not being ready for quick responses to emergencies (why didn’t they have any tankers on standby?), and the fact that al Qaeda was still very active in Libya. (A failure of their Arab Spring and/or the bin Laden is dead, al Qaeda is on the run meme.)

    We know that Hicks spoke to Hillary at 2am Benghazi time (10pm Washington DC time) and told her that Stevens was dead and they were under attack. That was the last he heard from her.
    She must have spent the better part of the rest of the night and following day planning how to spin this tragedy. She needed a story that would divert attention away from the failure to provide adequate security and that this was, in fact, a well coordinated attack. It had to be something that would not make her and the administration look quite so bad. Remember that it was Victoria Nuland at State who insisted that any references to Al Qaeda or organized terrorism be struck from the talking points. As I understand it, Petraeus did not agree with that, but someone (Mike Morell, I believe) at CIA wrote the final talking ponts (which were approved by the WH) as delivered by Rice.

    The Congress needs to hear from Petraeus. In fact, in my previous comment I said we needed to hear from Panetta, General Dempsey, General Ham, Hillary Clinton, Victoria Nuland, Mike Morell, Ben Rhodes, Jake Sullivan, Admiral Mullen, Pickering and others, if we are to get the whole story. A special House investigative body is the way to go, IMO.

    This story shows that, in the Obama administration, politics triumphs over good defense or foreign policy. For Obama appearances are more important than substance. Unfortunately for him, his appearances are slipping. The IRS targeting of conservative groups and the DOJ evesdropping on AP reporters provide an appearance of a paranoid administration that politicizes just about everything. He can claim he knew nothing about these activities. In fact he claimed that he only knew what everybody else knew from reading the newspapers. As if he doesn’t get briefed on what is happening in the various departments of his administration. If he is really that far out of the loop, then someone else is running the show and he is only the front man.

42. A friend of mine, a garden-variety liberal ignoramus (politically And historically speaking) did actually hear about the IRS audits, and said, in that Teacher Being Indulgent tone of voice, “well, of course they shouldn’t have behaved that way.”

    Zero indignation for the larger problem of a brute-force Government. Just a pro forma, lightly uttered Tut, Tut.

    Then she threw out the Hiroshima bombing and deplored it a few minutes later, and was treated to a 10-minute history lesson on Japanese War Crimes by Me.

    She’d never heard of the Doolittle Raid (still less the Empire of Japan’s savage reprisals against the Chinese, slaughtering a QUARTER MILLION of them for helping some 70 American pilots).

    She’d never heard of The Rape of Nanking (or any of the other cities that were so brutally treated; more killed in every case than in the Atom Bombing).

    She didn’t know of our assessment that it would mean 600,000 of OUR young men dead, AND at least 2 million Japanese, to invade their main island.

    In short, a Typical Liberal Asshat, spouting off about things she knows Nothing About, and all “feely” about how “dreadful” war is.

    Man, she doesn’t know the half of it.

    But she’s a genuinely nice person, and I’m quite fond of her. I’m really angry at the damned propaganda ministry that has filled so many good people’s minds with this CRAP.

43. Re Benghazi: Didn’t we hear the absolutely insane decision was made by the geniuses in the State Department to hire the Feb. 17th Islamic “Martyrs’ Brigade” for “Security??”

    That was before this donnybrook.

    Then there’s the bizarre setup of the Ambassador being ordered to Benghazi, in Libya, with a bunch of Arab nutters, on 9/11.

    Then there’s the very sinister evidence from (Democrat, Obama voter) Mr. Hicks, who said the military were Ready to Go and … Ordered to STAND DOWN, Twice.

    So BO did not just “go to bed.” According to the witnesses, only the president of the United States has the rank to order our military to “stand down” in such an emergency.

    This whole rotten situation screams of something much, much worse than dereliction of duty. Emperor Tiberius said of Caligula, “we have nursed a viper at our bosom.” I’m telling you, this guy and his cronies are the enemies of America and all she stands for.

    When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. It is the most parsimonious explanation of the facts in hand. But none dare call it treason.

44. Woops.
    Seems the DoJ snooped twenty lines covering maybe a hundred reporters. Latest report.

    Beverly. What did your lib asshat friend say when introduced to what everybody knew a generation ago?

45. Geoffrey, JJ,

    Better.

    I hope the GOP spin doctors are doing the same exercises. They must establish and maintain the contextual frame and weave the narrative.

    The public needs more than odd-looking puzzle pieces. They need a preview of the big picture to fit the pieces together.

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