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Showing posts with label Benghazi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Benghazi. Show all posts

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Media Narrative & Optics as the most important thing in public policy, to the detriment of real facts. Equally true in South Florida now with proposed David Beckham/MLS PortMiami soccer stadium as well as for mendacious Benghazi response in 2012 by stonewalling Obama White House, as Sharyl Attkisson can attest to


























Media Narrative & Optics as the most important thing in public policy, to the detriment of real facts. Equally true in South Florida now with proposed David Beckham/MLS Port of Miami soccer stadium as well as for Benghazi response in 2012 by stonewalling Obama White House, as Sharyl Attkisson can attest to
The attempt to successfully frame a media narrative with favorable optics, mentioned at the top in Chris Stirewalt's tweet and which is today's FOX News First newsletter 
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/01/white-house-correspondence-indeed/
is press management of the sort that we see everywhere and everyday, from here in South Florida to Stockholm, sometimes, in quite humorous or ham-handed ways if observant people are paying close attention.

And yet all too often, the news media fall for it hook-line-and-sinker and don't bring the sort of critical thinking to bear on the issue that they ought to, caught up as they are by the sight of the cute bear riding the bicycle in a circle in front of them, to ask questions that need to be asked.

In Miami, recently, questions like that included why should real soccer fans like me care about the prospective views from a proposed stadium at the Port of Miami more than they care about the actual comfort level and aesthetics they feel once inside of the stadium, and how easy it is to get to for the largest number of prospective fans to get to and from the stadium, with any hope, near public transit facilities that make that trip easy, which is good for everyone involved.

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player
Local10 video: Public hearing held on MLS stadium in PortMiami 
April 23, 2014 07:42:06 PM EDT   
Updated April 23, 2014 07:49:36 PM EDT
The mayor of Miami Beach called a public hearing Wednesday because he feels that a stadium in PortMiami will affect the already congested commute for residents.
But early on, though not true in the Local10 news video above, the cute bear on the bicycle on that issue, David Beckham, was all that the early news stories in South Florida largely focused on, which is precisely what his ownership group wanted, even as a few highly-observant and popular South Florida bloggers and tweeters of distinction and serious news personalities like Bill Cooke at Random Pixels blog, film/TV director Billy Corben and Local10's Senior Political Reporter Michael Putney were asking and writing about with a real purpose.




See conversations in the tweets!

David Beckham Meets With Florida Gov. Rick Scott Lobbying for New Stadium for Miami MLS Project 
Ed Molina, staff@latinopost.com
March 28, 2014 02:49 PM EDT 
http://www.latinopost.com/articles/5212/20140328/david-beckham-meets-with-florida-gov-rick-scott-lobbying-for-new-stadium-for-miami-mls-project.htm

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player
This Week in South Florida
Local10 video: "Local 10's Michael Putney talks with local leading members of the Beckham team and a Miami commissioner about why location they've set their sights on for the new major league soccer stadium and if it's a good one."
March 30, 2014 01:31:19 PM EDT
Updated March 30 2014 04:14:19 PM EDT
http://www.local10.com/news/this-week-in-south-florida-march-30/25236456
Local10 video: War of Words over David Beckham's plans for soccer stadium. Port Miami is second largest economic generator in Miami-Dade County  Published On: April 30, 2014 06:34:23 PM EDT 
Updated April 30 2014 06:42:45 PM EDT

 But as I've lamented so many times over the years on this blog over the past seven years, spouting common sense and asking pointed questions makes them (me) a distinct minority in this area of the country, unfortunately.

The anger we now see among some in the U.S. press corps is, for some of us at least, a little too late and convenient, to say nothing of being too over-the-top, especially given how easily, via CW group think, they abandoned their natural (accurate) initial suspicions and replaced that by eagerly swallowing the Obama Administration's feeble excuses about a YouTube video that hardly anyone had ever seen or heard of prior to them offering it up as a reason for protests in Cairo.

The Beltway Media is mad at themselves, obviously, but since they can hardly blame themselves, they are now wildly pointing fingers at others.
After the horse is long gone out of the barn.

If you missed Sharyl Attkisson's very revealing interview with Glenn Beck on Wednesday morning regarding the very curious circumstances she's been in for the past 18 months, from her being "watched" and having her work computer hacked -by ???- plus the problems she had at CBS News with getting reports on Benghazi on-air, and her recent departure from there, see the context and video here:

The Blaze
Sharyl Attkisson on the One Thing People Should Be ‘Standing Up on Buildings and Screaming’ About 
April 30, 2014 1:50pm  
Erica Ritz

That we are only now learning via a Judicial Watch FOIA request that the author of the Obama White House talking points about the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya that resulted in the death of four Americans, Ben Rhodes, would turn out to be the brother of the President of CBS News, is, of course, obviously a delicious wild card.
A wild card that none of us who were always suspicious of the White House narrative and Susan Rice's self-serving comments regarding a YouTube video, could've ever guessed at months and months ago.

By the way, for what it's worth, the Fox News First newsletter I received this morning that mentions some of these issues and which prompted me to do this blog post, has consistently proven over the past eight months to be much-more accurate and fair -even prescient- than I'd have initially guessed when I first subscribed last year.
You might want to sign up, too.
Just saying...
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Friday, October 19, 2012

Vacillating Obama: Washington Post's Jackson Diehl zeroes-in on fundamental weakness of Obama's dithering Mid-East policy and multilateralism: Obama’s greatest failure - "His miscalculations on Syria have led to a wider war" that threatens to bring in more dangerous players and more unpredictability, NOT more stability and democracy; @JacksonDiehl, #syria


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 I've been wanting to post this excellent analysis by The Washington Post's veteran foreign policy hand Jackson Diehl since reading it online early, early Sunday morning, while listening to some hard news online via the BBC.
Soon thereafter, I sent it out to a couple dozen well-informed friends and acquaintances across the country and around the world, who follow U.S. foreign policy as closely as I do, and who also like me, shake their head at what President Obama is doing. 

 Though we all disagreed on lots of matters whenever we were together, we're all in agreement about this Diehl column -it's spot-on analysis from the get-go about Barack Obama's unwillingness to stop digging the foreign policy hole he has put the United States in.
He just keeps digging, utterly convinced that he's right and that everyone else is wrong.

 I suspect that in about a dozen years or so, people who voted for Obama in 2008 will actually shake their head in wonder that they ever allowed themselves to willfully ignore his inexperience and weaknesses and elect someone as president who was foolish enough to convince himself -and them- that his carefully-constructed personal/media narrative would somehow allow him to solve longstanding problems.
It hasn't and it doesn't and it won't.

 Despite all the accumulated evidence on U.S. foreign policy that shows he has made already bad situations worse, sometimes, much worse, Obama still remains utterly convinced that the sheer star power of his personality will lead to positive results.
It's the ultimate act of -and sign of- his amazing hubris.


The Washington Post
How Obama bungled the Syrian revolution
By Jackson Diehl
October 14, 2012
Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans are doing their best to portray the assault on the U.S. mission in Libya and its aftermath as a signal foreign policy disaster for Barack Obama. But my bet is that when historians look back on Obama’s mistakes in the last four years, they will focus on something entirely different: his catastrophic mishandling of the revolution in Syria.
The deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi were a calamity — but those losses were mainly the result of poor security decisions by mid-level State Department officials, not policy choices by Obama. The president’s handling of Syria, on the other hand, exemplifies every weakness in his foreign policy — from his excessive faith in “engaging” troublesome foreign leaders to his insistence on multilateralism as an end in itself to his self-defeating caution in asserting American power.
Read the rest of the column at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jackson-diehl-how-obama-bungled-the-syrian-revolution/2012/10/14/13c492d2-13b2-11e2-be82-c3411b7680a9_story.html
Read previous Diehl columns at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/jackson-diehl/2011/02/24/ABccMXN_page.html
I subscribe to his RSS feed and get his columns as sson as they go online.
http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/rss/linksets/opinions/jackson-diehl

 Also see his Twitter page: https://twitter.com/JacksonDiehl

 The National Journal
Obama’s Quagmire: Syria and the Islamist Arc, Hammered on leadership, the president struggles for a Middle East policy.
By Michael Hirsh
Updated: September 21, 2012  1:55 p.m., 
September 21, 2012  1:07 p.m.
U.S. and Western diplomats are concerned that the longer Bashar al-Assad hangs on to his failing regime in Damascus, the more likely it is that the aftermath of the Syrian rebellion will be dominated by Islamist elements, completing an arc of newly empowered radical groups along the southern half of the Mediterranean from Libya to Syria. 
Read the rest of the column at: http://nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/obama-s-quagmire-syria-and-the-islamist-arc-20120921?mrefid=site_search

 As I've noted here several times over the past two years with videos of him speaking forthrightly about Syria, Florida Senator Marco Rubio has been much more realistic than Hillary Clinton's dog-chasing-its-tail State Dept. on the reality of what has been going on the Middle East and what is likely to happen if President Obama's dithering foreign policy is given four more years to make things worse.

 And seriously, how does U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice still even have a job? 
Is there no penalty for her abject failure, serial lying to the American public and Congress and her calculated and willful ignorance?
Rice's performance the past month has validated all the criticism of her as nothing more than a political hack with foreign policy pretensions, not a serious foreign policy professional, no matter what her actual experience is.
Susan Rice is the female version of Rahm Emanuel -a fixer.
And a Grade B fixer at that.

 How can we reasonably expect representatives of other countries to trust her and take her seriously if average Americans have learned from watching her for themselves, after paying attention to her own words and actions, NOT to trust her?


SenatorMarcoRubio video: U.S. Senator Marco Rubio on Foreign Aid to Libya, Egypt and Pakistan and what America and American taxpayers have a right to expect from these countries in exchange for U.S. dollars. Uploaded September 20, 2012. http://youtu.be/SFOBW7xkz7g Reminder, this video is a month old.

 Articles and columns on Syria in The Washington Post, in chron order:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/newssearch/search.html

By the way, if anyone reading this post knows anyone at Foreign Policy magazine, tell them that their YouTube Channel is the very picture of irrelevant.
One original video in the past nine months during a presidential election year?
That's embarrassing!
http://www.youtube.com/user/ForeignPolicyTV
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Sunday, September 30, 2012

More useful clarity on President Obama's Libyan Lies, Misrepresentations & Misadventures: Obscure film was NOT responsible for riot there, security was lax in Benghazi, U.S. Marines were NOT there during consulate attack, and FBI agents are still NOT there two weeks later, a fact that ABC News' Friday evening newscast continued to neglect to mention



senatorcorker video: Appearing on Fox News Channel, Tennessee Senator Bob  Corker, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sounded-off on the lack of information and cooperation the Comm. is receiving re the Benghazi attacks on September 11th. Corker believes the Obama administration's response to Libya consulate attack is "Nothing Short... of Benghazigate." "Both Democrats and Republicans want answers to what happened." Uploaded September 27, 2012. http://youtu.be/wLk6o3N8cB8 
More useful clarity on President Obama's Libyan Lies, Misrepresentations & Misadventures: Obscure film was NOT responsible for riot there, security was lax in Benghazi, U.S. Marines were NOT there during consulate attack, and FBI agents are still NOT there two weeks later, a fact that ABC News' Friday evening newscast continued to neglect to mention
And on Friday, sixteen days after the death of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christoprher Stevens, ABC News national newscast devoted ZERO time to Obama's serial lies about what happened in Libya, not mentioning Libya even once.

No, instead, the lead story was on TSA agents pilfering airline passenger goods. Really?
Yes, nothing at all about no FBI agents being in the country more than two weeks later to investigate.
The Washington Post
In Libya, security was lax before attack that killed U.S. ambassador, officials say
By Ernesto Londoño and Abigail Hauslohner
September 29, 2012 at 2:12 PM
On the eve of his death, U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was ebullient as he returned for the first time in his new role to Benghazi, the eastern Libyan city that embraced him as a savior during last year’s civil war. He moved around the coastal town in an armored vehicle and held a marathon of meetings, his handful of bodyguards trailing discreetly behind.
But as Stevens met with Benghazi civic leaders, U.S. officials appear to have underestimated the threat facing both the ambassador and other Americans. They had not reinforced the U.S. diplomatic outpost there to meet strict safety standards for government buildings overseas. Nor had they posted a U.S. Marine detachment, as at other diplomatic sites in high-threat regions.
Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-libya-security-was-lax-prior-to-deadly-attack/2012/09/29/a56ffca0-0992-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_story.html
The Weekly Standard
Our Fearless Misleader
By Stephen F. Hayes
October 8, 2012, VOL. 18, NO. 04
After more than two weeks of obfuscation and misdirection from the Obama administration, the American public is coming to understand what the U.S. intelligence community learned in the 48 hours immediately following the September 11 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Among the important new details:
Read the rest of the post at
https://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/our-fearless-misleader_653228.html
New York Times
Security Fears Hobble Inquiry of Libya Attack
By David D. Kirkpatrick, Eric Schmitt and Michael S. Schmidt
Posted online September 27, 2012
BENGHAZI, Libya — Sixteen days after the death of four Americans in an attack on a United States diplomatic mission here, fears about the near-total lack of security have kept F.B.I. agents from visiting the scene of the killings and forced them to try to piece together the complicated crime from Tripoli, more than 400 miles away.
Investigators are so worried about the tenuous security, people involved in the investigation say, that they have been unwilling to risk taking some potential Libyan witnesses into the American Embassy in Tripoli. Instead, the investigators have resorted to the awkward solution of questioning some witnesses in cars outside the embassy, which is operating under emergency staffing and was evacuated of even more diplomats on Thursday because of a heightened security alert.
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