Friday, September 14, 2012

When the Echo Chamber Makes No Sense!

In 2004, former Republican insider David Brock, exposed the Right Wing Echo Chamber showing us all how the right wing has a plethora of media outlets and talking heads to push any story whether its true or not.  

EIght years later and its still going strong, lets take a quick look at it in action.  We pointed out here that Mitt Romney had a really bad day recently where his ambition got the better of him and he jumped on the death of a US Ambassador to try and help propel him to the White House.  Fortunately for all of us it backfired big time. 

The public relations beating that Mitt Romney was taking needed to be stopped and the only way to do that is to change the topic.   Cue the right wing talking heads, including right wing pundit Marc Thiessen from the American Enterprise Institute to take his best shot

How long had it been since President Obama attended his daily intelligence meeting in the lead-up to the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Egypt and Libya? After all, our adversaries are known to use the anniversary of 9/11 to target the United States.

According to the public schedule of the president, the last time the Obama attended his daily intelligence meeting was Sept. 5 — a week before Islamist radicals stormed our embassy in Cairo and terrorists killed our ambassador to Tripoli. The president was scheduled to hold the intelligence meeting at 10:50 a.m. Wednesday, the day after the attacks, but it was canceled so that he could comfort grieving employees at the State Department — as well he should. But instead of rescheduling the intelligence briefing for later in the day, Obama apparently chose to skip it altogether and attend a Las Vegas fundraiser for his re-election campaign. One day after a terrorist attack.

So the new meme they are trying to push is that President Obama has no interest in security briefings, thus causing the terrorist attacks and taking your eye off of the "Mitt Romney's foreign policy fail" ball.     However because they are so desperate, they chose a topic that makes absolutely no sense.  

Does anyone really think that the President(or any president) would completely skip the daily briefing(aka Presidential daily brief - PDB)?   Even the criticism about George Bush not listening to the Aug 6th PDB but the fact that he listened to every word and then chose to ignore it.  

Does any thinking person who will not gain financially by a Romney Administration truly think that President Bush was that much more intellectually curious than a President Obama?  Could President Obama speak as intelligently and informed as he does on all issues if he completely ignored the PDB's? 

Fun Fact on PDB's: The PDB, contains the most critical and pressing intelligence information the President needs to know every day(researched and written by the people whose job it is to know these things).  They are all typed out given to the President.  He can choose to get them briefed to him by someone from the CIA and/or he can choose to read them himself.  These come to him every single day of the year, no matter where he is on the planet.   Many days, President Obama chooses to read them himself.  

One last fun fact for Mr. Theissen, or anyone who tries to advance such a blatantly false attack on the President, as saying he skipped his brief to attend a Las Vegas fundraiser. 

It is just NOT true!!  In case you are wondering, a plane ride to Las Vegas from DC takes approximately  4 Hours and 50 minutes.  Plenty of time for President Obama to have read that days PDB. 

There is the echo chamber in action, now you can go to almost every right wing blog or opinion writer in the county are now trying to push this ridiculous story throughout the country. 

They are lying!

Now you know the rest of the story! 

Now you know the rest of the story! 

2 comments:

  1. If I remember correctly the PDB in oral form was instituted for Dubya Bush because he either would not or could not read the PDB.

    After all he was a "multi-modality learner". The newly improved Dubya PDB was
    "always spiced up with intercepts,raw intelligence materials and, on occasion, videos or pictures."


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  2. My favorite Presidential quote of all time:

    “All right. You've covered your ass, now.”- George Bush upon being informed by a CIA analyst that Bin Laden was prepared to attack the U.S.

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