The Necropolitan Sentinel

Yesterday, Obama got thrown under the bus by both Big Bird and the State Department. The PBS icon's workshop team said that, like Mrs. Obama, he didn't want to be mixed up in politics, and asked that the Obama campaign team withdraw a video featuring their star that, as far as I'm aware, hadn't yet run in any markets, but which earned ridicule on the internet and on the political talk shows. Almost everyone in the commentariat shared Romney's view that his pledge to defund PBS, as a example of wasteful government subsidies he would look to cut, was a strange matter for Obama to focus on, in view of problems such as the number of Americans and the political rise of fundamentalist Islamist forces throughout the Middle East.

In the past couple of days reporters have actually begun to report that the Chief Security Officer responsible for US State Department security in Libya had asked that security be increased in Benghazi, and not received the favor of a reply. Names were named, among them Charlene Lamb, a high-ranking State Department official who is said to have dismissed the US security team that had been in place in Benghazi, arguing that the embassy should do with a less robust security footprint. Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats argued that Republicans ought to shut up, because many Republican Representatives had backed a reduction in the budget for worldwide embassy security. In the event, though, that resolution was never passed because of Democrat-controlled Senate intransigence and continuing budget resolutions, so there was no budget cut for State Department security. 

Among the spate of revelations, reporters discovered that there never was an Innocence of Muslims protest at the embassy. I wrote about the disinformation campaign here on several occasions, as it was unfurling, but even the State Department claimed (following the Revolt of the Spooks) yesterday that it never had suggested that the attacks in Benghazi were connected to the ridiculous YouTube trailer for that (and I use the term loosely) movie. The assertion is very difficult to square with the remarks of Secretary of State Clinton and US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, who both vociferously denounced the video soon after the incident, and it certainly makes the DoJ's detention and interrogation of the creator even more outrageous than it already was. In typical administration "never let a crisis go to waste (even if you've helped create it)" mode, the disingenuously proposed provocation was trotted out dutifully by apparatchiks, MSM enablers, and lefty pundits as a reason to restict freedom of expression as it applies to a particular religion, an idea that was trotted out in the UN as a matter of the international law that capital-P Progressives would like to see imposed on the United States. Administration and State Department creatures meanwhile claimed, despite their continuous attacks on Catholic freedom of religion in particular and that of Christian denominations at large, while ignoring Muslim violence against Jews, Christians and others worldwide, that they were simply aghast at any disrespect towards any religion whatever. Bible clingers were rightly dismissive of the claims, which were frankly religulous.

As is usual in these cases of sudden MSM surprise at proveable administration mendacity, MSM reporters shifted late into reporter mode. Much of what they are touting as new revelations had already been reported, not least by the New York Times, who provided an outline of what actually happened in Benghazi on 9-11-12 three weeks ago. Some of what is now being reported as new, particulars such as the attempts of one guard to get Ambassador Chris Stevens out of the 'secure" portion of the compound after terrorists soaked another part of the embassy with diesel fuel and lit the furniture on fire after unsuccessfully attempting to batter their way into the secure portion, which caused the deaths by smoke inhalation of Chris Stevens and Sean Smith, and the attempts of one of the security officers to get them out after flopping through one of the windows, and the attacks on their vehicles as they tried to navigate their way to the annex in a truck, actually are new information, but whether or not it contributes substantially to our understanding of what transpired is questionable. On one network, yesterday, a talking head was agog at the revelation that once Stevens' body was taken to a hospital, where doctors tried unsuccessfully to revive him, his colleagues were contacted by the cell phone that the doctors found in his pocket, and only then learned what his fate had been. This had been known since the NYT piece, but was breathlessly presented as astounding breaking news by an anchor as delusionally stunned as Obama upon learning that pretty much everyone felt that Mitt Romney had eaten his lunch during the debate.

After their initial disinformation campaign laying blame for the attacks on the absurd video proved a failure, the State Department and the administration, now in full CYA mode, began to claim that they couldn't comment further on the story because the FBI were conducting an investigation. Three weeks after the incident, the FBI were still in Tripoli, citing concerns about . . . security that were preventing them from getting to the site, which was by now denuded of most of the evidence that would have aided their investigation. It was only when news outlets repeatedly managed somehow to get their reporters to the site to interview witnesses and gather up information, including early on the Ambassador's personal journal, that they were shamed into setting foot within the environs of the assault. Despite the administration's slow-walking the investigation—and there's certainly little to no chance that any FBI report is forthcoming before the general election—the genie was already out of the bottle, and the networks were scrambling to bring their narratives more or less up to date. Univision had already belatedly demolished them on Fast and Furious, which Obama and his henchmen had tried after the debacle to pin on Bush and turn into a pretext for stricter gun control (which many feel was the intention of the 'botched operation" from its inception). And as all of this was unravelling, the President found it expedient somehow to accuse Mitt Romney of owing the American people the truth while his campaign mouthpieces hurled accusations that Romney had lied about his positions and 'reinvented' himself in the debate in which he waxed Obama to a high sheen.

The various excuses that Obama's spokescreatures promoted to explain his demolition in the first debate with Romney Starless has already covered in some detail, though the list grows ever longer. I've said many times that I abhor the horserace aspects of campaign coverage, and for the most part I leave the poll-reading to others who are better informed, at least in their own judgments. Nevertheless, I wonder whether the MSM even now would have jumped so enthusiastically into covering the administration's unravelling disinformation regarding the Benghazi attacks had Obama not performed so poorly. Perhaps only people who have been so thoroughly protected themselves can be so profoundly delusional as Obama and his administration regarding the dangers faced by others as a result of their choices. Only now that Romney has breached the fortress does Obama realize that he poses a threat to his continued misoccupation of the White House. Meanwhile, he's focused his threat assessment on Big Bird.

In today's congressional testimony, there will be some roosting.

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