{"id":957,"date":"2007-10-10T12:03:27","date_gmt":"2007-10-10T17:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/957"},"modified":"2007-10-10T12:03:27","modified_gmt":"2007-10-10T17:03:27","slug":"the-elephant-that-wasnt-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/957","title":{"rendered":"The Elephant That Wasn&#8217;t There"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Think Progress asks: <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2007\/10\/10\/mcconnell-smear-graeme\/\">was the right-wing smear campaign against Graeme Frost&#8217;s family orchestrated by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell&rsquo;s (R-KY) office<\/a>?&nbsp; This, from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.firedoglake.com\/2007\/10\/10\/convenient-laundering\/\">Firedoglake<\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>What&rsquo;s with <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.abcnews.com\/politicalradar\/2007\/10\/dems-poster-chi.html\">the non-denial from Sen. Mitch McConnell&rsquo;s office<\/a>?&nbsp; Is one of his aides indeed coordinating with wingnuttia for the attacks on&nbsp;a 12-year-old boy and his sister&nbsp;and their family?&nbsp; <a href=\"http:\/\/digbysblog.blogspot.com\/2007\/10\/judgment-daze-by-digby-naturally.html\">From ABC News, via Digby<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&ldquo;This is a perverse distraction from the issue at hand,&rdquo; said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid, D-Nev. &ldquo;Instead of debating the merits of providing health care to children, some in GOP leadership and their right-wing friends would rather attack a 12-year-old boy and his sister who were in a horrific car accident.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Manley cited an e-mail sent to reporters by a Senate Republican leadership aide, summing up recent blog traffic about the boy&rsquo;s family. <strong>A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., declined to comment<\/strong> on Manley&rsquo;s charge that GOP aides were complicit in spreading disparaging information about Frosts.&nbsp; <em>(emphasis mine)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In my experience, if you are not participating in something, you deny it outright to kill the story.<\/p>\n<p>Mitch McConnell is the Republican Minority Leader in the Senate and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ditchmitchky.com\/935\/more-of-the-same-from-sen-mitch-mcconnell\/\">sponsor of the Orwellian-named &ldquo;Families First&rdquo; legislation<\/a> which would actually decrease the number of kids covered for benefits.&nbsp; <em>Classy<\/em>. Is someone in his office coordinating a dirty tricks PR advance against a 12 year old child? Have they been helping the story along, doing oppo on this child and his family and feeding it out through the wurlitzer to their corporate media&nbsp;buddies&nbsp;so their hands appear publicly clean while the wingnuts launder their slime tactics for them?&nbsp; As <a href=\"http:\/\/digbysblog.blogspot.com\/2007\/10\/outsourcing-dirt-gathering-by-digby-i.html\">Digby asks<\/a>, has the Senate Republican Minority leaders office frequently been used as a laundering point of contact for wayward freepers and random wingnuttery at large?&nbsp; Yes or no.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>You often wonder sometimes, where the winger blogs are getting their information from.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Think Progress asks: was the right-wing smear campaign against Graeme Frost&#8217;s family orchestrated by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell&rsquo;s (R-KY) office?&nbsp; This, from Firedoglake&#8230; What&rsquo;s with the non-denial from Sen. Mitch McConnell&rsquo;s office?&nbsp; Is one of his aides indeed coordinating with wingnuttia for the attacks on&nbsp;a 12-year-old boy and his sister&nbsp;and their family?&nbsp; From ABC [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46,60,6],"class_list":["post-957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-the-kultar-kampf","tag-the-noise-machine","tag-the-right-wing-mindset"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}