And while we sleep, it will probably be spun around in quite a variety of ways.
What appears to have been the very first Associated Press report at 11:05 p.m. on the final-hour deal that averted a threatened government shutdown came from David Espo at the Associated Press (Espo's byline appeared at the AP's main site, but that report was supplanted by a second one to be discussed shortly; Espo's report is saved here in full as a graphic for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes):
Congress, White House reach deal to avoid government shutdown
Perilously close to a government shutdown, congressional leaders reached agreement with the White House late Friday night on a deal to cut tens of billions of dollars in federal spending and avert the closure.
House Speaker John Boehner informed the GOP rank and file of the accord, reached in grueling negotiations over several weeks, an official said.
“We have an agreement,” concurred a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Jon Summers.
... Officials said it would keep the government in funds through the middle of next week.
... Republicans said the deal called for $39 billion in spending cuts, a measure that one official said Boehner told his rank and file marked the “largest real-dollar spending cut in American history.”
Over a decade, the agreement would cut more than $500 billion from the federal budget, Boehner added, according to a participant in the meeting.
The agreement marked an extraordinary reach across party lines and the first test of a new era of divided government ...
Espo's 11:19 p.m. report, reproduced in full graphically below, appears to be mostly an attempt at a start-over. It oh-so-predictably gets President Obama by name into the first paragraph and puts the verbiage about the reported "historic" significance of the spending cuts into his mouth (and into the headline) instead of Boehner's:
So now Barry's the hero, and Boehner gets second billing, with the same set of facts and circumstances, proven in realtime. Zheesh.
Can's wait to see how the AP slices and dices this deal in the coming day or so. Then it looks like we'll be returning to the laundry room for another round by about Wednesday.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
