Media

Now the White House is in a battle with Woodward over the threat he inferred, and media people are taking sides. This is good news for Republicans. More media figures come forward and claim Obama's staff threatened them. This is rapidly blowing up on Obama.

Not seduced, Glenn Greenwald slams Woodward.

"As Brian Beutler points out: "the obscure type of budget document Woodward's referring to is called a duly enacted law — passed by Congress, signed by the President — and the only ways around it are for Congress to change it. . . . or for Obama to break it." But that's exactly what Woodward is demanding: that Obama trumpet his status as Commander-in-Chief in order to simply ignore - i.e. break - the law, just like those wonderful men before him would have done. Woodward derides the law as some petty, trivial annoyance ("this piece of paper") and thus mocks Obama's weakness for the crime of suggesting that the law is something he actually has to obey. "

I don't agree with Greenwald or Woodward. Obama doesn't have to stop an aircraft carrier deployment. He could fire bureaucrats instead. It's his choice to keep the bureaucrats and forego the aircraft carrier. But Woodward doesn't attack Obama for choices. He attacks him for not being militant enough.

"All of this, of course, is pure pretense. Is it even remotely plausible that Obama is refraining from engaging in military action he believes is necessary out of some sort of quaint deference to the law? Please. This is a president who continued to wage war, in Libya, not merely without Congressional authorization, but even after Congress expressly voted against its authorization. This is a president who has repeatedly argued that he has the right to kill anyone he wants, anywhere in the world, not only due to Congressional authorization but also his own Commander-in-Chief powers. If Obama really wanted to deploy that second aircraft carrier, he would do so, knowing that journalists like Bob Woodward and members of both parties would cheer him. This is just a flamboyant political stunt designed to dramatize how those Big, Bad Republicans are leaving us all exposed and vulnerable with sequestration cuts."

Greenwald has that 100 percent right.This media civil war is the most interesting thing I've seen in politics for years if not decades. I believe it will enlighten the American people.

The media is working double time to help Obama on sequestration. In this case the US Today claims that cutting government spending will lead to more spending.

"Some budget cuts designed to save billions this year might actually end up costing the government more money later on."

Baloney. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so criminal. The worst thing that can happen for the government, the establishment and therefore the media is for these cuts to happen and public opinion be unchanged. But that's likely to happen because, the day before the pseudo-cuts are scheduled, Republicans haven't caved. This may seem dumb, but it's part of a longer term strategy. Obama and his minions are setting up a narrative that spending cuts today lead to more spending tomorrow. He's making the cuts in such a way to support that narrative.

Big government loving Bloomberg piles on Obama over sequestration.

"As I said yesterday on Bloomberg TV, the cuts are best described as much ado about nothing."
"The other issue -- how the cuts are applied -- is trickier. And this is where the accusation that the Obama administration is merely playing politics rings true. Both Democrats and Republicans have decried the indiscriminate, across-the-board cuts. And there’s no denying that the sequestration mechanism is bad policy. But the cuts don’t have to happen that way.
First, the administration probably has the authority to reduce spending in more intelligent ways. This makes its doomsday scenarios completely disingenuous."
"Second, negotiators in both the House and Senate have come up with alternatives to give the president the ability to make the spending cuts with a scalpel rather than a meat cleaver. Unfortunately, these alternatives have met with resistance from Democrats. "

More evidence that Obama is intentionally applying the cuts in as damaging manner as possible to set up a future narrative about how damaging budget cuts are.

How government has thoroughly corrupted Hollywood to support its aggression at home and overseas.