This makes me wonder…

woodward… How many more lies the Obama administration is selling and just how compromised the media is when it comes to the Obama White House.

This morning I caught a couple of Tweets about Bob Woodward being under attack from the Media and one tweet said he’d been threatened by the White House over a story.

I thought Whoa!!!! Something is up.

In this case Woodward is at the center of a journalistic feeding frenzy of his so called colleagues.Woodward is famous for breaking the Watergate story and I’ve always enjoyed his writing, so I started trying to track down what the whole story is.

Mr. Woodward’s crime is that he pointed out, the Emperor has no clothes.

He caught the White House red handed in a bald lie. Then he published what he found.

In this case contrary to the White House spin, Which has been saying  that Congress and specifically the Republicans are responsible for the upcoming sequester

According to Woodward, the truth is that the Sequester was suggested and approved by the Obama administration.

This isn’t the first time Mr. Woodward has caught the White House in a lie… I seem to recall President Nixon resigning as a direct result of a Woodward story. At least Mr. Woodward is non partisan!

The whole article from The Washington Post is Here.

An interesting analysis of the feeding frenzy and comments from the “Balanced Media” can be found on Breitbart Here.

The upcoming cuts, according to Breitbart represent only 2% of the Federal budget.

Yet the Federal government is asking it’s employees to take furlough days that will account for a loss in their paychecks of as much as 5%.

I’m a “whats good for the goose is good for the gander kind of guy” and think if the Government expects their employees to accept a 5% cut in pay, then the government shouldn’t be bitching about a lousy 2% loss in theirs.

It’s a foregone conclusion that the people furloughed are folks can least afford a 5% pay cut.

They’ll be used as poster children demonstrating the evil that the bastard Republicans have caused. It will be the secretaries, clerks, phone operators, and maintenance people.

The management and the politicians themselves will not be losing at all.

Why would the furloughs be concentrated in those areas? So that the American people have the false impression that the sequester really is doing something that’s hurting average Americans.

I’d bet you that 2% of the Federal budget is toilet paper and office supplies. ( I might lose that bet but I wouldn’t be surprised with all the waste in govt. if the cost was that high. I’m sure they’re using $10 rolls of TP in Congress.)

Unfortunately, the story has become Woodward, instead of the lies and misrepresentations from the White House.

According to this NPR piece  Woodward has described a contentious conversation he had with a White House aide wherein the aide yelled at Woodward for a half hour, then followed up with an “Apology” email that said, “You’ll regret staking out that claim”.

Woodward said, “I mean, it makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters, you’re going to regret doing something that you believe in,”.

And he’s right.

It may be overstating it to say that this was a direct threat from the White House with the full backing of the President.

But in times like these, when the President can make you a terrorist by simply calling you a terrorist, and when your travel can be impeded because your name or someone with a similar name appears on a no-fly list.

Woodward’s discomfort may have more basis in fact than paranoia.

I think it’s very unfortunate that the real story has been eclipsed by the sidebar.

On the positive side of the scale is that we clearly can see just how deep the color yellow of “Yellow journalism” in America has become.

I find myself asking if this had been a Bush Administration gaffe… Had Mr. Woodward caught former President Bush in a similar lie, would Mr. Woodward have been a hero?

Sadly, I think the answer is that he’d have been a media darling.

President Obama and his administration are just as likely to lie, misrepresent, and abuse power as any other administration.

The old saying, “Power corrupts…” is just as applicable to a Black President as it is to a White one.

I  often find myself asking, Is President Obama getting special treatment because of racism? Is the media still laboring under some misguided guilt that an African American needs “Special” treatment?

If the people who are supposed to be the publics watchdogs are in fact spinning the news, if they’re reporting only one side of the Obama Presidency – that President Obama can do no wrong… We lose objectivity.

With that loss of objectivity we also lose our ability to question, formulate, or even express differing opinions.

It’s ironic as hell that the first amendment could in fact be undone by the very people operating most under it’s protections. Bundled in that irony is that journalists will devour their own for exercising freedom of speech.

Ok, I’ve got nothing!

Nothing to say.

Still looking for insurance that I can afford.

THuhhe search isn’t going well.

On the one hand I’d like to be covered, on the other hand I have a fundamental problem paying another mortgage payment to have medical coverage.

The primary problem I have is this, with a mortgage I have something that’s tangible. With health insurance I’m pissing money away to provide for coverage that I may or may not use.

At the rate I’m paying right now for COBRA, if I paid that same rate for 10 years it would come to $72,000 not including interest.

NewImage

When the  men in my family break at end of life we don’t typically last very long.

I’m actually fortunate in that as long as we stay active we live a long fairly trouble free life. Our sinuses are for shit but nothing is perfect.

When our time comes we tend to go out like Don Corleone in The Godfather. We’re playing with the grandkids or great grandkids in the garden then we drop dead.

If I’m going to pay the equivalent of another mortgage, I might as well take advantage of the lower mortgage rates and buy another piece of property. At least I could rent it out and have an income, with a potentially higher rate of return.

I was thinking about it and realized that were I to go to a bank to apply for a mortgage for another piece of property they’d tell me I can’t afford to make the payment. Yet our government says that not only must I afford the payment but that they will enforce it under the law.

It’s a lose, lose proposition. If I were still in my 20s I’d be applying for citizenship in other countries. Not because I hate America, I love this country, but because I wouldn’t be able to afford the cost of American citizenship as I got older.

Today if I could communicate with my younger self… I’d say go find a decent country with good people and a system that works. Move there, become a citizen and plan for a decent retirement.

I look at my parents and their retirement isn’t at all what they’d planned for because they trusted in a system that didn’t really protect them. Remember Enron? There were a lot of 401K investments that got wiped out due to them. Then just a few years later you have the housing implosion and the devaluation of their retirement savings has really cut into what they can do. I know they’re on Medicare and Social Security I know they’re paying for health care supplementary insurance I just don’t know how long they’re going to be able to afford it.

I’ve spoken to younger insurance agents who don’t have health insurance because they don’t have an extra 600 – 800 dollars a month in their budgets.

NewImageYet in 2014 we’re all supposed to be carrying insurance and we’ll be penalized for not having a policy in force.

I’m still OK,  yeah I’m using my savings to pay the bills but I can go for a while longer with careful spending. I keep wondering how the hell can people less fortunate than myself come close to affording health insurance?

It really messes with your head. You want to do the right thing, but you can’t afford to do the right thing.

Obviously if you didn’t bother to pay for your housing, and didn’t eat you could afford to pay for health insurance. Then you’d only have to worry about paying for health insurance for a few weeks.

This is seriously wrong. And yet the government is in a position to make us all face this choice.

I’ve said it before. Contrary to what President Obama would have us believe. The problem isn’t that American Citizens are irresponsible about medical coverage. The problem is that health insurance companies and to some extent the medical providers are raping the American People.

If our government was truly interested in taking action on health care they’d address the source of the problem not penalize the victims.

Humm, I guess I did have something to say after all.

And in the last few days before the election…

I’m turning my radio & Television OFF!

The incessant vicious ads and mudslinging have reached a fever pitch and I can’t take it anymore.

I’m with Abigael Evans,  the 4 year old who got an apology from NPR.

I wholeheartedly agree that it’s just gotten to be way too much.

If I see another 10 minute string of proposition commercials punctuated by sniping senate & congressional hopefuls… I swear I’ll just not bother to vote at all.

Grow up people, present your case be civil to each other and hopefully we’ll make the best decision.

At the very least you’ll be examples of how differences should be resolved, instead of demonstrating to young people that name calling and bullying are the way to get what you want.

I’m almost to the place where I thinking we should just choose our politicians randomly from the population. At least then, the PACS and businesses wouldn’t know who to hand the money to.

It would be a damn sight easier to figure out WHO was taking what money from whom.

I think we ALL deserve an apology for the nastiness we’ve seen in this election season.