I’m sure by now everyone knows about the looming swinging budget cuts that will happen automatically if no new budget deal is reached between the Republicans and the President. This is known as the “sequester”, and is the result of them kicking the can down the road a while back.
The BBC reports that the President doesn’t want this to happen, thinks it’s a bad idea, and has called on Democrat Governors to try and influence the elected Representatives and/or Senators in their States to cave compromise.
He warned the $85bn (£56bn) cuts would put thousands of teachers out of work and bring economic uncertainty.
The president has called on Congress to pass revenue rises and narrow budget cuts to avoid the automatic reductions.
The Democratic president will travel to Virginia on Tuesday to discuss the cuts’ impact on the defence industry.
“These cuts do not have to happen,” Mr Obama told a bipartisan assembly of governors at the White House on Monday. “Congress can turn them off any time with just a little bit of compromise.”
“Revenue rises”. Typical partisan language there. The Republicans refer to it as “tax rises”, of course, and the BBC uses instead the Left-wing terminology. Is the President offering to compromise as well? Don’t be silly. He doesn’t, and shouldn’t have to. According to Mark Mardell, when Congress is controlled by Democrats who don’t need to negotiate with Republicans to pass His plans, it’s a Golden Age.
Unsurprisingly, there’s another point of view that these cuts won’t really do much damage at all. In fact, spending will actually continue to rise and rise. The “cuts” just mean that the spending will rise slightly less than it would have otherwise. Does that sound familiar? Even Forbes admits this. Equally unsurprising is the fact that, not only does the BBC refuse to acknowledge this, but they even manage to quote a cuddly Republican, Sen. McCain, who says he doesn’t totally blame the President and is hoping for a compromise to protect the defense industry.
The BBC dutifully informs you that both sides of the aisle will try to blame each other. So, whose fault is this, really? The BBC reports it this way:
The budget cuts, known in Washington DC as the sequester, were devised in 2011 as an intentionally painful cudgel to encourage Democrats and Republicans in Congress to strike a deal to reduce the US budget deficit.
Note the passive voice, as if the cuts materialized out of thin air during some bi-partisan discussions. In actual fact, it was the President’s idea. He and the White House have been lying about it, and the BBC plays along like the good little propaganda organ it is.
Even the sainted Bob Woodward says so.
Woodward documents in his 2012 book The Price of Politics that team Obama first proposed the idea of the sequester. Expanding on his work in a Sunday Washington Post op-ed, he noted—as he has before—that both President Obama and his would-be Treasury Secretary Jack Lew lied on the campaign trail by saying the sequester originated with House Republicans. The White House has now ceded that fact.
The BBC doesn’t want you to know this, so they spin for the White House and deliberately mislead you. Defenders of the indefensible cannot impugn Woodward here. After all, not only is the above not from Fox News or Breitbart, but a previous book on the President by Woodward was lauded by the former BBC Washington correspondent and anchor of BBC World News America, Matt Frei. A diehard Obamessiah worshiper himself, Frei’s only concern then was that all the fascinating issues in the book might get in the way of the reader appreciating “the nuance of his finely-tuned brain”.
The cuts probably won’t be a big deal at all, and in fact will be considered a good start in some circles. The possibility of this is so great that Democrats and their lobbyists are worried about what might happen if there is no disaster. That’s in the Washington Post, not Fox News, not Breitbart. So the President has to do as much fear-mongering as possible, and work behind the scenes (i.e. get the Democrat Governors to do political cuts in the manner of Labour councils in Britain) to ensure as bad an outcome as possible. Is the BBC providing any analysis from this angle? Of course not. He can do no wrong. It’s not His fault, you see. And in any case, cutting government spending is a sin.
Your license fee hard at work, providing a propaganda outlet for the leader of a foreign country.
Mardell didn’t touch the subject but to be fair Katty Kay did point out this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/22/opinion/brooks-the-dc-dubstep.html?_r=0
…which attacks the Democrats, although harder on the Republicans..it being the NYT.
@KattyKayBBC via Twitter
POTUS apparently enraged by Brooks’ column. But he is right on one thing – politicians are messing up economy. http://t.co/hBvekYdRvI
Washington Post article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bob-woodward-obamas-sequester-deal-changer/2013/02/22/c0b65b5e-7ce1-11e2-9a75-dab0201670da_print.html
I saw Katty’s tweet. But you have to understand that by blaming “politicians”, she too shifts blame away from Him. Except for a quick moan about the President offering little more than raising taxes on the rich – which he later admitted was unfair – it’s all about blaming everybody except Him. For the BBC, nothing is His fault. Katty was on Chris Matthews’ show yesterday talking about this issue, and when the video becomes available, I’ll be watching.
To be fair. Congress has the obligation to pass a budget. Some say it is the only obligation.
It hasn’t done so.
Not Congress: the Senate. Guess which party controls that.
BBC-Democrats always seem to forget to mention the Obama-Hollywood political alliance.
In contrast, ‘Breitbart’ has:-
“FLOTUS INTERRUPTUS: OBAMAS HIJACK THE OSCARS”
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2013/02/24/obamas-hijack-oscars
Reports seem to say that it was conservatives who were critical of the attention-grabbing first lady crashing the Oscars. But here’s an interesting clip from Piers Morgan’s awful CNN show featuring the Democrat poster boy Donny Deutsch who seems uneasy over the decision.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2013/02/25/donny-deutsch-asks-piers-morgan-when-did-you-become-such-crazy-liberal
There is a lot of hand wringing by the compliant White House media types (and others) about the cavalier way Mr. Obama is treating them. Love his recent quote “let’s move the press out so we can have some questions here…” They are offended that he doesn’t respect them. Too bad, guys and gals.
(Full disclosure: it was critical comments I made as a presenter on Radio Cambridgeshire following Morgan’s headline “Achtung! Surrender” a day before England met Germany in a semi-final of Euro ’96 that led to my being written up by my boss. I admit I was wrong, by the way, to call people at the Daily Mirror “bastards” – not good BBC practice. It is perhaps the only time in 20 years I allowed personal beliefs to intrude while hosting a phone-in. However, it led to my decision not to be further involved in BBC radio. And I jumped – I wasn’t pushed.
More disclosure: Morgan was the nephew of my gardener. The real family name is more toff-life “Pughe-Morgan”. And now he’s a liberal. How long before he joins the Beeb?
“Brit anger at Ben’s Argo: UK diplomats deny movie ‘slur’ that they ‘turned away’ Iranian hostages as portrayed in Oscar winner.”
“In the film six U.S. embassy staff were refused refuge by British diplomats – quite the opposite of what happened
Ben Affleck won Best Picture Oscar for the film he directed and starred in.”
By GUY WALTERS
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2284631/Ben-Afflecks-Argo-UK-diplomats-deny-movie-slur-turned-away-Iranian-hostages.html
Your license fee hard at work, providing a propaganda outlet for the leader of a foreign country.
Imagine if, like here, they also provided a pretty comprehensive censorship operation too?
Oh…
A reporter questions Jay Carney about the $500,000 price tag for access to the President. Can someone send this clip to Mardell?
Is the press beginning to grow some balls.
I mentioned in my post that the President was going to be talking to Governors. Yesterday, he held a meeting with them, which the press covered. At first.
“And with that, what I want to do is clear out the press so we can take some questions.”
There is a Beeboid in the White House press pool. I don’t know if it’s Steve Kingstone or Paul Adams, but someone from the BBC was there for sure, and was there for Jay Carney’s pathetic display. Yet no snarky tweets from anyone, no mention of this behavior from any of the intrepid, impartial, experienced, professional journalists the BBC employs to cover the White House and US politics.
Instead, the BBC’s US President editor has cranked out yet another blog post spouting a White House talking point. This time, he’s spinning the story that the Defense Dept. cuts triggered by the sequester (whose idea was that again, Mark? You never really said….) will kill US soldiers because they will no longer receive the proper training. He even wheels out the obligatory bereaved parent to shove the absolute moral authority in your face.
As an alternative viewpoint which the BBC will refuse to provide (because it clashes with their belief system), the Defense cuts won’t do any such thing. They could, for a start, just kill the bloated, craptacular F-35 fighter jet project, which has already cost billions, and is a money pit. Killing that would then save the billions the DD would actually pay for the finished product. The thing is, it will not see the light of day until – they hope – 2019. Killing it and starting over would be much cheaper. Then there’s the tens of billions wasted on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s been a joke for ten years and everyone knows it. Funny how all those Haliburton/KBR/Dick Cheney haters aren’t screaming about turning off that spigot now.
There’s plenty of savings to be had in the DD, just like in any bloated government department. Nobody has to die, we’re not going to suddenly stop training soldiers because of budget cuts. This is fear-mongering plain and simple, eagerly lapped up and doled out for you by the man the BBC expects you to trust most – and to mentor and educate other BBC journalists – on US issues. All because of political ideology.
In case anyone still doesn’t get Mardell’s game, consider how he explains why the threat of the sequester isn’t working as planned (who planned it again, Mark? You still haven’t said…):
Here is the theory: Democrats would hate the savaging of social programmes; Republicans would loathe the harsh reductions of military spending. So they would be forced to come together and find more sensible ways to reduce public spending.
Cunning, eh? Only it has not worked. That is partly because some Republicans think bad cuts are better than no cuts at all.
And what about the Dems or the President, Mark? He doesn’t say, leaving the Republicans as the sole villain(s). Cunning, eh?
You know how I said in the main post that the President would ensure as bad an outcome from the looming “budget cuts” as possible? Well, it’s started:
White House was not involved in ICE’s decision to release detainees, Carney says
ICE announced Tuesday that it has released several hundred undocumented immigrants in recent weeks as funding cuts loom. The detainees will instead be monitored in less expensive ways, the agency said.
The White House claims ignorance. Yeah, right. Nothing goes on without tight controls from the White House, whether it’s direct approval from the President or one of His inner
cabalcircle. Then there’s this:Bob Woodward blasts President Obama ‘madness’
The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward attacked President Barack Obama on Wednesday, saying the commander-in-chief’s decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier because of budget cuts is “a kind of madness.”
“Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying ‘Oh, by the way, I can’t do this because of some budget document?’” Woodward said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
What’s this all about?
The Pentagon announced earlier this month the U.S.S. Harry Truman, which was supposed to leave for the Persian Gulf, will remain stateside due to budget concerns. The sequester, which will cut billions in defense spending, is scheduled to hit on Friday.
Anyone need those shipping lanes protected? Screw you. Just another one of those “nuances” of His “finely-tuned brain”, I guess. How’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya now, BBC?
I will not speculate on whether or not Mardell knew about this in advance, seeing as how he gets the same press releases and White House communications the rest of the Beltway press does, and especially considering his colleague in Washington Katty Kay’s close personal relationship with the White House spokesman, which would make one question the timing of his report on how military budget cuts will be a matter of life and death.
SYRIA.
What is the policy of the West’s political class (inc INBBC)?
-To support the Sunni jihadist opposition (which is politically close to various Al Qaeda jihadist groups), and to oppose the Shia jihadists.
INBBC report:
“Syria conflict: John Kerry extends US aid to rebels”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21612130