Dishonest Reporting

So the media across the board is dishonest in their reporting about the "sequester".  Even the talking heads at Fox News can't seem to tell the truth, insisting on repeating the theme that since the GOP voted for it, they share "blame" for the sequester equally with Obama.

Let's review how this thing came to be, and how we arrived at today's automatic implementation of the sequester.

There was this manufactured budget crisis, I think it was called the "Fiscal Cliff".  Obama wanted tax increases but no spending cuts.  The GOP wanted spending cuts but no tax increases.  There is no middle ground between those two goals.  So they made a temporary deal in which Obama insisted on the "sequester" idea, which was a modest across-the-board spending cut that hit Defense hardest and did not touch entitlement spending (you know, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Welfare).

Obama's strategy was that he'd continue holding out for tax increases and the GOP would eventually cave in to save the military from the big budget cuts.  But his belief that the Republicans would give in on taxes to save national security proved way off base.

The press has egregiously misreported that Obama is the reasonable party in these negotiations, failing to ever mention that he has never even met with Republicans to so much as attempt to negotiate an agreement to soften the blow of across-the-board cuts.  They've also done a criminally poor job reporting that the sequestration "cuts" aren't cuts at all, but merely a reduction in the amount of increase to each agency's budget next year.  Which may be at the root of the reason Republicans decided it's better to let the sequester go into effect than to give Obama what he wants - all tax increases and no cuts.

Obama had a meeting with Republican leaders yesterday.  It was the first such meeting to discuss the sequester, and lasted a whole 7 minutes.  Once again, I challenge anyone to find where that fact was reported outside Fox News and Conservative Talk Radio.  That's why liberals assert that conservative media lies, because if the story wasn't on ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN/MSNBC, then it must be false.

So liberals and all those folks Rush Limbaugh calls "Low Information Voters" believe that sequestration was a Republican idea somehow forced on Obama against his will, that Obama spent the past year trying to negotiate a "balanced" deal that mixes spending cuts and tax increases to solve the huge deficits but the GOP refused to negotiate, and that horrible consequences are in store for all of us because of drastic cuts in funding to vital government services.

All of those things liberals now believe are utterly false.  The Obama administration has created and expertly perpetuates a national mythology blindly embraced by the majority of Americans who don't take any time to seek out the truth.  That's how he was re-elected, and how he still might get his way, which is restoring every penny of spending pulled back in the sequester while adding more spending on his pet clean energy and socialist programs and hiking tax rates so he can pretend he's being responsible about all that increased spending.

The founders warned us that when the citizens become uneducated, ignorant, and uninterested in government, the United States will lose its unique free republic.  They also warned that as soon as people figure out they can vote themselves benefits, they will destroy the republic and allow tyrants to rule.  Both have come to pass.