Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

Archives for February 2013

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What was Woodward’s sin?

Ace:

Woodward’s sin was exposing “big whoppers” the Administration told on the sequester.

There are several lies Woodward has exposed:

1. Obama, despite the media blitz to blame the GOP, actually conceived of and proposed the sequester.

2. Obama, despite now claiming that tax increases must be part of the deal to avoid the sequester, agreed last year that only spending cuts would constitute the plan to avoid the sequester. Thus, he’s “moved goalposts” yet again.

3. Obama does not in fact have to release illegal aliens or cancel ship deployments due to the sequester — he’s doing these things by choice, for political purposes.

Welcome to The Obamaian Universe,

He doesn’t want to cut spending. He wants more of it. Forever. Public spending is beyond ideology for Barack Obama. It’s the oxygen in his universe.
…
Maybe it’s time to come to grips with the fact that he sees the public economy of federal spending as the life force of the nation as no president ever has, not even Franklin Roosevelt.

Indeed!

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“I think you will regret staking out that claim.”

As you all know by now, Bob Woodward, the guy who brought down Nixon, has made the White House unhappy by (correctly) asserting that sequestration was Obama’s idea in the first place. So unhappy that, after being yelled at for an hour, Woodward received an email from Gene Sperling, economic adviser to the president, promising(?)

But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim.

The charm oozes from the email later on, when Gene apologizes for yelling at Bob, but Bob isn’t the only one getting the yeller (h/t Instapundit): Ron Fournier writes,

As editor-in-chief of National Journal, I received several e-mails and telephone calls from this White House official filled with vulgarity, abusive language, and virtually the same phrase that Woodward called a veiled threat. “You will regret staking out that claim,” The Washington Post reporter was told.

Once I moved back to daily reporting this year, the badgering intensified. I wrote Saturday night, asking the official to stop e-mailing me. The official wrote, challenging Woodward and my tweet. “Get off your high horse and assess the facts, Ron,” the official wrote.

Lanny Davis (audio starts immediately) told Washington, D.C.’s WMAL this morning that the Obama White House had threatened the Washington Times over his column.

Woodward says sequestration is “a kind of madness I haven’t seen in a long time.”

So, is Woodward overreacting, or has he created a perfect storm of a timely controversy about the media and individual reporters?

Mind you, not just any individual reporter, but the reporter who brought down a POTUS, and had Robert Redford and Jack Nicholson (as Jack Foreman) play him in movies a generation ago.

Or is this just a generational thing that young voters will brush aside?

RELATED:
The presidency as theater:

And thus the facade continues: promising peace and delivering expanded war, with new frontiers broken for drone killings of children and other innocents, legal justifications crafted for killing Americans, and near-limitless executive power over nearly every aspect of our lives. Reciting the Progressive line while delivering impoverishment, decreased access and less-affordable healthcare, clearly it matters only what he says, not what is. His hoped-for next act: new goals of gun control that would make the most vulnerable more so, an increased minimum wage that would further exacerbate the inability of those with no work experience to get an entry-level job in which to hone the skills that will put them on the economic ladder, and “green” measures, based, like the Life of Pi, on computer-generated fantasy so much more appealing than dry real-world data.


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Taxing tango in Seattle

New Tax Rule Threatens Seattle Ballroom

Hallie Kuperman loves to dance. But what she loves even more is sharing this passion with visitors to her social dancing club, the Century Ballroom.

Hallie purchased the vintage dancing space 16 years ago, turning it into a Seattle institution. The Century Ballroom not only teaches swing, tango and the foxtrot, it also hosts cabarets and other live performances for an eclectic crowd of all ages. The club’s trendsetting owner has become a prominent and beloved figure in the community.

Business was swinging until a surprise bill arrived from Washington’s Department of Revenue. The state agency decided to reinterpret an obscure old tax, audited the Century Ballroom, and demanded a check for $92,000.

Here’s a tango show at the Century Ballroom:
Marcelo Molina Performing in “TANGO CABARET” Show at Century Ballroom, Seattle 2011 with Mirabai Deranja, dancing to Reliquias Porteñas.

h/t Gay Patriot, who says, New Tax Threatens Dancing In Seattle, Gays To Riot?

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“72 is the new 30”? Only if you compare to cavemen

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany found that

Those primitive hunter gatherers, at age 30, had the same odds of dying as a modern Swedish or Japanese man would face at 72.

Which doesn’t mean that you’re as spry at 72 as you were at 30.

But you didn’t need me to point that out, did you?

I’ll now go back to nursing my cold. Beeehave while I’m away.

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