The Media's New 'Crying Wolf" Canard

      Both Jamie Boule and Steve Benen have good pieces about this media meme. As Benen points out, the GOP made some pretty dire predictions as well. How about the predictions that the military cuts would embolden Iran, North Korea and al Qaeda driving up the membership at training camps? Benes also makes the great point that it's a little early to be declaring that the sequester cuts have hurt no one.

      "The point, of course, is that the president didn't quite cry "wolf" at all. He, like Republicans, warned of negative consequences, but the Beltway meme suggests Obama predicted falling skies the day after the sequester deadline passed. That simply did not happen."

      "And third, can we maybe wait a couple of weeks before we draw conclusions about the severity of the policy? The sequester policy began six days ago. To ask the "did Obama cry wolf" question is to assume that nothing bad has happened, negating the predictions from February."

     "But the point, which the president emphasized before the deadline, is that most of us wouldn't see the effects right away. If you or someone close to you is one of the furloughed workers, the consequences are quite real. If you count on a public service that's suddenly been made more difficult, I'm sure the sequester isn't some far-off abstraction, even if you f eel invisible to the Beltway pundits."

      "But the national impact will take time. When the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the policy would cost us 750,000, that doesn't mean all at once. The losses will be spread out over time, dragging down the economy slowly and incrementally."

      "The policy has barely begun and will take its toll as the weeks and months progress. To ask whether the president exaggerated the threat is to misunderstand the nature of the threat itself."

     http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/03/07/17224509-the-crying-wolf-meme-takes-root

      Here is a what the President actually said:

     "Now, I should point out and I'm sure you've heard from a number of experts and economists that this is not a cliff, but it is a tumble downward. It's conceivable that in the first week, the first two weeks, the first three weeks, the first month that unless your business is directly related to the Defense Department, unless you live in a town that is directly impacted by a military installation, unless you're a family that now is trying to figure out where to keep your kids during the day because you just lost a Head Start slot a lot of people may not notice the full impact of the sequester."

     http://prospect.org/article/obama-didnt-cry-wolf-sequester

     Remember we also had GOP Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell warning about them as well as a GOP Virginia Rep. In reality, the media is crying wolf again. Bob Woodward cried wolf about that "threat"- you know, "you'll be sorry" and this is the new faux issue to avoid talking about what really matters. Why not actually investigate the effects of the sequester in a meaningful way and assess what the impact is rather than just declaring Obama cried wolf because the world hasn't ended after 2 days?

   It does seem that we're kind of dealing with the niggly matter of time. In 1995, the GOP claimed Clinton was being alarmist-ie, of crying wolf, however, the pain was real and the GOP got a big public black eye for that episode. The hope seems to be that this will allow them to play chicken with an issue that might have bad but not cataclysmic effects. 

      We some to be condemned to have to go through everything that we don't want just to be sure we have a good reason for not wanting to. So we're in the suboptimal position of needing to see the pain before we can decide to stop it.