okay, I've been trying to narrow down the problem and gotten a better hold of what's going on.
The posts that show up in the dashboard post section are the ones that don't have a user group in UAM assigned to it in the Categories section. (Currently I am logged in as admin, so I should be able to see all posts). If I uncheck the UAM group in the category section, all the posts in that category show up in the dash board. If I check the UAM group, the posts disappear in the dashboard. I am also unable to add new posts to the categories with the UAM group assigned.
Also, if a post is assigned to a both a protected and unprotected category, I am able to see the poast title in the dashboard but the post text or text editing area does not show up in the dashboard when I go to edit the post. The tag assignment area, category assignment area shows up , but not the text (again in the dashboard)
I am however, able to view all post appropriately in the front/client side correctly. So this seems to only be a dashboard problem