Busted Rhyme

And here you thought we were broke. I know we’ve annoyed you with all sorts of scandal ridden, Sunday talk show posts today, so there’s a bit of a lighter, government incompetence story to share as we close out the weekend and prepare for QoTD. This one comes to us from long time Green Room [...]

Read this post »

Downsizing, the wrong way.

Just in case you thought the administration had finished drumming up frightening reasons for why Congress really needs to get their stuff together and undo sequestration, never fear. The past few summers, we’ve watched some truly catastrophic wildfires rage across the American landscape, and the Departments of Interior and Agriculture would like you to know [...]

Read this post »

Sequester? What sequester?

The federal government is in debt up to their (our!) eyeballs, and yet it has more land on its hands than it knows what to do with (except, you know, bar private individuals and citizens from putting the lands to productive uses). The federal estate covers almost a third of the surface area of the [...]

Read this post »

Roll, pitch, yaw, repeat.

A couple things. I hope this “Reducing Flight Delays Act of 2013″ is clean. One would guess it must be, as it passed with unanimous consent, suggesting it was not all larded up with nonsense. Two, it looks like the bill simply authorizes the agency to use part of its already existing budget to prevent [...]

Read this post »

Rabble rabble rabble.

Yes, you also warned us that we wouldn’t have meat inspections and that children would be denied vaccinations, remember? During Tuesday’s briefing, after the news from the FAA that employee furloughs were starting to cause flight delays (watch the vid at RCP): I find it fascinating that Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republican Party [...]

Read this post »

Crass politicization, A-Hoyer!

He was prompted by a reporter and didn’t bring this up on his own, so there’s a bit of distinction there. The question from the reporter seems to have been the rather leading “is Boston a reason to rail on your [insert favorite political target here]?” instead of what would have been more reasonable and [...]

Read this post »

Unexpectedly.

What happens when the President of the United States spends six weeks and millions of dollars spinning horror stories about the economic impact of a 2.3% reduction in government spending?  If you guessed “people spend less money,” you’d be right — and better at economic projection than media economists.  To only their apparent surprise, retail [...]

Read this post »

Dagger.

Those $85 billion in sequester cuts over which the Obama administration has been trying their darndest to whip everyone into a national freakout, insisting that employees will need to be furloughed, air traffic control towers are going to be shut down, and the White House can’t afford historical tours? Practically peanuts compared to the amount [...]

Read this post »

Cross their hearts.

I am mildly heartened by the fact that the American public is not absolutely freaking out over a small percentage of the budget. It gives me hope that perhaps we can stomach more necessary reforms in the future. For the same reason, Democrats are worried that they’re not freaking out, which is why Greg Sargent [...]

Read this post »

Seconded.

I think the consensus is that President Obama and the Democrats very much overplayed their collective hand on the sequester, with all of those dire warnings about meet inspection and longer airport lines, but whether or not they think they have a real shot at getting sequestration rolled back — lest its implementation should thwart [...]

Read this post »

...but actually, we do.

…but while we’re on the subject, we just wanted to send our Organizing for Action supporters this quick update about how your child is probably going to be less safe and not as well cared for at his or her public school now that the cuts are kicking in. Just a casual e-mail between friends: [...]

Read this post »

Shared sacrifice?

Last week, I wondered if perhaps the Obama administration would consider factor the optics of the decision to cancel White House tours for the public into their upcoming decisions about the executives’ leisure activities, and whether they’d tone them down a little due to the extra security and funds that they require. Evidently not. Not [...]

Read this post »

Optics.

It’s that time of year again — the time when the White House starts making preparations for the first family’s summer vacation. They skipped the usual Martha’s Vineyard visit last year in the heat of the campaign, but Politico reports that they’re returning to tradition this year: President Obama and his family are likely headed [...]

Read this post »

Bazinga.

As part of their sequestration-scaremongering roundup, the White House went straight for the worst-case scenarios that would hit all of the federal government’s departments and agencies in the spending cuts’ wake — terrible calamities, like “hundreds of thousands of Americans” losing access “to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings.” The [...]

Read this post »

Real talk.

Heh. Allahpundit already explained the motivations behind the White House’s announcement that they’re cancelling all public tours of the president’s residence until further notice; the Obama administration is putting all of their best efforts into making the sequester cuts as painful, visible, and wide-ranging as humanly possible in order to ensure that no ordinary American [...]

Read this post »

Yeah, about that...

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano had one of the starring roles in the White House’s Nightmare-on-Sequester-Street messaging in the run-up to the budget cuts’ implementation last week, warning that “under sequestration, ICE would be forced to reduce current detention and removal operations, potentially affecting public safety, and would not be able to maintain 34,000 [...]

Read this post »

Narrative failure.

Actually the two polls by Gallup and CBS don’t agree on much, but they both agree on the same point — no one’s winning the PR war over the sequester, at least not at the moment.  While there is a wide disparity between the two surveys on just how much this will impact the daily [...]

Read this post »

"Fix it."

After last week’s CPAC snub, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was back to hammering his role as an outsider-looking-in to DC’s inexcusable dysfunction at a press conference in his home state this afternoon. Via National Review: If the federal government can’t cut one cent out of a dollar, and not bring the economy and the [...]

Read this post »

"I really have no idea about how money works or how budgets work."

Come for President Obama admitting, “I really have no idea about how money works or how budgets work.” Stay for the priceless portrayal of a heroic public school teacher at three minutes. Perhaps more than anything, this skit signals to me that Americans might not experience sequester as the fiscal armageddon Obama promised. Instead, SNL [...]

Read this post »

Comeback.

Faced with a choice of rehashing the stale Bob Woodward drama and the very, very, very stale sequester doomsaying, the Sunday shows decide to kill two birds with one stone: Gene Sperling will appear on NBC and CNN to bash the GOP on sequestration and then field questions about what he meant by “regret” in [...]

Read this post »

And so it goes.

President Obama signed the order for sequestration to go into effect on Friday evening, after his This-Is-Happening press conference in which he chided, “We will get through this. This is not going to be an apocalypse, I think, as some people have said. It’s just dumb. And it’s going to hurt.” …Uhm, let’s holdup for [...]

Read this post »

Doomsday.

To say that the meeting between congressional leaders and President Barack Obama was unproductive might be an understatement. And as the meeting wrapped up, a new reality began to take hold: The sequester may be here to stay… “There will be no last-minute, backroom deal and absolutely no agreement to increase taxes,” McConnell said in [...]

Read this post »

"Literally."

This morning, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was the latest Cabinet member to hit the briefing room and lament the many ghastly ways in which sequestration would man-handle his department’s many absolutely essential functions. Via Politico:  ”Kids are gonna get hurt, kids are gonna get hurt. That’s just the reality,” he said. His visit to [...]

Read this post »

"They have to see the wizard and grow some courage."

Do you think maybe the White House is regretting that “we have no flexibility with which to implement these across-the-board cuts” talking point a little bit? (‘Er, no, we didn’t mean that we actually wanted more flexibility, we just meant that as a talking point with which to dissuade sequestration altogether so we could keep [...]

Read this post »

He'd like that, right?

Among the complaints about sequestration coming from the White House in recent weeks has been that the sequestration is much too indiscriminate, and that its rules pretty much legally require them to implement the cuts via budgetary hack job. Well, be careful what you ask for, Mr. President, ’cause you just might get it. From [...]

Read this post »