Sequesterization?

[Teatownclown]

A guy stopped at a local gas station & after filling his tank, he paid
the bill and bought a soft drink. He stood by his car to drink his cola
and watched a couple of men working along the roadside.

One man would dig a hole two or three feet deep and then move on.The
other man came along behind him and filled in the hole. While one
was digging a new hole, the other was 25 feet behind filling in the
hole.The men worked right past the guy with the soft drink and went on
down the road. "I can't stand this," said the man tossing the can into a
trash container and heading down the road toward the men."Hold it, hold
it," he said to the men. "Can you tell me what's going on
here with all this digging and refilling?""Well, we work for the
government and we're just doing our job," one of the
men said. "But one of you is digging a hole and the other fills it up.
You're not accomplishing anything. Aren't you wasting the taxpayers'
money?"

"You don't understand, mister," one of the men said, leaning on his
shovel and wiping his brow. "Normally there's three of us: me, Elmer
and Leroy. I dig the hole, Elmer sticks in the tree, and Leroy here
puts the dirt back. Elmer's job's been cut... so now it's just me an'
Leroy.

[Teatownclown]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-unparalyze-us.html?_r=0

A Grand Bargain now, rather than a meat-ax sequester, would offer stability for the long-term and maybe even a boost for the short term..... If I am right and enough Republicans meet Obama on a Grand Bargain, it would both split the G.O.P. between the sane conservatives and the certifiable crazies and give the president a real foundation for a truly significant second term....giving the president so much more momentum to get the best ideas in his speech — like infrastructure, early childhood education and a trade agreement with the European Union — enacted.

Our choice today is not "austerity" versus "no austerity." There are a lot of good bipartisan packages out there to choose from; we just need one that puts us on a trajectory to shrink our ratio of debt to gross domestic product over time.

You can feel the economy wants to launch, but Washington is sitting on the national mood button. There are many reasons Apple has not spent its cash hoard, but I'll bet anything that one of them is the uncertain economic and tax environment in this country. The problem in Washington is ... contributing to a very negative sense of what's going to happen in the economy. "people have always turned to Washington in times of economic crisis, but now they're losing confidence in the government's ability to reshape the economy, and that affects their buying and investing habits."

Tom Friedman ...I cliff noted this article. Would you agree it's time to move forward or do you prefer the current quagmire?

[Teatownclown]

I am sure this list is only a smidgen of the cost to the nation and it's people. Disgusting childish behavior. They waste so much precious time. They get paid to do nothing, but say NO. What a self serving bunch of lying takers. Why do we have to keep paying them?

[Teatownclown]

I think anybody who uses household economics to fight the balanced budget debate and the cut spending approach are clueless. Actually, they are guilty of lazy thinking with no idea of how we grow the economy.

Consumption Drops, Unemployment Rises, and DC Politicians Are Clueless: Here's Why
Monday, 25 February 2013 11:50
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog | News Analysis
Can we just put aside ideology for one minute and agree that businesses hire more workers if they have more customers, and fire workers if they have fewer customers?
There are two big categories of customer: One is comprised of individual consumers. The other is government.
We tend to think of the government as a direct employer — of teachers, fire fighters, civil servants.
But government is also a major customer of the private sector. It buys school supplies, pharmaceuticals, military equipment, computers. It hires private companies to build roads and bridges, dredge ports, manage data.
One out of every five Americans works for a company whose customer is the government.
Here's the problem: Both categories of customer are buying less.
Individual consumers are buying less because they have less take-home pay. Their wages are dropping (the median wage is 8 percent below what it was in 2000, adjusted for inflation). And their taxes have gone up. The expiration of the Social Security payroll tax cut will shrink the typical paycheck by more than $1,000 this year.
Less take-home pay is causing 45.7 percent of consumers to pull in their belts, according to a survey released Thursday by the National Retail Federation. A quarter of consumers are putting off big-ticket purchases. A third are cutting back on eating out. A fifth are spending less on groceries.
This is why January's retail sales rose at their smallest rate in three months.
What about the other big customer – government? It used to be that when consumers spent less, government stepped into the breach and spent more in order to keep people employed. That's what we were supposed to have learned from the Great Depression.
No longer. Government is cutting back, too. Deficit hawks and government-haters are insisting on it.
Last year, President Obama agreed to $1.5 trillion of spending cuts, which have already begun.
Unless Republicans and Democrats reach a budget agreement before next Friday, another $85 billion of spending cuts go into effect this year. They'll begin almost immediately.
With consumers and government both spending less, businesses won't hire more workers; they'll fire more workers. That's likely to happen in coming months.
Anyone with half a brain should be able to understand all this. But apparently many in Washington don't have half a brain.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/14771-consumption-drops-unemployment-rises-and-dc-politicians-are-clueless-heres-why

[Gaspar]

If the sequestration cuts that the president signed into law go into affect, the following may result from the 1.8% reduction in federal spending:
Old people will be forced out of their retirement homes and many will turn to prostitution.
Janet Napolitano will release millions of illegal aliens from holding cells.
Murderers will be freed from prisons.
Firemen and teachers will roam the streets eating brains.
There will be a drastic reduction in drone attacks against American citizens.
Electric car companies will have to make a profit to survive.
President Obama may be forced to close GITMO.
The Chinese will invade and force us to buy more iPads.
Michelle Obama will be limited to one $20 million dollar vacation a year.
The Kraken will be set free from his watery prison.
Flights will be delayed and those that do fly will crash due to a drastic changes in the navier-Stokes equations of fluid dynamics related to airfoil design.
The average American will no longer be able to maintain sphincter tension.
Peas will taste like carrots.
All public transit will be required to increase prices by 1.8%.
The evil rich will become invincible and only stoppable by a magic shotgun owned by Joe Biden.

President Obama has proven to be a master at crafting hobgoblins.  When a crisis looms, rather than face it head-on, he takes to the campaign trail.  He has the power, without lifting sequestration, to divert the cuts to other programs.  There is an empty chair somewhere waiting for him.

[Teatownclown]

http://gawker.com/5986069/kate-upton-and-ryan-gosling-explain-the-sequester?tag=explainers

[carltonplace]

http://gawker.com/5986069/kate-upton-and-ryan-gosling-explain-the-sequester?tag=explainers

Look, pretty white people with giant foreheads!

[Gaspar]

Look, pretty white people with giant foreheads!

They must be smart.  Let's make them our leaders.

[Townsend]

They must be smart.  Let's make them our leaders.

GOP tried that unsuccessfully this last go-round.

[heironymouspasparagus]

If the sequestration cuts that the president signed into law go into affect, the following may result from the 1.8% reduction in federal spending:
Old people will be forced out of their retirement homes and many will turn to prostitution.
Janet Napolitano will release millions of illegal aliens from holding cells.
Murderers will be freed from prisons.
Firemen and teachers will roam the streets eating brains.
There will be a drastic reduction in drone attacks against American citizens.
Electric car companies will have to make a profit to survive.
President Obama may be forced to close GITMO.
The Chinese will invade and force us to buy more iPads.
Michelle Obama will be limited to one $20 million dollar vacation a year.
The Kraken will be set free from his watery prison.
Flights will be delayed and those that do fly will crash due to a drastic changes in the navier-Stokes equations of fluid dynamics related to airfoil design.
The average American will no longer be able to maintain sphincter tension.
Peas will taste like carrots.
All public transit will be required to increase prices by 1.8%.
The evil rich will become invincible and only stoppable by a magic shotgun owned by Joe Biden.

Can you pick the only one of those that is false...??   I will tell you - peas will NEVER taste like carrots, no matter what!!  And one step beyond that, peas will never be edible!!  Cannot imagine who ever thought that up...had to be drunker than the first person to eat an egg!  (Ogg and Bogg were sitting around drunk one day at the front of the cave when a chicken came wandering by.  Ogg blurrily said, "I dare you to eat the next thing that comes out of that chicken's bu$$...."  That's why we have omelets today!!)

[Red Arrow]

GOP tried that unsuccessfully this last go-round.

Wow!  Mitt could have won the election if only he had combed his hair down over his forehead instead of combing it back.

[Townsend]

Wow!  Mitt could have won the election if only he had combed his hair down over his forehead instead of combing it back.

Wow!  no

[Gaspar]

Wow!  Mitt could have won the election if only he had combed his hair down over his forehead instead of combing it back.

No, He would have had to hang around Hollywood and spend more time on The View to win.

[Townsend]

No, He would have had to hang around Hollywood and spend more time on The View to win.

I doubt he would've been accepted in either place.

[Red Arrow]

I doubt he would've been accepted in either place.

He could have been if he had combed his hair differently.