sequester – Moe Lane

NPR tries, fails, to scaremonger on air traffic controller sequester woes.

Quick summary of this NPR interview: NPR hates the sequester, and brought in a spokeswoman from a local small airport to scaremonger about it by talking about the horrible, horrible loss of – thanks to the sequester – small airport air traffic controllers (ATCs). Small problem: lots of airports don’t actually use ATCs. In fact, the aforementioned spokeswoman’s own airport doesn’t have 24-hour coverage. And… most of that airport’s heavy traffic takes place outside of ATC-coverage hours. Seriously, that’s what she said:

I’d like to point out that we don’t have 24-hour tower coverage here currently. Those air traffic controllers are only directing traffic between 8 am to 8 pm seven days a week. And most of our heavy traffic is outside of those hours.

Matt Welch* (via Instapundit) had a lot of fun with this article generally, but I’d like to drill down on this one point, in order to ask a question: if heavy traffic is largely happening outside of existing coverage hours, why doesn’t the airport shift its ATC coverage hours? Is it because the heavy traffic will shift itself, in order to avoid the ATCs? Continue reading NPR tries, fails, to scaremonger on air traffic controller sequester woes.

More on the Left’s dawning realization that they got rolled on the sequester.

(Via Jim Geraghty) You can almost taste the terror* here from TPM’s Brian Beutler:

Republicans, by contrast, have become emboldened. On Tuesday, House Speaker John Boehner signaled that Republicans will not only set future appropriations at sequestration levels, but that they’d attempt to take even more money out of domestic programs and use it to increase national defense — the only category of spending they’ve attempted to shield from dramatic budget cuts.

That fight is still several months away. And there are plenty of reasons to think Boehner’s tough talk will give way to pragmatism, when Democrats object to providing defense spending with special treatment.

Continue reading More on the Left’s dawning realization that they got rolled on the sequester.

Cancel your golf games, Mr. President. Not White House tours for kids.

Although if you want to furlough more of your staff, instead: well, I’ve got my own reasons for being fine with that. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think that the President should furlough more of his staff in order to keep enjoying his golf games; I’m always up for seeing White House staffers be given a good, sharp lesson of their actual place in the DC food chain*. It’s not like there would be any actual long-term down sides, either…

Moe Lane

*Not actual krill, but… I believe that the term is ‘feeder fish.’

This comment on the latest Obama sequester lie is either deadpan, or despair-inducing.

PLEASE tell me this was sarcasm, Washington Post.

First of all, we should note that the White House’s story kept evolving as we reported last week’s column. It’s almost as if the president’s aides had to scramble to come up with reasons why the president could be correct, without actually knowing the facts.

Please.

Via… somebody on Twitter, I think.

QotD, The “Too Cute By Half” Sequester edition.

It certainly was, John.

In the past, presidents have reluctantly acceded to policies enacted by a Congress with enough power to override a White House veto. But this was and is something else: [President Barack Obama] himself sought the imposition of bad policy for the purpose of blackmailing himself and others into making better policy.

That’s ironic. And the thing is, the political system itself has no sense of irony. The political system is very literal. It can’t be expected to understand when a policy is intended to be sardonic — as Obama’s was.

President Obama messed up. I originally wrote that as “President Hipster,” but I try to keep a tight lid on the name-calling; judging from 2001-2009, that habit reduced the median IQ of the Online Left by about ten, fifteen points. Besides: hipsters generally stay within their own social space boundaries.

And so begin the days of Sequester.

As for public reaction: well, remember Y2K? – Because I don’t think that enough people in the current administration do.

And ain’t that a shame.

OK, this is getting to be one hell of a surreal Sequester Eve.

First there was this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfpL6_0OBuA

I was warned, but I went looking for it anyway. My mistake. Then there was this.

Star Wars Rock – Interjections: youtu.be/DUIPVOVRpCw via @youtube @moelane @drdohm

— Christine Dohm (@CMDohm) March 1, 2013

These things come in threes.

(pause)

I don’t wanna know what three is going to be.

QotD, You Should Hear What The ACTUAL Rocket Scientists Are Saying About The Sequester.

The one that I’m married to will give you an earful: if anything, she’s more annoyed than South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is at Barack Obama over his game-playing about the “budget”.

“I could not be more frustrated than I am right now,” Haley told reporters after the meeting. She said that when she asked Obama if he would consider a last-minute plan to shave about 2 percent from the annual federal budget without increasing taxes, the answer was “no.”

“My kids could go and find $83 billion out of a $4 trillion budget,” Haley said. “This is not rocket science.”

Read the whole thing; especially Gov. Haley’s ah, exasperated comments about Congress taking the last week off. Fair warning: my wife the rocket scientist agrees with THAT, too.

(H/T Instapundit)

Moe Lane

You got THREE DAYS there, Barry!

Better come up with something fast! – Because right now the GOP leadership is having great fun demonstrating the Hawaiian good-luck symbol to you. Speaker John Boehner’s flashy, crowd-pleasing profanity is particularly entertaining; guess the Democrats shouldn’t have pulled their hostages from a pool of voters that trend Democratic.

Moe Lane

PS: The problem with apocalyptic rhetoric is that it does not age well. Particularly after the time for the apocalypse comes and goes.