Aria, I think we’re in agreement. I just find it strange that the GOP and Fox News seem to want to present this situation in two contradictory lights.

On the one hand, they say the sequester and any bad results are all President Obama’s fault and that he was behind the whole thing all by himself.

On the other hand, they say that the sequester isn’t really a big deal anyway and it won’t do anything other than slow some spending growth a little bit, so what’s the big deal, anyway?

They can’t have it both ways. And none of their “analysis” includes the fact that most of the actual spending growth that will occur is in Social Security and Medicare, which are unaffected. Meaning that the 85 billion in cuts here are in the discretionary part of the budget – and they are CUTS, not slowed increases.

Kevin, this is the same GOP that tried to say Obama was responsible for every step of the sequester, and that they fought it tooth and nail.

In reality, let’s review:

1) The super Committee that proposed it as a disincentive was bi-partisan, and the Republican members supported the idea unanimously.

2) Who got the idea sold to Obama and Boehner? Oh, that’s right- Paul Ryan! You know Paul Ryan? 2012 VP candidate, also been a champion of creating a permanent sequester since 2004?

3) Bachmann, Boehner, Cantor, Issa, McCain, McConnel, and Ryan all endorsed and voted yes on it. Fox News endorsed it until it was unpopular, then they started pimping that “Absolut Obama” crap.

4) I have never heard Obama deny his role in this, outside of deceptively edited Fox News clips.

Now, Google “Reagan Sequester” if you want a few lingering questions answered… and have a nice day.

Nice trolling there, Pierce.

You missed the part where I said “the rest of the sentence is that they were created as a motivator”, specifically to get the GOP House to stop their obstruction and actually do their jobs. The intention was never to actually have the sequester go into effect. The intention was to spur everyone to make a reasonable deal – along the lines of the one that John Boehner and the House walked away from in their infamous 2011 tantrum. If you want to remember what actually happened rather than the Rush Limbaugh-tinted version, you’ll see that the Obama Administration did create the idea of the sequester in response to the GOP’s refusal to negotiate or do anything to stop a governmental shutdown regarding the debt ceiling in 2011. But they didn’t create the sequester out of nowhere – they did it in concert with the GOP, with everyone agreeing that this real deadline could be the only thing that might provoke everyone into acting in a more responsible manner.

The semantics you’re parsing are the GOP’s attempt to both blame the cuts on President Obama and ridicule his warnings that the cuts will have real consequences. The GOP and their media supporters are trying to blame any impacts on President Obama and duck their own responsibility. The specious attempt to give Obama control over which cuts would be a little more severe than others was almost comical – as if he would fall for the ploy of making some deep cuts into these programs all by himself and then listen to the GOP campaign about it for the next three years.

It’s really a shame that the GOP wants to continue to have these tantrums. Their own approval ratings have completely tanked, and this is the kind of thing that could keep them out of the White House for years to come. Hopefully, they’ll come to their senses and start acting like adults.

Sure he will pick up the tab,just like his waterboarding event for charity.

Hey Martin:

DOW hits all-time high: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2013/03/06/stocks-wednesday-3-6/1966461/

Unemployment fell to 7.7% last month- Even Fox News admitted it: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/08/unemployment-rate-falls-to-77-percent-in-february/?test=latestnews

Fact-check this graphic, Boehner refused the same spending cuts he asked for: http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/images/item/wh-20120222-presidentsplan.JPG

Gee, looks like he’s doing his job to me- At least on economic issues. Shall we talk about foreign po- Oh, yeah, that whole Nobel Peace Prize thing. Approval rat- What? 46 Obama, 12 GOP congress?

You tell me when he’s outright failed on something, ya hear? And I mean actually failed, not failed to make the house stop holding their breath.

The facts are not something that the GOP can spin away, although I’ll give them credit for trying. The entire sequester idea was a doomsday scenario for both sides that was created by the Obama Administration as a disincentive. The whole point was first to jar the GOP hardliners away from their 2011 attempt to shut down the government and default on our debts, and second to get the GOP to negotiate in earnest over budget issues rather than just pontificate. The idea was to create a real consequence for their intransigence if they didn’t stop it, and in 2011 they leaped to the opportunity to put off the problem for another year.

A bipartisan committee was formed to find real places to make cuts in the budget, and to find revenues as well to offset various cuts. But this committee never accomplished anything, since the GOP scuttled it almost from the beginning by refusing to acknowledge that any taxes could be considered. So the committee fell apart.

In retrospect, it seems obvious that the GOP thought they could wait out the 2012 elections and likely win the Senate and even the White House, thus allowing them to dictate any terms they liked. From that perspective, it’s obvious why they walked away from the earlier talks. Why commit yourself to an unfavorable negotiation when you can control the whole thing in a few months anyway? Unfortunately for the GOP, the 2012 elections didn’t go the way they thought and they are still in the same place they were in 2011.

It seems the GOP is now throwing a massive tantrum over the fact that they lost the 2012 election, as well as the fact that they don’t have any real solutions of their own at this time. So when the “sequester” came to pass, they clearly chose to punt.

The forced cuts under the sequester will have real impact, since they were designed to be draconian. And yes, they were created by the Obama Administration – but the rest of the sentence is that they were created as a motivator for the Congress to find a more reasonable solution. It’s clear that the GOP waited to see how President Obama would discuss the matter so they could see how to attack him. If he had said that the cuts were minor or that congressmen weren’t concerned, the GOP would have responded that the cuts were major, particularly to military. So the President took the position that the cuts would have real consequences, thus forcing the GOP to take a public position that the cuts would be inconsequential.

It’s funny that the GOP now wants to bring up this idea of having the President control what areas of the budget are cut under the sequester, without addressing the real issues that generated the idea in the first place. The idea wasn’t created to give the President control of anything. The idea was for President Obama to fall for a GOP ploy, after which he would be personally blamed by GOP candidates for any programs he personally decided to cut. Once again, the President avoided the GOP pitfall, sidestepping the question and insisting that the GOP congressmen do their jobs. Now that the cuts are being shown to have real potential impacts in multiple areas, the GOP seems to be trying the tactic of either ridiculing each cut as it becomes evident or accusing the White House of deliberately making the situation worse.

This entire notion that the President shouldn’t travel much, or that he shouldn’t play golf, is a GOP meme that has already failed repeatedly on Fox and with Rush Limbaugh. It’s the same one we hear each Christmas that the Obama family goes to Hawaii, and it ignores the record number of vacation days taken by George W. and Laura Bush between 2001 and and 2008. It’s essentially a snipe that, if followed, would find the President staying at home for the next three years while the GOP criticized him for diminishing the US image internationally, and while the GOP privately laughed at him for never leaving home.

Cancelling the White House tours is a public way of making the point that there are real cuts going on, as well as showing that the White House is willing to do its part to honor the lower budget levels. Congress could follow suit by reducing their own salaries and drastically reducing their staff size, given that it’s clear they have far more assistants than they actually need. Eric Bolling and Sean Hannity can offer to fund tours all they want, but the offer isn’t genuine, and it won’t get either pundit invited to any White House events any time soon.

I’ve been doing most of my Fox News sleuthing on how their viewers are escelating lately, and how they’re reacting to this on foxnews.com and Fox Nation comments answers literally every question about this, except for one:

Do these two actually believe their BS, or are they so afraid of their monster turning on them that they’re airing fanfic narratives?

KKKlannity could always dip into the cash he ripped off those suckers who bought tickets to one of his Freedumb Concerts.

Hannity's offer is probably about as genuine as his offer to undergo waterboarding for charity.