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CNN's Dana Bash fact-checked President Obama's falsehood about the sequester on Friday, but the major networks didn't exactly follow CNN's lead in reporting the distortion that Capitol Hill janitors and police would receive a pay cut because of the sequester. In his Friday press conference, Obama claimed, "They're going to have less pay, the [Capitol Hill] janitors, the security guards. They just got a pay cut." Shortly after that, CNN's Bash obtained from the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms that the workers would not receive a pay cut, just a limit on overtime pay. NBC ignored the distortion on its weekend newscasts, while...

<p>By now you have figured out that Armageddon did not occur on Friday and the dire warnings from the White House that the nation would essentially collapse were, shall we say, somewhat overstated.</p> <p>That doesn’t mean however that the nation and American prosperity is in any less danger. Barackalypse Now is indeed upon us, and it has nothing to do with the Sequester. It has everything to do with the deranged economic policies of the Obama administration.</p>

Airports have denied a claim by Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, that the sequester is already causing long delays for travelers at security screening checkpoints. Ms Napolitano said today that major airports were seeing lines "150 to 200 per cent as long as we would normally expect" as result of the federal spending cuts that went into force on Friday. "We're already seeing the effects at some of the ports of entry, the big airports, for example. Some of them had very long lines this weekend," she told a breakfast event organised by Politico. When pressed for specifics...

Today, Barack Obama took to the podium and confirmed that the terrifying cuts - cuts which every American should fear as if they were a gun pointed to their heads - will become law. Negotiations have failed, there will be no deal, and the United States will suffer the consequences. He did not mention the fact that the sequester was his idea, nor did he mention his refusal to sign any replacement legislation. Blame was placed squarely upon the Republican members of Congress, and their constant desire to protect the evil, greedy, rich.

Horsemeat and Sequester 2013

Back in my teaching days, many years ago, one of the things I liked to ask the class to consider was this: Imagine a government agency with only two tasks: (1) building statues of Benedict Arnold and (2) providing life-saving medications to children. If this agency's budget were cut, what would it do? The answer, of course, is that it would cut back on the medications for children. Why? Because that would be what was most likely to get the budget cuts restored. If they cut back on building statues of Benedict Arnold, people might ask why they were building...

Do we have a president or a perpetual candidate? It's not an entirely unfair question. Even as Barack Obama was warning of the dreadful consequences of the budget sequester looming on March 1, he spent days away from Washington, apparently out of touch with Democratic as well as Republican congressional leaders. In the meantime, Obama fans were lobbing verbal grenades at none other than The Washington Post's Bob Woodward. His offense: He's continuing to make it clear, as he did in his book "The Price of Politics," that it was Obama's then-chief of staff and now Treasury Secretary Jack Lew...

Even the White House is feeling the squeeze from the across-the-board cuts in federal spending. “From now on, my wife, Michelle, will only do four television appearances a week,” says “President Obama.”

March 3, 2013 White House Admits (Third Time) President Obama Fibbed On Sequester Paul Roderick Gregory Is the press corps getting some balls (to put it crudely but graphically)? Are they finally prepared to challenge the President’s untruthful assertions on facts that are crucial to understanding policy?None other than NBC’s David Gregory today pressed Obama’s chief economic advisor, Gene Sperling, whether his boss told the truth in the third presidential debate that “the sequester is not something that I’ve proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed.”  Sperling finally wilted under the pressure of tough questioning to  admit that “yes, in...

After Obama won re-election, there was extensive discussion among his supporters about whether the Republican “fever” would, in fact, break. Would the fiscal cliff negotiations, which resulted in the GOP accepting a tax increase on the nation’s highest earners, do the trick? If not, would coming fights over the debt ceiling and sequestration finally cure the Republican illness?....... Some in the GOP saw public opinion at work. “The three-day Gallup tracking numbers certainly aren’t good for him,” said one House aide, pointing to surveys placing Obama’s job approval rating at 47 percent approve versus 45 percent disapprove — down from...

Obama's administration gave Egypt $450 million in emergency aid in 2012 and the country averages about two billion in U.S. foreign aid money each year. ... Earlier this year the Obama administration rattled the nerves of Israeli leaders when he agreed to supply Egypt with dozens of F-16 cutting-edge fighter jets at a cost of approximately $213 million to U.S. taxpayers.

Secretary of State John Kerry announced Sunday that the United States would provide $250 million in assistance to Egypt after Egypt’s president promised to move ahead with negotiations with the International Monetary Fund over economic reforms. In a statement issued after his two-hour meeting with President Mohamed Morsi, Mr. Kerry said the aid decision reflected Egypt’s “extreme needs” and Mr. Morsi’s assurance that Egypt would reach an agreement with the I.M.F. after more than a year of talks over a $4.8 billion loan package. The statement issued by Mr. Kerry noted that he and Mr. Morsi had discussed the need...

To listen to the human side of sequestration, wait in line here for the 595 bus to Reston, Va., a journey across a suburbia grown fat and happy on a federal spending boom in the past decade, primarily military. While the rest of the country experienced a corrosive recession, unemployment in Arlington County, home of the Pentagon, never rose above 5 percent. Nearby Fairfax County, with a cyberintelligence industry that took off after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, gorged on government contracts to private companies. “It was easy, and people got comfortable,” said Stephen S. Fuller of George Mason University,...

It only took 5 years, butt Saturday Night Live finally discovered how truly funny Big Guy is. (I can’t wait till they figure out how funny Lady M is too!)     I guess the sequester cuts won’t be as bad as everyone thought after all – except for the cutback in Lady M’s television gigs. There will be hell to pay for that.     Butt don’t just take my word for it. Here, from yesterday’s Weekly Radio Address, a summary from the Wordle Wizard of Oz himself:       Or as only the immortal Emily Litella, a...

White House economic adviser Gene Sperling admits that, yes, in fact, the sequestration was President Obama's plan: White House economic adviser Gene Sperling admits that, yes, in fact, the sequestration was President Obama's plan: "We put forth the design of" the sequestration, Sperling finally admits after a long back-and-forth.

If we can't even cut federal spending by 2.4 percent without much of the country throwing an absolute hissy fit, then what hope does America have? All of this whining and crying about the sequester is absolutely disgraceful. The truth is that even if the sequester goes into effect, the U.S. government will still take in more money than ever before in 2013 and it will still spend more money than ever before in 2013. So it is a bit disingenuous to call what is about to happen "a spending cut", but for the sake of argument let's concede...

The US government will experience spending cuts that could affect the economy and limit military readiness as President Barack Obama and leaders of Congress failed to compromise on an alternative budget plan. The automatic budget cuts were placed during the budget negotiations in 2011 and can only be stopped by a deal between the White House and Congress.Talks last Friday resulted into nothing and that means government agencies will now cut a total of $85 billion from their budgets starting Saturday until October 1. Financial markets were unaffected by the stalemate in the budget negotiations in Washington.

**SNIP** California Parents in California also worried about the potential impact on their young children as Head Start programs were trimmed, NBC Los Angeles reported. “We can’t pay for it,” Ismael Lopez said of other preschool options for his son. “Everything is so expensive.” Cuts to funding for schools, the military and disability services could total $500 million, and primary and secondary education may see a $87.6 million cut, according to NBC Los Angeles. Connecticut The budget cuts include slashing funds for the Federal Aviation Administration by about $600 million nationwide, NBC Connecticut reported. How much any resulting delays may...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Just hours after across-the-board spending cuts officially took effect, President Barack Obama pressed Congress on Saturday to work with him on a compromise to halt a fiscal crisis that threatens the economy and his broader domestic policy agenda. The failure by Obama and Republicans to agree to halt the $85 billion 'sequester' cuts virtually guaranteed that fiscal issues would remain center stage in Washington for weeks, crowding out Obama's proposals to reform immigration, tighten gun laws and raise the minimum wage. The economic effects of the spending cuts may take time to kick in, but political blowback...