Free Republic

Pretty much says it all.

(CNN) - Many GOP critics say President Barack Obama should halt his golf games as the federal government weathers mandatory spending cuts, but one former Republican is taking the opposite tack, suggesting Obama golf more. But there's one important caveat to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's advice: The foursomes can't be made up only of friends. "I find it fascinating, people criticize him for taking people to dinner - he should be doing that every night. They criticize him for going and playing golf with people who he's got to deal with. He should be doing that every weekend. You...

We always knew that Obama has a glass jaw, that he can’t take a punch. But it’s a little surprising that he’s started staggering around the ring so soon after November, his approval numbers bleeding away, desperately counting the seconds until the bell rings at election time in 2014 to save him from further pummeling. It’s also hilarious. On paper he’s a bruiser. This is a guy who won a knockout reelection bout even though the economy was in the toilet. He hit the GOP with an uppercut over the Fiscal Cliff. He’s got an awestruck media in his corner...

They’re flailing. That’s the impression I get from watching Barack Obama and his White House over the past week. Things haven’t gone as they expected. The House Republicans were supposed to cave in on the sequester, as they did on the fiscal cliff at the beginning of the year. They would be so desperate to avoid the sequester’s mandatory defense cuts, the theory went, that they would agree to higher taxes (through closing loopholes) on high earners. But the Republicans didn’t deal. They decided to take the sequester cuts and make them the basis for a continuing resolution that will...

The phrase "jumping the shark" describes that gimmicky moment when something once considered significant is exposed as ludicrous. This is the week the White House jumped the sequester. The precise moment came Tuesday, when the administration announced that it was canceling public tours of the White House, blaming budget cuts. The Sequesterer in Chief has insisted that cutting even $44 billion from this fiscal year will cause agonizing pain—airport security snarls, uninspected meat, uneducated children. Since none of those things has come to pass, the White House decided it needed an immediate and high-profile way of making its point. Ergo,...

DAVID WOO: The Economy In March Will Be 'Decisively Slower' And There's Already One Worrisome Sign Joe WeisenthalMarch 10-2013Bank of America The economic data from last week was strong. Goldman Sachs sees a "tantalizing prospect" that the US economy may already be over the hump and that growth will accelerate this year, proving wrong the naysayers who said that the end of the payroll tax holiday and the sequestration would be a blow to the recovery. We thought this was interesting, because back in early February, BofA strategist for FX and rates David Woo said that the US economy was...

Mr. Chávez would have enjoyed the comparisons to Christ and Mr. Bolívar. "He wanted to be the Bolívar of the 21st century," said Enrique Krauze, a leading Mexican historian and author of "Redeemers," about Latin America's messianic caudillos, or charismatic political leaders. The late president often saw himself as a reincarnation of the 19th-century patriot who liberated five countries and sought to unite the former Spanish colonies, say former colleagues.

The sequesteria (irrational fear of sequestration) continues. For example, Newark Mayor Cory Booker claims that the sequester “is brunt, brutal and blind.” The Obama Administration suspended tours of the White House “because of sequestration.” George Mason University City and Regional Planning Professor Stephen Fuller claims that 2.14 million jobs could be lost because of the sequester. Now, take a deep breath. * Sequestration reduces the rate of increase in federal spending. It does not cut a penny of actual spending. * Under the sequester, total federal spending goes up, just by less than it would have gone up without sequestration....

U.S. lawmakers won’t have their $174,000 salaries affected by across-the-board government spending cuts going into effect this month, but there’s little clarity about how the bank accounts of senators and representatives were spared in the so-called sequester. The spending cuts hit every budget account with a few exceptions that were written into the law that set up the federal budgeting process more than two decades ago, known as the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act. Compensation for the president is specifically exempted, but there’s no mention of pay for members of Congress. So how did lawmakers’ pay escape the axe? Turns out that’s a...

President Obama’s approval rating dipped slightly after Democrats and Republicans failed to reach a deal to avoid the sequester, according to a Gallup survey released Tuesday. Obama’s approval rating had been holding steadily above the 50-percent mark since last October. But over the weekend, following Friday’s sequester deadline, the president’s approval rating fell as low as 46 percent. Obama averaged 49-percent approval for the week ending March 3, down from the previous week’s average of 51 percent, and down from 53 percent, where he started February. Obama’s highest weekly average in 2013 came shortly before his second inauguration in early...

President Obama warned Saturday that automatic spending cuts known as the sequester threaten to stifle the surge in job growth the nation saw in February. Switching from the adversarial tone he has used to pressure Republican leaders in recent weeks, the president appealed to what he called the vision both parties share for the country. “As Democrats and Republicans, we may disagree on the best way to achieve our goals, but I’m confident we can agree on what those goals should be,” Obama said in his weekly address. He cited a vibrant middle class, an education system that gives more...

This comes amid stories that Obama's chief political goal is helping his fellow Democrats win a House majority in 2014 and as his Organizing for Action (formerly Obama for America) is still cranking out press releases about the dire effects of the sequester. It's not unheard of for a politician to make public threats and private blandishments at the opposing party at the same time. But it is sometimes awkward. Especially if the threats and blandishments are not entirely credible. Democrats have some chance of winning the 17 seats they need for a House majority. But it's an uphill climb....

Innocent children, poor and minorities have been the worst hit. WARNING: attempted satire.On Wednesday, President Obama dined with a dozen congressional Republicans at an unpretentious little restaurant in a Washington, D.C. ghetto. His purpose was to show them how badly the poor, minorities -- and particularly little children -- have already been scarred, perhaps for life, by the Ravenous Bugblatter Austerity Beast of Traal. Even the dreams of little children that they might visit Barack's Barracks the White House this Spring have been dashed, viciously. Showing the determined leadership and frugality all have learned to expect from him, President Obama...

Jimmy Kimmel Live - Confusing Question of the Day - Obama Pardons The Sequester (and sending it to portugal)

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona said Friday that some of the more than 2,000 illegal immigrants recently released by the Homeland Security Department because of budget cuts may have been convicted of serious crimes, citing "local sources." In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, McCain demanded new information on the release of the detainees, who were facing deportation, including the details of their criminal records. He said there's a possibility some of them had committed serious crimes such as smuggling, narcotics trafficking and child molestation. Federal officials maintain those released were non-violent criminals and low-risk offenders. The...

West Wing employees will face furloughs and pay cuts due to sequester, deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday. Earnest did not specify what cuts the White House would make to its own staff, though he said “we’re also faced with making some tough decisions when it comes to ongoing projects” and equipment purchases. “We’re also a pretty personnel-heavy agency, if you will,” Earnest said. “So that means that there will be employees … who work here at the White House that will be facing pay cuts, that will be facing furloughs and again, this is the result...

Jimmy Kimmel did some on-the-street interviews on Hollywood Blvd. with people about the “Sequester.”These aren’t low-information voters; they are no-information voters. They are clueless. They vote in terms of race, feelings, and what other people are telling them. Actually, it’s worse.The most frightening part of what you’ll see in this three-minute video is how they go on even after admitting that they don’t know anything about what the Sequester is.One day these people will have children. The gene pool is beginning to grow algae.We are witnessing a world that is depicted in the 2006 film Idiocracy where “advertising, commercialism, and...

The 2013 spending cuts known to horror fans everywhere as “The Sequester” are not really spending cuts, because the Continuing Resolution form of government financing allows annual increases of over $85 billion per year. These adjustments of the automatic budget increases are therefore only a cut in the rate of growth, which, anywhere but the Bizarro World in which we now live, would still be called spending increases. Still, the WAY in which the money is being cut will have victims in the short term. -) There are government agencies that hired too many people because they thought they’d have...

Today, marks the first day of federal government budget cuts, referred to as “the 2013 sequestration.” No vote is required. The spending reductions automatically go into effect. Representing just 2 percent of the national budget, the cuts equal $85 billion and are the first overall spending reductions at the national level since Barack Obama became president 49 months ago. Technically these budget cuts were enacted in 2011, as a key component of that year's Budget Control Act. Basically, it was a deal between Pres. Obama and the Republican-controlled U.S. House to keep the federal government running, while delaying (or temporarily...

In response to questioning by Representative Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) of the House Oversight Committee, representatives from the Department of Education and Department of Transportation admitted that their recent dire warnings about the effects the sequester would have were not based on studies or data. According to deputy secretary of education Anthony Miller, the threat of “40,000 pink slips” for teachers was “an estimate,” but the department stands by this statement as an “impact it could have.” The inspector general of the Department of Transportation, Calvin Scovel III, also admitted that there were no “data or studies” supporting the warning...