Good morning
The headlines:
- Sequester yourself today.
Link: “it’s the Republicans”.
Well that’s it then. All the votes are in.
Obama:
“[The Republicans] voted to let the entire burden of deficit reduction fall squarely on the middle class.”
Reid:
“The Republicans want the sequester to go forward.”
Bitter much?
On the flipside, the Boehner:
“It’s embarrassing that after 15 months Senate Democrats still haven’t passed a single sequester replacement bill. Now that today’s political stunt to raise taxes has failed, it’s time for the Senate Democrats to do the hard work that is necessary to pass a bill in the Senate so we can begin to resolve the issue.”
As a general observation: Mr Boehner is an enema of the State. Repeatedly rinsing with the same watery drivel – yet somehow claiming that he’s not responsible for the flow.
But inelegant metaphors aside, if the media would calm down a second, it would realise that this was just another deadline in a series of deadlines. Now that the deadline has passed, we’re about to discover that the actual deadline is March 27th – when the already-allocated government funding runs out. After which there’ll likely be another actual actual deadline. And so on to the next Administration and beyond.
McCain remains optimistic though:
“It wouldn’t surprise me if it starts to kick in and some of the effects of it are being felt all over America – both in industries and the civilian workforce, in the usual manoeuvres in training and operations of our military – to the point where it drives us back together. That’s my hope.”
Hmmm. Yes – after a brief second of thought, I think that I’d be surprised. When you take away money from someone: I’m just not sure that it pulls all of y’all together.
- Francois Hollande is “most unpopular french leader since 1981”.
Link: campaign promises be bitches.
“The Socialist president is falling behind on nearly every economic pledge he’s made for 2013…”
Unemployment is on the rise, and economic growth is forecast at 0.1%. Compared to “we’ll create jobs” and “0.8% economic growth”.
But that said – it’s only March. And besides that, I’ve watched the Iron Lady. You never know what might cause the swing in popularity, and cause the turnaround in economic recovery.
Still – it’s all a bit awkward when a government realises that its policy success is entirely at the whim of fate. Especially when we’re hypocritical voters. Somehow, we know that our own lives are fairly whimsical; with death on every breath, and unexpected joy hiding in the linings of clouds – but when it comes to governments, there is general assumption that they should have more control.
- Bitcoin.
Link: Dear Austrians – thoughts?
It’s rapidly appreciating in value, now that they’ve sorted out some of the exchange problems and the fraud issues.
Wrote about it here.
So so interesting.
That’s all for now.
Have a good day.
