Yours truly has been in another one of his self imposed news blackouts. I’ve been busy and also I haven’t the heart to take the inevitable and fabricated sequestration dog and pony show seriously. I chose to utilize the magnificent switch on the media box which turns it off. It’s been a delightful (and productive!) week.
Unfortunately it dawned with enough snow piled around my head that I was forced to take a break. Snowed in! These things happen. I could fire up the 4×4 and do battle with mother nature but there are wiser options. When snow is building, timing is an art. Good thing I’ve got cold beer and a good book or things would be downright annoying.
Since I had free time I popped my head over the fortifications and noticed that the previous week’s “sequestration news” had been “all doom all the time”. Glad I missed that.
I’m not making light of those who’ll have hassles (myself included). Many of us will be impacted and some to a disturbing degree. Life can be tough. But isn’t life filled with uncertainty? Perhaps I’ll regret my hubris but at the moment the level of panic seems a bit contrived.
Predictions of Armageddon seem overwrought. As if I’ve the goal is to convince us this is all sudden and unpredictable and in no way within the real of reasonable prognostication. Which is, of course, poppycock. Aren’t we riding a wave of massive budgets, all of which dwarf the toughest years of WWII? Haven’t we been floating on debt for most of the last several (dozen!) years? Wasn’t this all baked in the cake by entitlements and demographics that were known years (decades!) ago? Once the budget is “sequestered” won’t it still be huge? Who didn’t see it coming? (And by the way, it ‘aint over yet by a long shot!)
It comes down to this. Is any cut, even the smallest one, so terribly inconceivable? Is our society really that fragile? And if so; how does that mitigate the mathematical facts that cannot be denied forever. One way or another, math always wins.
Despite a week of news that we’re all doomed, the sun rose on schedule. Based on the media you’d think we were plunged into eternal darkness. How do I balance such things? How should I capture the sense of unreality? On one hand, peaceful snow, work to be done, and perhaps some unpleasant but survivable belt tightening. On the other hand, politicians and their pet press are baying at the moon because the new level of spending which is enormous is suddenly an amount less than desired and anticipated. Really? Who has words for that?
George will does!
“Washington chain-saw massacre — we must scrape by on 97.7 percent of current spending!”
Oh that’s just awesome! Words of gold! Theres more.
“The sequester has forced liberals to clarify their conviction that whatever the government’s size is at any moment, it is the bare minimum necessary to forestall intolerable suffering.”
Click here for the source. Well done Mr. Will!
A.C.
P.S. To repeat, “belt tightening” sucks so I’m not trying to make light of those who’ll suffer… but surely the nation as a whole (a nation which has survived civil war, the Great Depression, WWII, and the AMC Gremlin) has endured worse.
I too, am one that has been affected by sequestration. In fact, my employer started prepparing 3 weeks in advance by layine off a couple people because the Gov’t contract was being pulled back.
As I look out the window at the firewood, both on the ground and standing (with green needles on it), I know I have plenty of work to occupy me until the (cough) smart people in D.C. get it sorted out. Would I rather be working? Of course!
Mr Will actually has it wrong. It’s really more like:
“Washington chain-saw massacre — we must scrape by on 102* percent of last years spending!”
When is a cut not a cut? When you work in D.C.! Apparently they were going to increase spending by (let’s just say) 5%* this year over last…. now it’s only going to increase by 2%* (or is it 3%*)
And the handwringing that goes on over this. If I saw an increase, ANY increase in my income, I would be celebrating! If it was a few percent less than I thought it was originally going to be, I might not celebrate as much, but I’d still celebrate!
* Percentages may vary year to year;resulting handwringing may or may not occur depending on the political outcomes desired.
As I understand it, we’re not trying to scrape by on 97.5% of last years spending, were trying to scrape by on 107.5% of last years spending.
Aaauughhh…. So much misery. How will we endure!
Enough about the sequester. We want to know about the cat!
The cat agrees. We will co-write a brief update shortly.
Survived the AMC Gremlin? I simply must protest. Unlike the Ford Pacer, nobody was actually killed because of a design flaw in the Gremlin. The Gremlin may have only had 105hp from its 3.8L inline-6 and looks that only a mother could love, but in that time of Arab oil embargo and pathetic quality from the Japanese imports, is it really fair to imply that America suffered from a simple, reliable, ugly, gutless econobox? Today you have to remove simple and reliable in order to make the Toyota Prius compete as only ugly and gutless, which to me seems a step backwards.
No, what we suffered from was the GM 350 diesel. Go to Europe and you can buy a Ford Focus diesel that gets 73mpg for under $15K. You can buy a twin-turbo Jaguar V-8 diesel sedan capable of moving you in supreme comfort at over 50 mpg. You can even buy a Mercedes twin-turbo diesel that cruises well into the triple digits at over 60mpg.
Yet you can’t buy them in the USA. Why? Why is only VW selling diesels here? Because the market is dead, and what killed the market was the Chevy 350. The EPA is only dancing on the grave of the small diesel in this country.
– Max
Max … that was AMC that made the Pacer (sort of the “Big Brother” to the Gremlin, yet with all the same foibles and failings as the Gremlin.) … the pony car you’re trying to remember is the Pinto… 😉
I rode in both Pacers and Gremlins. Both are the reason Toyota kicked the big three’s ass for a decade. (I have better memories of the Pacer but it occurs to me that both broke down plenty.)
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