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.