Americans aren’t concerned because they aren’t informed. A recent poll showed that 94% of Americans think deficits are getting larger; in fact they are getting smaller. Why shouldn’t they think things are out of control when both parties are acting like deficit reduction is a huge priority? Since Obama agrees with the Republicans that deficits are problem #1, it’s taken as truth that it’s an out-of-control problem.

They also don’t understand arithmetic. I keep getting mail from dumb wingnut relatives saying that we can avoid cuts if they just fire Obama’s nonexisting $100K/year dog trainer. After all $100K is a lot of money, right?

Yes, the world won’t end when several hundred thousand people lose their jobs and we join the Europeans on an austerity crusade, and Congress will have opportunities to repair the damage. And maybe Obama will save the Republicans’ hides by proposing deep cuts of his own that Republicans can then blame on him, he’s stupid that way. And we can all pretend that we’re too broke to have nice things when the US, in total, is richer than it ever was.

I’m not sure anyone in the Beltway can be shamed for any action, hypocrisy, or lie.

Maybe Obama wants the sequester. After all, much depends upon how this is administered. The process will be completely opaque, so this could be the perfect power grab. Not only the power grab of administering the sequester just how he pleases, but other power grabs while we are distracted by sequestration. All the while he can blame the Republicans. It is the perfect shock doctrine.

Most people are clueless when it comes to macroeconomics. It doesn’t help when you have all the dummies in DC extolling how the country that holds control of the world’s reserve currency is exactly like Ma and Pa Kettle’s household fund.

Because ya know the first thing I do when I have extra money in MY budget is hand it over to other people(which is exactly what the government did when it created the “tax breaks” to begin with.)

The Deficit Hysteria is fascist propoganda now on steriods. It’s a set-up to endlessly rip off brain-dead citizens by fooling them into pointing fingers at “the other side” and blaming it all on “that one.”

Another person commented on the thread about the Billion$$ that the Banks & Wall Street are raking in this in frickin’ bonuses, the rightwing noise machine endlessly whines about “tax and spend liberals” which means Obama & the so-called “Democrats.”

Like tax who? FWIW, Obama did somewhat reduce taxes on the middle class in various ways – some skeevier than others. The 1% hasn’t been touched, other than to figure out newer & different ways to finds loopholes & gull the gullible into giving mega-corporations tax breaks & incentives.

Yet rightwingers are STILL fooled by the ancient “tax and spend” meme. Spend on what? WAR, Inc and not much else, but all we hear is how “government” is “too big.”

What a load. Well, citizens get the govt they deserve. This is not the govt that *I* deserve, but most of the rest of the country? FEH. Not paying attention or endlessly distracted by jerkoffs like Ben Shapiro.

And so: on it goes…

There will be NO consequences for anyone in the House, Senate or White House, so it’s all Alfred E. Newman time over there in the Village.

The new GOP plan of action I’m hearing is that the GOP wants to give Obama the ability to cut the 85 billion unilaterally. Isn’t that nice of them? That way they can avoid the blame when he implements the chained CPI and they can use it against the Democrats.

Why should they care? None of this shit’s gonna affect them. Screw the rest of us. Why not? the 99% is too dumb & bamboozled to stand up for our rights, so… that’s that. home & hosed.

The chained CPI is for a whole other screwing I believe.

… the American people have become pretty jaded by the dire warnings of our elected officials.

For just about anything, whether it be GWOT, healthcare, jobs, roads, spying, water, fracking, education…… you name it. All Washington says is BLAH, BLAH, BLAH.

Amurka. Yet another failed state.

‘Sequester’ means nothing and tells us nothing. The media plays into and adds to the game of the word ‘sequester.’ WMD, the ‘deficit’, the Bush ‘ranch’, & ‘sequester’

Obama is actively looking for a way to implement the chained cpi. If not this time, there are other sequester-like “confrontations” scheduled that will provide him an opportunity to cave to the Repukes in order to “save” the US economy.
It would be nice to have an opportunity to elect a president who really represents the people, but with the current Supreme Court deliberations, it seems lke we are moving in the opposite direction.

Well, I wonder what will be said when their neighbors lose their houses, cars and start cutting back on everything; when their companies start having contracts cancelled. Anyone who thinks across the board cuts won’t hurt the economy is kidding themselves. And fuck the Grand Bargain. If it’s going to happen tell the truth of the situation. The sequester will wreck the economic recovery, which is exactly what Obama and our Corporate front men in Congress want it to do.

These scorched-earth policies can only work for so long. Another few million people out of work and home is maybe nothing to those who now implement these tactics. Eventually a tipping point will be reached and Americans won't care for what one party blames the other. They will seek to have those, who have collectively made them suffer, suffer far worse than have they.

People with nothing to lose, have nothing to fear.

“… needlessly feeding the deficit hysteria ….”

As Obama continues to seek a Grand Bargain to whittle away at earned benefits and democrats have no inclination to show some backbone and stand up to him, the sequester cuts emerge as the lesser evil.

We seem to be watching a cage match to the death for the title of the “Stupidest Party”.

Who said we’re jaded?

Let’s assume for a moment that all the dire talk about going off the fiscal cliff–which morphed into all the dire talk about the sequester–did not result in “jaded Americans,” as media is trying to convince us. (Gee, our fault again.)

What would unjaded Americans be doing about these stories? Calling their Congress people and the White House, under some delusion that any of them are going to change anything they’ve been bent on doing since before official formation of the DLC?

If you want a flag that flew over the Capitol building, by all means, importune your Senators and Representative. I’m pretty sure they respond to that kind of request, if their respective staffs possibly can.

But, if you’d like to stop drone killing or cuts to Social Security and Medicaid, you are not going to get there by emailing the WH. Or by posting on message boards. Those are things they love for us to do because they give us the illusion of activism, without even taking us outdoors.

It was just another artificial, manufactured bullshit crisis previously agreed upon by both factions of the corporatist party.