For once, I’m kinda happy this is an incredibly slow news morning. That’s because one story that needs to be read perhaps will be. It’s from HuffPost’s Sam Stein and Amanda Terkel:
The Huffington Post set out to do an extensive review of sequestration stories from the past week, with the goal of finding 100. What seemed like a daunting task was completed in hours. No one region of the country has been immune. Rural towns in Alaska, missile test sites in the Marshall Islands, military bases in Virginia, university towns across the country, and housing agencies in inner cities are all beginning to feel the cuts.
Read it all. It’s a reminder that the reported nothing-burger nature of the sequester, which Republicans celebrated on grounds that of course there’s so much waste, fraud and abuse that big cuts can be absorbed without pain, is proving to be a hoax as the cuts are finally being implemented. In addition to the many incidents Stein and Terkel write about, international travelers are being advised to skip trips to and stopovers in the United States if possible because suspension of overtime pay for customs officers is making entry at U.S. airports (particularly Miami) a rolling nightmare.
So I hope Republicans enjoyed their little stretch of hahahas over the sequester as a symbol of government’s uselessness. Before long, nobody much is going to be laughing.
