Feb 21, 2013
More technical difficulties today, but less delay as a result. This is progress! Greg Dworkin had a new crop of polls for us that say the President's popularity is rising to new highs while that of Republicans is falling to new lows, and to top it all off, Republicans are on the losing end of issues like the sequester, immigration and more. Time to compromise! So what's up with this sequester thing, anyway? David Frum asked yesterday why, if all agree that the sequester is a mistake, why it's being allowed to go forward. And the answer is that in Washington, a mistake that you think you can pin on the other side is a mistake worth making. Sure, the polling says Republicans can't pin this one on Democrats, but that's probably skewed, right? And just like the supposedly wise "business leaders" Republicans think would make such great stewards of the economy, it may turn out that many of them are actually economic kamikazes. So what's in store under the sequester? We review last weekend's New York Times editorial running down the impact, and it's an ugly picture. And of course, we spend some time embellishing that picture by tying in some of our recent discussion threads, just to round things out. We also added a mini #GunFAIL roundup, with the most egregious stories of the past day or two, a short clip from Gideon on the interesting development in the scientific world of "pre-registration" of a prominent neuroscience study, some observations on Senate paralysis (including the endgame on Hagel), and we wrapped up with mention of new polling out of California showing that ousting obstructionist Republicans from state government appears to have convinced more voters there that their government is finally on the right track again. Interesting!