As far as political theater goes, this was not much of a plot twist

Well, I'm glad to see that all this sequester nonsense has finally been exposed for what it was- a straw man in sheep's clothing, and it was President Obama who started yanking on the loose threads.

The supposedly inescapable package of across the board spending cuts had been so contentious that our already glacier-slow Congress ground to a complete halt, other than to yeshole away on all the news shows, like a boxer bragging about being undefeated even though he has yet to throw a single punch. 

One would imagine the surprise then from Democrats in Washington when White House Press Secretary Jay Carney announced Friday the President would be open to fixing the sequestration's effects on air travel, namely the furlough of air traffic controllers. What is anyone paying attention to the situation supposed to think, now that we have been made aware the sequester is inescapable, that is except for the parts to be cherry-picked later?

Not long after Carney's statement, the House passed a bill to correct the problems with air traffic controllers 361-41, a total which obviously contained a large chunk of Democrat votes.

The complaint from Democrats is that President Obama put them in a position to either stand their ground and try to make Republicans own their insistence on the sequester in the next election cycle, or look like they were more worried about the airlines and the inconvenience to air travelers than more socially relevant programs.

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) called it a bad vote, setting a precedent that air passenger inconvenience is of greater priority than programs like Pell Grants or Head Start. That may very well be, but it does absolutely nothing by Rep. Grijalva to explain why then he joined in on that bad precedent by casting a vote in favor of the furlough compromise. 

Naturally, when hit with questions as to why the White House would fix air travel and not other problems like Head Start, Carney naturally replied that the White House would like to see that kind of funding restored as well, as blamed the Republicans for it not happening.

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"We call on Congress to show as much concern for others who are being harmed. Other Americans, hard-working, middle-class families who are being hurt by this. Hard-working communities that depend on defense industries and should not have been dealt this blow of arbitrary cuts that cause furloughs and and layoffs and job terminations because Congress decided- the Republicans decided and they said it publicly 'You know what? Everything we said about how terrible the sequester's going to be? Never mind. It's a victory. It's a tea party victory.'" - White House Press Secretary Jay Carney

Rep. Raul Grijalva

That's rich. If Congress- Democrat, Republican, Independent, whatever, were more concerned about anything at all, they they wouldn't have spent the past five years engaging in a non-stop territorial pissing match. Wasn't that supposed to be the entire point of the damn sequester, to force both sides to do something, or face spending cuts that would "hurt" enough to spur some sort of action?

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"I think when you begin to take away some of the chokehold pieces of it that are publicly difficult, you start whittling away at this and sequestration becomes less onerous. You never address the parts that aren't seen like the Head Start kids" - House Democratic Caucus Vice Chairman Joe Crowley, one of the few 'NO' votes on the air traffic controller compromise.

Crowley is correct, of course, but thankfully those of us who pay attention could have already told you the sequestration was the worst kind of political theater- the kind the actors thought was real once the curtain went up. Maybe they really thought Dastardly Dan had tied the damsel in distress to the tracks, but we at home could clearly see the wires, the smoke, and the mirrors. It was barely a spending cut to begin with, and now that efforts are well under way to strike the set, so to speak, in the final wind-up not only does our Congress and the current administration look even more worthless, but they look like the idiot kids who wear band-aids for attention. They made a bigger deal out of what required a band-aid, when the only real pain they are going to suffer is ripping the band-aid away to expose the scam beneath.