Do you hear it? It’s the sound of waiting. There’s only one thing on most pundits’ minds (Oxymoron?) and that is the dreaded fiscal cliff. This morning, Ezra Klein continued to push his “Obama’s gonna screw his base, ain’t that keen?!” theory. John Waggoner of USA TODAY complains that the markets are not freaking out about the Fiscal Cliff as much as he is. (There’s hope, however: with his x-ray pundit eyes, Waggoner sees that the markets are on the verge of the freak out he so desires to see.) But mostly we just see a lot of finger tapping. Conservatives are waiting for the terrible deal they know is coming. Liberals are waiting for their inevitable betrayal by the Democratic Party.
Otherwise, nothing is happening. Really. Let’s look at WonkBlog, shall we. In the last 24 hours, here are the articles that they’ve published:
Why more and more businesses are being taxed like people
The deep, real spending cuts we’ve already passed—and that no one talks about
Wonkbook: A critical week for fiscal cliff negotiations
Five ways raising eligibility could change Medicare
Berlusconi’s back, but the Eurozone crisis isn’t *
Where things really stand in the fiscal cliff negotiations
Forecasters are optimistic about U.S. carbon emissions. Should they be? *
Graph of the day: Medicare age change matters most for minorities
Study: The U.S. government has way too many overlapping programs *
I’ve marked the ones that do not directly relate to the Fiscal Cliff. Thus, two-thirds of the articles deal with the budget negotiations. It is like political reporting at the federal level is being held hostage to these negotiations. And the partisans on the left and right are correct: we will be screwed. So maybe it is time to move on to other issues like American hubris or law enforcement murder.
Afterword
I lied a little. There was one more: Sarah Kliff’s fun Lunch Break, this time: A stop-motion history of GIFs.
For the record: gif is not a good format, it is not much used any more, and it patented status caused a lot of us to hate it and refuse to use it until it became free about 10 years ago.
