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It seems Republicans are ready to die on their sword of protecting tax cuts for the rich and are going to do their best to blame President Obama for their unwillingness to negotiate on anything in good faith. They've been wanting to take a pound of flesh from the working class by slashing our social safety nets and it looks like they might use this sequester to finally get their way: GOP Eager For The Sequester To Go Into Effect So They Can Blame Obama For Its Devastating Consequences:

With the sequester deadline looming just two weeks away, Republicans have adopted the public posture of cheerleading for the anticipated spending reductions to social programs, while preparing to blame President Obama for their devastating impact on middle class Americans and national security.

Republicans have yet to offer a proposal that would offset the cuts in the 113th Congress and have categorically rejected the Senate’s balanced approach of higher revenues and spending cuts. Instead they’re sitting on their hands until the March 1 deadline, informing Obama that they will not act to head off the automatic reductions. [...]

Pressed by Crowley on the consequences of the across-the-board cuts, Barrasso initially dismissed their impact before blaming Obama for any deleterious effects. “I believe the president has a lot of authority that he can decide how this works, and, yeah, he can make it very uncomfortable, which i think would be a mistake on the part of the president, but when you take a look at the total dollars there are better ways to do this, but the cuts are going to occur,” he said.

Here's more from them on the damage the cuts would do: How The Sequester’s Budget Cuts Will Devastate Already-Battered Programs:

Federal spending is scheduled to reach historic lows thanks to the Budget Control Act, which placed caps on spending as part of the deal to raise the debt ceiling in the summer of 2011. Non-defense spending is already 14 percent lower than it has been at any time in the last half-century, and it could go even lower if the so-called “sequester,” a series of automatic budget cuts that will begin to take effect at the beginning of March, is allowed to occur.

The drop in domestic spending has already devastated many programs on which Americans depend. But on March 1, those cuts will get even deeper when the first $85 billion of sequester cuts take effect.

That will have a substantial impact on food safety, education, law enforcement, and safety net programs, according to estimates from Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee. And if the sequester is left in place for the full year, it will cut $1.5 trillion and those effects will only get worse: Read on...

Here's a reminder from Greg Sargent on the right's decision to use the sequester as "leverage" against President Obama: We all agree that spending cuts hurt the economy. Right? Right.:

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Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Monday said that she would be willing force a "thoughtful" shutdown of parts of the United States government if President Barack Obama did not agree to deep spending cuts.

"What we want to make certain is that this president, this administration, this bureaucracy realizes that kicking the can must stop," she told MSNBC's Chris Jansing. "It is spending cuts and it is imperative that we reduce the size of the federal government, that we get in on a mega-diet, that we end this out-of-control spending."

"There is the option of government shutdown," the Tennessee Republican continued. "There is an option of raising the debt ceiling in short-term increments... There's also the plan of three dollars in cuts for every one dollar of debt limit increase. So, the healthy thing is this, we are having a good discussion on it."

Jansing pointed to a study by the Bipartisan Policy Center which found that the government could continue to fund interest on the debt, Social Security, Medicare, food stamps during a shutdown -- but it would mean that almost every other federal program would grind to a halt.

"[B]ut doing all that will mean defaulting on everything — really, everything — else," The Washington Post's Ezra Klein wrote last week. "The FBI will shut down. The people responsible for tracking down loose nukes will lose their jobs. The prisons won’t operate. The biomedical researchers won’t be funded. The court system will close its doors. The tax refunds won’t go out. The Federal Aviation Administration will go offline. The parks will close. Food safety inspections will cease."

"I think that there is a way to avoid default," Blackburn insisted. "If it requires shutting down certain portions of the government, let's look at that. Let's put these option on the table, be very thoughtful, but get this spending pattern broken. We cannot afford a $4 billion a day deficit and trillion dollar plus deficits every single year."

"So, it requires thoughtfulness and it requires that we are going to have a plan to work through this. I think that's where we as Republicans are headed."

Democracy Now's Amy Goodman did some follow up to Al Jazeera's reporting on the state of the Gulf of Mexico and the fishing industry there, two years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Gulf Oil Spill: BP Execs Escape Punishment as Fallout from Disaster Continues to Impact Sea Life:

Two years since the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, we look at its impact on the Gulf of Mexico’s residents and wildlife even as no BP officials have faced criminal prosecution for the disaster. Eleven workers died when the Deepwater Horizon well exploded, and almost five million barrels of crude oil leaked into the ocean before the well was plugged after 51 days. BP maintains the Gulf is rapidly recovering thanks to the company’s efforts, but Al Jazeera reporter Dahr Jamail describes how scientists say shrimp, fish and crabs in the Gulf of Mexico have been deformed by oil and chemicals released during the spill cleanup effort. Meanwhile, ProPublica’s environmental reporter, Abrahm Lustgarten, says the company failed to learn from past mistakes that could have helped avoid the explosion. He is the author of the new book, "Run to Failure: BP and the Making of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster."

Full transcript is available at the link above. Our corporate media actually did a small amount of reporting on this news after Al Jazeera broke their story on the diseased fish and shrimp coming out of the Gulf, but I'll be surprised to see much more follow up from sources other than those like Al Jazeera and Democracy Now.

From The Colbert Report -- "As the shrimp season begins, Michael Blum discusses the human health risks caused by the BP oil spill."

Colbert: That's right. Our inspectors are so good they can detect shrimp taint by smell. Do you know how hard that is? I need a jewelers loop to even see shrimp taint. Although I pride myself on my ability to smell moth balls.

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Countdown's Worst Persons for Sept. 16, 2009 with winner Joe Wilson. Runners up Michelle Bachmann and Glenn Beck.

From the White House Blog:

In this week's address, President Barack Obama makes key announcements regarding the safety of our nation's food.

"We are a nation built on the strength of individual initiative. But there are certain things that we can't do on our own. There are certain things that only a government can do. And one of those things is ensuring that the foods we eat, and the medicines we take, are safe and don't cause us harm."

Full transcript below the fold.

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