Sequestration Happened. Now What?

This sequestration thing really happened.  I don't know how to explain it other than it is the latest financial crisis since we got through the financial cliff everyone was talking about back in December.  Essentially, President Obama, the democrats, and the republicans all have different opinions regarding the way the budget and deficit should be handled going forward.  One wants to raise taxes, another wants to decrease spending, and some want to do both.  Since nobody can agree on anything, we are going to keep paying Congress to hang around and argue, and keep paying our prominent politicians and political analysts to have temper tantrums.  Paying for all of this waste of time is going to cost a lot of money.  It is going to cost so much money that funds are going to have to come out of unimportant things like cancer research and AIDS studies to fund important things like lunch meetings so more arguing can occur.  Due to the number of egos in play here, we are talking about a lot of cuts.  Unfortunately, this means that there may be less money to fund your ongoing research project, as was explained to signing officials for NIH-funded organizations today.  It's OK, politicians - we will just let more people get sick and die while you continue to mug for the cameras and hold up important research into disease cures.  Oh yeah, and all of these budget cuts are also causing major flight delays, so maybe you could hurry things along and all go home sooner.