As much as is possible, The SunBreak tries to ignore the activities of the “other” Washington, for the simple reason that it takes far too much time and effort to figure out what the hoopleheads in the nation’s Capitol are up to. The news about the potential grounding of the Navy’s Blue Angels for the latter half of 2013 is a case in point.

Not only are we witness to U.S. News & World Report‘s ignorance of the existence of Seafair:

The 65-year-old organization has more than 30 events scheduled for the latter half of the year, including shows at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., at the end of August, in San Diego, Calif., in early October and at Pensacola, Fla., in early November.

— really, Maryland makes it on the short list, but not Seattle? — but we have to look up what “sequestration” means, and on a Monday morning, too.

Before we do that, at least some area residents will be interested to learn that there’s a White House petition to protect the Blue Angels program, a fact that will be bitterly resented by many under the Angels’ thundering practice path. Democracy is indeed messy. (Personally, I could stand with the Blue Angels visiting every other year, or showing up every four years, like the Olympics. But then I’m of the same mind about fireworks, so I disqualify myself from the debate entirely.)

In theory, sequestration (mandatory cuts so frightening they were supposed to promote compromise) will occur if Congress can’t pass a budget by the end of March. It would have been the end of 2012, but they punted. Under sequestration, the Navy would have to cut $4.6 billion from its budget. Even if sequestration is avoided, the Blue Angels aren’t out of range of the budget axe — the Budget Control Act of 2011 slashes $487 billion in defense spending over the next decade, and its likely that any budget agreement reached this March would add to that.