We get five statements this time that are actually believed by significant numbers of people, and that for the most part are actually false. There are still elephants in the room, which I’ll get to, but for the moment I’ll give DC’s paper of record its due.

After duly referencing Robert Redford Bob Woodward’s version of this charge offered the other day, M&O say it’s too simple. They claim that the idea emerged through 2011 negotiations between “the parties,” who proposed a super-committee to iron out a deficit-reduction plan, and a sequester as something “designed to be so potentially destructive that the supercommittee would surely reach a deal to avert it.” They say that O never envisaged the possibility that it would actually happen.