Misunderstanding, misstatements and all the classic contortions of partisan message management surround the sequester, the term for the $85 billion in ugly and largely irrational federal spending cuts set by law to begin Friday.

What is the non-budget wonk to make of this? Who is responsible? What really happened?

The finger-pointing began during the third presidential debate last fall, on Oct. 22, when President Obama blamed Congress. “The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed,” Obama said. “It is something that Congress has proposed.”

The White House chief of staff at the time, Jack Lew, who had been budget director during the negotiations that set up the sequester in 2011, backed up the president two days later.

“There was an insistence on the part of Republicans in Congress for there to be some automatic trigger,” Lew said while campaigning in Florida. It “was very much rooted in the Republican congressional insistence that there be an automatic measure.”

The president and Lew had this wrong. My extensive reporting for my book “The Price of Politics” shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government.

Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved.

Nabors has told others that they checked with the president before going to see Reid. A mandatory sequester was the only action-forcing mechanism they could devise. Nabors has said, “We didn’t actually think it would be that hard to convince them” — Reid and the Republicans — to adopt the sequester. “It really was the only thing we had. There was not a lot of other options left on the table.”

A majority of Republicans did vote for the Budget Control Act that summer, which included the sequester. Key Republican staffers said they didn’t even initially know what a sequester was — because the concept stemmed from the budget wars of the 1980s, when they were not in government.

At the Feb. 13 Senate Finance Committee hearing on Lew’s nomination to become Treasury secretary, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) asked Lew about the account in my book: “Woodward credits you with originating the plan for sequestration. Was he right or wrong?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Lew responded, “and even in his account, it was a little more complicated than that. We were in a negotiation where the failure would have meant the default of the government of the United States.”

“Did you make the suggestion?” Burr asked.

“Well, what I did was said that with all other options closed, we needed to look for an option where we could agree on how to resolve our differences. And we went back to the 1984 plan that Senator [Phil] Gramm and Senator [Warren] Rudman worked on and said that that would be a basis for having a consequence that would be so unacceptable to everyone that we would be able to get action.”

In other words, yes.

But then Burr asked about the president’s statement during the presidential debate, that the Republicans originated it.

Lew, being a good lawyer and a loyal presidential adviser, then shifted to denial mode: “Senator, the demand for an enforcement mechanism was not something that the administration was pushing at that moment.”

That statement was not accurate.

On Tuesday, Obama appeared at the White House with a group of police officers and firefighters to denounce the sequester as a “meat-cleaver approach” that would jeopardize military readiness and investments in education, energy and readiness. He also said it would cost jobs. But, the president said, the substitute would have to include new revenue through tax reform.

Dark Skies, which is out in theaters now, was not screened early for critics. This is never a good sign. If nothing else, however, it does pique my curiosity. What am I not supposed to see? I must know!

On Thursday night, I purchased a ticket to the midnight showing of Dark Skies (along with fellow movie-writing folk Matt Singer and Jenni Miller) at the AMC Loews Village 7 in Manhattan's East Village. Dark Skies is the story of ... well, I still have no idea, to tell you the truth. If you must know, perhaps there's a nice summary on its Wikipedia page. Yes, I tried to see Dark Skies early on Friday morning, but things did not go smoothly. Along the way, I kept a running diary of what happened.

11:42 p.m. Honestly, I have no idea what Dark Skies is about. I think it's about space? Or aliens?

11:45 p.m. I live in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world. Here is the line for tickets to the midnight screening of Dark Skies.

line

11:54 p.m. I live in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world. Here is what the theater looks like at the midnight screening of Dark Skies.

theater

11:57 p.m. Strangely, a large group of people just showed up for Dark Skies all at once, yet very few seem to know each other. Including us, there are at least 12 souls in New York City who wanted to see Dark Skies as soon as humanly possible.

12:01 a.m. Just as the lights went down, Matt Singer had to close the theater door himself. That's never a good sign for those who hope that there are movie theater employees here to make sure things go as smoothly as possible.

12:06 a.m. So, after the 10-second AMC fanfare played, we've now been sitting here for five minutes staring at a blank screen.

12:06 a.m. Maybe this just is Dark Skies. Maybe this is why no one wanted us to see this movie.

12:09 a.m. The lights are still off in the theater and there's still nothing on the screen. I must say, the rest of the crowd is surprisingly calm considering that we all paid $13 to stare at literally nothing.

12:11 a.m. We are on the seventh floor of the theater, there are no theater employees in sight and the screen is still dark.

12:12 a.m. I called the theater and I was just told by whomever answered that what was happening is normal and the movie would start at 12:15. I think she thinks I'm complaining about the trailers. I literally said, "I go to a lot of movies, the screen is blank." Her response, "That's normal. Call back later if nothing happens."

The man with the "world's worst portrait tattoo" finally got his happy ending on Thursday when he had the opportunity to fix the botched ink job of his late wife that had plagued him for so many years.
More on Yahoo! The Worst Tattoos in Hollywood

In 2007, on the one-year anniversary of his wife Mindy's death, Chad Stahl, 38, owner of Cutright Lawn and Landscaping, LLC, visited On the Edge Tattoo Studio in Bowling Green, Ohio to honor her with a portrait tattoo. The couple had been dating for 10 years, had 3 children, and were married for less than 3 months when Mindy died in a household fire.

Tattoo artist Dennis Foust inked the $450 portrait tattoo. "I had seen Faust's portrait work on his website and he even tattooed some of my in-laws with designs in honor of Mindy so I was confident going in," Stahl told Yahoo! Shine in his first media interview. "But when the swelling subsided, it didn't look like Mindy at all—her teeth looked evil." To add insult to injury, a friend had emailed him a link to a blog post titled "Worst Tattoo Ever" with a photo of Stahl's tattoo posted by a disgruntled On the Edge ex-employee. A few months later, Stahl returned to the studio and Faust tried to fix it, adding the words, "In loving memory of Mindy" but the damage was too great. "I was embarrassed to wear sleeveless shirts and didn't want anyone to see the tattoo but everyone in my town knew about it," says Stahl.

Foust told Shine: "This was my very first portrait tattoo done years ago. I've since moved forward, improved my skills, and my work has been featured in magazines."

Recently, a friend of Stahl's recommended that he visit Scott Versago at Empire Ink in Akron, Ohio, who had heard of the infamous tattoo and on Thursday Versago fixed it—for free. Vergaso wrote on his Facebook page: "I got to tackle the official '#1 worst portrait tattoo in the world' today. I'm sure you've all seen it a million times online, as had I. I couldn't believe my eyes when this guy walked in and showed me this project. I think my jaw literally hit the floor. He went on to tell me the story behind the portrait; He had just married his beautiful wife and not even three months afterwards she was killed in a horrible house fire accident leaving him to raise their three children alone. Shortly after he went to a local tattoo studio to memorialize his wife and was left with this abomination. He later returned to that studio for one more session, thinking that perhaps 'he had done something wrong in the healing of the tattoo' and they butchered it even more the second time. Finally, he drove all the way to my studio, Empire Ink, just to meet me and to see what his options were. Touched by his story, I gifted the entire project to him for free. Now he has closure and I have an amazing story to add to my portfolio!"

The fix-it job took just three hours. "I'm so happy and want everyone to see it," Stahl told Shine. "I'm going to enter the tattoo in a contest hosted by On the Edge to see if they recognize me."

The "Poetic Justice" video hit the web on Friday, offering a glimpse into Kendrick Lamar and Drake's very different lives.

In the visuals, Lamar (who put out one of 2012's best albums, "Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City") raps as vignettes from a Compton, Los Angeles party interrupt his love-lorn verse. At the party, a young man and woman get cozy and walk off into the distance, until everything goes to hell.

Eventually we see an iPhone with a missed call from Drake, who is in a bedroom accompanied by a sleeping, nearly naked lady. Drake raps his verse into a cordless phone.

It's not until the end of the video that what actually caused all the commotion is revealed. We won't spoil it here, except to say that it's nice that the video didn't pitch us Drake as a character living in Compton, because the Toronto native doesn't really fit the bill.

MTV has more on the movie's backstory, involving Janet Jackson, who Lamar really wanted to be in the video:

    On the slow and syrupy "Poetic Justice," Kendrick and Drake trade bars over a sampling of Jackson's 1993 single "Any Time, Any Place." The Scoop DeVille-produced track also borrows its name from the 1993 film that starred Janet and Tupac Shakur, so a video cameo from Jackson would be very fitting.

Lamar made an earnest, public plea to Jackson. "Janet, c'mon, Janet," he said. "No paperwork with the managers, contact the managers. This is artist to artist," Lamar pitched in December. "This is a young boy that looked up to you for years. Please, yeah, video, Janet Jackson 'Poetic Justice.' It'll only be right."

The video still makes an impact. Take a look above and let us know what you think in the comments. Drake and K-Dot also appeared alongside A$AP Rocky and 2 Chainz in the recently released video for "F--kin' Problems," and Drizzy dropped the visuals for his new single, "Started From the Bottom."

Kendra Wilkinson Baskett couldn't wait to do "Celebrity Wife Swap." Then she found out who she was swapping with: Kate Gosselin, single mom to eight kids.

Kendra, who's appeared in "Playboy" and on "The Girls Next Door," is married to former NFL-er Hank Baskett and lives with him, their four-year-old son Hank IV, and a fulltime housekeeper and nanny, Rosa. Hank is very involved around the house and likes to cook for Kendra and set up her girls' nights.


When we spoke to Kendra, she sounded positive about the experience, saying she "got so excited" about going on the show, because "I love the feeling of stepping out of your comfort zone and doing something off. I think that's the way to live your life, is to be thrown off a little bit." She was into the idea of living "in someone else's life" for a week; she's "all about the social experiments."

But as experiments go, a week with eight children is practically the Manhattan Project, and when Kendra found out whose house she was headed to, she "lost it. I wanted to run out."

She wasn't the only one, evidently; Kendra reported that "there was some tension and drama" between Kate Gosselin and Hank. She didn't want to speak for them, because she wasn't there, but it sounds like Kate doesn't entirely approve of the Basketts' laid-back lifestyle, or what Kendra describes as her "Southern California" attitude. (Or, we're guessing, of Kendra herself, who laughed that Kate didn't get "why a woman like me deserves a man like that.") We'll have to find out whether Kate passed any judgments, but we know Hank didn't sell Kendra out. "All I know is, my husband said, 'I stuck up for you.'"

Meanwhile, back at the Gosselins', Kendra was determined to make a good impression. Calling that time a "whirlwind," she told us her goal for the week: "I truly, truly wanted those eight kids to really respect me." Not to think of Kendra as a second mom, necessarily, but it took "a lot of work" to get the kids to trust her.

She's a fighter, though, she says, and she kept at it. She wanted the experience to be good for everyone, and she wanted "these kids to know me, and to know my heart" -- not least because of the trash-talk they might have heard about her posing nude, "'she's stupid,' you know, all that bad stuff that's about me."

 A growing number of firearm and firearm-related companies have stated they will no longer sell items to states, counties, cities and municipalities that restrict their citizens' rights to own them.

According to The Police Loophole, 34 companies have joined in publicly stating that governments who seek to restrict 2nd Amendment rights will themselves be restricted from purchasing the items they seek to limit or ban.

Extreme Firepower Inc., located in Inwood, WV has had a longstanding policy that states:

"The Federal Government and several states have enacted gun control laws that restrict the public from owning and possessing certain types of firearms...If a product that we manufacture is not legal for a private citizen to own in a jurisdiction, we will not sell that product to a law-enforcement agency in that jurisdiction."

York Arms, located in Buxton, ME released a statement following new legislation in New York:

"Based on the recent legislation in New York, we are prohibited from selling rifles and receivers to residents of New York.  We have chosen to extend that prohibition to all governmental agencies associated with or located within New York."

Quality Arms, located in Rigby, ID writes on their website, "elected officials have their own agenda to circumnavigate the truth and destroy the constitution of the United States."

The site states: "Quality Arms Idaho will not supply and firearm or product, manufactured by us, or any other company nor will we warranty, repair, alter, or modify and firearm owned by any State, County or Municipality who infringes on the right of its citizens to bear arms under the 2nd Amendment."

"The people at Bravo Company USA and BCM support responsible private individuals having access to the same tools of civilian Law Enforcement to affect the same ends...As such Bravo Company's policy is that law enforcement officials and departments will be restricted to the same type of products available to responsible private individuals of that same city or state."