But, I thought the debt was all Nancy Pelosi's fault?
If you have a monocausal logjam you need a bigger river.
Griskevicius has found that cities in which men outnumber women have the highest amount of consumer debt -- the result, he believes, of men buying expensive stuff to show off.
Unmarried women, one is often told, outnumber their male counterparts in New York City, but if Manhattan, at least, isn't the Olympic Village of buying stuff to show off, it's certainly an adequate training pitch.
Congress has been a lot more male before. Sometimes there's been less compromise. Sometimes more.
Note that the Reid plan is actually from Nancy Pelosi. I'm not sure if that proves the theory right or wrong.
So this story actually legitimately irritates me, because the reason the negotiations are going so poorly is that the GOP who incited this crisis have zero interest in making a deal and never did. But we can totally talk about the research behind the not-particularly-applicable findings on gender mix in meetings because that's definitely interesting.
1: It is her fault! Men are fine as long there no women around at all. But once there is even one woman sitting at the bargaining table, they all lose their minds trying to impress her.
(another product of the Semi-Plausible Random Theory Generator)
7: I assume Stanley is actually trolling us with the theory.
Wasn't there some study about risk taking behavior and the number of total douche bags in the room?
7: Not that this research is applicable, but I do wonder if there are people who were trying to push the situation to the brink of disaster, and don't have the negotiating skills/character to work through a last minute deal even though they want to.
11: That's where the lack of leadership/managerial competence tells.*
* Pox, houses, someone is racist, Obama is pooping on Adlai Stevenson's grave, blah, blah, blah.
Anecdata: One of my colleagues claims that she gets better results in negotiations when when she is the only woman in the room. Also she thinks she does especially poorly when an opposing male alpha negotiator has a female junior colleague or client present. When both lead negotiators are women the results are mixed but the negotiation is relatively amicable.
She also claims that during the obviously visible portions of ther three pregnancies (all more than 20 years ago, when she was almost always the only woman in the room), she negotiated much more favorable settlements against male adversaries than before or since.
Evolutionary biologists, theorize away!
Also she thinks she does especially poorly when an opposing male alpha negotiator has a female junior colleague or client present.
Lawyering, this is an uncomfortable situation for me. For some reason there are a lot of junior female litigators who get eaten by wolves or something before they make partner, so male-grey-haired partner with youthful female associate is a normal pattern. And if I'm up against a middle-aged man who's got a young woman carrying his files, as a youngish woman I feel as if I'm perceived as her counterpart rather than his. I haven't noticed any tangible difference in outcomes, but it makes me jumpy.
Up against another woman hasn't come up for me much -- had a case like that this spring where the female attorney's female client dropped the litigation because they perceived me as too intransigent to negotiate successfully with, so they just gave up (weird situation, too complicated to explain). But it hasn't happened often.
One of my colleagues claims that she gets better results in negotiations when when she is the only woman in the room.
Wellington reckoned the ideal Cabinet meeting would have been if he was the only man in the room. "Extraordinary," he is supposed to have remarked after his first cabinet. "I gave them their orders, and they wanted to stay and discuss them."
16: I really like the BBC's new sitcom, That Darned Peer!
16: "My idea of a perfect government is one guy who sits in a small room at a desk, and the only thing he's allowed to decide is who to nuke. The man is chosen based on some kind of IQ test, and maybe also a physical tournament, like a decathlon. And women are brought to him, maybe ... when he desires them."
11: In this case, I think the people who pushed us to the brink of disaster are the ones thinking that maybe disaster is better than the alternative.
19:Dude, there is no alternative to disaster, only delayed or disguised disasters, which are even worse.
20. I know. On the other thread we've got you assigned to be the lord of the manor's kennel keeper or something. If you don't like it go there and argue.
21: In The Once and Future King, isn't the dogboy a noseless imbecile, his experience with whom teaches young Wart a royal pity?
16: Only once was I the only male in a professional crowd of any size. At a deposition, my colleague, two opposing lawyers, my client (a PhD economics expert) and the Court reporter were all female. At one time or another, each of the older women said, welcome to our world. The most noticeable oddity was that bathroom breaks took forever.
The most noticeable oddity was that bathroom breaks took forever.
Because I am a feminist have Twitter on my phone, I now take longer bathroom breaks.
At one time or another, each of the older women said, welcome to our world.
Not quite. It would have been just a little bit more like their world if the only other man in the room were in a low-status position. You and the court reporter, in a room full of female lawyers and economists.
I notice in the popup window title where tags are revealed, you used a capital I for the italics tag on the men's "this" but a lower case i for the women's.
26: I was typing fast, but I hope everyone will interpret that difference as uncharitably as possible.
Slightly less shorter: Opinionated Margaret Thatcher was actually pretty bad.
This thread seems dead enough to go OT without guilt. So, genuine question: is there any possible way my youngest son could look any more Scandanavian?
If he were actually cross-country skiing, or bothering a reindeer? But without props, no. None more Scandinavian.
He could be exploiting workers in rural Virginia. But, you know: walk, then run.
I think those props might make it appear forced--like his was trying to look Scandanavian. His Scandanavianity (Scandanavism?) comes completely naturally.
(Those who've met me know that this raises obvious questions of legitimacy, although we'll ignore those for now.)
Scandanavianity
Scandanositude.
If, rather than a chocolate cupcake, he were eating pickled herring.
But, that's the whole point--wouldn't a non-Scandanavian person usually have a somewhat less morose expression while eating a cupcake?
||
heɪ, ðis iz gʊd; ɔ:r fʌn æt li:st.
|>
Neat. Now is there a site where you can input something written in IPA and have the site read it out?
Golly, I admire that Stanley. What a catch!
Scandanavianity
Scandanositude.
Scandaniferousness
Imagine that I used the preview button and put those first two lines in italics.
I'm not a website, but if you put a few IPAs in me, I start talking.
||
Making Light gets pastichey
|>
7
... the GOP who incited this crisis ...
Felix Salmon explains here how the crisis was set up by Harry Reid in order to seek political advantage.
That's a very simplistic bit of analysis but at least it contains an significant fact.
I agree James. It was stupid of Reid to assume Republicans would be responsible enough to not take the economy and government hostage.
Eggplant, I assume that you're being sarcastic, but what you're saying is also true. That was kind of a dumb move on Reid part given what we know about Republicans.
48 49
It was in fact Reid's plan for the Republicans to discredit themselves by acting irresponsibly. Which was not neccessarily stupid but which does show a certain indifference to collateral damage.
I can't see how one could reach that conclusion.
From your article:
"Let the Republicans have some buy-in on the debt. They're going to have a majority in the House," said Reid. "I don't think it should be when we have a heavily Democratic Senate, heavily Democratic House and a Democratic president."
||
Irrelevant personal hygiene update: I just used soap for the first time since whenever it was that I stopped. My skin feels odd. (Maybe just oddly clean?)
|>
Holy shit, urple! I had no idea anyone was still keeping up that soap-free thing. As ever, you're a champion of science.
52
I can't see how one could reach that conclusion.
I guess it depends on just how stupid you think Reid is and what you think Reid expected to happen.
My guess is that Reid expected Congress to increase the debt ceiling without any controversy, like it has been for the last 80 years.
56
My guess is that Reid expected Congress to increase the debt ceiling without any controversy, like it has been for the last 80 years.
Not a very plausible guess. I expect Reid remembers 1995 even if you don't.
So basically Reid was asking for it by wearing that short skirt. Everyone knows the GOP is a bunch of rapists.
53: You rule. I had no idea anyone was still going either.
57: I'm sure Reid thought that the Republicans remembered 1995 and how well it worked out for them.
I mean, peeing in a sink may be hard, but it doesn't showcase determination and perseverance.
57: I must admit that I had not remembered that from 1995 (the government shutdown itself is what all the press was about at the time*), so thanks for that link. But Salmon is being a "hindsight is 20-20 asshole" in that article and you go even further in interpreting Reid's actions in a typically uncharitable manner. Ham-Love has it right in 58
*This and the Calculated Risk post it links to should be read.
Presumably Reid knew that there would be a minor kerfuffle. But at the time the CW was that the republican's would throw a little temper tantrum, but that Wall Street would then call in their chits and everything would be over. I don't see any reason to think that Reid was better informed about how crazy republicans were than everyone else was.
That said, Reid was a dumbass and I think he deserves a good chunk of the blame here. You should always assume that Republicans are a few steps crazier than your imagination.
I think I've reached the point where I'm hoping that heightening the contradictions works, because the contradictions are going to be heightened, no matter what.
64:I never presume powerful people are dumbasses. I do definitely presume powerful people lie and hold cards close to their vest.
What, Obama (and Reid works with/for Obama, and has voiced harmonious goals) appointed the Catfood Commission and then would let the recommendations disappear into the ether? The "Grand Bargain" has been on his mind since before the primaries.
So, with a Rethug Congress, however could he get the leverage to enact both the spending cuts and the tax reform of Simpson-Bowles? It would take something drastic and would require a lot of high-powered help, from media and campaign donors and the elite community.
Part of the power of "he said she said" media is the ways it limits analysis to public pronouncements, and the ways it distracts from what people actually do, and what actually happens with the idiocies and battling inanities of speech.
60
I'm sure Reid thought that the Republicans remembered 1995 and how well it worked out for them.
So which party had an incentive to stage a repeat performance?
62
... and you go even further in interpreting Reid's actions in a typically uncharitable manner ...
The charitable interpretation being Reid was too dumb to see this coming?
62: OK you win. The Republican caucus is entirely lacking in agency of their own and were crudely manipulated into this by his cunning plan.
s/b "from what actually happens"
1) Obama wanted a Grand Bargain, which must include revenue reform for his reputation
2) We will possibly get a "Grand Bargain" with the Super Congress" up-or-down vote coming of out of the debt ceiling "fiasco" which without a debt celing fight, is hard to imagine Tea Party House giving him. Or even earlier, if the debt celing is not raised and pressures mount.
3) Obama is not an idiot, neither is Reid
ergo, 1 and 2 are not merely correlated, but possibly causal. Quite often, what happens in human affairs is managed, controlled, and intended, even if the mechanism are incomprehensible to amateurs. I am not certain how the Mavericks won, but I assume they played a role in their own fucking victory.
The Ptb are fucking smarter than you and me. Do you know how to deal with that?
67: He thought they wouldn't dare a repeat performance, and thus wouldn't be able to bring up raising the debt ceiling as a campaign issue in 2012. In retrospect, this does look stupid.
Further to 69 (which should be to 68): And granting that I ask you to acknowledge that the vast majority of Republican congressmen are whining, irresponsible political terrorists who are utterly unfit to hold any position of public responsibility.
Remember the run up to 2000 when the Villagers were so excited that the "grown-ups" were going to be back in charge again?
Oh jeez.
I love these explanatory narratives of the groundlings in which billionaires and their top political minions are so much stupider and incompetent than we are. Very few people admit that they themselves are stupid. Vegas, lotteries, reality tv, and the fucking world depend on self-overestimation. You too can play professional Hold-em.
The grownups were put in charge in 2000. They cut taxes for the rich, started the resource wars, and bankrupted the country. These were not mistakes of "incompetents."
Grownups suck.
73: For some value of "grownup" my uniquely insightful friend. Where in my comment do you think I was implying that they "are so much stupider and incompetent than we are"?
65: Nah, they're just going to raise the contradictions ceiling and things will just keep going. That's why we need contradiction reduction NOW BY ANY MEANIES NECESSARY.
On the general question, Reid's never been a good majority leader. He's always getting out-maneuvered, plus he talks so damn quietly no one can hear him fail.
peeing in a sink may be hard, but it doesn't showcase determination and perseverance
Moby's prostate works just fine, laydeez.
||
"Elites obsess, over virtues that they lack."
"The corollary to Godwin's Law is that Nazis win all arguments on the internet."
173 of these
"MMT is the theory that you can print as much money as you can kill."
I spent an hour yesterday studying Newberry's multi-part stuy of MMT as "Nazinomics." I think he had gotten up to Sumeria and the hydrologic hypothesis.
171:"A little person is a failure if one person out of 100 hates them, a big person a success if one person out of 100 doesn't."
Bob:"You can judge your own honesty by the number of friends you have."
Krugman, DeLong, and Chait ...agree that everybody in Washington is very much stupider than themselves. Each pundit has at least two friends too many.
|>
My prostate works like a platinum coin.
It will be pulled from circulation once the economy recovers.
If I'm reading the Salmon piece linked in 46 correctly, it's Ezra Klein who says that Reid caused the present debt ceiling crisis. The relevant Klein piece reads weirdly to me:
Raising the debt ceiling is really, really unpopular. The idea that Congress should vote itself more authority to run deficits is really, really unintuitive.
It is?
"Unintuitive"? Really? He writes for a living?
Sifu is (of course) correct at 7. Gender way well affect behaviour, but negotiations unfold depending on whether both parties came to the table to negotiate, or not. The ANC successfully opened channels and then negotiated a transition from apartheid to minority rule with two successive apartheid governments -- and this during the darkest days of Botha's "total onslaught" and DeKlerk's Third Force -- with nothing but dudes in the room. This happened because both parties knew they had to negotiate.
Reports suggest that the Democrats are continuing to lose in the negotiations - unless they get some sort of "trigger" for revenue. But with that matched with cuts to Medicare, it hardly seems like a win. Unless they actually tie the revenue to the programs, meaning the programs aren't actually cut, or not by as much. Otherwise, there's no guarantee that money won't just flow to banks and wars.
It's hard to see how the Democrats won't lose any negotiation. The Republicans simply aren't negotiating. Default is probably getting closer to the best option, but only if there's a concerted effort to demonstrate that the Republicans are basically shooting hostages.
Shouldn't someone be making a list of things like: "On [date 1], the Republicans advocated this; on [date 2], they rejected it" and so on. And that sort of stuff should be running in ads nationally. All that money being raised for campaigns is just being hoarded. The first fight that needs it is going on now.
Yes, it's useless to post these kinds of analyses in blog comment threads. I know.
If it makes you feel any better, I agree with everything you said. The only hope at this point, I think, is that the GOP will bail out the Dems again, refusing to help pass a final "compromise" bill. President Obama will have no choice then but to use the 14th A. option. The Republicans in the House will, of course, have to impeach him, and maybe he'll get pissed enough to try to destroy them.
Failing that, I can think of no better way to celebrate the Civil War's sesquicentennial than by having another one. We'll want to airlift out apo, heebie, Mitch, Kraab, and a few others, but that's a small price to pay for a big win.
At any rate, Klein's hindsight argument is obnoxious in the extreme. He clearly sketches the very good reasons for the December 2010 budget deal, including the remarks that:
The other argument [for not raising the debt ceiling at the same time in December 2010] was legislative. Including the debt ceiling in the tax deal could have blown up the tax deal. And even if it didn't, it might have slowed the negotiating such that the lame-duck session of Congress wouldn't have had time to pass the START Treaty, the repeal of Don't Ask/Don't Tell, the 9/11 First Responders bill, and everything else it got done.
Well, yes. Democrats really should have seen the hostage-taking coming? Really?
Bah.
Who am I kidding; it took decades to get the first Civil War started. We're just at the beginning of the cycle, I'm afraid.
Shouldn't someone be making a list of things like: "On [date 1], the Republicans advocated this; on [date 2], they rejected it" and so on.
Steve Benen is doing that on a regular basis. He's become a broken record about it.
88: I kind of argued that somewhere else, but using my real first name. Only at least in the Civil War there was quite a bit of unity within the sides (yes, even taking into account every single counterargument someone would make if I didn't include this parenthetical). The future is Kansas and Missouri.
Actually, it's probably just an even more militarized and securitized state with high crime, high inequality, and low health outcomes. Walls and enclaves, free and unfree; lots of effort to keep the war hidden. Ah, the advances of technology. An open question is where the emigrants leaving the U.S. will go.
Ok, it's all open questions. It's just speculation. The Republicans could also be discredited, we could usher in a new era of flexible governance, and things could just muddle along. But that's a utopian dream.
89: I didn't realize that, but that's good to hear. But I meant someone with more reach. Possibly an elected official of some sort. Maybe one of those people who, every time they appear in public, the press is clamoring for them to say something. It's extremely difficult to see what advantage there continues to be in keeping almost everything behind closed doors. It isn't even helping the people in office, so it can't just be their self-interest.
We'll want to airlift out apo, heebie, Mitch, Kraab, and a few others
I'll stay in the breakaway People's Republic of Charlottesville; we'll try to forge a new state in alliance with Northern Virginia and the Eastern Shore (because ponies).
But I meant someone with more reach.
Yes, I know. The kinds of things Benen rehearses ad nauseam aren't really secrets, though; they're just things that fade rapidly from public awareness, if the public was ever aware in the first place. I can only assume that the failure of elected officials to point to these things is a function of both self-interest (one wouldn't want to seem shrill) and an inside-the-beltway courtesy, or something.
For what it's worth, I saw a poll recently -- unfortunately don't remember from whom -- showing that the public blames Republicans far, far more for the current clusterfuck than it does Democrats or Obama.
I feel like I should ask the places where I'm doing research if they've been given any indication of whether they'll have to close (completely, or just some days) in the event of a default - thankfully, I won't be here for September's shutdown* - but it just doesn't seem appropriate to broach the subject yet. I'm going to a place I haven't gone yet on Monday mostly to get myself registered, just in case they do something like stay open but suspend new registration services. Probably an overreaction, and these are all smallish problems in the scheme of things, but I have to go there anyway, so why not now.
*A friend of mine, also American in the same program, says he's got some deal in the works whereby he will marry a Canadian if needed. In the shorter term, he's worried that he'll be denied re-entry at the border in August if the U.S. decides it can't afford to keep doing student loans for the time being. He tends to worry about extremes. I think it's more likely Canada will let us come back - we just probably won't be able to afford to stay. I don't think they'll want to spend the money to reevaluate every single study permit already given.
I never did understand why the Dems didn't tell the Reps to go screw in Dec 2010. I mean, at that point the last public memory of a Republican opposition was impeachment and government shutdown. And then a month after elections the Reps offer to give everyone a reminder? Over exclusively high-income tax cuts? That's the fight you want to have, not this debt bullshit.
Democrats really should have seen the hostage-taking coming? Really?
IMHO, yes.
IMHO, yes.
Shrug. "Maybe" is about as close as we can get while remaining honest. I sure as hell didn't think the current demand for a balanced budget amendment was going to pick up any steam; the first I heard of it was just a few weeks ago, coming out of the mouth of Rand Paul. I thought, "That's surely as demented as most everything else he says, and he will be politely ignored." Wrong!
In any event, the Sunday talking head shows all picked up this very line of thought: the Dems (Reid/Obama) caused this debt ceiling crisis because December 2010, blah blah. Other ideas floated: Obama caused the incipient financial panic over the debt ceiling by explaining in ominous terms to the American people what the ramifications could be: he was scaremongering! or, variant on this: Obama caused the crisis by failing to have Treasury issue a reassuring message about how we have enough money to cover SS, Medicare/Medicaid, the military and debt payments, and this failure on his part shows weak leadership. (Here Meet the Press quoted from Peggy Noonan that Obama is a "loser.")
I realize I sound like an idiot for saying this, but the rhetoric on the Sunday shows really was so thoroughly accepting of the "both sides are extremists, both sides refuse to compromise, both sides are to blame for the deficit and debt and spending problems, everybody knows we need to cut spending dramatically, everybody knows entitlement programs have to be reformed" that I was, well, a tad demoralized.
It appears that while everyone was going about their normal Sunday lives, an election was held and the Republicans took over the Senate.
That's what was expected to happen, as far as I can tell.
It's a shitty fucking deal.
Don't be so hasty, parsimon. I'm waiting for Halford or Tweety to give me the go ahead before I judge this deal.
Yeah, no, it's a shitty fucking deal. I don't trust our negotiating partners an inch in the eventual Super Committee, and the result of all of this is a further entrenchment by those who actually have personal assets to simply protect those personal interests. We've been reduced to fighting over crumbs for a while now.
Give me a bit before I can think about what to do.
"Iceland's Constitutional Council, composed of 25 ordinary citizens publicly elected by their peers, has submitted its draft constitution to the Althingi, the country's parliament. The Council had posted the draft constitution on the net in April, and worked through many re-drafts in response to 3600 written comments from the public. As one might expect, and consistent with prior research, we see that the participatory process has produced a highly participatory governance structure." (From Comparative Constitutions blog.)
I should be clear that I haven't read the draft. But I do approve of Iceland's reacting to massive structural failure by seeking structural reform, rather than simply hoping for Hope and Change from a new party or knight on horseback. (Of course, they also did the latter...)
I realize I sound like an idiot for saying this, but the rhetoric on the Sunday shows really was so thoroughly accepting of the "both sides are extremists, both sides refuse to compromise, both sides are to blame for the deficit and debt and spending problems, everybody knows we need to cut spending dramatically, everybody knows entitlement programs have to be reformed" that I was, well, a tad demoralized.
The priest at my church was sort of saying this too--about how leaders in DC need to learn how to compromise and that there's no free lunch [in the context of, we can't wait for God to fix everything without acting ourselves, gospel of the feeding of the 5000]. He supports universal healthcare too, but he has some kind of debt fetish, because he was talking about how you can only borrow so long and the massive amount of debt that each of us as individuals has (govt' debt and individual debt DOES NOT = good comparison).
Basically a liberal. Really pissed me off.
No revenues! Another bi-partisan commission! What's not to love? (Tries to remember words of "O Canada".)
O Canada, O Canada,
How lovely are thy branches.
Thy boughs so green in summertime,
Stay bravely green in wintertime.
O Canada, O Canada
How lovely are thy branches, eh.
O Canada, I long to see you.
Away you rolling river.
O Canada, I long to see you.
Away, I'm bound away.
Across the wide lake Erie.
That's twice this week LB has beaten me.
Wiki has the Inuktitut version, which looks cool.
107: I thought we weren't talking about that on the blog.
I'm going to have to learn what the "Preview" button does.
Well, this looks stupid in retrospect.
I hate feeling like Bob, but it really does look like Obama sees his job as negotiating with Senate Democrats to get the most right-wing compromise they will accept.
My one hope for a glimmer of sanity in all this is that, a couple of days after the compromise passes, whatever it's final form, Obama gives a speech saying, "here's what we cut last Monday; Job training money for X thousand people, grants for Y thousand students, and Z thousand people born in 19xx, who have payed into social security and medicare for forty years and who expected to qualify for medicare next year, will not qualify. . .. (or whatever the details are). Next year many people in congress are going to suggest that we should cut taxes. That is not acceptable. We would all like to see lower taxes; I have promised to protect tax cuts for income below $250K but, in light of the cuts in budget yesterday, I will veto any bill, seeking to extend or expand tax cuts, which reduces revenue. I will be releasing my own plan which will cut middle class taxes by closing loopholes, and I encourage Congress to the same, but I will not sign a plan which expands the deficit. This compromise was too difficult, too hard fought, and too precarious to give up so quickly."
That's my hope at the moment.
On a slightly lighter note, I saw a clip today of Rick Perry giving some campaign-like speech, and he looks like such a dismaying parody of George W. Bush that I can't imagine he stands a chance. Really. Romney it is.
Can somebody give me a ride to Taco Bell? Fourthmeal!
Referring to the tortuous negotiations, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said: "Sausage making is not pretty. But the sausage we have, I think, is a very different sausage from when we started."
The sausage is a sad, deflated reminder of the sausage at the start.
Few people know that "While My Chorizo Gently Weeps" was the original title to that song.
Oh Canada, hats off to thee!
To thy colors true we shall ever be,
Firm and strong, united are we.
Rah, rah, rah, for Ottawa,
Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah!
Rah for the maple leaf!
Eh
Welcome to the normalization of extortion politics.
I know I have a tendency toward Chicken Little-ism, but I have seriously never been more pessimistic about the future of this country as I am watching this. I wrote my representative and urged him to vote against the "compromise" bill to force the president to take 14th Amendment measures. Not that I think that will actually happen.
So everyone in the government just agreed on ... it seems like it's going to add up to three anti-stimuluses. Is there anyone who will benefit from this besides Mitt Romney?
Yeah, I mean, I'm never happy with what the government is doing, whether its going up, down or sideways, but things do seem to be getting markedly worse. Almost withdrew lots of money (in case of a bank run) and bought a shotgun this weekend, but did anarchist organizing instead.
And we're coming up on the 10th anniversary of our endless war in Afghanistan too -- that's one campaign promise Barack Obama did keep!
If withdrawing money and buying shotguns was anarchist organizing, you'd have a more popular movement going.
Taking the common meaning of the term, it isn't even a stretch.
122: John McCain? I hear it's always good news for him.
Every time I almost take Romney seriously, I keep remembering his "who let the dogs out" (or whatever) moment. He's just not a good campaigner - although I do think if the Republicans hadn't been winner take all, he'd have had more of a chance (unless I'm remembering the math wrong) last time around.
Meanwhile, I suppose that it could be a coincidence that the LaCrosse headquarters of We Are Wisconsin was destroyed in an unexplained fire ten days before the recall election.
Do you think it's a coincidence that Obama cut this deal just a day before Ramadan?
Speaking of Ramadan, is everyone too thirsty to protest or more likely to protest because of holiday free time and/or cranky from not eatingness?
You left out the pony.
"There has to be a pony in here somewhere."
In my attempt to find some reason for optimism I'm just remembering an observations that I've seen around, that the fight over the Bush Tax Cuts will be the first major fight in which non-action would be more preferable to the Democrats to the Republicans and, therefor, the one in which there is the most potential leverage from a veto threat.
I don't think it will happen, however.
That very situation was faced in 2010 and nobody got a pony.
It's true, but if ever there was a time when you could say that the political groundwork had been done to allow a politician to get away with opposing tax cuts, this would be that moment.
I still don't think it will happen.
It won't happen, because Obama wants to extend the "middle class" tax cuts more than he wants to cancel the high-end ones.
It's shit sandwiches all the way down.
No shit. God. What the fuck?
I wonder whether this Super Senate thing could get challenged in the courts. I don't understand the concept exactly, so I have no specific theory, but I wonder if it could be delegating an essential responsibility or something. Okay, that doesn't work.
I really wish that I liked Canada better (or at least the parts with jobs), because I could move if I wanted to.
This is, maybe, the first time that I wish that Hilary Clinton were president instead of Obama.
117-119: This particular sausage (and those which will surely follow) will be seasoned with the as yet unwept tears of our children and our children's children.
Unless ... something something effective political strategy something voters something, something, something media something.
So why, if his Presidency has been such an unmitigated disaster, is he continuing to pursue this reckless course. My theory is that the key to the Obama administration's political strategy is not compromise or incrementalism. It is, quite simply, fooling liberals. When you look at Obama's governing role, he is clearly a servant of American oligarchs. But obviously he can't explicitly tell liberals this (unlike Republicans, who are explicit in saying they favor "job creators"), because liberals like to think of themselves as favoring economic justice. So how do you acquire support from liberals, as he did in the primaries in 2008 and will need to do again in 2012, while pursuing oligarch-friendly policies?You do it by ensuring that liberals only focus on the ceremonial non-governmental aspects of the Presidency*. You do it by making sure that they focus only on the televised aspects of the Presidency.
*Did you know Obama was Black?
Oh, and Dean Baker who I usually don't appreciate, has a good analysis
Many readers of the NYT and Post may not have a good sense of how much $2.4 trillion in cuts over the next decade is.The government is projected to spend $7.8 trillion on the military over the next decade. If this area is largely protected, then most of the cuts would be likely to come from the $6.7 trillion spend on domestic discretionary portion of the budget. This is the portion that includes spending on infrastructure, education, research and others that are considered investment.
Got it? That's $2.4 trillion cut from the $6.7 Trillion. We can argue on details, but this gives you the idea. Of course, states and municipalities will also be cutting.
(The Republicans were willing to move so much of gov't into Dep't of Homeland Security to make services easier to cut)
I still remember when the Obama admin was hinting towards some shitty budget policies and many liberals and progressives were freaking out, but some people were like "hey, don't freak out until the announcement is made, 'cause this keeps happening and it's never as bad as you think" and then the announcement actually wasn't so bad. Well, everything's actually worse now, and no one but the organized right had a say in it.
Well, one thing Obama (or someone) managed was to exempt Medicaid from the triggers - there will be some sighs of relief at the office today for that. Shit sandwich otherwise, of course.
I never thought I'd be disturbed by someone I thought of as serious being too nerdy on the internet, but the latest Tolkien/debt limit post at Crooked Timber scares me a little.
Of course, it's not as if I have anything productive to say about it either.
This is all very dispiriting, to be sure. At what point are we compelled to admit that Obama is the single biggest obstacle to progressive government? We're going to be asked to vote for four more years of this?
This is, maybe, the first time that I wish that Hilary Clinton were president instead of Obama.
At what point do we reach the conclusion that maybe Romney would have been a better president?
I suppose Roe v. Wade is still one vote from being overturned, so there's that.
143: OMG! That brought back hilarious and painfully ironic memories of the arguments at Andrew Sullivan's bloc circa 2002 on whether George W. Bush was more like Frodo or Sam Gamgee.
I never thought I'd be disturbed by someone I thought of as serious being too nerdy on the internet
How nerdy am I? I'm so nerdy that I Googled this when I realized that I couldn't remember this quote from the book:
They do not see what lies ahead, when Sun has faded and Moon is dead.
Turns out it wasn't from the book at all. It was from the movie!
So Quiggin is insufficiently nerdy - or at least an insufficient Tolkein purist - for the internet.
I suppose Roe v. Wade is still one vote from being overturned, so there's that.
Remember, that's purely ceremonial. For bob, at least.
I suppose Roe v. Wade is still one vote from being overturned, so there's that.
If Scalia dropped dead tomorrow, the GOP would just filibuster his replacement until Obama appoints Ralph Reed as a compromise candidate, or until they retake the White House (and do away with the filibuster).
I'm running out of reasons to vote Democratic in 2012.
146: Oh, funny. I saw that line, and had a momentary "Funny, doesn't ring a bell" reaction -- I read the books enough as a kid that anything aphoristic like that should spark a memory. But I only ever saw the first movie.
I'm running out of reasons to vote Democratic in 2012.
Would you like a list? It's really, really, really, really, really long.
148.last: I think 'lesser of two evils' works for exactly as long as you can identify who's lesser, and that's probably still the Democrats. (Unless you have some actual tactical purpose served by not voting -- can't think of what, but it could be.)
144: I suppose Roe v. Wade is still one vote from being overturned, so there's that.
I would wish for Roe to be overturned, just so that it would get some people out into the streets, but I'm not sure even that would do it. The level of complacency among so-called progressives right now is astounding. When Obama was elected, I knew there would be some of this kind of thing, but I imagined that it would be confined to a few Utne-esque 60's retreads. But no, it's everybody. People get the kind of government they deserve, I guess.
150: I'd like to see that list. I don't want to take up too much of your time, so maybe just the top five.
The level of complacency among so-called progressives right now is astounding.
Complacency? I'm seeing ineffectual despair, which is just about as useless, but very different internally. Who's complacent?
Who's complacent?
I was born nervous so I don't think I could manage complacent regardless.
I, too, would like to see five reasons. As it is, for me it is a choice between ineffectual despair and impotent rage.
If all Obama is going to do is act as a midwife for Republican policies while condescendingly patting his base on the head, I'm not seeing much advantage here. When Bush was president, the Democrats would *occasionally* serve as an opposition and block some truly egregious shit. Now? Their signature accomplishment is enacting the Heritage Foundation's Dole-Romney health care bill and completely caving in to extortion on the debt ceiling. Does anybody really believe anything other than a goddamned travesty is going to emerge from this new commission? Or that we won't see exactly the same dynamic play out in the upcoming budget negotiations? Get ready for the shutdown; you know full well it's going to happen.
Well despair/complacency/apathy/ignorance/quietism/whatever. I want to see people out there like we did in Wisconsin this winter, but everywhere and all the time. It's not impossible. People could do it. They know the score. They've seen it done. But they let the fascists and the neo-liberals whisper "Do nothing" into their ears.
I'm not seeing much advantage here.
I'm taking this on faith more than knowledge, but better functioning of agencies like the EPA?
156: You got to look after your prostate, no matter what happens politically.
"Contrary to promises to beef up prosecution of polluters, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency criminal enforcement program is withering under the Obama administration, according to records released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The number of EPA criminal investigators has fallen below Bush administration levels as the management of the criminal enforcement program continues to lack focus."
150, 153:
1 - Supreme Court goes from Kennedy being the decisive vote to - who? - maybe Roberts? That would be very, very bad.
2 - the regulatory environment goes to hell. A center-right Democrat is still going to be better on labor and the environment, for instance, than a center-right Republican.
And center-right Republicans - or Republicans who feel they can act that way - are increasingly an endangered species. Can one win the nomination?
You could probably spin out No. 2 here to cover the rest of Von's really long list.
My problem with Obama, though, is that he sucks all the air out of the progressive movement. If he were to decline to run for re-election, that would be a dangerous-but-hopeful development.
I'd like to see that list. I don't want to take up too much of your time, so maybe just the top five.
1. Electing a Republican in 2012 would go a long way towards undoing the hemi-demi-semi apology to the rest of the world for the Dub that was Obama's election/acclaim.
2. Sarah Palin will attach herself like a limpet to the eventual Republican nominee; a Republican victory will mean another 7-10 years in the public eye for her.
3. Electing a Republican in 2012 would encourage Jeb Bush ("Maybe they're ready to forgive! Everything's coming up Milhous Jeb!").
4. Something national parks something.
5. Trying to take the bald eagle off the Endangered Species list? Fuck you, Republican administrations, past and future.
OT: Every time I contact Eurail, I get a new answer about whether the Railjet from Salzburg to Zurich goes through Germany, requiring an additional tariff/country pass. It's like a slot machine.
I'm running out of patience for people who think being too lazy to vote in a primary is a reason not to vote in a general election
I want to say "something something Republicans in congress! something something Executive Branch!" in response to 157, but then I think about Obama's record on civil liberties, and I just can't.
Do we still have the various agencies stacked with right-wingers?
but better functioning of agencies like the EPA
Right, this was the big promise, wasn't it? We didn't need to worry about Obama caving on cap and trade, if you recall, because he held 100% of the negotiating leverage--if he couldn't pass a sensible policy through congress, the EPA would just start regulating carbon emissions on its own (as it had been directed to do by the Supreme Court!). Business interests would like that even less than carbon pricing, so the Republicans in Congress would eventually have to come around.
Remind me again what happened to that?
ICE is far more efficient at deporting people now.
And there's been some very efficient prosecutions of environmentalists.
Pittsburgh is making a billion dollar effort to put less shit in the rivers. That's something.
Obama has yet to demonstrate to me that he's willing to fight the Republicans on anything--anything--at all. It's like having President David Broder.
Something national parks something.
When the automatic cuts are triggered, national parks are going to be at the top of the list just like the state parks were in California.
ICE is far more efficient at deporting people now.
Instead of just dropping bombs on Iraq and Afghanistan, we're dropping bombs on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.
163:
1. Electing a Republican in 2012 would go a long way towards undoing the hemi-demi-semi apology to the rest of the world for the Dub that was Obama's election/acclaim.
But Obama has explicitly done this already. Remember, we need to look forward, not backward.
2. Sarah Palin will attach herself like a limpet to the eventual Republican nominee; a Republican victory will mean another 7-10 years in the public eye for her.
Sarah Palin's TV ratings go up with a Democrat as president. Under President Bachmann, she's reduced to C-list Fox commentator.
3. Electing a Republican in 2012 would encourage Jeb Bush ("Maybe they're ready to forgive! Everything's coming up Milhous Jeb!").
Electing a Republican keeps Jeb out of the White House for another four or eight years.
Instead of just dropping bombs on Iraq and Afghanistan, we're dropping bombs on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.
He kept us out of Syria.
174: Now who's being naive, Marge?
174: Not to mention Iran and Venezuela.
Obama sure ran rings around the Republicans like nobody's business, huh, DS?
From a childishly personal point of view, part of what makes this so maddening is that I had low expectations for Obama, I really did. I wasn't whirlyeyed, I was expecting someone in about the Bill Clinton class of depressing centrism (although I was expecting that to look better by contrast to Bush). But man, were my expectations not nearly low enough.
I never miss an opportunity to mock the Naderites and to praise lesser-of-two-evils thinking, but even I can't explain what's wrong with Krugman's thinking on this:
There are no safe options, and trying to play it safe when there is no safety lands you, well, where Obama is right now.
There really is a point where there's nothing left to lose. I'm tempted to think we're there.
180: Just for "burn shit down" reasons, I'd kind of like to see the Democrats in the House tank the deal. I can feel that way because it's not going to happen -- if it were likelier I'd be more thoughtful about it.
So why is it, exactly, that The Shock Doctrine isn't held in high regard?
Perhaps my impression is wrong. I thought it was considered unserious and factually inaccurate.
180:Not gonna happen. It is hilarious how Barney Frank has flipped 180 degrees to a big "YES" Remains interesting whether it will be majority Rep or majority Dems in the House that passes the bill.
Jared">http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/the-depressing-impact-of-a-spending-only-trigger/">Jared Bernstein, ex admin-official quotes Bob Greenstein
The first round of cuts under the Boehner plan would hit discretionary programs hard through austere discretionary caps that Congress will struggle to meet; discretionary cuts thus will largely or entirely be off the table when it comes to achieving the further $1.8 trillion in budget reductions. As Speaker Boehner's documents make clear, virtually all of the $1.8 trillion would need to come from cuts in entitlement programs. (Cuts in entitlement spending totaling more than $1.5 trillion would produce sufficient interest savings to achieve $1.8 trillion in total savings.)To secure $1.5 trillion in entitlement savings over the next ten years would require draconian policy changes. Policymakers would essentially have three choices: 1) cut Social Security and Medicare benefits heavily for current retirees, something that all budget plans from both parties...have ruled out; 2) repeal the Affordable Care Act's coverage expansions while retaining its measures that cut Medicare payments and raise tax revenues, even though Republicans seek to repeal many of those measures as well; or 3) eviscerate the safety net for low-income children, parents, senior citizens, and people with disabilities. There is no other plausible way to get $1.5 trillion in entitlement cuts in the next ten years.
My bet all along was that the stuff in the healthcare reform that the industries don't like would be whittled away in the name of "fiscal discipline", and that was the reason for the delayed implementation.
My bet all along was that the stuff in the healthcare reform that the industries don't like would be whittled away in the name of "fiscal discipline"
"[R]epeal the Affordable Care Act's coverage expansions while retaining its measures that cut Medicare payments" sounds like exactly the opposite of whittling away the stuff in the healthcare reform that the industries don't like.
Incidentally, I am not at all sure that Obama will not let all the tax cuts expire late 2012. He has said he needs money for programs he has not yet proposed.
Many of you will be thrilled.
Obama wants to reshape the Democratic Party into a Party that is focused on the John Coles, Bartletts, maybe Andy Sullivan:social liberals and fiscal conservatives. He will kick the New Dealers, unions, old people, DFH's to the curb, and you never again have to sit next to a socialist that might ask you to make the coffee or doesn't think Michael Jackson is the greatest ever, only because Lady Gaga is still at an early stage. No more Pumas to stink up the place, no blue-collars with bad grammar.
Then Obama can start spending the money on stuff Matt & Ezra like, and let those fucking boomers just die.
Sorry if this has been covered already, but having felt in 2008 that Von Wafer was correct about Obama -- "He's gonna win, and he's gonna suck" -- I somehow find myself surprised to admit that bob was correct about him too.
Though I do think he's overstating the divisive effect of Michael Jackson on political coalitions.
Then Obama can start spending the money on stuff Matt & Ezra like, and let those fucking boomers just die.
You were on such a roll, and I was nodding along agreeing with you. And then I hit this sentence: no one's going to do anything but cater to the boomers, until they're all dead. And I can't think of much of anything Matt&Ezra would want to spend money on that I'd be unhappy about. Seriously, Bob, what's the Juicebox Mafia spending plan that we should fear?
Oh, god, I just asked Bob to answer a question seriously. Never mind.
186.last: d let those fucking boomers just die.
Oh spare me, asshole. As if that's even close to the way it cuts generationally. Your poor, poor pitiful me act is one of the few things that keeps me supporting Obama's.
189: All that pro-city anti-suburban stuff. Stuff that you as a New Yorker elitist would love, but Bob as a rural peasant hates.
and let those fucking boomers just die.
And just like that, you're off the rails again. Check the age of your average Tea Partier. The ones who are going to get reamed are the children of the baby boomers.
no one's going to do anything but cater to the boomers, until they're all dead.
True, as long as they learn to use the self-scan at the checkout or get in the line with the cashier.
194 is why I want to see a serious hit to Social Security out of this. Let those assholes suffer a bit and then perhaps they'll take a look at the actual facts about the deficit. Most of the people who suffer will be innocent, but either they get screwed now or I get screwed when the retirement age is raised to 96.
We didn't need to worry about Obama caving on cap and trade, if you recall, because he held 100% of the negotiating leverage--if he couldn't pass a sensible policy through congress, the EPA would just start regulating carbon emissions on its own
Two things: (1) the EPA is putting together carbon regs; (2) there was just a huge victory on CAFE standards, almost totally unnoticed here, but that is a really big deal. 54.5 mpg by 2025.
But today really is an appropriate day for doom and gloom; Obama, his advisors, and the Democrats in Congress have a lot of unnecessary misery and unemployment on their hands.
167, 169: Yeah, like the distinguished gentleman from Judas Priest said, the EPA is doing this. (There is noise from the jackass-dem contingent in the Senate about removing the EPA's authority to do so, but that one is not actually Obama's fault.)
172.last: We're dropping bombs on Somalia? You mean against al-Shabab? I'd thought that was UN and/or African Union peacekeepers engaging in local firefights.
192:Yeah, pretty much, although that is a very long complicated argument, going back I think to late-60s Toffler. Not the suburbs as is, of course.
One example would be distributed energy and distributed socio-political power, having many smallish towns with rooftop solar panels rather than turning 90% of Texas into a industrial high-capital profit-concentrating windfarm to serve the Megas of Dallas, Houston, Austin.
I just finished This book about a Japanese village woman in the 20th century. The Japanese gov't disproportionately supported the rural community during the 50s and 60s of their economic miracle, and the book indirectly and perhaps unconsciously shows the connections between growth and broad geographic distribution of resources, among many other things.
196 is shrill.
194 is why I want to see a serious hit to Social Security out of this. Let those assholes suffer a bit
My impression is that most of the Tea Partiers are either already on Social Security (they're safe) or upper middle class enough that SS cuts won't hurt them much financially. Meanwhile, I'm in my mid-40s and not financially UMC and there's not a hell of lot of time left to build a very significant retirement nest egg, as there might arguably be for 30-somethings and younger. So no, I don't vote for this; don't think it'll teach the Tea Partiers a thing.
OT: Every time I contact Eurail, I get a new answer about whether the Railjet from Salzburg to Zurich goes through Germany, requiring an additional tariff/country pass. It's like a slot machine.
Based on, for example. this trip plan and the diagram shown here, I think you're okay. It looks like it crosses into German territory between Salzburg and Innsbruck, but it doesn't make any stops there.
Toshie, from 192.3, had a half-acre of land she got her rice from, so was officially a farmer, but actually spent her prime productive 20 years commuting ten miles into Niigata, working day-labor for minimum wage on the docks. She was part of the 90% of the labor force that does not get lifetime employment and great benefits.
The absurd price supports for Rice Japan provided ensured the Toshie would not sell her land, and kept her village concentrated and surrounded by open land even after it became mostly a bedroom community for Niigata.
The urban "reserve army of the under-employed" is a very expensive resource drain that the re-urbanists don't take into account.
You asked.
199: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/30/us-drone-strikes-somalia
The airstrike makes Somalia at least the sixth country where the United States is using drone aircraft to conduct lethal attacks, joining Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq and Yemen. And it comes as the CIA is expected to begin flying armed drones over Yemen in its hunt for al-Qaeda operatives.
...had a half-acre of land she got her rice from, so was officially a farmer
Talk about small holding.
God, this is cheerful:
Defeating al-Qaeda, Brennan said, "does not require a 'global' war" but rather a focus on specific regions, including Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and North Africa, in addition to Pakistan. "President Obama's approach to counterterrorism is pragmatic, not ideological," he said ...
Ah, okay. Not a global war, just a war in six (don't forget Afghanistan) countries across two continents. Got it!
Oh, and the headline: "Brennan: Counterterrorism strategy focused on al-Qaeda's threat to homeland"--well done, court stenographers!
I have taken that Railjet, and trapnel is right. It apparently goes through Germany but not so you would notice.
201 - I'll cop to being shrill. I'm also not in great shape to handle my own retirement absent social security. At this rate the implosion happens right when we both retire (2037 being the approximate date when the loans from SS to cover Ronnie's spending spree are all paid back and the fund is unambiguously in the red). A crisis now gives a couple of decades to put things right.
205: I think Obama's going for the record for most countries bombed by a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
207: 0.4 hectare total, maybe closer to an acre. In three separate locations. Always a money loser but provided food security. The vast majority of "farmers" by number got increasing amounts of their income from non-farming activities, silk production in the 30s, day-labor (flexibility) in the 50s onward.
Toshie, interestingly, was the second of three generations of what I think is called "moka, muka?" marriages, where the husband is adopted in order to preserve the family name and property rights. In such cases the man is usually a younger son, from a poorer and slightly lower social position. Toshie, her mother and her daughter had much greater decision-making authority in the household than is usually the case.
The vast majority of "farmers" by number got increasing amounts of their income from non-farming activities
I know many people in that very situation, but they had a quarter section or more of land.
204, 205: Thanks. I figured it was drone strikes, but hadn't heard about them.
Trying to take the bald eagle off the Endangered Species list? Fuck you, Republican administrations, past and future.
Are they still at dangerous population numbers? Because at least out in the Rockies it seems like they've made a good comeback.
210: A crisis now gives a couple of decades to put things right.
Understood, but call me risk-averse. I'm not at all convinced that increased suffering now would, er, trickle down to a change in voter opinion. Frankly, I think people already feel beaten down enough that they're giving up.
The most obvious thing to try to do is get the goddamned Tea Partiers out of office, and avoid any additional ones being voted in. I'd almost embrace open primaries if only to vote for the reasonable Republican over the nutjob.
211: He's got that record easily already, doesn't he ? Who's his competition? Kissinger?
Nate Silver attempts optimism.
He makes a decent argument that the Democrats could be happy to reject a bad proposal from the commission and take the automatic $1.5T in cuts. I haven't read enough of the details to know if I agree, but it's a reasonable argument.
Who's his competition? Kissinger?
I guess Arafat, Begin, and Rabin are in the brackets somewhere.
I haven't seen much detail about the commission. Who's on it? If that hasn't been determined, who selects who's on it? Who's in charge?
218: It seems likely to me that as long as we're talking purely about spending cuts (which is absolutely the wrong thing to be talking about), the default mechanism is better than anything that could reasonably be expected to be a negotiated outcome. So I'm assume we'll give that away early on.
Except that then the Republicans say it's the Democrats who wanted to cut Medicare.
223: He can go head-to-head with Alan Simpson.
If that hasn't been determined, who selects who's on it?
A bipartisan nominating committee composed of Tea Party Republicans and non-Tea Party Republicans.
223. People would be too busy laughing at his mustache to transact any business. Maybe that would work as well.
Diane Rehm kept asking today, "Why aren't people marching on Washington?" She asked this over and over again, posing the question to numerous callers, and finally just said that she thought people should probably consider marching on Washington.
Heh; she tries hard not to actually voice an opinion. But you know, march on Washington to say what, exactly? "Jobs not cuts?" or "Invest, don't cut?" It is not enough to simply march without a message beyond something handwavy like 'We're disgusted.'
220, 226: Let the masses decide--so, the politicians with the most Sunday Show appearances.
202: I think I saw that map before, which makes the varied viva voce responses so frustrating, because they range from "The train goes through Germany, but you don't have to pay extra because it doesn't stop" to "Ze train doesn't go through Germany" to "You must to pay extra, Herr Flippanter. I vas told you vould be a more interestink passenger. Perhaps you vould be more comfortable ... in ze dungeon third-class cabin!"
I didn't write 223. I'm not sure who did. Anyway, here's five reasons to vote for the lesser of two evils:
1) Supreme Court (every time you consider saying that the two parties are the same, consider the difference between their last few nominees to the Court)
2) Tax Policy (as bad as this debt deal is -- and it makes me want to puke -- it's far better than anything a Republican would have cooked up; it's silly to suggest otherwise)
3) Environmental Regulation (Obama has disappointed me more on this front than any other, and he's still been a gazillion times better than Bush)
4) Hostility to Government (people -- not anyone here, mind -- insist that Obama's a chess master playing a long game, but Republicans are actually in this to win it: they want people to hate government, so they're intent on making sure that government doesn't work; Democrats are better on this front)
5) Identity Politics (I'm with Bob insofar as I think that the Old Left was more effective than the New Left, but I do think that things are substantially better for women, LGBT people, and racial and ethnic minorities when Democrats are in office).
So, unless you think heightening the contradictions is going to work -- and as a member of a despised, albeit powerful, minority, that argument scares the shit out of me -- you should really vote for the flawed Democrat rather than the evil Republican.
By the way, before someone jumps on me, I'm not defending Obama. I'm even more disappointed in him than I expected to be, and that's saying something. Because, like k-sky says, I thought he would suck. But I also thought he'd have some success in changing the rhetoric surrounding the efficacy of government. Instead, he's made things worse on that front. It's really quite tragic.
as a member of a despised, albeit powerful, minority
Cyclists aren't powerful.
233: have you seen my quads and calves?
Diane Rehm kept asking today, "Why aren't people marching on Washington?"
Because marching on Washington accomplishes jack shit, as was amply demonstrated in 2003. Unless and until you're ready to actually burn shit down, they *do not care* if a million people march up and down the mall waving signs.
231: Hyphenation style says it's the TOS. Someone else delete? I can't from here.
as a member of a despised, albeit powerful, minority,
Truly, our society will not be great until we have rid ourselves of the plague of historians we suffer under.
First they came for the historians. And who the fuck knows what happened after that.
plague of historians
Fortunately, we only emerge from the ground every 17 years.
"Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) emerged from the meeting distributing copies of the Congressional Budget Office's parsing of the report. He had highlighted a line noting that the proposed defense spending caps would not apply to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq."
218: Silver's analysis was uncharacteristically weak. He's assuming that the Democrats would be able and willing to take advantage of a favorable negotiating position to press their own policy preferences. Where is his evidence for this?
231: Thank, Von Wafer! I know that wasn't easy.
I've been trying to put together a joke about feeling that if it comes down to Obama v. Romney, I would vote for Romney, because I've already proven my racial tolerance by voting for Obama in 2008, and so in 2012 I'll need to prove my religious tolerance by voting for Romney.
Seriously, while I have some hope that Romney would not be a particularly horrible President, I can't actually imagine a circumstance (outside the mcmanusverse) in which I don't wind up voting for Obama. I'm just trying to feel a little less bad about it.
241: Of course, nothing discretionary about that spending. We must meet our moral obligation to ...um.. 9/11 victims the Founders Lockheed-Martin Pat Tillman the people of the Middle East
I'm just trying to feel a little less bad about it.
New to the Democratic Party, are you?
239: And only a few of us are allowed to keep living after that. Mating or tenure is always a hard choice.
I'll sign on to 231 just like I always have. I understand the visceral "why botherness" that apo and others are expressing, but still think that it's worth choosing "shitty" over "so much shittier you can't really believe it."
The one time I signed on for heightening the contradictions was in 2000. I was living in Georgia, so my vote didn't matter, but I thought that at least putting the fear of god into Democrats might get them to stop collapsing towrd the right quite so readily. I felt like we hadn't gotten anything positive out of Clinton since his first week in office. As it turned out, I had forgotten about how much worse things could be made. They keep shifting the bar rightward, so there's always further to go.
"It's between our consciences and the president," said Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn. "This is a Trojan Horse with Scylla and Charabis inside of it."
Valid criticism of the bill, and winner of the Most Confused Classical Allusion contest!
235: Because marching on Washington accomplishes jack shit
la la la, I can't hear you. We're going to have to agree to disagree. Marching on Washington is part of a longer game, toward actually speaking up, which hopefully leads to some degree of media coverage or at least concern, and increased caution on the part of the powers that be. Calling your representatives is excellent, but things don't go *anywhere* if we don't try to shift the attention of politicians, even slightly, by shouting.
The anti-war protests gave Obama enough cover to actually campaign on his opposition to the Iraq war, for example.
I do feel like marches are kinda an outdated protest technology, but the alternatives are so much lamer. Change your facebook status!
Further to 250: It also rallies people, to be engaged, realize that they're not alone in their disgust/outrage/despair, that there are other people out there with similar sentiments, and so on, and this can contribute to an increased stubborn refusal to keep on shutting up. I'll maintain that online activism doesn't fully fill this bill, given that there are a lot of more-or-less centrists, Independents, who sure as hell don't read MoveOn.
That's the extent of my case; I certainly understand yours.
I'll maintain that online activism doesn't fully fill this bill, given that there are a lot of more-or-less centrists, Independents, who sure as hell don't read MoveOn.
Are there a lot of more-or-less centrists, Independents, who show up at protest marches?
Everyone who says that marches are ineffectual is right, I suppose. But I feel like there should be some way for a mass of unhappy people to be visible to possible candidates: "If you're better than this guy, we'll vote for you!" I don't know if marches are the way to do it.
233-234, 237-239 are fantastic. Nicely done.
Good news! A reason to vote for Obama!
http://women.webmd.com/news/20110801/no-more-copay-for-womens-wellness-birth-control
251: Change your facebook status!
Twitter storm!
255: There were at the Washington anti-war protest back when. A friend's brother -- an otherwise utterly whitebread, middle-class and middle-aged suburban accountant -- met up with us and seemed half surprised at himself for feeling strongly enough to actually do this, and half excited that he was standing up for something. There were a lot of people like him there.
I realize that it didn't stop the war, but I firmly believe there are other, not dismissable, positives.
"The train goes through Germany, but you don't have to pay extra because it doesn't stop" to "Ze train doesn't go through Germany" to "You must to pay extra, Herr Flippanter. I vas told you vould be a more interestink passenger. Perhaps you vould be more comfortable ... in ze dungeon third-class cabin!"
I really wouldn't worry about it. Just act very innocent and helpless if anyone questions you about it on the train.
Then again, as an approach to life, that hasn't entirely worked out for me.
What seems to have been effective so far is the suicide primary. This, of course, requires a willingness to lose some of those seats.
the suicide primary
Is that the one where you mix all the different Slurpee flavors together?
Yglesias's most recent post is both correct and has something about the tone which sets my teeth on edge.
and has something about the tone which sets my teeth on edge.
Maybe the--dare I say neoliberal--implication that regulating/mandating (sometimes known as "collectively determining the conditions under which we live and work") is always and everywhere less efficient than a mix of straight government provision/funding and "pure" market mechanisms?
So I don't understand the debt deal well enough to see why it's a bad bill. I can't make sense of this trigger mechanism and how it's going to work in practice.
But assuming that it's as bad as people say, I think we really need to start thinking about politics in a different way. On a current course we're headed for total defeat, where the welfare state is destroyed and the plutocrats take everything of value. Now every Election Day we're just choosing between losing quickly and losing slowly. We need to think longer-term, and bigger. The existing constitutional order has broken down, and our goal should not be to just patch up the system. We need to think rollback, not containment.
For example, we shouldn't look at the Supreme Court and limit ourselves to preventing more bad judges from getting put on the court. We should look at the Supreme Court and plan for the day in which we remove John Roberts as a justice. Under the norms of the old constitutional order, we would never do that. But our ideological enemies have destroyed that order, and our goal must be to make them experience the consequences of that destruction. Hell, we should plan for the day where we throw the fucker in jail.
Maybe the--dare I say neoliberal--implication that regulating/mandating (sometimes known as "collectively determining the conditions under which we live and work") is always and everywhere less efficient than a mix of straight government provision/funding and "pure" market mechanisms?
That is a very good point. Though my first order annoyance was to the fact that I'm unclear what political debate this is meant to respond to.
In the current political landscape we have one coalition which is more or less sympathetic to both mandates and government funding and another coalition which is actively hostile to both (with some very limited exceptions). So it's hard to see that anybody at the moment is going to be motivated be concerns about the proper balance between mandates and funding.
From across the pond: "Hundreds of council tax protesters storm courtroom in attempt to make citizens' arrest of judge."
A little more on this, and on "crazy constitutionalism" in general, here.
Wait, what makes thinking that straight government provision of necessary services, where appropriate, is likely to be more efficient than a regulatory alternative 'neo-liberal'? Yglesias there is saying NHS = good, ObamaCare = stupid&inefficient, albeit the best we've been able to do politically. That's not neoliberal propaganda, that's social democrat propaganda.
This is like the last conversation where I started defending Yglesias -- it's not that he's not wrong a fair amount, but he seems to piss people off by saying things that look absolutely unobjectionable to me.
That was me, shockingly enough. Also! Larry Lessig and the Tea Party Patriots are teaming up to host a September conference about holding a new constitutional convention; sadly, I doubt "eliminating elections in favor of random lot" will be much discussed. Fools!
265: yep. Yet another Econ 101 lecture from Yglesias. Also, the implication that a "cross subsidy" from birth control non users to users is some unusual, strange, inefficient thing, when the whole system of health insurance involves people who don't use a certain medical treatment contributing to treatment by those who do.
he seems to piss people off by saying things that look absolutely unobjectionable to me.
I can't speak for trapnel but, in my case, it's really the final paragraph that annoys me:
Over the long run, countries that accept that there's nothing wrong with the principle of paying taxes in order to create government services are going to do better. They'll think more seriously about the actual cost of services and whether or not they're worth paying for, but they'll also provide the services they deem worthwhile in a more efficient and equitable way.
Who is this directed at? People who think that the debt-ceiling compromise represents the best of all possible worlds? Who would fall into that category?
That just feels awfully high-handed for a post which, presumably, is directly at people he agrees with as a reminder of continuing the fight despite the current setbacks.
I did say the basic point was correct, and it's entirely possible that I'm just being touchy because I'm feeling kind of bitter today.
270: Fuck if I know. You're the smart one. I'm just the muscle.
265 - the neoliberal thing that bothers me is putting efficiency above other concerns such as political robustness. Direct provision of BC would be eliminated the first time the right got the power to do so. The mandate is a lot harder to turn into a soundbite that will outrage the marginal conservative. This sort of thing is won by convincing (or preventing the other side from convincing) the ill informed and not particularly passionate voter.
273: I thought Yglesias' point there was a good one. We live in a kind of fantasy land where we can never raise taxes because all tax money goes to buy Cadillacs for illegal immigrant hookers, so we can't ever say "This is a good idea. The government should pay for it," so we end up with these round-about methods, like tax credits and the ACA.
The mandate is a lot harder to turn into a soundbite
Boy do I disagree with that. "The government is making me pay for your contraception!" or "Government takeover of healthcare, exhibit A!" are right off the top of my head, and I'm not even very good at this. If anything I'd say the marginal conservative would be more galled at the thought that he's being forced to spend his own money on something he objects to, without the filter of taxation in between, but I could be wrong about that.
but he seems to piss people off by saying things that look absolutely unobjectionable to me.
Building on what Katherine said: treating the mandating of birth control as somehow a special regulation is precisely the problem; indeed, it's the whole problem the mandate is targeting. Our system of deeply state-regulated medical care is one where some medical treatments and procedures are considered normal and necessary and hence coverage for them is mandated, and some are not; you can't be neutral here. It's part of the right's success in the general culture war that birth control has often been in the latter category, with Viagra being in the former. Changing this is about both practical, dollars-and-sense access-expansion, and attacking the "birth control: just for whores, or also for sluts?" way of seeing things.
269:Well, for one thing just in passing so to speak, he slips in that raising taxes is impossible in America.
Just like Revolution and other good stuff that does not bear thinking about. We can't have them. Is this a fact? Well, it will be if we say so.
Yglesias is subtle, and I have learned to look precisely at what is at the periphery of his posts.
This Post on privilege counterintuitively said that the urban professor at $175k was better off than the rural CEO at $6 million.
None of the commenters picked up on the fact that from thousands of CEOs around the country Yggles choose as his example Otis of Darden Restaurants.
See, it's the white urban middle class that is so much better off and more privileged than black (or gay, or female) multi-millionaire business executives.
I find that my attitude about Yglesias changes based on whether I view him as fundamentally a hippie-punching prick with some ideas I favor or fundamentally a decent well meaning guy with a weird addiction to unnecessarily putting things in Econ 101 terms. I think the latter is clearly true, so I've been feeling a lot more charitable towards him recently.
Folks this is his style and method, starting with the scare quotes.
277:No Walt, he has been working on the premise for years that increasing revenues is impossible, especially on the rich. It may not be what he wants, but it is what he thinks he has to work with.
Left neo-liberalism and New Keynesianism essentially started as a defensive reaction to Reaganomics in the early 80s.
"But I also think that this kind of thing is the future of American public policy in a world where the population is aging and it's impossible to raise taxes." ...Yggles
Think about this, the connections. Two unrelated facts, or is the aging population and the impossibility of tax increases causal? Well, the two things will be related in your mind for a little while.
282:"But I also think that this kind of thing is the future of American public policy in a world where the population is aging and it's impossible to raise taxes." ...Yggles
Nah, he is a hack and a prick.
Raiding taxes on the rich was trivial, Obama could have done by going on vacation in December.
But Yggles works for Podesta at CAP, and so doesn't want to focus on that so much as on the greedy geezers.
281: Oh, I wanted to bitch about that post, that's completely wrongheaded. Or at least, he's right that the tenured professor making $175K is in some sense more enviable, to lots of Yglesias's readers, than a CEO making multiple millions a year.
But the tenured professor making $175K isn't typical of anything -- she's the winner of a tournament, and there really aren't many people out there in comparable positions. The much more typical academics out there are non-tenured adjuncts, or even tenured or tenure-track academics making a genuinely middle-middle class salary. And at that point, talking about who's better off, the professor or the CEO, stops looking like a real question at all.
272, 280: But why is treating BC as something that needed a special regulation something that's a problem with Yglesias, rather than a problem with American politics? Because of the forces you talk about, it did require a special regulation. Was it wrong to mention that?
286 to 285? If so, I was talking about the Yglesias post bob linked.
she's the winner of a tournament, and there really aren't many people out there in comparable positions
Isn't this also true of the CEO? I've been trying to work out my response to that post, and it gets complicated.
Incidentally I've been enjoying Tom Geoghagen's latest and, in an indirect way, it's a very good contribution to the recent debates over "neoliberalism."
288 cont.: Or rather the one he meant to link but, now that I actually try to click through, see that he didn't. This one.
"But the CEO making $6MM isn't typical of anything -- she's the winner of a tournament, and there really aren't many people out there in comparable positions. The much more typical corporate employee out there are non-executive middle-managers, or even upper management positions in small companies making a genuinely middle-middle class salary. And at that point, talking about who's better off, the professor or the coporate schlub, stops looking like a real question at all."
291 pwned by 289. But seriously, do you think CEOs making $6MM+ are more numerous than tenured professors?
285:LB, Yggles job is to build resentment
Read the birth control post again, and try to imagine any irrational feeling you get out of it, building from the line about aging and taxes and ending with the snark about "other countries can have nice things, but not us"
Why not? Those fucking greedy geezers.
288: yes. I don't understand your point at all.
289: What I meant is that if you're talking about absurdly high-income executives as a class, it is fair to say that all members of the class 'absurdly high-income executives' do actually have absurdly high incomes. Say, if you want to raise taxes on anyone with an income over $1M per year, anyone affected by the proposed tax is going to be someone whose income really is that high. If you're talking about academics as a class, and how enviable their lifestyles are, picking as your example the academic who's making $175K with subsidized Manhattan housing is putting your thumb on the scale.
291: But he's not responding to people talking about corporate schlubs generally, he's responding to people talking about the superwealthy, and implying that academics generally are comparably privileged. He identifies what he's talking about in the beginning of the post:
Rather than directly respond to John Quiggin let me just suggest that a serious examination of privilege and redistribution in the United States needs to widen its horizons a bit beyond a hyper-narrow focus on the fabled top one percent of households.
296: Ah, that makes more sense, although I didn't understand that to be sausagely's point. I thought he was only trying to point out that utility is measured across a significant number of variables other than just merely income (and so, consequently, can be improved through many different policy changes, even if they don't directly redistribute income). So too narrow a focus on the redistribution of income is, um, too narrow a focus. Or something like that.
and implying that academics generally are comparably privileged
That's where we were missing each other. I didn't view this as an implication of his. I think you're misreading him, although I admit I found the post confusing, so maybe I'm the one who's misreading.
I am continually amazed by how difficult it seems to be for liberal intellectuals to change figure and ground and look at style rather than argument or "substance" in bloggers that post thousands of words a day.
It is always about the way they say it, for every instance of "they."
298: I think you're right that that's what he meant, I just think the example he used to make it was cheating. A fair example would be more like "Look, there are plenty of academics out there who are making $60K with very little job security and living in very expensive cities, despite the fact that they have skills and talents that would have allowed them to make a whole lot more if they'd gone into the financial industry. Doesn't that suggest that there are serious rewards to the academic lifestyle that aren't reflected in the financial remuneration associated with it?" And then I still wouldn't be really sure what his point was, but I wouldn't think the post was such a mess.
301 cont: Forgot an intended parenthetical; "(and those are the successful ones)"
So I don't understand the debt deal well enough to see why it's a bad bill.
After looking at a few more details (but not really many), I had the sense that it's still bad, but maybe not quite as bad as I thought, having first adjusted my expectations to be the ones I had Sunday, not any day previous to that.
I think a big part of the deal is that it is intended to be distant and opaque, almost as if everyone in the dealmaking room knew they fucked up and were playing with fire, and so they were trying desperately to back away from the catastrophic stuff, while designing what they did put in the bill in such a way that any accountability or responsibility would be left vague, dispersed, and forgotten. Until the cuts down the line come up, but at that point default will be off the table (if I understand the timing correctly).
I took his point to be that before we get too gung-ho about taxing the wealthy we should consider redistributing the job satisfaction of academics. For example, they could be required to do unpleasant chores for the rural peasants.
I'm just the muscle.
Me, I'm the just muscle.
This "Another Take" post at TPM captures one angle on what's maybe not so bad.
The biggest problem has to do with the Super Committee -- which that post doesn't address -- and whether it'll come up with something egregious (likely), or whether it'll be deadlocked and the triggers go into effect. In either event, we essentially lose. I'm certainly expecting a proposal from the Committee to shift to chained CPI calculation for the COLA increase in Social Security.
And they just passed the bill by quite a lot, with the Democrats splitting evenly (presumably not a coincidence).
they = the children in the House
But why is treating BC as something that needed a special regulation something that's a problem with Yglesias, rather than a problem with American politics? Because of the forces you talk about, it did require a special regulation.
What if instead of BC and health care, we were talking about employee safety or union election rules in the workplace? Then it seems a bit odd, because here at least leftists tend to recognize the embeddedness of the workplace within society, and hence the artificiality of thinking that tax-and-transfer-and-free-markets is the same as, e.g., workplace democracy. Rules about how things happen aren't just about who gets particular goodies, but also about the nature of work, of family, of goods and places and statuses.
Now, I'm of mixed minds here, since my sympathies are more anarcho-socialist-IWW than let-us-use-the-state-to-create-new-socialist-man. But to a certain extent what's annoying about Yggles' style here is prior to the question about what the state (and of course thinking about the state as a monolithic entity is misleading) does or doesn't do; it's about Yggles' apparent refusal to see that much of politics is about fighting over the nature of things within society (BC: something for sluts and whores, or for everybody? Child labor: socially and individually useful, or abusive?), not simply who gets how much.
Next up: shutdown, also second depression.
One broader lesson from this extremely irritating and horrible business is that Grover Norquist apparently rules. His rhetoric about how, tax-wise, we must eliminate loopholes and exemptions and broaden the tax base, and then lower overall rates, seems to have become conventional wisdom. I figure something like that will come out of the Super Committee as well. Though honestly, how much time do they have? Only 'til the end of the year, I think, which I doubt is enough time.
303:Well I was wrong
Looks like it will only be around 70 Democrats and 150 Republicans. That means, I suppose, the Republicans are laughing, smiling, and high-fiving each other as they either a) vote for a pretty good bill, b) vote for something they don't really understand (tricksy Obama), or c) got a sudden conversion to civic virtue?
The Digby post above is about flying in Giffords for this really really important vote. Humanity fucking sucks tonight.
I thought the point was that we should design policy so that people get some of the benefits of being a tenured professor -- free gyms(?) access to libraries (?) -- in addition to just providing additional income. Although, how we'd do that without soaking the rich is a mystery.
Or maybe he was just saying that a lot of people bitching about inequality actually have it pretty good, which is OK as far as it goes.
Those are the charitable interpretations. The noncharitable interpretation is that the top .0001% actually don't have it all that good because there are folks like tenured professors out there who also have it good, so stop worrying so much about income inequality.
311: Hard to see how they're going to eliminate many loopholes. What, are they suddenly going to go against heavy lobbying? In the name of the public good?
312:Actually the vote count is, well not encouraging, but comforting.
I guess this probably means that the House Progressive Caucus really stood up at some point, and Obama had to make his deal so bad that he could get 2/3s of the House Republicans.
That is, anti-tax rhetoric is pretty much all bait and switch. Federal taxes are too high! States rights! Also, state taxes are too high. We can save by eliminating loopholes. But not those ones, they create jobs. And so on.
The thing about birth control is that if for any reason, you can't quite make the payment, you're very quickly at risk for pregnancy, which puts you at the mercy of a cobweb of awful legislation. Even waiting until the paycheck at the end of the week might be too late. In countries less freaked out about contraception, a woman might have socialized healthcare (awesome), or might at least know what her options are before running into "this pharmacist won't fill plan-b scrips" and "now you have to travel to the center 100 miles away" etc.
Without insurance, some birth control can cost $50 a month. True fact.
314, 316: I don't know. I haven't heard much of anything substantial from the Norquist-ites, though Norquist himself has said in recent weeks that he's all in favor of eliminating subsidies for ethanol, big oil, etc. And yeah, it's pretty surprising if his big money people aren't the same as the big money backing oil lobbyists and whatnot. So I'm not sure what the game is.
It's probably worth keeping on eye on their rhetoric, but I find that stuff tiring as hell. Tax policy makes me squint, and some people here can probably keep track and understand the underlying messages and motivations better than I. There's stuff about the Alternative Minimum Tax; it's probably a bait-and-switch, as you say, and "broadening the base" means making poor people rather than rich people pay more.
Not to be cynical or anything.
I think what we need is a move from symbolic protest to what I think of (somewhat oxymoronically) as coercive nonviolence. This is the kind of nonviolence that directly stops the machinery of the oppressive society from working. No symbolic arrests for trespassing in front of the Whitehouse. Block the doors of the trade negotiations so they just can't meet. Stand in front of fucking tanks.
Of course, these things take numbers to work, and there hasn't even been a good general strike in the US since I don't know when.
You know it's high time I read From Dictatorship to Democracy.
I'm just shrill. Really, I've recently (re)developed an unhealthy relationship with American politics, which is to say that I should go back to being, if not apathetic, then at least ignorant enough to not pay much attention.* I'm sure there are good ideas out there, just pessimistic that any will be implemented.
*I more or less successfully did this through most of the health care stuff - pretty much my first year and a half in Canada.
There was supposed to be a link there
We can't learn anything from the recent Wisconsin protests? Those resulted in a pretty damn robust movement to initiate recall elections.
This country is pretty deeply dedicated to maintaining stability, which is why (I've thought) people tend, since Vietnam, to think that protesting is in poor taste: these days, well, we wouldn't want to be like the Arab Spring, would we? Look at all that chaos!
Peaceful, constructive protest is an art and a science, as Natilo can surely tell us, and there are people out there who are well-versed in how it's done. But I sound like I'm lecturing now, when really I've become alarmed; I could swallow a one-year extension of the Bush tax cuts in December, but things have gotten out of hand, Obama's not taking care of it for us, and we're not helpless children here.
I should probably eat.
Fuck. I guess we're not even trying to "win the future" any more.
Partly I can't believe Obama allowed this to happen. Economic recovery is key to his reelection, no? Of all the things he needed to get right, not having a giant spending cut was it.
262: What seems to have been effective so far is the suicide primary. This, of course, requires a willingness to lose some of those seats.
I'm more willing than before to take risks like that. Looking at the Republicans, it's clear that having fewer seats doesn't mean you can't influence things. I'm also in favor of outright experimentation, a la 266. Because this episode shows that if we play it safe, we still lose. And the losses are getting worse.
(I realize I am sounding very earnest. It's because I'm very frustrated.)
there hasn't even been a good general strike in the US since I don't know when
I believe the 1934 San Francisco General Strike and the 1919 Seattle General Strike were the only two in US History, but I'm sure there are people who know more about this than I do.
It is hilarious how Barney Frank has flipped 180 degrees to a big "YES"
He voted No. As did my Rep.
md 20/400, where's the vote roll call?
My two Senators (Webb & Warner) will vote yes, I am sure.
I guess we're not even trying to "win the future" any more.
We have recalibrated our definition of "winning" to conform to the parameters of a future in which everything sucks, except stuff that a plurality of jowly, balding mama's boys think would pass muster with Ludwig von Mises and Wal-Mart Jesus.
325:Jane Hamsher's whip count as of 8:41 am
Barney Frank -- told me the other day he would not vote for a Super Congress. Today he makes fun of Connie Mack for refusing to vote for it, and that he now supports it. Says he doesn't know if he'll be on the Super Congress, but it may be a way to get out of Afghanistan. Who is he kidding? 202-225-5931
Hamsher links This Video of Frank on Scarborough today
C'mon, if they needed Frank, they had his vote. He made it clear. The Dems held back until the Repub vote count was pretty clear, and then gave permissions.
Barney is no fucking hero or dude of principle.
OT: Steven Seagal was skinny like unto a rail at the time of Above the Law. He must have put on 70 pounds since then.
330: bob takes the "your mouthvote says no but your bodyBarney says yes" route. Surprise!
Charlie Rangel voted No. This is probably his last term, but I'm going to miss him.
What can you expect from Frank? He voted with Michele Bachmann! Clearly he hates America.
There's a Republican Rep. in southern Maryland, near DC, named Andy Harris (who voted No because he was insisting on a balanced budget amendment), who we'd do well to be rid of. He's a freshman, and his election was close. It's not my district at all, but I'm thinking I'll look into whomever might be working to unseat him.
317: That's why IUDs are really good. The Mirena hormone one is sort of expensive (not a lot more than the U.S. brand-name copper one) but copper ones can be made cheap and last 10 years versus 5 for the others. USAID has had programs to help poor women in developing get them inserted, precisely because they don't require a regular prescription.
333: You think we'd have gotten a different vote if he'd been replaced already? All the NYC Dems except Meeks voted No.
I'm glad the NYT shows the roll call like that. It's great that the House's site puts it up in xml and everything, but the barebones approach makes it not quite human-readable, if you want to do more than look at the raw count.
337: Nah, I'm just fond of him. Gravelly-voiced old tax-evader though he may be.
I particularly love those states where the whole graphic is red, representing the fact that they have 1 rep who voted yes.
One rep who is Republican, that is. I need sleep.
Brown is a Republican, so he'll vote yes. Kerry is a "serious person," so he will too.
339 LB ♥s corrupt politicians.
</Shearer>
343
LB ♥s corrupt politicians
Actually just corrupt Democratic politicians like Alan Hevesi now in jail for his part in a massive conspiracy to rip off the New York State pension fund. I still recall her endorsement of Hevesi in 2006 on the grounds that it was more important that the state controller be a Democrat than be honest.
I haven't noticed her shedding any tears for the likes of Duke Cunningham .
All the NC Democrats except Heath Shuler voted no (thank you, Rep. Price). All the NC Republicans except Walter Jones voted yes.
296
What I meant is that if you're talking about absurdly high-income executives as a class, it is fair to say that all members of the class 'absurdly high-income executives' do actually have absurdly high incomes. Say, if you want to raise taxes on anyone with an income over $1M per year, anyone affected by the proposed tax is going to be someone whose income really is that high. If you're talking about academics as a class, and how enviable their lifestyles are, picking as your example the academic who's making $175K with subsidized Manhattan housing is putting your thumb on the scale.
I don't understand your point, he is comparing successful business people to successful academics. So how is picking a successful academic as an example putting your thumb on the scale?
Speaking of Yglesias posts I thought this one on why Democrats aren't as popular with the working class as they think they should be was perceptive.
