Balta1701

Sudden talk that the Republicans may allow a vote on the bill without amendments coming out of their 2nd meeting. Whether they have the votes or not is a question. One report said that they had maybe 20-50 votes in favor of the bill, which could make it very narrow at best and make it so that they would need a very united Democratic vote.

QUOTE (danman31 @ Jan 1, 2013 -> 05:27 PM) Big Ten probably goes 2-5 this bowl season, which is probably about what was expected. Heck, Northwestern was the only favorite. Even if they're not winning the games, I think they handled themselves well in the early games today.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 1, 2013 -> 04:38 PM) No guarantee sc can kick a fg. No need.

Michigan is going to lose this game because they couldn't tackle the QB with him in their arms on 3 straight plays.

Um...

QUOTE (MAX @ Jan 1, 2013 -> 03:58 PM) Not from what I remember. He lost a ton of velocity if I remember correctly. Was not normal headcase javy. If his velocity returns he could be useful again.This one's pretty well shown by the velocity graph. Remarkably, he did have some velocity recovery at the end of 2010. I'm not sure I'd sign him if I was expecting to be a contender. But if I were say, the Royals?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 1, 2013 -> 03:49 PM) Not at all. The deficit and inflation are unrelated. Who would say that? I could respond to some of the remainder, but I'm just sort of jarred that you'd say this. The government running a deficit is almost the definition of an inflationary act. The government running a surplus is a deflationary push. They can, of course, be overwhelmed by other actions, since there are other players (the federal reserve, international currency exchanges and international economic policies, occasional implosions of the entire financial system). But they're completely intertwined.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jan 1, 2013 -> 03:49 PM) Boehner needs to grow a set and realize his party is about to lose its majority if he doesn't do anything. No they won't. They got 2 million fewer votes in the House than the Democrats in the last election. They held onto the House with ease because the House districts that heavily gerrymandered, and that won't change until the next census or until some districts have serious population swings/growth. There are only 16 Republicans in the House from districts that Obama won. Their majority is fully entrenched right now. A 2006 style wave election might not be enough to shift the majority, and we're back into "Pox on both houses no matter what happens" mode.

Link

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jan 1, 2013 -> 03:35 PM) In other words, they don't have the votes to pass ANY tax increase. It's pretty amazing that even the RINO's are holding out - Boner only needs 20 votes to cover his Nancy Pelosi stance, right? Yes that's true, but Boehner also needs to bring the bill to the floor and decide what version of the bill to bring to the floor. The Democrats are powerless to bring a bill to the floor. If he brings a bill to the floor his caucus doesn't want, they can vote him out as speaker because of it in a couple days. That's why the failure to pass anything last time was such a big deal, it showed how weak of a speaker he is. He has no leverage whatsoever to bring people along from his side, and he can't afford to force a vote on something that the strongest part of his caucus doesn't want.

Within the last hour, House Republicans are now saying they will offer up an amended bill and send it back to the Senate (assuming they could pass it in the first place, of course). Presumably containing more spending cuts and maybe more tax cuts. That would effectively break whatever agreement the Senate had in place.

The House Republicans were supposed to meet at 1:00 p.m. today, there hasn't been any obvious comment on the results of that meeting yet, but a couple of the far right Republicans came out in opposition to the deal before the meeting. CNN did report that Boehner did not take a position on the bill or on whipping in favor of it. Sounds like most of the House Democrats will support it, but they cannot bring the bill to the floor on their own. There is no vote scheduled in the House for today, and some of the Republicans are doubting whether the bill will come forwards today.

QUOTE (Rex Hudler @ Jan 1, 2013 -> 01:38 PM) Looking back, I'm okay with yesterdays win. I really felt IU played poorly, especially on offense. But Jordan Hulls won't go 0-10 again. If he even shoots 40%, this is a different game. He got good looks. It's not like he forced up a bunch of bad shots. Not a well played game, but for the first road game of the year against a motivated team in a tough place to play, I'll take it. It's the big ten season, on the road. Every game is going to be a challenge for the next couple months. It's time for the team to grow up, because from now on, every excuse given is going to turn into a loss.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 1, 2013 -> 12:24 PM) this can't be said enough. The original "debt ceiling" bulls***, the "fiscal cliff," the upcoming second round of debt ceiling bulls***--all of these are problems invented entirely by Congress. There is no reason for them to exist. At all. Remember the good old fun days when people got to pretend that "We don't know what tax rates will be 5 years from now" was a significant source of uncertainty for business? Now we're at "the Congress might decide too destroy the world economic system for no reason" every 3 months or so. After all, 2008 was...fun.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Jan 1, 2013 -> 11:59 AM) agreed. and Obama's a p****. $450,000? Please. I could have had no problem with coming up with a new tax bracket or changing the level of the tax bracket. That's fair game. I would have had no issue with that. The fact that we're going to redo this in 2 months with the full faith and credit of the U.S. on the line at the time, that's what drives me nuts.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jan 1, 2013 -> 11:41 AM) I have to think someone will try to cut the payroll tax in the next budget negotiation. Nope. It's gone. We're lucky to get the unemployment benefits extension. The people who have to be satisfied in order to vote to increase the debt ceiling want upper income tax cuts. They couldn't care less about taxes for the lower levels; they keep trying to raise them to fund the upper income tax cuts.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jan 1, 2013 -> 11:27 AM) Are liberals really that attached to the sequestration cuts? I haven't nailed down what, in addition to defense, gets hammered. I hope once Boehner gets his spot back, he backs off of these fights. No. Everything other than Medicare gets cut. It's the foolish "Conservative wet dream" of a 10% across the board cut. It's terrible policy...and it's particularly frustrating since they'd come on top of what is now a 5 year salary freeze, a 5 year discretionary spending freeze, and very large cuts imposed as part of the budget agreement between the Congress and the President last year. (If there was any spending that could easily be cut, it was heavily gashed last spring in that mess). Of course, if you pay attention to even earlier this thread, counting "Cuts from that baseline" is somehow incorrect, since those cuts didn't actually happen so you have to cut even farther. Just letting the payroll tax expire is going to cut probably 0.5% of GDP growth this year compared to what it would have been if you extended that. The Sequester cuts this year would have been $100 billion, and with feedbacks, that probably would cut another 1% from GDP on the year.

Bills owner Ralph Wilson supposedly will announce that he's ceding direct control over the team to a new team president (promoted from within).

QUOTE (Jake @ Jan 1, 2013 -> 11:06 AM) The lack of entitlement cuts in this deal gives leverage to Ds if a budget fight arises. That said, the buzz late last night was that a contingent part of this agreement in the Senate was that there would be no debt ceiling fight. I've seen that McCain has already contradicted that, so we shall see. If there was an agreement on the debt ceiling...I doubt the House would pass it. They want to play this game again. It's no coincidence at all that the Sequester was put off...until the exact time the debt ceiling gets hit, in February.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jan 1, 2013 -> 11:07 AM) Cheney (like KW ) was more of the VP behind the curtain He was explicitly leading the Bush Admin's energy policy formation and he was perhaps the most powerful driving force behind the worst idea ever invasion of Iraq. His staff literally created the public case for the war.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jan 1, 2013 -> 11:02 AM) I've never seen a VP have such an important role in a major policy discussion. Were you around during the Cheney administration?

QUOTE (Brian @ Jan 1, 2013 -> 08:22 AM) That's not saying much. Knox, even before this awful injury, was soft and had gator arms over the middle, and fumbled, and would drop passes. Kick returns would be fine and go routes. If Knox somehow got back to 100%, on this team, he'd be the 4th WR. A couple years ago in his best season, he was effectively the #1 WR. I have no issue with him being the occasional "Stretch the field and force the safeties to respect the deep ball" guy, even with his hands, but that requires him to be close enough to where he was that his speed still is a weapon.

QUOTE (Tex @ Jan 1, 2013 -> 10:00 AM) I love it. Excellent work so far from what I am reading. Not nearly enough to fix the long term budget issues, but a nice step in the right direction. I also like how they gave political cover to some members. Hate it. We're going to be in a worse boat in 2 months because this didn't cover the debt ceiling. Jumping from one crisis to another because Congress votes for laws that create crises is literally insane.

Some sort of deal about to be announced according to Cooper.

Ok, it's been a full year, and I'm still b****ing and angry about Cee Lo deciding he was worthy of editing Imagine.