Rex Kickass

The Frank Grimes episode is by far my favorite episode because it ends up that there's nothing redeeming about Homer at all.

Real Housewives of D.C.

So let me get this straight. S&P admit to making a two trillion dollar error in their assessment of the US creditworthiness, and cite Social Security as a debt driver in the next ten years when Social Security does not contribute to the deficit in any way shape or form. And we're supposed to listen why?

OK, I don't know whether to laugh or slap my head at how silly this is, so I'll do both. http://twitpic.com/61bygw

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 5, 2011 -> 09:55 AM) That didn't last long. Market is pretty mentally negative. This is nothing like 2008-2009, though. Credit is freely available, companies are sitting on stockpiles of cash.

Opened up 1%.

Unemployment numbers better than expected. 117,000 total jobs added (150,000+ private sector jobs) and May and June also revised upwards. Not great, but better than the 85,000 forecast.

Feb 14, 2012.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 02:36 PM) To be fair, I have been using the term "double-dip" for a while now. Much longer than this "debt crisis" has been going on. Mostly because none of what has been done by the Obama administration has actually fixed any of the problems. Once the band-aids have fallen off, everything has gone back to where it was before the band-aids were applied. Until the housing problems fix themselves, most everything done to try to "fix" things is going to fail. That and the system has no confidence, though I bet a large portion of that is directly tied to the housing issues. Even with the stimulus effort, the underlying economic problem of confidence in a recovery never was instilled. So everyone viewed the stimulus as a temporary thing, and as it passed through, no real economic changes were made because of it. It was pretty much the financial equal of bailing out your druggie brother, only to have him relapse, just like you knew he would. So I guess I don't understand, short of letting the economy freefall, what can a government do to encourage growth?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 3, 2011 -> 03:57 PM) That was in response to the "terrorist" cat calls of the other side. Again, you don't counter an accusation of being called a hostage taker and terrorist by referring to things as hostages worth ransoming. Just sayin.

If you don't want to labeled as holding the economy hostage, you probably should stop referring to the economy as a "hostage." Senator Mitch McConnell ® - Minority Leader

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 2, 2011 -> 09:25 AM) And those $1.2 bil are being taken up by the airlines, who just adjusted their prices to compensate for the tax decrease. I really don't blame them for this one bit. It's an extremely competitive landscape out there and this is a boon for airlines which operate on extremely razor thin margins.

So the Senate was unable to restore FAA authorization before August recess, because Tom Coburn decided that there has to be a bright line on EAS subsidies that was different than the bright line that the bipartisan plan provided - despite the fact that the bright line would have chopped 4 times the EAS subsidy that was originally proposed. Orrin Hatch than blocked a clean authorization bill because it didn't discuss union rules. In the meantime, 4,000 FAA workers are unemployed until at least September. Over 2.5 billion dollars of infrastructure improvement programs at the nation's airports are halted, and to make matters worse, there are a number of safety inspectors who have to still work, but their pay is withheld until the authorization is granted again. Also, the federal government can no longer collect excise taxes on flights - costing the federal government approximately a quarter billion in revenue a week. What does this mean? It means, that by September, certain deficit hawk Senators who decided to block the reauthorization of an air safety organization will end up adding 1.2 billion dollars to the deficit.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 30, 2011 -> 03:40 PM) I'm really hoping we see the Monty Burns solution. Gotta love having the Simpsons predict reality 15 years in advance. You know if he just makes 14 of these Trillion dollar coins, we won't have to deal with this for a decade!

The GOP dominated house shot down Reid's proposal (which by the way hasn't even gotten to Cloture votes yet in the Senate) and did so by a special rule that would require a 2/3 majority to pass in the House. (Boehner's plan wouldn't have passed under the same rules) I think its time to start making some coins.

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 04:36 PM) Post of the week. So when will it be convenient in Amerika for the single hetero Caucasian to file discrimination suits? 1978.

I will point out that before the 2001 tax cuts, the federal government was looking at a roughly 2 trillion dollar surplus today.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 02:42 PM) * Not a blunder. The democratic congress did the same is my point, whether you want to see it that way or not. It's pretty obvious by now you don't, which is fine. ** Now let me fix something for you, because it shows you missed my entire point. Democrats don't want this to be a campaign issue *now*, but they had no problem with continuous short term solutions before. We've been kicking the can on this for *decades*, and it's always been done short term -- yes, it's stupid -- but that's how they've been doing it. Now that things are coming to critical mass, it's suddenly important to find a long term solution, right? Wrong. It was important to find a long term solution to this YEARS ago...but when times were good, they had no problem kicking the can. That tells me they'd be doing the same s*** now if it suddenly wasn't ready to blow up in their faces. These are supposed to be leaders. Leaders see the road ahead, not the one beneath our feet. These are the captains of the Titanic...they saw the iceberg, and said "whatever...that's really far away!", waited until we hit it and then said, ok...maybe we need a long term solution. Yea. And anyone on this board could have told them that years ago. Here are our leaders: At the same time, things like the Debt Limit and FAA reauthorization are being held hostage in exchange for passage of constitutional amendments, and union organizing regulations. This whole fight has made me physically ill thinking about it. Republicans have literally held the entire economy hostage in this fight, and Democrats have consistently caved to be responsible. The entire difference now is about timing of votes and whether or not constitutional amendments should be attached. It's really really disappointing.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 02:26 PM) Assuming they put in some sort of "in extreme circumstances" clause (war, recession, etc), why is a balanced budget amendment a bad idea? They're using the same language that Democrats proposed in the mid-90's. Because there's no longer a sense that both parties will negotiate in good faith.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 11:23 AM) The difference with the Reid plan is that nearly (or perhaps all) of the Democrats would vote for it to get it done. That means only 30-ish Republicans are needed instead of 215. To do an end run around the clock, Reid is likely to table the Boehner bill, stip it and instill his plan, force it through the Senate and send the Boehner bill straight back to the house with the Reid plan in place of the House plan. The words "Privileged Vehicle" will become very important this weekend.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 10:30 AM) Did he actually come out with a plan? Maybe he did and I didn't notice. Anyways, I think some re-tooling of the tax structure, as you put it, would be a fine as long as the spending cuts are legit. Perhaps you missed the last month of negotiations with the Speaker of the House, Majority Whip and Senate Majority and Minority leaders. Just because he doesn't submit a plan to you in writing, it doesn't mean there hasn't been one. Congress has the sole authority to raise the debt limit, not the President. He's also endorsed at least three separate plans for passing a procedural vote.

At this point, the only thing holding up a deal is Mitch McConnell whipping up seven votes for cloture (not even passage) on the Reid/McConnell plan Z. The Reid plan will pass in the house, I can't imagine that by the time this bill gets to the house on Sunday night or Monday, that the Democrats couldn't peel away 30 Republican congressmen.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 09:27 AM) I actually don't think this is a function of weakness from the Speaker. I think the problem the GOP has in the House is, basically, they sold themselves out to the lunatic fringe. They won in a big wave in 2010 becuase the ones who won, were either Tea Partiers, or people who had to slide way to the right and act like Tea Partiers. So now that they are in office, tey have to keep up the charade, or else they will lose in 2012 (or in some cases, there is no charade, they really are that extremist). Either way, the GOP sold their souls to get Tea Party support, and now they are stuck with it. They can either vote away from sanity, or they can compromise and then possibly lose in 2012. This is where the Dems and GOP really are very different. The modern Dems don't get dragged to ideological extremes - they get dragged into so much comrpomise that they come off as wimps and fail to protect their constituents. The modern GOP on the other hand, outright embraces extremism and principal, to a point so ridiculous that they can't achieve anything. I'm not sure how it would start, but I still think it would be healthy to have 2 more parties that actually had some influence and votes. The definition of weakness in the Speakership is being unable to whip enough votes to maintain your legislative priorities. Because a week ago, when the Speaker pulled out of negotiations with Reid, Pelosi and Obama, he abandoned the idea of working with Democrats, he found himself painted in a corner unable to whip votes from the opposition, he put himself in the position of finding 217 votes from his own party. (Pelosi was one of the strongest speakers we've seen in a long time, where house Dems pretty much couldn't even hold a press conference without permission first if they wanted any breaks from leadership.) If the Republicans truly sold their soul to the lunatic fringe to make them a majority in the House, its an even bigger sign of weakness that Boehner hasn't been able to cobble together a compromise that would get a majority of votes from Republicans and a majority of votes from Democrats. Given that the Democrats have literally walked up to the point of "we'll give you nearly everything you want as long as we can get 18 months of stability on this issue," that shouldn't be hard. But when you paint yourself in a corner like this, you don't have the room to maneuver.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 09:01 AM) Wow, I'm somewhat surprised but really shouldn't be. He could, of course, just bring 30 votes and accept the Reid plan without the Social Security and Medicare triggers. At this point, for the sake of his speakership, he really can't. Reid can't get his plan passed in the Senate until Boehner's plan is killed (although 58 senators have publicly stated they will not vote for Boehner's plan) because McConnell can whip his caucus in line and doesn't want to abandon the Speaker. The truth is that Reid's plan is going to pass ultimately - especially if Boehner can't whip the votes by this afternoon, because the Senate is literally running out of time, AND the markets are seriously starting to tank. The Dow is down 4% this week so far which futures pointing to a sharply lower open, because of poor GDP numbers for the second quarter. Boehner is the weakest speaker we have seen in over a generation, unable to whip enough votes to pass what should be something that is purely procedural at this point - and painted in a corner in such a way that he can't negotiate with house Democrats to get to 217.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 27, 2011 -> 05:27 PM) Of course, there is the trick for the Senate that still works...taking a budgetary bill that has been passed by the House, stripping out the entire text, and inserting totally new text. Can only be done so many times since the House only passes so many budgetary bills, but if you have a bill that can be passed that's the route. And if Boehner's plan actually passes tomorrow, that's exactly what you'll see happen in the Senate.