StrangeSox

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 01:40 PM) Medicare still needs to be improved/overhauled somewhat although the PPACA helped the projections significantly, the defense department needs to be cut back significantly, the wars need to end. Those are cuts you'd agree to, right? I do not know enough about Medicare to comment, yes to the other two. I was referring to the very large gap between mine and ss2k5's vision of the proper size and scope of government.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 01:32 PM) You must just be used to typing that. Sorry for the lack of clarity (again), we disagree on the necessity of cuts going forward once the economy has recovered.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 01:26 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. It's either a hard rule and thus terrible policy or you neuter it such that it's essentially meaningless. Especially given the perpetual state of war we find ourselves in.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 01:02 PM) It is a bad idea in a bad economy. There already is no confidence in the white house right now. Immediate cuts could really kill things. Once the economy recovers, there needs to be real movement on cuts. And not these pittances being bandied about like they are lots of money. Right, and on that we disagree. I'm just glad that someone I perceive as pretty staunchly conservative is seeing the policy that's being offered up as terrible for the same reasons I do.

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 01:11 PM) LMAO To clarify, I was laying the failure of being able to pass a right-wing deficit bill that was doomed anyway at their feet, not the revised GDP growth. Without Rex's quote, that's really out of context.

You shouldn't be able to fundamentally alter US fiscal and social policy because you control 1/2 of 1/3 of the government, but thanks to an arbitrary debt limit, you can!

Damn you Reid and Obama for proposing hard-right austerity bills! You should be agreeing to ultra-right austerity bills and constitutional amendments!

You've also said that massive, immediate cuts to federal spending right now is a bad idea. You're a lot closer to dems and liberals on SoxTalk than a sizable chunk of the House GOP on this one.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 12:21 PM) So it's all about timing. The timing favors them now, because the economy is going to drive off a cliff...so NOW they need to do it right. They should have done it right years ago and then we wouldn't be where we are now. In other words, they helped create the problem -- which you ignore -- and now they want to solve it because they're looking out for the American people! I don't buy it. They're playing politics, as always...the mere timing of this happens to be on their side for this specific moment in time, and ONLY in regard to this specific argument. You're continuing to ignore that the vote to raise the debt ceiling has been fundamentally changed from a non-issue with some political posturing (see: Obama, 2006) to a drawn out fight that dominates our political discourse for months and brings us to the edge of eliminating a sizeable chunk of GDP overnight as one party holds the economy hostage until its crazy ransom demands are met. There's no symmetry here between the past 30 years of debt ceiling raises and the current one.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 12:17 PM) Your sarcastic, and obviously defensive stance is a complete failure. I don't care if it was for 2 years or 4 years...the fact that when a republican was in office they had no f***ing issue kicking the can every 6 months is hilarious. They were ok with it then, but now they require a long term solution. Try harder next time. I dunno, it was a pretty significant blunder you made since it was in fact a Republican Congress that kept raising the debt ceiling without issue. And, like I said, before it was a routine matter. Now, thanks to the extremism that's taken over the Republican party, it's not. Doing it again in 6 months would be fine if we weren't guaranteed to go through this same protracted bulls*** again, but we are. As I pointed out to jenks a few days ago, that sword cuts both ways. Democrats don't want this to be a campaign issue, Republicans do. But I've no doubt you understand that.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 12:09 PM) They don't know anything, they assume it. Even if they end up being right, until it's written and they see it, it's an assumption. Boehner's publicly stated the framework of the plan. Reid has publicly stated that the Senate won't bother with said framework. Where's the ignorance? LOL wut? you mean for two years of the house only? Right, but we never had one party willing to drive the economy off of a cliff in order to make drastic fiscal policy changes in the US. Insisting that it become a 2012 campaign issue, both for the Presidency and for Congress, doesn't seem like it'll make it any less painful than it is right now.

What the new GDP numbers tell us about stimulus We need a balanced budget amendment that makes mainstream economic policies and safety net spending unconstitutional!

They know it'll have a short-term patch and another vote in a few months as well as mandating a vote on a balanced budget amendment. Even at the general level, those make the bill DOA in the Senate because they're viewed (correctly, imo) as substantially bad policy. You don't need to dive into the details to see that.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 11:46 AM) It's not quite the same, but equally ignorant. Then again, it's also a foregone conclusion that any bill from either side will favor themselves and the other side will balk anyway. It's pretty hard to argue that Reid's plan really favors any sort of Democrat party platform or ideology beyond "it's not quite as terrible as Boehner's bill." I also don't see why it's ignorant to say they're not going to pass a short-term measure that will mean a repeat of the same fight in a few months but with bigger stakes.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 11:36 AM) Kinda like the Senate Dems saying they will vote against a bill that hasnt even reached them yet for them to read because it will come from the Republicans in the House? Yup. No, not like that at all.

QUOTE (kjshoe04 @ Jul 27, 2011 -> 10:48 PM) Not technically TV but to others reading the Song of Ice and fire series, I just finished the third: "A Storm of Swords" and it is by far my favorite in the series. Holy s*** things get real. Best book in the series so far in my opinion and most others. The next two are still good, but the narrative gets a bit lost with the way they were split up and with some extra chapters crammed into ADWD because of the large time gaps between book releases (Martin didn't want to leave readers waiting 10 years for updates on some characters, like he did with AFFC).

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 09:03 AM) IIRC, Wal-Mart just had a suit like this against them and it was thrown out. Not exactly, they tried filing a class suit on behalf of every female employee of Walmart. The SC rejected the basis for a common class. Individuals are still free to file suit against Walmart, or to join in smaller, more coherent classes. It wasn't thrown out on lack of merit of the claims.

Should this go in financial or enviro thread? We have the answer to our economic woes, it's all the fault of the EPA! Damn you clean air and water!!!

There's a handful of guys like Kucinich who are pretty liberal for American politics. I don't think there's any comparable symmetry between that and the large number of GOP'ers that have signed pledges to never raise revenues ever or to let the economy implode.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 29, 2011 -> 08:18 AM) Huh, and I was told that all Republicans are the same. Go figure. Not voting in unity is a pretty unusual occurrence for the GOP.

2010Q4 and Q1 this year were also revised downward, and pretty significantly. I lay this more at the feet of the freshmen tea party Representatives more than Boehner.

Is treason clearly defined anywhere?

No vote on Boehner's plan tonight, as many as four votes short of passing a bill that has zero chance in the Senate or of being signed into law. He's got to make it more right-wing to pass the House.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 28, 2011 -> 08:18 PM) That doesn't on principle mean he has to be wrong though. Especially if the paper(s) passed a legit peer review (again, I don't know the journal and couldn't get there earlier) A fair point. But, as that realclimate link points out, what frequently happens with denialists is that relatively uncontroversial work will get published, but the media statements made about the work far outreach what's supported in their papers.

Well it's not his creationist position on evolution but that he's got some "god made it perfect" position on the climate. It's an ideological pledge that man cannot cause climate change, period. It really calls into question any supposed objectivity in his work.