StrangeSox

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 01:33 PM) Doubtful. Large donors are going to go berserk if this impacts stock prices on wall street. Ive been told 4 weeks of shutdown was what major institutions were willing to accept, before they start to sell. Republicans and Democrats both answer to the same master. Multinational corporations arent going to forgive a Senator who cost them billions of dollars over political idealism. I lol'd you're probably right though, his fake-filibuster was all about campaign donations, but this nonsense will (hopefully) irreversibly damage him.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 03:22 PM) I don't get why the rest of the house repubs don't call these guys morons and distance themselves as far as possible. Instead, they're publicly supporting them. They'll be primaried from the right by radical tea party conservatives if they don't. It's so ridiculous that even John Cornyn is called a RINO.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 02:58 PM) What will happen is that they are going to vote themselves another raise for doing a bang up job! Are any people who voted Republican okay with this? I mean, these are the guys they elected, so is this what they want? Yes, a substantial number of Republicans, including some legislators, are ok with this. They don't think going through the debt ceiling will be a big deal, or they think it's somehow necessary because 'fiscal responsibility' or a combination of both. The information bubble for these people is incredibly strong.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 02:48 PM) But you know this isn't September 31. It is different. If the house goes absentee on this, literally or figuratively, the GOP pays the bulk of the price politically. And EVERYONE ELSE IN THE COUNTRY pays the literal tab. I would love to see legislation that says, if at any time Congress goes into shutdown or default, ALL chairs in both chambers automatically come up for election the next cycle AND none of the current reps or Senators can run. Never happen, but would be great. Guys September 31st isn't a real day.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 02:01 PM) Isn't a quorum 50%? If so, the 20 most moderate Republicans could say they'll go along with that, then sneak back and join the Democrats to pass something while they're gone. No, the House leadership changed the rules at the last minute on September 30th to ensure that only they can bring a bill to the floor.

I don't want to live on this planet any more.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 01:23 PM) True. Then that senator would wholly own the consequences in the media. Cruz might like that, though it essentially destroys any chance the GOP has of taking the Senate in 2014, and may even lose them the house. Cruz's voters and his campaign coffers would love it. Cruz doesn't particularly seem to care what the rest of the GOP thinks, either. edit: It sort of highlights a fatal flaw in our particular system that a single person or the minority party in one house of Congress* could inflict this much damage against the wishes of a majority of Congress and any rational person. *The GOP doesn't actually want to block the debt ceiling increase with a filibuster, but they very easily could.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 01:16 PM) If they were smart we wouldnt be in this predicament.

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 11:49 AM) Right, but the thing is, deadlines ARE usually missed when building a web site. Stuff comes up. But they had years to get this ironed out and only ironed out what they wanted in Spring 2013. It's just madness. Government procurement is a giant mess that takes far too long and, generally, the RFPs require impossible technical details, are self-contradictory, and are vague enough that you can't even know what the hell they want (probably because they don't know exactly!).

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 11:43 AM) Can you imagine if the response if the Bush admn had been in charge of this disaster? You mean Medicare Part D? It's pretty terrible timing for the GOP that this comes at the same time as the shutdown and the debt ceiling nonsense. They've really shot themselves in the foot on that one and, like Yglesias, I gotta wonder how many people mistakenly believe the shutdown is at least partially responsible for the problems and why they're not getting fixed immediately.

David Auerbach has some more breakdowns of exactly what's going wrong with the exchange websites over at slate http://www.slate.com/articles/business/bit...ver_talked.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/b...many_cooks.html

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 15, 2013 -> 11:31 AM) It's fairly clear in the NYT report over weekend that the issues go way beyond traffic and will not be resolved for months. You are right that the communication to state databases is a burden which is why 6 months of build and testing is not enough to get a competent product out (especially when you have 3 teams not communicating). Yep, there's a lot of issues here. The overwhelming traffic would be more of a planned failure type of thing. But those issues are not deliberate attempts to 'hide the true cost of Obamacare,' as that Forbes editorial claims.

That's an odd report given that as of last week, you could see unsubsidized plan prices without registering and the wording about "obamacare's true costs" instead of "health insurance's true costs." Seems more like an opinion piece than tech reporting. I've seen other reports that indicated that based on the RFP and the requirements (and the general government procurement process), there was essentially no way that it was going to work well on Day 1. First, just the massive traffic load on October 1st was something you could either spend a ton of money to address or just deal with for a couple of days until traffic loads drop off a bit and then you'll never have to worry about it again. Would it make sense to spend say $50M for additional hardware when you're only going to see this peak load once? The second is that the website is a middleman that has to communicate with multiple different state databases that aren't structured in the same manner and many of which aren't compatible. It's a non-trivial problem. edit: Avik Roy was an adviser to Romney, apparently. Consider the source of that "growing consensus."

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 08:37 PM) Read the fine print, they're specifically looking at the "lowest priced plans" when they tally up the deductible and then they quote the price of the premium plan as what he needs to "keep the doctors and network he has now". That's the classic cross up ploy. In reality he'd be getting significantly better coverage under that premium plan, but because the plans are changing that's the only plan that keeps access to every doctor. In reality he will get one of the silver plans and probably find it slightly more expensive than what he was paying but will also have slightly better coverage. The problems with the internet website are legitimate problems. This is standard opposition research. This is the stuff I was expecting, not "its two weeks in and the website doesn't work". That should not be happening at this point. Oh, should have read closer. That's at least the third version of this ploy I've read.

That article provides a good argument for why we should have just gone with single payer.

The article says he mumbled, not that he yelled, or at least one of the articles I found said that. He was convicted of murder 2 because the other guy actually started the whole incident. He didn't just randomly stab some dude.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 04:39 PM) So, how do you view your friend now? I mean, you say drunken brawl that got out of control, but your friend stabbed him. I was thinking maybe he hit him in the head and the guy never woke up. Im just curious, I really dont know how i would feel about my friend if something like that happened. He was a friend of a friend I met a few times. I never really liked that crowd and hadn't seen him for a couple of years prior to that murder.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 04:13 PM) Yeah that's totally unacceptable if the state was delaying it simply for being backlogged. What was the result? Or is it still going on? He was convicted and sentenced two years ago. http://host.madison.com/news/local/crime_a...1cc4c03286.html http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-09...brendan-scanlon edit: he was the guy that killed Chicago street artist SOLVE, if anyone knows anything about that scene.

A friend of a friend waited something like two years, half of that in jail before his family could scrape together bail, for his murder trial (drunken brawl gone bad). I think it was just because Cook County has such a ridiculous backlog. But, FWIW, in cases like that, it's arguably the accused's right to a speedy trial that's being violated.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 03:36 PM) Are all u guys attorneys? So nothing can be improved in our judicial system?? It's perfect as it, with all these delays in cut and dried cases?? This is a family murder where EVERYONE agrees she is guilty including her. As a taxpayer I happen to be appalled at all the delays. Where are the rights for the gawddarn victims???? Tell me please. I guess I'm not seeing where there are delays here?

No, I'm really not. I don't know what you're perceiving as 'punishment' because you haven't actually said much in that regard. Who is being punished and how? edit: I jumped to an initial conclusion about what you were talking about, but I wanted to know what you actually meant instead of going with that because I've certainly been wrong about what you're saying in the past. edit2: it also seems odd that you're trying to minimalize the impact of the shutdown ("a mere 15%"), argue against the importance of the federal role in scientific research among other things, and then also arguing that the federal government is "punishing the people." Yes, there's some very real harm caused by this "mere 15%" shutdown, some of it being discussed in this thread. But your wording implies that this harm is being purposely inflicted by 'the government' (and really, it seems as if you're blaming a particular group) because they aren't getting their "mere 15%," which completely misses that the harm comes directly from not getting the 15%. Parks are closed and research is going unfunded because, well, there aren't funds. You've got the causation here all mixed up.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 11:43 AM) Wait, what? You can't be serious. No, I am serious. You are claiming 'the government' is 'punishing' people here because 'they' aren't getting 15% of funding. Who is doing the 'punishing' and how?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 11:41 AM) I know you don't. That is kind of the point. Can you explain how 'the government' is 'punishing' people here? Are 'they' 'punishing' people by closing services and stopping funding for the 15% of government that is deemed non-essential and is not currently funded?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 11:39 AM) Except it isn't, and you can plainly see that by this demonstration of government power and control. The government is literally showing off its depth and breadth by punishing the people for not getting funding for a mere 15% of the government. The government shouldn't have the ability punish its own people in such a way, even in a theorhetical ideal, let alone reality. I have no idea what you're talking about here.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 11:24 AM) http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/d...ent-since-1962/ Lowest number of civilian employees since 1962 was 2.501 million in 1964. Current level is 2.820 million, which is 12.8% higher than in 1962. Lowest level during Reagan's presidency was 2.825 million in 1982, so we are still a touch below the biggest year under Reagan. QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Oct 14, 2013 -> 11:31 AM) That table didn't mention that. I know the US population increased about 72% from 1960-2010, but I don't think that necessarily justifies a 72% increase in government employment. US population in 1962 was 186.54M and is 314.69M in 2012, or roughly a 68% increase. We've had 13% growth in federal employment for a 68% increase in population. There doesn't necessarily need to be a 1:1 increase, but it's important to keep that in mind when comparing employment levels decades apart.