Apparently Boehner broke off negotiations, refused to return WH calls, and the briefed the press before calling the WH. Obama then came out and smacked Republicans around a bit, and now our Orange speaker is going to have a press conference at 7:15 where he can presumably lie at will about everything and then Chuck Todd can tell us what this all means for the next election. How fucked are we? This fucked:
As Susan G. at the Great Orange Satan reminds us, that is the clown who brought us “Dude, Where’s My Recession.” In 2008.
I’m currently drinking scotch and I would recommend this reader website.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
Hamsher was right, all along about Obama
Show Obama how much you disapprove of Obama’s press conference with a contribution to Firedoglake’s primary obama campaign.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
Black Jimmy Carter
Worse than Bush
Spineless
Coward
Sell out
cathyx
I thought we had until August? That’s still a week.
Judas Escargot
It would be interesting to obtain Mr Boehner’s investment portfolio, also, too.
PsiFighter37
I’m drinking an Anchor Liberty Ale. It tastes good.
Fuck Boehner
PF37 +1 and counting
Leaving Texas
Welcome to the Second Civil War
cathyx
Cabernet for me right now. I can’t stand the hard stuff.
beltane
I’m going to go eat a hamburger. Orange Man can go cry me a river.
Phyllis
I’m fixing to have a white russian or six. Because I have an assload of kahlua and vanilla vodka. Maybe pop The Big Lebowski into the dvd player. And pretend I live in Canada. At least for tonight.
pablo
Yeah, well this whole thing is giving me a “Bachmann”!
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
Friday, July 22, 2011
Obama certifies the end of DADT.
Obama nominates 4th openly gay person to Federal Bench.
Obama steam rolls Boehner.
LETS PRIMARY HIM!
Violet
@cathyx:
I thought the general thinking was that if they didn’t get it hammered out by this week that there wasn’t enough time to do the legislative stuff before August 2nd, so our credit rating would start to wobble anyway.
I didn’t see the smackdown. I guess it was good?
JenJen
I’m actually teaching Bartending School right now, and thought I’d check in during my break to see what Boehner had to say.
Right after class, it’s Margarita Friday for me.
stuckinred
Mike Kay
I got my eye on you. . .
JR (Not the other JR)
@4 Dude. You know all his money is in Mystic Tan stock.
Poopyman
Boehner is on my TV spinning bullshit, and the press is not pushing back. Predictable.
Rick Taylor
On the bright side, this time when the large banks fail, we won’t be able to bail them out.
cckids
This, this, this, this, this!!!
Listening to him makes me violently angry. And I have no foam bricks to throw at my tv. Boehner is STILL flogging the “no tax increases on the job creators” bullshit. My FSM this guy is a lying, ignorant fuckstick.
fasteddie9318
These lie-fests would be more interesting if these fuckers had to strap in to a lie detector before the questions started.
fasteddie9318
These lie-fests would be more interesting if these fuckers had to strap in to a lie detector before the questions started.
Zyla
James O’Keefe has a new undercover video out, and it’s making its ways around the right wing circle.
Has two idiot whiteboys pretend to be russian gangsters and try to get medicaid.
stuckinred
Douchebag has that “path forward” bullshit going again.
Litlebritdifrnt
I am sorry but it is pretty obvious that Bohner has been dragged out of a bar for this presser, he is obviously drunk. What a fucking disgrace.
freelancer
idk, the media at the press conference are pretty skeptical of Boehner as it’s going on right now. He’s not doing so hot. Then again, the political press in Washington perpetually remind me so much of the seaguls in Finding Nemo.
JGabriel
Boehner joked about it to the House GOP:
No applause at reaching a deal, but silence instead. With the tension eased only when Boehner announced it was a joke, that there is no deal.
House Republicans do not want a deal. They want to crash the economy.
So now what?
.
dr. bloor
Wait, do I have this right? You have to wait until after class at bartending school to have a drink?
MikeJ
Gin & st. germain do go well together. The bitter from the campari could cut the floral too, especially if you were using sapphire instead of beefeater.
Poopyman
“The President had no plan”. Who the fuck does he think will believe this?
Never mind. Stupid question.
There’s not enough alcohol in this house to lower my BP.
General Stuck
I will enjoy the after glow from the Obama presser
fuck Boehner, the whiny shitstick
Obama says there will be no default, that was wrapped in tight ball of resolve. The wingers can’t back down now, and neither can Obama. You can do the math on what is left open.
The CO, or a slide into the deep ditch of anarchy, dug by the wingnuts.
Poopyman
Found the tequila. Hope there’s lime around here somewhere ….
The Dangerman
@JGabriel:
Burn, baby, burn, and vote them out in 2012.
eemom
on behalf of all Greeks and Cretans in particular, I apologize for this Pethofuckis asshole.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Poopyman:
The President has a plan: a Republican one. Meanwhile Republicans are running around screaming “black cooties!” This is clearly a recipe for success.
Trurl
This thing has come back from the dead before. But this is the best news we can hope for at moment.
A good evening to spend with the intoxicant of one’s choice…
Alex S.
I guess that, if necessary, Obama is going to use the 14th amendment right after the Republicans are exposed as the irresponsible fools they are, that is, a few hours before the debt limit gets hit. That will be the end of this mechanism.
Stillwater
The undercurrent here is that if the GOP fails to compromise and raise the debt ceiling, the most pissed off people in the room will be the financiers of the GOP. I don’t see how the GOP wins this one.
Does big money think it’s worth rating downgrades and etc. just to pinch some social programs?
Suffern ACE
@Rick Taylor – on the minus side, this time when the large banks fail, those with accounts in them probably won’t be getting their deposits back if the FDIC runs out of money.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
LOLZ
David Gregory is shitting his pants, incensed that Obama hurt Boehner’s feefees. He’s even trying to provide cover for BigOrange saying,…. wait for it… “both sides do it”.
NamelessGenXer
@Mike Kay 11
And may I respectfully add FUCK YOU GREENWALD, YOU FUCKING LIAR.
cckids
JGabriel:
Mainly because they are too dim and innumerate to comprehend what this will do to the economy. This is from the Onion; sadly I read & believed most of it before realizing the source.
That we truly expect this crap and nonsense from elected Reps of our government is pathetic.
OzoneR
I’m so glad Obama used the bully pulpit tonight so every news anchor and pundit can tell us “this is a failure of leadership on both sides”
I look forward to Obama’s approval rating spike because he stood up to the mean old GOP.
JPL
Can we please forget about the winner and the loser. Boner’s actions could tank the world economy and in that case we will all be losers.
Martin
Is Boehner crying again? Man cries more than my daughter.
The Dangerman
@Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century):
I think they pulled his ass out of a bar on this Friday afternoon, too, perhaps the same one Orange Dude was in.
General Stuck
This isn’t a surprise, and really isn’t about spending, or even medicare or SS. It was and is about destroying “Obamacare”, or else, and with it, the Obama presidency and reelection. They are all in with this tribal declaration and that enough fellow whites will look past their raging incompetence, and side with them.
That is the hostage, when you parse through all the layers of bullshit. Cantor said it the other day, basically stating put the ACA on the block, and we will deal.
Stillwater
@OzoneR: I’m so glad Obama used the bully pulpit tonight so every news anchor and pundit can tell us “this is a failure of leadership on both sides”
Hah! It’s definitely a step up from the usual, right?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Stillwater:
What you fail to understand is businesses pay half of Medicare (matched). For Social Security, employer pays the bigger chunk because of the recent change in the employees contribution.
celticdragonchick
I think this goes all the way to a constitutional cisis and a possible 14th ammendment explosion. In the meantime, those of us on disability and getting fereral financial aid are getting really, really worried.
Comrade Luke
@Poopyman:
“Mr President, the Speaker says you had no plan. What are your thoughts?”
Guaranteed. The fucking media is as culpable in where we are as a country as the politicians.
JGabriel
@Trurl:
Honestly, I’m not sure it was ever alive. It’s an aborted foetus zombie, the unborn undead.
.
lamh34
Ugh, I can’t stand Major Garrett. I don’t care if he’s no longer on Faux News. He’s still got the same attitude.
celticdragonchick
I was one of the bully pulpit exhorters here, until I noticed that the MSM doesn’t cover the Pres when he beats on the pulpit.
No difference tonite. The President was live on CNN with a vital statement, and CBS was doing local news. Bullshit.
jl
IMVHO, no should take the credit rating agencies stuff about downgrades very seriously when it is based on their dubious and probably totally hack macroeconomic and bond market analysis.
Take the credit agencies seriously when they have some new information about whether the money will or will not actually get paid.
A downgrade based on a credit rating agencies’ long run macroeconomic forecasts is not worth the paper its printed on. The only damage it can do is if Very Serious People use it as a club to beat the U.S. into doing stupid economic tricks.
If the credit agencies get advance word that after the debt ceiling is not raised, that Obama has decided bond holders can go take a hike, and wait in line after, say, the federal dogcatchers bureau retirement fund, then maybe you should run to the bank before the FDIC cash on hand peters out. Otherwise, pay a lot more attention to what the bond market does and macroeconomists with a good record at prediction say.
OzoneR
But but but, Obama didn’t cut Medicare! He yelled at the GOP! Everything is awesome.
Nina
@25 JGabriel:
Well, you remember the good one GWB told about looking for WMD, and who can forget Reagan’s classic joke about WWIII starting? Those repubs, wattalaffriot. Yer killing me, repubs,I tell you!
Maura Cavaleri
My sister is disabled and cannot drive or work. Her disability makes her unemployable, for safety reasons. She depends on her check and she paid for it into the system. That she needs to even have to worry about this enrages me.
Stillwater
@Just Some Fuckhead: So, the answer is Yes? FTFRMFers.
But seriously, JSF, they (big money) have to know that the revenue side of the equation isn’t gonna change. Dems won’t go for lowering that. Or am I completely out of touch on this.
Quicksand
Time to make some popcorn! (While we still have electricity.)
Comrade Luke
It’s pretty stunning to come here after Obama has just done what so many people have been begging him to do and read comments complaining that he’s done it, or mocking him for it.
How are you people any better than David Gregory or Brooks?
Trurl
Obama couldn’t cut Social Security without at least a fig-leaf promise from the Republicans to reconsider, in the midst of the next election, letting the Bush tax cuts expire. The Republicans foolishly refused to give it to him. So for the moment it’s looking like McConnell-Reid.
I hope Obama wasn’t counting on enthusiastic campaigning on his behalf in 2012 from the Democratic Congresscritters he just tried to sell out.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
Boehner walks out.
Boehner refuses to return the President’s calls.
An extraordinary press conference by Obama.
Yet David Gregory says it’s obama’s fault.
What a piece of shit.
CT Voter
As long as Jim Cramer isn’t tweeting that it’s no biggie if the U.S. defaults, I still have hope.
(Or Dick Morris, for that matter.)
LayedBackGuy
They have been stocking up on guns, ammo, and freeze-dried food for some time now; hate to see it all go to waste. Lets blow it all up! Vodka and OJ for me tonight; keeping it simple and straight to the point.
JPL
since i can say this word with being in moderation….fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck
What about us Boner. Boner has no guts and he is an orange man who wants to tank us.
j low
@ eemom #32- Don’t you mean Cretin?
The Dangerman
@celticdragonchick:
I don’t see a 14th amendment action, but I do see a Government Shutdown of some form (speaking of which, something is going on with the FAA tonight, think I saw that over at the GOS). I suspect some IOU’s will be going out.
Hopefully, the shutdown will be short and the really smart people (Obama, etc.) can find a way to protect the country from the stupid fuckers (Boehner, Tea Partiers, etc.).
Alex S.
@ NamelessGenXer, 39:
Interesting, he even mentions FireDogLake by name. That Greenwald/Hamsher alliance is not good at all. And these people forget that Obama is already moving the country to the left. DADT was Clinton’s idea of allowing gays and lesbians into the military. Obama repealed it so that they can serve openly.
Obama’s health-care plan is an improvement over Clinton’s failure. The Dodd-Frank bill is a whole lot better than Clinton’s/Phil Gramm’s deregulation bills.
Litlebritdifrnt
JPL @ 42 you know what at this point I am thinking that I don’t give a fuck. I am a extreme couponer hoarder of the first order. I have at least 18 months worth of food stocked in my house, probably 2 years worth if I scrimp. Fuck them all. I will take great delight in selling them a can of soup for a mere $1,000.00 cause I know sure as shit that they have no such stockpiles, rich people are like that, they don’t think ahead.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Stillwater:
Democrats will do whatever it takes to keep from looking like Democrats.
RandyH
Tomorrow’s headline: “Boehner Pulls Out.”
theBuhjaysus
Bobo is on Newshour all upset the the President showed some emotion. Funny I don’t remember him being upset when the scumbags on his side go ballistic on a regular basis. Brooks is upset that Obama is talkin down to the GOP, after a nonstop fuckin insult for the past two years. I’d suffer every bone in hand being broken to slap the snot outta so many villagers.
JPL
Dangerman, what else can the President do?
bad week to quit freebasing
@poopyman
Fuck the lime. There’s no tomorrow.
slag
@OzoneR:
Actually, since his latest hit came from the left, I truly hope this display does improve his numbers. I know that it’s improved them with me somewhat.
Ash Can
@Comrade Luke: Actually, I think that would be a splendid question for one of those idiots to ask Obama. Sort of like watching some team’s hitting coach lob a meatball to the plate in a one-man Home Run Derby.
4jkb4ia
Pennant Race Update
Cardinals bat around in first inning. 4 runs on 5 hits and 2 2-run HRs by Freese and Pujols.
That said, shit. It looks like Boehner thinks he can get the Senate Democrats to fold and make Obama look impotent. Complete win for GOP in that scenario.
Martin
It doesn’t matter if they should be taken seriously. They are taken seriously. So you need to deal with them no matter what.
But they have to put the rating out there ahead of time. The whole point of the rating is whether or not these bonds are safe before they’re purchased. Given the GOPs behavior, I wouldn’t consider them as safe as they were 3 months ago, which is a shame, because this is totally unnecessary and only going to soak up more taxpayer money.
JPL
Litlebritdifrnt, My meager savings are 80 percent cash at this point and high interest rates would be in my benefit but like all of us, can we really live with that? This is my country and I do love it and hell if I’m going to let Boner destroy it. Sometimes there are no words for that type of feeling.
Tom’s post yesterday about how Hitler came into power rang true. If unemployment went up to fifteen percent Bachmann, Romney or Perry could win but at what cost. fuckfuckfuck
FlipYrWhig
@ Comrade Luke :
It’s almost as if people are so dedicated to complaining that they build up a tolerance and have to continually raise the dose to get the same sweet, sweet pleasure-pain experience.
jl
@70 You didn’t ask me, but can’t help putting in my two cents. I think that if no legislative action on debt ceiling that the president signs, Obama can do one very big thing that will wrap up this bogus and dishonest manufactured crisis after a few days of experimentation with US having not enough money to pay the bills. Probably with enthusiastic GOP support.
Which is prioritize who gets paid US government money due, and who doesn’t, and when.
Sophie Amrain
To Mike Kay @1
Is your pay included in the three quarters of every donation dollar which Jane Hamsher pays to herself, co-founder Glenn and her PAC chief executives?
stuckinred
Jeff, food or puppy pics please. Ya’ll chill a bit, don’t have a stroke.
Quicksand
You know who else don’t have stockpiles? Poor people. (No, not Hitler.)
Xof
I’m extremely curious exactly what Fix Everything Now button Obama possesses, and what is restraining him from pushing it.
JPL
IMO..Mike Kay was being a tad sarcastic. Watch Obama’s press conference though and draw your own conclusion.
lamh34
Ugh, now MSNBC has replaced Major Garrett with Pat BuchKKKanan. I’m going back to watching the Princess and the Frog until Lawrence O and Rachel comes on.
jl
@74: well yes. But the issue you mention is precisely info on the probability of the money owed to bond holders being paid or not. That issue is not the same as their hack long term macro analysis, and their arbitrary $4T figure.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
Bachmann, Romeny, and Perry would all be vast improvements over that sell-out Obama, who’s a Black Jimmy Carter, a virulent homophobe, and worse than Bush.
MomSense
@ #18
Wine cork! Open the bottle, drink heavily, throw cork at tv!
MikeJ
@4jkb4ia: I’m watching my primary team against my reserve team. Confusing when Ichiro singles and steals twice and I’m yelling, “Whooo hooo! Oh shit!”
RandyH
This button.
Jennifer
I gotta say, I’m with Litlebrit, except I don’t have the hoard. Then again, neither do those mouthbreathing teabag motherfuckers…but they ARE armed to the hilt. How much love and respect you think they’re gonna have for their wealthy betters when they’re hungry?
As for the rest of it, go ahead, GOP, run the fucker into the ditch. See how much campaign cash they float you next time around after you turn their billions into mere millions.
Yeah, it’s gonna hurt us all – but they’ve got a shitload more to lose than any of us do, and hell, they’ve done a damn good job of taking most of what’s ours from us already and have continued to work on whittling away the rest of it. If it’s a choice between losing everything I’ve worked for my whole life tomorrow while watching those ripe fucks go into the poorhouse, or gradually losing everything I’ve worked for my whole life over the next 10 years while watching it end up in those ripe fucks’ hands, guess which my preference is?
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
i’m moving my entire portfolio into lottery tickets this weekend.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
your liberal media in action.
JC
Mike Kay,
Is that true? Is that really true?
Jesus, this deck is stacked against us, Obama, and Democrats…
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nick:
He didn’t stand up to them, you feckless cheerbot. He said, “I gave them everything they wanted, I negotiated on their terms, and they turned me down.”
He followed that up by TELLING Boehner and McConnell they were coming to the White House to tell him what they were going to do. In an effort to make it bipartisan, he made the same order to Pelosi and Reid.
jurassicpork
Meanwhile, WTF is there an ad extolling the virtues of Allen “I am a Mysogynist” West?
jl
Kay is having trouble with fugue states.
He thinks he does not, and is engaging in sarcasm.
But he is wrong. Soon he will lose track. He could step back from the brink, but won’t listen to me.
Will end up mad and raving.
Rome Again
@JGabriel:
Thank you. I needed that! :)
dr. bloor
He has to get it past Harry Reid first. And when last seen, Harry didn’t look to be in the mood to cut a deal with the Oompa Loompa and his Clown Posse.
JPL
Mike Kay, I’d actually laugh except for the possible changes to the supreme court and the deficit rising to 30 trillion. I’m just not in the mood tonight for chuckles.
OT>>how soon does 24/7 drop the coverage of the bombings in Norway (which were as large as our 9/11 if you consider the size of the population) when they realize it was a right wing extremist.
Irony Abounds
Republicans in Congress are so F**King vile and despicable that it defies belief. They are willing to destroy this country just to protect the wealthy and powerful. Just a disgusting collection of putrid, feckless pieces of shit.
Trurl
John Boehner Saves Obama From Himself
TX Expat
@jl:
Sorry to jump in the middle here, but I read them (warning Ezra Klein link) as saying they were basing their analysis on the fact that the political system is so dysfunctional that there can’t be a long-term deal because that would require buy in from both parties over the course of 10 years or so.
While I agree that the $4T figure seems arbitrary the fact that they’re downgrading us because of our banana republic politics doesn’t seem so out there. We have that rating because our political institutions, until recently, have been seen as stable and functional. Now, not so much.
Martin
David Frum is shrill:
jwb
OzoneR: Obama recently starting to shed measurable support from the left, so it’s not clear to me that this time his approval will take a hit like the other times he has taken this approach.
Comrade Luke
@Trurl:
Love the comment thread.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
Alan Grayson for President!
RossInDetroit
@TXX:
Have to agree. Considering the way things are going, would you trust us to meet our long term commitments?
ETA: I really want a reply button. One that doesn’t require that I squint at code to create it. I’m retired from code-squinting.
Martin
It’s not. The $4T number is the estimation of what needs to be reduced over 10 years to keep the debt at the current level of GDP. Basically, the ratings agencies are saying ‘this ratio of debt to GDP is okay, but no more’.
Joel
Really Charles, people will think…
JPL
During the town hall today a teacher of government studies asked what to tell her students about compromise. She always taught compromise is what made our democracy great but she was rethinking that. I’d have to google the script but Obama seemed thrown and he told her to still teach about the values of compromise.
General Stuck
Bout at my limit with the barely disguised blanket trolling of anything Obama. It smells like rank racism in disguise to me. And at times, like this one, is hard to miss its ugly stank.
MikeJ
@Comrade Luke: He could turn wheat into marijuana. He was way cool.
Litlebritdifrnt
@80 Quicksand. Wrong. Poor people are not like the lottery winners who spend all their winnings on velvet elvis paintings and fancy cars. Poor people tend to be like me, when times are good they buy food, if they get a bonus, or work some overtime hours, they don’t go to Walmart and blow it on DVDs, they tend to stock up on the groceries that they can rely on. I’ll bet that if you checked the cabinets of most poor peoples homes they are stacked with dried mac and cheese and ramen noodles.
Yes the poor people are going to suffer, but the rich will suffer more, they have no contingency plans, none, they will not know what to do in a world where there are no restaurants, dry cleaners, maids, pool boys, etc.
Davis X. Machina
@jwb:
Obama job approval
Gallup, self-identified 'Liberal Democrats' (Excel format file)
Week start date
Jul 11, 2011 85%
Jul 4, 2011 84%
Jun 27, 2011 86%
Jun 20, 2011 81%
Jun 13, 2011 86%
Jun 6, 2011 87%
May 30, 2011 87%
May 23, 2011 88%
May 16, 2011 90%
May 9, 2011 88%
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Stuck:
Oh lord, we gonna have us a throwdown, tough guy?
jwb
Mike Kay: “Yet David Gregory says it’s obama’s fault.”
You sound surprised. This response is entirely predictable.
jl
@101 TX Expat
I don’t disagree with what you say. I am just saying that people should not take anything the credit agencies do based on their macro analysis very seriously. They should not take arbitrary numbers based on their macro analysis very seriously. They should not fear the bond markets taking what the credit agencies say seriously based on their macro analysis.
So, yes, when the credit agencies say the US might not pay all of its bills, that is serious, and we should take it seriously. But not anything based on the credit agencies’ macro analysis or big numbers that the credit agencies say have to be cut or whatever by a certain date.
People forget that the best evidence is that there is no economic national debt crisis for the US now or in the next few years. It is a made up manufactured bogus crisis.
The only debt crisis is a legal and political crisis due to a unfit political party having control of one half of Congress and a nonsensical, stupid and arguably unconstitutional debt ceiling law. Not an economic one.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
Davis X. Machina,
That just proves he’s lost the base!
Poopyman
Andrea Mitchell just told me both sides do it, so it must be true.
Sure glad I found the Margarita mix.
TX Expat
@RossInDetroit:
If you use Firefox, you can go here and install a reply button.
@Martin:
Thanks. I haven’t been paying attention to the details like I should. I’ve been popping in and out on this crisis in between cramming for the bar exam. :)
JPL
btw..the faa closes down at midnight. discuss.
Linnaeus
Time for some bourbon.
I have to go to a five day conference in Ottawa next week. Maybe I should just stay there for a while.
slag
@JPL: Did Obama happen to mention that, sometimes, compromise can produce profoundly negative outcomes: http://thedanashow.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/picture-27.png ?
TX Expat
@jl:
The only debt crisis is a legal and political crisis due to a unfit political party having control of one half of Congress and a nonsensical, stupid and arguably unconstitutional debt ceiling law. Not an economic one.
I get what you’re saying, but, like it or not, the ratings agencies wield a lot of power whether we think they should or not. And yes, it is a manufactured crisis, but what you say right here is reason enough for investors to take the money and run. The political situation in any given country has a huge influence on the economic realities, just ask, I dunno, Egypt.
General Stuck
you are insane
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Stuck:
Bout at my limit with charges of insanity.
Rome Again
@jurassicpork:
Ah, come on! You’ve been around here long enough to know that John employs right wing ad services. No? He’s making money off of page hits knowing that nobody is buying shit from their crappy sponsors. :P
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
Andrea is wringing her hands that this will damage bipartisanship.
There’s something really sick about the Beltway media.
jwb
Davis X. Machina: Here is the report that said Obama is losing support from the left.
Darkrose
Does anyone have an actual link to Obama’s press conference?
mikefromArlington
Not only are the Republicans fiddling, they’re throwin’ f’in gas on America.
General Stuck
No doubt
JPL
slag, I think the President realizes that there are no compromises with repubs at this point. During the question and answer section you could just read his expression that no you never give up on compromise especially with students. Life is made up of compromises and that’s what he teaches his daughters. It’s how we live. I wondered how much his anger tonight was because of that question. Maybe none of it but his body language was amazing during that question.
eemom
Jaysus H.Q. Christ on a Triscuit. Y’all better calm down before you have a collective aneurism.
Thymezone
Predictions: There will be no default. And, there is exactly one player on this field who will look like a responsible adult to most voters, and I think we all know who that will be. Namely, the one who played all the others for fools.
Observations: The Republicans look like reckless assholes at this point, because that’s what they are. And that is what today was all about, to put them in that position. People in the WH have checked that item off on their playbook. Next, we either get a clean debt limit bill, or else we get the 14th amendment. In my opinion, both work for my side, but the latter one works better, because it will throw the radical right into a hysterical fit that they won’t be able to recover from in time to basically stop squandering the 2012 election opportunity for the GOP, because they are so fucking stupid and can’t help themselves.
Result: “The folks on the other side would have trashed Medicare, or caused a default, to have their way politically, but we prevented those things from happening, because we are looking out for you, and not for Grover Norquist.” Final tally, Obama 53%, Republican 46%, 1% confused. And after we have the debt limit, I will be ready to renew my bet with DougJ about the election outcome.
Looks to me like this little dog and pony show is right on schedule.
jnfr
We went out this afternoon to see the last HP movie, and I was fuming about the idiocy of the House Republicans already (Mr J: Honey, don’t yell at those kids on bikes just because Republicans are stupid. Me: *fume*). So I was already in a funk.
And then I got all emo watching the HP movie, so I was weepy.
Then we got home and found out the Republicans had gone EVEN MORE INSANE. Now I am about to explode. So I’ve got a bottle of wine here. I hope Bill Maher is good tonight. I need some cleansing humor.
quannlace
Can we depend on Wall Street putting pressure on the Repubs to raise the debt?
Heard on NPR how the Street was making plans on how to profit it there’s a panic in the economy.
BlizzardOfOz
@Rick Taylor
Are you serious? What do you think is the point of stealing from Social Security? Gotta keep paying Wall Street somehow.
Linnaeus
Thymezone, you may be right. But it strikes me as one hell of a gamble. A necessary one? Maybe. A skillful one? Probably. Still, I’m nervous, even if I think we’re probably not going to default.
BlizzardOfOz
@jnfr,
Yes they’re so INSANE that they’re about to get everything they ever wanted, with a Democratic-controlled Senate and WH allegedly in opposition.
Roger Moore
@Trurl:
You don’t understand. Boehner didn’t save Obama from himself; Obama only made the offers he did because he knows the Republicans won’t take anything that includes a tax increase. It’s like Charlie Brown and Lucy, except that Grover Norquist is the one pulling the football away so Obama doesn’t get his own hands dirty. If the Republicans actually agree to some tax increases, the deal still has to make it through the Senate, where Reid can make sure it isn’t too crazy.
lamh34
I think this is a good post by Booman Tribune on the Boehner walk-out
Boehner Walks Out, Again
by BooMan
Thymezone
Boehner knows he has been had. Cantor is probably thinking about how this positions him for speaker, or not. The Tea Pardners are furious but they can’t articulate what they are upset about, since they caused the fight.
Dems will thrash around and sound suitably worried but actually can’t figure out how they came to be used as pawns in Obama’s game plan, and how silly they looked — unless they were faking — when they ranted all week about how they were outraged at the entitlement offers. Outraged!! With multiple exclamation points!!
Obama is sipping a brandy and thinking, damn, I’m good. I’m going to get reelected with 9% unemployment and take these fuckers to school.
TX Expat
@Thymezone:
Agreed. Didn’t Obama tell Cantor sometime in the recent past (when Obama allegedly “walked out”) that if he didn’t compromise he was going to take his case to the people? Yeah, we saw that play about an hour ago.
jl
@126 TX Expat
I think we basically agree but I just want to emphasize the other side of the issue.
Yes, if the credit agencies downgrade for any reason, it will be painful, and will particularly hit state and local finances, due mostly to legal and bond insurance issues.
But if the credit agencies downgrade because of their hack macroeconomic analysis, and the U.S. is still able to buy and sell bonds, you can ask Japan what will happen to the market for the country’s bonds (not much).
slag
@JPL: Well, I’m just sad to hear that he didn’t bring up the subject of anthrax and tire rims in his discussion.
I understand his point and agree that compromise is necessary in a democracy. Not only that, but I think compromise can actually make things better than they would have been without it. But it requires serious ingenuity and innovation to make that happen–rather than just a willingness to meet in the middle. Because sometimes the middle is anthrax and tire rim bolognese, and no one should be eating that shit.
Davis X. Machina
@jwb:
.
Apples to pears: Gallup’s got 85, 88, etc. for self-identifying liberal Democrats, and about 5-8 lower for liberals generally. CNN’s got him at 80, for self-identifying Democrats, but not liberal Democrats. I’m guessing the MOE on these particular figures are around 7-8%, because it’s a sample of a sample.
Stochastic noise.
Jewish Steel
@jwb: From that report, bold mine:
WTF?
And is the fact that 9X3=27 significant here?
@Davis X. Machina:
My suspicion.
Thymezone
LBNL, there is one and only one guy on tv who has this figured out, and he is on right now. Larry O’Donnell, who has basically been telling us all along that this has been the WH game plan. Larry is brilliant.
My indicator that this is the true story is that the TPers are thinking right now that they won something. They are going to get the precipice walk they wanted all along. However, their tune will change after the debt limit is raised and the game is over and they realize they got nothing but a big boost in Obama’s approval rating and the disdain of the American public for themselves.
This is reality tv at its best.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Thymezone:
Boehner doesn’t feel like he’s been had. He just recognizes that anything he comes up with won’t be swallowed by the prevailing Republican caucus. He’s already been told by them that it doesn’t matter what he and Obama comes up with, they are going to oppose the black man.
No no no no no. Obama thought he could pull a fast one here by sacrificing a Democratic agenda in service of his reelection and he’s been informed as of today it’s going to be a bit harder than that. Clinton already telegraphed the situation when he said he’d challenge the constitutionality of the debt ceiling law. Obama thought he was better than that and found out today he isn’t.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
The AOS is gonna cry all night. And he should, the fucker. If he had any balls he’d have tamed the whiners led by that sniveling little weasel from Virgina and we wouldn’t be in this fix. Drink up, Actual Orange Satan; you’re gonna need it.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
BooMan is such an obot. He refuses to acknowledge obama is evil.
Rome Again
One correction – the Tea Pardners haven’t figured out that they’ve been had yet. They are celebrating Boehner’s withdrawal (sorry, I hadda do that!) and think he’s totally smacked down “Zero” and that the game is over and they can claim victory. They are totally delusional – but we already knew that! Kinda fun to watch them giggle themselves into a respiratory fit that ends in cardiac arrest!
Thymezone
@TX Expat #146: Yep. And by the time we get to the nomination of Rick Perry, this thing will be polished into a set of messages that paints the GOP into a frame that makes them look like the worst assholes in the history of the USA.
That Obama rant today was just gold. Gold. He has worked his ass off to get this position and right on schedule too.
slag
@Roger Moore:
I’m dubious. I wish this were so and would like to think it was. But I doubt it. Doesn’t really match Obama’s past behavior. He was thinking “historic”, and I think he’s bummed he didn’t get it. At this moment, I think he should consider himself lucky he didn’t.
jl
@145
I agree, except you missed that this morning the House Democrats conceded some social insurance ‘adjustments’ (namely benefit cuts for higher income people) would be OK.
Made it look like GOP walked out over sole issue that rich people might have to pay a little bit more taxes.
So, House GOP looks the silliest, and most dangerous, and a lot of other bad things right now.
PurpleGirl
Rick Taylor @ 17: You might think it was good thing for the big banks to fail, but what does that really mean? If the big banks fail, will the FDIC be able to pay all the depositors their money back? You realize the big banks have been playing with their reserve amounts and in all probability will not have enough assets to cover all their depositors. Will the FDIC be able to do so instead or will all the people with savings and checking accounts lose all their money? That wouldn’t be very good.
Roger Moore
@Thymezone:
I think the Democratic ranting about the entitlement offers is part of the politics, since it serves as proof of their commitment to Medicare and Social Security against the Republican hordes. It’s hard to see that as anything but a win for them.
Corner Stone
I’m not sure what some of you think Obama has “won” as of today?
Lots of Snoopy dancing going on.
Also too, someone please clear something up for me. Has President Obama effectively used the bully pulpit during this ongoing crisis, or has he not?
General Stuck
I wonder if even Norquist has much sway with the new teatard caucus in the House, many of which are openly embracing a default. And Boehner needs their votes with any deal to pass with a GOP majority, and I doubt they will give it without getting a lot more than the Mcconnell plan, or a clean bill. And try as I might, I can’t envision John Boehner falling on his sword for the country, and accepting dem votes to pass a raised of debt ceiling that doesn’t please the teatards. No matter what Norquist says.
And at this stage, that seems the only possible alternative out of this clusterfuck by the GOP, short of a 14th amendment solution. Otherwise, having a default is just so incredibly dangerous and unknown, that simply shutting down this or that part of the government, would, or very likely could plunge our already shaky economy into the abyss.
I hope Obama doesn’t take that risk, and weathers the backlash from the wingers, who have already floated a plan to turn it over to Obama, and will be rejected by just the House,.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
It’s not to late to primary Obama.
Please, call Alan Grayson and plead with him to run.
J
Drinking Boulevard Single-wide IPA. will need a few to cope with our completely fucked up politics. Just hope Boner doesnt “win the evening” with his presser.
Thymezone
@JSF #152, nah. Obama doesn’t have to challenge the constitutionality of anything. His hole card is the 14th Amendment, and congress can suck on it. They can’t stop him, and the louder they scream about it, the better Obama looks. he looks like he is fighting for me, Thymezone, while they are fighting for their own image, or for Grover Norquist, or whatever dumbass thing they yell about. The President will stand up for me, and look good doing it.
Congress has no standing to even challenge the move. To get standing, they have to pass a joint resolution asking for standing, according to the tv constitution expert we heard a week or two ago. That resolution will be a straight majority vote, and the Senate will not pass it. Congress can do exactly nothing but bitch. While they bitch, Obama ends the default threat and saves the country. Heh.
Unless congress is smart enough to pass a bill and save themselves from that ignominy. We’ll see.
Ruckus
i’m moving my entire portfolio into lottery tickets this weekend.
I do that too. But $2 doesn’t improve the odds much.
jl
@159 If US cannot engage in new borrowing, and there is another financial panic, no, the FDIC will probably not have enough money to pay out all the claims.
If you are not one of the lucky first in line, you will just have to hold on to your statements and hope the U.S. government shows mercy and fairness when it cleans up the mess, at some later unspecified date.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
http://www.boomantribune.com/
Rome Again
@lamh34:
OMG!
jwb
Davis X. Machina: ok, but then I’m with OzoneR that Obama will probably take a hit for his presser today—although his numbers are at relative low points for him, so he may well already be at his floor.
Mike Kay: Booman is a self-acknowledged Obot. Nothing wrong with that, but it sort of makes your comment nonsensical.
MikeMc
@justsomefuckhead:
How did you feel when Pres Clinton sacrificed a democratic agenda to get re-elected? Then got re-elected. You got the “fuckhead” part right.
slag
@Corner Stone:
I don’t think he’s won as of today. I think we’ve won as of today. As of tomorrow, it’s anybody’s guess.
magurakurin
What’s the deal with people who keep coming to a bar long after the regulars stopped talking to you…except for a handful, who just yell at you, call you crazy, call you names and tell you to leave? But night after night they keep coming back. There are other bars with people who they could become friends with, but instead they spend all their time at a place where people either ignore them or outright loathe them. I don’t understand people like that.
jwb
Rome Again: Teatards aren’t through yet. However this plays out, they will almost certainly use whatever Obama does as grounds to try impeachment.
Rome Again
@Roger Moore:
Absolutely!
Southern Beale
Since this is not abstract for me, I personally will be royally fucked if we default, so I called my FA and got the same clueless bullshit I always get, which is that “there’s a deal, there’s nothing to worry about, the Republicans are being assholes and embarrassing themselves, there will be a short term deal with the longterm details to be worked out.”
In other words, he has NO clue. WTF. I need to bail … we’re gonna be SCREWED. Unless Obama goes 14th and it’s not looking like he wants to do that.
Thymezone
@Rome #169: Perfect. Norquist has enough sense to know that this whole thing is making him and his little pledge book look like shit. Which he is. The idea of some asshole making people sign pledges and then keeping them proudly in a scrapbook so that he can intimidate his puppets into trying to crash the country … it’s pretty sick. But now we see that Norquist was a fake all along. He is the biggest blinker on the stage at this point in the game of chicken. He is blinking so fast he looks like he has a tic.
dr. bloor
I don’t folks really appreciate how big a deal it would have been had he gotten his $4 Trillion 75/25 deal. He’d have been a fucking hero among everyone but the fringes of both parties, both domestically and internationally.
stuckinred
jwb
so the fuck what?
jwb
Thymezone: I won’t take Norquist seriously on this unless he says he’ll primary anyone’s ass who doesn’t vote for the deal. Because he either has the power and is not using it or he doesn’t have the power, and either way he is a fraud.
Rome Again
@jwb:
I expect that. I also expect it will not succeed. but if it does…
You know who else was impeached? Bill Clinton and did he lose his presidency? No? And yet, he actually left us with a surplus and started to pay down the debt. Not bad company to be in.
Thymezone
@jwb #174: I’m pretty sure that this has been baked into the cake.
Let’s see: Jobs are on everyone’s mind, and the TPers are shouting about impeachment because the evil president saved the country from their phony crisis. Yep, perfect. That pretty much trashes the GOP message for 2012. What will their platform be? More tax cuts? DOMA? Prayers for rain to end the drought in Texas?
jwb
stuckinred: Many more weeks of utterly pointless political theater.
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
we can only hope.
stuckinred
jwb
Right, like if that doesn’t happen there won’t be something else. Get used to it.
Thymezone
@Dr. Bloor #178: Sure, but he didn’t have to get that deal to look good in that light. He only had to say he wanted that deal. And be sincere, because he’d had taken it if he could have gotten it, and he and the GOP knew that it was his reelection on a silver platter. Good for the country, and good for his position. One of several reasons he didn’t get that deal.
What he will get is a debt limit increase one way or the other, no huge cuts, and a story line that makes him look like the sensible adult at the table. In short, exactly what he asked for when the game started. While his adversaries look like an ant hill right after you stick the shovel into it. Ants running all around trying to figure out what the hell to do.
jwb
Thymezone: Wingularity will be taken to unprecedented levels. Not clear where it ends. Also not clear what either the media or the Galtian overlords are going to do about it. Seeing Gregory’s and Brooks’ reactions to Obama and Boehner tonight, I think were in for a truly absurd farce.
Wilson Heath
@Randyh
“Tomorrow’s headline: “Boehner Pulls Out.” ”
Huh, and I’d always heard he was a good Catholic.
RossInDetroit
I had been thinking that Boehner was working from Newt’s playbook without reading to the end, where the principals got tossed on their asses.
The difference is that Newt shut down the government because he could, and it fed his ego to have that power. Boehner’s brinksmanship is due to the fact that he has no actual power.
He has to be afraid that how ever this turns out, everyone will realize that he’s impotent and of no use whatsoever.
jl
Long before the constitutional option, when the money starts running out, Obama will have to prioritize who does not get paid, and when. And some people won’t get paid. After the press conference today, I have confidence that old folk, sick people, poor people and small business contractors will have high priority.
Others, will be way down on the list.
I would bet he has a team working on that list right now.
If no debt ceiling, I think that lever will be used to get the GOP to deal.
Some old person will be willing to scrap along on pet food for weeks, thinking it is a sad and necessary sacrifice for the country.
Rich money bag GOP constituents will bring a battering ram to knock down their contresscritter’s door as soon as they are a day late on ten bucks out of ten million.
Rome Again
IANAFA, but, I don’t think Obama wants anyone to think he’s itching to push that trigger. That’s how he rolls. He doesn’t like to show his cards (and rightly so) – BUT, he taught Constitutional Law. I can’t see him turning down the opportunity to use it when he actually feels the need to. I think he is waiting for the need to!
Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century)
Wow. Even the liberal Keith Olbermann praises Obama.
There goes his invite to Nutbagger Nation ’12.
Roger Moore
@slag:
Maybe, maybe not. The upside of the Republicans accepting is that it would have required them to break their no tax pledge. If the Republicans who broke the no tax pledge suffered no bad consequences, that would hurt Grover Norquist and company. If the Republicans who broke the no tax pledge got primaried, it would result in nasty internecine fighting and possibly crazy, unelectable candidates in Republican held districts. That might or might not be enough to make up for whatever damage the Democrats would suffer from accepting their side of the bargain.
RossInDetroit
Krugman seems to think that the president will play the 14th card out of necessity and make them take it to the courts. That could be long, loud and messy but possibly for the best, long-term.
Thymezone
Boehner actually thought he could whip up a tax cut pie and put sprinkles on it and call it a revenue increase, and that would be the deal sealer? Did he actually think Obama would fall for something like that? Either he is a good actor, or he is incredibly stupid.
There he sits at the big table with Obama. He’s looking at a black guy who has a funny name and stick-out ears who ran against a prohibitive favorite Democrat, and then a war hero, and won the presidency … and he thought that a shit pie with sprinkles would fool Obama into giving the GOP a victory in this little dustup? Honestly?
slag
@Roger Moore:
I’m not so sure. I don’t think Obama was lying when he said that they came up with something Republicans could vote for without breaking their deal with the devil. But the details on the “deal” were always sketchy to me. I’m just going with what he said. And he said they would continue to be solid with Grover.
Thymezone
#194: They can’t take it to the courts if what we have been told is true. Congress can’t pass the required joint resolution they need for standing. Unless SCOTUS is going to pull a big Thomas out of their pants and basically overlook the law. Which puts SCOTUS in the role of sending the country into default. How does that work for the GOP … their little band of loyal justices vote for default? Heh.
I am just about 101% certain that all of this has already been gamed out in the White House long ago.
@Rome: He wants to have no other choice when he invokes the 14th. Which is where he is headed right now, right on schedule. Oookay. I hate to have to do this, but I won’t let the US default on my watch …..
gwangung
I wish people would remember that it’s to a competent player’s advantage to keep outsiders guessing. If he reveals something, it’s for a purpose. And it’s not necessarily a good purpose to admit, NOW, whether he’d use that option or not.
It may annoy Dems that he plays it close to his vest, but it’s driving the Republicans bat shit crazy. I’ll take being annoyed.
gwangung
That goes without saying; that happens in every White House (with the possible exception of the last). It’s whether it’s been gamed out correctly in this case–and I’m betting that it has.
Rome Again
@Thymezone:
It makes me sad that he won’t come here and read this and weep.
Ryan
I don’t pay much of any attention to the Twitter Machine, but came across this Dan Riehl tweet anyway:
https://twitter.com/#!/DanRiehl/status/94561635993260034
Is that typical behavior for RightBloggers?
Frankensteinbeck
Thymezone:
Bear in mind while talking to JSF, he actually thinks Obama wants to cut SS, Medicare, and Medicaid. Given the really fabulous chances Obama has given up so far to do so and his devoting entire speeches to explaining why he opposes cutting those services, I’m not quite sure how they continue believing it. I know part of it is that when listening to said speeches their reviews come down to picking one or two words out and declaring those are a code while ignoring the main content.
Canuckistani Tom
@124 Linnaeus
If you have some time, visit Parliament Hill around sunset. The view of the river is gorgeous. And meet the cats on the hill.
SiubhanDuinne
Aaron Sorkin wrote this script, didn’t he?
Stillwater
@gwangung: Good point. The GOP lies/speaks in code all the time in an effort to bluff on the strength of their hand or simply play the game. It’s a well understood part of politics, but apparently not for us liberals.
Thymezone
Second term appointment: Larry O’Donnell, communications director.
Rome Again
@General Stuck:
Are you serious? Norquist is famous for wanting to drown government in a bathtub. Of COURSE he wants default, he just wants to make sure the damage is contained enough that he can wield power in the next system too. He’s possibly worried about how it goes down, but he’s not opposed to default at all.
slag
@magurakurin:
“People”? You mean there’s more than one of us? Whew! I’m glad you said something. I always thought it was just me.
Come out all you crazy assholes; it’s time to party!
RossInDetroit
A couple of law professors on the NYT Opinion Page say that Obama would be on relatively safe ground to ignore the debt ceiling. I guess that’s their wheelhouse. Their comparison to Lincoln’s suspension of Habeas Corpus seems a little unnecessary and alarming.
Rome Again
@gwangung:
Me too! :)
Thymezone
@Frankensteinbeck: I am not sure that JSF isn’t pulling our leg, but in any case, the whole entitlement thing was the red cape in this little bullfight. It got the crowd riled up and bamboozled the dumb animal. It was all theater. Worked absolutley perfectly so far. I think Obama would have taken the Big Deal if he could get it. It was reelection on a platter, and insulates him forever from that old “tax and spend liberal” attack.
General Stuck
Grover is anti tax zealot, but he mostly is a corporatist . And a default is just too risky for the plutocrats to stomach. I think he, like a lot of other wingers thought they could sand bag Obama, and bluff him into doing their bidding. But now that they seems very wrong, they are looking for a way out. So no, I don’t think Grover wants a default. But a sizable tea party bloc in the House does, for their own more nihilistic reasons, mostly hatred of government, all of it. Grover just hates the part where money gets spent on poor people, and is not in the pockets of the wealthy plutocrats, who really owns the money. All of it, everywhere.
SiubhanDuinne
@Canuckistani Tom #203:
I met some one today who used to produce all the Canada Day spectaculars on Parliament Hill. She’s now with Cavalia.
(Sorry for going O/T).
Corner Stone
@Thymezone:
So was it a charade, or did he want it? Did he actually want 86 / 14 ?
And who do you think it would have made so damn happy? The mushy middle? Seniors? Young people?
Rome Again
@Frankensteinbeck: Ummm, you are apparently not aware that TZ is very familiar with JSF.
Elie
Trust me. My kishkas say its over. This is theater for close out scenes. Both sides are doing the talk to their sides
The deal is done.
Jennifer, your canned goods are safe for now…
We’ll see soon whatsup
Rome Again
@Corner Stone:
He knew he wouldn’t get it, but would have taken it if he had gotten it.
Ben Cisco
@Ryan: No, that one is spelled correctly.
Odie Hugh Manatee
fasteddie9318:
Fix’t. Burn baby burn!
Poopyman
Gene Robinson just accidentally called Lawrence O’D “Keith”.
Old habits, and all that.
Rome Again
@General Stuck:
You know, Stuck, at some point the toy counting is supposed to begin and I think Grover can’t wait for that party to start.
Rome Again
@Thymezone:
We need you at OFA with that speech! :)
Stillwater
@Ben Cisco: No, that one is spelled correctly.
{{gold claps}}
Frankensteinbeck
Corner Stone:
The complicated answer is that it was expected to be rejected, but Obama would have been fine if it was accepted. Its contents turned out to be much like the budget negotiation, with 400 billion off the military budget, a few hundred billion counted as ‘spending cuts’ that were removing tax incentives for very big businesses…
Basically, he hedged his bets.
Stillwater
@Rome Again: He knew he wouldn’t get it, but would have taken it if he had gotten it.
This makes absolutely no sense. You gotta do better than that.
Elie
Thymezone @ 177
LOL.
That skinny guy turned out to have a shiv godammit…
whoocoodanode
Thymezone
“So was it a charade, or did he want (the big deal)? ”
Yes. But probably more charade, on balance, only because he had to know that they wouldn’t take it. Did you see how fast Mitch McConnell pulled the plug on it? You’d have thought he had just heard his car alarm going off in the parking lot and had to rush out and catch the thief. He looked like somebody set off a cherry bomb in his shorts. There was NO WAY on earth he was going to let that thing get by. He wasn’t, in his own words, going to let Obama rope him into helping Obama get reelected. Nuh uh. No, all you can get from me is three little debt limit advances, but only if you grab your ankles and cry Uncle each time, on my command. Heh.
Stillwater
General Stuck, you’re talking sense in this thread. I, for one, completely agree with your Grovernalysis.
It’s worth noting.
Trurl
The stage is set for Obama say that, though he’s not satisfied with this “imperfect deal”, his conscience will not allow the innocent to suffer the pains of default.
You remember. The same bullshit he said when extending the Bush tax cuts.
The ‘bots will believe it, naturally.
Stillwater
@Trurl: The same bullshit he said when extending the Bush tax cuts.
I’m not sure what a person could do to publicly express greater opposition to extending those cuts than Obama did.
Is he just a dark hearted fucking liar thru and thru?
Trurl
Veto the bill.
I understand that to ‘bots, asking a Democratic president to veto right-wing legislation is wishing for ponies.
Thymezone
The only way the charade would really work to its best advantage would be to back the GOP into a corner and make them walk out and look like sore losers.
Well … here we are. They walked. They know and Obama knows that at that moment, this game was over and there is only one player still standing.
So now congress can do the right thing and do the debt limit, or Obama will do it himself. And honestly, if I am Obama, doing it myself is just fine with me. But I imagine Obama is hoping for the legislative solution.
On another topic .. I hadn’t noticed lately what a bone stupid shill for GOP bullshit David Frum still is. Well, today settled that question. What a wanker.
When Grover Norquist says “just give him the debt limit increase,” I think you know who won this thing.
Elie
229 – so Trurl — you say he set it up so it would appear that his conscience would not allow the innocent to suffer
— but he could not in your view, actually feel that — only appear to feel that..
This is why I know you are not a real liberal/progressive. Only a repub reptile would think that its a set up like that. A person with those deeply ingrained values — the value of protecting the weak — would not see that as a set up. You would instead believe that value would be critical — central …
Get lost, reptile.
Rome Again
@Stillwater:
It makes perfect sense. I can’t help it that you don’t realize the dickering over the deal is over.
hildebrand
Oh dear god, do not ask trurl that question. Of course he/she believes that Obama is a dark hearted fucking liar thru and thru. Trulr believes that Obama will cross the street to take lollipops out of the hands of cherubic children. Trulr believes Obama will piss on the homeless. Trulr believes that Obama will gleefully skull-fuck kittens in front of his children. Trulr believes that Obama is actually Dick Nixon in blackface. Trulr believes that Obama is the reincarnation of a cross between Hitler and Jefferson Davis. Trulr believes that the Marquis de Sade is an absolute novice compared to Obama in the field of depredations. Trulr believes that Obama’s bones should be burned and scattered into landfills before he is even dead because he has not been a true progressive. No, don’t pose that question, we know the answer all too well.
Rome Again
@Elie:
Trurl posts progressively only ever three hours or so, then jumps back into wingnut mode. The troll thinks nobody notices.
Stillwater
@Trurl: Veto the bill.
Good God dude! This is the extent of your understanding of politics: that if a President really cared he’d just act unilaterally?
You must have forgotten that a UI bene extension and other liberal initiatives were attached.
Stillwater
@Rome Again: It makes perfect sense? So does the idea that machines achieve consciousness and take over the planet. What are you talking about? You haven’t cited any evidence for this deranged belief.
ETA: + 3, due to Cole’s fancy mixed drink post.
Thymezone
@ Trurl: Does anybody actually fall for your act? It’s pretty lame. Just saying as a friendly observer of the BJ fray for into my seventh year now. Your fake firebag fu is weak. The delivery is okay but the material is much too unoriginal. However .. if you are DougJ, to which I give about a 33.3% possibility, then …. okay. Not bad, you haven’t lost all your chops yet. Yet. :)
Corner Stone
@Stillwater: There’s no reason to respond to TZ’s sockpuppet. In case you haven’t figured it out, TZ not only likes to endlessly fluff Obama, he also likes to have really boring conversations with himself at the same time.
Ron
@Alex S.: DADT was not Clinton’s idea. He wanted to allow gays to serve openly and Congress basically said “we won’t let that happen”.
Stillwater
@Corner Stone: Thanks for the face-slap. I think I’m better now. I dunno what happened: I complimented Stuck upthread and now I’m talking jibberish to fools.
Fucking contagious.
Elie
Ok Thanks, gang —
So Trurl, why would your skanky ass come here over and over to see what you hate over and over — cause we aint changin’.
I think you like sticking sharp objects in your eyeballs and doing enemas with HCL.. sick — or at least major kinky
Hey — you a spoof?
Rome Again
@Thymezone:
I gotta tell ya, that’s a delicious dish I never expected to see on the smorgasbord. I still don’t know whether to believe it.
Corner Stone
@Stillwater: It’s going to get worse. Shortly.
Rome Again
@Stillwater:
Seriously? You equate the idea that Obama played a game of poker and would have liked to have upped the ante but was happy to make a successful bluff with the idea that machines can take over the world? That must be some strong drink.
Rome Again
Ummm, why am I in moderation? I didn’t post any links or call anyone nasty names or anything. Hmmmmm!
Ron
@Mike Kay (Democrat of the Century): Bernie Sanders said primarying Obama was a good idea. Sigh, I like Bernie generally, but….no.
Rome Again
@Corner Stone:
Oh, so now I’m not even a real person? LMAO That’s hilarious! Really, excruciatingly so.
pattonbt
Anyone who thinks Obama “won” or will get a long term victory out of this is insane. Nor will the Republicans face any serious consequences even if they tank the economy. Obama was the man who killed Osama and two weeks later he was back to being dickhead number one.
My bet is this. Republicans continue to dick around next week acting as they have. Obama gives them room to do the right thing. Then when they dont, say Thursday, Obama pulls the trigger on the 14th Amendment option. Republicans then move to immediately impeach him. Not that Obama necessarily cares about that, it would never get as far as Clinton’s, but they go down that path as much as they could. Obama gets short term cred for doing the right thing and Republicans continue to look like assholes. Press says “both sides do it”. Two weeks later any “being the only adult in the room to save the worlds economy” approval bump Obama gets will be gone.
America is dumber than Forrest Gump right now and has the attention span of a gnat. They want the bloodsport and Obama won’t give it to them, so they will bring him back low because he won’t fight the way they want.
I say this as someone who mostly approves of Obama and what he has accomplished (and has had to deal with).
Frankensteinbeck
Ron:
The ‘stopped clock’ metaphor doesn’t make any sense in reverse, but it’s still true. Nobody’s perfect and brilliant people can say some stupid, stupid things sometimes. It’s all in my upcoming children’s book ‘Everybody Derps’.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Hi All,
If you haven’t seen the tape, check out the transcript of Obama’s event at UMD today here. Those of us who wallow in political discussions and analysis by others occasionally need to remind ourselves of what he actually thinks:
1) He categorically said the US isn’t going to default. I take that to mean that if nothing has happened to pass an extension by 11:59 on 8/2, he will act to prevent default. But he expects the Congress to do its job.
2) He gives an impassioned defense of his approach and core beliefs in dealing with the Republicans. He’s not going to sell out the poor and the middle-class.
I’ve said on Krugman’s blog that I think that BHO thinks our biggest problem is our broken political system – it’s an even bigger problem than the economy. I think he’s right. He obviously reads Krugman and he knows more needs to be done to fix the economy, but that’s not going to happen unless he gets the votes. He’s trying to fix the political system (by showing normal people how crazy the teabaggers are, among other things), but he’s working with the respect that people’s elected representatives are entitled. If he can get the Republicans to walk back from the no-taxes precipice, then there is a chance for progress in other areas that will actually help the unemployed and the country.
Unfortunately, it’s a long process. I think he won’t let the teabaggers destroy the Republic while he tries to bring sanity to DC.
Here’s hoping…
Cheers,
Scott.
cynn
Whew! More exciting than the crappy wooden roller coaster!
Rome Again
@Stillwater:
The heads up was a false flag, but, you go ahead and believe what you want to believe.
Stillwater
@Corner Stone: Really? You think he’s that dialed in?
Christ.
Elie
Oh ferchrissakes patton butt. You are just another faker trying to sell your snake oil here.
Get lost. Go tend your hemorrhoids which after this, will need tending. I hear the low key approach using ice packs and witchhazel is very “natural” and you can use it over and over. Of course, there is always the definitive butt surgery that tightens all that shit right up. Again, however, you face the ice paks on the buttocks area and plenty of time laying on your stomach…
RossInDetroit
So this is what insanity feels like. Shouldn’t I be able to fly or read minds or something? How disappointing.
Stillwater
@Rome Again: WTF are you babbling about?
Rome Again
@pattonbt:
Nobody is saying the game is completely over. This is just the turn of a friendly card. August isn’t even here yet (and the 2nd probably will not be the end either).
pattonbt
@Elie: Excuse me? Did I piss in cheerios or something? How was anything I said controversial enough to warrant such a stupid and asinine response? Did I bash Obama? No. I put the blame squarely where it belongs – the Republicans. I just do not have faith in the American people to see through this long term. Evidence on such thinking has been severely lacking in the last few decades, don’t you think.
Our fee-fee are a bit raw right now?
Corner Stone
@RossInDetroit: Ross. What did he win? No BS here.
Elie
Stillwater, cornerstone and patton butt.
Three parts to the outhouse:
The shed, the toilet seat and the big stupid butt sitting on the seat. The only thing we need is corn cobbs…
Lemesee — hmmm– Trurl… now there is a corn cobb that could be applied effectively in the right place — for once.
pattonbt
I made my point. Obama killed fucking Osama Bin Laden and two weeks later he was back to the same approval ratings. What makes you think that when he solves this he will get anything more than that here? Seriously?
Corner Stone
@pattonbt: She isn’t too bright. She reflexively falls back on some kind of midwife/middle ages nurse descriptions of things her perceived opponents should suffer.
It’s a little disturbing.
pattonbt
@Elie: My my, have we been drinking or smoking something tonight? The children seem to be running around unsupervised and found the keys to the parents liquor cabinet.
pattonbt
@Corner Stone: It’s weird. I think my, albeit limited, posting puts my beliefs pretty squarely in the middle of people here. I take no exception with Obama (he’s good and bad and I’ve pretty much got his back), but the American people are idiots and he will get nothing but hatred for being the adult.
RossInDetroit
I’m assuming that there won’t be a default, because the WH isn’t insane and they’ll find a way to keep the money moving.
I think what’s on the table is the optics of the crisis. He’s showed that the GOP is cornered by their most rabid backers and has become ineffecual in government. If that sinks in it’s death in 11/2012 for them.
I guess that’s two assumptions.
Stillwater
@pattonbt: The children seem to be running around unsupervised and found the keys to the parents liquor cabinet.
Definitely true at my place.
Elie
Patton butt:
sorry man, collateral damage. You shouldnt stand too close to cornerstone and stillwater.
Rome Again
@Stillwater:
Paranoia will destroy ya!
Don’t mind Corner Stone – he can’t believe TZ might have attracted a female who was willing to move across the country to Arizona from Florida for him. I think CS might be a bit jealous.
pattonbt
@Elie: Well, first off all, it’s pattonbt (if you were trying to be sincere you didn’t do a good job). Second, I don’t give a rats ass one way or another about Corner Stone or Stillwater (no offense meant to you guys/girls, I’m just generally indifferent) and my postings proximity to theirs should not have had any bearing on it’s worth and whether that should determine someones response to it.
Corner Stone
@RossInDetroit:
Let’s agree the debt ceiling will be raised. At some price, or at no price.
What can be done next to decrease U3? It’s fairly obvious the R’s aren’t going to pass a damn thing to do anything about job creation. We need some 400K+ per month just to start bringing it down before Nov 2012. And it just ain’t gonna happen.
I guess my point is that if we escape debtmageddon, there’s another more visceral hurdle that has to be breached.
Stillwater
@Rome Again: Hey, I just caught this. You said,
So you don’t think he wanted that deal after all!
WTF were you jabbering about then?
Rome Again
@pattonbt:
I disagree and the reason why is because rhetoric doesn’t work when people’s income and ability to keep their homes and jobs is on the line. Look at the governor of Virginia who wants to pass the debt ceiling now that his state is on the Moody’s list.
Rome Again
@Stillwater:
It wasn’t necessary. It would have been nice, but it wasn’t a necessity.
Rome Again
@Stillwater:
Ummmm, WTF was I jabbering about? Please cite such jabbering, because I’m not +3 and I didn’t change my stance.
jwb
Rome Again: Corner Stone likes to play the game of uncovering sock puppets. More than occasionally, he’s even correct; but sometimes he seems to think everyone posting here is one of Nick’s sock puppets.
Thymezone
What is the debt limit? The U.S. Constitution provides Congress with the power “to borrow money on the credit of the United States.” The amount that the federal government is allowed to borrow is subject to a statutory limit, set forth in 31 U.S.C. 3101(b). The debt limit places a ceiling on nearly all public debt (debt held by the public and federal debt held by the government’s own accounts, such as Social Security, Medicare, Transportation, and Civil Service Retirement accounts).
Prior to 1917, the Congress was required to approve every issuance of debt. In 1917, the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917 (P.L. 65-43) established the first statutory limit on federal debt to allow the Department of the Treasury to issue long-term Liberty Bonds to help finance the United States’s entry into World War I. Between 1917 and 1939, Congress passed debt limit legislation that set separate limits for different categories of debt, such as bills, certificates, and bonds. In 1939, Congress established a $45 billion aggregate limit covering nearly all public debt, eliminating separate limits on bonds and on other types of debt. As a general matter, this better facilitates Treasury’s ability to manage the federal government’s finances – the law requires that the government’s legal obligations be paid; the Department can issue new debt to manage short-term cash flows or to finance an annual deficit.
Increases in the debt limit. Since 1939, the debt ceiling has been increased nearly 100 times. It was doubled to more than $12 trillion, with seven increases between 2002 and 2008, at the request of the Bush Administration. The Congress most recently increased the debt limit from $12.104 trillion to $12.394 trillion in December 2009.
It is important to note that an increase in the debt limit does not authorize a single penny in additional spending. It is largely designed to meet obligations already incurred. In this case, those obligations were largely incurred by the previous President.
Indeed, a Brookings Institution study concluded last year that the “fiscal mess” we find ourselves in was precipitated by “a series of policy actions adopted during the Bush administration”: In 2001, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the 2008 budget would show a surplus equal to 4.5% of gross domestic product. The actual 2008 budget ran a deficit of 3.2% of GDP. Almost all of the reversal was the result of policy changes – tax cuts and spending increases.” [Brookings Institution, 7/30/2009] This was, of course, followed by the collapse of the financial markets, the deepening of the recession, and the extraordinary measures that the federal government had to undertake in response to the crisis. The Brookings findings were confirmed by a subsequent Center for American Progress study that found that Bush policies account for 40 percent of the short-term fiscal problem, the recession accounts for 20 percent, and the financial sector rescue accounts for 12 percent. And Obama policies, primarily the Recovery Act, enacted in response to an inherited crisis of unforeseen proportions, account for 16 percent. [Center for American Progress, 9/2009]
from this link, which contains the legislative details
Elie
okay okay okay
Cornerstone and Pattonbt, Stillwater…I was throwing the chairs around a little having some fun…
come on…have some fun. Corner Stone, you used to be funny once in a while.
These are really serious times and I hate that. I had a little wine and wanted to sparr.
Stillwater
@Rome Again: At time 1 you said he wanted the deal even though he knew he couldn’t get it, and at time 2 you said he was bluffing when he offered the deal.
You can find the semantics of the word ‘bluffing’ here.
pattonbt
@Rome Again: I’d like to believe that, really I would. But this isn’t the 90’s, pre Fox days. The haters have a channel dedicated to hating Obama. They have the radio as well. The noise machine will not relent.
Again, my recent data point is Osama. Had that been Bush, he’d be on Rushmore already.
But, I’m not as much of cynic as I play here. I definitely don’t see Obama getting hurt by this and I still see him getting re-elected (unless of course the economy tanks).
Stillwater
@Elie: You gotta say something ridiculous, challenging or insulting. We’ll keep everything above board. Swearsies.
Rome Again
@Stillwater:
The fact that Corner Stone seems to think I’m not a real person separate from TZ (I live with him, he is my domestic partner and truest love) and you believed him?
The sockpuppet warning was a false flag. I am a real person, female to TZ’s male – 49 years old to TZ’s 59+ (I’m not telling his age, I don’t have permission). Brunette to his blonde, short to his tall, shapely figure to his skinny build…. two separate people.
Rome Again
@Stillwater:
wanting and expecting are two different things. He never expected it. He didn’t need it. He surely would have taken it if it had been offered – but he knew it wouldn’t be. Not confusing at all.
Corner Stone
@jwb: Keep up jwb. Your third party observer schtick is old.
Stillwater
@jwb: sometimes he seems to think everyone posting here is one of Nick’s sock puppets.
Who’s Rome Again again. All the Nicks look the same to me.
pattonbt
@Elie: No harm no foul. I just found it odd, as a rare poster, to get such an inside baseball response (I know all the players here and read most post and comments, so I know the teams and history) to something I saw as non-controversial.
Anyway, I’m probably not one to get into chair throwing too much. I tend to lose – I am definitely not a very good verbal/writing jouster. Not quick enough, and too stiff. At least online.
Rome Again
@jwb:
Yeah, I know jwb, I just thought Corner Stone remembered me well enough to know that I’m not TZ. TZ is MUCH better at this than I am.
Stillwater
@Rome Again: I’m getting sorta excited. Both descriptions are rigorous.
Wonder why you linked to my comment about babbling, tho. Does one of you babble more than the other?
Corner Stone
“Putting pressure on an already lousy job market, the mass layoff is making a comeback. In the past week, Cisco, Lockheed Martin and Borders announced a combined 23,000 in job cuts. (See: Another Retailer Bites the Dust: Borders Doomed by Amazon Deal, Davidowitz Says)
Those announcements follow 41,432 in planned cuts in June, up 11.6% from May and 5.3% vs. a year earlier, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Meanwhile, state and local governments have cut 142,000 jobs this year, The WSJ reports, and Wall Street is braced for another round of cutbacks. This week, Goldman Sachs announced plans to let go 1000 fixed-income traders.”
Yep, get past the debtmageddon and then what?
Rome Again
@Stillwater:
I’m TZ’s girlfriend. We met on this blog and I moved to Arizona in 2007 to be with him. :) We’ve both been posting here (recently not much) since the day John got pissed off at the Republican party in 2005. We both moved over to BJ by jumping on the same thread link from Kos where John’s Republican dilemma was announced.
General Stuck
Just another note for those claiming Obama offered the wingers everything they wanted, looking at you fuckhead.
He did no such thing, and actually offered nothing of what they wanted, which was singularly access to the core benefit infrastructure of the New Deal programs. None of that 3 trillion, or whatever, touched that core, other than maybe to extend those programs.
And the ACA is what they want to go down more than anything. Plus, things like letting medicare negotiate with drug companies for lower drug prices, is an example of what was in the package, and something the wingnuts would never do.
So the misleading wanking that Obama gave the goopers “the cuts” they wanted, is patently false, as are the Obama Caved arguments that spring from that false meme. The people that insist on conflating “program cuts” with benefit cuts are either stupid or liars. No gray area.
EDIT – and somebody through a net over corner stone before he starts chewing his own tongue off.
Elie
Stillwater:
I thought that I WAS insulting….
Stone Ware thought I was “diturbing”. Is your threshold higher than his? ( He is such a delicate flower)
Okay, I need to kick it up a notch you say?
Hmmm
Stillwater
@Rome Again: Dood, you don’t seem to understand the distinction between a bluff and a legitimate offer. Let’s test it: I’ll take your next comment seriously if you just admit you were bullshitting earlier.
Deal?
Thymezone
@jwb 277: Anybody who thinks RA is a sockpuppet has never heard us argue. Heh. Few of you guys — or gals — could stand up to that kind of heat. We can both be pretty … intimidating. There is a big style difference though, on the blog. My arguments are pretty much performance art based on real opinion. Hers are pretty much true to life, also based on real opinion. I’m an old classroom instructor and tend to fall back on classroom skills in real life. Which feels safe to me but is not all that effective when the heat is on.
Rome Again
@Stillwater:
I tried to follow the line of threads and it led to the False Flag comment. Maybe I’m wrong? I can be wrong sometimes (oh yes, I babble much more than TZ, he’s very articulate, I mostly generalize).
Rome Again
@Thymezone:
Ummm, why are you texting me with “are you there” when we’re both on this thread? LOL
Rome Again
@Stillwater:
No Stillwater, the bluff doesn’t have to remain a bluff if the stakes are high enough and they become appetizing. They just didn’t become appetizing. If Obama got that extra 400B, I dont think he would have turned it down (and it would have immediately destroyed the Republican party – which is why he knew it wasn’t happening).
FlipYrWhig
@ Corner Stone : Actually I agree with your sentiments in 290 and especially 272. Accordingly, I look forward to talking/fighting over (1) what ideally _could_ be done to help the economy, (2) what Obama _should_ do to help the economy, (3) what Obama should do politically to compensate for or take advantage of the fact that Republicans surely won’t let him do (1) or (2).
Stillwater
@Elie: No, no, no. Just telling us what we already know isn’t insulting. The insult comes in the style of the denigrating, family-trust-breaking, car-won’t-start-in-the-morning insult. It’s all about aesthetics.
Thymezone
I am less articulate than I am circumspect and careful IRL. I tend to equivocate when I don’t have all the facts. And I tend to think out loud, which is really annoying. Even to me.
Elie
290 Corner Stone:
Seriously… you point out something that without a doubt will add fuel to the current fire we are in. (I’m in that unemployed place and its not a good place, trust me)
Of course, there is a fine line between stressing people and putting them where they perceive they have nothing to lose…
I think that every effort is being made to negatively impact this administration and its key objectives. Do you think differently?
Stillwater
@Rome Again: The False Flag (?) was about someone else I think. Someone who I would dearly love to show up about now.
Stillwater
@FlipYrWhig: Flip, do you want the use of a handy reply button, at no charge? There’s ways for these things to happen.
Stillwater
@Rome Again: Better than ‘do you like what you see?, do you like what you see?’
FlipYrWhig
@ Stuck : After watching the full half-hour press conference (linked at Chez Benen), it sure seemed like there was something on the table that would to some degree reduce future benefits for SS and the Medi- programs. There was a bit of finesse around the subject of “current beneficiaries” vs. others. I assume that the “adjustment” was something like indexing, means-testing, or moving piles of money around based on savings that should be realized in the fully-implemented HCR. But I’m pretty sure I saw one of those loopholes the skeptics around here so enjoy.
FlipYrWhig
@ Stillwater : I’m using an 8-year old Mac laptop with Firefox 2. I think I’m beyond the point of no return with fixing it. Good idea, tho.
Rome Again
No Stillwater, it was about me being TZ’s sockpuppet (Corner Stone’s accusation).
Stillwater
@FlipYrWhig: Flip, you remember that conversation about 6 months ago where I said that the table was being set for medicare/SS cuts, and the usual suspects did pound upon me and lay teeth unto my flesh?
Just wanted to remind you of that.
Stillwater
@Rome Again: I think my comment might still apply :)
Corner Stone
@Thymezone:
I’m sure it gets pretty heated when you’re deciding which hand to slip the sock on and type as her persona.
Elie
Hmm — “reply” button?
that disappeared a long time ago from what I see. I have been just typing in the comment number and the commenter name. Is there some way to connect to a comment that I am missing?
(Can’t wait to connect to Corner Stone’s comments and irritate him with my references to 14th century health methods – yeah — right.)
General Stuck
FlipYrWhig
I think it may have been the age of retirement raising over time, and maybe tinkering with the COLA formula, but mostly Obama mugging for the cameras about his courage to make “cuts”, any cuts to social programs, and let it appear he is meeting gooper demands which was to gut the core benefit structure. He set the table with a win win for him, to either checkmate the wingers into making these non essential cuts, plus getting some revenue, which he would like to have, imo, the cuts and revenue, or if they refused, being able to say, “hey, I tried”.
If you listen to his anecdotes about not hurting the poor and elderly, there is no wiggle room for seeing that those folks don’t get their lifelines cut.
Elie
311 Corner Stone
now That is the Corner Stone I know and “love”…
Rome Again
@Thymezone:
That must happen when I’m not around. I don’t experience those events.
Rome Again
@Corner Stone:
The black helicopters are on their way. LMAO
Stillwater
@Elie: This isn’t the fix I used, but I think MonkeyBoy posted this after I fixed mine.
FlipYrWhig
@ Stillwater : I still think there’s an important distinction between kinds of cuts — “program” cuts vs. “benefit” cuts. I have been hopeful that any policy that resulted from any kind of bargain, “grand” or not, would not involve benefit cuts.
(Then, to make things more complicated, there’s the whole deal with trying to measure cuts, for instance, by trying to peg a check to inflation — is your somewhat bigger future check not as much bigger than it could have been some other way and hence on some level a cut… even if it buys the same goods and services?)
So I am more leery than I have been that some kind of thing that could be called a benefit cut, not through outright falsehood like 2010’s “$500B in Medicare cuts” but through reasonable interpretation of the meaning of benefit cut, has been put on the table. I still think it’s likely to be more along the lines of “bigger check than now but smaller check than present methods extrapolated into the future would yield” rather than “smaller check now or soon.” But there’s something there, a kernel of something potentially worrisome either politically or tangibly.
Elie
Hmmm — thanks Stillwater. Apparently the fix requires loading Firefox…
Thanks for the tip though
Caz
Cole, you’re either very ignorant or very dishonest. Stalin would be proud to have you as one of his “useful idiots.” And when the country really turns into Greece, you’ll probably be the first one out in the street complaining about all the problems that you actively participated in creating by supporting the boobs ruining the country. You’re not quite an enemy of the state, but you’re getting close.
FlipYrWhig
@ Stuck :
True, although it leaves open the kinds of possibilities Martin has been discussing, where future beneficiaries get larger checks than today’s do, but not as big as they might have otherwise, which may be decent _policy_ but could not unreasonably be called a “benefit cut.”
Rome Again
@Thymezone:
I am what I am, I don’t know how to do “performance art”. LOL
Stillwater
@Elie: No. There’s other fixes. Just search MonkeyBoy on BJ and include ‘reply button’ and ‘fix’ or ‘fixes’. If you can’t find it, I’ll look for his post on the other platfroms.
Rome Again
Stop, open an encyclopedia, look at the size of Greece and then look at the size of the US. Look at the impact of both on the world. We will NEVER be Greece! You are misinformed.
General Stuck
Yep, Martin is good with that sort of thing. At least with medicare, there is going to have to have some restructuring of benefits within the next few years. And there are some more benefit structural adjustments, or changes, that are some dicey politically, and how the entitlement programs are thought of, like means testing, and a few other possibilities. But these are progressive in nature, as benefiting the lower income seniors at the expense of wealthier ones. But I really don’t think those things will be seriously looked at now, though maybe if Obama is reelected, but most likely, like everything else that involves the third rail, not until the last minute, in 2017 or 18.
Elie
In case no one has noticed: the rest of the world is in some pretty weird crux as well… between the instabilities of the economies of Western Europe and the Norwegian stuff,
we are in a very strange place. It also appears that they guy they apprehended in Norway is a right winger Christian type… hmmm familiar theme. How very weird though in an all white, homogenously Christian and uniclass Norway. Shit, what change do WE have if they can’t figure out how to get along?
Rome Again
@Stillwater:
Chrome Stylish
http://userstyles.org/styles/50391/balloon-juice-fix-reply-button-non-specific
Elie
Thanks Stillwater. I will look up Monkeyboy’s fix options…
Stillwater
@Elie: Elie, you’re not on Chrome or Firefox, right? what are you on? I saw fixes – i think – for IE and even Ubuntu.
WHAT ARE YOU ON?
Rome Again
Well, time for bed for me. I have newspapers to deliver in about seven hours. I want to thank Corner Stone for making me laugh hysterically. I hope you get that paranoia looked at, I’d hate to see you go all CT and end up on schizo meds. Good night!
jwb
TZ: Well, yes, I didn’t think you were sockpuppets, that’s Corner Stone’s specialty. He’s rather tiresomely obsessed with outing sockpuppets these days.
Corner Stone
@jwb: God. Get off your schtick and take a look around you useless douchebag.
Not that bright, are you dog.
Corner Stone
“Oh, some other person likes to do this.”
Corner Stone
@Stillwater: She’s old and unemployed but somehow wedded to maintaining the status quo minus future benefits.
Thymezone
The US has around thirty times the population of Greece, and something like one and a half times the per capita GDP.
The US is not Greece, is not going to be like Greece, has little in common with Greece economically or any other way.
If you want to spread stupid bullshit, why not claim that the US is going to become like Grand Fenwick?
cbear
Stillwater–
There’s a reply fix for IE? I’ve never seen that posted—please link if possible. Tx.
Thymezone
@jwb — all these years and Stoned still has no idea what the real dynamics of the commentariat are about here. That’s quite a feat, really. We used to run an off-blog mailing list, and that sort of died out after a few years, but now some of us hang on FB. The realities of who we are are hardly secret. Anyone could see the email addy I posted today, shoot me a msg, do a FB stopover, meet a few folks in a different venue. The world is not Balloon Juice. Cole has talked to both of us and definitely knows who we are. The sockpuppet thing is just so lame. We’ve both been posting here since early 2005.
We both have BJ correspondents who have known each of us since high school for crissakes. Hers in DE, mine in AZ.
Yutsano
@Caz:
SPANAKOPITA FOR EVERYBODY!!
cbear
Tz–
Ah, the mailing list—I burned out on it fairly early cuz I could never really understand the entertainment value in spoofing and trying to keep track of who was doing what just became tiresome, imho.
Btw, do you remember what year it was that the mailing list first started?
* You know, as I think about it—you may have even been the one that “sponsored” me onto the list. Is that right?
Thymezone
cbear — yes I did most of the recruiting, and the poster known as Perry Como did the list administration. We had around 2-3 dozen members over time. The list started around late 2005/early 2006. We also ran a couple of spoof blogs through the list resources. Not everybody participated in that.
opie jeanne
So… what does this mean regarding SS checks being late or being VERY late?
We have a garden and food in the pantry and freezer, and we have a little money set aside so we won’t starve, but what will happen to people just slightly less fortunate than we are? People a lot less fortunate? I figure we’re all screwed but at different dates.
I’m going to stock up on rice and dried beans, flour, sugar and yeast, and Target will give us a dozen eggs for free this weekend because that SS check makes a great big difference in our retirement income.
opie jeanne
@Yutsanso,
Tomorrow I’ll plant more spinach. We finished eating all of ours a month ago.
Stillwater
@cbear: I looked thru MonkeyBoy’s threads (wasn’t as bad as it sounds) and there was no clean fix for other browsers. Sorry to have gotten your hopes up. The thread with the best info is here.
lacp
This is very sad. Suggest folks wait until 8/3 before trying to spike the ball in the endzone.
Yutsano
@opie jeanne: Mmm…spinach.
Stillwater
@cbear: On the other hand, this might be just the time to load up Mozilla and breakaway from the shackles that enslave you. You never know.
ETA: Same goes for you, too, also as well, Elie. Shackles.
bob h
Pethokoukis might be right that a downgrade would not affect Treasury yields much. The ensuing Depression might even cause them to rise a bit. But the mass unemployment that would follow whacking 10% out of the American economy would be a big deal. It would be bad even for Masters of the Universe at Goldman Sachs.
kay
Cuts in benefits versus cuts to providers is one important distinction ( It must be important: the progressive caucus used “benefit cuts” 5 times in a 4 paragraph statement) but in terms of what Obama said yesterday, I’m hearing reciprocity.
He didn’t use the word, but that’s what he wants, in a deal, if there’s a deal (I don’t think there will be a deal).
So, two tracks. There’s outlays and revenues. Take discretionary spending out of it, because that isn’t entitlements.
Taxes and entitlement cuts. How much and when. Broadly, as a matter of process (and Obama trusts process: he doesn’t trust anyone or anything else) IF the deal includes entitlement cuts and tax increases, and the tax increases are promised in some distant future, then the entitlement cuts should be spun out too. That’s “fair” to him, in terms of a deal, from his usual 30,000 feet up. The specifics are less important than the reciprocal nature of when the cuts/tax increases kick in.
He’ll see that as reciprocal, and an acceptably “fair” framework or process, in terms of time (not amount, that’s the other question).
None of that addresses the political issues, but that’s what I’ll look for if and when they release something solid.
It’s how much and when that will be worth looking at, for both tax increases and entitlement cuts to providers or beneficiares. The “when” also matters a lot in terms of stimulus. If all the discretionary cuts are spun out to begin in 8 years (best scenario) , or two years, or four years, that matters in terms of pulling money out of the economy. When these things happen is another negotiating point.