Eh, I guess I could live with #1 though being liberal I would make it more of a "may be" or 'can be" rather than "probably". But otherwise I'm okay with this formulation.
Arguably Tom, but any weight I would give to the arguement that "the sex created a "natural" obligation" is negated by the weight that I give to the arguement that any given woman is faced by almost 50% of the entire species turning a considerable amount of their entire waking attention to the matter of persuading, cajoling, tricking or otherwise coaxing women into having sex with them.
Indeed Katherine, this is a very important point. I always find myself rankled when this line of argument 'the woman is responsible for the fetus being inside her" is deployed. More adamant feminists generally refer to this as 'Slut Shaming' and while I wouldn't subscribe to that incendiary level of rhetoric I feel there is a salience to it.
What users of this female responsibility argument always seem to ignore or scuttle away from is that it generally does take two people to cause a fetus to appear in a woman's body (or a person and a God in one scenario I read about somewhere). This also ignores the historical, sociological and psychologically unhappy fact that at least 95% of the arts; 50% of economics; 50% of society; 95% of athletics and large proportions of every other human activity in existence is pursued with the express or implicit purpose of overriding any given woman's disinclination to get pregnant and convince her to open the drawbridge so to speak.
So yeah I really don't like the whole "well it's her fault for having sex" thing.
but how do we square that with the overwhelming support for banning abortion in those same states?
Nob. My personal two cents: If, let's hypothesize, a President Romney appointed a couple adamant pro-life justices to the supreme court and Roe got eliminated, if further the states in question then outlawed abortion I theorize that we could see the current support in opinion polls invert.
My own uneducated impression of the state of play on the matter of abortion is that many pro-choicers are tuned out of the issue and many other more fence sitting people find it convenient to be vocally pro-life while enjoying the fact that the current system is pro-choice despite their asserted opposition.
I'm not sure Will? Is this genetically generated toenail clipping posting its comments from within the body of the woman concerned? Is it inflicting debilitating physiological and psychological effects on her? Is it dependant on its occupation of her body for its continued existance (and internet connection)? If not I don't think I see the paralell with abortion.
Gentlemen, as someone who deeply respects both of your writing styles and thought processes may I interject to gently suggest we try and keep the discussion a touch less heated and maybe slightly more impersonal?
What most of this demonstrates is that there are few policies more harmful to pro-choice causes than generally pro-choice policy. Similarily I have no doubt that nothing would torpedo pro-life popularity and support more than enactment of pro-life policy.
I find ceramic edges implements both fascinating and daunting. My brother once playfully tried to test a new ceramic knifes edge in the traditional way (thumb lightly on the edge) and slides a corner off the digit in question (the damn fool). I remain in awe that they can be so sharp, it seems almost magical.
Here in Minneapolis we have the pleasure of a Keresotes high end theater. The ticket prices are noticably steeper but they have several rules that keep us coming back:
-You can't buy tickets for or be seated in the theater of a movie that's already started.
-Polite but strict policing of phone use and disruptive behavior in the theater. I've seen a small number of chatterboxes and phone addicts be escorted out.
-Seating is assigned, you select it for yourself when you buy the tickets either online or at the theater (this is astonishingly useful for ensuring spacing and eliminating arguements over seating).
The theater is also new and really nicely designed and the films have never had technical difficulties in my time there. The snack bar also offers (overpriced for sure) a wide and interesting seelction of food options above and beyond popcorn and chips. It's overpriced of course, the business model for the theater is fundamentally the same as for a multiplex afterall.
I've observed since I first started going there that the crowds have been steadily and reliably increasing in size and attendance. My own clique declared after several visits that it was the land of milk and honey for film viewing experience and swore off other theaters. If theaters are to survive I suspect that in dense population areas where a theater can select for the consciencious viewing subset that this is one of the futures of public theaters.
I'd like to +1 the latter half of the fine Mr. Akimoto's comment especially. Obama's behavior hasn't been exactly a model or even example of war spreading agression. If one considers it in light of Obama's general MO; hypercautiousness (bordering on outright cowardice or miserlyness with his political capital), leading from behind and letting others float the trial baloons we end up with something that sounds a lot more like the domestic Obama we know; a slow agonizingly slow cautious careful creeping towards the exits on the wars coupled with a huge amount of ass covering. I'd submit that he's moving away from wars in general (civil liberties I suspect is more of a wash, the CYA ratchet dynamic for public servants/officials is brutal in this area) but in such a slow gradual manner that you'd have to take marks to see him move.
Ward, James beat me to it generally and before even beginning I'll note that the Dems have hardly been paragons of spending reduction but I do consider "reductions in increases" to be cuts of a sort though obviously less impressive than reductions in actual spending which dems also proposed.
What all this boils down to is that the dems have repeatedly come up with both types of cuts and reductions (to the shrill howls of their own base) only to then have the proposed deals spurned by the GOP. This is stellar politics for the GOP: the Dems depress their base with the proposals and then depress independants when nothing gets enacted. Meanwhile the GOP please their base by refusing to compromise. The only question is whether independants and voter in general will recognize and punish this intransigence or whether such subtleties are lost on the electorate. That question, coupled with the question of how quickly the current green shoots on the economy develop (and whether Europe collapses and blows us back into recession) will probably be the hinges of the upcoming election.
Oh and in case I forget later, Happy New Year to the lot of you and an especial happy one to you Koz. If you didn't exist some liberal would have to make you up. Tip o' the tophat to you.
James, this is his standard line which remains, to my eyes, just as false as before. If spending cuts would improve our trajectory vis a vis the deficit then ceteris parabus spending cuts AND revenue increases would improve our trajectory significantly more. He tries, repeately to insist that the two together are impossible but has to retreat to koz-speak every time one asks on what basis he's asserting such.
Yes yes, we can retreat back into the language quibbling if you insist. Yes there is no one "solution" if you define solution as something that eliminates the entire deficit and debt in one fell swoop. By this definition the only plausible action is something that sets the government on course to fiscal solvency in the mid to long term. That's all well and good but even by this definition the fact remains that you are wrong on this issue because even defined this way a course change that combines BOTH revenue increases AND spending cuts will produce a sharper change in direction and a faster . The political obfuscation and GOP sound bites is just noise, you'll forgive me for skipping over it since it's just chest thumping, the salience and reality of which varies from viewer to viewer and which will be tested soon enough in the upcoming election for good or ill.
No, it’s much closer to think we’re in artificially manufactured illusion that we can continue to fund the government at levels the Demos will find acceptable. After all, we could think think that Worldcom would be worth billions forever or that residential real estate values in Las Vegas would never fall.
Again hogwash, the Dems have repeatedly come to the table with cut after cut (more on this later) so the assertion that they won't accept any government funding level that'll improve the national trajectory is laughable. There's only been one intransigent party in this debate.
I'll throw out a swift aside to put down this Greece comparison once and for all. The US's problems are nothing like Greeces; with Greece everyone clearly knows there's no slack to tax, no will to cut and no ability to collect. Greece is broke. The US is flush with economic capacity to provide revenue and political space to cut programs. The only thing the ratings agencies and markets have asked is that the Feds demonstrate that they're serious about the issue. The sorry performance (which I lay partially at Obama's feet but mainly at the GOP's) has done little to allay their concerns.
These have to do with news reports of negotiations that no important Democrat has even been willing to acknowledge publically.
This part is especially cute politically and I applaud you for it even if I refuse to accept the specious assertions. Anyone who has been paying attention to the politics of the last several years is well aware of the GOP created dynamic:
Step 1: Obama/Dems can't come out with concrete official proposals because the GOP (specifically tea partiers) reject them out of hand due to the proposals (no matter what they are) are coming from Obama/Dems (and then they try and string them up even if this involves rank hypocrisy; see for instance the GOP shrieks that Obama is cutting Medicare).
Step 2: Obama/Dems accordingly negotiates behind closed doors with GOP leadership in hopes of reaching a compromise that the GOP can sell to their membership.
Step 3: With most of these maneuvers the GOP leadership agrees in principal to a deal and then when they take it to their caucus they get paddled, tarred and feathered and disavow everything (weepy ol Boehner has had this happen so much that it's a wonder he can sit at all).
Step 4: Then in a gesture of impressive cheek the GOP declares "Obama's never offered anything publicly and officially!"
This is all clever and cute and all, but the problem is that Obama et all have publicly and repeatedly come out with reluctant offers of spending cuts of every size and shape. The public certainly is well aware of it. One look at the poll numbers on the subjects communicates that clearly. The GOP has just as publicly refused to deal in any way so long as it involves any compromise from the GOP at all. Indeed, they have a laundry list of spending they won't even permit to be touched without screaming the sky is falling: defense (especially), social security and medicare for instance have all been campaigned on by the GOP as innocent victims of Obama's nefarious cutting ways.
Over and over both the GOP and you insist that Obama should do things entirely their way and in the manner and direction they demand. Obama and his party have merely asked that they, who control the executive and half of congress, get a say in this policy. The insanity of the GOP demands for their way or the highway are long past obvious.
We shall see, I suppose, in a year or so whether this maneuvering will actually work electorally. I certainly hope it doesn't and doubt it will but I've certainly been wrong before and Twain always had a scathing word or two for the aggregate cleverness of the great masses of the people.
As I noted above this isn't true... and once the libertarians start rolling their eyes at it Koz old boy ya gotta face up to the fact that what you're peddling ain't selling.
*sigh* Koz, you can yell "there is no money! I really mean it!!" as often as you'd like. The problem is it is empirically not true. We can see this is not true because we can see examples of countries where there is literally no money. Greece, for instance, has pretty much no money. They don't make it themselves, they have astronomically high tax rates and enormous entitlements and outlay commitments. On top of that their economy and populace is so dysfunctional that it is virtually impossible for them to collect more than what they're collecting now, or at least not in any politically plausible manner. In Greece there is no money. The United States is not Greece. The tax rates are low, there's lots of room for them to rise. The tax system and economic system is sound. Tax evasion is a problem but it is not endemic. The money is there. The government could take it (a note, I strongly oppose raising taxes alone enough to cover the deficit, such a move would be economically dangerous). Yes, in some states and municipalities, there is very little money that's easily or politically feasibly collectable (Ca springs to mind) and obviously someone is going to have to tell the electorate there to face the music but this is a side show. Even in CA there is not a titanic amount of change needed to fix their finances, the economy is there to tax, the programs are there to cut, the state can do it.
And of course finally there is the printing press. Do you hear the bedlam? That's the sound of every invesor in the world begging the US to print them dollars and begging the Treasury to sell them bonds (at negative effective interest rates!) the money is there. This is not a situation that can last, obviously, and I certainly don't think a blasé indifference to the fundamentals of the country's finances would allow this favorable market to go on forever (some other large economy in the world is eventually going to get its act together) but at the moment, yes Koz, the money is there.
We can see states where "there is no money". The US is not one of those states. The US financial crisis is an artificially manufactured one produced in Washington by politicians playing politics. A green eye shadow accountant could balance the budget in twenty minutes; hell the newspapers had apps out to let you balance it yourself not long ago. You can bet the Italy, Spain or Greece's politicians would sell their children into penury to be in our shoes with only artificial debt problems to deal with. Over and over the Democrats have reluctantly (very reluctantly) allowed that cuts are needed hither and yon. Over and over the GOP has done much as you have; covering their ears and shrieking "there is no money" but it's not true no matter how much they or you repeat it. Just like you they're probably going to have to face up to the fact that revenues are going to have to rise even as expenses get cut. This is a simple fact, there is no constituency in the country for a 100% cut based solution to the problem. The party of old white government program (retirement and healthcare) dependant voters is not going to do enforce this. Neither is their opposition.
Except, of course, the memo you’re positing is flat out wrong. The US is taking in historically low amounts of revenue for instance, 1940's levels in fact. If tax revenue was increased even to 2000 levels then that'd be a significant amount of money. Or, if raising taxes doesn’t work for you there is always borrowing: investors are currently –paying the US government to take their money- by accepting treasury bonds that pay zero interest (once you factor in inflation it’s a negative return). So the memo is flat out wrong.
I’d hazard that the memo more accurately says “Some of the money is there, but people want to know which way you’re going to collect it and what you’re going to cut to make up the difference so they know what to expect. Sort the politics out!” And in the case of that memo I’d say the dems and the GOP are respectively only getting half the memo each.
Everyone makes an assortment of mistakes. No surprise there. He's had his share of hits as well as misses. Oh I checked and you recall partically correctly. Coburn supported the plan and every single other republican on the comittee opposed it, so the original point stands.
Last I heard Obama was graciously letting the GOP nomination process have the limelight. He's giving that way. Heh.
Jay, I used to think that myself. I went from "Surely someone pays him to say this" to "Noone would pay him to say this" to "this is performance art" but I finally settled on "No artist is this comitted to a role; this dude's believes what he writes."
Hogwash. Coburn flat out stated the plan was going nowhere because it included tax increases and Ryan voted against it. They didn't change their tune until Obama abandoned the thing. For the record I consider abandoning his own deficit plan one of Obama's biggest errors in his presidency.
Obviously I'm no fan of republicans, sure, but mainly because I find them incoherent. As for me personally? My preferred policies would be generally what was proposed by Obama's deficit comission: taxes increased with loopholes eliminated and simplification (which would result in a lower numeric tax rate but a higher amount of revenue generated by said tax); reforms to entitlements, a vigerous cut to defense spending etc.
My pragmatic policy preferences (recognizing that no politician in the arena at the moment wants what the deficit comission proposed) are the natural expiration of the Bush tax cuts, the mandatory sequestrations from the debt ceiling showdown and then we'll have to see where we stand vis a vis the deficit at the point.
I'm pretty sure that was common knowledge round these parts.
On “Reproductive Rights and Libertarianism”
It should be noted of course that Mid- to late- term abortions for matters of convenience are an astronomically small percentage of all abortions.
"
Eh, I guess I could live with #1 though being liberal I would make it more of a "may be" or 'can be" rather than "probably". But otherwise I'm okay with this formulation.
"
Arguably Tom, but any weight I would give to the arguement that "the sex created a "natural" obligation" is negated by the weight that I give to the arguement that any given woman is faced by almost 50% of the entire species turning a considerable amount of their entire waking attention to the matter of persuading, cajoling, tricking or otherwise coaxing women into having sex with them.
"
True, I should have said potentially is inflicting. Otherwise the point stands.
"
Indeed Katherine, this is a very important point. I always find myself rankled when this line of argument 'the woman is responsible for the fetus being inside her" is deployed. More adamant feminists generally refer to this as 'Slut Shaming' and while I wouldn't subscribe to that incendiary level of rhetoric I feel there is a salience to it.
What users of this female responsibility argument always seem to ignore or scuttle away from is that it generally does take two people to cause a fetus to appear in a woman's body (or a person and a God in one scenario I read about somewhere). This also ignores the historical, sociological and psychologically unhappy fact that at least 95% of the arts; 50% of economics; 50% of society; 95% of athletics and large proportions of every other human activity in existence is pursued with the express or implicit purpose of overriding any given woman's disinclination to get pregnant and convince her to open the drawbridge so to speak.
So yeah I really don't like the whole "well it's her fault for having sex" thing.
"
but how do we square that with the overwhelming support for banning abortion in those same states?
Nob. My personal two cents: If, let's hypothesize, a President Romney appointed a couple adamant pro-life justices to the supreme court and Roe got eliminated, if further the states in question then outlawed abortion I theorize that we could see the current support in opinion polls invert.
My own uneducated impression of the state of play on the matter of abortion is that many pro-choicers are tuned out of the issue and many other more fence sitting people find it convenient to be vocally pro-life while enjoying the fact that the current system is pro-choice despite their asserted opposition.
"
I'm not sure Will? Is this genetically generated toenail clipping posting its comments from within the body of the woman concerned? Is it inflicting debilitating physiological and psychological effects on her? Is it dependant on its occupation of her body for its continued existance (and internet connection)? If not I don't think I see the paralell with abortion.
"
Gentlemen, as someone who deeply respects both of your writing styles and thought processes may I interject to gently suggest we try and keep the discussion a touch less heated and maybe slightly more impersonal?
"
What most of this demonstrates is that there are few policies more harmful to pro-choice causes than generally pro-choice policy. Similarily I have no doubt that nothing would torpedo pro-life popularity and support more than enactment of pro-life policy.
On “Thermomixed Up, Part 6: Enough is Enough (For This Year)”
I find ceramic edges implements both fascinating and daunting. My brother once playfully tried to test a new ceramic knifes edge in the traditional way (thumb lightly on the edge) and slides a corner off the digit in question (the damn fool). I remain in awe that they can be so sharp, it seems almost magical.
On “Let’s All Go Insane at the Movies!”
Here in Minneapolis we have the pleasure of a Keresotes high end theater. The ticket prices are noticably steeper but they have several rules that keep us coming back:
-You can't buy tickets for or be seated in the theater of a movie that's already started.
-Polite but strict policing of phone use and disruptive behavior in the theater. I've seen a small number of chatterboxes and phone addicts be escorted out.
-Seating is assigned, you select it for yourself when you buy the tickets either online or at the theater (this is astonishingly useful for ensuring spacing and eliminating arguements over seating).
The theater is also new and really nicely designed and the films have never had technical difficulties in my time there. The snack bar also offers (overpriced for sure) a wide and interesting seelction of food options above and beyond popcorn and chips. It's overpriced of course, the business model for the theater is fundamentally the same as for a multiplex afterall.
I've observed since I first started going there that the crowds have been steadily and reliably increasing in size and attendance. My own clique declared after several visits that it was the land of milk and honey for film viewing experience and swore off other theaters. If theaters are to survive I suspect that in dense population areas where a theater can select for the consciencious viewing subset that this is one of the futures of public theaters.
On “Blood and the Treasury”
I'd like to +1 the latter half of the fine Mr. Akimoto's comment especially. Obama's behavior hasn't been exactly a model or even example of war spreading agression. If one considers it in light of Obama's general MO; hypercautiousness (bordering on outright cowardice or miserlyness with his political capital), leading from behind and letting others float the trial baloons we end up with something that sounds a lot more like the domestic Obama we know; a slow agonizingly slow cautious careful creeping towards the exits on the wars coupled with a huge amount of ass covering. I'd submit that he's moving away from wars in general (civil liberties I suspect is more of a wash, the CYA ratchet dynamic for public servants/officials is brutal in this area) but in such a slow gradual manner that you'd have to take marks to see him move.
On “I’ll Be the First to Admit I’m Biased…”
Ward, James beat me to it generally and before even beginning I'll note that the Dems have hardly been paragons of spending reduction but I do consider "reductions in increases" to be cuts of a sort though obviously less impressive than reductions in actual spending which dems also proposed.
What all this boils down to is that the dems have repeatedly come up with both types of cuts and reductions (to the shrill howls of their own base) only to then have the proposed deals spurned by the GOP. This is stellar politics for the GOP: the Dems depress their base with the proposals and then depress independants when nothing gets enacted. Meanwhile the GOP please their base by refusing to compromise. The only question is whether independants and voter in general will recognize and punish this intransigence or whether such subtleties are lost on the electorate. That question, coupled with the question of how quickly the current green shoots on the economy develop (and whether Europe collapses and blows us back into recession) will probably be the hinges of the upcoming election.
"
Oh and in case I forget later, Happy New Year to the lot of you and an especial happy one to you Koz. If you didn't exist some liberal would have to make you up. Tip o' the tophat to you.
"
James, this is his standard line which remains, to my eyes, just as false as before. If spending cuts would improve our trajectory vis a vis the deficit then ceteris parabus spending cuts AND revenue increases would improve our trajectory significantly more. He tries, repeately to insist that the two together are impossible but has to retreat to koz-speak every time one asks on what basis he's asserting such.
"
Yes yes, we can retreat back into the language quibbling if you insist. Yes there is no one "solution" if you define solution as something that eliminates the entire deficit and debt in one fell swoop. By this definition the only plausible action is something that sets the government on course to fiscal solvency in the mid to long term. That's all well and good but even by this definition the fact remains that you are wrong on this issue because even defined this way a course change that combines BOTH revenue increases AND spending cuts will produce a sharper change in direction and a faster . The political obfuscation and GOP sound bites is just noise, you'll forgive me for skipping over it since it's just chest thumping, the salience and reality of which varies from viewer to viewer and which will be tested soon enough in the upcoming election for good or ill.
No, it’s much closer to think we’re in artificially manufactured illusion that we can continue to fund the government at levels the Demos will find acceptable. After all, we could think think that Worldcom would be worth billions forever or that residential real estate values in Las Vegas would never fall.
Again hogwash, the Dems have repeatedly come to the table with cut after cut (more on this later) so the assertion that they won't accept any government funding level that'll improve the national trajectory is laughable. There's only been one intransigent party in this debate.
I'll throw out a swift aside to put down this Greece comparison once and for all. The US's problems are nothing like Greeces; with Greece everyone clearly knows there's no slack to tax, no will to cut and no ability to collect. Greece is broke. The US is flush with economic capacity to provide revenue and political space to cut programs. The only thing the ratings agencies and markets have asked is that the Feds demonstrate that they're serious about the issue. The sorry performance (which I lay partially at Obama's feet but mainly at the GOP's) has done little to allay their concerns.
These have to do with news reports of negotiations that no important Democrat has even been willing to acknowledge publically.
This part is especially cute politically and I applaud you for it even if I refuse to accept the specious assertions. Anyone who has been paying attention to the politics of the last several years is well aware of the GOP created dynamic:
Step 1: Obama/Dems can't come out with concrete official proposals because the GOP (specifically tea partiers) reject them out of hand due to the proposals (no matter what they are) are coming from Obama/Dems (and then they try and string them up even if this involves rank hypocrisy; see for instance the GOP shrieks that Obama is cutting Medicare).
Step 2: Obama/Dems accordingly negotiates behind closed doors with GOP leadership in hopes of reaching a compromise that the GOP can sell to their membership.
Step 3: With most of these maneuvers the GOP leadership agrees in principal to a deal and then when they take it to their caucus they get paddled, tarred and feathered and disavow everything (weepy ol Boehner has had this happen so much that it's a wonder he can sit at all).
Step 4: Then in a gesture of impressive cheek the GOP declares "Obama's never offered anything publicly and officially!"
This is all clever and cute and all, but the problem is that Obama et all have publicly and repeatedly come out with reluctant offers of spending cuts of every size and shape. The public certainly is well aware of it. One look at the poll numbers on the subjects communicates that clearly. The GOP has just as publicly refused to deal in any way so long as it involves any compromise from the GOP at all. Indeed, they have a laundry list of spending they won't even permit to be touched without screaming the sky is falling: defense (especially), social security and medicare for instance have all been campaigned on by the GOP as innocent victims of Obama's nefarious cutting ways.
Over and over both the GOP and you insist that Obama should do things entirely their way and in the manner and direction they demand. Obama and his party have merely asked that they, who control the executive and half of congress, get a say in this policy. The insanity of the GOP demands for their way or the highway are long past obvious.
We shall see, I suppose, in a year or so whether this maneuvering will actually work electorally. I certainly hope it doesn't and doubt it will but I've certainly been wrong before and Twain always had a scathing word or two for the aggregate cleverness of the great masses of the people.
"
As I noted above this isn't true... and once the libertarians start rolling their eyes at it Koz old boy ya gotta face up to the fact that what you're peddling ain't selling.
"
*sigh* Koz, you can yell "there is no money! I really mean it!!" as often as you'd like. The problem is it is empirically not true. We can see this is not true because we can see examples of countries where there is literally no money. Greece, for instance, has pretty much no money. They don't make it themselves, they have astronomically high tax rates and enormous entitlements and outlay commitments. On top of that their economy and populace is so dysfunctional that it is virtually impossible for them to collect more than what they're collecting now, or at least not in any politically plausible manner. In Greece there is no money. The United States is not Greece. The tax rates are low, there's lots of room for them to rise. The tax system and economic system is sound. Tax evasion is a problem but it is not endemic. The money is there. The government could take it (a note, I strongly oppose raising taxes alone enough to cover the deficit, such a move would be economically dangerous). Yes, in some states and municipalities, there is very little money that's easily or politically feasibly collectable (Ca springs to mind) and obviously someone is going to have to tell the electorate there to face the music but this is a side show. Even in CA there is not a titanic amount of change needed to fix their finances, the economy is there to tax, the programs are there to cut, the state can do it.
And of course finally there is the printing press. Do you hear the bedlam? That's the sound of every invesor in the world begging the US to print them dollars and begging the Treasury to sell them bonds (at negative effective interest rates!) the money is there. This is not a situation that can last, obviously, and I certainly don't think a blasé indifference to the fundamentals of the country's finances would allow this favorable market to go on forever (some other large economy in the world is eventually going to get its act together) but at the moment, yes Koz, the money is there.
We can see states where "there is no money". The US is not one of those states. The US financial crisis is an artificially manufactured one produced in Washington by politicians playing politics. A green eye shadow accountant could balance the budget in twenty minutes; hell the newspapers had apps out to let you balance it yourself not long ago. You can bet the Italy, Spain or Greece's politicians would sell their children into penury to be in our shoes with only artificial debt problems to deal with. Over and over the Democrats have reluctantly (very reluctantly) allowed that cuts are needed hither and yon. Over and over the GOP has done much as you have; covering their ears and shrieking "there is no money" but it's not true no matter how much they or you repeat it. Just like you they're probably going to have to face up to the fact that revenues are going to have to rise even as expenses get cut. This is a simple fact, there is no constituency in the country for a 100% cut based solution to the problem. The party of old white government program (retirement and healthcare) dependant voters is not going to do enforce this. Neither is their opposition.
"
Except, of course, the memo you’re positing is flat out wrong. The US is taking in historically low amounts of revenue for instance, 1940's levels in fact. If tax revenue was increased even to 2000 levels then that'd be a significant amount of money. Or, if raising taxes doesn’t work for you there is always borrowing: investors are currently –paying the US government to take their money- by accepting treasury bonds that pay zero interest (once you factor in inflation it’s a negative return). So the memo is flat out wrong.
I’d hazard that the memo more accurately says “Some of the money is there, but people want to know which way you’re going to collect it and what you’re going to cut to make up the difference so they know what to expect. Sort the politics out!” And in the case of that memo I’d say the dems and the GOP are respectively only getting half the memo each.
"
Everyone makes an assortment of mistakes. No surprise there. He's had his share of hits as well as misses. Oh I checked and you recall partically correctly. Coburn supported the plan and every single other republican on the comittee opposed it, so the original point stands.
Last I heard Obama was graciously letting the GOP nomination process have the limelight. He's giving that way. Heh.
"
Jay, I used to think that myself. I went from "Surely someone pays him to say this" to "Noone would pay him to say this" to "this is performance art" but I finally settled on "No artist is this comitted to a role; this dude's believes what he writes."
"
Hogwash. Coburn flat out stated the plan was going nowhere because it included tax increases and Ryan voted against it. They didn't change their tune until Obama abandoned the thing. For the record I consider abandoning his own deficit plan one of Obama's biggest errors in his presidency.
"
It's important to understand that Republicans don't fail, they're only failed.
"
Obviously I'm no fan of republicans, sure, but mainly because I find them incoherent. As for me personally? My preferred policies would be generally what was proposed by Obama's deficit comission: taxes increased with loopholes eliminated and simplification (which would result in a lower numeric tax rate but a higher amount of revenue generated by said tax); reforms to entitlements, a vigerous cut to defense spending etc.
My pragmatic policy preferences (recognizing that no politician in the arena at the moment wants what the deficit comission proposed) are the natural expiration of the Bush tax cuts, the mandatory sequestrations from the debt ceiling showdown and then we'll have to see where we stand vis a vis the deficit at the point.
I'm pretty sure that was common knowledge round these parts.
On “Sic Semper Tyrannis!”
If you'll excuse me I am overdue to stick a barbed pin into my Mark Penn vodoo doll.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.