Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

Is there anyone on this thread who is not cynical about our government?

Or, is there any reason to not be cynical about our government?

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

Finally saw most of Barry's speech and I liked large chunks of it. But, most of it is a non-starter. My guess is nothing gets done until the next election and maybe not even then. If we're lucky maybe we won't pass the debt limit thing so we can go into full bore crisis mode and be done with this crap.

 

[Priceless]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

Not to change the subject, but, um...

A few days after its main sponsor met with Donald Trump, Arizona’s “birther bill” has passed the state Senate. The bill requires a sworn statement confirming the candidates residents and… drum roll… (sorry for the caps):


A CERTIFIED COPY OF THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE’S LONG FORM BIRTH CERTIFICATE THAT INCLUDES AT LEAST THE DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH, THE NAMES OF THE CANDIDATE’S MOTHER AND FATHER, INCLUDING INFORMATION SUFFICIENT TO DETERMINE THE CITIZENSHIP OF BOTH PARENTS, THE NAMES OF THE HOSPITAL AND THE ATTENDING PHYSICIAN, IF APPLICABLE, AND SIGNATURES OF ANY WITNESSES IN ATTENDANCE.

That’s for every candidate, so only Donald Trump can qualify for the ballot as of right now. This has been written so that Barack Obama’s certificate of live birth, which does not include the name of the hospital and attending physician, does not count.

 

[bronconick]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

That'll get shot down in court in about 18 seconds.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

But, as we move further towards the American Idolization of politics, he has as much chance as anybody.

We've already had an actor.

 

[pirate]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

We've already had an actor.

And some would say we have one now

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

And some would say we have one now

Truth be told... they're all actors. The last president who was not BS'ing us all was probably James Madison. Anyway, he stood just 5' 4" and thus would obviously not be presidential timber by today's standards...

 

[joecct]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

Being "cynical" (or realistic) is fine as long as it doesn't paralyze you. "Where's there's life, there's hope."

Institutions either use us or we use them. At least the great merit of our political institutions is we can throw the bums out. Given that, every persistant problem with our politicians is just our own faulty oversight. Want politics to be more honest? Be more honest.

Cripes Greg! A simple yes or no would have sufficed!

BTW, this tidbit from the Washington Post today...

How do $38.5 billion in cuts become $350 million?
By Ezra Klein

So how do the $38.5 billion in 2011 cuts become $352 million when the CBO looks at them? Well, they don’t, not really. They become more like $20-$25 billion. But that’s still a lot less than $38.5 billion. And to understand what happened, you need to understand an important quirk of the budget process.

There’s a difference between the amount of money an appropriations committee has to spend (their “budget authority”) and the amount of money they actually do spend (their “outlays”). The numbers you hear — $38.5 billion in cuts, if you’re measuring by what we spent in 2010, or $78.5 billion, if you’re measuring against the president’s 2011 budget request — are talking about “budget authority.” But some of that money wouldn’t have been used anyway. The Census Bureau, for instance, had $2 billion or so sitting around that it didn’t end up needing. That money got sucked back in this deal. But if it hadn’t gotten sucked back in this deal, it’s not like it would have gone to pizza parties. It probably just wouldn’t have been used. It’s like the philosophers always wondered: If a tree never grows in the forest, can it really be cut?

The authority/outlay distinction doesn’t get you down to $352 million, however. Rather, that’s what you get if you’re only looking at money saved by the end of this year. But a lot of the money will actually be saved next year, or in the years to come (the Pell Grant cuts, for instance, stack up over time). So the CBO took a longer view (pdf), too, and estimated that “federal outlays over the 2011-2021 period that are between $20 billion and $25 billion lower than the amount of outlays that would be expected from having 2011 appropriations set at the same level as 2010 appropriations.”

In other words, the real number of cuts isn’t $38.5 billion. It’s probably closer to $20-$25 billion. That’s not nothing. But it’s also not $38.5 billion, and Republicans are a) figuring that out and b) unhappy about it. In the end, the CR will probably pass because a lot of Democrats are going to vote for it, but as Republicans come to realize they got a rawer deal than they were initially told, I imagine there’s going to be a fair amount of anger at John Boehner, and a lot more resistance to cutting a bipartisan deal on the debt ceiling.

See honey I save us $5,000 by not buying you a fur coat!

 

[walrus]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

Is there anyone on this thread who is not cynical about our government?

I heard Obama said rich people want to pay more taxes last night, if that doesn't make you cynical what would. Somehow people think he's the smartest person in the room

 

[Bakunin]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

Buchanan's take on budget situation
Basically we should expect no budget deal of any sort until after the 2012 election decides who controls what. Dems won't cave on Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security, and the GOP won't cave on taxes. If nobody gives in on any of those things, we can't balance the budget.

Yep, we're screwed.

 

[amherstblackbear]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

Nothing's going to change after 2012. Obama will get reelected. We'll be right back where we are now.

 

[LynahFan]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

Nothing's going to change after 2012. Obama will get reelected. We'll be right back where we are now.

At which point all the knuckleheads in the Senate will be positioning themselves for a 2016 run, so they won't take a stand on anything... 'Twas ever thus.

I only sleep well at night knowing that none of this matters anyway, because once we run out of oil, our great-great-great-grandchildren will be back to living in local agrarian communities anyway, and there's really nothing going on right now that's going to change that, so it's all pretty irrelevant.

 

[Bakunin]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

Nothing's going to change after 2012. Obama will get reelected. We'll be right back where we are now.

Well, if the GOP somehow loses the house, we'll be back to 2008 - of course, not a lot got done then either.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

Well, if the GOP somehow loses the house, we'll be back to 2008 - of course, not a lot got done then either.

I don't think the GOP is going to lose the House this time. While a fair number of the dead wood from the 2008 Freshman class will probably lose, I suspect the Dems will lose just as many through retirements (why stick around if the best you can do is be the major minority members on a committee) and some residual anti-Obama anger in districts where they're scared of death panels.

2012 was always supposed to be The Challenging Year for Dems in the the Senate, so it is entirely possible, if Obama has no coattails, for him to be comfortably re-elected while also losing the Senate and facing an all-GOP Congress. That might be the optimal result as far as deficit reduction goes, to be honest. And while it would also give Obama likely at least one and maybe two or even three more SCOTUS nominations (Scalia, Ginsburg, Breyer and Kennedy will all be nearly or over 80 by the end of the next presidential term), what you'd wind up with under those circumstances are solid centrist jurists in the mold of say O'Connor. That might oddly lessen the influence of the intellectual partisans (Scalia, Roberts) and the dingbat partisans (Thomas, Alito) compared to a more directly partisan counterweight.

 

[joecct]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

The warhorse liberals will be returned with 80% of the vote, while the bluest of blues will also be returned to office. The leaderships of both parties will not change ditto the committee chairs.

Both are willing to sacrifice pawns to advance what they perceive to be a strategic game. But, I wonder, are they playing the wrong game while Rome burns??

Oh, and Kepler, your TBRW awards are due.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

The warhorse liberals will be returned with 80% of the vote, while the bluest of blues will also be returned to office. The leaderships of both parties will not change ditto the committee chairs.

Both are willing to sacrifice pawns to advance what they perceive to be a strategic game. But, I wonder, are they playing the wrong game while Rome burns??

Oh, and Kepler, your TBRW awards are due.

Hey, I've got a job to balance against my constant USCHO posts...

Both sides kind of need the cover of a crisis to pull a reverse on their most cherished rhetoric. Really the emphasis should be on ginning up as much fear of default as possible to give Dems the cover to slash social security and Republicans the cover to bite the bejeweled hand that feeds them. When the World Was Ending during the 2008 financial crisis Congress managed to pass TARP and bail out the banks, which might go down as the single most unpopular thing any Congress has ever done. As of course during wartime people will happily vote to bankrupt themselves and send their own children to be slaughtered, weeping all the way about God and Country. Such is life with an emotional electorate.

So my advice to the calm, responsible people who want to actually achieve true fiscal reform is to encourage widespread, irrational panic.

 

[Bakunin]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

I saw an article advocating precisely that - and gave several ways to hasten the arrival of that panic (i.e. cutting tax rates to zero and increasing spending to see just how much of an appetite the world really has for our debt).

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

I saw an article advocating precisely that - and gave several ways to hasten the arrival of that panic (i.e. cutting tax rates to zero and increasing spending to see just how much of an appetite the world really has for our debt).

If you tell people that the only choice is raising taxes back to Eisenhower's brackets vs a full stop on social security checks, we'll have a 90% top rate in a fortnight.

 

[Bakunin]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

If you tell people that the only choice is raising taxes back to Eisenhower's brackets vs a full stop on social security checks, we'll have a 90% top rate in a fortnight.

Well, that's obvious due to the sheer numbers of people involved. People at the top rate are vastly outnumbered by those collecting social security checks (and perhaps just as important, the people collecting the checks vote in high numbers to protect those payments). This is why it's impossible to pass any reforms that don't spare current retirees at the expense of future ones.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

Well, that's obvious due to the sheer numbers of people involved. People at the top rate are vastly outnumbered by those collecting social security checks (and perhaps just as important, the people collecting the checks vote in high numbers to protect those payments). This is why it's impossible to pass any reforms that don't spare current retirees at the expense of future ones.

The way around that is clearly to have a maximum voting age.