Page 1 of 52 123451151 ... LastLast
Results 1 to 25 of 1276
  1. #1
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514


    Chaos Looms

    Is economic/political commentary like writing detective stories? In some ways, I think, it is; certainly I have always taken to heart some passages in Raymond Chandler’s The Simple Art of Murder, especially the passage in which he distinguishes between the inherent importance of themes and the extent to which they are a good subject for writers:

    Other things being equal, which they never are, a more powerful theme will provoke a more powerful performance. Yet some very dull books have been written about God, and some very fine ones about how to make a living and stay fairly honest.

    Right now, if inherent importance were all that mattered, I wouldn’t be writing about the effects of sprawl, or the Fed succession, or even, probably, about China’s brick-wall problem. I would instead be writing all the time about the looming chaos in U.S. governance.

    In the short run the point is that

    Republican leaders are about to reap the whirlwind, because they haven’t had the courage to tell the base that Obamacare is here to stay, that the sequester is in fact intolerable, and that in general they have at least for now lost the war over the shape of American society.


    As a result, we’re looking at many drama-filled months, with a high probability of government shutdowns and even debt defaults.

    Over the longer run the point is that one of America’s two major political parties has basically gone off the deep end; policy content aside, a sane party doesn’t hold dozens of votes declaring its intention to repeal a law that everyone knows will stay on the books regardless. And since that party continues to hold substantial blocking power, we are looking at a country that’s increasingly ungovernable.

    The trouble is that it’s hard to give this issue anything like the amount of coverage it deserves on substantive grounds without repeating oneself. So I do try to mix it up. But neither you nor I should forget that the madness of the GOP is the central issue of our time.

    While I’m at it, a note to loyal readers: I know that my output has been a bit low this week; that’s because of family matters that among other things have me on the road. My guess is no posts at all tomorrow, unless traffic is a lot less severe than I expect. Normalcy should return next week.

    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/201...os-looms/?_r=1

    House Repugs, wrapping up important business before summer vacation, squeezed in their
    40TH failed repeal of ACA.

    Will Cruz and accomplices shut down government if ACA isn't defuned, repealed? Cruz wouldn't reap that whirlwind because TX bubba assholes will vote him in again.



  2. #2
    Believe. AntiChrist's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Oct 2008
    Post Count
    1,369
    Lol Krugman

  3. #3
    Veteran
    My Team
    Houston Rockets
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Post Count
    2,176
    WE NEED AN ALIEN INVASION TO SAVE THE ECONOMY!!!

  4. #4
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Republicans Against Reality

    Last week House Republicans voted for the 40th time to repeal Obamacare. Like the previous 39 votes, this action will have no effect whatsoever. But it was a stand-in for what Republicans really want to do: repeal reality, and the laws of arithmetic in particular. The sad truth is that the modern G.O.P. is lost in fantasy, unable to participate in actual governing.

    Just to be clear, I’m not talking about policy substance. I may believe that Republicans have their priorities all wrong, but that’s not the issue here. Instead, I’m talking about their apparent inability to accept very basic reality constraints, like the fact that you can’t cut overall spending without cutting spending on particular programs, or the fact that voting to repeal legislation doesn’t change the law when the other party controls the Senate and the White House.

    Am I exaggerating? Consider what went down in Congress last week.


    First, House leaders had to cancel planned voting on a transportation bill, because not enough representatives were willing to vote for the bill’s steep spending cuts. Now, just a few months ago House Republicans approved an extreme austerity budget, mandating severe overall cuts in federal spending — and each specific bill will have to involve large cuts in order to meet that target. But it turned out that a significant number of representatives, while willing to vote for huge spending cuts as long as there weren’t any specifics, balked at the details. Don’t cut you, don’t cut me, cut that fellow behind the tree.


    Then House leaders announced plans to hold a vote cutting spending on food stamps in half — a demand that is likely to sink the already struggling effort to agree with the Senate on a farm bill.

    Then they held the pointless vote on Obamacare, apparently just to make themselves feel better. (It’s curious how comforting they find the idea of denying health care to millions of Americans.) And then they went home for recess, even though the end of the fiscal year is looming and hardly any of the legislation needed to run the federal government has passed.


    In other words, Republicans, confronted with the responsibilities of governing, essentially threw a tantrum, then ran off to sulk.


    How did the G.O.P. get to this point? On budget issues, the proximate source of the party’s troubles lies in the decision to turn the formulation of fiscal policy over to a con man. Representative Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has always been a magic-asterisk kind of guy — someone who makes big claims about having a plan to slash deficits but refuses to spell out any of the all-important details. Back in 2011 the Congressional Budget Office, in evaluating one of Mr. Ryan’s plans, came close to open sarcasm; it described the extreme spending cuts Mr. Ryan was assuming, then remarked, tersely, “No proposals were specified that would generate that path.”


    What’s happening now is that the G.O.P. is trying to convert Mr. Ryan’s big talk into actual legislation — and is finding, unsurprisingly, that it can’t be done. Yet Republicans aren’t willing to face up to that reality. Instead, they’re just running away.

    When it comes to fiscal policy, then, Republicans have fallen victim to their own con game. And I would argue that something similar explains how the party lost its way, not just on fiscal policy, but on everything.

    Think of it this way: For a long time the Republican establishment got its way by playing a con game with the party’s base. Voters would be mobilized as soldiers in an ideological crusade, fired up by warnings that liberals were going to turn the country over to gay married terrorists, not to mention taking your hard-earned dollars and giving them to Those People. Then, once the election was over, the establishment would get on with its real priorities — deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy.

    Paul nailed it, as I have so many times!


    At this point, however, the establishment has lost control. Meanwhile, base voters actually believe the stories they were told — for example, that the government is spending vast sums on things that are a complete waste or at any rate don’t do anything for people like them. (Don’t let the government get its hands on Medicare!)

    And the party establishment can’t get the base to accept fiscal or political reality without, in effect, admitting to those base voters that they were lied to.


    The result is what we see now in the House: a party that, as I said, seems unable to participate in even the most basic processes of governing.


    What makes this frightening is that Republicans do, in fact, have a majority in the House, so America can’t be governed at all unless a sufficient number of those House Republicans are willing to face reality. And that quorum of reasonable Republicans may not exist.

    http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/08/05...t-reality.html




  5. #5
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    This NOT an Onion article

    House GOP Weighs Defunding ACORN In 13th Vote To Block Funds To Defunct Organization




    When House GOP leaders abruptly shelved a bill to fund standard federal transportation and housing programs last Wednesday, one of the legislation's few uncontroversial provisions was a section banning funds for the anti-poverty group ACORN. Had Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) been able to pass the bill, it would have marked the 13th time that Republicans have voted to block federal funding for ACORN since the GOP took over the lower chamber in 2011.

    Oddly, however, ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, does not exist. And it did not exist at any time when the House GOP has held a vote on ACORN's access to government monies -- the group disbanded in the spring of 2010.


    Just why, exactly, the House GOP keeps voting to ban funding for an organization that was extinguished more than three years ago remains something of a mystery, and the subject of Democratic ridicule.


    "Word is the majority will also prohibit foreign aid to the Ottoman Empire this year," a Democratic congressional aide snarked to HuffPost. (Like ACORN, the Ottoman Empire does not exist.)

    "Thirteen votes to defund a program that no longer exists. Forty votes to repeal a health care law that is transforming millions of lives," said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), comparing the anti-ACORN legislation to the House GOP's routine votes to repeal Obamacare. "If their agenda is to do nothing on a timeline of never, they're setting record pace."


    A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) declined to comment on the ACORN legislation and directed questions to Jennifer Hing, spokeswoman for the GOP majority on the House Appropriations Committee. Hing has repeatedly told HuffPost that the defunding of ACORN is a "standard provision" that goes into most appropriations bills.


    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_3690753.html





  6. #6
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    BOEHNER URGES REPUBLICANS TO REST UP FOR MEANINGLESS VOTES AHEAD


    As House Republicans began their five-week summer vacation, their leader, House Speaker John Boehner, urged them to rest up for “the many symbolic and meaningless votes that lie ahead.”


    Mr. Boehner, while congratulating his colleagues on having voted to repeal Obamacare forty times, reminded his fellow-Republicans that their work is “far from over.”


    “I want you to come back from vacation rested and refreshed, because we’ve got another year of futile, time-wasting votes to cast,” he said. “Only the strong will survive.”


    According to Mr. Boehner, this year’s gruelling schedule of fake-repeal votes had been the G.O.P.’s “most physically punishing ever.”

    Noting that the exhausting ordeal of frequent, pointless Obamacare votes had transformed his fellow House Republicans into hollowed-out husks of their former selves, the Speaker observed, “Purely symbolic voting may be even more exhausting than actual work.”

    “It’s true that voting to repeal Obamacare has cost the American taxpayer over fifty million dollars,” he said. “But that’s nothing compared to the toll it’s taken on us.”


    For his part, Mr. Boehner said he intends to spend August at the beach, as he always does, fruitlessly trying to change the rules of volleyball.

    http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...rowitz%20(157)




  7. #7
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Cantor: We'll totally keep government running, if you give up Medicare and Social Security




    House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) suggested on Sunday that Republicans could be open to a deal on the sequester if it includes cuts to en lement programs.

    “What we need to have happen is leadership on the part of this president and the White House, to come to the table finally and say 'we're going to fix the underlying problem that's driving our deficit,'" Cantor said on "Fox News Sunday." "We know that is the en lement programs and the unfunded liability that they are leaving on this generation and the next." [...]


    "This fall is going to give us a great opportunity, I think, to all come together and try and tackle the real problem, which is the en lements,” Cantor said.

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/0...8Daily+Kos%29#

    "the real problem, which is the en lements"

    He lies, naturally as would any wealthy 1%er Repug ing the 99%.

  8. #8
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Cruz: A Government Shut Down Is No Big Deal Because It Happens Every Weekend


    Tea Party members of Congress like Sen. Ted Cruz are threatening to shut down the federal government in an effort to defund health care reform while, simultaneously, attempting to place the blame for any such shut down on President Obama.

    Obviously, pulling that off successfully will require the creation of some pretty ingenious arguments, one of which Cruz tried out last week when he was interviewed on Newsmax TV where he asserted that the term "shut down is a misnomer; what it in fact is is a partial, temporary shut down" where "nonessential government functions are temporarily suspended.

    "Now that's inconvenient," Cruz admitted, before adding "but we actually see that every single week on the weekends":

    http://www.rightwingwatch.org/conten....y3qVmNHR.dpuf

    and TX ignorant, simplistic bubbas who vote Cruz take him at his word on this bull .
    Last edited by boutons_deux; 08-06-2013 at 06:13 AM.

  9. #9
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    6 of the Nuttiest Right-Wing Statements Just from this Week Alone

    With Congress taking its summer break, Tea Partiers and other kooks were saying some of the nuttiest things we have ever heard. With straight faces!


    1. Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL): Obama’s tax on tanning beds is racist

    2. Rick Santorum: Liberals Make It Uncomfortable to Shower at the YMCA

    3. Rep. Louie Gohmert: Brags about having ‘duct-taped’ a defendant’s head, then later in the week manages to blend his Islamaphobia with his anti-Latino racism.

    4. Rep. Steve King: Global Warming is more of a religion than a science.

    5. Mike Huckabee: For your weekly dose of Islamophobia

    6. Pat Robertson’s Sanity is In Grave Doubt
    http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-an...t=3&paging=off

    NOTHING on the non-right compares with these assholes. They say this because they know their voters, co-religionists are equally ignorant, stupid assholes.



  10. #10
    One of the most best jag's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Post Count
    13,881
    I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the liberals in this forum wish boutons would have been aborted. They probably feel about him the way most Christians feel about the Westboro Baptist church.

  11. #11
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the liberals in this forum wish boutons would have been aborted. They probably feel about him the way most Christians feel about the Westboro Baptist church.
    on your knees and take your slapping like a little

  12. #12
    Veteran scroteface's Avatar
    My Team
    Dallas Mavericks
    Join Date
    Aug 2011
    Post Count
    730
    it's funny because i'm one of like 2 conservatives on this board and none of the liberals like you

  13. #13
    on instagram, str8 flexin DUNCANownsKOBE's Avatar
    My Team
    Phoenix Suns
    Join Date
    May 2011
    Post Count
    19,109
    I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the liberals in this forum wish boutons would have been aborted. They probably feel about him the way most Christians feel about the Westboro Baptist church.


    I actually find protesting funerals of dead soldiers hilarious. The "semper-fi got" signs legitimately make me laugh.

  14. #14
    Veteran
    My Team
    Dallas Mavericks
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    8,957
    Obama is a liberal Republican and neocon.

  15. #15
    Scarlett our Goddess4ever
    My Team
    Dallas Mavericks
    Join Date
    Dec 2008
    Post Count
    12,836
    As far as I know there're 3 conservatives on this board at least: scrote, me and DMC.

  16. #16
    Veteran
    My Team
    Dallas Mavericks
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    8,957
    What type of a conservative? We need to have a town hall discussion on the definitions of conservative and liberal.

  17. #17
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Donald Trump, Louie Gohmert Make Great Case For Why GOP Should Keep People Like Them Off TV

    Jonathan Karl asked Donald Trump the Important Questions, like, "Is Ted Cruz eligible to be president?" Karl knows that the answer to this question is "Yes." But Karl asked Trump because he knew it would be some Super Duper Silliness

    OMGZ!


    “If he was born in Canada, perhaps not,” Trump said, adding, “I don’t know the cir stances. I heard somebody told me he was born in Canada. That’s really his thing.”

    And Trump's "thing" is horse like this, which everyone at ABC News knew to be the case the second they agreed to interview him. I promise you, no one at ABC News thought that their interview with Trump would be good for America. Interviewing Trump is the political media version of the group of people who positioned pig's blood above Carrie at the prom and then laughed in anticipation of the big joke they were about to pull, only in this case, "America" is Carrie. "HAR DE HAR, THERE'S GONNA BE PIG BLOOD EVERYWHERE!" is what the people at ABC News said when they hatched the idea of airing an interview with Donald Trump.

    Right now, the GOP leadership is trying to tamp down the idea that they'd be willing to shut down the government unless they get an agreement from Democrats to defund Obamacare. At the end of last week, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor -- no weak-willed compromiser! -- was strongly signaling that everyone needed to take a chill pill. So naturally, ABC went out and got a guy that they knew would say something like this:

    STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you think you have the votes to defund Obamacare? It doesn't appear like that's...
    GOHMERT: No. Not right now. But we'll see after August after people go home.

    Louis, call Eric Cantor's office!


    Meanwhile, over at the Meet The Press, King was on, defending his remark, "For everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds -- and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert." There was never a moment that Gregory gave any suggestion that resolving this weeks-old matter was important to journalism or immigration reform or anything. King was doing so, just because David Gregory wanted him to come on "Meet The Press" so that everyone could watch King flop his gob over this matter one last time.


    Ana Navarro, a GOP strategist, thankfully decided that she'd heard enough. "I think Congressman King should go get himself some therapy for his melon fixation," she said. "I think there might be medication for that. I think he's a mediocre congressman who's got no legislative record, and the only time he makes national press is when he comes out and says something offensive about the undo ented or Hispanics."


    Navarro went on to say that the really great thing about King is that his stupidity is "emboldening other Republicans to speak out strongly against him, people like John Boehner, like Eric Cantor, like Paul Ryan, who are not going to stand anymore for the Republican Party being defined by somebody like Steve King."


    "There are other voices who are the adults in the room and who are working hard towards a reform," Navarro said, "And I think it's going to happen. I'm more optimistic than most."


    Well, I appreciate the optimism, but I don't share it because it is still Steve King getting booked on Sunday Morning Teevee, not these other "adults in the room."

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/11/donald-trump-louie-gohmert-steve-king_n_3740081.html

    Repugs have so many 100% asshloles, jerks, buffoons, Wild Corbras, Yonis, Snakeboys, etc, etc.

    Trump going birther on Cruz!



  18. #18
    I play pretty, no? TeyshaBlue's Avatar
    My Team
    Dallas Mavericks
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Post Count
    13,319
    lol confirmation bias feed

  19. #19
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    TB

    bull l, as always. Nothing but evidence evidence evidence, from their own ing mouths, why the Repugs are asholes, obstructionits, racists, ideologues, etc, etc.

    show evidence to contrary, iow, confirm your own Repug-sucking bias.

  20. #20
    I play pretty, no? TeyshaBlue's Avatar
    My Team
    Dallas Mavericks
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Post Count
    13,319
    lol op ed blogs = evidence.

  21. #21
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    lol op ed blogs = evidence.
    those are direct quotes from Repugs, not blog editorializing.

  22. #22
    I play pretty, no? TeyshaBlue's Avatar
    My Team
    Dallas Mavericks
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Post Count
    13,319
    Cherry picked quotes = editorializing. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. lol confirmation bias.

    Partisan hackery by non-thinking sychophants is the central issue of our time.


    http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/...h-obama-years/

  23. #23
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Cherry picked quotes = editorializing. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. lol confirmation bias.

    Partisan hackery by non-thinking sychophants is the central issue of our time.


    http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/...h-obama-years/
    that .

    The quotes stand by themselves, without any need for your bull "context". keep trying to wiggle your asshole Repugs out of their undeniable assholeness. TB

  24. #24
    I play pretty, no? TeyshaBlue's Avatar
    My Team
    Dallas Mavericks
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Post Count
    13,319
    that that you didn't read. lol simpleton. keep trying to claim some kind of relevance and I'll keep slapping you for it.

  25. #25
    I play pretty, no? TeyshaBlue's Avatar
    My Team
    Dallas Mavericks
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Post Count
    13,319
    lol boutons the shallow coward.

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •