I'm really excited to watch the all the inauguration festivities.

jerseyhoya wrote:Looks like I got an inauguration ticket. Was planning on hunkering down in my apartment and laughing at all the fools outside, but it's really a bit of history. Probably worth standing in the cold for, not sure if it's worth braving the absurd crowds, but I live an hour walk from the Capitol. Avoid Metro, just walk everywhere. Should be OK.

Are you going to join in the Yes We Can chants? And trust me, there will be chants.

Do Democrats do "U-S-A!" chants? I like those.

Unless I pregame the inauguration extensively, I do not foresee chanting Yes We Can or anything else Obama-centric and not Yay America in general.

jerseyhoya wrote:Looks like I got an inauguration ticket. Was planning on hunkering down in my apartment and laughing at all the fools outside, but it's really a bit of history. Probably worth standing in the cold for, not sure if it's worth braving the absurd crowds, but I live an hour walk from the Capitol. Avoid Metro, just walk everywhere. Should be OK.

Scalp it to a Taco Bell insider

Werthless wrote:

drsmooth wrote:Meanwhile, over in his own column, the Times newly-minted Nobel economist is on the map all right - somewhere out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

brewing op-ed columnist fight?

Thanks for linking this. I don't regularly read Krugman, and I'm reminded why with this piece. He makes fundamental macroeconomic errors that, while they make his short articles readable for the average American trying to understand what the President can do to combat a recession, simplifies things to the point of being borderline wrong.

Here's an example of an error about economic activity that persists in most of his columns

Bear in mind just how big the U.S. economy is. Given sufficient demand for its output, America would produce more than $30 trillion worth of goods and services over the next two years. But with both consumer spending and business investment plunging, a huge gap is opening up between what the American economy can produce and what it’s able to sell.

And the Obama plan is nowhere near big enough to fill this “output gap.”

<snip>

Here's an articlewhich addresses the very point that I was talking about. And hereis a tiny snippet from Krugman demonstrating that he supports ANY public spending, even digging holes if necessary.

President-elect Barack Obama's choice to run the Treasury Department and lead the economic rescue effort disclosed to senators Tuesday that he failed to pay $34,000 in taxes from 2001 to 2004, a last-minute complication in an otherwise smooth path to confirmation.

Timothy Geithner paid most of the past-due taxes days before Obama announced his nomination in November, an Obama transition official said. The unpaid taxes were discovered by Obama's transition team while investigating Geithner's background, the official said.

jerseyhoya wrote:

President-elect Barack Obama's choice to run the Treasury Department and lead the economic rescue effort disclosed to senators Tuesday that he failed to pay $34,000 in taxes from 2001 to 2004, a last-minute complication in an otherwise smooth path to confirmation.

Timothy Geithner paid most of the past-due taxes days before Obama announced his nomination in November, an Obama transition official said. The unpaid taxes were discovered by Obama's transition team while investigating Geithner's background, the official said.

So he knows all the tricks, right? That may make more valuable when trying to squeeze out extra revenue to pay for some of the spending. I mean, choosing him just netted the federal government 34K plus penalties. Obama should look into employing other tax evaders!

jerseyhoya wrote:Looks like I got an inauguration ticket. Was planning on hunkering down in my apartment and laughing at all the fools outside, but it's really a bit of history. Probably worth standing in the cold for, not sure if it's worth braving the absurd crowds, but I live an hour walk from the Capitol. Avoid Metro, just walk everywhere. Should be OK.

Having attended two inaugurations, I can honestly say that it's worth experiencing for those interested in history and/or politics, regardless of ideology.

so some people were protesting libraries closing. These are probably the same people against the casinos. It's like they don't realize that they are receiving services for a city of 2 million when there are only 1.45 million currently within the borders. Or they don't care. There will still be 40 some library branches after the closures. I know the Wynnefield branch got NO visitors when I was there.

I also noticed the list of the ones they seek to close...they are in areas with less population than 20/50 years ago. Hell, one isn't even in the city. This is a nothing issue.

I'm impressed that Obama would go to George Will's for dinner. I'd love to hear the back story of how it came about. Who reached out to whom, etc. But it's definitely an interesting tack to take, and overall, pretty cool.

It was really out of line for me to suggest Geithner shouldn't have been the pick. I fully support him now.

Oh, yeah, I'm sorry , OBVIOUSLY you knew about his tax difficulties and how he paid his domestics when you opposed the pick. Obviously.

If the dude's a tax cheat, I don't want him in there either. Doesn't mean it wasn't a solid pick.

I just want to know how these cabinet picks, no matter who the president is, always end up to have a good 10-15% dud ratio? Who vets these people? Maybe someone should propose all the rich people in America for cabinet positions so we can weed out all the white collar criminals, tax cheats, and employers of illegal immigrants. We'll let a Republican determin what "rich" is though, otherwise we'll never finish.

VoxOrion wrote:I just want to know how these cabinet picks, no matter who the president is, always end up to have a good 10-15% dud ratio? Who vets these people? Maybe someone should propose all the rich people in America for cabinet positions so we can weed out all the white collar criminals, tax cheats, and employers of illegal immigrants. We'll let a Republican determin what "rich" is though, otherwise we'll never finish.

Haha

VoxOrion wrote:I just want to know how these cabinet picks, no matter who the president is, always end up to have a good 10-15% dud ratio? Who vets these people? Maybe someone should propose all the rich people in America for cabinet positions so we can weed out all the white collar criminals, tax cheats, and employers of illegal immigrants. We'll let a Republican determin what "rich" is though, otherwise we'll never finish.

I've wondered about this--Presidential pardons for friends of the President. Among all my friends, as far as I know, even counting bare acquaintances, I know of none who could use a Presidential pardon.

The closest I can come up with is I've met Susan McDougal. But she really was screwed by the feds.

When it comes to presidential pardons, I think your friends find you. I imagine if I was an outgoing president, I'd have a few peripheral-ish friends try to get away with something illegal and ask for a pardon.

Geithner did his own taxes in 4 of the years in question. I mean, I do my own taxes, but I'm a tax lawyer. Why would he? And then not pay taxes for his domestic employees even after people like Kimba Wood got in trouble for it. Did he harbor no hopes of ever needing Senate confirmation for anything?

i'll believe it when i see it.


i voted for him anyway, but his being in favor of lifting the clusterfcuk is actually one step more than i figured he'd be willing to go.

TenuredVulture wrote:Dajafi's favorite Republican in some trouble.

He's not a Republican anymore, though he'll probably get their line in the election; no Republican has a better chance, at any rate. And he might switch back.

But I'm actually undecided this year. The question is whether I prefer a super-arrogant Bloomberg corrupted by power and utterly convinced of his own virtue and wisdom, or a hack New York City Democrat with every flaw of the breed, further burdened by the fact that no D has held the office since Jan. 1, 1994.

Truth is that I'm kind of down on representative democracy in general these days. Which I guess suggests I'll wind up grudgingly voting for Bloomberg again, since my biggest beef with him is that he and the laughably awful NY City Council undermined that process.