Oh yeah, Obama gave another back to school speech. THis time, no one cared since they were too busy hating gays and muslims.

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:I'm hopeful if the system remains ridiculously effed up, that leaves the window open for radical tax reform, and not a bandaid fix like hiking the taxes on a small segment of the population a modest amount.

it's confusing to see you calling for radical tax reform when something as tame as allowing a tax break for the wealthiest to lapse makes you queasy.

Who said I was queasy about it?

well, I guess I read the quote below to be an expression of your belief in the protest that letting the upper-crust tax break lapse will cost all sorts of jobs:

Raising these taxes will cost jobs in the short and medium term, but less than raising other taxes and you can make the argument that the job losses in the short run are a small price to pay for the long term budget health and all that.

That seems a protest only mitch mcconnell could mutter with a straight face.

Huh? Do you think raising taxes on the top 2% or whatever 200k for singles, 250k for joint filers works out to, will cause an increase in jobs? Have no effect on jobs?

pacino wrote:Oh yeah, Obama gave another back to school speech. THis time, no one cared since they were too busy hating gays and muslims.

Let the indoctrination begin. Muhahahaha!!!

Fitzpatrick up 14 on Patrick Murphy

Deffo on my top ten wants in November. Bastard.

Got the George Will treatment today too. Kind of a crappy article.

The Vietnamese say it's the people's seat, Loretta. (People's in a non Commie usage)

traderdave wrote:I thought Erik Erickson's "review" was pretty good also:

http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/09/2 ... mcclellan/

When RedState and National Review disagree, it's a mortal certainty that National Review is right.

jerseyhoya wrote:Huh? Do you think raising taxes on the top 2% or whatever 200k for singles, 250k for joint filers works out to, will cause an increase in jobs? Have no effect on jobs?

If you mean in real terms, almost none. Jobs data is quite possibly the least reliable, most politicized stuff on the planet. It's crap. Spongy, loosey-goosey, fudged every which way. Ask a noted liberal like Barrons' Gene Epstein what he thinks of its quality.

If you mean can your favored flavor of politicians make whiny noises about such practical impacts, masking the naked greed of their masters' demand to be relieved of financial burdens of the society that permits their station in the first place, oh sure - but not based on anything like incontrovertible facts.

It's interesting to me what's left out of the Republican thing--dead silence on free trade. The greatest force for positive economic change ever--more important for future prosperity than any tax cut, and there's nothing. So basically the Republicans are going to continue to redistribute money from the young and the urban to farmers and old people. Redistribution is redistribution, no matter who gets what.

The stuff on TARP is a joke, as TARP is over and in fact will in the end probably make the government money.

I actually like the stuff on Freddie and Fannie, except that it doesn't go quite far enough. Phase them out.

Matt Bai on CT politics & Linda McMahon

loved this quote from Lowell Weicker:

Coincidentally, and a little oddly, Weicker sits on McMahon’s board at W.W.E. After a lengthy discussion of the health care reform law, I asked him if McMahon, who favors repeal, knew what she was talking about. “No,” he answered, waving me away as if I had just asked whether either of his large dogs could fly. “I think she’s following the Republican line — to say no.”

The democrats are going to get destroyed in November aren't they? looking at 538s predictions it seems like every "tossup" they are predicting 80 and 85 percent chance that the R wins it.

Yes?

Colbert is testifying before Congress on immigration today in character. When we look back at this mercifully short 4 year reign of Pelosi, this will be remembered as both a high and low point.

Colbert: "Maybe this bill would help. I'm not sure. Like most members of Congress, I haven't read it."

just for fun? these politicians, ugh.

"I was a corn packer. I know that term is offensive to some people, because corn packer is a derogatory term for a gay Iowan."

jerseyhoya wrote:Colbert is testifying before Congress on immigration today in character. When we look back at this mercifully short 4 year reign of Pelosi, this will be remembered as both a high and low point.

Colbert: "Maybe this bill would help. I'm not sure. Like most members of Congress, I haven't read it."

You know. Even as a Repub, I love Colbert and like Stewart alot but whoever thought this was a good idea is pretty stupid. There's a place for celebrity paid comedy but this really isn't it.

SQUIRE

That line was crossed when Clinton answered the "boxers or briefs" question on MTV.

Brooks, getting right wrong again, this time with help from Philip K Howard:

The Responsibility Deficit
One of the oddities of the current moment is that the country wants a radical change in government but not a radical change in policy....

....What’s needed, Howard argues, is a great streamlining. He’s not calling for deregulation. It’s about giving teachers, doctors and officials the power to actually make decisions and then holding them accountable. Some of their choices will be wrong, Howard acknowledges, but it is better to live in an imperfect world of individual responsibility than it is to live within a dehumanizing legal thicket that seeks to eliminate risk through a tangle of micromanaging statutes.

Brooks - more accurately, Howard - conveniently ignores the complete lack of incentives for anyone to take on the role of streamliner-in-chief, a job in which authority is totally absent currently and would be hard-won at best.

Non-technophiles (and technophiles who are uninterested in social ramifications of their favorite technologies) don't grasp the opportunity to allow tech to play exactly that 'streamlining' role, or something as close to it as we're likely to get.

Also not grasped is that the 'streamlining' will not be authorized - it will be subversive, of necessity rather than desire. Why? Because you're talking about letting a thousand chokepoints (probably more like a million and one chokepoints) wither - and with the withering, 10,000 whose livelihoods depend on each chokepoint withering as well.

When an infrastructure decays - whether roads, or as Brooks is addressing, the operating apparatus of social fabrics - those charged with responsibility for fixing the problem can a) pave over what's been b) introduce substitutes for what's been c) discover that others have usurped their official functions by introducing workable substitutes for what has been. "C-type" changes, which may be the most common and ultimately the most effective (the most satisfying, the most enduring, the changes the most people are the least unsatisfied with), nonetheless happen fitfully, crudely, with plenty of mistakes and problems and uproar.

Brooks apparently assumes his streamlining would take place without any, or at least much, of the kind of disruption - the kind of violence - that happens with any revolution. That seems remarkably naive.

I've not read any Howard, but it sounds like he's on to something, and I don't trust Brooks to get it right. A solid book exposing the dilemmas and how we got to the point of a "responsibility deficit" is Robert Behn's Rethinking Democratic Accountability. It's sort of old, coming out in 2001.

So what did y'all think about Christie's rant in California? Maybe it is me but I found it interesting that he made sure speak into his mic when he went after the guy; like he knew he was creating a great sound bite.