US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

Sorry, I mean I read it when I was in college. I don't know what kind of bathtub Norquist had in college.

one filled with the blood of the poor, presumably

he want to harvard so presumably one made of gold

depends on which house he lived in

now I can't stop thinking about how Michelle Bachmann would pronounce "denouement"

"denno-weement"

Deweening?

http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/07/14/269210/michele-bachmanns-weak-command-of-yiddish/

Deneweemint

http://news.yahoo.com/ap-source-fbi-probing-news-corp-9-11-185600706.html">FBI opens investigation into News Corp

FBI opens investigation into News Corp dammit

BTW in re the debt ceiling stuff, in a more paranoid (lucid?) moment recently it dawned on me that maybe the Bush tax cuts were a kind of time bomb attempt to force later government shrinkage.

this was noted at the time they passed by certain people

― i hate it when rats eat my bushels (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, July 14, 2011 8:37 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

the gimmicks used to make an $800-billion-plus tax cut carry an official price tag of only $320 billion are a joke, yet the cost without the gimmicks is so large that the nation can't possibly afford it while keeping its other promises.

But then maybe that's the point. The Financial Times suggests that ''more extreme Republicans'' actually want a fiscal train wreck: ''Proposing to slash federal spending, particularly on social programs, is a tricky electoral proposition, but a fiscal crisis offers the tantalizing prospect of forcing such cuts through the back door.''

Paul Krugman 2003

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/27/opinion/stating-the-obvious.html

It's hard to fathom -- it seems like you'd have to have an almost religious devotion to the idea of small govt to pull that kind of shit.

"almost"

I know, I just can't completely get my mind around it. It's one thing to think "we can't afford to have the government taking care of everyone" or even "I'm uncomfortable with the government taking care of people" -- it's another to think "I want to MAKE the government unable to afford to take care of everyone"

well if you honestly believe that the government taking care of people is bad for the economy/bad for society, then slashing the tires is a good deed

right

among some of these ppl it's not just bad for the economy or our government, it's bad for people ~existentially~

if they think government is so bad, WHY ARE THEY RUNNING FOR OFFICE

"Hey, there's enough food for everyone. Let's burn some of it."

these people are basically right-wing anarchists

if they think government is so bad, WHY ARE THEY RUNNING FOR OFFICE

to make it worse! literally!

lol

ie, the only authority they are willing to invest the state with is the authority to kill people

xp

beyond that, all bets are off

these people are basically right-wing anarchists

― i hate it when rats eat my bushels (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, July 14, 2011 8:19 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

http://www.fr33minds.com/product_info.php?products_id=467

those are left-wing anarchists tho

I thought it was obvious that the point of the big spending GOP was to cause fiscal crisis so as to undo the New Deal / Great Society.

^^^yeah this has been the plan for generations afaict

those are left-wing anarchists tho

― i hate it when rats eat my bushels (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, July 14, 2011 8:33 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

did you look at the other books on that page? this is a convo that's happenin

same dude: http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2011/07/should-bleeding-hearts-be-anarchists/

lol no sorry - I always skip that kind of "customers who bought this also bought this" crap (I have no interest in other people's shitty tastes thenkyewveddymuch)

The strategy goes back to Reagan, doesn't it?

Prior to being elected as the President, then-candidate Ronald Reagan foreshadowed the strategy during the 1980 US Presidential debates, saying "John Anderson tells us that first we've got to reduce spending before we can reduce taxes. Well, if you've got a kid that's extravagant, you can lecture him all you want to about his extravagance. Or you can cut his allowance and achieve the same end much quicker."

It appears the earliest use of the term "starving the beast" to refer to the political-fiscal strategy was in a Wall Street Journal article in 1985 where the reporter quoted an unnamed Reagan staffer.

(Wikipedia)

Grover Norbit from the same article: "A well-known proponent of the strategy is activist Grover Norquist who famously said 'My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.'"

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/271915/do-not-be-complacent-kevin-d-williamson

kevin d. williamson, of all people, trying to talk to the crazies

McCain: "We're Not Winning"
from The Page by Mark Halperin by Mark Halperin
Sen. says, "If I were Boehner and Cantor, I'd get one of our highly respected Republican pollsters to come over and brief them."

lol

At times like these, I comfort myself with the idea that John McCain definitely vetted Sarah Palin and included her on his ticket as a way to destroy the party through the magic of STUPID.

it ain't just in america. look what cameron's proposed, amid the smokescreen of the hacking scandal:

Under the changes, every public service except for national security, frontline policing and the judiciary will be opened up to providers from the private and voluntary sector.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/11/david-cameron-promises-end-state-monopoly-public-services

yes, you read that right.

^^^Yes, been monitoring that and all the other shite Cameron is trying to bury while everyone's busy flaying Rupert Murdoch.

what a guy

william gibson here we come

opened up to

what does this mean? i mean, sure, if you want to get into the "caring for the desperately poor and sick" game for the money, go ahead and try...

It could have horrible consequences for the NHS, is the thing... but UnitedHealth and similar are very excited about this, goole! You should be looking into this story IMO.

what does this mean? i mean, sure, if you want to get into the "caring for the desperately poor and sick" game for the money, go ahead and try...

a lot of the pressure that's been applied since the announcement is in light of the kind of privatisation that killed stuff like royal mail, here, last time around; services arise that skim the easier practices leaving public services to deal with the more complicated & more expensive ones. amongst the other subsidiary problems for the nhs would be limiting the kind of small-scale, daily-bread kinda practices that are used in teaching & training nurses & doctors

with the mail, btw, that meant royal mail being the ones that had to schlep recorded delivery envelopes to the remotest corners of scotland, without the counterweight of making money from abundant inner-city, straightforward deliveries.

Oh, "cream skimming"! I learned all about that in telecom law this year! Although in that context it was more independent private actors skimming from a govt-approved private monopoly than from a service directly provided by the govt.

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/jamesfallows/assets_c/2011/07/UMB%20Debt%20Sign-thumb-1200x900-57474-thumb-560x420-57475.jpg

Obama keeps trying to work little deals that Republicans keep saying no to. They like tax breaks and they don't like helping Obama on the jobs front

Mr. Obama suggested in Thursday’s meeting that leaders end tax breaks for ethanol producers, oil and gas companies and corporate jet owners, and offset those tax increases with an extension of the payroll tax credit for employees, a Democratic official familiar with the meeting said, but Republicans said they would not support it.

So now the House is taking their time (according to TPM) because--

Scores of House Republicans say they won't vote to raise the debt limit unless a Constitutional balanced budget amendment has been sent off to the states for ratification. And so whatever Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and other Congressional leaders decide about the real path ahead, he'll hold votes next week on a major spending cut and spending cap plan that includes a hike in the debt ceiling, and, separately, on a balanced budget amendment. The latter would require a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate and, in its current form, stands little chance of passing either chamber.

The votes themselves will put some political pressure on Democrats to support the nominally popular balanced budget amendment, and will allow Republicans to claim they voted to raise the debt limit in the event that the government runs out of borrowing authority. But the so-called "cut, cap, and balance" approach is dead on arrival in the Senate.

house doing a good job of making the senate look like a bastion of sanity