"A black sheriff?!": The Official Topic of Obama and New Era American Politics

[Oblivion]

Wasn't Al Capone referred to as the "mayor of Chicago"?

Therefore Obama = Al Capone.

Thought that was pretty self explanatory.

[Great Rumbler]

Wasn't Al Capone referred to as the "mayor of Chicago"?

Therefore Obama = Al Capone.

Thought that was pretty self explanatory.

"Fox News logic"

[Human Snorenado]

HAY GUYZ WTF IS GOING ON IN ISRAEL AND GA-

Oh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_legislative_election,_2013

[Mandark]

HAY GUYZ WTF IS GOING ON IN ISRAEL AND GA-

Oh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_legislative_election,_2013

*cough*

[Human Snorenado]

QUIET YOU

So are Israeli elections like Groundhog Day, where if there's a crazy massacre of Palestinians right beforehand your people are stuck with four more years of Avigdor Lieberman?

[Phoenix Dark]

Veerrry tempted to defriend some folks on twitter and facebook who are cheering all this. Israel should protect itself, Palestinians hurling rockets is stupid etc etc...but cheerleading this nonsense is rather ignorance. Lots of innocent people are getting blown up right now, and most aren't Jewish.

[Mandark]

Israel-Palestine is the quickest, surest way to bring out horribly ugly tribal sentiments.  Israeli domestic politics are pretty depressing right now, too.  I'm more hopeful of normalized relations between the US and Iran than meaningful progress towards a lasting peace there.

[Oblivion]

[Broseidon]

 

[Brehvolution]

Was forced to watch faux news all weekend. Fiscal cliff, taxes going up on everyone, bengazi, fiscal cliff merry go round.

[Phoenix Dark]

[AdmiralViscen]

Was forced to watch faux news all weekend. Fiscal cliff, taxes going up on everyone, bengazi, fiscal cliff merry go round.

It amazes me that they can pretend the concept of the fiscal cliff came out of the ether

[Mandark]

Marco Rubio comments on hip-hop:

The only guy that speaks at any sort of depth is, in my mind, Eminem.

Gonna need a response from PD.

[Phoenix Dark]

I have heard many insulting or stupid arguments about hip hop over the last decade and a half, but none tops the never ending "I don't like hip hop but I like Eminem; everyone else doesn't say anything but violent or gangster stuff" meme. It will never die, and it's made worse because I live in Michigan. Even my un-hip, religious mother loves Eminem; the only other rapper she likes is Coolio, because she saw him on one of those judge shows and "he defended himself well and seemed intelligent."

I guarantee if GQ asked a follow up question (I know, I know) along the lines of "what other hip hop have you listened to?" he would say "well, I don't listen to any. I've heard a few tracks on the radio and they were rather unappealing." God dammit.

[Eric P]

i dunno.  asking politicians about rappers seems as inconsequential as to which lolcat is their favorite.

[Mandark]

To quote recursivelyenumerable from the Larry Craig "wide stance" scandal of aught six, "I know it doesn't have any impact on policy, but it's fucking funny."


Plus, it's America!  Campaigning is at least as much about signaling your tribal affiliations as it is discussing actual substance.  Which is why it took so long for Mitt Romney to figure out which TV shows to say were his favorite that he missed the deadline to respond to TV Guide.

[Madrun Badrun]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/world/middleeast/israeli-iron-dome-stops-a-rocket-with-a-rocket.html?_r=0
Man I'm happy there are wars because this kind of tech is so cool.

[Oblivion]

    Kristina Collins, a chiropractor in McLean, Va., said she and her husband planned to closely monitor the business income from their joint practice to avoid crossing the income threshold for higher taxes outlined by President Obama on earnings above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples.

    Ms. Collins said she felt torn by being near the cutoff line and disappointed that federal tax policy was providing a disincentive to keep expanding a business she founded in 1998.

    “If we’re really close and it’s near the end-year, maybe we’ll just close down for a while and go on vacation,” she said.

http://readingisforsnobs.blogspot.com/2012/11/your-job-creators-ladies-and-gentlemen.html

Take that, ObaMAO.

[Great Rumbler]

Now, The New York Times has reported that Murdoch's tweet prompted Christie to call Murdoch on November 3 to personally explain that "amid the devastation, New Jersey needed friends no matter their political party." But Murdoch rebuffed Christie's explanation for why he had praised Obama and, according to the Times, bluntly told Christie that he "risked looking like a spoiler unless he publicly reaffirmed his support for Romney." Following the call, Christie reiterated his support for Romney the following day.

 

[Phoenix Dark]

    Kristina Collins, a chiropractor in McLean, Va., said she and her husband planned to closely monitor the business income from their joint practice to avoid crossing the income threshold for higher taxes outlined by President Obama on earnings above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples.

    Ms. Collins said she felt torn by being near the cutoff line and disappointed that federal tax policy was providing a disincentive to keep expanding a business she founded in 1998.

    “If we’re really close and it’s near the end-year, maybe we’ll just close down for a while and go on vacation,” she said.

http://readingisforsnobs.blogspot.com/2012/11/your-job-creators-ladies-and-gentlemen.html

Take that, ObaMAO.

How can small business owners be this stupid...

I guess to be fair democrats do a bad job of explaining marginal tax policy; most people seem to think that if they make more than 250k than all of it is taxed at the top rate.

[Steve Contra]

Yup, someone on the facebook was saying that soon if you make a million dollars, you only keep 9% of it.   

Let's make statistics and basic economics mandatory in Highschool.  Fuck the arts.

[Mandark]

Couple months back a FB friend posted about how Obamacare would tax all house sales.  I tried to explain that it was a capital gains tax, and that the first $500k in (inflation-adjusted) profit for a primary residence is still exempt, and his response was just "January 2013."

I remember when being a nerd meant making people bored or mildly exasperated, rather than outright hostile.

[Steve Contra]

I also told some conservative friends that Israel is merely a regional problem and not really the epic world shaking problem they imagine it to be.

You can imagine how that went over

[Mandark]

ahaha

A conservative I know tried to sell me on McCain in '08 by sending me to a Ben Shapiro video on how Obama was going to let Israel be overrun by Arab terrorists.  I'm not sure which was more insulting: that he thought my Jewiness must imply a devotion to Israel so slavish I'd ditch all my other beliefs, or that he thought I'd take anything Ben Shapiro said seriously.

[Phoenix Dark]

"Obama will abandon Israel in their time of need!" was the original whitey tape. I can't say I'm surprised there don't seem to be any loud complaints about the US response to Israel's recent actions - conservatives seem the loudest when nothing is happening.

[Joe Molotov]

I also told some conservative friends that Israel is merely a regional problem and not really the epic world shaking problem they imagine it to be.

You can imagine how that went over

They explained their positions rationally and without doomsday rhetoric?

[Great Rumbler]

Dean Chambers is back!

http://www.barackofraudo.com/

[Howard Alan Treesong]

Dean Chambers is back!

http://www.barackofraudo.com/

Barack O'Fraudo, our first Irish president.

[Mandark]

Unskewed geneology.

[Himu]

 

[Great Rumbler]

"more responsive to the people it represents" = "more responsive to what I want"

[Howard Alan Treesong]

"Ron Paul for the 2013 United SOUTHERN States of America"

hmm ... 2 birds 1 stone

[Joe Molotov]

Dean Chambers is back!

http://www.barackofraudo.com/

Barack O'Fraudo, our first Irish president.

I knew it was you, Fraudo. You broke my heart.

[Barry Egan]

Romney resurfaces after losing his bid for the most powerful office in the world:

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[Human Snorenado]

THAT POOR HAIR

[Human Snorenado]

Some days, I have to pinch myself to remember that Andrew Breitbart is still dead and Obama will be President for another four years.  Feels good, man.

[Barry Egan]

yea, that picture helped persuade me that I have somehow managed to slip out of the Darkest Timeline for a spell.  Soon it will be raining donuts. 

[Broseidon]

Romney fills up his own tank? I would have thought he'd have someone to do that for him.

[Stoney Mason]

Ron Paul. 

I like how crazy people have followed his schtick all the way to the inevitable Confederacy argument of state's rights and secession. Yep. These people aren't racist. They just coincidentally have the exact same views as racist people.

So sad that a person can have the right opinion on defense issues and then spoil it by being bat shit insane on everything else.

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

So sad that a person can have the right opinion on defense issues and then spoil it by being bat shit insane on everything else.

Sometimes a broken clock is right twice a day.

[Stoney Mason]

So sad that a person can have the right opinion on defense issues and then spoil it by being bat shit insane on everything else.

Sometimes a broken clock is right twice a day.

True. It's just sad to me when a person speaks correctly on a particular issue (and is one of the few people doing it on the public stage) and then ruins it by being a scumbag on other stuff or in his personal life. I feel roughly the same about John Edwards who spoke very eloquently about poverty in America and then ruined it by being a hideous monster in his personal life.

[Mandark]

I'm fine about it, cause I only supported him for president.  Stoney's volunteer work on his campaign for Husband of the Year 2008 does look pretty bad in retrospect.

[Human Snorenado]

I kind of disagree.  John Edwards was basically right about 95% of everything he said.  In his private life, he was an adulterous jerk, but whatever.  He'd run the country better than, say, George W. Bush did, or arguably even other Democrats.

Ron Paul is right about civil liberties and defense spending.  I'd like to see some more transparency from the fed, as well.  Other than that, he's disastrously, disastrously wrong on everything. 

To me, your fundamental views on what you want government to do are more important than who you're fucking out of wedlock, basically.

[Mandark]

I'll take it a bit further.

It's not totally clear whether the Edwards who ran for the Democratic nomination was more or less the "real" Edwards that served as Senator from NC, or that either one is real.  But it doesn't really matter.  Worst case scenario he was a Democrat who was going to be beholden to a Democratic coalition and surrounded by Democratic staff, and on top of that at least believed it was in his self-interest to talk explicitly about the plight of the poor.

Ron Paul's a nutbar whose ideas about foreign policy and civil liberties are more the product of his own dogma than any reasoned empathy for his fellow man.  There's no real point in discussing how he'd fare as president, because he could only ever win an election on an Earth Prime with very different politics from ours.

[Oblivion]

Some days, I have to pinch myself to remember that Andrew Breitbart is still dead

The guy may have been a scumbag, but there's no reason to beat a dead Breitbart horse.

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[Himu]

Romney resurfaces after losing his bid for the most powerful office in the world:

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He looks like someone fresh out of the bed either from drinking all day or having sex all day or both.

[ToxicAdam]

A rough framework of the deal?

December 21st, people keep saying. We’ll have a deal by December 21st… Here’s how it could work: The top-income tax cuts expire, as Obama wants. Those cuts only raise about $80 billion in 2013, so they’re a ‘down payment’ on reform. And their cost is that the Democrats identify roughly $80 billion in spending cuts that can be passed into law now — so Republicans also get a ‘down payment’ on the bigger deal. And all this happens in the context of a framework for a larger deal, which includes the promise of tax reform in 2013.”

Basically this is all piddly shit and more punting into the future.

[Mandark]

Deficit reduction of $160 billion in a single year (~$2 trillion for the typical 10-year forecasts, assuming 5% nominal GDP growth) would not be piddly shit.

Especially by the standards of a lame duck Congressional session.

[Phoenix Dark]

and lets not forget that getting rid of the Bush tax cuts is not a one year effect - it'll reduce the deficit by what, 800b over ten years? That alongside no longer wasting hundreds of billions in Iraq/Afghanistan alone will significantly reduce the deficit (even more so once the recession's effects wear off and the economy starts growing at a good pace).

please don't tell me you're gonna pull the "raising rich people's taxes would only pay to run the government for a day!" card TA  :'(

[Mandark]

and lets not forget that getting rid of the Bush tax cuts is not a one year effect - it'll reduce the deficit by what, 800b over ten years?

Deficit reduction of $160 billion in a single year (~$2 trillion for the typical 10-year forecasts, assuming 5% nominal GDP growth) would not be piddly shit.

*ahem*

[Phoenix Dark]

damn my bad

[ToxicAdam]

Deficit reduction of $160 billion in a single year (~$2 trillion for the typical 10-year forecasts, assuming 5% nominal GDP growth) would not be piddly shit.

Especially by the standards of a lame duck Congressional session.

The CBO's projections of GDP are shit. It's (more likely) going to be 1-3 percent for the foreseeable future, with another mild recession likely. Which means less revenues overall and more pressure to increase federal spending to plug the leaky holes in our dike.

Look, I get undoing the Bush Tax cuts in slow steps and using them as the new quasi-welfare program for the lower classes ... but "protecting" the middle and upper middle class by keeping them at the same rates is just bad policy. You're talking about even more trillions of dollars in revenues lost. Which means more deficits and more political power to the Grover Norquist's of the country.

Every year they punt their responsibility in letting them expire is another opportunity lost and another shot at someone else making them permanant.


http://www.motherjones.com/files/images/blog_cbpp_deficit_long_term.jpg

[Mandark]

Nominal GDP.

Today is the day of people barely skimming over my posts.   :'(

[ToxicAdam]

My point is still the same. This is the projections of the most recent CBO report:

As the economy adjusts to a lower path for budget deficits, real GDP is projected to begin growing again in late 2013. The pace of economic expansion will average 4.3 percent from 2014 through 2017, CBO projects, although the economy will continue to operate below its potential level (when output reflects a high rate of use of labor and capital) until 2018.

[Mandark]

So set the nominal rate to 4% if you want, but that doesn't change the fact that $160 billion in reduction in 2013 gets you about $2 billion total reduction in the span of 2013-22.  Which ain't de minimis.

Plus the projection you're citing is for a baseline scenario where all the fiscal cliff policies go into effect, plus stuff like the AMT and Medicare reimbursement rates which are always adjusted.  It's a completely unrealistic "current law" calculation which they're obligated to do, but won't reflect any reasonably possible political outcome.  In that scenario, they have the US in an outright recession for a year, then showing above-average growth for a few years* before it settles into 2.4% real growth for the half-decade after that.

So it's not like the CBO's throwing out fantasist growth numbers to smooth over the math, Paul Ryan style.

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*Isn't this unrealistic in light of sluggish growth following the last two recessions?  Not really.  I think the implicit judgment is that recessions from asset bubbles last longer because of the debt overhang, while a 2013 recession based on contractionary fiscal policy would act like a typical recession caused by contractionary monetary policy (like in 1982), where you get a sharper bounceback.

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[Phoenix Dark]

If you believe GDP growth will remain tepid and the another recession is on the horizon...why would you raise taxes on the middle class?

[Mandark]

Here's what I think are important things to remember for this negotiation:


* Right now we're talking about a lame duck session that has basically one month to pass anything  Historically that's not nearly the amount of time they need. The 1986 tax reform bill took almost a year, and Clinton's first budget with all the deficit reduction took six months, despite being a single-party affair. The only reason they're even trying to get anything done is because of all the stuff that's scheduled to expire; no way does a grand bargain get done before Xmas.

* The fiscal cliff doesn't immediately halve the deficit/wreck the economy when it goes into effect. It's like any economic policy change: the effects are cumulative, and living with it for a couple months will probably not kill us (besides which the effects can be rolled back in the subsequent deal).

* Unless you believe deficit reduction is an important moral goal for its own sake, then the whole point of closing the gap is the benefits to the country in economic growth and stability. Because we're still in an economy with a lot of slack and at the zero lower bound for monetary policy, sharply reducing the deficit this year would probably be counterproductive for those goals.

* There will be lots of numbers thrown around.  If something is said to increase or decrease the deficit/revenues/spending, then check both the time horizon and the baseline against which it's being measured. This is important! There are going to be apples-to-oranges comparisons flying all over the damn place.

* There is no "permanent" policy on taxes, spending or anything else. There are policies which are designed in a way that make them more or less likely to stay in place going forward, but that's it. Future governments will pass their own bills and make their own changes depending on the political and economic situations they find themselves in. There will be other chances to get what you couldn't this time, and opportunities for your opponents to roll back what you were able to get.  Grover Norquist's biggest victory came when the federal government was running a surplus; rebalancing the budget will make him irrelevant.



SHORTER: Short-term deficits don't really need to be reduced, and long-term deficits are almost impossible to affect via the budget process. In terms of balancing the budget, the middle term is where the action is.

[AdmiralViscen]

If you believe GDP growth will remain tepid and the another recession is on the horizon...why would you raise taxes on the middle class?

DEBT DEFICIT 16 TRILLION

[ToxicAdam]

If you believe GDP growth will remain tepid and the another recession is on the horizon...why would you raise taxes on the middle class?

Every dollar of an upper class family's income passes through the middle class tax brackets. So, by 'protecting' the person/family that is barely in the middle class bracket (and would only see a small portion of their income hit by higher taxes), you are missing out on trillions of dollars in revenues (over a 10 year period) from other family units that can afford it.

There are more (and larger) tax breaks for the middle class than ever before. IRA tax break (up to 5000), Saver's Tax Credit, EITC, Child Tax Credit, American Opportunity Credit (college tuition write-off), Lifetime Learning Credit, Student Loan Interest credit, Child care tax credits. Plus all the other tax breaks that small businesses get that are not afforded others.

Granted, if you are a high school educated, twenty-something, single and making a middle class salary .. you will not see most of these breaks. But they are out there and people are using them.

Unless you believe deficit reduction is an important moral goal for its own sake, then the whole point of closing the gap is the benefits to the country in economic growth and stability. Because we're still in an economy with a lot of slack and at the zero lower bound for monetary policy, sharply reducing the deficit this year would probably be counterproductive for those goals.

Maybe you are right, but we seem to be heading in unchartered waters here (long-term). SO, while it would be foolish to expect (or even want) a balanced budget, it's not foolish to want more done than is currently proposed. This country just went through 4+ years of trillion dollar deficits .. more than 20-30 percent in revenues/cuts is not a big ask.

[Mandark]

Over 30% deficit reduction is >$300 billion in cuts/tax hikes in one year, which would almost hurt an already slow recovery, if not give us another recession.  I just don't see much benefit in immediate austerity, especially compared to the downside.

In terms of debt burden, we're not in a completely new situation.  The US in WW2 and Japan recently have had higher debt/GDP ratios IIRC and survived without soaring inflation and interest rates (just as both are still low in the US now, despite certain predictions to the contrary).