Evilbore's Official Political\Media Crap Thread

[siamesedreamer]

Obama released a study about the impact his stimulus plan will have on the economy. Someone please tell me this is a joke:

We considered multipliers for the case where the federal funds rate remains constant, rather than the usual case where the Federal Reserve raises the funds rate in response to fiscal expansion, on the grounds that the funds rate is likely to be at or near its lower bound of zero for the foreseeable future.

http://otrans.3cdn.net/45593e8ecbd339d074_l3m6bt1te.pdf (page 12)

Obama is basing his entire plan on the idea that somehow the Federal Funds Rate will stay at or near zero for the duration of his first term even though he'll be showering the bond market with treasuries as far as the eye can see to pay for the incoming trillion dollar deficits. Then they go on to say that there is "considerable uncertainty about our choice of multipliers for this element of the package". But hey, who gives a shit right?

This is criminal negligence. Everyone of his "advisors" needs to be fired. How they can go along with such idiocy is beyond my comprehension. What I suspect is happening is that this is probably polling much worse than they anticipated (as Bloomberg ran an article a few days back about how they've gone back to the Clinton way of polling to decide policy) and that they are painting this plan in the best light as possible (aka lying). Which is exactly what Bush was accused of doing time after time. Change you can believe in amirite?

[Crushed]

does sd have a conscience, i wonder

i mean, if a human capable of moral introspective made statements as hypocritical and intellectually dishonest as his, they would probably kill themselves from the guilt

[Eric P]

i think he's a genius

sorry

that's disingenuous

[ToxicAdam]

All I see is people flippantly disparaging SD instead of talking about what he is bringing to the table.

[Crushed]

All I see is people flippantly disparaging SD instead of talking about what he is bringing to the table.

when someone brings a bowl of dogshit to a potluck dinner, you usually don't dwell on it

[ToxicAdam]

I think bringing a bowl of dogshit to a potluck dinner would cause quite a stir.

[siamesedreamer]

GAF   SD  EB

Its nice having a fan club.

[recursivelyenumerable]

text and/or chart(s) presenting economic and/or fiscal data over a long time span in non-inflation-adjusted currency

I will hate you forever

[Flannel Boy]

text and/or chart(s) presenting economic and/or fiscal data over a long time span in non-inflation-adjusted currency

I will hate you forever

Let's be friends.

The bars at the bottom of the charts show the political parties. The top bar is the president, the middle bar is the house majority, the bottom bar is the senate majority. Orange is Republican, blue is Democrat.

[ToxicAdam]

I really think the 90's was a "perfect storm" for fiscal responsibility. You had Bush Sr and House Dem's big tax increase in 1990 (because spending was ballooning out of control). Then Clinton came in and shifted the tax burden back onto the rich in 92-93. Then the new Republicans stormed into office in 94 with a mandate for balanced budgets and less pork. Of course, they forgot about all that in the next decade .. but they did awfully well those first few years. Then on top of all that, we had a massive decrease in military spending and no real major conflicts to deal with.

With our (apparent) need for federally funded health care, baby boomers hitting retirement age and the added costs of rebuilding infrastructure ... I can't imagine us ever getting back to those levels again (even if Obama goes back to Clinton's tax plan).

[siamesedreamer]

The 90s decade was also the period of peak productive output for the boomers.

Anyway, Clinton only had one "true" surplus as the other years needed SS fund raids to push them into positive territory. Learnted that this weekend watching "I.O.U.S.A." on CNN. Which was utterly frightening. Honestly don't know how the US isn't going to default on its debt at some point in the next 5-15 years given the political impossibility of entitlement reform. Just think, two years from now we'll be roughly close to a national debt of 100% of GDP. At the end of Obama's first term we'll be lucky if we're under 110% of GDP.

What's really interesting is that today during testimony on Capital Hill, Obama's OMB pick Peter Orszag gave deficit numbers significantly worse than the 10-year outlook released by the CBO last week (and he headed the CBO only a few weeks ago). Makes you wonder what extra costs his estimates are incorporating that the official CBO estimates aren't incorporating.

[ToxicAdam]

[siamesedreamer]

Supposed to be around 25 degrees with windchills in the single digits.

[ToxicAdam]

Time to move the capital to Miami.

[siamesedreamer]

Just a heads up here on the talking points - Bin Laden's capture is not essential.

http://thepage.time.com/2009/01/14/obama-finding-bin-laden-not-essential/?xid=rss-page

Make sure to edit your fake outrage lists.

[Phoenix Dark]

OBAMA: I think that we have to so weaken his infrastructure that, whether he is technically alive or not, he is so pinned down that he cannot function. My preference obviously would be to capture or kill him. But if we have so tightened the noose that he's in a cave somewhere and can't even communicate with his operatives then we will meet our goal of protecting America.

swing and a miss SD.

Obama probably knows Bin Laden has been dead for years

[siamesedreamer]

"We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority," Obama said during the presidential debate on October 7.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/12/binladen.hunt/index.html

Pretty obvious his intelligence briefings since the election have snapped him back to reality.

In other words, talk is cheap - especially in an election.

[Mandark]

All I see is people flippantly disparaging SD instead of talking about what he is bringing to the table.

Can you blame them?  He's got several years and a few thousand posts proving that he can be safely ignored.

He's not bright, not interested in learning, and completely uninhibited by his own ignorance.  Are we gonna have to engage with Beardo and FoC too?

Demanding that all of Obama's advisers quit for predicting a rock-bottom funds rate?  If yer dumb enough to say something like that in the first place, the odds that further discussion will produce some gems is about nil.

[siamesedreamer]

In the context of estimating the results of a $1 trillion "stimulus" plan, yes its fucking nuts they are going along with it. So, Mandark is on record as saying the Fed will keep ZIRP the next four years.

Any other takers?

[Cheebs]

"We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority," Obama said during the presidential debate on October 7.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/12/binladen.hunt/index.html

Pretty obvious his intelligence briefings since the election have snapped him back to reality.

In other words, talk is cheap - especially in an election.

It's probably briefings. He has to know SOMETHING now since he is getting the same info as Bush as of Nov 5th. Either Bin Laden is dead or well something.

[Cheebs]

The official portrait is out. You'll be seeing this picture in every single government ran office in the country pretty soon.

[Brehvolution]

[brawndolicious]

I'm predicting that Biden will probably be the brains behind this administration.  That's the main reason I voted for Obama anyways.

[Mandark]

sd, care to explain why the fed rate is about to go up?  Or how that would even affect the multiplier?

Considering you're calling for other people's jobs, one would hope you were on fairly solid ground here.

[ToxicAdam]

(Image removed from quote.)

American Flag label pin!?? Flip flopper!

I wonder what the process is behind this picture. How long it takes to decide, how many pictures they take, etc.

[AdmiralViscen]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/15/AR2009011502054.html?hpid=topnews

House Democrats Present $825 Billion Stimulus Package

[Cheebs]

I'm predicting that Biden will probably be the brains behind this administration.  That's the main reason I voted for Obama anyways.

That makes almost no sense at all. Biden's role is being severely restricted compared to Cheney's. Biden himself claims Cheney had too much power.

[siamesedreamer]

I didn't say it was "about" to go up. Rather, that it was absurd to base the estimates of the results 2-3-4 years out on the premise the Fed will maintain ZIRP. Especially when there will be ~$2.5-3.0 trillion in deficit spending over the next two years.

Tell me how you think its possible to maintain ZIRP and spend spend spend, all the while the bond market continues to absorb treasuries at an unprecedented rate and the economy recovers.

 

[brawndolicious]

wtf?  I'm not saying that Obama will be his puppet but that Biden was the most qualified candidate for president.  Obama probably picked him because he has actual experience and relationships with lots of people in Congress.  That makes him a kind of useful guy.  At least that's the reasoning that Obama gave to Biden to convince him to be VP.

[Cheebs]

wtf?  I'm not saying that Obama will be his puppet but that Biden was the most qualified candidate for president.  Obama probably picked him because he has actual experience and relationships with lots of people in Congress.  That makes him a kind of useful guy.  At least that's the reasoning that Obama gave to Biden to convince him to be VP.

Yeah I agree with that. But that is a whole lot different than claiming Biden is going to be the brains behind the white house. 

[Mandark]

Cause the deficit spending is a direct result of the ZIRP and its failure to keep us out of a deep recession.  It's called a liquidity trap, homes.  Fiscal policy steps in when monetary policy's out of ammo.

The rate on treasuries will go up when either 1) people start thinking stocks are a better investment and need to be enticed with higher returns, or 2) the Fed is worried about a tight labor market driving inflation.  Both would signal that the recession's over.

It's absurd to think the rate's going to stay low for 2 years?  Remember the early 00's recession?  The fed didn't raise rates until about four years into the recovery.


edit:  Remember, we were running some deficits at that point too and it didn't force the funds rate up.

[brawndolicious]

Yeah I agree with that. But that is a whole lot different than claiming Biden is going to be the brains behind the white house. 

being the brains doesn't mean you have the power.

[Flannel Boy]

Biden is the brains? Then I guess McCain was the looks of the Republican ticket.

I'm having a hard time believing that a man that finished at the bottom of Syracuse Law is smarter than a man who was Harvard Law Review president and who graduated magna cum laude.

[brawndolicious]

right out of school, I wouldn't guess that Biden was smarter than Obama.  Today, especially with regards to real-world politics, experience matters.

[Fresh Prince]

Eggheads don't always make the best 'anything'.

[Flannel Boy]

Eggheads don't always make the best 'anything'.

And?

[recursivelyenumerable]

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/02/bush-oral-history200902

this is pretty good

One of [Rumsfeld's] shticks—if I can call it that—at the nato meetings was always about caveats. He would pronounce the word “caveat” the way you and I might speak of some sort of sexual deviation. You know, people who had “caveats” were really evil, bad people.

lulz

[recursivelyenumerable]

oh this is kinda interesting, dunno how seriously to take it though:

Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore’s former ambassador to the United Nations: The Chinese never said so, because they are the best geopolitical strategists in the world, but it was immediately obvious that with 9/11 the U.S.-China relationship improved. The Chinese were smart. They didn’t put any real obstacles in the way of action in Afghanistan, and even if they strongly opposed the war in Iraq, they did so in a way that minimized the difficulties for the U.S. I saw that firsthand, in the period after the invasion was over, when the U.S. needed a Security Council resolution to get the oil sales flowing again. They got the resolution, and I remember asking a U.S. diplomat which country had been most helpful in getting the resolution passed. China, he replied. That 2003 resolution was a double win for the Chinese leaders: they obtained valuable political goodwill from the Bush administration, which translated into gains on the Taiwan issues, and they helped to ensure that American troops would remain bogged down in Iraq for a long time.

The Chinese have been brilliant in playing the Bush years. Asia is one part of the world where many will see George Bush in a positive light, although not necessarily for the reasons he may have wished.

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

Chinese aren't that great at geopolitics.  They just have a lot of cheap slave labor on hand and a government that isn't as incompetent as the other nations that offer slave labor wages.

[recursivelyenumerable]

They haven't been involved in a war in 30 years and have achieved explosive economic growth during that time, while maintaining control by their authoritarian government.  Seems pretty successful to me.

[recursivelyenumerable]

Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell: The Cheney team had, for example, technological supremacy over the National Security Council staff. That is to say, they could read their e-mails. I remember one particular member of the N.S.C. staff wouldn’t use e-mail because he knew they were reading it. He did a test case, kind of like the Midway battle, when we’d broken the Japanese code. He thought he’d broken the code, so he sent a test e-mail out that he knew would rile Scooter [libby], and within an hour Scooter was in his office.

wow.

[Phoenix Dark]

stimulus plan specifics so far
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2009/01/summary_american_recovery_and_reinvestment.php
*bookmarked*

[Mandark]

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/02/bush-oral-history200902

this is pretty good

One of [Rumsfeld's] shticks—if I can call it that—at the nato meetings was always about caveats. He would pronounce the word “caveat” the way you and I might speak of some sort of sexual deviation. You know, people who had “caveats” were really evil, bad people.

lulz

This is a great piece.  It's a really fun format in general.  VF did a similar thing with the history of the Simpsons which was about as entertaining (though not similarly horrifying).

[recursivelyenumerable]

· How funds are spent, all announcements of contract and grant competitions and awards, and formula grant allocations must be posted on a special website created by the President.

well I appreciate the President not wanting to pass the buck, but I really think they should hire a professional in this instance.  Obama's CMS coding skills are probably kinda rusty by now, and even if not, doesn't he have enough else on his plate?

[siamesedreamer]

stimulus plan specifics so far
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2009/01/summary_american_recovery_and_reinvestment.php
*bookmarked*

Broadband to Give Every Community Access to the Global Economy
· Wireless and Broadband Grants: $6 billion for broadband and wireless services in underserved areas to strengthen the economy and provide business and job opportunities in every section of America with benefits to e-commerce, education, and healthcare. For every dollar invested in broadband the economy sees a ten-fold return on that investment.

Only part I'm selfishly excited for. This could huge for my family's company.

[Phoenix Dark]

money for you: yay government
money for everyone else: boo government

?

[Van Cruncheon]

Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell: Cheney brings this accumulation of power and ability to influence the bureaucracy to a fine art. He surpasses Kissinger even. This is all the more ironic because Cheney was the antithesis of this when he was chief of staff of the White House under Gerald Ford and when he was secretary of defense. He was very deferential. He was not trying to insinuate himself.

But he turns everything on its head and he becomes the power. And he does it through his network. This is a guy who’s an absolute genius at bureaucracy and an absolute genius at not displaying his genius at bureaucracy. He’s always quiet.

So are most of his minions, not all of them. [David] Addington [the vice president’s counsel] is brilliant, and Addington is a strange beast, and Addington is sort of the Ayman al-Zawahiri for Cheney, the brains trust. [Chief of Staff Lewis] Libby was the doer. Libby was a real bureaucrat’s dream.

:'(

[recursivelyenumerable]

money for you: yay government
money for everyone else: boo government

?

he qualified it as selfish, in before indignant explication.

[Mandark]

Larry Wilkerson always brings the good quotes.

He's the hatchet man for Colin Powell's legacy reclamation program.  Wilkerson tells anyone who will listen that the Cheney axis was evil and wrong and his boss fought against them, while Powell demurs, only to (ever so reluctantly) let reporters know off-the-record that it's all true.

[siamesedreamer]

money for you: yay government
money for everyone else: boo government

?

Uh...its not money directly to us. As AT&T/Comsuck/Cox/etc. expand into these rural areas they are going to need our products.

[y2kev]

That pic by Leibovitz is superb. It looks like some television show.

[siamesedreamer]

I thought we were all Keynesians now?

[recursivelyenumerable]

I just bought a copy of Economic Consequences of the Peace, but haven't yet read it

[siamesedreamer]

I finished Krugman's updated Return of Depression Economics a few weeks back.

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

I was kinda hoping that now that Barack al-Jihad is now President that we no longer have to hear the name "Dick Cheney" anymore.

[siamesedreamer]

The government wouldn’t be able to spend at least one-fourth of a proposed $825 billion economic stimulus plan until after 2010, according to a new report that suggests it may take longer than expected to boost the economy.

A Congressional Budget Office analysis of President Barack Obama’s plan found that most of the approximately $355 billion in proposed discretionary spending on highways, renewable energy and other initiatives wouldn’t be spent before 2011. The government would spend about $26 billion of the money this year and $110 billion more next year, the report said.

About $103 billion would be spent in 2011, while $53 billion would be spent in 2012 and $63 billion between 2013 and 2019, the report said. Republicans said the analysis showed that the plan, unveiled last week by House Democrats, won’t get money into the economy quickly enough.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aJAoR5GECKWo&refer=home

[Positive Touch]

I was kinda hoping that now that Barack al-Jihad is now President that we no longer have to hear the name "Dick Cheney" anymore.

I think it'll be a long, long time until the name Dick Cheney drops out of political discussions.

[ToxicAdam]

About $103 billion would be spent in 2011, while $53 billion would be spent in 2012 and $63 billion between 2013 and 2019, the report said. Republicans said the analysis showed that the plan, unveiled last week by House Democrats, won’t get money into the economy quickly enough.

The most efficient way to get money back into the economy is a (temporary) reduction in payroll tax across the board. Congressional Democrats will never do it because it would leave out some of their core constituents.



This is cool, Presidential approval ratings throughout recent history: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-presapp0605-31.html

[Flannel Boy]

This is cool, Presidential approval ratings throughout recent history: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-presapp0605-31.html

Clinton, despite his "sex-scandal," is the only modern US president to end his time in office with a higher approval rating than when he entered.

[ToxicAdam]

Pretty smart of Al Gore to run away from him during his 2000 campaign. Haha.