The Democrat Thread

[StrangeSox]

That is pretty funny after hearing about all of the ways that Obama won't compromise now.

 

Democrats have offered all sorts of spending cuts and the Republican line has remained "absolutely no new revenues"

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein

I knew the White House wanted a compromise on the debt ceiling. I just didn't expect them to do quite so much, well, compromising.

 

Here's what appears to have been in the $4 trillion deal they offered the Republicans: A two-year increase in the Medicare eligibility age. Chained-CPI, which amounts to a $200 billion cut to Social Security benefits. A tax-reform component that would raise $800 billion and preempt the expiration of the Bush tax cuts -- which would mean, for those following along at home, that the deal would only include half as much revenue as the fiscal commission recommended, and when you add the effect of making the Bush tax cuts a permanent part of the code, would net out to a tax cut of more than $3 trillion when compared to current law.

 

What a bunch of uncompromising socialist bastards.

Edited July 12, 2011 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Anonymous hacked into another FBI contractor:

http://thenextweb.com/industry/2011/07/08/...t=Google+Reader

Hacking group Anonymous has today released an archive containing what it claims to be private emails and databases of IRC Federal, a contractor that partners with the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of the Army.

 

The group calls this latest release ‘F*ck FBI Friday II’ and says that it “laid nuclear waste to their systems, owning their pathetic windows box, dropping their databases and private emails.”

 

Anonymous says that it found information in the emails that includes “various contracts, development schematics, and internal documents for various government institutions.”

 

As well as 90,000 more emails from the US military

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/90000...urce=feedburner

The first wave of results have just been released, (Pirate Bay link) which Anonymous is calling #MilitaryMeltdownMonday. Anonymous targeted consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton that often works the with U.S. Department of Defense and National Security Administration and gained access to 90,000 military emails, four gigabytes of source code (which was erased from the Booz Allen Hamilton servers) along with login credentials and other sources of information that Anonymous can hack along the intelligence community's digital infrastructure. What did Anonymous find in Boox Allen Hamilton's servers and how damaging could be it be to American homeland security?

 

In terms of what Anonymous found in the Booz Allen Hamilton servers, there are certainly items that will get people fired. One of the bigger items is Boox Allen Hamilton's association with security company HBGary. Booz Allen Hamilton and HBGary Federal proposed software for a sophisticated program (dubbed Metal Gear by Anonymous) that would allow security teams to control "sock puppet" online identities in social media spheres that would attempt to steer conversation about certain topics.

 

Balta, I'm on to you!

Edited July 12, 2011 by StrangeSox

[BigSqwert]

Krugman echoes Greenwald's (perpetual) meltdown over Obama's policies.

 

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/1...-that-into-you/

 

To paraphrase, at what point does "he's too weak" or "he gives in too easy" stop working and you have to say "he's not really very liberal at all?"

 

eta Krugman also lays into his speech here

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/1...l-flow-fallacy/

Did you want to have the huge "Obama '12" rally at my house or at yours?

 

/sarcasm

[Balta1701]

That is pretty funny after hearing about all of the ways that Obama won't compromise now.

[StrangeSox]

Democrats refuse to negotiate (and by negotiate we mean give us every single thing we demand, basically our entire party economic platform in one lump sum while getting absolutely nothing back), blame them!

[Balta1701]

Democrats refuse to negotiate (and by negotiate we mean give us every single thing we demand, basically our entire party economic platform in one lump sum while getting absolutely nothing back), blame them!

Unless Obama finds a way to cut a value greater than 100% of discretionary spending, without cutting Medicare, Social Security, or Defense, he's being a d***.

[BigSqwert]

[StrangeSox]

Cantor: Dishonest POS or idiot?

 

 

The cardinal principle of grand bargaining is that “nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to.” In other words, if you’re going to have a balanced agreement in which Democrats agree to do some things Republicans want in exchange for Republicans agreeing to do things Democrats want, you need to be able to talk about those “things” in a conditional way. For example, I would be willing to index Social Security benefits to the Chained CPI (a small benefit cut) if we also indexed tax brackets to the Chained CPI (a modest tax increase). But that doesn’t mean I’ve “agreed” to index Social Security benefits to the Chained CPI. It’s a bargaining chip.

 

Eric Cantor who, despite some appearance to the contrary, isn’t too stupid to understand this has decided to pretend not to understand it. In an earlier phase of negotiations headed by Joe Biden, the White House was prepared to entertain almost $2 trillion in cuts in exchange for Republicans agreeing to some tax increases. But Republicans rejected that, because they reject tax increases. Then later, President Obama tried to up the ante by suggesting $4 trillion in deficit reduction, again balanced between spending cuts and tax increases. But Republicans rejected that, because they reject tax increases. Now Cantor has put together a slide show based on the false premise that a bipartisan “Biden Framework” existed to do the almost $2 trillion in cuts. And his proposal is that instead of doing the $4 trillion in deficit reduction, they just implement the made-up framework.

 

The whole thing strikes me as laughable. But I do think it’s important to appreciate that this kind of partial leaking of the contents of negotiations has the tendency to poison the atmosphere. The whole reason that “nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to” is that to reach a bargain you need to have a pretty open and flexible discussion. If everyone in the room knows that Cantor has no compunction about misrepresenting every discussion as an agreement, it merely makes it that much harder for people to negotiate in a serious way.

 

More

 

A source passed along the slides from the presentation that Cantor is using to sell the deal to his caucus. The slides provide more detail than we’ve yet seen on the specific cuts that Cantor, at least, believes were agreed to in the Biden talks. It calls those cuts “Obama’s version: the Biden framework,” which Cantor says was revenue neutral, and then compares them with “Reid’s deal,” a trillion-dollar package that avoids entitlement cuts altogether, and “Obama’s version: The Big Deal,” which is the $4 trillion deal that fell apart last weekend.

 

The final slide lists the GOP’s “Agreement Principles”: No tax increases, which rules out “the big deal”; a dollar-for-dollar match between the increase in the debt ceiling and the spending cuts, which rules out “Reid’s deal,” unless the White House agrees to a short-term increase in the debt ceiling; and spending controls and caps, which aren’t included in any of the deals

[southsider2k5]

Cantor: Dishonest POS or idiot?

 

 

 

 

More

 

the Blago defense huh.

[StrangeSox]

the Blago defense huh.

"Basic negotiation practices", a novel concept for the GOP.

[Balta1701]

"Basic negotiation practices", a novel concept for the GOP.

I'd say they're succeeding markedly on the basic negotiation front here. Aside from a few angry bloggers, who is actually going to call him on this?

 

If he pretends that Obama has given up those points, not as a negotiation matter but in general, the media won't call him on it, his side can run outside ads saying "Obama agreed to raise the Medicare age to 67 and gut your Social Security" without being called on it, and the Obama Administration will not pull an offer off of the table once its been made.

[StrangeSox]

I'd say they're succeeding markedly on the basic negotiation front here. Aside from a few angry bloggers, who is actually going to call him on this?

 

If he pretends that Obama has given up those points, not as a negotiation matter but in general, the media won't call him on it, his side can run outside ads saying "Obama agreed to raise the Medicare age to 67 and gut your Social Security" without being called on it, and the Obama Administration will not pull an offer off of the table once its been made.

 

I'm bouncing back and forth between my usual "Democrats are really just terrible politicians" and "Democrats really just support these terrible policies" lately.

[Balta1701]

The tax rate paid by the criminal enterprise known as NewsCorp in the U.S. for the last decade? -46%. Made a cool $4.8 billion.

[lostfan]

Anonymous hacked into another FBI contractor:

http://thenextweb.com/industry/2011/07/08/...t=Google+Reader

 

 

As well as 90,000 more emails from the US military

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/90000...urce=feedburner

 

 

 

 

Balta, I'm on to you!

These hackers are starting to bore me.

[Balta1701]

These hackers are starting to bore me.

Would it help if they worked for Newscorp?

[southsider2k5]

Would it help if they worked for Newscorp?

 

These guys are targeting the military industrial complex, so they are cool.

[Balta1701]

These guys are targeting the military industrial complex, so they are cool.

Im pretty sure newscorp targeted them too. A lot.

[StrangeSox]

These guys are targeting the military industrial complex, so they are cool.

this but unironically

[StrangeSox]

The Tea Party is driving the Republicans off of a cliff of insanity

 

EK: And was it a list of demands? What did the Republicans have to do in order to avoid being “unelected”?

 

SC: The marching orders were, first, you must not vote to extend the continuing resolution [that would keep the government open through 2011] unless it, in their words, “defunds Obamacare.” Number two, you must not, under any circumstances, vote for an increase in the debt ceiling. Period. No conditions. Number three, and they said this explicitly, we don’t trust John Boehner or Eric Cantor. And the state party chair from Virginia was from Cantor’s district. And, finally, the members themselves told me afterwards that what they thought they did wrong in 1995 and 1996 was they gave in too early to Clinton.

 

The next day, five Tea Party Republicans voted against the first extension. The second one lost 54 Republicans. The third one lost 59 Republicans. What I took from that was, first, that the debt ceiling was going to be a lot more trouble than anyone realized. They did not want a negotiation there. There was a religious-like fervor on that point: Voting for the debt ceiling was a sin, and you can’t just sin a little. Second, Boehner and Cantor were going to have a lot more trouble than anyone thought. And then the third thing was for all those who thought they could get a deal early, it was clear to me that there was no way they could come up with a compromise or agree to a deal before the deadline. Even if it was a great deal, the presumption would be that they gave up too much by not waiting till the last second, just like with Clinton. So there’s no way they won’t blow through the 22nd of July, the date that got set up for an early deadline.

[lostfan]

Those "pledges" are so dumb and myopic. They are pretty fundamentally un-democratic, too.

[clyons]

Does anyone think that if the debt ceiling isn't raised and all hell breaks loose, that it will be a boost to Obama's re-election chances, almost like the Gingrich shutdown was for Bill Clinton?

[Balta1701]

Does anyone think that if the debt ceiling isn't raised and all hell breaks loose, that it will be a boost to Obama's re-election chances, almost like the Gingrich shutdown was for Bill Clinton?

No, because this one would drive the economy crazy.

[StrangeSox]

“Whether [the Bush administration] did or didn’t [find WMD], America was certainly safe between 2000 and 2008. I don’t remember any terrorist attacks on American soil during that period of time," - Fox News host Eric Bolling.

[Jenksismyhero]

No, because this one would drive the economy crazy.

 

And I think the GOP can easily argue that the current deficit has Obama's fingerprints all over it.

[Balta1701]

And I think the GOP can easily argue that the current deficit has Obama's fingerprints all over it.

And we can just as easily blame Bush.