zero shift
Banned
Stewart isn't as intelligent as people say he is. He's a fantastic debater but not the smartest guy on the block, though he is definitely not dumb and nails points at times. His ideology is of a typical American liberal.
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PoliGAF 2013 |OT2| Worth 77% of OT1
- Thread starter The Librarian
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Stewart isn't as intelligent as people say he is. He's a fantastic debater but not the smartest guy on the block, though he is definitely not dumb and nails points at times. His ideology is of a typical American liberal.
T
thepotatoman
Unconfirmed Member
New York Times: Many in G.O.P. Offer Theory: Default Wouldnt Be That Bad
Ok, this is starting to look like an official talking point of the republican party. What's going on? Why are these guys talking like this? What in the world are they possibly thinking?
Is there any explanation other than they plan to actually take us to default?
Ok, this is starting to look like an official talking point of the republican party. What's going on? Why are these guys talking like this? What in the world are they possibly thinking?
Is there any explanation other than they plan to actually take us to default?
I'm sure for some at least, they would rather lie to themselves and perpetuate that lie to others than accept a black man could do arguably the most important job in the world even half decently.
Hannity strikes me as such a person. He is the worst person on Fox News, which is saying something given the competition.
nuclear war would probably be kind of exciting in its own way, too!
A Black Falcon
Member
I linked that article earlier this page... and yeah, it does seem like a lot of Republicans now really do want to default. They've clearly either completely lost their minds, or are so devoted to appeasing the craziest anti-spending zealots on the right that they're willing to destroy the world's economy to get their way. Either that or they'll cave at the last second and raise the debt limit, but it's not sounding like that will happen.
i hope obama has a secret plan to kill the debt limit or at least indefinitely delay relying on congress to increase it somehow.
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thepotatoman
Unconfirmed Member
The thing is, investors aren't going to like not knowing if obama's secret plan is legal or not. It's hard to feel confident in putting a bunch of money into the government if you don't know if the radicalized solution will stand in the supreme court.
Might not be as painful as giving investors no doubt that we're in default, but still very painful.
Officerrob
Banned
Wall St. should start pushing back on them hard any day now
TacticalFox88
Banned
I'm becoming more convinced this is more about sticking it to Obama, personally, rather than any full blown 100% desire to defund the ACA.
That's always what it's been about. The GOP just wants Democrats (especially a black Democrat) to fail at everything because they know the Republican party is dying.
If you can't win, cheat.
If you can't cheat, ignore the rules and cheat harder.
Yeah I agree. At least that's the impression I got when I used to watch him. I've never regularly watched the show but a couple years ago I used to tune in here and there when I still payed for cable.
Something else that has bothered me too is that a lot of the interviews are uncomfortable to watch. Like I get the feeling that the Daily show correspondents are often unnecessarily rude in order to be funny. In some cases it can be appropriate but I just don't feel they need to be sarcastic douche bags to create good material. Particularly when the person being interviewed isn't all that aware of how the show operates.
This was on Colbert but maybe a couple months ago he did a story on a rural town coming around to allow gay rights. It was pretty uplifting to see but it was framed in sort of this sarcastic look at these country idiots tone, and iirc the crowd even had a few laughs at the townspeople which left a pretty bad taste in my mouth.
I don't think they have demonstrated any kind of awareness of self destruction at all (though I imagine this is dawning on some Republicans now behind closed doors).
My take on their obstructionism is that it has a very simple aim - don't let the Democrats and a Democrat President achieve anything while they are out of power, then point to that "ineffectiveness" when they retain power so they can steamroll through their agenda.
Problem is, somewhere along the way some established and new Republican representatives forgot about that aim as they started to buy into the facade they had created because the echo chamber was too strong. The fake narrative that was concocted to disguise their simple minded obstructionism is now an argument some Republicans both believe is legitimate and rally around.
DHHS seems to use AWS a lot, and I'm amazed if they haven't used it here. If you have a half-way competent developer or sysadmin, AWS should almost certainly ensure that you almost never experience downtime.
Somebody help me out here if I'm mistaken, but essentially what that wall of quotes from the GOP is saying is that we should only spend what we take in(in taxes)? Isn't this pretty much the antithesis of the entire GOP platform?
We have shown that our country requires more spending than the taxes we take in, so the only way to offset that if you do not spend in deficit is to raise taxes tremendously, or have massive spending cuts(which basically = higher unemployment).
We have shown that our country requires more spending than the taxes we take in, so the only way to offset that if you do not spend in deficit is to raise taxes tremendously, or have massive spending cuts(which basically = higher unemployment).
I don't think he really lied. His statement, as well as Lew's, prior to the conf was basically "we don't believe we have the authority." So while it seemed all but final that they flat out wouldn't do it, they reiterated the same thing across two or three news articles over several days. But President Obama not completely denouncing it at the conf pretty much tells you all you need to know. Bear in mind he's not a big fan of it... neither am I.
Why? The household analogies are perfect. If you don't give a damn about ever paying your mortgage again unless you make outlandish demands to JP Morgan Chase expecting them to give in, why should they take you seriously? What the GOP is doing is the exact same thing...
Chuck Todd and the gang deserved everything they got. I really hope as the younger generations continue to mature and the baby boomers fizzle out that mainstream media as we know it bites the dust. Their coverage of this crisis is nearly a facade and they deserved to be ignored. They ought to be ashamed of themselves with the "both sides are to blame" narrative like a teacher yelling at her kindergartners at a playground.
Agreed.
Worth noting:
He's not happy about these options though. However, in a default, there are only so many options he'd have left and he has to be prepared. That is the crux of what he was trying to say. That is what I wanted to hear from him, directly, as the prior news articles did not make me feel confident about his administration's willingness to do whatever it takes to prevent default in light of the GOP shrugging it off. I think he has made that pretty clear now. It will be interesting to see what Lew has to say on Thursday.Barack Obama said:
I think the 14th is his best option. Minting a trillion dollar coin looks like a clown move, and I would worry about inflation.
It would be interesting to see what happens after he uses the 14th/mints a coin/something else. Obviously the GOP would have a field day screaming impeachment from the rooftops, going to court, etc. The real question is how markets would respond. I.e. would it prevent a meltdown of the global economy or would they laugh at such an attempt?
You say there are things he is thinking of that we don't know about -- what could those things possibly be? I think tracking down every option has been exhausted by now, from the 14th to minting a coin to prioritizing payments in the Treasury. Obama already indicated his options are dwindling.
It's not that simple, while services like AWS can definitely help you with these things, it's not a magic solution that guarantees end to end uptime on complicated web solution.
That being said, a cursory look at the problem (though to be fair, I have not messed with the website and have not thought about it too much) it seem like a type of problem that have been solved before in the industry and such poor roll-out is not a result we should accept, they obviously didn't do a proper capacity planning (although I can't think of a big tech company that hasn't screwed such roll out in it's life).
p.s.
I wonder if this was contracted out or done in house, anybody knows that?
A reader pointed this out at TPM, but the GOP can't have it both ways. Is the threat of default by not raising the debt ceiling such a massive amount of leverage that they can reverse Obama's signature domestic policy achievement, or it is no big deal? Ever since this started they've been talking and acting like the threat of default would buy them the moon. Now that we're closer, it's maybe not so bad. If it's not so bad, then you don't have any leverage. Pick one, people.
They know the people will blame them if we default so the current talking point is to drastically downplay how bad it is in an attempt to make people not blame them.
And this is fucking scary. That means they are fully preparing to push us past that point.
I think it underscores the potential implosion of the GOP if Boehner folds. They are having it both ways because... well, they are. One group of Republicans (40-50 Tea Partiers/those who sympathize with them/fear them) want it one way while the other side is attempting to be more rational about it (although completely lacking a spine). The end result is a utter messaging failure from the GOP but party leadership doesn't care.
The scary part is if they continue to let the Tea Party be the loudest voice in the room leading into a possible default. These people aren't rational, and if others in the party aren't brave enough to stand up to them, welp...
Yeah, I get why they're doing it. Downplaying the consequences of horrible behavior is nothing new in general or for them. It's just so obviously out of step with their actual behavior. Actions vs. words. And yes, it's more than a little alarming.
RustyNails
Member
This simply proves what we have been screaming all along. They are not serious, and are only doing it to tank Obama's Presidency. They are going to destroy the world for political gain.
"And let that be a lesson you never elect a democrat to the whitehouse. Especially a black one."
By downplaying the threat of default, the GOP looks more likely to carry it out, and thus make it a more credible threat. Make them seem crazy enough to do it. And that's true for Tea Party Republicans. Unlike the regular flavor, who only wish what's shown on Fox News is true, the Tea Party actually believe they're true. These warped version of the news have so infected these Republicans that they make policy decisions for a country that doesn't actually exist. They are the political equivalent of people who think they're vampires.
TacticalFox88
Banned
I'm more or less trying to seriously comprehend HOW a group of people can be totally delusional to reality.
It's easy. We live in a world of selective information. There's so much data out there that you can surround yourself with only what conforms to your world view. So all they need to do is watch only Fox News, and listen only to conservative talk radio. They obliterate anything contrary to this view with a stream of what to a rational person seems like nonsense, but has become a conservative dialect.
mightynine
Member
They don't know either. It's plainly obvious that they had no idea about how to use this shutdown as a means to an end, because they have no end. They want everything that they couldn't get because they couldn't win a national election.
Shep asked some GOP Republican Congresswoman (forgive me, I'd never heard of her, so I forget the name) about how she would vote - up or down - on a bill to raise the debt ceiling. All she could stammer out was along the lines of "I can't vote to increase the debt ceiling without (wish list of GOP talking points)". It's the epitome of painting yourself into a corner, but refusing to believe there's not a way out of this.
And no, I don't believe Boehner's got the cajones to lead his chamber out of this corner.
What I can't understand is there's people who are relatively smart that buy into all this and they're critical of the mainstream media (and think they're getting fed baloney by them), but somehow Rush, Hannity, and Fox News, etc are all legit and don't have their own biases/spin. They don't apply that same critical eye to everything.
empty vessel
Member
I think the 14th Amendment is probably the worst option and the one that is the least helpful to the American people (which is probably why it is taken most seriously).
You needn't worry about inflation with minting a coin. I don't know who put that thought in your head, but whether the government mints a coin or sells a bond, the Treasury is spending the same amount into the economy, which is the amount that Congress directed it to spend. Selling bonds and minting coins are just different ways that the Treasury pretends to spend money. It actually spends by creating the money from thin air. It's identical to the way that an NFL scoreboard operator "spends" points during a football game. The points don't "come from" anywhere.
bodyofanamerican
Member
Wonkbook: The GOP rewrites its ransom note
So it looks like reality is beginning to set in. If Ryan's bailing on defund/delay, it's over Johnny. They're hoping for some face saving cuts in the budget.
PERFECT
\/ \/ \/ \/ \/
So it looks like reality is beginning to set in. If Ryan's bailing on defund/delay, it's over Johnny. They're hoping for some face saving cuts in the budget.
PERFECT
\/ \/ \/ \/ \/
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Manmademan
Member
More importantly, minting the coin is irrelevant to inflation, since that "money" created by doing so never enters the money supply. At least, not in any rate greater than the standard amount of government spending in the yearly budget.
Or to put it simply:
Printing a trillion in cash and allowing banks to loan it out increases inflation.
Minting a trillion dollar coin and locking it in a room where it will never actually be seen by consumers and financial institutions does not.
The worst thing about it is just the optics, since most people don't actually understand where money comes from.
Noted. I wasn't expecting there to automatically be inflation but I came across this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion_dollar_coin#Inflation_risks
It goes on to state that Bernanke may have to order the coin to be minted, that could be messy depending on how he feels about it. Then again I don't think the Fed Chair is as idiotic as the Tea Party
If nothing else it could set a bad precedent, but I realize it isn't as bad as many make it out to be. Still, it hasn't really been done before.
I read a great article about this yesterday but now can't find it. I thought it was on Wonkblog...I'll keep looking, but here's the summary:
The healthcare.gov website actually works fine (#slatepitch). Even at the peak of traffic, you could just go to it and surf around and do research with zero problems with server load. (I can actually independently verify this!) The problems only start appearing when you try to actually use the marketplace.
The designers of the marketplace used a pretty common industry pattern where they separated logging in and account creation out onto another server which passes you through to the main server. (This is a pretty standard approach that's used by most MMOs, for example.) It's the login server (which was outsourced to a private contractor) that's crashing under load.
Unfortunately, the federal website is designed to require you to have an account to use basically any aspects of the marketplace. This is not necessarily insane -- since there's so much private information being thrown around, it's potentially a security win to make sure all your secure information is only input and carried around in one place, with the rest of the app just checking in with it. On the other hand, this strategy probably increases the load on the login server, and if that goes down, none of the rest of the site is usable.
The other problem, which should be obvious from looking at today's complaint pattern, is that the login server didn't fail gracefully -- it apparently corrupted a bunch of accounts it was creating, which is why some people who created their account on Oct 1 now can't get past the first few screens while other people are creating accounts and using the website now. This is obviously a huge design fuckup, and, frankly, one I feel like you really shouldn't be making -- I kind of assumed atomic database updates would be baked into whatever solution they used, but obviously not. This is a big part of the ongoing problem, because once you've munged the database, there's not necessarily a really obvious way to automatically clean it up or handle the bad data.
NYCmetsfan
Banned
Coin > 14th.
RustyNails
Member
Why didnt they hire the engineers and designers who worked on Obama's project Narwhal for 2012 campaign? Dumb.
Nazgul_Hunter
Member
The biggest problem about hitting the debt ceiling is not *quite* that people who are supposed to be paid that day won't be paid.
Rather, it's that the market will lose confidence that the US Government is the most rock solid security in the world.
The reason Obama doesn't wanna do the 14th amendment is that he believes it will be litigated to death for months. That would generate the same uncertainty and lost confidence in the short term, even if people actually get paid.
Rather, it's that the market will lose confidence that the US Government is the most rock solid security in the world.
The reason Obama doesn't wanna do the 14th amendment is that he believes it will be litigated to death for months. That would generate the same uncertainty and lost confidence in the short term, even if people actually get paid.
Nazgul_Hunter
Member
[edit double post]
I mean, they probably did hire some of them. A bunch of them are probably still running OfA, too. But keep in mind that Narwhal probably had very difficult security and account requirements. In terms of the email part of that job, there's obviously no accounts to worry about, just data curation. In terms of the private app, there's almost no need for outward-facing account handling, because you actually don't WANT anybody to be able to make an account unless you just hired them.
I don't think it's crazy for the web designers to outsource login and account handling to a developer who spends all their time just working on login and account handling. As noted, at a certain size, that's pretty much what everybody does, because your job usually isn't to handle account creation, it's usually to do a thing, and account creation is overhead. The big problem here is that a) they fucked it up pretty badly for some reason, and b) there's no accountability apparently since HHS isn't willing to say "oh, yeah, it was all on TouchSupport" (or whoever).
Plus the GOP would try to impeach him and the rest of his presidancy would be meaningless, regardless of if they succeed.
PhoenixDark
Banned
I've long felt republicans want to essentially write off the Bush years by ruining Obama's presidency. If they can just get him in the <40% approval range and completely wreck voter confidence in him, they'll succeed. The problem has been that Obama tends to rebound and people generally like him even if they dislike his politics.
What better way to end his presidency than force a default. He'd spend the next three years dealing with creditors as another recession raged - this time with no hope of a stimulus passing. Then in 2016 they can run against "the last 8 years" just as democrats did in 2008.
I think GOP leadership would rather walk close to the edge just so that damage alone can throw off the recovery, but many members clearly want to jump. We've essentially been dealing with a financial crisis 1-2 times a year since 2011. That's not a coincidence. Which is also why Obama cannot afford to give up now. If he does this will happen again. If republicans fail then the tea party's "a shutdown wouldn't hurt us at all" view would no longer be valid, and House leadership could presumably ignore them next time.
What better way to end his presidency than force a default. He'd spend the next three years dealing with creditors as another recession raged - this time with no hope of a stimulus passing. Then in 2016 they can run against "the last 8 years" just as democrats did in 2008.
I think GOP leadership would rather walk close to the edge just so that damage alone can throw off the recovery, but many members clearly want to jump. We've essentially been dealing with a financial crisis 1-2 times a year since 2011. That's not a coincidence. Which is also why Obama cannot afford to give up now. If he does this will happen again. If republicans fail then the tea party's "a shutdown wouldn't hurt us at all" view would no longer be valid, and House leadership could presumably ignore them next time.
empty vessel
Member
Noted. I wasn't expecting there to automatically be inflation but I came across this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion_dollar_coin#Inflation_risks
It goes on to state that Bernanke may have to order the coin to be minted, that could be messy depending on how he feels about it. Then again I don't think the Fed Chair is as idiotic as the Tea Party
If nothing else it could set a bad precedent, but I realize it isn't as bad as many make it out to be. Still, it hasn't really been done before.
It would be a great precedent! And I wouldn't get your economic views from Wikipedia. The bit that you quoted reflects a sorely deficient understanding of the monetary system and banking, beginning at the very first sentence: "The Fed's purchase of the trillion dollar coin would be largely analogous to the securities purchases that are part of Quantitative easing (QE), in both cases adding to the monetary base, which is the sum of currency in circulation and bank reserves."
First, the Fed doesn't purchase the coin. It is deposited by the Treasury. Second, the deposit does not affect the sum of currency in circulation and bank reserves, because the Fed simply credits the Treasury's account in the amount of the face value of the coin. Third, this is not at all analogous to QE. In QE the Fed buys financial assets. The Fed buys nothing when the Treasury mints a coin. That's three mistakes in one sentence, which is pretty damn remarkable.
And that people actively vote for those that would try to destroy the country is depressing.
PhoenixDark
Banned
Can't link on my mobile but a couple big things on twitter:
-Koch Industries sent a letter to House republicans today saying they do not support tying Obamacare to shutdown/debt ceiling
-Boehner and Cantor are meeting with Pelosi and Hoyer right now, behind closed doors
-Koch Industries sent a letter to House republicans today saying they do not support tying Obamacare to shutdown/debt ceiling
-Boehner and Cantor are meeting with Pelosi and Hoyer right now, behind closed doors
He's the people's champ.
Wow, that's a lot of epic fail if you are right. Perhaps you should edit it with better sources. Seriously. Thanks for clearing that up.
Well you can take some bittersweet comfort in knowing had the GOP not Gerrymandered the Tea Party caucus into lily white districts they would probably only be about half as strong right now.
Yeah, noticed that myself.
So weird to picture Boehner and Cantor meeting with Pelosi and Hoyer.
NYCmetsfan
Banned
Koch getting scared?
I cringed when he attributed Sarah Palin to his ability to get a seat in the US Senate.
Gotta wonder how that makes John McCain feel. In a way he played a big role ushering in the Tea Party wave by giving Sarah Palin the VP nomination.
RustyNails
Member
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