Fuck its silent in here.......

[CT III]

One of the reasons that the US and many other sovereigns have been able to maintain AAA ratings is that governments have the ability to raise taxes if hey need to raise revenue.  Given that on branch of the legislature has a majority that refuses to do that, the borrowing costs for the US government have now gone up. This means that we now have increased the deferred tax on future generations (debt) by capitalizing today's current interest.

Interest that is higher than it should be.

30 years of irresponsible government coming home to roost.

Something d-o-o economics.  Anyone?  Anyone?

So I can blame this all on Grover "The Toad" Norquist? 

Sweet.

[morpheus]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/sp-downgrades-us-aa-outlook-negative-full-text

Republicans and Democrats have only been able to agree to relatively modest savings on discretionary spending while delegating to the Select Committee decisions on more comprehensive measures. It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options. In addition, the plan envisions only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements, the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key to long-term fiscal sustainability.

Sounds pretty evenhanded to me.  Doesn't seem like S&P played around back there behind either side.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/joint-statement-fed-fdic-ncua-occ

Presenting the joint statement by The Fed, the FDIC, NCUA, OCC. In essence: the Fed tells S&P to go fornicate itself.

[Wheezer]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/sp-downgrades-us-aa-outlook-negative-full-text

Republicans and Democrats have only been able to agree to relatively modest savings on discretionary spending while delegating to the Select Committee decisions on more comprehensive measures. It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options. In addition, the plan envisions only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements, the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key to long-term fiscal sustainability.

Sounds pretty evenhanded to me.  Doesn't seem like S&P played around back there behind either side.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/joint-statement-fed-fdic-ncua-occ

Presenting the joint statement by The Fed, the FDIC, NCUA, OCC. In essence: the Fed tells S&P to go fornicate itself.

"(collectively, banking organizations)"

You know why they defined this but didn't bother to use it, right?

[Gilgamesh]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/sp-downgrades-us-aa-outlook-negative-full-text

Republicans and Democrats have only been able to agree to relatively modest savings on discretionary spending while delegating to the Select Committee decisions on more comprehensive measures. It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options. In addition, the plan envisions only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements, the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key to long-term fiscal sustainability.

Sounds pretty evenhanded to me.  Doesn't seem like S&P played around back there behind either side.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/joint-statement-fed-fdic-ncua-occ

Presenting the joint statement by The Fed, the FDIC, NCUA, OCC. In essence: the Fed tells S&P to go fornicate itself.

These are the parts that I thought were pretty damning...

Standard & Poor's takes no position on the mix of spending and revenue measures that Congress and the Administration might conclude is appropriate for putting the U.S.'s finances on a sustainable footing.

Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act. Key macroeconomic assumptions in the base case scenario include trend real GDP growth of 3% and consumer price inflation near 2% annually over the decade.

On the other hand, as our upside scenario highlights, if the recommendations of the Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction–independently or coupled with other initiatives, such as the lapsing of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for high earners–lead to fiscal consolidation measures beyond the minimum mandated, and we believe they are likely to slow the deterioration of the government's debt dynamics, the long-term rating could stabilize at 'AA+'.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

Will Yeti ever win?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-roadkillveto,0,7463218.story

Quinn blocks law letting people collect roadkill

SPRINGFIELD, Ill.— Forget about squirrel stew or a nice coyote-fur coat. Gov. Pat Quinn has vetoed legislation letting people collect animals killed along Illinois roads.

In his veto message Friday, Quinn said he was worried about the safety of drivers who stop to pick up roadkill. He encouraged lawmakers to come up with a version that includes safety measures.

The legislation said that if people have the proper permits and licenses, they could collect any furbearing mammal found during the appropriate hunting season.

People could do whatever they please with the carcasses, whether it's skin them for their hides or add them to a rustic stew.

Even without the legislation, people are allowed to collect deer killed by vehicles.

[Wheezer]

People could do whatever they please with the carcasses, whether it's skin them for their hides or add them to a rustic stew.

Prion Disease, It's What's for Dinner.

[flannj]

People could do whatever they please with the carcasses, whether it's skin them for their hides or add them to a rustic stew.

Prion Disease, It's What's for Dinner.

But the brain, spinal cord, eyes, spleen, tonsils, and lymph nodes are the best parts!

[Wheezer]

People could do whatever they please with the carcasses, whether it's skin them for their hides or add them to a rustic stew.

Prion Disease, It's What's for Dinner.

But the brain, spinal cord, eyes, spleen, tonsils, and lymph nodes are the best parts!

We saved the gid hanasheh just for you!

[Wheezer]

DPD. Only now I learn that Westboro was picketing "The Response"?

[Quality Start Machine]

DPD. Only now I learn that Westboro was picketing "The Response"?

how do we get those guys to picket the Cubs?

[Eli]

This was ... depressing.

The president is fond of referring to "the arc of history," paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous statement that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics — in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time — he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.

In contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze.

Like most Americans, at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama — and by extension the party he leads — believes on virtually any issue. The president tells us he prefers a "balanced" approach to deficit reduction, one that weds "revenue enhancements" (a weak way of describing popular taxes on the rich and big corporations that are evading them) with "entitlement cuts" (an equally poor choice of words that implies that people who've worked their whole lives are looking for handouts). But the law he just signed includes only the cuts. This pattern of presenting inconsistent positions with no apparent recognition of their incoherence is another hallmark of this president's storytelling. He announces in a speech on energy and climate change that we need to expand offshore oil drilling and coal production — two methods of obtaining fuels that contribute to the extreme weather Americans are now seeing. He supports a health care law that will use Medicaid to insure about 15 million more Americans and then endorses a budget plan that, through cuts to state budgets, will most likely decimate Medicaid and other essential programs for children, senior citizens and people who are vulnerable by virtue of disabilities or an economy that is getting weaker by the day. He gives a major speech on immigration reform after deporting a million immigrants in two years, breaking up families at a pace George W. Bush could never rival in all his years as president.

The real conundrum is why the president seems so compelled to take both sides of every issue, encouraging voters to project whatever they want on him, and hoping they won't realize which hand is holding the rabbit. That a large section of the country views him as a socialist while many in his own party are concluding that he does not share their values speaks volumes — but not the volumes his advisers are selling: that if you make both the right and left mad, you must be doing something right.

[CBStew]

People could do whatever they please with the carcasses, whether it's skin them for their hides or add them to a rustic stew.

Prion Disease, It's What's for Dinner.

But the brain, spinal cord, eyes, spleen, tonsils, and lymph nodes are the best parts!

We saved the gid hanasheh just for you!

I used to watch my grandmother kosher a chicken before cooking it.  Her knowledge of anatomy was limited so her practice was "when in doubt, throw it out."

[J. Walter Weatherman]

This has got to be like porn to Fork...

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/how-bad-news-corp-133928

[CBStew]

This has got to be like porn to Fork...

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/how-bad-news-corp-133928

Has anyone else noticed how closely Rupert Murdoch resembles a Shar Pei?



http://www.wallpaperweb.org/wallpaper/animals/shar-pei-pups_1600x1200_40252.htm

[Chuck to Chuck]

Great stuff from Bruce Bartlett:

Those ... who look only at the increase in nominal revenues in the 1980s and attribute all of it to some Laffer curve effect are like roosters who think the sun rises because of their crowing. Philosophers call this logical fallacy post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

Unfortunately, the focus on revenues has distracted attention from what I think is the greatest achievement of the Reagan tax cut: It not only didn't raise inflation, as almost all economists thought it would, but it also helped the economy transition from high inflation to low inflation at a remarkably low economic cost. In 1978 Brookings Institution economist Arthur Okun said that to bring the basic inflation rate down by 1 percentage point would cost 10 percent of a year's GNP.14 That suggests that the 8 percentage point fall of inflation between 1980 and 1982 should have cost the economy something like 80 percent of its real output, which obviously didn't happen. I think the tax cut deserves much of the credit.

Although I believe the Reagan tax cut was a success, it doesn't necessarily follow that its replication today would achieve similar results. For one thing, tax rates are much lower and revenues as a share of GDP are 4 percentage points lower than they were when Reagan took office. For another, the economy's principal problem now is a lack of aggregate demand, whereas in the early 1980s it was excess demand. Bracket creep was a serious problem that does not exist today. Consequently, the economy needs different policies today than were appropriate in 1981. Unfortunately, it's in the nature of politics that when a policy works once, there are those who will insist that the same cookiecutter approach be followed over and over again until the idea is beaten into dust.