Juicebox.

Fat old f***.

Yeah, if they like it, then I don't.

The old, fat Klein makes the point that no one cares about the debt ceiling hike. At least, not the broad voting population.

I mentioned in a comment that McConnell had a similar scheme back in December 2009 as we were voting on ObamaCare. We could have forced the Democrats to remain in session through the holidays; instead, McConnell agreed to let them recess and come back, in exchange for a supposedly prominent vote on the 2010 debt ceiling hike.

Yeah, that wasn't as prominent as planned, was it? No one reported on it and it resulted in zero political benefit.

Plus, the media would have a reason to downplay these later votes that are supposed to be so "brutal" for the Democrats. They would claim the Republicans caved early and set up a rubber-stamp formality for the later votes, so the later votes are unimportant. And they'd have a point.

No deal.

Posted by: Ace at 04:03 PM | Comments (211)
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Maybe if we ate our peas we could have the light bulbs of our choice.

The Better Use of Light Bulbs (BULB) Act, sponsored by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), failed on a 233-193 vote, with a two-thirds majority needed for passage.

The vote fell mostly along party lines, but five Democrats voted in favor of the bill and 10 Republicans voted against the bill. One Republican voted "present."

...

Yet the light bulb efficiency standards havenÂ’t always been this controversial.

In fact, raising light bulb standards won significant bipartisan support in 2007 and was signed into law by President George W. Bush as part of sweeping energy legislation.

Current House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) co-sponsored the light bulb efficiency language, and came under fire during his campaign for the Energy panel chairmanship over his past support for higher standards.

Upton now has changed his tune. He worked behind the scenes with Barton on a new version of the bill introduced last week, and voted in favor of the legislation Tuesday.

I have no idea why they would bring this up on the Suspension Calendar which requires 2/3 support. Maybe they want the Democrats to own killing it? That seems unlikely since when you are in the majority you are responsible for passing things.

Sure it might have died in the Senate but then we'd have an issue that everyone gets to beat the Democrats with.

Roll call vote is here.

(Added: The GOP "No" votes here and here)

Meanwhile, the Republican/crazy tea party controlled House did manage to continue the federal government's flood insurance program.

The House on Tuesday evening easily approved the Flood Insurance Reform Act, a bill that enjoyed rare bipartisan support even though it could result in higher flood insurance premiums at a time of significant flooding in the middle of the country.

The bill, H.R. 1309, was approved in a 406-22 vote; most of the "no" votes were Republican members.

Several members of both parties agreed that a top priority of the bill is eliminating the red ink that the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) has generated over the past several decades. Members noted that the NFIP is nearly $18 billion in debt, and spoke in favor of the bill that would require the phasing in of actuarially sound rates for flood insurance policies, and phasing out taxpayer subsidized rates.

Reform and phase out are nice but terminating programs is better.

I'm pretty sure Republicans have been pretty much against government insurance programs while supporting private sector options in other areas. Maybe I remember that wrong.

Seriously, if the GOP can't get this stuff right, the hopes of getting something as gigantic as the debt ceiling even remotely right is depressingly low.

*That's not actually the name of the bill but it should be.

Posted by: DrewM at 03:46 PM | Comments (70)
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and you haven't voted yet...

The Huey-Hahn race is very, very winnable particularly if the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, Dean Logan, is to be believed at the current turnout for the election:
*UPDATED AGAIN*-- Per Mr Logan the turnout remains just under 11% through 4pm.

If overall turnout remains this low, but Republicans, used to years of losing here, actually show up, this is very winnable.

You still have just under four hours to still vote.
Find your polling place here.
Results thread will be up in a few hours.

*2nd update*- Per twittering with Mr Logan, the 2010 cycle saw a turnout of 192,035 votes, or 55.7%. The current rate is a fifth of that.

Posted by: CAC at 03:06 PM | Comments (41)
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You know, when I read this, I read it wrong.

Did you?

I assumed it was 2 Trillion. I read it that way. My eye made a B into a T, because the B just made no sense. I auto-corrected the obvious typographical error.

Nope. 2 Billion. With a B.

Meanwhile...

And also meanwhile: Treasury's books show they have plenty of money every month to pay for debt interest, all SS and Medicare payments, all military salaries and veterans benefits, etc.

So yes, default would be on Obama.

Posted by: Ace at 03:04 PM | Comments (76)
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Oh boy.

This is breaking so I don't know the story but this might just be flat-out nullification.

Posted by: Ace at 02:20 PM | Comments (160)
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After the horrible trade deficit numbers, they're now looking at a meager 1.6% annualized rate of growth.

Expect that to come down, too.

JackStraw wonders, "What is he going to run on, killing bin Ladin?"

Good question.

Expect video to leak from that.

This is why I'm starting to think that 2012 might be a run-the-table kind of year, and am sort of wondering if c***s***erish political posturing might not be a terrible idea.

Posted by: Ace at 01:29 PM | Comments (149)
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WalrusRex put this quote in a comment, and I thought maybe he was punking me.

He wasn't.

Can we just enjoy Obama for a moment? Before the policy choices have to be weighed and the hard decisions have to be made, can we just take a month or two to contemplate him the way we might contemplate a painting by Vermeer or a guitar lick by the early-seventies Rolling Stones or a Peyton Manning pass or any other astounding, ecstatic human achievement? Because twenty years from now, we're going to look back on this time as a glorious idyll in American politics, with a confident, intelligent, fascinating president riding the surge of his prodigious talents from triumph to triumph. Whatever happens this fall or next, the summer of 2011 is the summer of Obama.

I assure you, I am not punking you. Check the link if you don't believe me.

Due to the specific nature of his political calculus, possibly not a single person in the United States — not even Obama himself — agrees with all of his policies. But even if you disagree with him, even if you hate him, even if you are his enemy, at this point you must admire him. The turning point came that glorious week in the spring when, in the space of a few days, he released his long-form birth certificate, humiliated Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and assassinated Osama bin Laden. The effortlessness of that political triptych — three linked masterpieces demonstrating his total command over intellectual argument, low comedy, and the spectacle of political violence — was so overwhelmingly impressive that it made political geniuses of the recent past like Reagan and Clinton seem ham-fisted. Formed in the fire of other people's wars, other people's financial crises, Obama stepped out of Bush's shadow that week, almost three years after taking over the presidency.

The non-punking of you continues.

But even that string of successes cannot fully explain the immensity of his appeal right now.

Right now? This is July, and you're talking about March. You know that, don't you?

Reagan was able to call upon the classic American mythology of frontiersmen and astronauts and movie stars; Obama has accessed a much wider narrative matrix: He's mixed and matched Jay-Z with geek with Hawaiian with Kansan with product of Middle America with product of a broken home with local Chicago churchgoer with internationally renowned memoirist with assassin. "I am large, I contain multitudes," Walt Whitman [FIG.3] wrote, and Obama lives that lyrical prophecy. Christopher Booker's 2004 book The Seven Basic Plots, a wide-ranging study from the Epic of Gilgamesh on and a surprisingly convincing explanation for why we crave narrative, reduced all stories to a few plots, each with its own kind of hero. Amazingly, Barack Obama fulfills the role of hero in each of these ancient story forms.

Not punking you. Oh, let's break the text for a picture, of Whitman, with this caption:

FIG. 3: The original American, Whitman: "In [Obama] I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less. And the good or bad I say of myself I say of [Obama]."

Oh anyway there's a little more. He talks about the plot points of the Great Mythopoetic Narratives and how Obama fits each plot point, like Luke Skywalker or, hey, you know this is what he means, Christ.

Wow.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:58 PM | Comments (277)
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First of all, there is McConnell's proposal, and then there is the speech McConnell made explaining the reasons for it.

The latter is good. It's 16 minutes long, but it's good. more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:46 AM | Comments (248)
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Rangers lead the way.

As they moved to cross the open area before the chicken coop, an insurgent shot at them with an AK-47 assault rifle from about 10 meters away.

Petry was wounded by one round, which went through both of his legs, and Robinson was hit in his side plate by a separate round.

...

Petry, Higgins, and Robinson were still grouped together on the side of the chicken coop when another grenade landed a few feet from Higgins and Robinson.

Recognizing the threat that the enemy grenade posed to his fellow Rangers, Petry, despite his own wounds and with complete disregard for his personal safety, consciously and deliberately risked his life by picking up the live enemy grenade and trying to throw it away his fellow Rangers.

He decided to risk his life to remove the immediate threat to his fellow Rangers' lives. As Petry was throwing the grenade away from his team, which prevented serious injury or death to Higgins and Robinson, it detonated and catastrophically amputated his right hand.

Ceremony is going on right now (2:25 Est)

Follow the link above for more information on this extraordinary man and soldier.

Posted by: DrewM at 11:17 AM | Comments (51)
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Mitch McConnell is proposing some proceduralist "solution" which seems to give Obama a lot of power to raise the debt limit near-unilaterally. Essentially he gets the power to raise the debt limit by simply sustaining a veto (meaning so long as 1/3 of either chamber is with him, he "wins" on this).

You know why he's doing this, right? He's doing it for politics. He's trying to make Obama own the unpopular increases in the debt limit all for himself. Well, Obama and the Democrats.

As political posturing, it's cute.

But there is more to this than politics. And it won't work. It will be seen as it what it is, Republicans giving Obama to raise the debt limit. So we will be on the hook too, and the debt will continue piling up.

Although... If we've apparently already decided to give up then I guess this lame shit is better than nothing.

Posted by: Ace at 10:50 AM | Comments (149)
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