Drew's right, below, about a lot of things. He's right that it would be nice to see cuts in the $100+ billion range and I'd like to see them this year. He's right that the out year cuts are iffy and therefore not reliable. He's right that the debt ceiling is absolutely going to be raised. And so he's absolutely wrong to oppose Boehner's plan. A vote against Boehner's plan is a vote for Reid's plan.

I know that's hard to hear, but it's the truth. Drew writes a lot of things below. What he doesn't write is how opposing Boehner is going to translate into a victory for conservatives rather than a victory for Obama. Even Drew admits that Cut, Cap, and Balance isn't happening while Democrats control the Senate (although he strangely then takes Boehner to task for not cutting as much as the Ryan budget, which also got shot down by the Democrats in the Senate). So what's the alternative?

There seems to be two trains of thought on an alternative. The first, is to claim that failing to raise the debt ceiling won't be that bad. These folks admit some checks will go out, some won't, but it won't be that bad. They concede the U.S. AAA rating will be lost, but that'll be okay too because it's not like the world has anywhere else to borrow money from. Let's just grant their premise for the sake of argument. Okay, supposing that it turns out that running into the debt ceiling doesn't cause much of a problem, why in the world do you believe that this result is going to lead to Cut, Cap, & Balance and the Balanced Budget Amendment? What makes you think that having had a thorough demonstration that federal spending isn't in crisis, America will decide that the conservative goal of cutting federal spending is the way to go? The logic fails.

Second, there are those who admit that the loss of the AAA rating and disruption in federal spending will be a bad thing for the economy. That it will have substantial negative impact on people's lives, not just in the short-term, but in the long-term as the U.S. has to earn back its AAA rating. That by failing to pay its bills on time, the U.S. will bring down the economy its been sucking dry through taxes. States, expecting federal transfers, will find themselves without expected moneys. Federal vendors and contractors, expecting payment for services rendered, will also find themselves unpaid for a time. Hospitals, expecting federal reimbursements, will go unreimbursed for a time. Federal employees, expecting their paychecks, will likely receive IOUs. Securities holders, expecting to cash out when their securities mature, will likely get nothing for a time. And many of these unpaid obligations will accrue interest for as long as there is a backlog.

This second group of folks who don't mind pushing past the debt ceiling deadline are not evil. They recognize that this is going to hurt a lot of people. They're just cynical enough to believe that by hurting so many people, Obama and the Democrats can be leveraged into agreeing to conservative demands. That the pain and suffering will lead to Cut, Cap, and Balance and the Balanced Budget Amendment; in other words, a greater good.

In this horrifying-but-with-a-happy-ending scenario, the Republicans somehow manage to escape blame for the economic catastrophe. Experience tells us that this happy ending will never happen. Republicans will face just as much blame as Democrats.

Here's the kicker. Everyone in D.C. knows that failing to raise the debt limit is to be avoided, precisely because of the harms I've described. Which means that in the next five days either some version of a Boehner plan or some version of a Reid plan is going to pass. And, notwithstanding his veto threats, the President will sign the first one to reach his desk. Now why do you want that to be the Reid plan?

The Reid plan is a victory for Democrats. It includes a gigantic debt ceiling increase, which will take this issue out of play for the election season. It includes over a trillion dollars in imaginary cuts from Iraq and Afghanistan spending that is already winding down.

The Boehner plan is a victory, a small victory I admit, for Republicans. There's a small debt ceiling increase now and we've set the terms of debate come the spring when Obama has to face this issue all over again. It guarantees a vote on the Balanced Budget Amendment before the end of the year, giving us time to convince the public to convince their Senators to vote for it. It contains no tax hikes, a feature of Reid's plan too, but only because Boehner absolutely won on that point. And finally, it will hopefully have more cuts after Boehner re-works it today, but whatever the final numbers it will have cuts that are real and not imaginary like Reid's.

I want us to win. And I recognize that we're never going to get the big win on the Balanced Budget Amendment while we only hold one half of one third of the federal government. I want us to win today so we can beat the stuffing out of Obama and the Democrats on Election Day.

There are two options on the table and only two options on the table. One is okay, but not great. The other is downright bad. Pick one. But don't pretend that if you refuse to choose, you're not responsible for the outcome. At the end, it will be one or the other. Boehner or Reid. Pick one.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:01 AM | Comments (244)
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Perry's still at 15%, and Romney's barely ahead at 17%, while Palin is at 12% and Bachmann is at 11%. Rudy Giuliani, who I don't think is really running, is also at 11%.

We are still a long, long way from having anyone who really unites the party. But that's what the primary is for.

Obama is faring poorly in battleground states. He often loses to a man named Mitt Romney in hypothetical head-to-heads. Since Romney isn't my guy, I hope that isn't a "Romney thing" so much as a "nonthreatening Republican who seems to have a good bead on the economy thing."

In every reputable battleground state poll conducted over the past month, ObamaÂ’s support is weak. In most of them, he trails Republican front-runner Mitt Romney. For all the talk of a closely fought 2012 election, if Obama canÂ’t turn around his fortunes in states such as Michigan and New Hampshire, next yearÂ’s presidential election could end up being a GOP landslide.

Take Ohio, a perennial battleground in which Obama has campaigned more than in any other state (outside of the D.C. metropolitan region). Fifty percent of Ohio voters now disapprove of his job performance, compared with 46 percent who approve, according to a Quinnipiac pollconducted from July 12-18.

Among Buckeye State independents, only 40 percent believe that Obama should be reelected, and 42 percent approve of his job performance. Against Romney, Obama leads 45 percent to 41 percent—well below the 50 percent comfort zone for an incumbent.

The news gets worse from there. In Michigan, a reliably Democratic state that Obama carried with 57 percent of the vote, an EPIC-MRA pollconducted July 9-11 finds him trailing Romney, 46 percent to 42 percent.

That Michigan poll might be specifically a Romney thing, because he has family history there, and Northerners generally prefer Northerners.

Right now I think it looks like Romney is our best bet for winning. Again, since he's not my guy, I hope that will change. But Romney is doing something right in attracting support.

It might just be that they've heard his name so much, and have seen him so much, they've grown comfortable with him. Or it could be something else.

One of the things I like about Perry is that he can run on Romney's apparently-successful platform of "Economic Fix-It Man." He's got a story to tell about job creation during a depression.

Posted by: Ace at 08:30 AM | Comments (256)
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If you haven't read Gabe's piece in support of the Boehner Plan, it's well worth your time. It's also the jumping off point for this post.

For most of the day yesterday I was right there with Gabe. I thought Boehner's plan was the best we could do economically and politically. Cap, Cut and Balance wasn't resting, it wasn't pining for the fjords, it was and is...DEAD. We should congratulate the GOP for passing it, bank it as a campaign point and then face facts and move on.

Then the CBO score on Boehner appeared and I really regretted any support I offered. Forget the fight over whether it's 1.2 trillion in deficit cuts over 10 years or 800+billion neither number is terribly impressive in the overall scheme of things. No, what was truly awful was the projected $1 billion in deficit reduction from discretionary spending next year. Why's that important? Well, it's the only year that counts. The rest, the so called "out years" are promises and projects this Congress can't commit to delivering. Only next's years budget would be binding (well, as binding as anything in the federal budget is, which is not much).

$1 billion? That's not a cut, that's simply a decision to round down instead of up at some point.

How ridiculously small is that number? The Ryan Budget the House passed earlier this year would cut the deficit by $30 billion next year. So the Boehner Plan represents a surrender on what already got passed the House. Way to negotiate against yourself.

Even if the Boehner plan passed as is (or will be once they finish the rewrite, more about that in a second), there's no way the deficit will be cut by $1 billion next year. It's simply not a big enough number that it won't get swamped by "unexpected' increases in entitlement spending or "emergency" spending that will be added throughout the year.

As for the the $1+ trillion or $851 billion in cuts, depending on what baseline you want to use? Again, simply promises no one can actually commit to delivering. Meanwhile, the $1 trillion or so in new borrowing authority? Oh, that's very real and will definitely happen.

When it comes to "More borrowing now" vs. "Spending cuts in the out years", remember..."Out Years Are For Suckers". For that reason alone, Boehner's Plan as presented yesterday is a non-starter and should be defeated.

Now, this is where I get off the purity train...we are going to raise the debt ceiling. There's simply not enough time or political will to cut enough to avoid more borrowing to cover costs we've already committed to. And I'm simply not willing to risk default on the magical thinking that somehow that will only put pressure on Obama and Senate Democrats and they will suddenly embrace the tea party fiscal platform. That pressure will work both ways and likely force Republicans to cave. No, if you want Cut, Cap and Balance (plus real entitlement reform) you're going to need big wins next November, Even then it's kind of iffy but that's the prerequisite.

So, how do I a RINO sellout square the circle with my sudden brush with PURITY? I could support a Boehner type plan but the cuts have to be front loaded. It's not going to be all $1.1 trillion next year (though that would be great, it's just not an option) but it needs to be in the $100 billion plus range at a minimum. Yes, that's even more ambitious than the Ryan budget but two things...

1-It's a starting point. It's going to come down in any final deal. Starting a $1 billion gives you no where to go down to. Starting at say $200 billion, well, now we can deal.

2-The whole point of tying budget cuts to the debt ceiling hike is because we have some leverage. If you aren't going to use this moment of pressure to up the ante from what you could normally get, what exactly is the point of the exercise? Why not just pass a clean hike as always and move along?

The fact is this is political theater and not a moment of leverage. Boehner's back loaded plan is simply a way to try and give cover to GOP members who said 'I'll never vote for a hike in the debt ceiling!". Sorry but that was always a fundamentally unserious position.

We can't lock in more cuts than the amount of the debt hike, that's always been silly. Anyone who really thinks these plans are about $851 billion, $1.1 trillion or $2.2 trillion are just buying the hype. It's next year's number that matters. It won't be as big as the hike in the ceiling but it needs to be big and real. THAT would be a real victory. Let's see if that's what they come back with that in Bowhner 2.0. If so, I'm back on Team RINO. If not, book me a seat on the Purity Express.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:06 AM | Comments (345)
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When a liberal tells moderates "you bastards are killing this country", you have to find a way to get his message out.

It's not the conservative knuckledraggers now, nope. It's the uncommitted, apolitical types, who think left and right are equally right (or wrong).

Sweet. (link to NYT Krugman desperation whine)

Granted he's actually pissing on the media, that's really what this is about. Some WH correspondents didn't toe the line, they had the temerity to challenge the President's spokespuke, and that just cannot be tolerated.

Because in our system, the liberal-leaning MF-media must never, ever give credit to the other side for looking reasonable, with their stupid plans, and their numbers, and facts and stuff. Not when Krugman's boyfriend comes to the podium with his, adult-looking aloofness.

via Allahpundit

Unrelated, from the sidebar: Teamsters threaten to cut off Ohio's Budweiser supply. That's not much of a threat anywhere except Ohio. [via Jay in Ames]

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 06:00 AM | Comments (162)
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If you haven't been following that cool new show called Debt Ceiling, let me catch you up:

• Senator McConnell's plan didn't garner much support. People felt that it was a craven attempt to deflect blame (which is pretty much what it was).


• The "Gang of Six" plan came next. The only problem: no one, GOP or Democrat, much liked it. It crept off quietly to die by the side of the road somewhere.


• The GOP put on their big-boy pants and passed the "Cup, Cap, and Balance" bill in the House (with a few Democrat votes thrown in to make it bipartisan), but the evil Harry Reid wouldn't even let it come to a vote in the Senate.


• House Speaker John Boehner has come up with "The Boehner Gambit" to get at least something of of this drawn-out debate, but the CBO shat all over it and now it must be redrafted to keep the GOP House from killing it with extreme prejudice.


• The Dastardly Dingy Harry has a nefarious plan known as "The Harry Reid Imperative" in a secret vault, just waiting for his nemesis Cryin' John Boehner to fail.


• The financial Apocalypse predicted by His Majesty the King keeps failing to materialize. (In fact His Majesty has been calling banks on the down-low to assure them that there will be no default. Which makes a cynic like me think that his public statements to the contrary just might have been alarmist bullshit.)


• Marcia is celebrating the birth of her child when her husband Arturo comes out of his coma and announces that he cannot be the father of little Gertrude, because he had a vasectomy years ago. It turns out the real father is Arturo's heretofore-unknown twin brother, Osvaldo, who had been working as a Guatemalan mercenary for years before arriving in Elmdale to stand-in for his stricken brother. Marcia was so devastated that she passed out and hit her head, and now she's in a coma. Butch wants to tell Yelena that he has fallen in love with the cabana boy Richard, but fears Yelena's crazy business-magnate father Lowell will have him killed.

Are we boned? Yes. But the thing is: everyone else is boned too. That doesn't really ease the burn, though.

When the word "malaise" once again enters the nation's argot, you know we're back in Carter Country.

Help us, Ben Bernanke! You're our only hope!

I've been saying it for a long time: Tax the poor! A lot of people are coming around to that view. Even people on the bottom end of the income ladder must have some skin in the government game. They have to know that government has a cost, and that if they want more government, the cost (to them!) is going to go up.

The WSJ has more to say about America's broken jobs engine. The problem is a complex one, and is not solely attributable to the current downturn. Our workforce's skills are badly-aligned with the needs of businesses (jobs are going begging during a period of 10% unemployment because there are no qualified applicants), technology and automation have removed many jobs entirely, and foreign competition is heating up, making our labor costs uncompetitive. This is a complicated problem that will take (probably) many years to solve, and will require a much more able political class than the one we have now. (That bit about the "just-in-time worker" from the article strikes me as very prescient about what your future jobs are going to look like.)

New orders for durable goods in June fell -- everybody together now! -- "unexpectedly"!

Via Insty: Is the Euro an idea whose time is gone? Actually, it was a shitty idea right from the get-go. It never really had a "time".

Hold on tight, now, my children: a 500-day retail recession is on the way. Instead of "Summer of Change" we can call it "Summer of Chump"?

California has found a new way to screw both itself and the citizens who live there by making it hard to build and buy single-family homes. I'm sure you'll be as shocked as I am to find that the geniuses behind this one are the global-warming alarmists and their fellow social-planners on the Left. My message to Californians: you're getting what you voted for. Good and hard.

UPDATE 1: Many casual observers wonder -- if American debt is so bad, why are investors still flocking to it? The reason is simple: there aren't many alternatives. But it's also vital to note that this may not always be the case; if investors ever find a viable altnernative to US Treasury debt before we get our fiscal house in order, we are well and truly boned beyond redemption. Our reprieve is due to luck, not skill.
more...

Posted by: Monty at 04:58 AM | Comments (108)
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Speaker Boehner has rushed his bill back to the drawing board with the hope of re-writing its provisions to get better numbers out of the CBO. The bill is still tentatively scheduled for a vote tomorrow, but Boehner can lose only 23 Republicans before he has to find votes among the Democrats. Keep in mind that only 5 Democrats crossed the aisle for Cut, Cap, and Balance and none of them have spoken up in support of the latest Boehner plan. Somewhere in a Capitol Hill office, Senator Reid is doing a Snoopy happy dance.

So what happened with the numbers? Boehner promised that his bill would increase the debt ceiling by less than it cut spending. So his numbers were $800 billion for the debt ceiling and $1.2 trillion in cut spending. But that cut was only relative to the January 2011 baseline, which had been used up until now in the debt ceiling talks. Unfortunately for Boehner, that baseline is out of date.

The March CBO baseline is more recent and current than the January one, and it makes sense to use that one now, even if the Biden talks and subsequent negotiations used an earlier baseline (which led the architects of this bill, working off their prior efforts, to do the same). Republicans are right, therefore, to be re-writing their bill to match the later baseline.

...Democrats have just realized that the Reid bill, which the White House is backing, has made the same mistake, so that ReidÂ’s cuts would also be scored as lower than its authors claim by CBO (probably at exactly the same level as the original Boehner bill). With House Republicans accepting CBOÂ’s correction and re-writing their bill with deeper cuts to suit the later CBO baseline, ReidÂ’s bill suddenly becomes a much weaker player in all this unless he also makes deeper cuts, which the Democrats are obviously not inclined to do.

In that sense, this baseline confusion could well strengthen BoehnerÂ’s hand.

One can only hope. Because it's still the only other game in town. Purists insist that the Cut, Cap, and Balance plan that passed the House (thank you, Speaker Boehner) is still viable, though Reid shot it down in the Senate, but there is no reason to believe that is the case. The Senate won't vote for it and the President won't sign it. And leveraging the threat of economic calamity isn't changing that.

What might change that particular stalemate would be to push past the August 2 (or is it August 10?) deadline, let our AAA rating be lost, let federal disbursements be disrupted, and use the actual economic calamity as leverage for CCB and the Balanced Budget Amendment. That is the strategy that the purists are suggesting now. Of course, there's no reason to believe that Republicans will not be blamed in whole or in part for this "Let it Burn" plan and it has the smell of desperation about it. While it may be fun to imagine using economic Armageddon to get everything we want without having to compromise on anything, they're playing with people's lives and livelihoods in a particularly cynical and unprincipled manner.

Like it or not, Republicans only control one half of one branch of government. As long as that's the case, the range of possible options on the debt ceiling issue is between Speaker Boehner on the Right and President Obama on the Far Left. In a better world, one where Republicans have control of Congress and the White House, the range of possible options would be better---between Jim DeMint on the Far Right and Speaker Boehner on the Right. I'd like to live in that world, and I know you would too. So, for the love of Pete, can we please concentrate on getting there? Say, perhaps, by racking up some victories against President Obama?

Republicans have the opportunity for a small victory here. They get to moderately restrain spending, put the President in the hot seat, and lay the ground work for a Balanced Budget Amendment vote. Small victories lead to larger victories.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:05 AM | Comments (127)
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With regard to the sword and the purse, I could have no conception of Congress keeping a sword, and the states using it; of Congress using a purse, and the states keeping it; of Congress having power, and the states exercising it.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:59 AM | Comments (75)
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The Return of Pulse Jets?

Pulse jets are an old technology - dating from the 1930's - but it was Nazi Germany that fielded the first actual jet planes. But while pulse jets had few moving parts, they were loud, inefficient and had valves that quickly wore out. Which is why they were soon superceded by turbo-fan-based jet engines.

But now they're back in the form of a cargo-carrying plane designed by Boeing that uses a modern form of pulse jets in large arrays (Pulse-Ejector-Thrust-Augmentors) without any moving parts at all. The trick is a well-designed combustion chamber along with precise computer-controlled fuel injection and ignition.

Unlike turbofans, the pulse jet engine has no moving parts at all. Its core—situated at the top of the engine—generates shockwaves via a subsonic combustion of fuel. Each shockwave forces hot exhaust air out of the tube, creating a pressure differential that fills the engine with cold air. New fuel then mixes with that air through computer-controlled injection similar to the technology used in cars, starting a new shockwave. This process is repeated at very high speeds, providing with the thrust needed to lift the aircraft from the ground.

The PETA cell is encased in a thrust augmenting duct that channels more air into the flow, increasing its power. Every cell is independently controlled and can be grouped on the belly of any aircraft. And since each cell has its own direction controls, you can basically maneuver the ship while taking off or landing in any way you want—even if it’s basically a large flat brick like the Millennium Falcon. Then, when the ship is in the air, horizontal thrust engines take over.

And if you're interested in building or buying your own pulse jet engine, check out this site.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:00 PM | Comments (537)
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Charles Krauthammer just called this a "great achievement."

Over 10 years, it cuts, it is supposed, $1.1 trillion dollars.

But almost all of those cuts come in the tenth year.

See page 9 for the overall effect on the deficit, year by year.

The line of year-by-year "total effect on the deficit" reads:

-1 -16 -57 -73 -85 -96 -109 -123 -138 -153

The CBO scores the ten year deficit reduction as $851 billion, not $1.1 trillion.

They're rewriting their proposal in light of the CBO's scoring of the plan.

And probably, as Gabe writes in an email, due to mass hysteria.

Thanks to DrewM for spotting that.

Isn't that less than the $2 billion in 2012 that Biden and the Democrats proposed?

Posted by: Ace at 02:46 PM | Comments (733)
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Politico doesn't have a link, but quotes this from the Navy Times:

"Had the subsequently determined facts and evidence surrounding both the incident for which the award was made and the processing of the award itself been known to the Secretary of the Navy in 1992, those facts would have prevented the award of the Silver Star," [Mabus spokeswoman Pamela] Kunze said.

This Wade Sanders is now in jail for child pornography charges (!!!), but that does not seem at all to be the reason for his losing of the Silver Star -- the text indicates that the report about the incident that led to Silver Star was... falsified.

At least that's my take. I can't see how else to read that, except the government was defrauded as regards the supposedly heroic conduct he exhibited.

Interesting.

Update: The medal was not awarded when Sanders was serving in Vietnam (with Kerry, during Kerry's brief four month tour), but in 1992.

The Navy is being very tight-lipped about the reasons for revoking the medal.

It's not clear whether Sanders conviction played a role in him losing his Silver Star.

The Navy declined to release a copy of the memo, which Mabus addressed to the chief of naval personnel, who in turn would be responsible for the administrative actions to pull the award from official naval records.

Kunze would not say who or what prompted the review of Sanders Silver Star, nor would she say what new information had surfaced about the Silver Star.

"Additional information was brought to light after 1992," she said. "Those facts could have prevented the award of the Silver Star at that time."

She gave no specific reasons as to how Mabus or the board came to their conclusion.

Oh, By The Way: Guess what Sanders' defense is for being in possession of child porn?

Yeah, you nailed that on the first go.

"I got caught in the net," Sanders said, "I'm not the kind of person they were after." Sanders said he had downloaded the files as part of his research for an article on sexual exploitation of children in foreign countries. He said his work for the Clinton administration had included aiding victims of child sex abuse in the former Yugoslavia. "I have no sexual attraction to children whatsoever," Sanders said. "There was no evil intent." Sanders also said he didn't realize federal child pornography laws barred downloading or viewing the material even by researchers.

When I posted that busty lesbian pron picture, I too was researching an article about sexual exploitation. The article was to be entitled: Shit Yeah, Look At Those Knockers!

I had a tentative deal with Penguin Classics.

Posted by: Ace at 12:58 PM | Comments (347)
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