Sequestration is a terrible, horrible, no good idea.

And we must let it happen.

You know what you call $1.2 trillion in budget cuts? A good start.

After last night it's clear that as presently constituted there is no electoral path to reducing the size and scope of government. Since we can not do that in an orderly and rationale way, we must use the tool we have at hand.

The lame duck will feature a lot of talk about "grand bargains". No Just no. While the GOP and conservatives were crushed last night, the GOP still retains control of the House so "the people" voted for more gridlock. Then gridlock they shall have. And that means enforcing the current law of the land....sequestration.

I'd much rather a messy, disorganized and painful set of cuts than an clean, orderly and disastrous set of tax and spending increases.

As someone once said, "never let a crisis go to waste bitches". At least I think that's what they said.

Oh and the debt ceiling needs to be raised again.

As a commenter pointed out: Let ALL the Bush tax cuts expire. All the people who were taken off the roles 10 years ago? Back on baby!

Posted by: DrewM at 09:25 AM | Comments (409)
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I'm going to ignore obvious ones like "the media," with one exception. I'll stick to things we had control of, and one big thing no one had control of.

1. Benghazi/Candy Crowely. "Act of terror." The line Obama had prepped for, and probably tipped Candy Crowely off about in advance.

Romney's mistake here was looking as precisely what he wasn't -- unprepared. Romney is a very prepared guy, and it's generally shown throughout his campaign.

In this case, though, I think the guy tasked with prepping him for Benghazi-- and briefing him on it-- overlooked two vague mentions of "acts of terror" by Obama.

Romney got stung -- and it's based on this one exchange, and then his off-his-game-performance for the next ten minutes of the second debate -- that caused his loss in the debate. Had he watched his words more carefully, had he been prepped to say "I know, Mr. President, you're going to claim you made a vague allusion to 'act of terror'"... he would have cleanly won the second debate, too.

Further, it's my theory that Romney laid off Benghazi at this point due to this error. I think he lost confidence in the guy tasked to this issue -- embarrass me in public and I don't want to hear from you for a while -- and also figured that to continue attempting relitigating it would just keep Candy Crowley's ignorant slapdown in the public consciousness. I think he choose, wrongly, to just ignore it from this point out.

And because he was no longer pushing it as an issue, the media decided they had the pretext necessary to drop it entirely as an issue, too.

Think how differently the whole second debate would have gone -- and the third debate, too, as that began with a Benghazi question -- had the ordinarily well-prepped Romney simply known Obama made a vague reference to "act of terror." more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:25 AM | Comments (825)
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Ah well, who needs money anyway, right?

Hey, know how I know Obama won? The dollar dropped.

Hey, know how I know Obama won? The line at Cabela's.

Hey, know how I know Obama won? All the Help Wanted signs disappeared.

I refuse to be deranged like the lefties were in 2004. Running crying to shrinks and getting a mental syndrome named after themselves. Ridiculous.

We're bigger than this. Our natures are far more hardy than that, we are far tougher than the other side and we will be back.

Hey, know how I know Obama won? Gasoline now costs 50 shell casings per gallon!

Posted by: LauraW at 06:02 AM | Comments (922)
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Well. We lost. We lost in a disappointing fashion. If these numbers hold, Romney and Obama will have received less votes than Bush and Kerry did in 2004. It was said that Obama would benefit from a low turnout election and he clearly has.

I warn you that this post may be rambling and incoherent. Anger and disappointment can do that to a man.

First, as Gabe pointed out, Romney ran a good campaign. I didn't like Romney and didn't want him in the primaries, but I won't deny that I came to like him as the campaign went along. He did everything he was supposed to do. He campaigned hard. He spent his money wisely. He ran competitively in a lot of states. He made a lot of gains on what John McCain lost in 2008. Unfortunately McCain lost by so much in 2008 and there was too much ground to be made up.

I don't know why or how we only turned out, as of now, some 56 million people. That's less than McCain got. Were those 3 million people independents who voted for McCain but decided to stay home? Were the 10 million people who voted for Obama in 2008 but didn't in 2012 also independents who decided to stay home? Were they demoralized Democrats and Republicans?

If it turns out those 3 million people belong to a demographic that normally votes Republican then we'll have to find a way to appeal to them in 2016 or find a way to win without them.

Regardless, we're going to have to find a way to cobble together coalitions to win elections in the future. The Democrats are the party of free stuff. We can't really compete with that. I'll leave this to better minds, but I can tell you that you probably won't like where we'll have to go to win votes. Think amnesty.

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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:23 AM | Comments (360)
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Very nice words from Gabe below. Very nice.

But as a high-income-a/k/a-1%-American who has never cheated on his taxes before, I have another message.

Fuck. You.

I've been paying AMT for, oh, five years now: 28% marginal on a lower base plus a state rate of 5.3%. The "Bush Tax Rates" that Obama talks about ... oh, wait. He forgot about the AMT. He made out like the "rich" were paying ridiculously low tax rates.

Well, if you're "rich" and still earn a living from real work and happen to live in a high wage/high tax state, this isn't the case at all. You've been paying the AMT too.

So welcome to your red-state tax increase, folks. Your blue-state brethren voted that you should be taxed more. And they're right! As it goes, anyway.

Because this folly won't fall on me. I'm at a high enough rate as it is. And the incentive to cheat just went way up. The IRS charges a much lower interest rate than I'd ever have to pay from holding "the government's" money for a while, so my income model just got another line called "tax float".

Arbitrage, 99%ers, do you speak it?

You like your big government, assholes? Pay for it. But I'll have a chair when the music stops.

I encourage all similarly-situated Americans to do the same.

You idiots that reelected Obama, and elected Warren and the like, can't vote yourselves an infinite slice of my wallet. I'll always be one step ahead of you.

A large amount of money will be moved to offshore tax havens between now and 12/31. Also, watch dividend-paying stocks. A ton of money's about to be distributed in advance of the return-to-Boooosh!!11! tax rates plus the new Obamacare tax on investment income.

Oh, and it's my birthday. Instead of spending it happily effing off, I'll spend it moving money. Point. Click. Done. So, happy.

Also, FWIW, Dow futures are down ~100 points on "hope" as I write this.

[Update] Apologies if this is too ranty. I'm just pissed at the idiots that are stealing my hard-earned money.

Posted by: andy at 04:19 AM | Comments (560)
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Walp... back to work.

We struggled through four years under that idiot, we'll just have to struggle through four more. And, happily, he won't have a Democratic Congress with which to ram his second-term agenda through, at least during the next two years. Now it's our job to make sure our congresscritters don't lose their spine. Major items on the agenda: (1) sequestration and budget; (2) the debt limit; (3) taxes. Other issues that would require control of the Senate, like nixing Supreme Court nominees and chipping away at Obamacare, are basically conceded.

Colorado and Washington, meanwhile, voted to approve state initiatives legalizing marijuana. So, if you live in those states, raise a bowl for us.

Alabama, Wyoming, and maybe Montana approved measures to amend their state constitutions to prohibit people from being compelled to participate in Obamacare. Lawsuits will ensue, but here's hoping.

Maryland, Maine, and Washington approved initiatives legalizing gay marriage. Minnesota became the first state to reject a ballot initiative to amend their constitution to ban gay marriage.

I will probably tune out the storm of accusations and recriminations that are coming. Gov. Romney ran a strong campaign. His error, one that all of us in the Republican Party shared, was in not realizing just how far the election in 2008 had shifted voter demographics in presidential elections. We were led astray by the unusual win in 2010. We believed that 2008 had been an aberration, rather than a new normal.

Do not believe any nonsense that this is the end of the GOP. Democrats say that every time. Tea Partiers also say that. The fact is that the popular vote was 48% to 50%. That's amazingly close. It means that almost one out of two people agreed with you and are hurting today because of it. The President lacks a mandate and, as we have seen, lacks the skills to effectively govern this country. Sit tight. As the man said: do it for love of country. And, as the other man said: if you must, do it for revenge.

Edited to Add: Major props to CAC and JohnE for their work on the AOSHQ Decision Desk. It was an amazing resource last night. Maybe one or both of them will write a post about all the work, the behind-the-scenes maneuvering, the volunteers that made it possible. I hope so.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:56 AM | Comments (618)
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We've been punched in the gut before. I think this time it's a little more painful because we can't believe that half of America could possibly vote for a man whose policies have been so costly and so ineffective. It's like going to bed with your S.O. and waking up to a complete stranger...

...who happens to be punching you in the gut.

So I suppose there should be healing, yes? Some sort of Kubler-Ross five stage process to get through this?

Fortunately we at AoSHQ long ago perfected a 1-stage healing process which served us remarkably well through the 2006 and 2008 elections. In layman's terms, we skip right over the Denial/Anger/Bargaining/Depression/Acceptance malarkey and play to one of our major strengths:

So let me gift you this thread, and encourage you to express your appreciation for the insightful public, the supportive media, and the outstanding administration which have provided us with such a promising 4-year future.

Posted by: Geoff at 10:33 PM | Comments (903)
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On TV, now.

It's just hitting me. It's really over. It's not a nightmare. This happened.

Posted by: Ace at 08:55 PM | Comments (1188)
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Harrison Ford is up for it.

Um, so are Mark Hammill and Carie Fisher, but of course they'd be.

Posted by: Ace at 08:21 PM | Comments (22)
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I figure the ONT is going to be preempted and stomped on like crazy tonight but consider it your election night meet-up point, staging area for attacks as well as meta-analysis.

And should the lines break and we be overrun, the ONT will also be our rallying point. If you see 'Alamo' appear on the front page, make your way here, sock up, and hold the margins. There's a reason we've been stockpiling ampersands all these months. Also everyone take one of the red capsules, it'll be explained later.

UPDATE:

Posted by: Maetenloch at 08:06 PM | Comments (667)
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