If you want to keep talking about kabuki theater.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 07:10 AM | Comments (30)
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When a foreign operation perp snatch seems too risky, its easier to just con the perp into coming to you to be arrested.

In a sting operation worthy of Hollywood, Mohamed Abdi Hassan was lured from Somalia to Belgium with promises of work on a documentary about high-seas crime that would “mirror his life as a pirate,” federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle said Monday.

But rather than being behind the camera as an expert adviser, Abdi Hassan ended up behind bars, nabbed as he landed Saturday at Brussels airport.

The promise of free shit (in this case free fame) draws them like moths to the flame though. Hundreds of fugitives have been swept up en-mass over the years here simply by mailing them notices they won free NFL tickets or some similar nonsense. A significant percentage always show up to "claim their prize".

Every time the cops run one of these scams, its a winner even though the ploy is old as the hills.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 07:11 AM | Comments (317)
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Things are changing fast but here are the reports on where we seem to be at this point.

The Senate GOP is going to be meeting shortly to discuss the developing McConnell-Reid deal.

Lawmakers and aides said the legislation would fund the government until Jan. 15 and extend the nationÂ’s borrowing authority until February but leave ObamaCare largely untouched.

One senior Senate aide said it would raise the debt ceiling until Feb. 7 while another said Feb. 15 remains a possibility.
It would also establish a Senate-House budget committee to craft a replacement for the automatic spending cuts known as sequestration, which would have to report its work product to Congress by Dec. 13.

There's also talk that the deal might include a gift to unions, a one year delay in ObamaCare's "reinsurance tax". There are other reports that say that won't be in the deal.

Basically, the Senate deal gives the GOP nothing. Income verification is part of the law (but one Obama is ignoring), so why is getting a provision that restates that a win of any sort?

The budget conference would simply be a device to loosen the sequester levels, so while some big spending Republicans will like that, conservatives won't.

The House has decided that's a non-starter and is proposing another ping-pong shot back to the Senate.

emerging House legislation: CR + DL + med device + income verification + Vitter language

— Robert Costa (@robertcostaNRO) October 15, 2013

The length of the CR and Debt Ceiling hike aren't clear at this point but are important. If the CR is only for 3 months, then the Democrats will come back and try to loosen the sequester levels again. If they are going to do a CR at this point, it needs to be at least 6 months.

And please stop trying to repeal the medical device tax. It's a gift to K-Street lobbyists and gives no relief to actual voters. Who exactly is the GOP standing with here?

Personally, I'd like to see the House do one of two things. Either pass a clean debt ceiling hike to get it off the table, keep the shutdown and refocus the fight where it belongs, ObamaCare or add some of those conditions Costa tweeted about to the debt bill. Either way, leave the shutdown in place.

(To me the ideal strategy would have been to have passed the clean debt ceiling hike last night...jam the Senate before they jam you, put Reid on defense and cut the legs out from under the GOP sellouts. I guess Boehner doesn't follow me on Twitter)

Remember, I didn't think the debt ceiling was a good place to fight from the start because it was an empty threat all along. Yes, the feds can pay interest and some contracts but aside from how the media and markets spin it, the real rub will be when entitlement checks don't go out. Stop Social Security and Medicare checks and even Rand Paul and Ted Cruz will come running to open the spigots again. Yes, Obama did a debt ceiling deal in 2011 but not because he was worried about protecting the US from a financial crisis (never let one go to waste) but because he was worried about his reelection in 2012. He's never going to be on a ballot again, so he's willing to go full Bullworth.

The important thing here is to keep in mind who the sellouts are...the Senate GOP. Reid never had to deal with the House because he knew eventually Collins, Corker, McConnell, etc would cave and cut a deal. Reid could then take that deal and jam it to the House at the last second. And because the press in this country is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrats, they'd play it as "the House must pass this because the Senate produced a bi-partisan deal". Note that when the House passes bill upon bill that the Senate ignores, that's just partisan gamesmanship that doesn't matter. But time and time again (2011 debt ceiling, fiscal cliff, Sandy Relief) when the Senate passes something then the House MUST accept it according to The Narrative.

The House has held pretty firm so far but the Senate GOP, whose only job in this was to vote no on whatever Reid puts up, has once again come to the rescue of the Democrats.

Yeah, let's put all out eggs in the Mitch McConnell as Majority Leader basket. At least if he's Majority Leader he'll have the nicer office when he cuts the legs out from conservatives in 2015.

Added: Boehner going full O'Reilly..Fuck it! We'll do it live! What could go wrong?

One GOP source: @SpeakerBoehner bringing new House R plan to the floor w/out a whip check.

— David M. Drucker (@DavidMDrucker) October 15, 2013

Rule Number 12 of politics...never go full O'Reilly.

UPDATE: Here's the outline of the GOP leadership sales points for their new plan.

On the Vitter Amendment:

more...

Posted by: DrewM at 06:11 AM | Comments (336)
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• Cooke: Louisiana Heist
  
• Mandatory Health Insurance: Obamacare's Wrong Diagnosis, Wrong Remedy
  
• House Conservatives Revolt
  
• Deranged People Are So Funny
  
• I Told You So On Obamacare
  
• Anti-Redskin Indian Leader Is An Obama Fundraiser
  
• Taranto: Co-Op Country
  
• Aetna CEO Blasts Obamacare Debacle (video)
  
• Michelle Obama Not Maintaining Her Private Garden
  
• A Return To Keynes
  
• Four Libertarian Things We Tell Pollsters, That We Really Don't Believe
  
• VDH: America Is Intervened Out
  
• Afghan Governor Killed By Bomb
  
• Where Even The Middle Class Can't Afford To Live Anymore
  
• Megyn's Numbers Were Real And They Were Spectacular
  
• This Is So Not Like Normal Red Sox Fans /sarc
  
• More Reasons To Homeschool
  
• Debt Ceiling Deadline, Stop Fixating On Oct. 17
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:24 AM | Comments (127)
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Day 15.

Leon Panetta was slightly, obliquely critical of President Obama's lack of leadership skills at a breakfast with reporters that was sponsored by the Wall Street Journal. So several reporters objected:

To some extent, the reporters in the room seemed more forgiving of the circumstances in which the president finds himself. Jackie Calmes of the New York Times noted that the Panetta-envisioned budget deal was illusory because Republicans refuse to consider new tax revenue. Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times observed that the White House would argue that its previous efforts at schmoozing and deal-making had fizzled.

Republicans in Congress aren't exactly jumping for joy at the Senate deal to end the shutdown and raise the debt ceiling. Senate GOP will gather at 11am to hear the full details.

Ed Morrissey writes in his column for The Week that the failed Obamacare exchange website is only the tip of the iceberg. Actually, Andy talked about that in this week's podcast too: the exchange failures are part of the process of getting health coverage; Obamacare is also failing substantively on getting affordable health coverage to people.

And, for a bit of amusement, check out the five different television adaptations of the Wizard of Oz currently in development. "Everyone is on really good drugs. That is the lesson here."

[ RSS]

[iTunes]

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:52 AM | Comments (253)
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OMFG We're Gonna go through the Debt Ceiling!

Okay. So what does that mean exactly?

Well basically we won't be able to take out any more debt so the government will have to live off daily revenues and whatever pocket change it has lying around.  And keep making interest payments to the Chinese.

Rick Moran's take is that it'll be unpleasant but not Armageddon:

OCT. 30

Default happens. By the end of the day, the government is $7 billion short of what it needs to pay all of its bills.

So who gets stiffed?

Everybody, according to the Obama administration.

Treasury says it doesn't have the ability to pick and choose who gets paid. The last time the government faced this situation in 2011, they planned to wait until public coffers were full enough to pay a full day's bills before cutting any checks, according to a Treasury Department watchdog report from 2012.

But not necessarily a default-default since we're capable of paying interest due to bond holders.

In theory, the government could keep bondholders whole indefinitely because tax revenues are more than enough to cover interest payments, and Treasury pays creditors through a separate system than other obligations.

On the other hand Tyler Cowan sees chaos in financial markets, the US technically in default, permanently higher interest rates, cats and dogs living together, and a 10% hit to the GDP and a brand new recession.

And if in the worst case we do default on our bonds, well it wouldn't be the first time:

It has been widely said, including by President Obama that the United States has never defaulted on either the principal or interest of its debt. That's not so.

The United States was in default in the 1780's, after the Revolutionary War and Britain's closing of West Indian ports to American ships threw the country into deep depression. It was that financial crisis that led to the present Constitution.

Then in November of 1814, with Washington, D.C., in ruins and with American soldiers going unpaid, the Treasury defaulted on some bonds. The default was temporary and quickly forgotten as the war ended soon afterwards.

In 1979, another dust up over the debt ceiling caused the Treasury to be late, for up to a week, on redeeming $122 million in Treasury bills. The Treasury blamed it on new word-processing software and called it a "delay," but the market called it a default and the interest rate on T-bills rose 0.6 percentage points and stayed up. A study in 1989 calculated that that cost us $12 billion.

Yeah a 'word processor' delay. I like that.

So where does Obama actually stand on raising the debt limit? Well the last time he voted on it, he was all agin it. Because Bush and failure of leadership or some other bullshit reason.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:30 PM | Comments (796)
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Chargers and Colts on the west coast. Also, the Cowboys win over the hapless Redskins just reinforces my thought that the NFC East is completely full of suck.

May I take a technological editorial moment? Thank you.

On Friday evening my laptop crapped its final and joined the choir invisible. I'm traveling, so I grabbed some inexpensive HP replacement which I'm fine with.

Except. Windows 8. Now I realize I'm a bit older and set in my ways but who in the hell thought a user interface designed for tablets would be super neato for laptops? Laptops without a touchscreen.

An idiot that's who.

Hey, I have an iPad, I *get* it. Windows 8 is stupid. So there, I said that.

Here, have a cheerleader. She's cute.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:00 PM | Comments (322)
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I'll try to translate.

The criminal court of Limoges has convicted Friday a father to 500 euros in fines plus probation for having given a spanking to his 9-year-old son, revealed [the newspaper] La Populaire. Beyond this penalty, the father of the boy must pay 150 euros to the mother, acting as the legal representative of the boy, for moral prejudice.

La Populaire says the mother and father are going through a difficult separation.

"For a long time my son does not say 'hello' to me, I asked him why and he said that he didn't feel like it. I said to him that he owed me respect, and yes, I gave him a spanking," said the father. According to the father, he's suffering due to the "current fashion [of parenting which forbids correcting children's behavior]."

For their part, the judges justified the decision by decarling: "This is violence! And still more, an act of humiliation for a child who, at 9 years old, finds his buttocks in the air for the assing,*" said the president, Estelle Lamotte-Genet. "Fortunately we aren't in a time anymore where parents and teachers inflict physical punishments. That is of a bygone age," added the assistant prosecutor, Jean-Paul Lescat.

The defense, unbowed, tried to explain this action in speaking of a complex family situation and a child of a particularly willful character. "This action would not have have been taken had my client seen it as humiliating for his son," said Me. Anne-Laure Catherinot.

There's a legal issue here, due to the parents divorcing (or separating), where a court would feel obligated to resolve a difference on the point; but they way the officers of the court speak, it sounds like they're saying spanking is a barbaric practice of a forgotten age, period, even if both parents agree to it.

Now if I understand French history and demographics (Caveat: I don't), Limoges, being in the west-middle of the country and in the Occitan, should be one of the more traditionalist and Catholic areas in the country. Well, it's not Paris, definitely.

And yet this is the sort of ruling coming out of there, demonstrating that the ruling class really feels no regard at all for the "bygone age" views of its citizens.

* This article caught my eye just because of the word "fessée." "Fesses" are buttocks, so I wondered if the French word for giving someone a spanking is "giving someone an assing." Well, apparently so. I left "assing" in there even though the right word is "spanking" because it sounds funny, I think.

For anyone who doesn't care about this article (and I don't really blame you), here's that sidebar item of Robert Gibbs calling ObamaCare's rollout "excruciatingly bad," and calling for the responsible parties to be fired.

Yeah... that's not going to happen, obviously. Fired people begin leaking about the incompetence of their boss who remains behind. And if there's one thing a Naked Emperor can't have, it's people beginning to write stories noting that he is unclothed.

And so the most incompetent administration in history rolls on, all its failures still in place.

Posted by: Ace at 03:09 PM | Comments (189)
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Here's the short version:

Now here's the long version from Avik Roy at Forbes: Obamacare's Website Is Crashing Because It Doesn't Want You To Know How Costly Its Plans Are

Comparable private-sector e-commerce sites, like eHealthInsurance.com, allow you to shop for plans and compare prices simply by entering your age and your ZIP code. After youÂ’ve selected a plan you like, you fill out an on-line application. That substantially winnows down the number of people who rely on the site for network-intensive tasks.

But Obamacare can't do that because the sticker shock from seeing the gross premium without the offsetting amount of subsidies (read money stolen from taxpayers to pay for this crap) they qualify for would send everyone running.

Instead of creating a simulation where people could answer a few questions and get an estimate of the subsidy, which would have been comparatively easy, the Obamacare exchanges try (and fail) to go through the entire enrollee qualification process on the fly.

And even when people do manage to create an account, there's another issue:

But even before the exchanges opened for enrollment there were reports that the subsidy calculator was not working correctly. That still seems to be the case. Cigna is so uncertain about the subsidy calculator in the federal exchange that it has issued an official warning to brokers not to attempt to enroll anyone who might qualify for subsidies until November ...

So the thing that caused the day one and ongoing debacle doesn't even work? Hmmm ... let's see if we can spot the problem.

I'm betting it's the interfaces, isn't it? It's always the damned interfaces.

And in further cheery Obamacare wagers, I'm also betting the Venn diagram of the people who are trying to enroll on day one and the people just dying to game the system looks like this: O

But fear not, the Obamacare exchange debacle will soon appear at the top of the search results for "the perfect is the enemy of the good". So we've got that going for us.

Posted by: andy at 02:20 PM | Comments (249)
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Via Hot Air, Reuters reports a possible deal to fund the government until February 15th, permitting negotiations on budgetary matters.

Actually Reuters says "mid January" and then "February 15th," in the same article. Early next year, let's call it.

The tentative framework, which is not finalized and could change, would also set up a new round of deficit-reduction negotiations that would try to strike a bargain by year's end.

At Hot Air (first link), Guy Benson says Democrats will refuse to entertain it, and of course Democrats are needed to pass anything in the Senate.

I'm curious what the media would do if it is clearer than ever it's the Democrats continuing the shutdown.

Tell a lie, I'm not curious at all. I know exactly what they'll do.

Posted by: Ace at 01:35 PM | Comments (175)
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