Have at it. Trying to find something about the stimulus bill, but everything seems so vague. I can’t figure out what exactly was cut from the MSM write-ups.
I am watching Comedy Central for the Daily Show this morning, and there is an infomercial for the “Slap Chop,” which may be the most pointless invention I have ever seen. Do people not use chef’s knives these days?
Zzyzx
I’m hoping I can decide if I want this bill to pass or not before it does…
4tehlulz
The conference committee is going to be a bitch, though if I had to guess which bill the final version will most resemble, it’d be the House’s.
Starfish
Here is what I read yesterday. The elimination of all the science and violence against women bothers me a lot.
robertdsc
I think the tax cut portion should be eliminated entirely. But it won’t and we’ll get a load of crap that won’t do a thing to help. Nice job, Senators.
demkat620
I think it needs more cowbell.
Walker
The science funding was for organizations (e.g. NSF) that have an annual budget. A budget which cannot be fillibustered.
Englischlehrer
good afternoon from germany! cold and rainy, I broke even at poker last night and spent some time in the hammock before watching an episode of season 4 of LoST. I’m going to an early dinner with my girlfriend and then putting her on a train to the other side of the country, north of Hamburg. She’ll be back next week and then we’re going to Portugal for 10 days, can’t wait!
ps check my blog to see how i’d live on 500,000/year as a salary.
fastandsloppy
We have a slap-chop. It’s actually a pretty handy little tool.
Fulcanelli
No help for the states, no mass transit bux, but billions in tax cuts for 1st time home buyers and car buyers, WTF?
With unemployment through the fucking roof, millions of people buried in consumer debt with credit scores in the negative numbers and credit tighter than a turtle’s asshole who’s going to be buying a NEW FUCKING HOUSE OR A CAR when many can’t afford the payments on the ones they have??? Or is that the point?
Didn’t see any relief for home foreclosures but that should come from the 2nd phase of the TARP money, no?
Infrastructure funds were increased, which is good for construction related trades, labor and manufacturing but that’s where it seems to end.
I doubt this will pass the House sniff test as is, so it’ll get kicked back to where the Dems dominate. I hope Obama’s got this "bipartisan’ fantasy shit out of his system like Mexican food from a Tijuana street vendor. It’s war, Barry. Time to call in the Governors who are getting stiffed and turn up the heat. Hint: Start with California and Florida.
The Grand Panjandrum
After watching a few videos of people cooking on Youtube it would probably be best for most people to either learn proper knife skills or use a Slap Chop.
bago
Dare I ask? What is a slap chop?
Comrade Darkness
My chef’s knife wielding partner thought that looked pretty cool.
So I found out how it got that name. It comes from having to slap your family members upside the head to keep them from wanting one.
Zach
Science wasn’t cut as much as initially threatened. $200M out of $1.4B for NSF and larger chunks were taken out of NOAA/NASA/NIST.
There’s a huge discrepancy ($3B vs $1.2B) in the House and Senate NSF allocations. I’d think the Senate has the upper hand in conference because they need the votes, but who the hell is going to filibuster the conference report? That way, the compromising fraction would get shit from both sides first joining the compromise and then bailing on the passed bill when it changes.
Here’s hoping the conference committee cuts the $11B auto subsidy in the Senate bill in half and uses it to bring science funding roughly up to levels in the House bill.
There’s a list of what got cut in the compromise over at the Corner; I believe it’s accurate: corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDgwZjVmNGNiNWFhNGQwMTI3MTMxZDNhODFmMzg5MWI
Also, fwd’d an e-mail that lists the science cuts specifically.
D-Chance.
I feel so… "stimulated" this morning. Just finished my taxes and used every dodge I could find… and, for the 13th straight year, will pay ZERO income/payroll tax. The tax rules and interpretations are your friend, if you dig around long enough. Obamamerica can "stimulate" all he wants; he won’t do it with any of my money. Other than the necessary SS/Medicare money grabs, he never will, either…
Brick Oven Bill
"So then you get the argument, ‘well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill.’ What do you think a stimulus is?"
"That’s the whole point,"
I say, if we are going to burn a trillion dollars, instead of sodding the National Mall in the aftermath of the inauguration, perhaps we should buy two hundred Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carriers. At $5 billion each, $1 trillion could increase our fleet from ten or so to two hundred and ten or so.
Or better yet, let’s electrify the railroads. The Pennsylvania Railroad electrified the northeast corridor during the ……. First Great Depression at a cost of $113,636 per mile. So let’s say costs have gone up 400%, and the cost today is $500,000 per mile.
$1 trillion would electrify TWO MILLION miles of railroad, which would be the equivalent of some 700 TRANSCONTINENTAL LINES, which should do it. This work could begin next week.
I, again offer my humble design services at cost of $12 million, plus tunnels and other incidentals, which starts at a mere 0.0012% of the total package. Typically, engineering costs are, like ten percent. So this is a good deal.
Comrade Darkness
Oh, the Repubs have decided the Dems needed a gift:
Michael S. Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, arranged for his 2006 Senate campaign to pay a defunct company run by his sister for services that were never performed, his finance chairman from that campaign has told federal prosecutors.
from wapo
demkat620
I can’t take these fucking people anymore. From the corner:
Seriously? Seriously? Do they have anything else? To quote Earl Weaver, "Are you gonna get any better or is this it?"
Zzyzx
@D-Chance.: That’s great, assuming you never would use a public road, call the police, go to a school, enjoy not being invaded, and not care about your personal safety at all…
El Cid
Wouldn’t it be much cheaper to electrifry Republicans, and of much more benefit to the nation?
demkat620
@Brick Oven Bill:
Hey Brick Head, the mall has looked like that for years. It was not the inauguration that caused it. It has looked like that since Nixon. I know, I’ve been there several times.
Why do Republicans hate grass?
Zzyzx
@demkat620: I mentioned that plan to the girl last night. She was tempted for a second until I asked her what she’d do with 5 grand. "Pay off debts. Save the rest."
The point here is that no one is spending any money. Giving us more money to not spend helps things how exactly?
demkat620
@Zzyzx:
Yes, and I guess we can hold a national telethon to raise money to rebuild our infrastructure.
demkat620
Course, Barack could always follow Bush’s example and ignore the law and spend the money however the fuck he wants.
Oh yeah, I forgot, Barack can’t do that cause he’s a democrat. That would mean impeachment. Rule o’ law is now back in effect.
Brick Oven Bill
Electric power reduces greenhouse gas emissions by nearly fifty percent when contrasted with internal combustion engines, even before idle time. Add in nuclear power and we can eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions from long distance train transport…
Twelve million is a very good price…
Think of the children…
bob h
I’m not a mental health professional, but McCain’s stimullus package outbursts look like clinical, unhinged hysteria to me.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Telethon schmelethon. Here’s how we’ll raise money.
Comrade Darkness
The Baltic Dry index surged up 14%, due to the Chinese. Partly this is gearing up to buy grain because of a winter wheat crop failure and partly this is their steel industry gearing back up.
Me thinks they are going to kick our butts at this recovery thing. Their system is perfect for it. Top down, do this, do that, here’s the money for it, is standard operating procedure.
And they’ve got beaucoup monies to do it with.
Stuck
@demkat620:
It is your pure distilled essence of wingnut. There next amendment should to disappear the entire Federal Government, and christen the new era of Dog eat Dog.
Comrade Darkness
@Brick Oven Bill, Gah, I have to agree with BOB on this one.
That and re-prioritize the tracks so passenger trains aren’t at the very very bottom of the schedule, which will always make them too unpredictable for mass transit.
demkat620
@kommrade reproductive vigor: Hilarious! I’d certainly pay!
eric
if you thought the stimulus bill was a trainwreck, just wait. Ginsburg’s likely replacement will be the fight to end all fights. there are many center-left judges that Obama could choose and every single one of them will support Roe. That will make the Repubs apoplectic. The idea that elections have consequences will again be lost on them. Obama had to win this stimulus fight even if it is less a victory and more a missed opportunity. That is a fight that matters even more to the core religious wing of the republican party. It will be nastier than anything we have seen yet.
I cannot wait for the rank hypocrisy on giving the President’s choice an up or down vote.
This was child’s play compared to that upcoming fight.
right now though, Obama is Everything and O. He has no losses even though he should have won this latest battle by a bigger margin, he still won and that counts for something in the minds of the Villagers.
In fact, by keeping Daschel out of the papers for the week, it eliminated the one thing that might have counted for a loss against Obama’s record.
The entire Gregg appointment is about getting to 60 for the remaining 6 years of Obama’s presidency….chicks dig the long ball.
The Other Steve
I’ve got one of those slap chop things. It’s not named slap chop. It’s got some other name on it. I think it might be german. Bought it for $10 at the store. We love it.
But then they’ve been making these things for 30 years or more. I’m surprised someone decided to buy tv commercials to sell ’em.
The Other Steve
Let’s wait until Ginsburg dies or retires before we worry about that.
eric
@The Other Steve: You can’t wait for it to happen. I am betting the plan was for Stevens to retire, but i will bet he putsthat off for another year. this is a horrible diagnosis. just about the worst and it is tragic. there are few women of Ginsburg’s statute that the current jackoffs in the right would allow to sit in the courtroom, much less on the bench,
this is THE reason many people would NEVER vote for a republican and there will be intense pressure for Obama to deliver a suitable replacement.
If it were me, I would nominate Hillary Clinton. As a Senator, there would be great deference toward her, notwithstanding her last name. She is very smart. She is center-left (though more center than left on foreign affairs).
And it would make the wingers EXPLODE!
Conservatively Liberal
As the stimulus plan now sands, I hope it fails to pass. I don’t care about ‘just pass something’ because ‘just something’ is not going to solve our problems. When the solution is more tax cuts, I have had it up to here with fucking tax cuts and I want it to die a fast death. Same with tossing money into the gaping money pits that used to be our banking system. They ran the banks into the ground and they want us to pay for their ‘mistakes’ and poor decisions.
Do absolutely nothing and hope the whole thing just slides into the shithouse so everyone can enjoy what our government has wrought upon us and the rest of the world. Why let them clusterfuck their way into a kludged bill that that will only fail and leave Obama hanging onto the bag of shit these assholes made for him?
No, IMO a bad plan is just as bad, if not worse, than no plan at all. Obama started out with a good plan/framework and it has gone downhill ever since. I am not falling for the ‘they will hammer it out in committee’ bullshit because if it looks this bad going in to the belly of the beast I will bet that it will be an even bigger abomination when it finally gets crapped out. CR called the housing tax credit "ill-conceived" and said "We need to see the details, but it sounds like they made the package smaller and the composition worse."
No, this deserves to be DOA and I hope it is until there is a better plan. More tax cuts are not the answer.
JL
@Conservatively Liberal: The plan concerns me because a few programs like increase in food stamps and more aid for the unemployed was cut. Those particular programs are the most stimulative. I’m willing to wait and see what comes out of conference before I say throw it out.
Mark Zandi founder of MoodyEconomy thinks that there is a real sense of urgency.
What’s your definition of a clean bill?
Bill H
Let’s think about how well TARP worked out. So, "Freaking out and doing something in such a big rush that you screw it up" is bad when the Republicans do it, but it’s okay when… Oh wait. The Democrats were in control of Congress then, too.
So, "Freaking out and doing something in such a big rush that you screw it up" is bad when the Republicans demand it, but it’s okay when a Democrat demands it and Democrats do it.
(Why does the damned strikethrough work in the preview and not in the finished product?)
eric
@Bill H: the dems are only in control of the House. Until everyone learns how to sanely deal with the filibuster, the Dems do not "control" the Senate. But more importantly, the Dems do not control the airwaves and that is where these figths have been waged.
One of the problems with counterfactuals is there inability to conclusively answer an argument, but I think the burden is on those who say nothing would have been better than the something on TARP and the stimulus. The real fear is not economic conditions per se, but the perecptions of economic conditions and if TARP delayed the onset of terror then it was a "success" even if it is now evidently a boondoggle. But the boondoggle portion was controlled by Treasury, which, at the time, was not "controlled" by the Dems.
Conservatively Liberal
My definition of a good bill is one that invests in our infrastructure, period. One that creates good paying jobs that people can use to earn money to in turn stimulate our economy. If we have to spend than lets not spend it on simple consumption since that is what got us in this mess, lets invest it in infrastructure that can still be standing when our grandchildren get the bill for it. Consumption will rise if and when people are earning some money so let the increase in consumption be driven by that factor instead of artificially feeding it by throwing cash out to the public.
The Rushublicans don’t want the government to create ‘good paying jobs’ since it defeats the purpose of the free trade deals we have to offshore every job we can. People will start to draw the line between good paying jobs, jobs that anyone can do, being created by the government now and the fact that we once used to have jobs like that but our government allowed them to be off-shored. IOW, we are going deeper into debt to create jobs that we once had but were destroyed by government trade deals.
Mark Zandi is right, we need action now. But if all we are going to get is a watered down bill that isn’t going to do what is intended and just hand out more of the same old shit (TAX CUTS!) that got us into this mess then we are better off where we are now. If the Rushublicans think it is not that bad now then lets just hang on and wait until it is because it will get worse. Right now, people are going to blame the congress and senate for this failure, not Obama. Oh the Rushublicans will try to spin it that way but in the end the people are going to remember that Obama is the ‘new kid on the block’ when it comes to this shitpile and that the ones who can’t fix it are the ones who caused it.
I would rather have the shitpile blow up in our faces than taking the last of the cash and handing it out as more tax cuts. Just the looks alone on the faces of our politicians would be worth it. Both parties would be in the shithouse but everyone will remember that the Rushublicans were the ones who put us there. The Democrats just came along for the ride, they are too weak to either have prevented this and they are not strong enough to solve this.
So let the cards fall where they may. No. More. Tax. Cuts.
Mike in NC
Not as much as nominating Bill Clinton. Hey, that worked out OK for Taft, right?
eric
@Conservatively Liberal: I think you are gonna see that as a second bill in the Spring. Again, this bill is about stemming the negative tide. I think you will see a push on infrastructure with a focos on non-transportable jobs overseas. with an emphasis on energy independence. The issue will then be on things like the Minnesota bridge collpase and the current report cards on infrastructure. that is an isolatable debate that can be tied to jobs, jobs and jobs. then a three week fight in the Senate is not nearly as costly and the sum will be greater the parts.
In the real world, what the Senate Repubs did was extortion. "Stop before I shoot this dog." And it was clear, they were more than willing to shoot the dog.
Conservatively Liberal
eric, I would fully expect that there would be follow-up bills. I am not stupid enough to think that we are going to get a perfect bill or that one bill will do the job. Obama is right on that point but that doesn’t excuse the abomination that they are hacking together right now. We don’t get unlimited chances to pull out of this tailspin because the cash that is available is finite. If we start flushing it down the toilet of tax cuts now then we might as well do nothing at all and not incur the additional debt.
I expect stimulus and we are getting tax cuts and no help for people who really need it. Tax cuts are for people who have taxes to cut, which means that you have a lot of money coming in to cut the taxes on. People who have a lot of money coming in don’t need more tax cuts. People need good paying jobs before you can start talking about cutting taxes on those jobs. If they are not working then there isn’t a whole lot of tax to cut, is there?
Tax cuts are not going to do shit for us right now. Hell, taxes being too low put us in the situation we are in right now so does it make sense to hand out more of them? Fuck no.