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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Thursday Morning Open Thread

Thursday Morning Open Thread

by Anne Laurie|  July 28, 20116:19 am| 18 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome

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(Ted Rall’s website)

Tom Junod posted this in Esquire‘s Political Blog two weeks ago, but I don’t think I’ve seen a better analogy for the GOPers’ intransigence since then:

Ah, but that’s vision for you: Some men see the economic peril that is and say “Why?”; others dream of the economic peril that never was and say “Why not?” Indeed, after spending an entire day talking to Democrats and Republicans about the debt ceiling, I’d become convinced that they were never going to come to any kind of agreement because they were in fact talking about different things: They both agreed that the patient was sick, but the Democrats diagnosed diabetes, and the Republicans diagnosed cancer. The Democrats were saying that as long as the patient stayed on insulin — i.e., as long as the patient could issue new debt — he wouldn’t lose his toes, go blind, and succumb to impotence; the Republicans were saying that if they didn’t get in there and start cutting right away, he would die. The Democrats were “conservative,” saying that if the patient started eating better and exercising a little bit he’d eventually come around; the Republicans were intent on using the patient’s illness as an occasion for a little experimentation, an opportunity to prove that if they preemptively excised his toes, eyes, and penis he’d get along just fine, and might even be motivated to get off his ass and get a freaking job….

***********

Apart from situations over which we may have even less control than we do over the weather…. What’s on the schedule today?

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Reader Interactions

18Comments

  1. 1.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    July 28, 2011 at 6:21 am

    Freshman U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh, a tax-bashing Tea Party champion who sharply lectures President Barack Obama and other Democrats on fiscal responsibility, owes more than $100,000 in child support to his ex-wife and three children, according to documents his ex-wife filed in their divorce case in December.

  2. 2.

    arguingwithsignposts

    July 28, 2011 at 6:36 am

    Re: the mustache of unserstanding: i will repeat this on a later thread probably, and it’s likely a project for driftglass, but a funny idea is The Pundit League of America, with MoU, Bobo, Chunky Bobo, Modo and possiby Kthughulu. Then you could have the wapo version with Krauthammer, Will, Dionne, Gerson and whoever their other stable of wingnuts are.

    Like DC vs Marvel. Fighting the good fight for centrism, elitism and the village way!

    Illustrations with comic book graphics for all of them.

    Moving this up from cole’s previous thread.

  3. 3.

    magurakurin

    July 28, 2011 at 6:49 am

    The dollar plunged in Japan today. Last night the news announcers were trying to explain what was going on and when they got to the point of explaining that the whole problem could simply be removed raising the debt limit they got twisted puzzled looks on their faces. It was beyond their comprehension that a country would be doing this to itself when it had no clear need to. It was funny and sad at the same time. They more or less think the States is off it’s fucking nut over here.

  4. 4.

    kdaug

    July 28, 2011 at 7:20 am

    @magurakurin: A lot of us think we’re off our fucking nut over here, too. (Also).

  5. 5.

    JPL

    July 28, 2011 at 7:30 am

    Raven, Walsh was on CBS this morning explaining how even if we don’t raise the debt ceiling we will not default. The interviewer tried a few times to get him to explain but of course he didn’t. She did not ask him about his own personal finances.

  6. 6.

    Linda Featheringill

    July 28, 2011 at 7:31 am

    Morning folks.

    I found it interesting that a couple of Dem representatives are urging Obama to use the constitutional option.

    http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/927433-196/disagreement-whether-obama-can-raise-limit.html

  7. 7.

    Montysano

    July 28, 2011 at 7:43 am

    From the Esquire link:

    by Tuesday afternoon Dr. McConnell announced that he had figured out a “last-choice option” to resolve the impasse and get the patient some treatment. The “last-choice option,” as far as I could understand it, turned out to be this: The patient might have cancer, but the Democrats can treat the patient for diabetes, as long as they agree to let the Republicans blame them for malpractice.

    Seems about right.

  8. 8.

    lacp

    July 28, 2011 at 7:48 am

    If the 27% really, really are true believers…..we’re so screwed:

    http://scienceblog.com/46622/minority-rules-scientists-discover-tipping-point-for-the-spread-of-ideas/

  9. 9.

    JPL

    July 28, 2011 at 8:12 am

    Lacp, yup. The tea party has a forum thanks to the MSM.

  10. 10.

    Wag

    July 28, 2011 at 8:55 am

    @lacp

    The researchers should have had two diametrically opposed idea competing each with the same formulation I have no doubt that earth flat ideas would get stuck at 27% under that kind of scenario.

  11. 11.

    El Cid

    July 28, 2011 at 8:58 am

    Goldman Sachs continues to be smeared by simplistic paranoids unfamiliar with the subtle workings of the financial industry and the impossibility of commodities speculation and monopoly manipulation.

    LONDON/DETROIT (Reuters) – …A string of warehouses in Detroit, most of them operated by Goldman [Sachs], has stockpiled more than a million tonnes of the industrial metal aluminum, about a quarter of global reported inventories.
    __
    Simply storing all that metal generates tens of millions of dollars in rental revenues for Goldman every year.
    __
    There’s just one problem: only a trickle of the aluminum is leaving the depots, creating a supply pinch for manufacturers of everything from soft drink cans to aircraft.
    __
    The resulting spike in prices has sparked a clash between companies forced to pay more for their aluminum and wait months for it to be delivered, Goldman, which is keen to keep its cash machines humming and the London Metal Exchange (LME), the world’s benchmark industrial metals market, which critics accuse of lax oversight.
    __
    Analysts question why London’s metals market allows big financial players like Goldman to own the warehouses which store huge quantities of metal even as they trade the commodity.
    __
    Robin Bhar, a veteran metals analyst at Credit Agricole in London says the conflict of interest is so acute he wants U.S. and European anti-trust regulators to weigh in.
    __
    “I think it makes a mockery of the market. It’s a shame,” Bhar said. “This is an anti-competitive situation. It puts (some) companies at an advantage, and clearly the rest of the market at a disadvantage. It’s a real, genuine concern. And I think the regulators have to look at it.”

    Monopolistic (or oligopolistic) hoarding is a natural part of the workings of the Free Market. Anyone unhappy with the collection of aluminum supplies in a few hands could easily switch to some other metal, leading to price changes under the Laws of Supply and Demand, right?

  12. 12.

    El Cid

    July 28, 2011 at 9:02 am

    Also, the portrayal of “Al Qa’ida” as free agents whom can be defeated by drone attacks within Somalia continues to instead develop as the standard model of terrorists as state and state-elite funded insurgents.

    NAIROBI (Reuters) – Eritrea was behind a plot to attack an African Union summit in Ethiopia in January and is bankrolling al Qaeda-linked Somali rebels through its embassy in Kenya, according to a UN report.
    __
    A U.N. Monitoring Group report on Somalia and Eritrea said the Red Sea state’s intelligence personnel were active in Uganda, South Sudan, Kenya and Somalia, and that the country’s actions posed a threat to security and peace in the region.
    __
    “Whereas Eritrean support to foreign armed opposition groups has in the past been limited to conventional military operations, the plot to disrupt the African Union summit in Addis Ababa in January 2011, which envisaged mass casualty attacks against civilian targets and the strategic use of explosives to create a climate of fear, represents a qualitative shift in Eritrean tactics,” the report obtained by Reuters said.
    __
    The UN said while past Eritrean support for rebel groups in both Somalia and Ethiopia had to be seen in the context of an unresolved border dispute with Addis Ababa, the new approach was a threat to the whole of the Horn and east Africa

  13. 13.

    Chris Gerrib

    July 28, 2011 at 9:45 am

    My Congressman (Peter Roskam, R-Il) holds “telephone town halls.” These are conference calls that one gets randomly invited to join. I attended one last night, and was pleased to hear five (5!) people in a row tell him to raise taxes and raise the debt ceiling. Two of the callers were very clear that they were long-time Republicans.

    Alas, all is not well – there was one guy who said we defaulted back when we went of the gold standard so just do it again, and 70+ year-old lady who doesn’t like Obama flying around in Air Force One. But still, 5 out of 7 has to be good news.

  14. 14.

    Linda Featheringill

    July 28, 2011 at 9:57 am

    OT but mildly amusing:

    Headline of a Yahoo news item states that the founder of the Knights Templar claims he has no connection to the Norway murderer.

    Wow. He must be pretty old by now!

  15. 15.

    Trollenschlongen

    July 28, 2011 at 10:27 am

    I love Ted Rall.

    On other matters relatedly: I don’t get an answer to this, so I will try again.

    Rather than negotiate with the Repubs, who are not acting in good faith and may well be insane, why doesn’t Obama simply say “give me a clean debt ceiling increase bill, without complications, or I will take my chances on the 14th ammendment?”

    Wouldn’t this calm the markets and citizenry with the added bonus of telling the pukes to fuck off?

  16. 16.

    lacp

    July 28, 2011 at 10:38 am

    Trollenschlongen,

    Because of all the smoke and mirrors about the 14th amendment, invoking it might just make the markets crazier. I happen to think it’s a legitimate option, but there has been a lot of talk against it that probably reduces its value as a hole card.

  17. 17.

    Trollenschlongen

    July 28, 2011 at 10:54 am

    Because of all the smoke and mirrors about the 14th amendment, invoking it might just make the markets crazier. I happen to think it’s a legitimate option, but there has been a lot of talk against it that probably reduces its value as a hole card.

    But it seems strange that a lot of that “talk against it” comes from the WH, thus devaluing one of its own bargaining chips. I don’t get it.

  18. 18.

    HyperIon

    July 28, 2011 at 4:23 pm

    Some men see the economic peril that is and say “Why?”; others dream of the economic peril that never was and say “Why not?”

    A very sad parody of what RFK once said…in To Seek a Newer World.

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