Fuck its silent in here.......

[Slaky]

Newsflash: 41% of Democrats want to lose the White House in 2012. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/poll-dems-want-primary-opponent-for-obama.php

But of the Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who favor a challenge for the party's nomination, 39% say they'd like the primary challenge to come from the left, while 40% want the challenge to come from the right.

Too crazy for Boys Town, too much of a boy for Crazy Town. The child was an outcast.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
   The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
   Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
   Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
   The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
   The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
   The best lack all conviction, while the worst
   Are full of passionate intensity.

Hey, I read that book.

But you're referencing the poem.

[Gilgamesh]

Newsflash: 41% of Democrats want to lose the White House in 2012. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/poll-dems-want-primary-opponent-for-obama.php

But of the Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who favor a challenge for the party's nomination, 39% say they'd like the primary challenge to come from the left, while 40% want the challenge to come from the right.

Too crazy for Boys Town, too much of a boy for Crazy Town. The child was an outcast.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
   The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
   Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
   Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
   The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
   The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
   The best lack all conviction, while the worst
   Are full of passionate intensity.

Hey, I read that book.

But you're referencing the poem.

How about "fins to the left, fins to the right"?

[Slaky]

Newsflash: 41% of Democrats want to lose the White House in 2012. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/poll-dems-want-primary-opponent-for-obama.php

But of the Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who favor a challenge for the party's nomination, 39% say they'd like the primary challenge to come from the left, while 40% want the challenge to come from the right.

Too crazy for Boys Town, too much of a boy for Crazy Town. The child was an outcast.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
   The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
   Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
   Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
   The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
   The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
   The best lack all conviction, while the worst
   Are full of passionate intensity.

Hey, I read that book.

But you're referencing the poem.

How about "fins to the left, fins to the right"?

Die slow.

[Gilgamesh]

Newsflash: 41% of Democrats want to lose the White House in 2012. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/poll-dems-want-primary-opponent-for-obama.php

But of the Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who favor a challenge for the party's nomination, 39% say they'd like the primary challenge to come from the left, while 40% want the challenge to come from the right.

Too crazy for Boys Town, too much of a boy for Crazy Town. The child was an outcast.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
   The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
   Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
   Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
   The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
   The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
   The best lack all conviction, while the worst
   Are full of passionate intensity.

Hey, I read that book.

But you're referencing the poem.

How about "fins to the left, fins to the right"?

Die slow.

I'm not going to lie, I felt dirty writing that post.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

Newsflash: 41% of Democrats want to lose the White House in 2012. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/poll-dems-want-primary-opponent-for-obama.php

But of the Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who favor a challenge for the party's nomination, 39% say they'd like the primary challenge to come from the left, while 40% want the challenge to come from the right.

Too crazy for Boys Town, too much of a boy for Crazy Town. The child was an outcast.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
   The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
   Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
   Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
   The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
   The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
   The best lack all conviction, while the worst
   Are full of passionate intensity.

Hey, I read that book.

But you're referencing the poem.

How about "fins to the left, fins to the right"?

Die slow.

I'm not going to lie, I felt dirty writing that post.

Why would we think you would lie about that?

[Bort]

Newsflash: 41% of Democrats want to lose the White House in 2012. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/poll-dems-want-primary-opponent-for-obama.php

But of the Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who favor a challenge for the party's nomination, 39% say they'd like the primary challenge to come from the left, while 40% want the challenge to come from the right.

Too crazy for Boys Town, too much of a boy for Crazy Town. The child was an outcast.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
   The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
   Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
   Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
   The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
   The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
   The best lack all conviction, while the worst
   Are full of passionate intensity.

Hey, I read that book.

But you're referencing the poem.

How about "fins to the left, fins to the right"?

Die slow.

I'm not going to lie, I felt dirty writing that post.

Why would we think you would lie about that?

Because he's nothing if not Nixonian.

[morpheus]

Newsflash: 41% of Democrats want to lose the White House in 2012. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/poll-dems-want-primary-opponent-for-obama.php

But of the Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who favor a challenge for the party's nomination, 39% say they'd like the primary challenge to come from the left, while 40% want the challenge to come from the right.

Too crazy for Boys Town, too much of a boy for Crazy Town. The child was an outcast.

Come my lady, come, come my lady...

[Quality Start Machine]

The NORKS are the good guys now?

[Gilgamesh]

The NORKS are the good guys now?

OBSESSED!

[ChuckD]

The NORKS are the good guys now?

OBSESSED!

GOTCHA MEDIA!

[Chuck to Chuck]

Greg Hintz with some very accurate words:

(D)iscretionary spending — both defense and non-defense — will amount to about $1.3 trillion this year. That's dwarfed by non-discretionary spending: $701 billion for Social Security; $720 billion for Medicare/Medicaid; $435 billion for items like food stamps and Supplemental Security Income for kids and the disabled, and a stunning $1.2 trillion in tax breaks.

   That last item includes all sorts of sacred cows, things like the home-mortgage deduction, hiring tax credits, investment tax credits and housing subsidies.

   Put a different way, most of the federal budget now is on auto pilot. The money goes out the door automatically. Much in the form of transfer payments (Social Security and Medicare, for instance) and much in the form of tax breaks that, once law, are almost impossible to remove.

   Each item has strong defenders. Almost none of them represent low-hanging fruit — like arts funding is for Republicans, or more money for Army tanks is for Democrats (unless, of course, the tanks are built in my state).

   That's the backdrop of the great debate that now has begun.

   Given the times and results of the recent election, I can't blame fiscal conservatives for trying to seize the moment. In many ways, they're right. Ultimately, a nation can't spend what it doesn't have.

  But once the current recession hangover wears off — and it will — I doubt whether the American public really is committed to cutting spending, when it's their programs that will go.  Like I said above, shared sacrifice is for someone else.

[Quality Start Machine]

I don't want to hear shit about debt or deficits for the next 2 years.

[Slaky]

I don't want to hear shit about debt or deficits for the next 2 years.

I give up.

[Gilgamesh]

I don't want to hear shit about debt or deficits for the next 2 years.

Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a thing.

[morpheus]

I don't want to hear shit about debt or deficits for the next 2 years.

Everyone knows that it's the spending that drives deficits, not the income tax rates.  Or, that is, they *should* know that.  The problem is that people, shockingly, respond to incentives and change their behavior when tax rates rise.  To support this assertion, here's a chart using data from the Deficit Commission's work as well as the CBO (I am just using it for the historical data, not the projections).  You'll notice that whatever the tax rates were, the government really hasn't been able to collect more than 21% of GDP in taxes.  In fact, the historical average is more like 17.5% of GDP.  That's whether we had the 90% top marginal tax rates of the 1950s or the 28% top rate of the late 1980s.



So, your comment about the extension materially affecting the deficit is misguided.