Pangloss

"We need a mon-tage!" When did Bush try to take credit for something the Navy Seals did? I must have missed that one.

No it's not, it's smaller than Social Security, even including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (sorry, I mean the "overseas contingency operations"). And mandatory entitlement spending DWARFS discretionary spending, so we'll have none of that now. See the more accurate summary below, which takes the numbers from the White House web site. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget By the way, whomever put that graphic together didn't even get the year right. The one they'll implement in October is the 2010 budget, not the 2009 budget. The 2009 budget is the one they're using now.

I know "the look"! I usually listen to my own toons or Pandora internet radio through my iPhone. I have XM but the audio quality isn't high enough so I'm letting it expire. FM isn't allowed to soil my audio system except for the occasional bit of All Things Re-Considered.

I hate to break it to you but most people liked that Tolkein did that. Why is it that you think Jordan wrote his books that way? Also, don't forget that Sauron is destroyed not because of a massive conflict between nations, but because of a single act of heroism. Precisely 1/2 of the 2nd and 3rd books are devoted to that story. But of course, to each his own.

Thanks!

True. We're a bit tied up with with the walls of Montezuma. (sorry) BTW, speaking of the Marine Hymn, you guys noticed name of the US destroyer that rescued Captain Phillips, right? It's a masterful bit of irony. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bainbridge_(DDG-96) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bainbridge

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/13/cuba.travel/?iref=mpstoryview This should be interesting. He's lifting mainly the ones that prohibit Cuban exiles from traveling to see family members and sending them large amounts of cash. The cash they've been able to send has already had a major impact on the Cuban economy, so that will certainly increase, but the Elephant in the Room (American tourism) is still off the table. For now. This seems to be a certain degree of pandering to the exile community. Which reflects typical Cuban exile denialism, IMO. "I'll send MY money to MY relatives, but as long as nobody else does that the regime will suffer and wither and die!" As if. All the sanctions should be lifted. Flood the country with American wealth. Give them so much money they'll have a high-speed internet connection in every home by next Thursday. Then see what happens. Cubans are most definitely NOT Chinese. What do you all think?

I understand the sentiment, but IMO you have to be much more hesitant than that in drawing conclusions about what all Republicans are (or aren't). The Republican Revolution was similarly fueled by broad generalizations, in that case about Democrats, that were popularized by talk radio and other conservative media outlets. The whole Anybody But Bush movement was no better grounded in reality, and didn't get us any farther in solving real problems. When it comes to the economy there's enough blame to go around with both parties. The focus on getting us out of this economic slump should be economic realities, not which party was right and which one was wrong.

Which tells us to do what, exactly?

Certainly if there hadn't been some cutbacks then there wouldn't have been any budget surpluses. But even then I'm afraid there was little agreement to cut programs. The budget actually grew under Clinton by almost 30%, with 2/3rds of that growth coming during the "more responsible"/"surplus-producing" period of 1996-2001. There were cuts, especially to defense, but overall discretionary spending increased. Also much of the defense "cuts" were actually postponements to programs like the F-22 and F-35, which instead came "due" during the Bush administration (at a greatly increased cost per unit). I won't say there aren't any examples of widespread support for cutting of specific items during the late 1990s, though. Were you thinking of something specific? I don't entirely disagree that the "cuts" that were made (such as they were) aided in producing the surplus -- certainly if they hadn't been made then there wouldn't have been any surpluses at all. I'm just not sure I see a lot of evidence for optimism about our ability to cut spending in that period of history. It's an interesting footnote here that the line-item veto was one of the few things that Clinton and Gingrich agreed on. Not that it mattered in the end, since six supremes failed to share their POV. Had the line-item veto been preserved, our current budget picture might be very different today. Perhaps President Bush's weakened LIV should be resurrected (it passed the House but died in the Senate). A LIV would be very useful over the next couple of years, giving us the ability to cut costs without giving nearly so much weight to local-political and special-interest considerations. (Actually some senators might support the idea now, if they can be convinced that this gives them political cover to do what they know needs to be done. I don't see Arlen Specter giving up his doubled education budget, though.) But for the present little has changed. Last week Gates announced the end of production orders for the F-22 and the C-17. The F-22 employs workers in two states, neither of which is likely to change their general political affiliations any time soon. The C-17 employs workers in 40 states. We'll see which one gets preserved (or at least fought over) when the debates hit the floor, eh? Sources: 1991 budget (Bush 41's last) Summary of budget submissions from 1996-2010

I thought it was Will, but Gingrich had some interesting exchanges with Krugman as well. That whole show was a little odd this week from the get-go (with that last-minute Rick Warren cancellation), and at least part of that piracy discussion was rendered moot 45 minutes after it aired by the developments off the coast of Somalia. An off week, I suppose, but I think I actually like the Round Table better when they stray off their prepared statements a bit (like the way Huffington got smacked around last week).

From the Sunday talk show "This Week" on ABC today: George Will: "The Dow has predicted nine of the last three recessions." Paul Krugman: "... and six of the last one recovery!"

Minor correction: 435.

That chart may say something bad about Republicans, but it doesn't say that Democrats are bipartisan. It shows that they like social spending regardless of who proposes it -- that's an ideological preference. That doesn't mean they're better at "playing ball" than Republicans. I can't really see a bunch of congressional Democrats sitting around saying "oh well.... sigh... I guess if Mr. Reagan really wants to spend our money on the poor, wellllllllll, I guess we can open the purse strings just this once........".

Reposted from another forum. Infraction issued and topic closed.

Well this is where the rubber meets the road in politics, right here. Yes, it's "policy" spending, because it's entirely on the "discretionary" side -- the spending that's being done ostensibly to "fix the economy" is not entitlement spending. Which means it can be stopped at any time. You're absolutely right. The problem is that lawmakers are already gearing up to fight that battle and reframe it as a matter of "spending cuts" to "important services". As you point out they were actually one-time massive increases that had nothing to do with those services, but they'll be fought over tooth and nail because that's how politicians get re-elected -- by pandering to special interests and their deep pockets. We've never been very good at it -- we don't cut budgets, we increase them. There's never been a single time in history when we HAVE cut discretionary spending to a program that enjoyed any kind of support at all. The situation calls for an approach that is unique and unprecedented. And there's no groundwork going on at all to make that happen, even though it will HAVE to happen (or at least start happening) in the very next budget. And here's the gut-puncher: That debate will take place just a few months before the mid-term election. Oof. I can already picture the interviews.... "Senator, what do you think about the upcoming changes to the budget with regard to education spending?" "Why thank you, Katie, I'm glad you asked. My opponent wants to cut the federal education budget in half, returning us to a time of No Child Left Behind, when we all knew that the problem with education in this country was the lack of sufficient spending at the federal level. Now that we have finally fixed that problem with appropriate spending, why would we want to cut that spending? Why does my opponent hate children?" Now mind you Obama doesn't actually call to remove all that additional spending in the 2011 budget -- I believe the plan is to remove it gradually over time (which is why the OMB went apesquit and "corrected" Obama's projected deficit through 2019). But that actually makes the political problem worse, because each year that additional spending is on the books will make it that much harder to remove later. Not only will the politics get harder, but the bureaucracies will become more inured to those budgets as well. It's going to be a tough nut to crack. This is one of (if not the) most difficult tasks on Obama's agenda for his entire presidency, IMO.

That's a good point, and in fact the projected increase in budget size is roughly comparable to the decrease in tax revenue. Both are around 14% -- i.e. tax revenue is projected to decrease by 14% (2.71 trillion to 2.38 trillion), and expenditures are projected to grow from 3.1 to 3.55 trillion. (I'm just using very rough numbers here from the well-sourced-but-sometimes-error-prone Wikipedia articles on the 2009 and 2010 budgets.) Unfortunately that doesn't make up for the deficit, which is projected to be a whopping 50% of the budget. As the economy grows you can expect to whittle away at that deficit, but all the while you're increasing the debt, and that debt has to be serviced. So unless there is really MASSIVE growth (the kind we've never actually experienced even following WW2), we're going to have to cut expenses. A lot. And we have to do that -- something we've never really done before -- at the very moment that entitlement spending is about to skyrocket due to retiring baby boomers. We live in interesting times.

Sure, because he think the Republican platform is just fine the way it is. He thinks the only problem is the lack of grassroots support. On the second point he's not even wrong -- with sufficient support from the religious right John McCain would be in the White House right now. Of course, I happen to think he's entirely wrong on the first point, and that the religious right is best serving the country when it is sitting quietly at home stewing about lost opportunities. But hey, that's me.

Many of us here are forum frequenters around "da internets". I thought it might be fun to use this thread to share some of our favorite graphics that we've run across in conversations elsewhere. Anybody have any fun ones to share? Here's a lil' one just to get us started (can't remember where I found it):

I enjoyed the "Covenant" books a lot when they first came out, but my friends all hated them because they felt they were "too derivative of Tolkien". I've never read the Gap books, but I'll have to put them on my list now. I didn't realize they were based on Wagner's Ring until Bascule's post. That's pretty cool. Unfortunately they aren't offered as Kindle downloads. I am devouring books on my iPhone Kindle app lately. Just lovin' it.

Well I did call Scrappy out, it just didn't do any good, which is when I realized iNow was right and he was being a bit of a troll. That's Pangloss for you -- you never have to tell me a fifth time!

Not even if the opinion is made out of ignorance? A child is to be disrespected because they should have been born smarter? Being rude is not an argument. An ignorant statement is a learning opportunity, not a good time to call for a hanging rope.

I think that's a stupid ****ing argument. Do you feel that I respect you more or less, having phrased it that way?

Stanford University is running its introductory course on iPhone application development in an open format, available for free to the public via iTunes University. To access it just download iTunes and click on the "iTunes U" link on the main store page. From there you can't miss it; there are banners for it everywhere. The course is taught by two Apple employees from the iPhone dev team, and covers all the basics of interface design and data management and display, but not OpenGL/game stuff. You build a couple of applications including a Twitter client. Here's a link to the class home page, which includes a link that you can use to connect to the iTunes site after you have it installed: http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/index.php I imagine Apple is sponsoring it to some extent, but there's no advertising or any kind of marketing requirements involved, and you do NOT have to submit personal information in order to download the lectures, etc (though you do have to log into iTunes to get them).

Well now we're just degenerating again into name-calling and rudeness. Members opinion should not be called "bullshit" and members should not be called "patty cakes". If that's the best we can do here then I'm going to put the thread on suicide watch.