Obama got some of his biggest laughs with this line: "It's true that I turn 50 tomorrow, which means that by the time I wake up, I'll have an e-mail from AARP, asking me to call President Obama and tell him to protect Medicare."
Looks like the Tea Party is getting what it has long desired, a return to the financial situation at the time of the Tea Party in 1773: Poor credit standing by the government(s), a preference for "hard money", hostility to debt of any kind, and economic thinking suitable for small farms and firms operating in villages. It's simple and works fairly well if you have a family-based social services culture, although growth is severely constrained.
Faced with the realities of modern capitalism's atomized and dispersed work force along with occasional disruptions within the system, both Bismark and Keynes advocated for (a) a substantial government-run safety net, and (b) counter-cyclical spending. Both involving debt and taxes. And - most important - it requires a citizenry that agrees to the social contract and does not have callous disregard for those in distress and needing aid (usually people, but can be firms, e.g. General Motors).
Republicans are practicing myopianomics. If they, and their supporters, still have jobs, then that's as far as they care to look. Therefore, it's easy to propose elimination of whatever policies that might help the "other guys". And so they have. And here we are.
Or more properly, The Response. Here's the schedule:
8:00AM Doors open and pre-event worship
10:00AM Opening remarks and direction for the day Worship Focus: Personal Repentance Prayer for personal repentance
11:30AM Worship Focus: Corporate Repentance Prayer: Repentance for the Church’s Idolatry Rapid Succession Prayer Small Group Prayer Prayer: Repentance for the shedding of innocent blood Rapid Succession Prayer Focus: Prayer for America Rapid Succession Prayer Small Group Prayer Focus: Prayer for Israel Rapid Succession Prayer
1:45PM Worship Focus: First Commandment Worship Rapid Succession Prayer Small Group Prayer Focus: Generational Blessing Small Group Prayer
3:15PM Worship Focus: Revival Worship Rapid Succession Prayer Small Group Prayer Worship
5:00PM Closing remarks
Lots of interesting stuff at the website. A list of Honorary Co-chairs that's a Who's Who of evangelicals. And in the Why? section, under Historic Precedence for National Prayer, a list that's all 18th Century events (most pre-Constitution) with one exception. That called by President John Tyler, who later ended up siding with the Confederacy (and was a delegate to the Confederate Congress). Weird.
Eric Cantor, Republican House Majority Leader on Medicare: (emp add)
U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) on Wednesday suggested that Republicans will continue a push to overhaul programs such as Medicare ...
"What we have to be, I think, focused on is truth in budgeting here," Cantor told The Wall Street Journal'sOpinion Journal. He said "the better way" for Americans is to "get the fiscal house in order" and "come to grips with the fact that promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept for many." ...
... Republicans could make a new push to cut back on Medicare ...
"When we came out with our budget, we said, look, let's at least put people on notice, but preserve those who are 55 and older," Cantor said, referring to a Republican-written budget plan that would turn Medicare, now a fee-for-service program, into a program that subsidizes private health insurance. "The rest of us have got ample time to try and plan our lives so that we can adjust ...
There was a DJ ... who spun some hip-hop, but none of the people playing music were hip-hop artists! Look: When I'm promised a "Hip-Hop BBQ" in a headline, I expect nothing but hip-hop stars and enthusiasts eating BBQ. Instead, I learn that a collection of celebrities, some of them black, ate "chicken, ribs, hamburgers, hot dogs, pasta and salad" and then a bunch of pie before listening to Herbie Hancock. Fox Nation could have gone with the "Jazz BBQ Doesn't Create Jobs" hed, I guess, but why not cut to the chase with something like: "Uppity Blacks Eat Soul Food and Laugh While You Hunt for A Job You Can't Get Because of Welfare Queens, Affirmative Action, and Carjackers."
If the White House continues in this way. Ben Smith of Politico reports: (emp add)
Tense moments at Common Purpose meet
Tensions between the White House and its liberal allies came to a head last night at the weekly Common Purpose meeting, where progressive leaders and National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling had a tense exchange about the debt deal, two Democratic sources said.
The meeting is an off-the-record, regular gathering that some on the left credit both with keeping the White House aware of liberal concern and keeping liberal messaging coordinated with the White House. Critics deride it as a "veal pen" aimed at neutering the left.
Yesterday, Sperling faced a series of questions about the White House's concessions on the debt ceiling fight and its inability to move in the direction of new taxes or revenues. Progressive consultant Mike Lux, the sources said, summed up the liberal concern, producing what a participant described as an "extremely defensive" response from Sperling.
Sperling, a person involved said, pointed his finger at liberal groups, which he said hadn't done enough to highlight what he saw as the positive side of the debt package -- a message that didn't go over well with participants.
Right now the Task Manager is reporting that in the last 24 hours my laptop has received 18 quintillion bytes. Or 18 billion gigabytes. And it's sent almost the same amount (but is short 400 million bytes).
This is not the first time it's reported figures like this, and no, there was nothing bizarre going on - like a hard power fail. Just some browsing (with a defective Firefox 5, but that's another story) and one or two instances of Word and Excel.
Kudos for the excellent Q/A work at Microsoft.
I guess all you are supposed to do these days is fire up the browser, go to Facebook, and stay there the entire time. Simple! Nothing complicated. No strain on the OS with multiple socket connections and all that other stuff that had been resolved about 10 years ago. But really, who cares about that nowadays, right? Just build your software with wonderful object-oriented tools that allow the programmer to not know or care about the underlying elements, but add "extra value" with baroque custom fetch-receive components that deliver images or content, because it's too much hassle to actually have the servers present most or all of the information in the first transmission.
Why the GOP's debt-ceiling victory was a generational defeat for liberals.
The precedent-setting nature of this cannot be underestimated. Never before has the White House done anything other than demand a clean debt ceiling hike.
