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January 29, 2009

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Tournament Texas Hold 'Em. No Limit Texas Hold 'Em at that.*

In any event, I might argue that the GOP's real problem was not going "all in" sooner, instead letting themselves get whittled down to next to nothing with the usual series of BS. So, not only are they forced to move all in with a monster such as Ten-Deuce suited, but even if the win, Obama still has a commanding chip lead. Bad times.

* Apologies, I sort of do this for a living at times, so bad poker analogies get my hackles up. My hackles are up a lot.

ok pooh - i'm going to fight you on this one. i thought about putting "tournament" in -- but i thought it was an extra unnecessary word, and people just think about the world series anyway when they hear the term.

more importantly, what poker books do you recommend. i just read harrington not too long ago (you can respond over email if we want to avoid hijacking thread)

Of course part of the point of going all in before the flop is to bluff your opponents into folding. And betting that the Democrats will fold is never entirely stupid.

And betting that the Democrats will fold is never entirely stupid.

But betting OBAMA will??? Different story....

The Republicans are betting against the stimulus. They WANT the stimulus to FAIL. They want more and more Americans out of jobs and out of their homes.

Make sure that every conservative you know gets that message (right, OCSteve?).

Of course part of the point of going all in before the flop is to bluff your opponents into folding. And betting that the Democrats will fold is never entirely stupid.

This is another problem with waiting too long before you move all in, is that it basically ensures you will get called.

Publius, I sent an email to the main email, send me a message there and I'll give you some recos.

one word: filibuster
two more words: Harry Reid

whatever the House did could end up moot, if the Senate doesn't pass its bill.

i bet the house GOP is betting on that.

Jeff: I’m not sure why you’re calling me out on this. Care to clarify?

I’m sure that there are some who do actually want it to fail. Rather, they want to see Obama fail at the first big thing he tackles.

But I’m equally sure many just don’t believe that government spending will do the job. And we don’t have to look back even as far as the New Deal to justify that. In recent times, Japan’s “lost decade” seems proof enough.

Of more concern, increases in government spending and the scope of government programs are never "temporary”. Increasing spending is easy – scaling it back again once the emergency has passed – not so much.

But hey – once again I don’t have kids. So it’s not my progeny that is going to pay for all this…

Actually, OCSteve, the New Deal shows that proper government spending does work. The country was coming out of the epression until Roosevely gave into Republicans who convinced him that the deficit was more important than people's lives.

Also, the Depression was another whole ball of wax with major population relocation and geographic, climate issues that don't exist today.

OCSteve: But I’m equally sure many just don’t believe that government spending will do the job. And we don’t have to look back even as far as the New Deal to justify that.

Yes, I suppose the argument could be made that it was World War II, not Roosevelt's New Deal, that really fixed the US's economic woes in the 1930s.

Sorry, OCSteve, but I for one would far rather than Americans tried the New Deal method than sat waiting for WWIII...

In recent times, Japan’s “lost decade” seems proof enough.

I look forward to reading liberal japonicus's analysis of that last comment.

Of more concern, increases in government spending and the scope of government programs are never "temporary”.

Hey, how's ADC doing these days?

Of more concern, increases in government spending and the scope of government programs are never "temporary”. Increasing spending is easy – scaling it back again once the emergency has passed – not so much.

no doubt.

could someone please tell the GOP that the next time they complain that the military isn't getting as much money as they did the previous year ?

Hey, how's ADC doing these days?

How about the WPA?

ok pooh - i'm going to fight you on this one. i thought about putting "tournament" in -- but i thought it was an extra unnecessary word

It's not unnecessary because you can play Hold Em with limits. Meaning, you can sit down at a 1-5 table ($1 dollar minimum bet, $5 maximum bet), 2-10, 5-20, etc.

You can't go "all in" when playing with such stakes unless your "all" happens to be equal to or less than the max bet limit.

"Maybe the economy will get even worse in 2 or 4 years."

If the economy gets worse in two or four years, we will have Sarah Palin leading us to a Bridge to Nowhere.

Yikes.

There's a problem with the analogy that I don't know how to fix. Hmmm.

Termites are eating the table the players are using for the game. Moths are eating the paper currency they're betting with. The GOP is stalling the phone calls to exterminators in the ('rational') hope that since the other side has more currency to be lost to the moths, the moths will be drawn to the bigger pile of currency and even though everyone will have much less at the end, maybe they will have slightly more. And then the termite destruction will reach critical mass and, even though it will have holes in in and a leg will fall off, they will own the table for a while. Or something.

Publius is right that the GOP is in a very difficult political situation. They need Obama and the dems to fail and they have to do all they can to coax failure without being perceived as having done so. Of course, if Obama and the dems do fail, it means serious damage and decline for the entire country, but I guess that consideration is outside the bounds of 'rationality'.

This solves the ID/evolution controversy: homo sapiens is *definitely* descended from the chimp.

But I’m equally sure many just don’t believe that government spending will do the job....Japan’s “lost decade” seems proof enough.

Actually, what I think the lost decade proves is that if you keep letting the banks get away with avoiding an accounting, they will drag the rest of the country down with them. You also have to remember that in the middle of the lost decade, after the huge government stimulus seemed to be working, 2 things happened, which were 1) the Kobe earthquake and 2) the raising of the consumption tax from 3 to 5 percent. These both knocked the wind out of the economy and it has never really recovered.

Also at this time, the yen got a lot stronger, which then allowed the Chinese to really clean up by keeping the reminbi low, so that there was (and continues to be) little demand for Japanese labor. Also, the Japanese gave money to a lot of traditional businesses (like construction firms) that helped grease the skids because these folks helped the politicians stay in office, but wasted the money that was spent because the traditional businesses kept going, but shed off labor costs, diluting the impact of the stimulus.

Seeing how this happened is why I think the whole emphasis on green power is really important, because that sort of industry is not something that can easily be sent offshore, and so would be more resistant.

This solves the ID/evolution controversy: homo sapiens is *definitely* descended from the chimp.

Quibble: this is not what TOE says.

I know: it's just a joke.

Correct me if I am wrong, lj, but I think the hope is that the creation of a "bad bank" (better late than never) will prevent a lost decade.

or if the GOP somehow manages to block it in the Senate.

Nah. David Obey has seen this same performance dozens of times. Yesterday he predicted that they would do exactly what they did, vote against the stimulus en masse.

Then the bill will pass the Senate (probably with some GOP-added crap that both Obey and I will hate), and when the conference committee version comes to the House a goodly number of Republicans will vote for it.

eric - i'll fight you too. :)

sorry - i should have been more clear. I think that the general reading public assumes "no limit tournament" when they see the words "tx hold em" these days.

there are of course differnet variations -- but those don't get replayed on espn.

so i gambled on leaving out those words.

you need to spend less time on my poker analogies, an dmore time improving your halloween costumes


Of more concern, increases in government spending and the scope of government programs are never "temporary”. Increasing spending is easy – scaling it back again once the emergency has passed – not so much.

Harry Truman and Bill Clinton would like to have a word with you...


Correct me if I am wrong, lj, but I think the hope is that the creation of a "bad bank" (better late than never) will prevent a lost decade.

I think this depends a great deal on how it is done. We could conceivably put something like the Swedish banking rescue together using a good bank/bad bank triage process (afer splitting the mega-banks up into smaller pieces, as is starting to happend to Citi for example).

Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be what is currently under discussion. The bad bank plan I'm reading about sounds more like a ressurection of some of Paulson's proposals for the banks to just dump their toxic securities onto the Treasury at mark-to-model pricing (i.e. overpriced).

The latter plan is a terrible idea - it is just a complicated way of performing a massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the executives, shareholders and bondholders of the big banks. That is looting on a grand scale, not a solution to our problems.

Correct me if I am wrong, lj, but I think the hope is that the creation of a "bad bank" (better late than never) will prevent a lost decade

Why we're doing that -- even with clawbacks -- instead of simply nationalizing them is beyond me. It's the same freakin' thing, and at least the taxpayers (the ones PAYING FOR IT) are running the bank.

And more importantly, can break it into tiny, tiny, TINY banks when their books are clean and it's time to sell them off.

Too big to fail? And you fail? You get saved by the government, who wipes out your stockholders, fires your board (and sues them to recoup your bonuses), cleans up your books, then breaks your business into a bunch of tiny ones that are small enough to fail.

TLT beat me to it. At some point, the shareholders have to take a beating, though some argue that because pension funds and the like have been investing in the stock market, they is us. (or y'all)

The way that the banking sector was handled here also ran up against the peer pressure for which Japan is famous, where money was there, but no bank wanted to have the stigma of admitting how screwed they were. Sadly, this seems to be the same in the US. However, you haven't (I don't think) had any bank runs yet, something that happened a few times here.

"That is looting on a grand scale . . ."

Well, we've had enough of that -- no wonder the banks are now for this idea.

Geithner needs to step up.

Apparently, according to Tom P,http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/1/29/10311/7383/149/690396, the SEIU is about to take it to the matt in particular districts with some pretty hard hitting ads. Since I was fantasizing about doing this just last night, and see that it is being done this morning, I'm pretty excited. My imaginary Ad ran images of job losses and shuttered factories with a voice over saying "How do you feel right now, as the Economy crashes? Your congressman/your senator voted against doing *anything* to help put people back to work, to help communities survive. Are you hurt, angry, out of work, worried about your children's future? Hold on to that feeling, because in 2010 you get to let your congressman and your senator know just how you feel as they abandoned you and the country." The ad they are running looks pretty good, too, but I like mine.

aimai

This solves the ID/evolution controversy: homo sapiens is *definitely* descended from the chimp.

Quibble: this is not what TOE says.

That is the funniest thing I've read today, Slarti.

Of course, they key is the strategic delimiting of what you mean by 'everything'.

Kevin Drum notes that at the same time the House Republicans were voting unanimously against the stimulus bill, they also votes nearly unanimously against a proposal from the administration to delay the switch to digital TV. Like Kevin I don't have any particular opinion about the merits of the proposal, but as he says, "Here we have a relatively non-ideological issue. It went through a modest amount of give-and-take and a compromise was struck. And the result? 100% of Senate Republicans voted in favor but 90% of House Republicans voted against. ... Apparently the House GOP caucus really has decided to blindly stonewall everything Obama wants, no matter what. This is even more of a wakeup call than the vote on the stimulus bill."

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/01/nyet.html

Includes a photo of Nikita Khruschev banging his shoe on the table at the UN. That's rich, comparing the House GOP to commies!

they also votes nearly unanimously against a proposal from the administration to delay the switch to digital TV.

But you see, this is part of their stimulus plan. If 6.6 million americans are forced to go without television, they will either go buy new teevees (stimulus!), or do something more productive than sit around watching teevee (stimulus!).

The ad they are running looks pretty good, too, but I like mine.

I like yours too, aimai.

Why we're doing that -- even with clawbacks -- instead of simply nationalizing them is beyond me.

Perhaps because all any right-wing commentator or politician has to do is gibber "Socialism, socialism, socialism...Chavez" like some sort of incantation from Harry Potter's world to render such a proposal completely unpalatable.

Includes a photo of Nikita Khruschev banging his shoe on the table at the UN. That's rich, comparing the House GOP to commies!

GOPsters manage to call each other commies these days quite regularly especially when (but not limited to) compromises get mentioned. The pure doctrine of St.Ronnie and Teh Norquist may not be compromised under any circumstances (unless a buck can be made on it). I think the GOP leadership also relies on the "liberal" media to confuse poetential voters about GOP obstructionism. When you have people on your side that can with a straight face claim that Clinton ruined the American economy after the golden Reagan years and that now Obama intends to kill the Bush II recovery that followed the Clinton disaster and millions of people that will believe those straight-faced opinionmakers then selling obstructionism as heroic resistance to liberal wrecking balls looks less futile an idea.

Bad bank is stupid idea. U.S. Treasurer should bought bank stock not buy assets which market not values at any thing. Americans just is fear from word "nationalisation". U.S. should bought common stock in banks but not refer with "nationalisation" instead refer with "public participation in bestest wealth creation engine invented by man the private equity market."

Jeff: I’m not sure why you’re calling me out on this. Care to clarify?

I think of you as a "rational conservative".

If the Republicans really wanted a stimulus package, they wouldn't have come forward with a "Tac Cuts, Tax Cuts and Nothing But Tax Cuts" package. Thet're showing no desire to truely compromise, then calling Obama partisan for not caving to them.

That's why I say they're acting like they want the economy to fail, and since they have shown that they'll do anything to get what they want, it's up to the "rational conservatives" to call them on it.

"If 6.6 million americans are forced to go without television, they will either go buy new teevees (stimulus!), or do something more productive than sit around watching teevee (stimulus!)."

I imagine the thinking is that if 6.6 million Americans find themselves unable to get a tv signal, they'll be almighty pissed at The Government, and the Obama Administration and Democratic Congress in particular.

There's probably nothing more likely to incite revolutionary sentiment amongst the masses than cutting off tv to the proletarians, comrade.

I do not think the Republicans think of this as a high-stakes gamble, betting on ruin. I think they quite sincerely believe a large spending stimulus would be disasterous and only tax cuts can save us. They feel like a desparate voice crying out in the wilderness, trying to warn the rest of us that we are on our way to disaster.

And while you're at it, why don't you ask OC Steve if he feels exactly that way.

Media coverage I've heard (on NPR, yet) still seems to be pure Republican spin, including from reporters like Mara Liasson and BBC folks talking about Obama's failure. Maybe at some point we'll start hearing from some Democrats, but there's no sign of it yet.

There's probably nothing more likely to incite revolutionary sentiment amongst the masses than cutting off tv to the proletarians, comrade.

I guess we will find out cause the bill failed (i think).


There's probably nothing more likely to incite revolutionary sentiment amongst the masses than cutting off tv to the proletarians, comrade.

The Televison will not be revolutionized, also.

they key is the strategic delimiting of what you mean by 'everything'

What I meant by the "E" in "TOE" is "Evolution. It's a fairly common abbreviation that I've seen in discussions involving evolution vs creation, but I can see how it could be confused for an out-of-context (but much more commonly used) Theory Of Everything.

Sorry for the mixup.

What I meant by the "E" in "TOE" is "Evolution.

Sorry. I thought you were making an extremely witty joke. The TOEvolution doesn't have it that homo sapiens and chimps share a common ancestor?

Extremely OT, but...if I am mistaken, I'd like to know it!

"descended from the chimp" and "homo sapiens and chimps share a common ancestor" =/ (are not) the same thing.

Common ancestor is not descended from.

Jonnybutter, what you said earlier was "homo sapiens is *definitely* descended from the chimp." Do you have trouble telling the difference between your cousin and your grandfather?

That confusion annoys me much like the parallel confusion among people who think English descended from German. Partly that one stems from the similarity between "Germanic" and "German" in English, which doesn't arise in other languages ("germanisch"/"deutsch", "germánico"/"alemán", "germanico"/"tedesco", etc.).

Refreshingly, it seems that I don't have to clarify myself further. This may be a first.

and don't forget that
a) 'descend' has negative connotations
b) chimp has been used as a pejorative too
=> We came down from something used as an insult.
(hey, what if my cousin actually was my grandfather? ;-))

"People who claim to be small government conservatives and who also are frightened to be associated with the ACLU puzzle me."

I think you're missing the humor here; Steve is just disappointed that he has to violate that stereotype they have of him.

"*"Conservative" in quotes because, despite what "hard-core conservatives" think, I don't believe the ACLU is particularly "liberal," unless "liberal" means "a fan of the US Constitution.""

Snort. Good thing I'd finished my morning tea.

Yeah, being a fan of the US Constitution is what drives them to deny that the 2nd amendment guarantees a right to own guns, essentially ignore takings issues unless they involve some kind of discrimination or religious aspect, and to oppose any efforts at all to stop illegal immigration. And let's not even get started on how much the ACLU doesn't give a damn about enumerated powers doctrine.

Remember Strossen's "not co-extensive" remark? The ACLU defends what it choses to defend, and then defines it's take on what's a "civil liberty" by what it feels like defending, not based on what the Constitution actually says.

Finally, the idea that the GOP is dancing to Rush's tune is one that could only be taken seriously by somebody who doesn't listen to Rush. His theme this election cycle has basically been to remind listeners that there's a difference between conservatism and the Republican party, and that it's the former that's important, even if the latter has decided to abandon it and go down in flames.

I'm spanking myself for being so sloppy.

"I'm spanking myself for being so sloppy."

Spank your chimpanzee/monkey, instead. It's less painful.

The human/chimp thing isn't all that cut and dried. And your grandfather can be your cousin with the proper inbreeding.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/43616.php

P.S. You're reaction to the article may be "Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle." (Or not, if you want to get technical about who does or does not have a tail.)

I think this:

"The House Republicans’ long-term prospects ain’t good – they’re locked into a declining, southern-centric demographic base getting smaller by the year. Plus, it's not like voting for the stimulus will reverse these trends."

is very perceptive. The Republican party has pushed the "all regulation is bad" meme past its expiration date, and it is now clear, as well, that instead of making their companies stronger, many CEOs collecting huge eight and nine figure salaries were simply gambling with their companies futures. Yet the Republicans can't seem to address this problem.

In addition, the Democratic party has been moving away from the social engineering of the 70's, making its positions more attractive to the West, at the same time that the Republican party has been indulging its authoritarian side, which probably also hurts with the more libertarian west.

Finally, to add insult to injury, the Republican party has become a party of whiners and cry-babies. The current fear mongering about what might happen if a Terrorist (TM) is imprisoned in the continental US is simply bizarre -- the Right has endowed these people with such super-human powers that they seem to think that Khalid Sheik Mohamed can simply walk out of a supermax prison in Colorado, travel to DC and destroy the capital. They've been watching too much 'Heroes,' I guess.

The Republican base is the south. And with states like VA and NC becoming increasingly blue, within 4-8 years, the base may be restricted to the deep south. All in all, not a pretty picture for the next few years.

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