I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
Frist!
Sigh. Erm, OT, has anyone seen Billmon of late? The Whiskey Bar seems to have shut up shop, or something, I couldn't get at the site.
Sigh. Erm, OT, has anyone seen Billmon of late? The Whiskey Bar seems to have shut up shop, or something, I couldn't get at the site.
Now how did that post twice? Apologies, people, but I'm certain I only pressed that button once.
Like Bush, I'm taking the Fifth!
Now how did that post twice? Apologies, people, but I'm certain I only pressed that button once.
Clinton did it.
Duh.
"It's our due, biatch!"
Thea
Got a "Cannot Find Server" glacier a few minutes ago.
Billmon's back, but apparently the bar needs some renovation.
Ick. I haven't been able to read most of Newsweek for the full length of the Bush Administration, and especially Samuelson. Has he ever been anywhere near correct on anything economic? I mean, seriously?
And I know diddly about economics.
Like the NY Times, my subscription to Newsweek is ending. And I've let both publications know exactly why.
Punish bad behavior!
I have an image of Bush lighting his farts with $100 bills.
"Burn, baby, burn!"
cheny_usa,
"Burn, baby, burn!"
Stop, please, you're killing me here. Staring at your computer screen and laughing out loud is not considered appropriate office conduct around here.
Heads I win, tails you lose. Any questions?
Grok- more like drink the fifth.
Fuck Grandma Millie!
Don't you people get it: now deficits are good. Reagan proved that deficits don't matter...for Republican regimes.
Totally on topic: Bush Going Nuts
Bush Going Nuts
Like Bush, I'm taking the Fifth!
Grok
Taking or drinking?
Associated Press
ROME - President Bush arrived 15 minutes late for his meeting with Pope John Paul II - unusual for a president who makes no secret of his impatience when others keep him waiting.
It was a rare breach of protocol in Vatican City, too, and raised eyebrows in the papal delegation.
"The president is 15 minutes late," John Paul's secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, pointed out to Vatican reporters.
White House aides blamed Bush's tardiness Friday on a longer-than-expected preceding meeting with the Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
Billmon was up and running 3 hrs ago when I was last there, now it's down.
Apparently economics is a developing science. Samuelson will twist his beliefs into impossible pretzels before admitting the possibility that he's full of shit.
bush pummels pope after being chastized about iraq
developing......
Bush going nuts? thank god we've got Cheney. and then Hastert
Actual text on whitehouse.gov website: (note last sentence)
Statement by the President to the Travel Pool
Ambassador's Residence
Rome, Italy
6:36 P.M. (Local)
THE PRESIDENT: Today's job report shows that the American economy is strong and it's getting stronger. Two hundred forty eight thousand jobs for last month is good for the American workers. It shows that our economy is vital and growing. We've added 900,000 jobs over the last three months and 1.4 million jobs since last August. The policies in place are working; the entrepreneurial spirit is strong; the small business sector of our economy is vibrant. And I'm pleased the American worker is doing their job.
Thank you.
Samuelson is a piece of fecal excrement.
I've known this for years. He is just one in a long list or reasons why I lost respect for Newsweek YEARS ago.
Fuck him, and his mother and grandmother too!!
Gary,
How does it work after Hastert? Do we go to Ashcroft next? Someone could shoot Cheney and Hastert, but I think you'd have to find a silver stake to drive through Ashcroft's heart.
Cheney_usa: This certainly seems like a credible story!
Don't you people get it: now deficits are good. Reagan proved that deficits don't matter...for Republican regimes.
NTodd
They're even good. Repubs get in power, transfer as much wealth as possible to themselves for as long as it lasts. If the economy tanks after their binge, hey they've stashed cash and get to buy everything on the cheap. That's how you get *really* rich.
Lessee...drugged-out Dubya, pumphead Cheney, piss-boy Hastert...order of succession ain't lookin' too good.
hecate- after Hastert, I think it's Chalabi
Hecate,
I thought you needed a wooden stake to kill a vampire and a silver bullet to kill a werewolf...what does a silver stake kill?
If anything Ashcroft is a mummy: boring, monotone, not a part of modern society...and a little smelly. And, obviously, his can only be defeated by removing the blue velvet wrappings...
Samuelson also helped torpedo Clinton's health care reform plan. His major reason (IIRC) was that the cost would add to the deficit.
Hecate,
Reahing back into the dim recesses of my addled brain, I seem to remember the following mnemonic:
ST. DAPIACLE
The first part is still valid, I think...
S = State
T = Treasury
D = Defense
A = Attorney General
So Asscrack's down the list a ways.
In the latest TNR, or recently, there's a hit against Samuelson and his anti-Rubinonomics, and with his reply. It is indeed interesting why he thinks debt is OK now. Check it out.
The Vice President Richard Cheney
Speaker of the House John Dennis Hastert
President pro tempore of the Senate Ted Stevens
Secretary of State Colin Powel
Secretary of the Treasury John Snow
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
Attorney General John Ashcroft
Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton
Secretary of Agriculture Ann M. Veneman
Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans
Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao
Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy G. Thompson
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson
Secretary of Transportation Norman Yoshio Mineta
Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham
Secretary of Education Roderick Paige
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony J. Principi
Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge
Atrios
off the top of my head, wow.
Craig,
DAMN!!!
Craig,
Didn't they make a change a few months ago moving Homeland Security up the list?
I think there was pending legislation to move up Homeland Security. And I was lying about it being off the top of my head. But the order is supposed to be in order of the founding of the department, that is why the legislation to move DHS up.
And why we might be in danger of a woman presidency, who knows what will happen, raging hormones and all. 
Interior? Agriculture?
Well, growing up in Bush-loving Central Texas, I had the balanced-budget gospel pounded into my head and was raised believing that the Balanced Budget Amendment was necessary for the future of our republic and that horrible Clinton wasn't balancing budgets because he hated America.
Weekend before last, I went home for a childhood friend's wedding. Over a bottle of Chivas Regal, my dad told me, among other crazy things, that it doesn't matter that we have deficits as far as the eye can see, because "we're at war." facepalm
I didn't leave the Republican Party; the Republican Party left me, and Howard Dean essentially made me realize I was really more of a Democrat.
Samuelson is almost as full of crap as Greenspan.
Samuelson flip flops on deficits and debt depending on whose getting the tax cuts.
Greenspan opened the broke the Glass-Steagall act so that Banks could sell securities and opened the door to thieves like Sandy Weill, Jack Grubman and every other brokerage firm and bank in NY.
If not for NY state AG, Spitzer, they would have gotten away with billions looted from investors without any notice and it would still be going on.
As it is they got penalized chump change and were left with tens of millions!
Actually the only way to kill these guys is with a golden parachute.
Re: the "Capitol Hill Blue" article...they had one, Jeez, at least a year ago, which said that Bush was a nutcase and that staffers were revisiting Nixon-era strategies to keep him away from the nuclear button.
This one's real similar. What are you supposed to say, though? I hope it's true? I hope it's NOT true? Ya can't win!
Samuelson is almost as full of crap as Greenspan.
Probably about the same, Rudy, but Alan Greenspan is much more dangerous because of the job he's in. I went through the roof when I heard Greenspan say that, because of the federal budget deficits, the government couldn't afford to pay out the level of Social Security benefits promised to American workers.
Americans have been overpaying Social Security taxes since the early 80s to deliver that level of benefits. Now, Bush gave away the store to the super rich with his tax cuts and Greenspan said, "OK, we'll screw working Americans again by cutting their SS benefits."
Dammit, enough's enough! We've got to take back our government from the rapacious Rethugs and somehow get the somnolent Dems to wake up to these pressing issues. If we don't, we're going to wake up soon with the top 13,000 familiies owning the entire US wealth and the rest of us will be either indentured servants or slaves.
Sigh. Erm, OT, has anyone seen Billmon of late? The Whiskey Bar seems to have shut up shop, or something, I couldn't get at the site.
The Whiskey Bar is open for business again! I'm headed over there for a drink now.
This is the oldest theme of the Republican Revolution. In 1980 Carter's 400B national dept was a disaster, Reagans 4T national debt didn't matter. "We owe it to ourselves"...well not really. HWBush lost some of his core support because he made tiny step toward balancing the budget. Clinton made big steps but the Republicans took Congress in 1994 while promoting a balanced budget amendment. An amendment, along with term limits, that they, cynically but probably good for the nation, had no intention of ever enacting. GWBush has record deficits but that's good because the economy needs stimulus (as Keynes might say if he were alive, well duh) never mind that the stimulus is trivial compared to the cost (and Keynes would again say duh.) Tax cuts were the wrong sort of stmulus tool for the situation. But that doesn't matter because the means, tax cuts, are more important than counter-cyclical policy, so the result--deficits--is irrelevent.
Keynes is in fact dead as conservative economists glibly point out, but unfortunately the inventory, employment, and investment cycles still exist. The 2001 recession was an investment contraction and the best policy, given the surplus that existed, spending targeted to the affected sectors--tech generally, microchips specifically--would have produced the right stimulus with less deficit.
Unfortunately Republicans economics consists mostly of rhetoric: label your opponent as tax and spend and repreat endlessly that both taxing and spending are bad. Some times raising taxes (91 and 93)is the correct policy; some times increasing spending would have been (2001); some times cutting taxes is the correct policy (1960 an 1980); sometimes cutting spending is the correct policy (1996). If your rhetorical goals trump your policy goals then things tend to get way out of kilter.
Samuelson played economist for the neocons promoting the notion that an Iraq war would not be a problem for the US economy "even if it cost as much as a hundred billion dollars." I remarked to friends at the time his projection was absurdly low. I haven't seen that he's at all bothered that he was outrageously off the mark.
clinton obviously taught them nothing.
God damn Robert Samuelson's dishonest soul to hell.
--Won't you all please join me in expressing this sentiment to God, the universe, your fellow neighbor, the air that you breath, atrios, or some other fitting object or person of your choice?
How about a link to what he has said (written)lately?
Concerning the order of succession, if it got all the way past speaker of the house, and senate president pro-tem, State is listed next. Powell as president I could live with, I think. He sure as hell would straighten up the Iraqi mess, quickly mending the shattered international relationships, etc,,,,etc,,,
We must recognize Samuelson's greatness. He has taken the dismal science and made it absymal science.
Another stock market crash? What's going on with our money supply (M-3)? Read this important link:
http://www.fxstreet.com/nou/cont...asts&
dia=262004
random item on succession: Elaine Chao is ineligible: she was born in China, and her parents weren't US citizens.
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