Enoch

Um. You do realize there will be SERIOUS economic effects if the debt is not serviced and entitlements are not distributed correct? Refusing to pay the interest on the debt would certainly make for an interesting game of chicken with our debtors, unless we wanted to default entirely I suppose. Or we could just inflate our way out of debt, but that NEVER ends well. As for entitlements well, I suppose old people rioting are amusing. I never said that the government should default on its obligations. It should alter what it has promised so that the projected growth in entitlement costs (which is primarily Medicare) doesn't continue on the trend it is currently on. In the interim, no person or institution in the world can borrow money as cheaply as the government of the United States can. That will probably be true for as long as there are no serious rivals to the USD as the preferred 'safe' currency across the planet. (And the likelihood of that changing in the foreseeable future is pretty small.) Sure, you can't borrow forever, but to stop doing so while the economy is in its current state would be folly.

Equities markets are relatively insignificant-- they're pretty lousy as a measure of overall economic performance. Attributing national economic performance to the current occupant of the White House is also fundamentally problematic. The Prez has a couple of levers that he can push (e.g., appointing Fed governors, occasional major legislative priorities like EESA under Bush and ARRA under Obama), but for the most part, he's along for the ride with the rest of us.

The House Majority Leader has already signaled that he would be open to compromising on some taxation issues. It's not clear the degree to which his caucus will support him, but it's a start. Ultimately, given the structure of the "fiscal cliff" scenario (a terrible metaphor, BTW), House Republicans are going to have to decide whether they'd rather vote for a relatively small tax increase, or have a relatively large tax increase take effect automatically because they voted against compromise. As to the "you can't tax the rich because they'll just avoid it" line of thinking, you're describing 2nd- and 3rd-order effects that might have an offsetting impact on the 1st-order effect of higher tax rates (i.e., more revenue). They'll probably happen to some degree, but it's pretty outlandish to suggest that they'll be anywhere close to sufficient to overwhelm the primary effect. We're not talking about increases to confiscatory levels here-- the suggestions on the table even fall short of a return to tax rates and policies that were in force as recently as the 1990s. Anybody who hasn't already fled to tax havens probably isn't going to be pushed over the edge by that kind of change. (By the way, arguing with Volourn is pointless. He'll just keep going until you collapse from exhaustion and befuddlement. R00fles!)

I'd take issue with a few of those points. This is just bizarre. Alteration in the means by which the government gets all its money is somehow insignificant in considering the problem of the government not taking in enough money to cover its obligations? Really? First, the author's focus on variation in nominal tax rates is a meaningless distraction-- those numbers mean very little without the context of the attendant definitions, deductions, credits, and other provisions. Second, describing a range spanning 6% of GDP as "very tight" is a flat-out lie. U.S. GDP is over $15 trillion annually. The difference between the historical high-tax state at around 20% and the low-tax state around 14% would be somewhere around $900 billion annually. Which would account for the majority of the current annual budget deficit all by itself. Current federal tax receipts are around 15.4% of GDP, which is pretty close to historic lows. Just returning to the federal tax levels in place back in 2002 would more than half the annual federal budget deficit. The funny thing about all this "legally bound" language is that these "binding" laws are simple acts of Congress, signed by the President. All that would be necessary to change them is another simple act of Congress, signed into law by the President. Yes, existing laws have over-promised things, and the exponential rise in healthcare costs has made promises that looked reasonable in the past far too costly. Nearly everybody acknowledges this, and both sides have ideas about how to address these issues. It's an easy issue to put on the "maybe next year" pile, but some manner of either solution (either via compromise or via full-on elective victory) will happen at some point.

It's less "knowing how to handle it" and more "having the infrastructure to handle it." All the knowhow in the world won't help you if you don't own any snowplows. And snow in the Southeast is infrequent enough that a heavy investment in snowplows, etc., probably isn't a particularly wise use of public funds. Cheaper to just let things shut down in the rare event of a meaningful snowstorm.

The problem is that the only real questions regarding the possible economic catastrophes in Europe are "which one will happen first?" and "how much longer will they succeed in kicking the can down the road?" The chance that this whole situation doesn't go quite badly at some point in the coming years is vanishingly small.

The path for the GOP is pretty clear: Revisit the attempts that W made back in his 2nd term to broaden the party's appeal to Latino voters. The right of the GOP cut W's knees out from under him in the midst of that effort (particularly with regard to what was termed "comprehensive immigration reform"). Bush and Rove knew that was a risk, but they were also looking at the longer-term demographic trends that, absent some increase in appeal to People Who Aren't White, would make the party a permanent minority. (White people made up 88% of Romney voters this year.) And there are some reasons to believe that Republicans could do well with Latinos, who often share the GOP's religiousity and views on related issues. On the other hand, if the 70-30 split among Latino voters continues, even Texas will be a swing state within a few election cycles.

Time is running out on Russia's energy lever, even without Europe seeking alternatives. They've been using antiquated and staggeringly inefficient extraction technology because the firms that control the good tech (which are generally American, British, or Dutch) won't do business in a country whose government is both too strong for them to control and too corrupt to trust that their contracts would be enforceable. They're on a path to blow through their known, reachable hydrocarbon reserves within a decade or so.

It's a useful shorthand. People may not be especially educated about, say, candidates for the state legislature or county council, but if they know that they're more likely to agree with one party than the other, they can at least make a semi-informed decision. Also, they might care more about the furtherance of particular national or statewide policy initiatives favored by one party or the other than they do about the backgrounds and specific policy statements of individual candidates. To Gorgon's comment, a panoply of parties tends to give more power to the wingnuts, not less. The fact that the tea partiers have hurt the GOP this time around is a benefit of big catch-all parties. If they were two clearly separate groups (albeit ones that caucus together on many issues), voter distaste for the extremists wouldn't have had as much of a negative impact on the more moderate party's fortunes. Systems with more institutional support for a wider selection of parties have an alarming tendency to make the Wingnutter Party the crowd that swings the balance of power in the legislature.

Agreed. Christie is an emotional guy who kinda wears his heart on his sleeve. Most likely explanation is that he was earnestly upset by the devastation that the storm wrought on his constituents, and earnestly thankful for the assistance provided by the feds, including the personal involvment of the President.

There was a coup d'etat in Grenada. (Which the U.S. government ended up reversing via invasion 4 years later.)

I'm trying to get into Torchlight 2 at the moment. A friend and his wife have been inviting me to join their multiplayer efforts, so I feel like I should get a better handle on the game before jumping into that. But I find it a bit tiresome to play for more than an hour or so in a sitting. It has its charms, but I usually conclude that I'd rather be spending my time with Crusader Kings 2 than I would with a click-and-loot ARPG. (Which has never been my favoritest genre. I deliberately skipped the early Diablos because they just didn't sound espeically interesting to me and I couldn't afford to buy a whole lot of games back then, but I did pick up Torchlight 1 for $5 and spent 9 or 10 relatively enjoyable hours with it before it got old.) I'm looking forward to playing with people whose company I enjoy, but if it weren't for the motivation to get good enough at the game that I won't be a burden to them, I probably wouldn't be playing it all that much. Anyhow, I'm playing as an Embermage on Veteran difficulty, focusing on Ice-type spells. I'm at level 12 or 13, and just died for the very first time, in the main-quest dungeon that you reach after clearing the first really big outdoor area.

Sigmund Freud once wrote “A man with a toothache cannot be in love" Pretty true isn't it? Probably. But I like Dostoyevsky's treatment of toothaches better. (Not the greatest translation, but it's the one I could find in full-text online.)

Man, I remember when Hotbot was the best search engine out there.

That one, you're welcome to all by yourself. The fragrance of a nice cigar can be pleasant from afar, but I never got past the whole "this smoke burns my throat, why would I want to deliberately inhale it?" thing.

I for one have no idea what you are talking about! *sips on Bruichladdich 18yo* *Checks liquor cabinet* Dammit, you've got me beat by 2 years on the Bruichladdich!

Well, if I were drinking vodka and Gallo vermouth, I'd probably want to drown out those flavors, too. I've never really thought that vodka and vermouth went together well at all. Martinis work because vermouth (if it's decent vermouth and it isn't spoiled) goes pretty well with gin. That said, I've never seen much use for vodka at all, beyond pouring it into fruity stuff to get undergraduates wasted. You almost always get a more interesting ****tail if you drop the vodka and use either gin or rum instead. As for whiskeys, scotch is lovely but expensive. Bourbon and (especially) Rye are good and generally more economical.

A friend of mine loaned me the CD containing this track earlier this week, based on a hunch that I would dig it. I do. '70s Nicaraguan jazz-funk-spacemusic! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xzpR2TL1m0

Ugh. If you buy decent gin and good vermouth, why on earth would you screw it up by pouring in liquid from a $3 bottle of olives? Drowns out all the flavor with a ton of salt. Leave the olive out entirely, and go with a twist of lemon peel and a dash of orange bitters. Alternately: Slow day at work today. I'm spending way too much time trying to decide what I should pick up to cook for dinner when I get home.

Here in MD, it was windy and rainy, but we never lost power or cable/internet. (Which is a surprise, given our recent history with the power company-- the "derecho" storm this summer knocked us out for a few days.) And pretty much everything was closed down, so I got 2 free days off work. However, the area where I grew up in South Jersey got hammered. It's a little surreal seeing helicopter footage on the news of landmarks that I grew up around, flooded and ruined. I lived on the mainland, rather than one of the barrier islands, but I went to school with a lot of people from there, and as a teenager I worked summer jobs at touristy businesses near the beach. I have friends whose childhood homes are now under water. My parents' house is fine (minus a few trees in the yard), but they're hosting some evacuated friends whose home and business have probably both suffered significant damage. (Also, don't we already have one recent "Krezack starts a shouting match about global warming" thread? No need to turn this into another.)

This has been an interesting read, although I've been skipping over any obvious Lonesome Road spoilers, as I haven't played it yet. Mostly, it's interesting to hear about how highly some of you regard Honest Hearts, which I didn't find nearly as compelling as DM and OWB on my first playthrough of those expansions. The exploration element of HH was excellent (and actually brought back memories of a childhood trip to Zion NP), and the story of the Survivalist journals was really well done. But once I had explored the whole map and found all the Journals, I pretty much wanted to get the hell back to the Mojave, and didn't feel like the story had given me any particular reason to care about the futures of the tribes I had met in Zion. The initial conversation with Graham was cool, in that it told me interesting things about the Legion, New Canaan, etc., but mostly I felt that the expansion's attempts at pathos fell flat. If the story is supposed to be about Graham's redemption, I didn't see anything in him that was especially capable or worthy of meaningful redemption. In particular, it never struck me that Daniel's goal of preserving the "innocence" of a bunch of tribals was an achievable or worthwhile goal in the Fallout universe. I haven't seen the ending slides that occur if you take that path, but I would expect based on my overall impression of core Fallout themes that it describes them all being picked up by slavers within a few weeks of the Courier leaving, and sold off for prostitution and medical experiments. I mean, War Never Changes, right? Why should it change for those guys? </SneeringImperialist>

Same here. Meh. I've never finished it, either, but I've also never had any desire to revisit it. There were some neat world elements, but it just failed at being an entertaining game to me. The ability balance was non-existant (a majority of the places you could put points at level-up could fairly be described as one of either "screw you, that's mostly useless!" or "you just won the game!"), the XP system was completely bonkers (which led a lot of character builds being simply not viable over the long haul-- e.g., PCs who rely on party members to deal most of the direct damage in combat), and although the setting had some neat points, none of the characters I met were interesting enough for me to care what happened to them for very long. Ultimately, a very forgettable experience.

That's just cruel. Sure, the music was great and there were a few neat ideas in the world background, but nobody should be pushed into such a terrible ruleset against their will.

If nobody else does, I'll report whatever they convey to me (unless specifically instructed not to).

I've just run through OWB for the 2nd time, and yeah, that LAER is nice. (The previous character I did it with didn't use energy weapons.) It's nice to have a high-DAM energy weapon that doesn't weigh a ton-- I was previously using the Q-35 for this role, and it doesn't quite have the same punch. The catch is that its condition degrades incredibly fast. The only economical way to keep it going is to periodically stockpile ingredients to make Weapon Repair Kits. I've moved on to Dead Money, which is my favorite of the expansions I've played. (Finally getting around to Lonesome Road is the main goal of this little campaign.) I'm also nearing the Sawyer-mod level cap (30) and getting neurotic about making sure that I spend my last few skillpoints and perks in the "right" way.