Off-Topic

This is too good. Caucus says rules no cameras (or anything to record) allowed and people object but they refuse to allow vote to have it. It gets out of hand as the caucus goers grow angry and tons of police called in and caucus is adjourned without ever voting. Some comments even say people did get arrested and they voted yea and nay but the chair went with the much quieter one

Thats what happens when someone tries to rig an election out in the open. This fall the voting machines should be watched closely.

Didn't really know where to put this so I'll put it here. I'm curious to see the details. You have to respect Paul Ryan for making substantive efforts towards real reform, not just bullshit nibbling at the edges.

"House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is slated to unveil today a tax and spending plan that would shrink the number of brackets to two from six with rates set at 25 percent and 10 percent. The top rate now is 35 percent.

Ryan's proposal would also eliminate the alternative minimum tax while reducing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent now to 25 percent, according to documents provided by his office. "

So they're going to decrease the tax burden for the 99% by 10%...decrease the tax burden for big companies (ie. the 99%) by 10%? Then they're going to pull the poor into the fray by making them pay 10% (because like many have said...some pay nothing at all) and then the middle class might get a huge cut (10-20%) or might get a small cut depending on what income level puts you in the 25%.

I simply can NOT wait to see how they're going to pay for this considering I'm positive the defense bill will not get cut. Sounds like a new version of the old trickle down economics on steroids.

Defense is (in the process of) getting cut, and quite deeply (and I'm not even talking about further cuts in Ryan's plan). It's easy to find info on this.

The Ryan plan will (again) be the House budget passed through legal and transparent means. The Obama budget will (again) be rejected in the Senate 96-0 (unless some retiring D throws him a bone) and the Senate will (again) abdicate its responsibility to even present a budget in committee, let alone pass one. Ryan is the only game in town. Since the Democrat position in both houses is now that piecemeal appropriations bills satisfy their budgetary responsibilities (completely bogus), I wish we could at least de-fund their budget committee staffs.

Sometimes I really want to argue with a point you guys are making, but then I stop and realize that it really doesn't make a difference. It isn't the policy you guys are opposed to, it's the person. And everything he will do is the greatest threat to liberty since the last thing he did.

It's funny because you guys make fun of liberals who think he can do no wrong. But you guys are all exactly the same people, just the diametric opposite.

Actually, my argument (not yet made in this recent turn of the conversation) centers around math and not which politicians are proposing what.

Actually, I think there's something to that, and I have have to watch that for the sake of my marriage. What you describe is exactly what the Dems (including O) did with W and I thought it was pretty despicable then. It's even more despicable now b/c they've lacked the grace to acknowledge the abundant areas where they've essentially endorsed and extended W's approaches without even a thank you. So, I try to fight my reflex and find stuff I approve about O. Bin Laden of course. Drone war in Af/Pak: check. Payroll tax holiday: check (and if he'd doubled it instead of the stimulus, he'd be in tall cotton right now). Avoid war in Syria and Iran: check (tho I have doubts about whether it can work). Afghan surge: check (we were both wrong on that one!).

On Reid and Pelosi, tho, I've got nothing. And the Senate's refusal to even discuss budgets for three years during this time of unprecedented debt and deficit spending is about the worse dereliction of duty I've ever seen. Yes, far worse than W's failure to identify a funding source for prescription drugs in medicare.

It really isn't about "compromise", because tax increases are a tacit approval of the spending that has taken place over the last 8-10 years. A fight against tax increases is a tacit rejection of the spending policies and politics of both parties over the same period. Politicians who are asking for tax increases only want them because they will signify that approval from voters, and will encourage the same policies to continue. This is the main reason the Dems didn't raise taxes from '06-'08...it's much easier to just spend the theoretical money than to ask the American people to realize it by forking over more of the private sector's real wealth.

Politicians spent this theoretical money, and they can damn well unspend it through the same legislative process. Spending is the problem, not tax revenues. Anyone who has even bothered to look at a spending graph for the last 8-10 years can see that.

I'm not crazy about what I've read of Ryan's budget (I really fear we need to make much faster progress on debt reduction), it's just the only one out there and better than a bunch of ad hoc appropriations bills passed in some phony emergency. I'd take Simpson/Bowles in a minute. I'd have taken the Boehner/Obama deal that one or both walked away from. I'd also take Ryan/Widen on Medicare which is clear progress.

But it does strike me as crazy that we are going into the election with a guaranteed recession looming because of the tax increases and spending cuts cooked in for January 2013. Counting on a lameduck Congress to step up in December seems like a huge gamble. Only the Prez can break that logjam, but since the Repubs have such a weak field going right now, he feels no pressure/desperation to do so.

The funny thing is the lame duck sessions are the most productive because Congresspeople have less to lose by compromising. The 2010 lame duck was amazing in what they got done in so little time.