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[Duke 2.0]

 The election being right around the corner is sort of a blessing. The budget will be a major issue that whoever is elected will have to deal with. The public won't stand formit not to be dealt with now.

[counting]

After some boring waiting moments, I calculated how many gold in volume will be at current price worth 1 trillion.

52.02 dollar/g, gold density 19.30 g/cm3, means 996.03 m^3. If we build rooms 3m high, and 10x10m in width and depth, and half of the space can be used to stored gold bar. We will need about 7 rooms to store this amount of gold worth 1 trillions. and 100 rooms to store the total debts of 14.2 trillion dollars.

Quite a sight right? Now you know how big Fort Knox vault should be, if we used gold bar to backup dollars. Unfortunately, the total gold mined out by human since the beginning of history (165,000 tons), doesn't add up to the amount needs for 14.2 trillion dollars. (273,000 tons)

[Dsarker]

Oh, good. The cans and batteries and fuel I stored aren't going to waste.

[Tilla]

Anyone else bothered by the media calling this a 'compromise bill'? That would imply both sides are compromising to me, when really, only the Democrats are compromising anything.

[Nadaka]

Anyone else bothered by the media calling this a 'compromise bill'? That would imply both sides are compromising to me, when really, only the Democrats are compromising anything.

I know. This wasn't a compromise. This was a tragedy.

[KaelGotDwarves]

For the best bipartisan analysis, try NPR: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/08/01/138906476/house-approves-bill-to-raise-federal-debt-limit?sc=fb&cc=fp

And of course, statistical genius Nate Silver of 538: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/the-fine-print-on-the-debt-deal/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

EDIT: Long story short, it's not as bad for US and the Democrats as it might look like at first glance, however, we once again booted the goalposts down a few years...

[nenjin]

You could argue both sides gave up something on the issue of budget cuts. Democrats gave up seeking tax reform or higher taxes and a weaker committee for financial reform. Republicans gave up (iirc) the size of the spending cuts they were looking for, the exclusion of the defense budget and all the crazy rider shit they were trying to attach.

And in the end, Dems got the money they needed for the government to stay solvent and the Republicans got to show their base just how committed they are.

About the only real losers in this as far as I'm concerned was the public, who paid for it and on whom the budget cuts fall directly. Time will tell if businesses ultimately get to lose along with us in the form of higher interest rates, lost government monies and a greater loss of consumer confidence.

So yeah, to me it is mostly a compromise bill, where Republicans were dealing from a position of greater strength.

[Tilla]

The only really good thing to me was seeing representative Giffords able to get out and actually vote after the tragic shooting in Arizona. She's made a remarkable recovery considering she was shot point blank in the head..

[KaelGotDwarves]

This is worth posting in the thread though:

[nenjin]

Source prz?

[KaelGotDwarves]

It's from Nate Silver's blog, the second link I posted. Math/statistics non-biased wizard that rose to fame during the 2008 election

The accuracy of his November 2008 presidential election predictions—he correctly predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states—won Silver further attention and commendation. The only state he missed was Indiana, which went for Barack Obama by 0.9%. He also correctly predicted the winner of all 35 Senate races that year.

More detailed analysis in the link. I won't water it down here.

[Duke 2.0]

 He may be smart, but he can't make a chart. It's like that visual illusion where you have to read color names while they are colored differently, or saying what color those words are. I have no idea what that chart is trying to accomplish.

 What government program calls anything improving blacks rights anymore? I thought we all agreed to beat around the bush and consider them generic urban youth improvement programs.

[nenjin]

In other words, [The Super Congress] probably leads us to a stalemate: Democrats cannot do much better unless there are tax increases, and Republicans will not be eager to raise taxes. So the automatic cuts embodied in the trigger are quite likely to go into effect — and those are the sorts of cuts that Democrats, not Republicans, would prefer to make to the budget.

Which, if you compare the Super Congress agreed to, to what the Dems wanted, this Super Congress actually gets them closer to their goal than their own plan, which I think was designed to protect entitlements like Medicare ect... by making the commissions' proposal have no teeth.

Now, the Super Congress will have teeth and, by design, failure to approve their measures results in the deepest defense budget cuts democrats are likely to get. In lieu of tax increases....slashing the defense budget will easy the financial pressures on the government most dramatically. Even if the Republicans take 2012, dems should be able to defeat any proposals from the Super Congress which spare the defense budget at the expense of other programs.

What stops this from being a total win for the Republicans is that their positioning for legislative and executive control of budget policy in 2012 may have actually backfired, depending on how closely you hold the party to its support of defense spending. They didn't get their constitutional amendment, they didn't get another debt ceiling vote to being the elections with, and they've agreed to substantial defense spending cuts tied to automatic triggers. As a democrat, the spending cuts so far feel equitable on paper and if they stay that way, Congress might have actually managed to please everyone while pleasing no one specifically.

What government program calls anything improving blacks rights anymore? I thought we all agreed to beat around the bush and consider them generic urban youth improvement programs.

Urban development, I'm guessing. And federal backing for Affirmative Action measures. The chart, if I read it right, is basically presented from a democrat point of view, illustrating how far from democrats Republicans are on each issue.

[KaelGotDwarves]

He may be smart, but he can't make a chart. It's like that visual illusion where you have to read color names while they are colored differently, or saying what color those words are. I have no idea what that chart is trying to accomplish.

 What government program calls anything improving blacks rights anymore? I thought we all agreed to beat around the bush and consider them generic urban youth improvement programs.

It explains further in the text :|

The defense budget has the largest partisan split of any of the 18 areas, and is the only one in which Democrats tend to prefer spending cuts while Republicans tend to prefer spending increases.

This has two major implications. The first is simply that if you’re scoring the deal as a Democrat, it makes the cuts less painful. In fact, if you’re a Democrat (or a libertarian) who is not just indifferent toward defense cuts but actually in favor of them, you might even regard the cuts to defense spending as a “win,” making up for the “loss” incurred from cuts to other types of discretionary spending.

The other implication comes from the effect this might have on the bipartisan panel. If its recommendations are not agreed to — or if it can’t come to an agreement in the first place — $1.5 trillion in cuts would be triggered, half of which would come from defense.

If you’re a Democrat and you must accede to $1.5 trillion in cuts — and that’s literally the situation that Democrats will find themselves in if the deal passes through Congress — it’s going to be hard to do better than this $1.5 trillion in cuts. They are very heavily loaded with defense cuts, while containing few changes to entitlement programs or to programs which benefit the poor.

So Democrats will have very little incentive to vote for the panel’s recommendations unless they include tax increases. Does that mean that Republicans will agree to tax increases? Perhaps the Republicans on the committee will consider them — but it is unlikely that rank-and-file in the House will give their sign-off.

In other words, this probably leads us to a stalemate: Democrats cannot do much better unless there are tax increases, and Republicans will not be eager to raise taxes. So the automatic cuts embodied in the trigger are quite likely to go into effect — and those are the sorts of cuts that Democrats, not Republicans, would prefer to make to the budget.

TL;DR - Democrats actually get less cut from what their base wants (demonstrated by the chart), while Republicans get to deal with the fact that the military is actually getting the largest chunk taken out of it. Republicans will be pissed, or would be if they're paying attention.

[nenjin]

They're looking forward to 2012 and assuming they're going to take it. The more I look at it the more I wonder how they ever sold Republicans on defense cuts that deep, or that are tied to automatic triggers. Deadlock is the political norm these days. I mean, it's possible Republicans were like "Yeah, it's the biggest part of our budget and no one gets a free ride anymore." I'd just be the most magnanimous and reasonable they've been on defense since 2000.

Meanwhile, I'm guessing at the Pentagon and several dozen government contractors, people are fucking pissed.