“U.S. credit outlook lowered by S&P on deficit fears”:
Standard & Poor’s slapped a negative outlook on the United States’ top-notch credit rating on Monday, jacking up the pressure on the Obama administration and Congress to slash the yawning federal budget deficit.
S&P, which assigns ratings to guide investors on the risks involved in buying debt instruments, said the move signals at least a one-in-three chance that it could eventually cut its long-term AAA rating on the United States within two years.
A downgrade, which would leave Germany and France with a higher rating, would erode the status of the United States as the world’s most powerful economy and the dollar’s role as the dominant global currency.
[…]
The deficit problem has become crushing since the financial crisis of 2008. Now for every dollar the federal government spends, it takes in less than 60 cents in revenue.
A budget deficit running at nearly 10 percent of output and expected to grow will likely further swell a public debt load that’s already more than 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
“Because the U.S. has, relative to its AAA peers, what we consider to be very large budget deficits and rising government indebtedness, and the path to addressing these is not clear to us, we have revised our outlook on the long-term rating to negative from stable,” S&P said in a release.
Even so, White House Economic Adviser Austan Goolsbee on Monday downplayed S&P’s move, telling CNBC it was a “political judgment” that “we don’t agree with.”
See? Not a real problem. Obama will just offer a signing statement telling S&P to fuck right off, too, and all will be well.
It’s magical thinking from the Magical Negro and his leftist cronies — with the end result being their enrichment and power at the expense of whomever doesn’t join their voter base.
Time we just stopped tiptoeing around it and said so. These are “good men” in the same way that Donald Trump — who not too long ago was calling Bush evil (and raising the issue of his impeachment), and who has donated to Schumer, Rahm Emmanuel, Hillary, and Anthony Weiner, among others — is a “Tea Party” conservative.
I like that S&P made their announcement on Tax Day. As if to underscore the reality that there’s simply no way the FedGov can levy enough taxes to pay off their proposed spending. When 20% of the nation is looking for work, and 45% don’t pay into the Treasury in the first place, and when the biggest earners, individual or corporate, shelter their income to reduce their tax bills to a pittance — where does Timmy Taxcheat think the money is going to come from?
Math ain’t nothing but a trick on negroes.
From the printer.
Magical thinking indeed.
Run the numbers for the Ryan plan. Take the deficit figure that is figured out as happening for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year and whatever figure that the Ryan plan shows to be the projected deficit under that plan for the 2012 fiscal year, add them together and then raise the debt limit by that amount and refuse to raise it again until the end of fiscal 2012.
Rinse, repeat, for the 2013 fiscal year.
Geoff, I don’t think Congress needs to bother with any more wrangling over the debt limit. The market is likely to take care of that for them.
Speaking of smears, here’s Glenn Beck’s confession to having stolen content without attribution.
Shameless. Positively shameless.
Projection. Everything is a “political question” to these mooks, so naturally they assume that Standard and Poor’s is ideologically blinkered as well.
It’s of a piece with their long, appalling record of mendacity and poor judgement.
Also, Beck’s crew flatly denies that the person who wrote the story about him stealing material is out for revenge, despite the fact that said person applied for a job with Beck and was turned down.
Christ, you can’t even remember what you wrote 2 posts prior. Allow me to refute you with you: “Obama’s $2 trillion stealth tax hike”
You a little short on coherence today, h2EO745?
Expound, multiple letters and numbers person, if you will.
No Pablo, I think he’s running about normal for him.
I assume that h2whatever is referring to S&P’s assumed ambivalence regarding tax increases as a method of bringing the budget into line.
I further assume that h2whatever was reaching for mindless snark rather than considering the basic numbers. $2 trillion in tax increases over 12 years doesn’t even get close to alleviating the problem. And the later “trigger” is so vague and down the road that it would have no more bearing on their analysis than the silly comments of your random internet troll.
I don’t think we should write $X Trillion. We need to add in the zeros.
$2,000,000,000,000
“We need to add in the zeros.”
NUMERALIST!!!
Maybe it would be helpful to the semi-numerate to render it as “$2,000,000,000,000 (that’s with a T)”
Fuck Trump, and the ego he rode in on.
Beck is assuredly one of the great content thiefs of recent memory, whatever else the dude says, or whatever the motivation of his critic.
It’s sort of like arguing about whether the NYT is liberal. There’s no need for him to do it either.
S&P is like that boss who pulls the hard drinker aside–the one who swears he has no problem because he doesn’t let it interfere with work– and says that he thinks the guy is drinking a little too much and that if he doesnt stop he’s going to have to make a hard decision that he won’t like.
Double He Trick !!! !!!
Beck is assuredly one of the great content thief of recent memory
He steal stuff from you? Anyone you know? Anyone you don’t know?
Bald assertions don’t carry so much water, eh?
OT: after spending the day changing the brakes on my Fiero GT, with all the attending kneeling on the ground, awkward angles when using wrenches, getting up and sitting down and the like, it has come to my attention that my workout routine, such as it is, is woefully inadequate to put one in a condition to do such things.
I hurt in some muscles I forgot I had.
I’m glad I don’t have to do it for a living.
most workouts are, cranky
I work with an athletic trainer 4 days a week, and it helps with some things, not so much with others. I need to supplement that with something else.
I’m learning to tear phone books and bend nails and such.
I had a go at that Suples Bulgarian bag yesterday after a full day of training with other things (medicine ball, sledges, thick handled clubs, etc.) and that is a fearsome 37lbs when you’re swinging it and trying to stay controlled. Not to mention the way it taxes the grip.
I actually took today off from lifting because my wrists are so fried.
I have to wonder what sort of federal resources the Obama administration now intends to bring to bear against Standard & Poor’s.
Seriously.
I’m surprised you can train that hard, Jeff, and still get results. If I trained that hard I would be in pain almost all the time, and would probably never fully recover. For my goals (which again are apparently inadequate), less has turned out to be more, though since I always recover fully, I can’t take more than a week off without losing a little strength. When I trained harder, I could actually take two weeks off and still not lose much, though the pressures of work ended that as I was in the gym for 2 hours a day. That is just too much for me to live with right now.
I hope those FatGripz came to my place in Mpls while I was here in San Diego (still am until Wednesday). I think they will help me a lot. My grip is really bad, and I would not be surprised if that was the cause of my plateauing.
In case anyone is interested, here is my routine. The site claims that one can get pretty good results by only doing 1 set per exercise. If you click around the site they quote studies that showed that 95% of your gain occurs on the first set. My results have been such that my strength increases at least as quickly with this method and doing the 4-5 sets per exercise did, while taking less time. The fact that I can spend less time in the gym is a huge plus for me.
I haven’t taken more than a couple days off in ages. I really need to, to be honest.
I have mixed up my routines, though. Today I did two miles with the weight vest but nothing else at all. If my right wrist is still balky tomorrow I might force myself to take a few days.
Oops, html fail. Here.
You must have good genes, Jeff G. Just your description of your routine makes me feel some pain.
I normally don’t do more than one or two sets per exercise. I follow the P90X model.
Only thing I really do more than two sets on are pull-ups (8), chins (6), bench (8), and shrugs (3, 2 w/ Fat Gripz). I do a number of different kinds of curls but never more than 2 sets of any specific kind, unless it’s the max out set that I end with, in which I go down in weight from 80 to 70 to 60 dumbbells.
I’m mostly going for endurance, but having trouble with that as that usually involves aggravating a dodgy knee. At the moment I’m going for 2 hours a day, 5 days a week – but haven’t been doing that so long, so I’m still sucking wind in a big way. I really need to throw some strength stuff in eventually.
Insanity is great for aerobic conditiong, and hard as hell if you’re looking for a challenge. It’s gotten the better of people far fitter than me.
I am scaling back on lifting this summer, focusing on some very specific weight training for swimming, biking, and running. I signed up for 2 more half marathons, 2 sprint triathlons, and 2 Olympic distance triathlons this summer, so cardio cardio cardio will be the order of the day for me this summer.
Gee Dicentra, It’s an open secret, like Rock Hudson or Monty Clift’s “lack of steady girlfriend’s.” The only question is when it would come out. I was on Fox two weeks ago and they were talking about it then. I used the NYT-liberal metaphor because the only people who don’t think the paper leans left are central-casting progressives. The only people who think Beck–I should be precise here: Beck’s producers and staff (you do understand he doesn’t do any research or reporting, right?)–aren’t serial lifters or plagiarists are people who don’t care about that kind of thing or work for him.
He’s really very powerful on the right, much sought after for endoresements and people are dying to get on his show–radio, not TV–because of the audience size. He’s a white Oprah for right-leaning authors, pure and simple. Look, I wrote a book that’s pretty apolitical but if his producer asked me on, I’d be there in an NYC minute. He gets books sold, period. By contrast, other talk show hosts have audiences who don’t react to their hosts who get enthused about a book. O’Reilly is a good example of this.
So against this backdrop to get people on the record, his frigging allies for Pete’s sake–Spencer and Geller’s are his audience core–is no small thing. I just thought there would be more.
Robert Spencer briefing a producer for hours and they don’t mention him? Here, I’ll help you out: If you write an article full of original reporting and I use its components on air, including blocks of verbatim text, and my excuse is that I’ve mentioned you before or that I’ll have you on some later time, that still is wrong. It’s not cool because you wrote it for someone other than me. All I have to do is say “DiCentra, who we talk with a lot, just came out with a cool new….” and youre off. No more need be said (though a URL or a tip to your book or article would be cool.) But he doesn’t do that enough. It’s not optional. You have to do it every time.
When I was at Fortune, CNN produers told me several times he had been spoken to about lifting other reporter’s work. It wasn’t a big deal because his HLN show wasn’t terribly huge at that point, or frankly, controversial. Moreover, he was known as a pretty good guy in the halls and didn’t do it all the time.
I think Beck has been right more than many supposed–hysterics, blackboard and goofy lighting aside–and it’s clear that either DC Caller got that Opelka thing wrong or he and Beck made up, so he’s no Stephen Glass or Jayson Blair. But really, that six minute clip was something other than exculpatory. He seemed guilty as hell.
Gee Dicentra, It’s an open secret, like Rock Hudson or Monty Clift’s “lack of steady girlfriends.” The only question is when it would come out.
Gee Boyd, sorry for not having such intimate access to all the backstage gossip. As someone without a book on Amazon (anymore) or the ability to “be on Fox” or “be at Fortune,” I’m just not hip to the scene. I’m so ashamed!
Robert Spencer briefing a producer for hours and they don’t mention him?
Why should they? Did they quote him verbatim? Did he provide genuinely original material? Was he the sole source of their information, or was he one of many sources who told them essentially the same thing?
This reminds me of commenters grousing about not getting a hat tip from a blogger after sending a link, because in reality the blogger found it himself, or he gave the hat tip to the first person to send the link.
And yes, I know all about researching public knowledge and compiling it into new texts. If I learn one thing from three different sources, then package it my own way, do I have to attribute all the people whose texts I read? For example, if it takes me several sources to learn how the MAC layer of IEEE 802.11 works, and then I write a bitchin’ chapter on it, do I need to source the web sites that all provided lame explanations that I improved upon with the force of my inimitable genius?
I’d need to see what Beck and co. allegedly stole and also see whether Beck’s research staff Did Not Have Any Other Source for the information.
Original material is hard to come by anymore, especially when you’re talking about a huge phenomenon such as Islam or Progressivism, over which much ink and pixellage has been spilt.
either DC Caller got that Opelka thing wrong or he and Beck made up
Given that Opelka’s been on Beck’s payroll for 20 years, it doesn’t sound like there was anything to make up for.
Besides, if it were easier to search blog comments, you could find plenty of people saying “the truth has no agenda” or its equivalent multiple times, independently, going back many years, and neither Beck nor Opelka nor anyone associated with Beck would have seen them even once. It’s hardly an original or especially clever turn of phrase. Beck’s just the one who put it on a T-shirt. Any one of us could have done the same thing on Zazzle.
(Also, I don’t know where people get off calling me DiCentra [you’re not the first]: it’s a floral genus that’s never spelled with a capital C. Evar.)
You should go all hipster-continental and refashion yourself as d’Çentrå. Maybe even a nonsensical umlaut under the “n” if you can manage it.
But if you do it, I get to call you a content thief.
Who is this Glenn Beck person and why am I supposed to care what people say about him — let alone care enough about it to take sides? Is he spending my great great grandchildren’s wages? Is he taking my country to war without even the pretense of asking for congressional authority?
If what they say is true then the truth will out. If they are lying, that truth will out. I have no interest in the matter until then.
When I’ve listened to Beck, his sources have always been rather obvious to anyone that does any reading or pays any attention to political writing.
#38 – but I think the attribution is the problem, not the use.
I’ve tried to listen to him once or twice in the car, I guess you have to be a regular. His TV show? Hell no. It just rubs me wrong. Granted that that’s not hard, but I’d rather watch the 700 Club than Beck and I’d rather pick my eyes out with a fork than watch the 700 Club.
Shit. Nowadays all I watch are Burn Notice and Hee Haw re-runs on RFD. Seriously, it’s hilarious. And Justin Beiber should be paying royalties to the Hager estate for the hair. (RIP Hagers)
No, I understand the complaint. I’m just saying … whenever I’ve watched, I’ve always KNOWN which books he’s been reading.
I never thought the ideas were originating from him. He is obviously influence by what he has read – for the better.
I’m not sure attribution is an issue. I simply don’t know.
When you talk of ideas, do they have to be attributed?
Text has to be attributed. Ideas, not so much.
Depends on how prevalent the ideas are, McGehee.
Anyways, as far as attribution goes, methinks Mr. Beck’s critics protest too much.
Besides, it’s not like he or his producers rigged a pickup truck to explode on impact and declared it “investigative journalism!” or something linke that.
Beck is a bit sloppy, tinged with goofy. The ‘mad hatter’ act is annoying to me, so I quit listening or watching him some time ago.
The NYT has a 7-economist ‘debate’ thinger on the S&P’s action today. The only one of the 7 worth reading is Arnold Kling, a CATO contributor, who also pooh-poohs S&P, but adds this…
To which I say, “Bingo!”.
Did I really say 7, when there are 8? I can’t count. No wonder I’m not an economist. )
I am expecting them to give me back about half of my 401k after they confiscate it to compensate for the Social Security they stiff me.
Call me a hopeless optimist.
When I use it, “not so much” != “not at all.”
Text and intent intersect. #WINNING!
Beck, Meh…
While I agree with him on many issues and share many of his points of view, I am rubbed the wrong way by his “reformed addict” zeal, and the broad brush he paints with while giving his civics lessons to those who never had the subject before, or who have only become interested as of late.
I think a lot of times he misses the forest for the trees, so to speak. But as far as the stealing content assertion, I really can’t say. I used to listen to his radio show a bit, but, SHOCKAH!, it’s gone off the air here in NYC. And I don’t generally watch his TV show-any more.
I will say that it seems like he’s got a bit of a book-mill going, like Roddy alluded to, and seems to “unexpectedly” profit quite a bit off of a lot of his “patriotic” endeavors; such as selling tickets to 9/11 rallies…
But I don’t generally like to bad mouth the guy, because he has done some good, but, well, this thread went there. I’m thinking though that he may have sailed over that proverbial shark a while back.
But then maybe I just did instead :)
And no offense intended by my comments, dicentra, I realize you admire Beck more than most.
I have no trouble at all if Beck profits from his endeavors, nor would I criticize him for it. No one is forced to give Beck his or her money. I rarely watch the show (except for the history of black men and women in America stuff, which was quite good I thought), and even then only bits and pieces, and only listen to clips of his radio show when referred to them by blogs. It’s just not my thing.
So true Cranky, folks do so by choice. But folks have been known to buy snake oil also. I mean folks bought Obama as a serious candidate!
I agree with him on a lot of issues, but it’s more like you said; it’s just not my thing…
If folks want to buy snake oil, then snake oil they shall get. I don’t blame the guy selling the snake oil. In any case, who needs to oil a snake?
Snakehandlers, cranky. The snakes get squeaky if they’ve had too many mice.
Can’t have the squeaks drowning out the slither.
Cranky – you have a Fiero???
How did that survive?
My Fiero is a 1988 GT, fully loaded, with 49K on it. I got it in 1995 from a guy who had bought it new and kept it in his garage, but had run out of room and kept his ’63 Corvette instead. It survived by staying in San Diego when I moved to MN, again in 1995. I intended to move back after a few years, and eventually ended up in a place such that I cannot bring it to MN (unless I leave the car I can actually drive all year outside to get snowed on, as the garage is not big enough to hold one of those lifts used to stack cars). It would be useless half the year anyway.
I drive it when I’m visiting my father, and one year we took it on a round trip to Sturgis and back for the bike rally. It’s a sweet little car.
No, no, cranky – you squeeze the snake from tail to head to get the oil out. Or you did, until the invention of the mechanical snake press in 1860…
Dicentra,
I am sorry about the misspelling of your name.
I’m not sure why youre being snide with me. I write for a living so these are the people I deal with and those are the places I worked; I am not sure why that makes you sharp. I brought that up to say that no one who has any awareness of the guys MO could have any real doubt that he has a sloppy habit of failing to give direct attribution. Every place he has worked that has been a criticism against him. It’s just assumed at Fox, for instance, that they’ll get blowback about it.
I’m not sayin, however, the guy is rancid.
He has a good amount of attributes. For example, much more than most of the Fox–or MSM–people, he’s a completely regular guy. He pays “little people” well (the ones who work way behind the scenes) and he is a loyal guy, helping people he worked with a decade ago get better gigs if he can (and he can, so he does.) He is, in other words, the utter opposite of Bill O’Reilly, who is even more unpleasant in real life than he is on TV. That happens a lot with TV people. Beleive it or not, one on one, Olbermann is a pretty normal guy (away from his political stuff where he is every bit the stooge he plays on TV); O’Reilly isn’t.
So Im not condeming the guy, but what he’s done is wrong. It’s been privately pointed out to him a lot and he still does it because he can. I have no idea what you do for a living but I am an investigative reporter so having people take my work and my research is a real bummer. I support my family doing this so even though I have deeply mixed feelings about Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer (his work is excellent, but his conclusions can be much, IMO), I feel for their frustration. And yes, if you spend hours on the phone with a producer, and they use your ideas and concepts directly, and you get not so much as a mention or reference, that’s wrong.
It’s not immoral, like the way many kinds of abortion or murder or robbery are immoral, it’s just flat wrong.
I write for a living so these are the people I deal with and those are the places I worked; I am not sure why that makes you sharp.
Because “Gee Dicentra, It’s an open secret,” sounded like I should have known something that I could not have possibly known, not travelling in the Privileged Circles where you hang out, Poor Little Person that I am.
I have no idea what you do for a living but I am an investigative reporter
I’m a technical writer. I know from the outset that my stuff will be repackaged and reused by the people who come after me, sans attribution. I get no byline at all, ever, nor do I particularly want one, but my work is still pretty damned good–a huge improvement over any sources I may use–and I’ve learned to invest no ego in my work beyond the knowledge that I did a fantastic job.
I do have to be careful not to get my client in trouble by plagiarizing something that was produced by or for another company, including my own work, e.g., I can’t just rebrand a chapter that I wrote for Cisco and give it to HP: I have to start from scratch (but not duplicate the time invested in research).
But whether Beck used original reporting from Spencer I cannot say until I’ve seen all the sources that Beck’s research staff had access to. Spencer’s bailiwick is Islam, which is mostly “open source” content, as it were. Had Beck been using Michael Yon’s anecdotes that he obtained by hauling his carcass across the bleak fields of Afghanistan, then you would have a solid case. On the other hand, if they talked to Spencer AND two or three other people about the same subject (12th imam?), then I’m not sure what the beef is. From Spencer’s POV it might feel like he got robbed when in reality he didn’t provide anything original so much as confirm what they already had.
Also, the guy who wrote the DC Caller piece WAS in fact turned down for a job at Beck’s place, and he totally got the Opelka thing wrong, so I can’t much trust what he says about Beck’s operation.
Nor, I’m sorry, do I much trust the whisperings that you may have run into, because people aren’t exactly going to give Glenn a break when they suspect he robbed their stuff when in fact their contribution wasn’t all that original.
Need something more substantial than the rumor mill, is all I’m saying.
peace.
points taken.
be strong,
roddy
Mormon solidarity!
No, no!
I’m in a mood to bite heads clean off!
Stay oh stay!
Mormon solidarity!
With Harry Reid? Orrin Hatch?
Try again, dude. I despise more Mormons than you’ll ever know.