Reason Morning links: Debt Panel Makes Recommendations, Pentagon Study Says No Risk To Repealing DADT, Dobbs Joins Fox
- Debt panel lays out sweeping, tough-minded recommendations that will never, ever happen.
- Pentagon study group says there's little risk in repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
- Walmart announces free shipping for online purchases over the holidays. New York Times posits it could represent a "new high — or low — in e-commerce."
- U.S., South Korea fail to reach a free trade agreement.
- Lou Dobbs joins Fox Business Network.
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# Lou Dobbs joins Fox Business Network.
Didn’t see that coming.
He’d be more appropriate for Fox News.
Does this mean he’s going to show up on Stossel more and avoid answering direct questions?
Can’t wait to see his head explode on live teevee, cause you know that’s coming…
The judge will be in prime time now, M-F 8:00 PM EST.
Way to go, judge!!! Keep the light of freedom shining!
Nice! I wish he’d get off the Tea Party’s cock, though. Sometimes his show became almost unwatchable as he talked to candidates that seem like they’ll be very soon at odds with the Judge’s other topics about which he generates lots of enthusiasm and passion.
Isn’t that the way it should be? Heap praise upon them when they’re right, roast ’em when they’re wrong…
“U.S., South Korea fail to reach free trade agreement.”
Goddamn it. This is why kimchi costs over $4/pound. Maybe someone can get Mexicans hooked on it so they’ll start producing it at much, much better prices?
Keep your kimchi, I’ll take the soju.
Soju is my lifeblood and the national sport of Korea.
“National sport of Korea”? I didn’t know they called Starcraft “Soju” there.
Fear the Korean broodlord zerg!!!
Ah….touche, indeed.
However, as we [type] I am getting kazooed on the stuff as 5 drunken men stagger down the alley below my apartment singing…whatever it is they’re singing.
Interesting factoid: Korea is a terribly homophobic country and yet men walk holding hands regularly. Sometimes it’s due to the stumbling but usually not.
Starcraft? Not Baduk?
I need the soju if I’m going to eat my mother in law’s kimchi.
Even with my low standards for food, watching kimchi come out of the pot buried in the back yard is enough to put me off it.
The stuff my wife makes here in the states isn’t too bad. Of course, she doesn’t bury hers so it doesn’t have time to develop that fermented goodness.
Any reason cant have craft kimchi producers in the US or is that where the $4 stuff comes from now?
Weather destroyed the cabbage crop and government regulation exacerbated the lack of demand.
It’s made with cabbage? Now I know never to try it.
Napa cabbage.
The fact it’s rotten (they call it fermented, as a brewer I call it rotten) cabbage stuck in a pot that is buried in the ground or set in the sun would probably be a larger detraction for most people.
That should be lack of supply.
Duh.
Korea Farm out of Chicago sells a pretty good domestically made Kim Chi. It’s not quite as good as the stuff imported from Korea that smells like rotting fish (due the dried shrimp) but it is tasty.
Walmart saves poor people money; the “Party of the People” bitches.
The funny thing is, government healthcare is run on the same model: use the government’s outsized purchasing power to force suppliers to sell at artificially low prices.
When the private sector does it, it’s wicked; when Big Government does it, it suddenly, magically becomes virtuous.
Man forced to eat his own beard
Kentucky! Woo!
The gift of bourbon makes up for a lot of sins.
Also Double Star firearms
“Everyone was drinking then all hell broke loose,”
A gift that keeps on giving.
There was a story recently in the Idaho Statesman about a fatal car wreck caused by two young men fighting over a can of DustOff. Driver lost control and one of the men died as a result of the accident.
Is it just me or are humans devolving into a more sociopathic species?
no, but we’re more creative in our pathologies. plus, the internet lets you read about it.
Increasing standards of living allow more stupid people more access to stupid ways of autodarwination.
Watch some episodes of HBO’s Rome, then tell me we’re more sociopathic now.
Then watch a Speedy Gonzales cartoon and tell me supersonic mice are impossible.
First it was the WV story about a gal with a knife demanding that a guy lick her beard, now this.
What is going on with hillbillies and hair to mouth demands at knifepoint?
Could this type of story supplant shark attacks on young blond women as the new hot story?
Hair to mouth demands much better then the ATM demands seen in urban settings.
I eat my beard every chance I get. He loves it!
With the two families still getting a piece of the action
God, you suck.
Free trade agreements, managed and imperfect though they are, are better than the status quo.
I always thought the absence of an agreement was de facto free trade.
WRONG
Like Cytotoxic said, exactly wrong. Most countries have tariffs, excise taxes and out-and-out trade limits on foreign goods.
Did you think that the negotiation of NAFTA, for example, was all just a big ruse? Do you think the “duty-free” shops exist just for fun?
Zombie safe barge
The debt commission cmae out with the whole accross the board cut. That won’t do any good. And it is stupid. When you are broke you don’t decide to cut all your expenses accross the board. You figure out what you can and cannot afford. We are going to have to cut functions and figure what we want government to do and not do. Cutting 15% accross the board just ensures the governmetn does everything it is doing now worse. Get rid of cabinet agencies. Get the governmetn out of certian functions. Then try to do the remaining ones better.
You can tell this thing was written by Washington insiders. They couldn’t bear the thought of there being a few less cabinet positions available or that there might be some things, anythign, that the government ought not to be doing.
It begins.
Why can’t they do both? I like the idea of a baseline 70% cut, followed by eliminating most federal departments.
And then I’ll ride my pony in the magical gumdrop forest.
If you are gonna dream big you may as well ride your Gubmint issued Unikorn.
Dont’ forget your unicorn. We need to change the conversation from accross the board cuts to functional cuts. Accross the board just leaves the agencies in place to eat more money another day.
I’m willing to trade my mortgage interest deduction for the death of the Department of Education, straight up.
Second!
I would too, if I had a mortgage.
I’ll trade that and the health insurance tax change in exchange for the Dept of Sped AND opting out of Social Insecurity.
I’ll take my 12.5% and do much better things with it, thank you.
I’ll trade mine for the elimination of the FCC.
Unless cuts are “across the board” they will almost certainly never happen. Remember the pity parade when we attempted to shut down a few military bases? Sure, reasonable people would do as you suggest. The problem is that every government agency, and every government worker is simply certain that their positions are “necessary”.
Close the Department of Education? Millions of rent seekers will scream their heads off. Adjust Social Security and you will be able to hear the wails of seniors in this country from the moon. Have you forgotten that idiot Barbara Boxer using hand puppets on the floor of the Senate, talking about how Republicans wanted to kill Ernie and Bert, because they floated the idea of ending PBS?
Maybe, just maybe, if every single thing were cut, people could swallow it. Like so many adolescents, no one is going to give up theirs unless the other guy does as well. Not that I expect this to happen, either. I am convinced that economic collapse is inevitable.
Shouldn’t the Dept of Education be the single easiest budget cut of all?
They’ve only been around since 1980 and test scores haven’t improved a bit since then.
If they ain’t the easiest (I’m looking at you Dept of Energy), then it has to be the second easiest.
You want to get rid of the Department of EDUCATION?! Our children need to be educated! Why do you hate children?
They Tuk arrr jobbbbss
An alternative to the apparent fairness of across-the-board cuts is random elimination of agencies until the desired accumulated savings is achieved. I’ll leave the details to others, since this’ll never be implemented.
Put them all on a big dartboard and then what ever gets hit with a dart – goodbye!
There is some truth to your argument, but I also think the key factor is at what level do you impose the 15% cut?
If you impose the 15% cut at the very top of the various departments, I don’t think it will be a bad idea. On the other hand if you impose the cut at a very granular level, it is a very bad idea for the reasons you laid out.
For example, if you told the Department of Agriculture that they need to cut 15%, then they would (should?) find the most wasteful 15% of expenses in their gargantuan budget and everything will still be fine.
If, though, you say every unit of the Dept of Ag needs to cut their budget by 15%, then you run into the problems you bring up.
Of course, the problem with my argument is that if you told the Dept of Ag to cut by 15%, they will probably turn around and either a) tell each unit to cut by 15% or b) cut 15% from the most beneficial department so that farmers get mad at the people who brought up the idea of cutting budgets.
The key is to start with 25% (15 isnt enough) across the board cuts but then trade out. If Dept of Awesome needs all its money, then Dept of Ed has to go entirely. But I think you start with across the board cuts and then agree to keep certain things around but something else has to go away to pay for it.
Or, we could go to priority based budgeting, which is basically what John is suggesting. Earmark EVERY SINGLE DOLLAR (The Ron Paul earmarking strategy) and put a priority number next to it. The budget can be a 100 bajillion dollars but we spend in priority order until the budget is balanced.
We get the expected amount of revenue – spend down it item #12,342.
More than expected, also spend on #12,343-14,864.
Less than expected – #9,987-12,341 never get funded.
And, of course, I would sprinkle billion dollar chunks of “pay off the debt” every 1000 items or so.
If nothing else, it would be fun to see the democrats (they still control the senate after all) try to figure out what priority # to give to NEA grants.
That is a great idea.
It sounds like a fine idea, rob, but I think that the process of numbering things runs the same problem.
If you ask any bureaucrat/rent seeker where they land on a numbered scale wouldn’t most, if not all, claim to belong in the top 10?
Don’t get me wrong, here, I would favor ANY form of reduction. Certainly spending our money wisely would be preferable, but I am skeptical of our ability to actually do it.
Some cities (and maybe some states) do it. Of course any rent seeker demands a top 10 spot, but now he has to convince a politician to put him there and there are only 10 spots available.
The point being, when combined with a mandatory balanced budget, it forces choices to be made. If XXX is the most important government problem evar, then it gets put #1 and everyone is fine with it being funded.
On the state level, priority budgeting prevents the game where you threaten to cut school funding without a tax increase. If school’s are so damn important, they will be high on the list and wont be in any danger.
Yeah, that works great at the federal level.
#1 Social Security
#2 Medicare
#3 Defense
#4 Medicaid
Don’t bother filling in 5-25,000. You’re already in deficit.
Absolutely correct, since that stuff is 98% of the budget already.
I think they did make some good suggestions, such as raising the retirement age and getting rid of some tax deductions. But I’m sure that when the Prez and Congress carefully consider these suggestions as they promised, we’ll end up with a plan that’s something like “SPEND MORE MONEY ON SHIT.”
I’d take it. Yes, it is not perfect, but, it looks much better than what can possibly come out of Congress.
“Cheap pork, pork, fresh, cheap pork, pork extra cheap now, get two free if you take one free.”
A local kid aces both the ACT and the SAT. Unfortunately the good news story in the local rag ran this pic.
Aaargh! How can I be supportive of this kid when he looks so smug AND has “The Essential Chomsky” book in his stack?
Also, I suspect a rat. The kid is from Coon Rapids which is the notoriously redneck suburb of Minneapolis. I doubt the other kids would have let him survive this long.
The comments are also priceless. I think the Chomsky book has swayed the liberals into undying support. The only slightly negative comment was from one worrywart who warned him against drinking too much Mountain Dew because it could lead to diabetes.
OMG. Yeah he has this look of “someday I will be in charge of great things and do my part to destroy the country”. Little fucking bastard.
I want this kid working for Me!
Be careful, my Lord… he might wind up taking over. He has The Holy Word of Noam on his desk.
I’m trying to spread the meme of “Moan Chomsky.”
Try it out; it’s fun.
I’d bet that the kid probably regrets that picture. The photographer probably talked him into posing with “advanced” books and his physics bowl trophies.
I wish him the best. If history is any indicator odds are he will end up in academia or working for some guy with an MBA. Hope he manages to avoid that trend.
No little high school fucker knows shit about machine learning. He needs to quit posing with his older brother’s books.
True. And Chomsky is fucking unreadable. Kant is easier and more interesting to read.
Derrida was the one who made me want to run through the college library shooting anyone who might possibly believe in PoMo. Kant at least somewhere in his 8+ clause sentences had a point.
I didn’t ace either test. Neither did most of the managers/directors at my firm.
The fuckers wonderfully-talented people who did comprise our “direct reports”. This guy looks like a future Finance or Product Planning pledge, to me. Welcome aboard, underling!
There’s really no reason to take both the ACT and SAT. One of them would have been enough. It seems like he is just trying to show off, “Look how smart I am everybody!” The picture doesn’t help change my opinion of that. And are we supposed to be impressed that he is taking calculus in high school? I think that is the norm for all honors students these days. If you want to impress me, have a copy of Baby Rudin.
There’s really no reason to take both the ACT and SAT. One of them would have been enough.
I think some state’s public colleges require an ACT while most schools want the SAT. Having both tests probably increases scholarship options as well. He’s looking at Reed College and UofW-Madison, that suggests “regular marijuana use”.
He is also looking the U of Minnesota, which suggests he is going to get a football scholarship.
He couldn’t be any worse than our current crop of Gopher gridders.
KY schools require ACT. I went to Ga Tech, which is an SAT school.
Hence the reason I took both, ACT was solely for fallback in state options. Most schools I was seriously considering were SAT schools.
Thank a vet today
And of course, this is obligatory today. “For democracy, any man would give his only begotten son.”
The one topic I’m afraid to talk straight about, even on H&R, is veteran worship. So I got nothin’ else to say.
IMO, there’s a difference between thanking veterans for their service, and kissing they asses. I refuse to do the latter.
This…
I mean, “Mister FIFY, why do you not support teh Troopz!!!1!”
Very true.
Is this some sort of DADT support?
If ass-kissing violated DADT, there’d be a lot fewer veterans.
A lot fewer staff officers. And flag officers for that matter.
I agree. I doubt though that many veterans are the ones who think you should kiss their ass.
One thing the services are very good at is teaching you a bit about humility.
In my experience the most strident vet worshippers are usually mother’s of veterans or chicken hawks.
The vets selling poppies on the street corner are always very nice. I always give my kids $10 to buy a poppy with the instruction to tell the old vet “Semper Fi”.
Most vets want nothing to do with it. Then they get old. And they like to remember when they were young. This kind of things is for the families of the dead and old guys.
Exactly.
Aren’t old vets and families of the dead the sorts of people you’d want to support?
The old vets in Minneapolis also volunteer to staff a great servicemen’s center at the MSP airport. When I was on leave, I would regularly be dumped at the MSP for the night because I missed the connecting flight to Fargo. The servicemen’s center would always have a free hot dog and a rack to spend the night in.
The old vet volunteers were always happy to swap sea stories with you. Of course, you had to hear about how easy it was now a days.
I went to the American cemetery in the Ardenne a few months ago.
Beautifully maintained grounds. The number of markers has an intense effect. Then you start to walk down a row…names. The names are tough.
But wait until you get to the first one that reads “Here Rests in Honored Glory a Comrade in Arms Known But to God”.
Glad I’ve been. I won’t be going back for a while.
The whole notion of thanking veterans is bizarre to me. If you are supposed to thank vets for risking getting shot to make your life better, should you thank taxi drivers too?
Why not? Cab drivers provided a needed service.
I thank garbage men. Their job is about the most dangerous outside commercial fishing and logging. They work hard in all kinds of weather They are nearly always friendly and yield the right-of-way to motorists. The only recognition they receive is getting busted by local TV news during sweeps week for drinking beer at lunch.
Ours are NYC public servants – the best you can hope for is a non-committal grunt and a better than average percentage of garbage making it into the truck vs. all over the sidewalk.
Well, Warty, we could go the whole nine yards* and thank everyone for everything, but that sounds too much like collectivist thinking for my personal tastes.
*Normally, I avoid cliches like the plague.
What are you saying?
Me too!
I wonder whats on LRC today regarding veteran worship.
I guess it’s right below this post.
For the time being.
Thank a Vet today.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blo…..931624.jpg
Killing and maiming people under orders of the state is nothing to feel proud for.
Dammit, you stole my joke, OM. Watch my Metallica video as punishment.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! ? An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
…you stole my joke, which I stole from Lew Rockwell, blah blah blah.
Lew Rockwell such a prick. I really hate that guy. It is a rough world. And as Orwell said sometimes it is necessary for rough men to do violence on your behalf. That doesn’t require vet worship. But it is true nonetheless. Rockwell only gets to be such an insufferable prick, because we have a country that protects such stuff. And if we didn’t have a military we wouldn’t have a country. That is a sucky reality but it is a reality.
THANK YOU.
Sadly, this asshole is the chairman of the really awesome Ludwig von Mises Institute, so unfortunantly he’s more influential than I would like.
It’s the same way I feel about the Ayn Rand Institute and Peikoff.
Rockwell has no intellectual depth so he attracts attention with shock stories.
Thank goodness there have been all those times the military has repulsed invasions of the country, because as we all know ” if we didn’t have a military we wouldn’t have a country.”
I agree. Soviet invasion would suck.
Good thing the military repulsed it when it happened.
The Wolverines weren’t regulars.
OM, there are times we need the military to kill and maim. Iraq and Afghanistan and Vietnam, however, were not such times.
When were those times? Perhaps the war against the Barbary pirates?
Afghanistan: yes, lets let AQ maim and murder our citizens. Thanks asshole.
Iraq I: Bush the elder’s vanity project. Unnecessary and made worse by actually allowing Sadaam to stay in power.
Iraq II: necessary to clean up after Iraq I. Nation-building component unnecessary and expensive.
*yawn* – oh, you mean as opposed to killing and maiming as part of a roving gang that you would have to join under anarchy?
I have said it already, but I am going to keep hammering on it: Old Mexican, you are boring and intellectually shallow. At no point during your tenure here have you demonstrated that you understand the deeper meaning behind any of the platitudes you regurgitate. You have the thought process of a leftist.
Ah yes. One can win all arguments by using anarchy as a synonym for “bad.”
Thank goodness veterans never killed or maimed anyone; only gangs under anarchy do that.
(How can something be “under” anarchy?)
Somalia is calling for you.
And…. roads.
Where did I use “anarchy” as a synonym for “bad”? Though it is a bad thing.
You just through up anarchy, attached some imaginary consequences to it and left it at that. That level of non-argument, of assuming that anarchy = roving gangs isn’t much more than just asserting that anarchy = bad.
And so what if there are roving armed gangs? The proper calculus is if the killing and pillaging of these armed gangs if less than that of armed gangs that exercise a monopoly on force in a given geographic area.
Warty, that is a very moving video. It brings back memories of when Metallica didn’t suck.
I’m surprised you didn’t pair One with it’s inspirational novel. One of the better books I was assigned in HS.
Say no to war! Unless it involves killing Nahtzees.
“Everyone’s trying to figure out how we can serve a customer that’s trying to save every penny they can,” said Steve Nave, senior vice president and general manager of Walmart.com.
Perfidy!
When you are broke you don’t decide to cut all your expenses accross the board. You figure out what you can and cannot afford.
Believe it or not, Gates is not the guy who decides how many pencils you get.
WAA?
http://www.nytimes.com/interac…..ef=science
this is way cool.
The atomic cannon is such an awesomely bad idea. It’s like something from Fallout.
I was thinking more like the RPNs (Rocket Propelled Nukes) from Starship Troopers.
Oh, goody! The Plutonium Pu-36 Explosive Space Modulator! Now I can blow up the Earth!
The army played around with the Davy Crockett. A recoilless rifle designed to shoot atomic rounds.
We were amazingly silly back then, as evidenced also by the picture of spectators in shorts sitting comfortably in adirondack chairs watching a nuclear blast.
Someone needs to make a “Borated” joke.
Feynman on the Trinity test
Walmart offers free shipping: women and minorities hardest hit.
Walmart offers free shipping: women and minorities hardest hit.
Many college students do it. But the thought of shopping at Wal-Mart sends a jolt of guilt to the pit of my stomach.
It’s not the people there who upset me, or the unbelievably low prices. But when I walk through those automatic doors and into the bright, white lights, I see concentrated evil. …
http://www.redandblack.com/201…..-wal-mart/
They then charge American consumers more money than what it took to produce their products.
Is there anything in the world more evil than that? Surely we can come up with a system of government which would forbid such things!
Oh jesus fucking christ. If your town can’t support a fucking candy store after wal-mart moves in, it’s got more problems than you realize.
I didn’t know there were candy stores anymore.
Crystal Villarreal is a senior from Lawrenceville majoring in magazines.
what the hell is a major in magazines?
I think it’s supposed to say “appearing in magazines”.
Makes more sense than her other coursework in women’s studies. At least some magazines make money. Of course making money is bad so maybe she should operate one of those non-profit magazines. Not sure how she’ll do that without ads from profitable companies or subscriptions from people who work for profitable companies but hopefully she can pull it off since that would be nice for her.
The toy store, candy store and grocery would shut down, crushed under the customer lure of Wal-Mart’s unbeatably low prices.
Why should we let such distant and cold corporate monsters set the styles for things such as the clothing we wear, movies we watch and music we listen to?
So much win. Plus, she has the style and eloquence of a 5th grader.
But one day our neighbors started worrying that our way of life could change, and there they stood shouting in unison that Wal-Mart destroys communities.
The interim report stands as an opening bid in what will likely be a heated debate over the future of spending and taxes, issues that exploded in the midterm elections. Many of the plan’s more provocative elements are intended as starting points for negotiation, not final recommendations.
In that case, they didn’t go nearly far enough.
So, wait, you’re totally sure that we can’t sell the federal government to Walmart? God-dammit.
So, wait, you’re totally sure that we can’t sell the federal government to Walmart? God-dammit.
The debt commission story mentions the “Navy’s Future Maritime Prepositioning Force.”
I can take care of that right now:
“off” “on” “in” “out” “above” “under” ….
(For $100 million more, I will throw in a few adverbs and adjectives. Nouns and verbs will require a new contract.)
Today is Veterans Day (aka Armistice Day). My Great-grandmother’s brother (my great-great-uncle), Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff (Hindenburg’s First Quartermaster-General) was mighty pissed off about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Ludendorff
So, are you claiming to be a descendant of the August Wilhelm Ludendorff?
Yes.
True Story.
Which I guess is why I inherited figurines stamped “Made in Prussia”.
H.L. Mencken whote about them in the June 1917 Atlantic Monthly.
http://www.theatlantic.com/pas…..encken.htm
Of the two sisters, one died unmarried and the other married one Jahn, an under-secretary in the Imperial Treasury.
I assume it is the latter one from which you are descended.
I never gave it any thought and all the people who could answer that question are dead. But my Grandmother’s maiden name was Ludendorf so I suspect Great-grandmother Ludendorf married one of August Wilhelm Ludendorff’s sons.
They then charge American consumers more money than what it took to produce their products.
“Whyyyy, da noive o’ dem guys!!!!”
Dildo on dildo crime?
Everyone’s having a good time, and then some idiot has to yell “Ass to ass!”
Thanks