krill

Let's fire Chuck Hagel because the DoD still uses payroll software written in cobol (not joking) that has become alarmingly error prone... The people responsible for this mess need to be help accountable, but it's not like they have been getting any help. I was reading somewhere that the federal government does something like $80 billion in IT related contracting a year. It's quietly become one the biggest boondoggle honey holes in all of government. Congress is supposed to play an oversight role here to make sure departments of the federal government are not squandering our money, and what have they been up to lately. Not that, not passing laws, not doing anything besides grandstanding and shutting down the government. So don't act surprised or shocked when things like this happen.

I have a gut feeling the size of government and deficit is growing, and I trust my gut because it survived Taco Bell tonight.

Most websites grow incrementally to facilitate the needs of visitors, implement new features, refine usability, etc. Healthcare.gov went from 0 to tens of millions of hits in one day. There's just no way to predict how all those people are going to try to use the site and it's really complex with the exchanges. I agree though that it looks bad when people need confidence that this will work. It's a little mind boggling why the government didn't just partner with a proven model like ehealthinsurance, and instead apparently spent a pile of money on something completely new that isn't working as planned.

SEC SEC SEC Of course it won't while bama is still favored to three-peat, or at least for the B10 until we win some January bowls.

It's proven that easier access to contraceptives = much fewer abortions and unplanned pregnancies. If you find abortion more appalling than recreational sex, and most people do, then this should be a no brainer from an ethical point of view. Because the conflict on this issue seems to be centered around whether religious groups should be able to opt out of contraceptive coverage for their employees, I again have to wonder why employers should have any say at all in the matter. It's crazy, and it's not their business.

I really believe that what drives most of the Tea Party politician's uncompromising zealotry is fear of primary challengers. Not 20 minutes after the deal was done last night, the CEO of the Tea Party group Freedomworks said all reps that voted yes will face primary challenges. Those votes matter to these reps; a one or two term congressmen cannot fend off primary challenger that is backed with piles of outside money. It's a classic case of do what we say, or we'll find someone else who will, and "we" is increasingly not the majority of the people these reps ostensibly represent in congress.

I find Ted Cruz to be really confusing. Is he a senator, or the guy on late night BET televangelist shows selling miracle napkins, or a used car salesmen trying to sell you a car with blown head gasket? He would fit right in with any of those roles.

Much as I don't like Boehner on a personal level as a career politician and general sleazeball that's only interested in power, and probably $ post-public life, I don't think anyone could even get that caucus to agree that the sun rises in the east. There's true believer TP'ers, TP'ers that are worried about an even more extreme primary challenger, mainstream Republicans, and a few token moderates from Democratic-leaning districts. The liberal wing of the Democratic party stomps their feet and makes a lot of smoke when they are required to moderate on legislation, but nothing like what the Republicans have been doing.

The house is worse than a college student that procrastinates their graduate thesis until the night before, works on it a few hours, then goes off and gets hammered, sleeps through class, and finally begs the professor for extension...and it will still be a flaming piece of crap, if it ever is finished.

Looked like the senate was actually very close to negotiating a deal to at least kick the can down the road another 3 to 4 months, and assemble another debt commission that would accomplish nothing but staging the next fiasco...but wait, there more! from the house, which needs to clutch at least one impossibly idiotic straw from their disaster... I almost fell out of my chair reading this, I can't even imagine anything more token and pathetic. Who has the stomach for more of this 3 months from now?

I will venture to guess that if that group was quizzed, at least half wouldn't know the basic function of the legislative branch, half of that half would still blame ol' Barry, and a significant remainder would assume that anyone who does know how the government functions is a liberal elitist. After all those pocket copies of the constitution do have a lot of pages...no telling what Jefferson and Adams were able to sneak in there.

They are protesting the takeover of "their" country with Chinese made American flags, flat hats, and flag t-shirts.

My expectations were not very high, but there were some OK tailgates, the fans ranged from nice to indifferent, and it was very easy to get in and out of. Really shocking how few students were there though. I felt so bad when one of their pro alums starting talking about the great student section in his day where there were maybe 200 students left at the half. The game atmosphere was simply not very good. It was nice to go and see a new opponent at a new venue, but I would not make this trip again unless it was supposed to be a really, really good game somehow.

Degenerate media, campaign finance laws, gerrymandering, citizen's political apathy, and structural deficiencies in our system of government probably all deserve equal blame. If I had to pick one that is most to blame though, it would be structural deficiencies. Imagine if the house, instead of representing what are now completely arbitrary districts, was instead a proportionally represented by national vote. Radical parties would have their seats and their voice, but if they refused to moderate and join governing majorities, they would have no power. Of course this system has all sorts of nastiness when it comes to forming a governing majority, but if we had a higher house (the senate) that was more of a technocratic check on the lower house, with a reformed executive that still served as head of state and commander in chief...that might actually be a more rational way to govern 300 million people in the 21st century.

http://www.nationalj...licans-20131007 19 Times Democrats Tried to Negotiate With Republicans 1. 4/23 Senator Reid requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Toomey blocked. 2. 5/6 Senator Reid requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Cruz blocked. 3. 5/7 Senator Murray requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator McConnell blocked. 4. 5/8 Senator Warner asked unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator McConnell blocked. 5. 5/9 Senator Murray asked unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator McConnell blocked. 6. 5/14 Senator Warner asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator McConnell blocked. 7. 5/15 Senator Wyden asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator McConnell blocked. 8. 5/16 Senator Murray asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Lee blocked. 9. 5/21 Senator Murray asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Paul blocked. 10. 5/22 Senator Kaine asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Rubio blocked. 11. 5/23 Senator McCaskill asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Lee blocked. 12. 6/4 Senator Murray asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Rubio blocked. 13. 6/12 Senator Kaine asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Lee blocked. 14. 6/19 Senator Murray asked unanimous consent to go to conference, and Senator Toomey blocked. 15. 6/26 Senator Murray requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Cruz blocked. 16. 7/11 Senator Murray requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Marco Rubio blocked. 17. 7/17 Senator Murray requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Mike Lee blocked. 18. 8/1 Senator Durbin requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Marco Rubio blocked. 19. 10/2 Senator Murray requested unanimous consent to go to conference, Senator Toomey blocked. Oh...now that there's a government shutdown, we really, really want to negotiate, and spend time tweeting photos of us pretending to do so. Lucy van Pelt for Speak of the House!

I wish that right around kickoff, all people trying to scalp tickets and unused student tickets were lopped together at a ticket office and anyone who just wanted to go to the game cheap could get those tickets. It's frustrating when ticket prices have got so high and you do go down looking for discount scalps, and then turn around to see so many empty seats.

I doubt Lee Terry could even pull down a kushy lobbying job if he wanted to. He was elected to congress 15 years ago and still sits on three minor committees, has never worked on major legislation, and has little clout in his party. The thing is there are a lot of nobodies in congress who are not independently wealthy like Terry, who do genuinely need a paycheck, and a lot of them feel like their $175k salary is practically a vow of poverty...and yet they are not able to empathize with a summa cum laude astrophysics MIT graduate at NASA that makes 1/3 of what they do, or apparently even a park ranger.

It's a good thing Mr. Terry's district was fixed after Obama accidentally carried an electoral vote from the 2nd in 2008. For awhile there it was looking dangerously competitive.

Both sides!!!! I have a hard time understanding how it's both sides when Boehner could allow a vote right now for a temporary spending bill that would pass (with a bi-partisn majority) end the shutdown, but he won't because 40 or so tea party backed reps would probably mutiny against his speakership. Although, I give Boehner some credit for at least starting to ice any ideas of another another battle over default with the debt ceiling needing resolution in the next few weeks. If he were to be forced out in favor of someone truly crazy like Cantor, we would be in a much worse situation.

I think you guys are a little confused, which is hardly surprising considering no one besides politicians and c-span junkies probably want to keep up with the monthly crisis in government. October 1st is the beginning of the fiscal year for the federal government, and congress is supposed to pass a budget to appropriate funds for the year. Without that only essential services will be automatically funded. Because our congress has not been able to function at a very basic level, most of the budgets since 2006 (?) have not been budgets at all, the government has been funded by a series of continuing resolutions that simply fund the government at previous levels with some tweaks...essentially kicking a can down the road. Now that cannot even be passed. The other crisis have been related to automatic cuts that came into effect (sequestration) in previous negotiations, and separate votes on raising the deficit ceiling. So, not to worry, by the time this crisis is "solved" we'll be due up for another. The continuing resolutions can be for any amount of time, a day, a month, a year I think at most. That's why these battles have been happening with alarming regularity, because they can't even pass a normal budget for a full year, or do CR's without poison pills like the sequestration business, and what Republicans want now with a litany of conditions beyond delaying the ACA for a year. At least that's my understanding of the situation.

“We stress the importance of martyrdom operations against the enemy, these attacks that have scared Americans and Israelis like never before.”— Osama bin Laden The more entrenched Republicans become, the more they resemble the worst of extremists. *Exasperated sigh* First off, I'm pretty sure you just broke a variant of the "calling your opponents Nazis on the internet" rule. Second, my whole point is that partisan brinksmanship is an American pastime. Everyone's aghast at how these monstrous Republicans could shut down the government....when there have been 18 of them since the mid-1970s. Unified Democratic governments allowed shutdowns to happen 5 times when Carter was president. The Democratic Congress shut down the government eight times when Reagan was President. Certainly true about past shutdowns, and it's not like New Deal and Medicare legislation went into effect without Republicans using every tactic imaginable (at the time) to stop those laws and protest them. I think the difference here is that in the past, the government at least went back to functioning at a nominal level after everyone had had their fun. After Boehner cracks during this shutdown, if he's even still speaker, does anyone have even the slightest amount of hope that the situation will be improved at all? It won't be long before perpetual crisis over the debt ceiling is the new norm on top of the procedural tactics that have made it all but impossible to rationally legislate and solve America's problems.

And here's the effect of that exquisite gerrymandering Fewer swing districts, and thus, fewer representatives that have to take moderate positions that actually serve the interest of all their constituents. Throw in terrible decisions like citizens united that have effectively allowed plutocrats like the Koch brothers to bankroll elections, and here we have a completely dysfunctional congress of radicals that don't answer to anyone besides their reelection coffer.

It's fine though, federal workers aren't real people that need their paychecks.

I think we would have been better off if CU would have left as planned for the Pac-10, and TCU was added as a start. No one could have stopped the realignment though, because of structural deficiencies with the Big 12, UT pushing ahead with the LHN, and the retarded amount of non-football bitterness between A&M and UT. Maybe Mizzou and A&M are happy with their situation, but I see the B10 being watered down even more with the expansion to 14, a lot of games that are frankly not compelling, further away, and without even the tinge of a rivalry like we had with Big 12 opponents. Then there's the big picture...the strength of the SEC, increasing strength of the Pac-12, a few resurgent programs in the ACC. It makes the B10 look like a league that is spiraling towards second tier sans Urban Meyer.

Chrome's GPU acceleration and javascript engine can sometimes be a bit wonky. I had been using SRWare Iron, a build of Chromium that fixes many of the privacy issues in Chrome, but switched back to Firefox with version 22. Mozilla has really pulled a rabbit out of their hat and made Firefox great again on desktop, and Firefox mobile is also, in my opinion, the best browser for Android right now. The only thing I really care about though is device syncing and at least a modicum of security.