Time to comment like it’s 2011!
(Now would seem as good of a time as any to make your predictions and wishes for 2011. Peace and prosperity to you in 2011 from the 538 Refugees crew. – Mr. Universe)
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538 Refugees 
Gas prices will be 50 cents a gallon higher at the end of 2011 because of a weak dollar, demand from marginal economic growth and new EPA regs on refineries.
If you live in one of the unfortunate states receiving EPA GHG and particulate regs, your price per KwH will rise by a penny by the end of next year. Doesn’t sound like much in isolation, but that is about a 15% increase in most locations.
Health insurance premiums will rise by double digits for the second year in a row complying with hundreds of pages of new Obamacare regs. Dem states will deny premium increases and drive health insurers out of state. If MA does not permit the surviving non profit insurers to raise premiums to make good their losses under Romneycare, the insurers may stop writing and renewing policies in retaliation creating a health insurance crisis in the Bay State.
Because the GOP Congress is going to cut off the bailouts, the insolvent blue states are going to force Obama to grant waivers to cut Medicaid with a threat to enter bankruptcy and cave the bond markets. I suspect that Jerry Brown will lead this effort because CA is now on the precipice and he will not cross the public employee unions who elected him to reduce costs there.
Unemployment will be above 9% at the end of 2011 while American companies will create over a million jobs overseas (they created 1.5 million this year) because of our high comparative cost of labor aggravated by government interventions.
GDP growth will remain a a sub recovery level of 3.5% because of higher health and energy costs.
However, American business will continue to find ways of making money with less growth and fewer employees, driving the Dow above 12,500.
The housing market will finally bottom out towards the end of 2011 as most foreclosures will at last clear the system.
Anyone who knows what will happen politically when our first socialist president clashes with a Congress reinforced with over 70 revolutionary limited government types with the establishment leadership caught in between is lying. Next year may be one for the books.
My prediction: BDP will continue to whine, moan and lie while refusing to engage in intelligent discussion of any sort. He will make unsupported statements that demonstrate his ideological blinders. His disconnection from reality will provide endless entertainment.
His meme: Obama is a stinky poophead, and he’s poopy, and he stinks.
Oh, my prediction already came true.
My wish for the new year is some intelligent conservative participants in the discussions here.
Re. “insolvent blue states”
Forty six states face budget shortfalls in 2011.
Decreases in tax revenues is hardly based on the red-blue divide http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=711
However, federal largess is skewed in favor of red states.
Perhaps we should just call them welfare states instead of red states.
dr funguy:
The states staring down insolvency as opposed to not being able to pay for a desired baseline are nearly all blue (or were formerly blue before the 2009 special and 2010 general elections).
The feds doing highway maintenance and funding military bases does not pay for Red state budget shortfalls.
CA is going to be very interesting to watch because the voters have reelected a blue government beholden to the public employee unions faced with the point of no return. CA is in essentially the same situation as Greece without a EU bailout. You reap what you spend.
Obama enacts end of life plan, but no death panels here folks. Nothing to see. Move along. Healthy people to the right; elderly, feeble, and ailing to the left.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40811501/ns/health-the_new_york_times/
Predict Colorado will turn totally Blue, ok that one already happened.
Predict teabaggers will (((continue))) to cost wingers several seats. 😀
Predict Waaaahhhh! :::sniffle::: Waaaahhhh! Bartles, 538’s whining prima donna, will continue to cry me a river! … Death, taxes, BDP’s incessant, hyperbolic, infantile exasperations:
“Our Republic Has Stumbled, But Has Not Yet Fallen”
My descriptive phrases do not begin to do justice to the damage these policies are doing to the country.
April 23, 2010 10:46 AM
I wonder whether I live in America anymore when the government imposes its will in opposition to the people. That is what ruling classes do, not representatives of the people.
May 2, 2010 4:21 PM
~~~~~
Predict Bartles ad nauseam, childish name calling will increase as it continues to be easily proven he’s a winger fool! ~ rinse, lather, repeat …
Predict Obama will continue to be president the next (2) er (6) years ~ sorry Bart! 😛
>
Bart, feel free to agree w/any of the above or not lol. So Bart, how will you be celebrating New Year’s ie when was the last time you let loose 😉 hmm, 1984 ?!?
take care
So Bart, if the economy continues to sputter as you say, the newly elected Rep governors in WI, OH, PA, MN, FL, SC, GA, NM, NJ, etc. will all be toast the next time around, eh.
A catch-22 for wingers ie the yin and yang of just say no …
Bart, why do you hate America!
GROG
Right you are. This is a true victory for America. It is great to see a president with some backbone, standing up to the scary scary propaganda from the whackjob right.
For too long, the right wing has been able to come up with twisted names for things (“Patriot Act,” “death panels,” etc.) which usually refer to something that is the opposite of what the words mean. For too long, this bit of Orwellian language manipulation has actually worked. It is truly gratifying to see a President standing up to this nonsense.
Thank you, President Obama!
@GROG.. “death panels”
When somebody you love is dying, you have a lot of medical options and there are many hard decisions for you to make.
*If they have reached the point of being unable to chew and swallow food, you can opt for a feeding tube to be surgically inserted into their stomach. This provides excellent nourishment but involves anesthetic risk and is not well tolerated by many patients. (Some will reflux and aspirate the contents of the feeding tube into their lungs, causing pneumonia.)
*If they are having difficulty breathing, causing them to experience a “suffocating” sensation and constant panic (or if they are in terrible pain) you can request additional morphine, which eases breathing and pain but may also hasten death.
* You can request resuscitation in the event of heart stoppage, which essentially means electric shock and vigorous chest compression. In frail patients this can cause burns, broken ribs and extreme pain.
These are all wrenching, difficult decisions for family members, involving variables related to the condition of the dying patient. The Obama end-of-life initiative allows the family to weigh their options with medical guidance and reach the decision that is best for an individual patient (and best reflects the wishes of the dying person) and pays for the cost of the consultation.
How could anybody possibly object to this?
MI not MN and add AZ, Jan Brewer, America’s sweetheart!
Again, all these new Rep governors may turn out to be manna from heaven for Obama in 2012 ~ just sayin’
Sadly, much of what Bart says in his first post is what I am predicting also, but not for the reasons he has stated.
Gas prices will continue to rise. We have reached peak oil it seems and it has nothing to do with EPA regulations.
Health insurance premiums will rise due to the fact that no public option or even a Medicare opt in exists to provide real competition.
The GOP congress will try to stop the rise in the federal debt ceiling. If they suceed, and they just might, we will be in default. The effect this will have on credit will be devestating and send us into a deflationary spiral as consumer spending drops off the cliff.
Unemployment will rise due to the fact that Congress won’t do anything to encourage job growth in the US, not due to high labor costs. Are our labor costs higher then most other contries? Yes, but so are our expenses. Of course, the spiral down the drain described above may correct some of that…..but at what cost. Say good bye to our safty nets as the Public Cons complete their Two Santa plan.
We will have a double dip recession due to GOP policies. I hope Obama gets his veto pen ready. He is going to need it to minimize the damage.
Yes, business will still be good for the international corporations who hold no alegence to the American Worker, who is about to make the Tea Bagger ‘revolt’ look like a mild morning fart.
The housing market will crash some more but on the other hand, people will wise up and force their ‘lenders’ to actually come up with the paper work to prove they are the actual lenders and holders of their notes before they can forclose.
Anyone who continues to think Obama is a socialist will find out how wrong they are, and continue to ignore that small fact. But remember, these are the same folks who think that yelling at your congress critter at a town meeting makes one a ‘revolutionary’.
Sorry for the depressing post. I will find no pleasure if I am right other then the hope that the voting populace will finally get the message that the GOP is not the party for positive change. I need a drink 😉
@filistro
Well, if one’s goal is simply to oppose the President — with no thought to the effect that has on actual people, or on the nation, or on the budget, or anything else — then it’s an easy decision.
If one has a conscience however, not so much. Well actually, then it is an easy decision too, but then it runs counter to opposition.
Number 7,
It’s not so much that peak oil has been hit (although that may very well be true, we won’t know it until well after the fact, thanks to the fact that all the major oil companies and their colluding governments keep inflate their “reserves” figures dramatically). After all, there are still huge reserves available in the form of tar sands — plenty of reserves, in fact, to drive the CO2 in the atmosphere to about double its current value, ensuring the greatest mass extinction since the Permian.
It’s rather that the Chinese and the Indian markets are soaking up all the oil, driving up the price. Until recently the USA had relatively little competition in its appetite for oil, but that has now changed.
We can only hope that the Chinese and Indian populations don’t develop more of a taste for beer, or life won’t be worth living…
Number Seven says: Gas prices will continue to rise. We have reached peak oil it seems and it has nothing to do with EPA regulations.
Oil is not close to peaking. Just in the United States we have untapped reserves between 3-5 times Saudi in Alaska, offshore and the UT/CO/WY oil shale, all of which Obama is putting off limits. Then there is the enormous and largely untapped Iraqi and Russian oil fields.
Health insurance premiums will rise due to the fact that no public option or even a Medicare opt in exists to provide real competition.
You mean like the government subsidized high risk insurance pools which have gone into effect while Obamacare health insurance premiums are soaring?
The GOP congress will try to stop the rise in the federal debt ceiling. If they suceed, and they just might, we will be in default.
The debt ceiling is the maximum amount of debt the federal government is authorized to take on. Freezing that ceiling does not prevent Treasury from rolling over current debt, only from borrowing more.
Unemployment will rise due to the fact that Congress won’t do anything to encourage job growth in the US, not due to high labor costs. Are our labor costs higher then most other contries? Yes, but so are our expenses.
Our productivity can more than cover market labor costs. It has fallen behind government imposed costs.
We will have a double dip recession due to GOP policies. I hope Obama gets his veto pen ready. He is going to need it to minimize the damage.
LMMFAO! Pray tell what policies?
Bart,
You really should provide a link for your assertion that Alaska has 3-5 times the reserves of Saudi Arabia, because that is NOT generally agreed by available sources. See wikipedia, for example, where it says that 58 percent of the world’s reserves are in the Middle East.
Barted ~ Pray tell what policies?
LMMFAO indeed as teabaggers have no policies, let alone rational/intelligent policies, except keeping the top bracket tax cuts and increasing the wage disparity between the rich and middle class as the poor were left behind by Reps some time ago.
Bartles chill, it’s New Year’s Eve … ok, ok, nevermind 😛
All I can say is at least the conservatives who are my freinds at least have an open mind and won’t try to shut you down, point by point. Debating with people like Bart is an exercise in futility. All you have to do is look at some of the inane comments he makes.
Honestly, how can anyone claim we have more oil reserves of any type then Saudi?
Bart uses the word Obamacare as if there is some sort of company called Obamacare, Inc., that controls all of our health care insurance premiums.
How can anyone claim that we will not be in default if we can’t borrow more? If we can’t pay the interest due (and we have to borrow just to pay that), we are defaulting. PERIOD! (back off, back off, back off….)
Our productivity can more then cover labor costs? What the fuck does that even mean? Just how many jobs does one person have to do? Multitasking is the ability to do more then one job equally poorly. And what are these government costs that are mentioned? Honestly, educate me, please.
And if you don’t honestly know what policies are about to be tried by the Public Con party, why are you even here ‘debating’?
Bart, I do not think you are a lawyer. You are a paid blogger. It is the only thing that makes sense considering the abuse you put up with here. I usually have to pay for this kind of abuse 😉
Actually there is enough credible data to indicate that we hit peak oil in ’07 but as shortchain points out, energy companies continue to look for neew technologies to get at previously untapped resources or new sources of carbon energy.
Therein lies the problem: changing the mindset of hbow we use energy and breraking the oligarchy energy companies have on the market.
For a good read, see ‘The Party’s Over’ by professor Richard Heinberg
Tea party opposition to net neutrality seems to stem from concerns over increased government power, and Net neutrality being an affront to free speech and free markets. The Tea party has it backwards. Though they may be well-intentioned, they are pretty confused, letting their anti-government zealotry get in the way of reason. So to clear things up for those folks, here’s the easiest to understand explanation I’ve ever read:
In the case of net neutrality, the whole point of the debate is to PREVENT service providers (like the phone company providing the DSL or cable company providing cable internet, both which provide the backbone of the internet worldwideweb) from favoring some content and applications over others. In the dispute between consumers (the American public) and providers (corporate giants), Tea Partiers have chosen to fight for the latter.
These conservatives are convinced this has something to do with free speech. That doesn’t make any sense.
Let’s put this in a way Tea Partiers can understand. Let’s say Mr. and Mrs. Tea Party Zealot love to use the Internet for political activism — they frequent right-wing websites, send around clips of Hannity and Limbaugh, organize right-wing events, post sycophantic praise on Sarah Palin’s website, the works.
But let’s say their service provider is a (cue scary music) liberal company, which contributes heavily to Democrats. The corporate giant that this family pays for Internet access wants to make it easy for customers to access socialist content, send around pictures of Karl Marx, coordinate with the New Black Panther Party, and send money to gay illegal immigrants, but would make it exceedingly difficult to access RedState.com, visit Glenn Beck’s activist sites, access Palin’s Facebook page, etc.
At that point, Mr. and Mrs. Tea Party Zealot would probably be pretty unhappy. It’s not fair, they’d conclude, that some Internet content (which they don’t want) is easily accessible, while other content (stuff they do want) is slow and difficult. What they’d prefer is a level playing field, where all content is equally easy to reach.
What they want, in other words, is net neutrality.
Jean:
Great explanation.
The problem is, the Tea Party(tm) is a corporation that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of FOX “News”. Its consumers (Rush’s dittoheads and FOX addicts) don’t know how to think beyond the advertising (FOX programming) that is spoon-fed to them.
Since Rupert Murdoch will be able to pay the premium bribes to internet providers, and will thus be able to insure right wing content gets top priority, the effective censorship of free speech will never be a concern to FOX viewers who have their brains leaking out their ears anyway.
Coupled with the Citizens United case, and with the recent SCOTUS rulings that it’s okay for a supposed news show to broadcast outright lies, the opposition to Net Neutrality is just another piece in the Orwellian fascist conquest, another brick in the tomb of liberty.
dc,
I’d be surprised if he’d be able to bribe the traditional phone companies who are the backbone and providers of DSL and fiber internet, those phone companies like AT&T, AT&T, Qwest, CenturyLink, etc. The phone companies are still regulated by the FCC. More likely to happen is that without net neutrality Murdoch would simply BUY preferred access for his products (such as they are), and everyone else would have to queue up behind Murdoch’s content.
GROG,
re: Obama enacts end of life plan, but no death panels here folks. Nothing to see. Move along. Healthy people to the right; elderly, feeble, and ailing to the left.
GROG, you know better than that. As an Editorial in the Star Tribune points out ” Those recklessly claiming that “death panels are back” are at best ill-informed and at worst are engaging in prevarication. The planning is voluntary, and the decisions are made by the patients themselves. Senior citizens who want heroic measures to extend their lives if they become deathly ill are free to make that choice. Those who prefer less intrusive care can also make that call. All can change their minds at any point. “There’s no binding contract that you have to live out. This is not a discussion that you can’t revoke, change or alter,” said Art Caplan, a renowned University of Pennsylvania medical ethicist.”
Further, the Obama administration’s new policy actually amounts to a minor update of end-of-life care planning reimbursement regulations drafted by the George W. Bush administration in 2008 and put in place in early 2009.
The Bush regulations implemented legislation passed by Congress in July 2008. That bill was called the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act. Deep within it is language specifically stating that end-of-life care planning is part of the preventive service package covered during a senior’s one-time “Welcome to Medicare” exam.
The Obama change now means this type of planning is part of the array of services covered during Medicare’s annual wellness visit. The definition of advanced care planning used in the Obama administration rules is identical to that used by the Bush administration.
And again, if patients don’t want to discuss this, they don’t have to.
This is about patient empowerment. Having an advance directive enables individuals a clear choice, filed with their doctors, about what they want done in the event of terminal illness or traumatic injury. We should all want an advance directive.
@Jean
Yes. I didn’t mean to imply other content would be banished or become inaccessible. Only that it would be delivered at less-preferred speeds. And some applications (such as file sharing and torrents) would be, in many cases, slow enough to be unusable.
The point of the Internet — and its power and usefulness — is that it is free (in the political sense of “liberty”, not in the economic sense of “free beer” — although the lower the price, and the more level the cost, the more innovative and world-shaking it is). Freedom and liberty, of course, are dangerous. That is something the FOXers and the Powers That Be don’t like much. Which means the Teapers are conditioned to oppose it, since the whole point of Teaperism stands in opposition to true liberty.
DC,
re: Only that it would be delivered at less-preferred speeds. And some applications (such as file sharing and torrents) would be, in many cases, slow enough to be unusable.
Yes, exactly. And it is the telephone companies (Regional Bell Operating Companies R(RBOCs) all across the USA and the cable companies, like Comcast, Charter, etc., who currently provide equal and open access to all or, conversely, who would be the ones to deliver the speed to some at less than preferred speeds.
Gas will indeed rise at least another 50 cents by the end of 2011, why, because they can. Unemployment will fall BELOW 9% based on better than expected GDP. Health care premiums will go up, again because they can. Housing and retail will continue to get better as consumers come back. The teapers entering congress will be disappointed when they are told to sit at the back of the bus and nobody cares about their stupid teaper ideas, especially Bohner. They too will be assimilated and by the end of 2012 nobody will recognize them as teapers. Sarah Palin will become “Sarah Who?”.
Jean:
This is about patient empowerment.
And this is why I insist that Teaperism stands in opposition to liberty. On issue after issue, the Teapers align themselves with the rich and powerful, with corporations and established elites, and against the rights and needs and Sacred Will of the common folk.
That Teaper TV watchers buy this nonsense is what is so shocking. That they succumb to the marketing campaign of FOX “News” is a testament to the power of advertising and of totalitarian-style propaganda.
That Texas gene I keep buried way deep down in the code says y’all all need good luck for 2011, so you gotta eat your black-eyed peas tomorrow, and you woulda shoulda been fixin’ to start ’em in the crock pot on low by now.
Here’s my variating recipe, supply y’own cornbread.
(Cooking time 12-36 hours, whenver you say to turn ’em off.)
Pour a bag or two of blackeye peas in the crockpot with enough water to be enough water. Don’t bother soaking them. It’s all goint’ the same place.
Thow in a ham bone, or a hunka salt pork, or sump’n like that. Or both.
Lotta ground cumin. That’s important.
If you must have a pinch of chili powder – Gebhardt’s. Go without, but accept no substitutes.
A shot or two of whatever beer you’re drinkin’, for extra good luck, only mandatory for New Year’s Day. That’s for the crockpot. You’ve already had your share.
A tablespoon of molasses. Or Karo syrup. Or not.
A bay leaf. Remember to fish it out later. Don’t eat it, unless you’re into that sort of thing. Not that there’s anything wrong with that….
Gotta have an onion. Whole so it lasts a long time cooking, or cut in half.
A whole bell pepper, less the core and seeds.
Maybe a tomato. Slice the skin a bit and thow it in.
The longer it cooks, the better. No matter how done they are they could be donener, so leave ’em cokking after you start eatin’ ’em. This could go on for days. Add more water as needed. When all the peas are gone, you can add more to the remaing gooky substance still in the pot.
When you’ve had enough to make you wanna puke, try it in burrito form with cheddar cheese if you’re a true rebel.
You’re welcome.
WA7th, now that is the way I like to cook, lol
Oh, yea Wa7, sounds good.
As long as we are talking gourmet eating, this will have to be accompanied by collard greens, a slab of side meat and a hunk of cornbread!
As an appetizer a nice grilled foie gras with mini cornichons would be lovely.
And may I suggest a good chenin blanc.
Max,
“good chenin blanc”? There ain’t no such thing. That recipe shouts for beer.
Black-eyed peas just ain’t quiet riot without cornbread, so you needa go down to the Safeway bakery and pick up a few corn muffins for yourself, but if you’re sharin’ your blackeye peas and good luck with friends or family, you really should be able to make your own, so I’ll hep y’all out with a tried and true self-pleaser.
1) Connect to the interwebs, find the most complicated and time-consuming recipe you can find, multiply the preparation time by 5 and hand copy it to a piece of steno paper with a fountain pen, dip it in flour, attach it to the fridge with your nearby handydandy Cowboys helmet magnet, and forget about it for now.
2) Get enough boxes of Jiffy or Crusteaz Corn Muffin mix to be enough. Follow the directions on the box to make the batter. Add a little sugar and set it aside.
3) Open a can of corn. Dump it in a bowl. Mash up a couple spoonsfull and add that to the batter mix. Place the remaining bowl of corn on the floor for the dog to eat, or the cat to play with. You don’t need all that salt.
4) Bake the cornbread in the oven however long the box saidda do.
5) Any sumbitch asks if it’s scratch, just sigh, roll your eyes, nod and point at the fridge.
Now that there is just plain sad! A man that cain’t cook a pan of cornbread from scratch, I strongly suspect to have elitist GOP leanings.
2 cups Aunt Jemima cornmeal mix
1 egg
enough milk to make a slightly thin batter
sugah? what da hell?
mix ingredients
meanwhile, preheat oven to hot! 450 degrees,
while oven is heating, put the black-as-Bart’s heart cast iron skillet with 4 or so tablespoons bacon grease in there. when grease is beginning to smoke, take skillet out, slosh grease around to coat bottom and up the side of the skillet
pour grease into batter and stir well
do all this quick, dammit, so skillet stays HOT
pour batter into skillet, it should sizzle on hitting the cast iron.
bake in hot oven for 20 minutes, give or take
so no wine? well this years Shiner holiday Cheer beer is quite good.
My brief elitist GOP past is already a matter of blog record, and I recovered from it quite nicely, thankyouverymuch, but my scratch cornbread still turns out too dry. Residual karma, I guess.
My wife diced the onions before thowin’ ’em in, and now my eyes are bleeding. That’s not residual karma, but my laziness for not doin’ it myself or lettin’ her read my comments here. Bleeding eyes are good luck, though. Not a lotta people know that.
Whatever cornbread recipe is used, the addition of creamed corn (rather than the usual canned corn kernels), a judicious handful of diced jalapeno peppers and some shredded cheddar cheese, is a welcome addition.
Oil is not close to peaking. Just in the United States we have untapped reserves between 3-5 times Saudi in Alaska, offshore and the UT/CO/WY oil shale, all of which Obama is putting off limits. Then there is the enormous and largely untapped Iraqi and Russian oil fields.
I happen to know something about oil shale, since it was my “family business” from the late 60s to the 1980s.
It’s not the Socialist Obama who is “putting [oil shale] off limits”. Rather, it’s the laws of physics. It takes more energy to release the oil from the shale than one gets back out in the form of oil.
The only exception I know of is using an underground nuclear explosion to generate the necessary energy to liberate the oil. Problem is, that makes radioactive oil.
You really do think President Barack Obama has superpowers. If only he would use his heat vision to release the shale oil…
Nigel Tuftnel on the New Year.
http://serico.tumblr.com/post/2536306028/11
That was good enough to put on the First! post. 8)
GROG may wish to observe the real death panels.
I’m going to guess he’ll whine “but we can’t afford to provide a chance at life for everybody!” in response. But perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps he and Bart will read the op-ed by Oliver Sacks in the paper this morning and have an epiphany.
With the new year comes a hope for things to get better.
Bart also pretends that there are “death panels” in the new health care law.
Does anyone actually believe that nonsense? I really can’t imagine that even the people who say it truly believe it. It is such an outrageous lie that no sane person could possibly think it is true.
Could they?