Northjayhawk posted:

A new handgun purchased today that is not semi-auto is an odd exception rather than the rule. Only collectors are interested in old-timey revolvers. a semi-auto handgun ban would hit a hell of a lot of the handguns commonly owned by ordinary gun owners in the country.

SedanChair posted:

quote:

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew on Monday tried to increase pressure on lawmakers to raise the nation's debt limit before a Nov. 3 deadline, warning that he feared an accidental federal government default if they wait too long.

"I worry every time we hit this that sometime there would be an accident, and that would be terrible," he told CNBC.

Lew wrote to congressional leaders last week that the Treasury Department would run out of borrowing authority on Nov. 3 — two days earlier than a previous estimate — unless the $18.1 trillion debt limit is raised.

At that point, he said, the Treasury will have about $30 billion in cash and will have to use that and the daily inflow of revenue to pay a host of major bills, including Social Security payments, federal salaries and interest on the debt.

"Just think about it, we have a government of the United States, a $4 trillion-a-year enterprise, where swings of a few billion dollars can determine whether or not you have enough cash to pay your bills," Lew said.

"It's ridiculous," he said. "The debt limit needs to be raised."

Republican congressional leaders have said they want to avoid a federal government default, but many conservatives want spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit.

Obama administration officials have refused to negotiate, arguing that Congress has a responsibility to raise the limit to pay for spending that it already has authorized.

Lew said the recent turmoil among House Republicans, which led Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, to announce he was stepping down, has complicated the issue as the deadline approaches.

"I believe that all the congressional leaders understand that they need to do this," Lew said. "I think they're in a very uncertain environment right now in Congress and they don't have a lot of time."

Chris Krueger, a Washington policy analyst at financial services firm Guggenheim Partners, said in a report to clients Monday that there was a "40 percent probability for some kind of accident that would keep Congress from raising the debt ceiling in time due to brinkmanship, procrastination, or political gridlock."

"We believe the debt ceiling will be raised in November, but we are basing that on nothing more than blind faith and would remind investors who shrug at another debt ceiling 'boy cried wolf' charade that, at the end of the book, the wolf eats the boy," he said.

A 2011 standoff over the debt limit, which was raised at the last minute, spurred Standard & Poor's to downgrade the nation's AAA credit rating for the first time. Another showdown two years later — again resolved before a default — caused investors to avoid buying some government bonds and led to higher government borrowing costs.

The brinkmanship over the issue in recent years has sparked calls from the Government Accountability Office and others for Congress to change the way it handles the debt limit to avoid future crises.

The nation technically hit the debt limit in March, but Treasury officials have been using so-called extraordinary measures since then to juggle government finances and continue borrowing.

Those measures will be exhausted on Nov. 3, starting the clock ticking on a potential default, Lew said.

The Bipartisan Policy Center think tank has estimated that the Treasury would not be able to pay all of its bills sometime between Nov. 10 and Nov. 19.

But Lew said it's difficult to estimate the exact date a default could happen, which is why Congress shouldn't delay.

"Anytime you wait until the last possible minute, you're inviting a risk, and this is not a last minute that we can know with absolute certainty," he said.

William Bear posted:

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew appealing to my worrywart nature:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-debt-limit-lew-20151019-story.html

This guy gets how I feel. Both times recently the debt ceiling has been raised, I keep thinking to myself "What if the accountants missed something? What if the computers at the Treasury Department break? What if someone important in Treasury borrowing were to suddenly die?"

Also surprised to hear 40% chance of default.

Boon posted:

gently caress the GOP now and forever

Fojar38 posted:

Will Boehner save us

SedanChair posted:

Northjayhawk posted:

A new handgun purchased today that is not semi-auto is an odd exception rather than the rule. Only collectors are interested in old-timey revolvers. a semi-auto handgun ban would hit a hell of a lot of the handguns commonly owned by ordinary gun owners in the country.

Fried Chicken posted:

500 posts, I'll assume it was gunchat again.

Anyways, someone has torched 5 black churches around Ferguson in the past 10 days. It's arson and being investigated as such

SedanChair posted:

blackguy32 posted:

I would just like to say that Obama 's neck scares me.

James Garfield posted:

That comic's art is even worse than the poo poo in the politoon thread,

Milk Malk posted:

I know all this because I torched the churches to end the Negro scourge on our beautiful white city. You heard it here first

Fojar38 posted:

I know he isn't the good guy but he still seems to be the only sane man here with the power to do anything

LORD OF BUTT posted:

Does a double-action revolver count as semi-auto? There's a lot of those around, if Academy's gun selection is anything to go by.

Fojar38 posted:

Will Boehner save us

Dapper_Swindler posted:

sad thing is 1 or 2 of his old comics got a laugh out of me. this is just sad.

Sheng-ji Yang posted:

thats worrying considering the author is a straight up neo-nazi white nationalist

Sheng-ji Yang posted:

thats worrying considering the author is a straight up neo-nazi white nationalist

Mr Interweb posted:

Republicans are claiming that the Benghazi committee is not investigating Hillary's e-mails and that's being done only by the FBI, supposedly. So who keeps leaking all these random e-mails from Hillary's server?

PupsOfWar posted:

Republican Governors' Association has regrouped and is wading back into the KY gov race. Funneling $1.6 million into the commonwealth, which would give Bevin approximate money parity with Conway, at last count.

Luigi Thirty posted:

Alabama: if you're too poor to pay for your citation we'll just take your blood instead and call it even. Hope you're not gay or have hepatitis or anything!

zoux posted:

Carly Fiorina is polling at 4% in the new CNN/ORC poll. She was at 15% last month, what happened?

spunkshui posted:

I just hate how everyone is demonizing the teacher when the kids goal was to get this reaction.

He even refused to explain it to the police.

Martin Random posted:

This could be a trump tweet word for word.

Luigi Thirty posted:

Alabama: if you're too poor to pay for your citation we'll just take your blood instead and call it even. Hope you're not gay or have hepatitis or anything!

Luigi Thirty posted:

Alabama: if you're too poor to pay for your citation we'll just take your blood instead and call it even. Hope you're not gay or have hepatitis or anything!

quote:

The dozens of offenders who showed up that day, old and young, filed out of the Perry County courthouse and waited their turn at a mobile blood bank parked in the street. They were told to bring a receipt to the clerk showing they had given a pint of blood, and in return they would receive a $100 credit toward their fines — and be allowed to go free.

Luigi Thirty posted:

Alabama: if you're too poor to pay for your citation we'll just take your blood instead and call it even. Hope you're not gay or have hepatitis or anything!

Article posted:

The dozens of offenders who showed up that day, old and young, filed out of the Perry County courthouse and waited their turn at a mobile blood bank parked in the street. They were told to bring a receipt to the clerk showing they had given a pint of blood, and in return they would receive a $100 credit toward their fines — and be allowed to go free.

[...]

Mr. Crocker said he grew even more uncomfortable later, after he recognized the blood bank, LifeSouth Community Blood Centers, which had recently lost a $4 million judgment for an H.I.V.-tainted blood transfusion.

[...]

Ms. Evans said that after receiving a complaint, LifeSouth quarantined and tested the blood, tried to contact all the donors and eventually discarded nearly all of the blood units collected.

[...]

However, Sara Zampierin, a lawyer at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that in the handful of instances she reviewed of people who gave blood, none had received the $100 discount they had been promised.

zoux posted:

Carly Fiorina is polling at 4% in the new CNN/ORC poll. She was at 15% last month, what happened?