Fine, fine, fine whatever. You’ll build a better model. You know, this is a social site, we’ll use social signals. People can click and say “This is spam” and then when, I don’t know, 10 people say a tweet is spam, we’ll delete it and ban that account. But you know, people are fuckwits, and people are confused, and people are unpredictable and the scope of human activity at scale is amazingly wide and vast and deep, so a simple additive, easy to explain, fundamentally fair model isn’t going to work. (protip: if you’re site is growing quickly, make sure to use variables for those threshold numbers, otherwise you might DOS yourself)

Putsch Racing has taken on an lofty design exercise to create and build the world’s only turbine powered Batmobile. Taking the the fantasy of the 1989 original and making it reality is just the start, but there is one catch, no movie sound effects or audio overlays. The lines of the vehicle along with the original movie sketches support a trubine powerplant, but was never intended to truly deliver that level of authenticity.

Powered by a Boeing turbine engine from a decommissioned military helicopter. Putsch Racing has taken the fantasy of movie magic and the power from what was once used to protect our country and combined them into an excercise that inspires bigger dreams and opens creativity.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image of the giant asteroid Vesta with its framing camera on July 9, 2011. It was taken from a distance of about 26,000 miles (41,000 kilometers) away from Vesta, which is also considered a protoplanet because it is a large body that almost became a planet. Each pixel in the image corresponds to roughly 2.4 miles (3.8 kilometers).

GAO has prepared this report to assist Congress in identifying and addressing debt management challenges. Since 1995, the statutory debt limit has been increased 12 times to its current level of $14.294 trillion. The Department of the Treasury (Treasury) recently notified Congress that the current debt limit could be reached as early as April 5, 2011, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that under current law debt subject to the limit will exceed $25 trillion in 2021. This report (1) describes the actions that Treasury traditionally takes to manage debt near the limit, (2) analyzes the effects that approaching the debt limit has had on the market for Treasury securities, and (3) describes alternative mechanisms that would permit consideration of the link between policy decisions and the effect on debt when or before decisions are made. GAO analyzed Treasury and market data; interviewed Treasury officials, budget and legislative experts, and market participants; and reviewed practices in selected countries.

July 13, 2011 8:35 AM Business community to Congress: Enough

By Steve Benen

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It wasn’t too long ago that 62 leading U.S. business groups, including the American Gas Association, the Telecommunications Industry Association, and the National Association of Manufacturers, all pleaded with Congress to end the standoff and raise the debt ceiling. “With economic growth slowly picking up we cannot afford to jeopardize that growth with the massive spike in borrowing costs that would result if we defaulted on our obligations,” the groups said. “It is critically important that the United States stands fully behind its legal obligations.”

That was two months ago today. Ordinarily, the allegedly “pro-business” Republican Party would have taken this seriously, but instead, GOP leaders ignored the pleas.

So, business leaders are being forced to ask a little louder.

At his press conference earlier this week, President Obama was asked about working with business leaders to “lobby Congress to raise the debt ceiling.” The president explained that he’s spoken “extensively” to the business community, but they’re often reluctant to push Congress publicly, even if they agree with Obama privately: “[T]hey’ve got a whole bunch of business pending before Congress and they don’t want to make anybody mad.”

Fortunately, some are raising their voices anyway.

A sprawling coalition of Wall Street and Main Street business leaders sent an unmistakable message to lawmakers Tuesday: Enough squabbling. Get the debt ceiling raised.

The message, sent in a letter to President Obama and every member of Congress, puts pressure on GOP lawmakers, who have staked out an uncompromising stance against raising taxes in the partisan wrangling over the country’s borrowing limit.

Republicans rely heavily on corporations for political support and have regularly cited the opinions of these “job creators” in their opposition to new tax revenue. Many of the House GOP freshmen most opposed to a compromise were swept into office with the help of financial support from groups behind the letter.

But the business community, which has largely kept quiet on the issue until now, does not uniformly share the Republican orthodoxy on taxes, according to some lobbyists who helped craft the statement.

The businesses involved in this effort didn’t present a blueprint for a possible debt-reduction plan, and were silent on revenues or cuts-to-savings ratio. The reason is simple: they don’t much care. The corporate leaders just want Congress to raise the debt ceiling; how members get to “yes” is irrelevant.

In this case, the letter was “signed by hundreds of senior company executives and groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.”

So, let’s see. Wall Street wants Republicans to stop screwing around. The business community wants Republicans to stop screwing around. Global investors want Republicans to stop screwing around. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department want Republicans to stop screwing around.

But unhinged and uninformed right-wing activists want Republicans to keep pushing their — and our — luck. As of this morning, the congressional GOP is only listening to the activists.

Steve Benen is a contributing writer to the Washington Monthly, joining the publication in August, 2008 as chief blogger for the Washington Monthly blog, Political Animal.

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