Dance Lessons!

From James Brown (h/t Cation).



I think if I did the funky chicken I would break my hip.

-Cheers

Perfection

Sometimes in life you come across something that is absolutely perfect. This is one of those things!

A graphical representation of the differences between dork, nerdness, and dweebdom!


The perfect combination of semantic argument and Venn diagrams. I am pretty sure and angel got its wings when this graph was made.

-Cheers

April 15

Cause I think everyone could use this as a reminder today.



-Cheers

/face palm

I am still lying (click for a larger version h/t The Atlantic).


I just have a feeling these people have not actually looked at any serious policy questions. Setting an arbitrary limit on the length of a bill is juvenile at best. I also like how there are never specifics on what is going to get cut, and the limited government fetish is just annoying. Smaller government, for the sake of smaller government just seems foolish.

More efficient government?

Sure. Sign me up!

But that is never the crusade. It is always for smaller, with no comment on what that would entail or the price associated with a reduction of government sponsored services. So by less government, do they mean less policemen, firefighters, or teachers?

Anyway this neo-libertarian, conservative palaver is just profoundly unserious. Some problems are complicated.

P.S Some Paul Anka for you!

-Cheers

This one is for Andy....

So I am a liar, I came across this article and had to share it.

To repeat, no one likes paying taxes. Yet we all want the benefits that they provide. There is always a lot of misinformation swirling around about taxes, especially during this time of year. Despite what cable channels and certain ideological pundits may claim, you are paying less taxes now then you would have last year or 5 years ago or 20 years ago etc.....

If anything, the government numbers I’m using here exaggerate how much of the tax burden falls on the wealthy. These numbers fail to account for the income that is hidden from tax collectors — a practice, research shows, that is more common among affluent families. “Because higher-income people are understating their income,” Joel Slemrod, a tax scholar at the University of Michigan, says, “We’ve been overstating their average tax rates.”

State and local taxes, meanwhile, may actually be regressive. That is, middle-class and poor families may face higher tax rates than the wealthy. As Kim Rueben of the Tax Policy Center notes, state and local income taxes and property taxes are less progressive than federal taxes, while sales taxes end up being regressive. The typical family pays a lot of state and local taxes, too — almost half as much as in federal taxes.

There is no question that the wealthy pay a higher overall tax rate than any other group. That is an American tradition. But there is also no question that their tax rates have fallen more than any other group’s over the last three decades. The only reason they are paying more taxes than in the past is that their pretax incomes have risen so rapidly — which hardly seems a great rationale for a further tax cut.

So why are those radio and television talk show hosts spending so much time arguing that today’s wealthy are unfairly burdened? Well, it’s hard not to notice that the talk show hosts themselves tend to be among the very wealthy.

Anyways, it bares repeating. I know, no one likes taxes but we should at least be able to agree upon what is and isn't actually true about those taxes.

-Cheers

Mental Health Day

In the lead up to Tax day, I will be posting lots of lounge music. You have been warned.



-Cheers

Conservative vs. Liberal....part 483

You know, in ever political discussion, when talking about the ideological right and left. There is a consensus that the both behave equally as bad. There is always an implied equivalence of the two sides.

As it is well know, I do not agree with that. Some times one side is worse than the other. Some times one side steps way beyond the bounds of reasonable dissent.

I hope that this, is some sort of hoax, cause if it isn't then we all have a lot more to be worried about.

Last Friday, someone going by the name "dermdoc" posted a thread on a message board for Texas A&M students and alumni with this topic: "Laid off my first Obama voting employee today."

"Our reimbursement rates are spiraling downward, taxes are projected to go up with Obamacare, so I did it," the person wrote. He later added: "I made this decision because I can."

"It is kind of interesting watching their face as you explain to them the economic consequences of the policies of the guy they voted for," wrote dermdoc.

Hotsheet reached out to the person who we believe to have been responsible for the posting, but our requests for comment went unanswered. Late Wednesday afternoon, after Hotsheet's inquiry, the thread appeared to be removed from the TexAgs.com Web site. (The original link was here.) We took screen shots before the removal; you can view the full first page of comments here.

The posting prompted 20 pages of comments, some celebrating dermdoc's initial post and others questioning whether it was appropriate for him to have laid off an employee seemingly on the basis of his or her politics.

I am fairly certain that is illegal. On top of showing a stunning lack of knowledge about the issues he purports to care about.

But to the main point. I do not recall, even at the height of Bush's tenure, these sorts of things being bandied about in the liberal community. Jokes about moving to Europe/Canada? Sure. Firing people, or intimating that if you vote for someone I don't agree with, that in and of itself is a fireable offense? What?!

This is the fever swamp that the modern day conservative/republican inhabits. Liberal/progressives are not people with whom they disagree, they are sinister agents who wish ill on the country have no love for said country and who posses ideas that are fundamentally evil.

This is no way to have a debate. The idea that the electorate is going to reward this sort of behavior just shows how far we have fallen, and has the air of oppression to it.

-Cheers