Democrats are tripling the debt, which means that generations of Americans not yet born will be taxed to pay for spending today. That is a kind of taxation without representation.
This makes me want to punch someone. Jonah Goldberg would probably be best, but just about anyone might do. I can't believe how hypocritical, and stupid, this is.
I can't believe how hypocritical, and stupid, this is.
You've read Goldberg before, right?
Jonah Goldberg is a very silly person.
2: no. I've heard of him of course, but never figured reading him was worth my time.
Really, apo, you should have linked to Powell's, or one of those sites parsi provided in the other thread.
secessionism
I can't keep from smiling when I see Republicans flirt with secession while the Democratic President extols Lincoln at every opportunity.
Those sites are totally gay, M/tch.
Wait... Jonah's down with anarchism? He and minne are soul brothers?
i so hate hate hate mean people, the mean IST person at the poster printer who refused to let me adjust the margins of the damn poster, now it looks weird with the left margin narrower than the right margin
though good thing the lower margin didn't cut off some words at least
what would drop off of him to check once more and try to adjust what is needed to be adjusted, it takes just some clicks, but no, he wouldn't, not willing, he needs to eat lunch and he's absent for an hour, then he cancels my uploaded poster because i wasn't present there all the time, i needed things to do!
he even dared to call behind me you have to log-off something when i already did that
one learns if one had to repeat the whole damn process three times!!!
i hope he has some apoplexy later in life
Stupid doesn't even begin to describe this:
Americans work an average of 103 days a year just to pay their taxes. If you had to work 365 days a year to pay your taxes, that would be a kind of slavery or indentured servitude, because all of your productive labor would be going to the government. .... And, I think if we had to work 364 days a year it would still be a kind of serfdom (after all, serfs were allowed a little plot of their own). Ditto 363 days, 362 days, 361 days etc. Now, at some point the difference of degree becomes a difference in kind; working one day a year to pay for the government doesn't sound oppressive to me. But it seems to me that it's hardly absurd to think that 103 days a year is too much, or to believe that if that number goes even higher, we're losing something important.
The only way you can arrive at a number like "Americans work an average of 103 days a year just to pay their taxes" is to take all taxes at all levels of government as a % of GDP, then take that % of 365 days (28% X 365 days ~ 102 days).
It's obviously fallacious to make the denominator 365 (all days), and claim the numerator is "working days".
But the mendacity goes further.
The "average" American (i.e. one earning the median income) pays less than 6% of income in federal income tax. Add in the employee contributions for Soc Sec and Medicare, and you're up to 15% in federal taxes. At 222 working days per year, that person is working 33.3 days to cover federal taxes.
Not so bad when you consider that for that you get a guaranteed retirement income, health care after age 65, a National Parks system, and a few other perks paid for out of the federal treasury.
5,7: Also, Amazon has a clear competitive advantage over Powell's.
It's obviously fallacious to make the denominator 365 (all days), and claim the numerator is "working days".
WHAT ABOUT LEAP YEARS?!
Julian Sanchez, to his enormous credit, has called out his libertarian brethren on the "average American's tax burden" flim-flammery I take issue with in 11.
what would drop off of him
I am so stealing this phrase for future use.
At 222 working days per year
Is this considered the standard for back-of-the-napkin calculations? That seems to work out to something like 7+ weeks of vacation per year.
That is, I tend to assume 52 weeks/year minus, say, 3 weeks of vacation. 49 weeks. At 5 days/week, that's 245 days/year. I haven't checked how much this changes the calculations in 11, but 222 working days/year just struck me as odd. I must be missing something.
11: Deceptive conflation of mean and median is a core tactic of the anti-tax right. If you use mean when median is the appropriate measure you can get people all riled up over a tax cut for themselves and everyone they know.
10: Does not sound like our read.
Where were the teabaggers 2001-2008? Something has recently thrown them into a rage. It's amazing that people can be so sincerely, furiously angry without any clue as to how they look to people.
222 days is after you deduct time reading Unfogged.
8:See, I am compelled to take, not Jonah Goldberg, but something un his argument seriously, even though it isn't anything Goldberg might be able unwilling to articulate,
Hannah Arendt was passionate about differntiating Nazi Germany from Mussolini's Italy (or Franco Spain, or Romania) but Arendt also thought essential to understand that Hitler's Germany & Stalin's USSR had some things absolutely critical in common.
Most of what Goldberg is doing is of course projection, and everyone should understand the existential world-destroying threat the Republican Party is today.
The "average" American (i.e. one earning the median income) pays less than 6% of income in federal income tax
You need to include the time that you spend working to earn more money for your boss so that they can pay their tax bill.
Ya know, it isn't as if I comment so much I couldn't take a little time to preview and edit, more than I usually do.
Something has recently thrown them into a rage.
They noticed something unsettling about the new president, see.
20: There is nothing in his argument worth taking seriously. He defines Fascism as totalitarianism and then proceeds to point out all the commonalities between right wing totalitarians and left wing ones, along with a smattering of incidental similarities between certain policies supported by some Fascists and certain policies supported by some Liberals.
Stalin and Hitler may have had a lot in common, but that doesn't make Hillary Clinton a member of the Schutzstaffel.
Is this considered the standard for back-of-the-napkin calculations?
No, don't take that as authoritative. I used an approximation based on average hours worked (1777) p.a. divided by an eight-hour work day. In fact, it's likely an underestimate relative to the median worker (oops, hoisted on my own petard here) because the annual average hours worked includes part time employees (I think).
That said, your 245 days doesn't account for public holidays, sick days, etc.
i hope he has some apoplexy later in life
Why not right now? So much more satisfying.
As far as I can tell, the word "fascism" can be added to the list of words with no generic meaning. You start off by distinguishing Nazis and fascists, and then you separate out the Romanian and Hungarian and Spanish and Portuguese authoritarians (because they were all to traditionalistic), and then you laugh off the various chickenshit wannabes like Mosely, and you end up with Mussolini and maybe the Lebanese Phalange.
Austrian economists think that all state intervention in the market is Fascist.
Minnesota's Farmer Labor Party included actual Communists and suspected Fascists, and one guy (Senator Lundeen) was accused of being a Communist in 1932 and of being a Nazi in 1941. But it wasn't a Hillary Clinton party at all. Eventually Hubert Humphrey cannibalized it and produced the nice liberal DFL party.
That is a kind of taxation without representation.
Only in the sense in which it's absolutely false, yes.
You've gotten me started.
Yggles had a very nice post today on urban management, with tight coherent arguments. And..and...whatever.
Okay, how about:process liberalism understood as problem-solving rather than interest group negotiation will always tend toward totalitarianism?
I usually try to be calm and not confronting whatever happens but when one treats me lowly I'm not willing to tolerate it
If one is friendly disposed one would try to listen what another person is trying to say and perhaps try to comply to the request what it takes, not dismiss it and start to act weird
Especially if they charge for their service
Even worms crawl if touched
"Even worms crawl if touched" = true and poetic
"The smallest worm will turn being trodden on" = false and clumsy
read 1, shakespeare 0
As a trivial example of 29.3, and I think the kind of thing that Goldberg feels his revulsion for:
Yggles:We need tax revenue, and soda pop is bad for your health. Let's tax soda pop. If soda pop drinkers object and get in our way, they are just another problem to be solved.
Okay, how about:process liberalism understood as problem-solving rather than interest group negotiation will always tend toward totalitarianism?
+
Yggles:We need tax revenue, and soda pop is bad for your health. Let's tax soda pop. If soda pop drinkers object and get in our way, they are just another problem to be solved.
"First they came for the soda pop drinkers, and I did not object, for I was not a soda pop drinker..."
THEY'LL TAKE MY SODA POP, OR SODA, OR POP, OR COKE, OR WHATEVER YOU CHOOSE TO CALL IT (WE ARE A BIG TENT) WHEN THEY PRY IT FROM MY COLD, PUDGY HANDS!!!!!11!!!!
New bumper sticker: "I drink soda and I VOTE!"
Tending toward totalitarianism would be "soda drinkers will have a finger removed any time they are seen with soda," not "soda drinkers will pay three cents more per can."
I suspect that the term "totalitarianism" will disappear next. How many instances are there? Do you need a general term to cover two things, when they're as different as Communism and Naziism?
My semi-Trotskyite roommate told me last night he objected to taxing soda because that's regressive, but he's fine with regulating it by other means. I started to ask: You would require a soda-drinking license? A training and safety certification (avoiding bubbles out the nose, etc.)? But then 30 Rock started.
Tending toward totalitarianism would be "soda drinkers will have a finger removed any time they are seen with soda," not "soda drinkers will pay three cents more per can."
It's a slippery slope, see? First it's three cents a can. Then it's five cents. Pretty soon it applies to Twinkies and potato chips, too. Before long it's show trials, forced labor camps and crematoria.
I hate those half-assed measures.
8: When I read the quote, I scanned over the attribution, and thought that it was somebody like Yggles criticizing Goldberg, in a fairly apt way.
I'm really unclear about how "secessionism" could be a particularly libertarian doctrine. Seems like it's just multiplying state power. I don't remember Jeff Davis saying anything about mutual aid or free love either.
Goldberg should read A Plea for Captain John Brown before he shoots his mouth off about how great secessionism is.
This whole country is fascists.
I just read the Goldberg post linked. So, he's purporting still to be a serious person. Yeah, I knew that.
How much power does Goldberg have, anyway?
Economics:Output and distribution are not to be determined by interest group negotiations, but are technical problems to be solved, as free of politics as possible.
Transsexuals & public bathrooms? How shall we approach this dispute?
There are many ways you can approach the Goldbergs and Prescotts. You can laugh at them, and I promise, someday they will burn you. They are killing us now with plutocracy.
You can negotiate with them, and concede basic human necessities.
Or you can accept that liberalism is a totalitarianism, and go for it. But wait, liberalism forbids illiberal methods. But it uses them, in the form of "universal and inalienable rights" and a majoritarianism that is almost designed to create its equal and successive opposite.
Is this incoherent? Fuck, it's hard not to breathe when the only air is Enlightenment.
It's a slippery slope, see? First it's three cents a can. Then it's five cents. Pretty soon it applies to Twinkies and potato chips, too. Before long it's show trials, forced labor camps and crematoria.
Brilliant.
Unfortunately too long to fit on a bumper sticker, but perfect.
"My Wife Yes, My Dog Maybe, My Big Red Never"
Why not right now? So much more satisfying.
it's not satisfying coz the person wouldn't realize his meanness if something happens to him now, he'd just blame the others, the world, whatever
and just one quarrel with me is not enough, but he'll perhaps accumulate some more meantime
"The smallest worm will turn being trodden on"
i thought it has the same meaning to the proverb i mentioned "ot hurtel hurehed arvalzana'
Pretty soon it applies to Twinkies and potato chips, too.
No, actually it becomes no one but neo-liberal plutocrats being allowed to make economic policy.
Economics is a science, you know.
The Unfoggetariat is too regular in its habits. Always dinner at 6:00 pm.
Think outside the box, motherfuckers!
I'm at an 8 hour differential, so I'm always around after everyone's said lots of stuff and before they come back.
Hi!
The advantage is being able to read the 600+ threads at leisure, knowing there's no immediate conversation to catch up with.
Economics is a science, you know.
It says it right in the name! -> Economic science! <- Whoa!
max
['I like it when they put what it's in it right there on the label!']
I still haven't started dinner; I took a break so I could catch up on the work I was procrastinating on all day.
We just ate dinner. I have plenty of work I could be doing, but fuck that.
Never mind. Since my last comment I have discovered Pierre Louys. I need to learn French.
Too busy to attack liberalism anymore tonight.
Anything with "omics" in the title is a science. Agronomics. Ergonomics. Comics. Everything.
There's no "omics" in Burt Bacharach.
Speaking of giving people a bully pulpit, here's the New York Times editorial page editor's rationale for hiring Ross Douthat:
Q. Could you explain the process and considerations behind Ross Douthat's selection as an Op-Ed columnist? -- O.R. Siddiqui, Toronto
A. We were looking for an interesting, fresh conservative voice for our page. After looking at many columnists, some of whom were terrific, we felt in the end that Ross had the right combination of interests -- politics, policy, culture, society. He is also well-versed in the world of Web opinion journalism.
Alternate A:
No, I won't explain the process, but I will tell you that more than one person was considered. We picked Ross because he was young and verbose and happy to opine on a wide range of topics, unlike those tedious activist types who drone on and on about their pet topic. And did I mention young? He's young. He published on the Internet.
Dinner's done. Entertain me.
I recommend Problem Sleuth.
61: That link says HTTP 404 Not Found.
A good enough reason to retire for the night.
54: You were dodging work? No public assistance for you!
It's just as well the link didn't work. I've got to figure out how I'm going to make a rabbit and an English roast this weekend, because the goddamn fridge went on the fritz and everything in the freezer thawed.
60: It is kind of interesting that there's almost an absence of style among political/news bloggers, or I suppose a style-less style, if that makes sense. Sure there's clarity, snark, cleverness and the occasional personal post, and at least the best of them write really well in a formal sense - they might misspell a lot, but the overall writing structure is fine - but little of that is the kind of writing I usually think of in terms of style. I would say I like such and such a blog more often than I'd say that I like such and such a blog's writing. I can't say I've read much of Douthat's writing in any form - I've probably read more of it in non-blog contexts - but it does seem clearly to be going for style in the sense that I'm thinking of it here. I wonder if much of the praise he gets for his writing style is really praise just for making the attempt (as it's hard to believe the praise is for the actual writing produced).
Anyway, here's a perceptive analysis of literary style in online writing.
68 is interesting. I guess I often say I like a blogger's voice, and rarely say I like his/her style. And voice only partially overlaps with style.
Huh. Going to have to think more about this when I am more awake.
I do find that blog commenting has made me a more ruthless editor. Or maybe I was heading that way anyway.
Well I didn't find 68 interesting. More bloviating about the net from an overstuffed New Yorker, say I!
I also say that Problem Sleuth is quite strange.
Crain is one of the people who writes for the New Yorker who I like to read. Also, 68 and the link in 68 are not the same thing. I'm not a New Yorker!
71: More bloviating about the net from an overstuffed New Yorker, say I!
Your wish is our command.
Also, 68 and the link in 68 are not the same thing.
God's wounds!
From the link in 74:
And steer clear of italics because they are hard to read on a computer screen.
I absolutely hate blogs and blog templates that format long quotations into italics. Hate.
Hmm, I still haven't eaten dinner. And tonight's dinner prominently features arugula (drenched in bacon, so good wholesome American food - but! also in a quiche, so back to being suspect). Maybe I'll eat it while reading the New Yorker.
Use fresh New Yorker leaves as an unusual and tasty substitute for arugula!
Inexplicably, I bought a print copy of Harper's today when all I went into the newsstore for was a soda because the line was too long at the CVS around the corner.
Inexplicably, I have a print subscription for Harper's, despite it being available to me for free through the university. D'oh.
And neb, I've never much cared for the taste of ink.
77: arugula (drenched in bacon
Rocket to the abattoir!
Your university gives you free magazines? All I get is a bus pass and all the bad coffee I can drink before they shut-off the pot at noon.
82: Yes, the electronic version is accessible through the library's VPN. Handy. The only reason why I signed up for a subscription in the first place was because I desperately wanted to read an article from a back issue on the website ... now I'm saddled with a two year subscription to a magazine I hardly ever read.
Re-reading the link in 68, I still don't agree with Crain that there are no backstage areas on the internet. I've heard talk of places where people use different names than the names they use elsewhere, where names are written in such formats as to evade the search engines, and where what would elsewhere be links are left unhyperlinked to prevent showing up in referrers and trackbacks. That would seem to qualify as backstage in a way, although not for the names used there.
I miss having free access to the entire archives of the NYRB. I originally subscribed to the New Yorker because I was losing access to it via Lexis Nexis.
Crain is one of the people who writes for the New Yorker who I like to read.
Proof that eb is not E.B. White. (And if you can't spot why, you're not E.B. White either.)
Oooh! I know!
White would have said "persons".
He would have italicized New Yorker too.
Something interesting just occurred to me about eb's non-Whiteness, but I'm not going to say what it was.
I was thinking of E. B. White when I picked out a name. Specifically, I was thinking that I wasn't picking out E. B. White's name. And I wasn't.
've got to figure out how I'm going to make a rabbit
You need two other rabbits, for a start - a girl rabbit and a boy rabbit. What's an English roast?
What's an English roast?
English roast is people! Run, OFE!
Fee fie foe fum. I smell an English roast!
93: Wait, the definition of people has expanded to include the English now? This is getting out of hand.
No, English roast is people. From Texas.
And the tailings get turned into Texas Toast?
Only the Protestants, just like everywhere else.
How can I tell if I'm about to have a Protestant? Is that something that shows up on the ultrasound?
It should by now, yeah. If you see little horn buds, you're having a Jew.
I hope she has my father's forked tongue!
If you want to ensure that your baby is a Muslim like her daddy, make sure to point your cervix towards Mecca during delivery.
Are you going to defend yourself, eb?
What's an English roast?
Same as a cross-rib roast. I don't know what you people call it, probably a French roast. Wait, that's something else altogether.
I thought that was another word for a split roast.
Huh. I'd always heard that as a 'spit roast', though in a different configuration.
What 107 says.
The comic strip in 106 gets it wrong.
Yep, 107 is what footballers do in their spare time.
109: And "footballer" is what Brits call baseball players, right?
Yes, but they call baseball biscuits.
45 et al It's a slippery slope, see? First it's three cents a can. Then it's five cents.
Rod Stewart used to spray soda on the stage so as to avoid the slippery slope effect and not fall off stage or down.
My Google-fu for Rod Stewart and Coke does not provide a germane footnote. (Not intended in a My people call it blow sense.)
113: Yeah, it wasn't slipping that caused Rod Stewart to collapse on stage.
Reading that site has made me realize that nothing anyone has ever told me is actually true.
115: Aw, c'mon, that's not true, Walt.
111: He gives you dimes for nickels,
He calls watermelons "pickles",
Have you ever met that funny reefer man?
I actually know someone who has a cousin who used to work for the spouse of a woman who worked at Snopes. Apparently they don't actually do any research on the urban legends, just make shit up.
Snopes doesn't have a page about 116, so I don't know whether to believe you, Stanley.
118 definitely jibes with what I've heard.
I heard that if you load the Snopes webpage and put your computer in the microwave, it will explode.
122: yeah, that's part of Sharia law. Thanks, Obama!
I heard that once they impose sharia law, our Coke will have sugar in it rather than high-fructose corn syrup.
I heard that under Sharia law, women have to comment with their eyes closed.
124: If a modest and temporary abandonment of the rights of women will lead to free flowing Mexican coke, then Anglo-American jurisprudence, I divorce thee!
I got some friends who can hook you up with free-flowing Mexican coke right now, fm. Okay, technically Peruvian, but refined in Mexico.
I refer, sir, only to the beverage brewed(?) with sugar. My life's dream, however, is to restore to our national beverage its original flavor and potency. If you know of any reputable source of fresh leaves I am all ears.
OT: Can anyone recommend a poem for me to read at the dedication of my grandmother's headstone tomorrow? "I come not to praise Caesar but to bury him" has already been rejected. We're aiming for more folk than classical. She was a wonderful gramma. Sweet and straightforward is ideal. Even an essay selection. No one really wants to do the Kaddish.
I wonder if the flavor really is that different than the original. Do "spent" leaves taste particularly different from fresh ones?
Apparently what we're drinking now is different in a number of respects from the 1904 version.
Well, what you're drinking now. I'm having a beer.
Huh. Reading the post, I thought Labs was back for a minute there.
I'm sorry to hear about your gramma, Wrongshore.
I wish that I'd bought some kosher coke that was around pre Passover.
Belatedly, I did mean that 68 itself was interesting, not the link. I gave up on that halfway through; I was kind of irritated with the author's argument and assumptions.
||
Chavez gave our dear Leader some classic Galeano. Is there, or will there be, any way one may tell if he has read it or not?
|>
Aw, parsimon, it was a year ago. We're unveiling the headstone. But thank you very much.
139: Ah. I'm sensitive on these death things lately.
Are you going to defend yourself, eb?
I'm kind of surprised that book seems to have been taught so much even in recent years. I'm not sure I've every opened it, much less read the entire front and back covers.
Also, I went back and re-read the link in 68 and have to say I was disappointed a bit in retrospect, though I still think he's on to something. I don't think the absence of style I'm talking about in 68 (non-link portion) had really registered with me before I read the link.
The link in 104 reminds me of Menand's review of Eats, Shoots and Leaves:
The first punctuation mistake in "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation" (Gotham; $17.50), by Lynne Truss, a British writer, appears in the dedication, where a nonrestrictive clause is not preceded by a comma. It is a wild ride downhill from there. "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" presents itself as a call to arms, in a world spinning rapidly into subliteracy, by a hip yet unapologetic curmudgeon, a stickler for the rules of writing. But it's hard to fend off the suspicion that the whole thing might be a hoax.
The foreword, by Frank McCourt, contains another comma-free nonrestrictive clause ("I feel no such sympathy for the manager of my local supermarket who must have a cellarful of apostrophes he doesn't know what to do with") and a superfluous ellipsis. The preface, by Truss, includes a misplaced apostrophe ("printers' marks") and two misused semicolons: one that separates unpunctuated items in a list and one that sets off a dependent clause. About half the semicolons in the rest of the book are either unnecessary or ungrammatical, and the comma is deployed as the mood strikes. Sometimes, phrases such as "of course" are set off by commas; sometimes, they are not. Doubtful, distracting, and unwarranted commas turn up in front of restrictive phrases ("Naturally we become timid about making our insights known, in such inhospitable conditions"), before correlative conjunctions ("Either this will ring bells for you, or it won't"), and in prepositional phrases ("including biblical names, and any foreign name with an unpronounced final 's' "). Where you most expect punctuation, it may not show up at all: "You have to give initial capitals to the words Biro and Hoover otherwise you automatically get tedious letters from solicitors."
Parentheses are used, wrongly, to add independent clauses to the ends of sentences: "I bought a copy of Eric Partridge's Usage and Abusage and covered it in sticky-backed plastic so that it would last a lifetime (it has)." Citation form varies: one passage from the Bible is identified as "Luke, xxiii, 43" and another, a page later, as "Isaiah xl, 3." The word "abuzz" is printed with a hyphen, which it does not have. We are informed that when a sentence ends with a quotation American usage always places the terminal punctuation inside the quotation marks, which is not so. (An American would not write "Who said 'I cannot tell a lie?' ") A line from "My Fair Lady" is misquoted ("The Arabs learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning"). And it is stated that The New Yorker, "that famously punctilious periodical," renders "the nineteen-eighties" as the "1980's," which it does not. The New Yorker renders "the nineteen-eighties" as "the nineteen-eighties."
143: Ah, but the Indians knew how to properly use grammar scolding as a way to bring the community into closer communion with the spirit of the Earth.
People should post on a different thread than T+4 a little.
This actually should be on T-4, but I'm hoping h-g doesn't see it. Anyone who wants to participate in an unfogged baby present for her, email me at ElizardB@hotmail.com if you would? And don't post in this thread so it drops off the front page? And tell anyone you think would like to participate but might not have seen this comment?
143: What's wrong with "printers' marks"? That's where the apostrophe's supposed to go. They're marks for printers, not for a printer. See, for instance, the book Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography
assert English roast == lamb:
....except AssertionError:
........print 'oh, those funny Americans'