HCR Avatar analogy -- and "pass HCR" contingency fund

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Friday January 22, 2010 · 8:27 AM PST

2010/01/22 · 08:27

Maybe lots of other people are making Avatar analogies, but I haven't happened to see them myself. So I'll just throw this out there. (Spoiler alert for people who haven't seen the movie and don't want to know the storyline: avoid this diary entry.)

Scott Brown's election is the point in the story where Hometree topples over and the Omaticaya are scrambling for their lives in fear.

The boneheaded cowardice of Democrats in the House, Senate, and White House is the point in the story where the Omaticaya retreat to the Tree of Souls praying for rescue. (This is a little bit of an insult to the Omaticaya since they weren't being foolish or cowardly in going to the Tree of Souls, but bear with me.) Instead of going to the source of life and wisdom, these Democrats are praying to that unholy mythical deity, the independent voter who won't know the difference between Republican and Repbulican-lite.

How does this story end?

Poll

19 votes Show Results

Would you donate to a contingency fund that pays out to the DSCC and DCCC _only_ if HCR passes?

19 votes Vote Now!

Would you donate to a contingency fund that pays out to the DSCC and DCCC _only_ if HCR passes?

No. I hate the existing legislation too much and wouldn't do anything to help it pass.

4 votes

No. Even though I would otherwise support passage of HCR, the Dem Party has so sickened me I've just plain given up on them.

4 votes

Yes, I'd put 25 cents into the fund.

1 vote

Yes, I'd put $1 into the fund.

2 votes

Yes, I'd put $10 into the fund.

2 votes

Yes, I'd put $100 into the fund.

1 vote

Yes, I'd put $200 into the fund.

1 vote

Yes, I'd put $500 into the fund.

0 votes

Yes, I'd put $1,000 into the fund.

0 votes

Yes, I'd put my first-born child into the fund.

1 vote

No. I like the contingency fund idea, but your stupid Avatar analogy sickens me so much I've given up my faith in humanity.

3 votes

How much would you pay to seem like just a regular guy?

spudly

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Friday December 26, 2008 · 9:43 AM PST

2008/12/26 · 09:43

How's about $18 million? That's what John J. Noffo Kahn, of Palm Beach, Florida, paid for a farm in Barnard, Vermont, to be used as a vacation home, and in the process shattering the previous record price for the sale of a residential property in the state (a mere $8 million).

spudly

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Wednesday October 22, 2008 · 6:45 AM PDT

2008/10/22 · 06:45

I was having some nightmare fantasies running through my head last night as I biked home from work. I know that "float within the error" is just that and I shouldn't take small movements in the polls too seriously, but between the DailyKos tracking poll moving slightly tighter the past few days and Florida and Ohio moving back into "tossup" status at Pollster.com, I can't help but have the occasional grip of fear. And that got my mind wandering... and that ended up leading to this:

spudly

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Thursday September 18, 2008 · 12:27 PM PDT

2008/09/18 · 12:27

[Originally posted at ChelseaGreen.com.]

One of the most shocking tidbits in Robert Kuttner's new book Obama’s Challenge has to do with where Obama could come up with the money to pay for the programs Kuttner recommends. Nearly half the money Obama would need—at least $ 300 billion—could come from having the IRS crack down on illegal "tax shelters" that are used nearly exclusively by the richest sliver of the American population. In Kuttner’s words, "the consensus among tax experts is that at least $ 300 billion of taxes owed by the richest Americans go uncollected mainly because IRS enforcement resources have been diverted from audits of tax shelters used only by the wealthy onto audits of working Americans." (Obama’s Challenge, p. 29; Kuttner cites this report as his source.)

Poll

29 votes Show Results

Are you a tax cheat?

29 votes Vote Now!

Are you a tax cheat?

Never. I'd rather over pay than not pay enough.

4 votes

I try to pay what I'm supposed to.

14 votes

When I see tax forms, my brain freezes. I have no idea if I'm paying the right amount.

4 votes

What the IRS doesn't know won't hurt me.

2 votes

I'm waiting to win the lottery so I can hire myself one of those fancy tax shelter lawyers.

2 votes

I don't make enough to pay taxes. Maybe I should look into that Earned Income Tax Credit, eh?

2 votes

Federal income taxes are a violation of the Constitution given to our Forefathers on Mount Washington. I cheat tyranny by refusing to pay any taxes.

1 vote

Kuttner cuts Hannity down to size

spudly

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Thursday September 11, 2008 · 10:22 AM PDT

2008/09/11 · 10:22

Robert Kuttner was on Hannity and Colmes and--predictably--took a tongue-lashing from Hannity when he dared to suggest that the economy is in less than the greatest shape in all of human history. Happily, Kuttner stood up for himself. Would that all Dems or Dem-sympathizers had the oomph in their guts to stand up equally to the Fox-style garbage. (Lord knows I'd have a hard time keeping my thoughts straight under those conditions. Quite honestly, I'd rather repeat my activism in Palestine, with an Israeli soldier shooting a teargas canister directly between my legs, than deal with that kind of in-person rudeness.)

Video of the episode is here.

Ironically, Hannity cut in on Kuttner to say he was "spewing garbage" in favor of Obama when Kuttner was actually being somewhat critical of Obama. Oh well, when your brain is as starved for oxygen as Hannity's is, up there in his ivory Fox tower, you can't expect much sense from him.

Poll

85 votes Show Results

Rising unemployment is actually...

85 votes Vote Now!

Rising unemployment is actually...

um, rising unemployment?

60 votes

the greatest thing since sliced bread.

5 votes

please, someone lay me off so I can have more time to volunteer for Obama!

20 votes

Spoof McCain-Palin bumper sticker

spudly

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Wednesday September 10, 2008 · 6:24 AM PDT

2008/09/10 · 06:24

For your mild entertainment this morning, a spoof McCain-Palin bumper sticker. Just one heartbeat away... Sounds like lines from what could be a great song!

[To whichever tune happens to be stuck in your head at the moment]

Just One Heartbeat Away

From the land of snowy white
and inky black oil
came a queen of beauty
with the brain of a boil.

She'd lie right to your face
which is why I had to love her.
She's my own sweet Rapture
why, oh why do Liberal Commie Pinko Queer Traitors hate her?

Oh, she's just one heartbeat away
One little heart beat away
Left behind, no I don't mind
God bless the voters who stray.

And so on, and so forth. It's early, so I'm not quite at the top of my game.

Volunteered lately?

title=

The Emperor Changes His Clothes

spudly

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Tuesday July 01, 2008 · 8:37 AM PDT

2008/07/01 · 08:37

At last! I had the basic idea for this cartoon years ago but I can't draw for squat, so it just languished in my head. Enter my coworker, Dennis "I'm an actual, honest-to-goodness cartoonist" Pacheco, and voila, from neuro-purgatory to ink reality. Thank you, Dennis, both for drawing it and for improving on my original concept in the process. I hope y'all like it.

By Any Means Necessary

spudly

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Wednesday June 04, 2008 · 2:46 PM PDT

2008/06/04 · 14:46

A friend tells me this might somehow be confused with some notion of assassination type thinking. I can't begin to tell you how much I don't want that to be the case. I only created this because I thought it would be funny and a clever (if I may say so myself) way of poking fun at the Clinton campaign's overzealous sticktoitiveness and their playing a little too loose with the race card. So, with apologies to Malcolm X and without further ado...

spudly

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Monday April 14, 2008 · 8:36 PM PDT

2008/04/14 · 20:36

[Crosspost from fguide.org]

I know I’m behind the times, but last night I was reading some (seriously) backlogged email and in it was a link forwarded by my mom to David Mamet’s recent essay in the Village Voice, "Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’." It’s a strange essay that’s simultaneously difficult to follow and clearly intended as an embodiment of Churchill’s (perhaps apocryphal) dictum that "If you’re not Liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not Conservative when you’re 35, you have no brain." It took Mamet more than 25 years to harden his heart, but by golly he’s done it! As for the question of whether he successfully traded it in for a new and improved brain... well, that’s not quite so certain.

spudly

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Friday March 28, 2008 · 8:46 AM PDT

2008/03/28 · 08:46

[Crossposted from Flaming Grasshopper. Links are included there.]

In my post a moment ago I mentioned how I’d once heard that, for the money the US spent on the war in Vietnam, we could have paid for the installation of an in-ground swimming pool for each and every Vietnamese family instead. What a great way to win the hearts and minds of our enemies, eh? So I decided to try out the math for this stupid, awful, and infuriating Iraq war. What if we had tried to bribe the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam Hussein and install a working democracy instead of imposing these things (rather: trying futilely to do so) by force?

Cost of war to US taxpayers as of March 28, 2008: a bit over $506,359,000,000. Source.

Population of Iraq in July 2008, according to the CIA World Factbook: 27,499,638.

I threw in 2,000,000 extra people to account for the dead and refugees, so the numbers below are based on an estimated population 29.5 million people.

Cost per Iraqi (each man, woman, and child) paid so far by US taxpayers on the war: $17,767.21.

spudly

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Wednesday March 05, 2008 · 7:51 AM PST

2008/03/05 · 07:51

[Crossposted at Flaming Grasshopper]

So here’s the latest update. This includes not only yesterday’s primaries in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont, but also update/corrections to other previous states’ totals that resulted from the fact that when I made the earlier editions of the popular vote tallies, some states were not reporting all of their precincts yet. My thanks to some commentors–some constructive and some senselessly obnoxious–for pointing out to me that some of those older numbers were outdated.

RSS

HCR Avatar analogy -- and "pass HCR" contingency fund

How much would you pay to seem like just a regular guy?

Dewey Defeats Truman redux

untitled diaryThe size of illegal tax shelters vs. taxes and wages paid

Kuttner cuts Hannity down to size

Spoof McCain-Palin bumper sticker

The Emperor Changes His Clothes

By Any Means Necessary

Night of the living “brain-dead liberal”

How it could have been done if the preachers of the free market had stuck to their principles instea

Popular vote totals, update March 5