Sometimes it's almost kind of endearing (I'm not totally familiar with some of my opinions, but you could check with the programmer):
Jennifer Steinhauer writes in the Times about Congress's "shrinking pool of moderates":
Smoking gun:
If you haven't been following the scandal of Obama's soliciting campaign contributions from foreigners, that's probably mainly because there's no scandal, since it didn't happen. But that hasn't stopped Republicans from working on it, and the Government Accountability Institute (Toujours GAI) thought they had come up with a real smoking gun, with a Norwegian commenter, Gaupefot, who posted a solicitation (in English) for Obama donations at the website of the newspaper Verdens Gang. Another commenter, ExNASA, replied, also in English, that only US citizens were allowed to contribute, whereupon Gaupefot produced an explosion of Norwegian prose including the sentence
And this bit from the Great Debate clarifying how Ryan's math works:
In a word, no. Sadly, no, if you like. The Kennedy administration did carefully lower some marginal income tax rates and saw increased economic growth, the only piece of evidence, I think, that has ever been adduced for the Laffer curve. But that has no connection of any kind with the Romney proposal other than the use of the words "tax", "lower", and "increase". Neither Kennedy nor Reagan proved that Romney's arithmetic is possible because they didn't use it, and indeed it hadn't yet been invented.
However, if you imagine a kind of arithmetical topology that goes beyond ordinary expressions of quantity to the deeper nature of their numberiness, you could replace the traditional relations of "equals" (=), "is greater than" (>), and "is less than" (<) with a more general "is related to" (call it ~). Then you could say, for example, if x is the ingoing income tax base and y is the total deductions,
Jennifer Steinhauer writes in the Times about Congress's "shrinking pool of moderates":
Middle-of-the-road Democrats, known as Blue Dogs, have been all but eviscerated from the House over the last few elections, and now three who have been in the Republicans’ cross hairs for years are fighting uphill battles for re-election.I wonder what she thinks eviscerate means?
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| "But I'm not really a Democrat! Do I look like a Democrat?" |
If you haven't been following the scandal of Obama's soliciting campaign contributions from foreigners, that's probably mainly because there's no scandal, since it didn't happen. But that hasn't stopped Republicans from working on it, and the Government Accountability Institute (Toujours GAI) thought they had come up with a real smoking gun, with a Norwegian commenter, Gaupefot, who posted a solicitation (in English) for Obama donations at the website of the newspaper Verdens Gang. Another commenter, ExNASA, replied, also in English, that only US citizens were allowed to contribute, whereupon Gaupefot produced an explosion of Norwegian prose including the sentence
Hadde jeg i praksis kunne gitt penger til Obama hadde jeg gjort det.which Google translated as
“I have in practice given money to Obama, I had done it.”So there it was! A confession! But Google missed the verb of the first clause and misunderstood the tense/mood of both clauses. What Gaupefot meant, at the end of a diatribe about trying and failing to donate to John Kerry and the CIA donating to Det Norske Arbejderparti, was
"Had I in practice been able to give Obama money, I would have done it."So he didn't. And the gun fizzled. Via ThinkProgress.
And this bit from the Great Debate clarifying how Ryan's math works:
BIDEN: Now, there’s not enough—the reason why the AEI study, the American Enterprise Institute study, the Tax Policy Center study, the reason they all say it’s going—taxes go up on the middle class, the only way you can find $5 trillion in loopholes is cut the mortgage deduction for middle-class people, cut the health care deduction, middle-class people, take away their ability to get a tax break to send their kids to college. That’s why they arrive at it.President Kennedy cut everybody's taxes by 20% and then eliminated loopholes in such a way that the wealthy did not get a lower effective tax rate but did pay the same share as before? Ronald Reagan did the same??
RADDATZ: Is he wrong about that?
RYAN: He is wrong about that. They’re…
BIDEN: How’s that?
RYAN: You can—you can cut tax rates by 20 percent and still preserve these important preferences for middle-class taxpayers…
BIDEN: Not mathematically possible.
RYAN: It is mathematically possible. It’s been done before. It’s precisely what we’re proposing.
BIDEN: It has never been done before.
RYAN: It’s been done a couple of times, actually.
BIDEN: It has never been done before.
RYAN: Jack Kennedy lowered tax rates, increased growth. Ronald Reagan…
BIDEN: Oh, now you’re Jack Kennedy?
(LAUGHTER)
RYAN: Ronald Reagan—Republicans and Democrats…
BIDEN: This is amazing.
RYAN: Republican and Democrats have worked together on this.
BIDEN: That’s right.
RYAN: You know, I understand you guys aren’t used to doing bipartisan deals…
BIDEN: But we told each other what we’re going to do.
RYAN: Republicans and Democrats…
In a word, no. Sadly, no, if you like. The Kennedy administration did carefully lower some marginal income tax rates and saw increased economic growth, the only piece of evidence, I think, that has ever been adduced for the Laffer curve. But that has no connection of any kind with the Romney proposal other than the use of the words "tax", "lower", and "increase". Neither Kennedy nor Reagan proved that Romney's arithmetic is possible because they didn't use it, and indeed it hadn't yet been invented.
However, if you imagine a kind of arithmetical topology that goes beyond ordinary expressions of quantity to the deeper nature of their numberiness, you could replace the traditional relations of "equals" (=), "is greater than" (>), and "is less than" (<) with a more general "is related to" (call it ~). Then you could say, for example, if x is the ingoing income tax base and y is the total deductions,
x - x/5 + y ~ xmeaning that they are all real rational numbers (however they have been arrived at) and so on. However, at this level all tax plans are identical, so I'm not sure you're really getting anywhere with the Ryan plan.
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