test your psychic powers

How do you figure this guy feels about americans dying in terrorist attacks?

Take your time.

Of course, in fairness, he's not a major liberal figure like the anonymous America haters that the good Professor Reynolds imagines lusting after the deaths of americans when he reads their e-mails.

Why, practically his only claim to fame is that spot right up there at the top of the Pure Bloggers list at Instapundit.

Very, very nice.

edit: Apparently the good professor has gotten around to this little-noticed post and allows as how it's almost maybe bad enough to be compared to Ted Rall and whatever he's supposed to have done.

Still very nice.

raise your hands if you think you're the base

via Brad DeLong

The Wall Street Journal finds signs that the Bush tax cuts aren't that popular an idea:

WSJ.com - Bush Leaves for London With Bills Up in the Air: RISING DEFICITS stir concern among Americans and administration officials. Though a White House strategist says chances of rolling back tax cuts are "zip," 41% of Republicans call that "a good idea" in order to reduce the deficit and finance domestic priorities...

from the New York Times

Senior Bush administration officials said Thursday that they were considering plans to simplify the tax code and to revive earlier ideas for savings plans that would allow people to exclude almost all their investment income from taxes.

In a speech before the Tax Foundation, a policy group here that advocates lower taxes, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said his staff was preparing "a number of proposals to simplify the tax code" and resurrected the idea of "lifetime savings accounts" that would allow people to put aside large sums of money and pay no tax on the investment income they receive.

First proposed last February, but then made a low priority, the "lifetime savings accounts" would allow a married couple to set aside up to $15,000 a year and avoid any taxes on the dividends or stock profits that accumulate as a result.

The plans would also allow people to withdraw money for almost any purpose and at almost any time; existing plans impose big tax penalties when people withdraw money before they retire.

Make most of your money in income, do you?

Comfortable seeing your tax money go to provide basic services for people who don't work for a living?

Boy, have I got a candidate and a party for you.

more psychic blogger fun!

See if you can guess how this man feels about the deaths of american soldiers.

You'll have to.

guess we won't have the SCLM to kick around any more

from the NY Observer:

While Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III was being called to the White House on Tuesday, Nov. 11 to reassess the increasingly difficult situation in Iraq, his advisors in Baghdad were preparing to roll out their plan to broadcast live with its own version of the news from Iraq on the Pentagon budget.

As the Observer reported Nov. 12, the Coalition Provisional Authority running Iraq, dissatisfied with American network news decisions on the conflict, is about to create its own broadcast operation, with the capacity to create its own version of the news, live from Iraq, 24 hours a day. Dorrance Smith, the former ABC News producer who is Ambassador Bremer's media advisor, called the satellite feed a kind of "C-SPAN Baghdad." But network news executives and journalists were pretty shocked by the concept of a taxpayer-supported news broadcast purposefully created to bypass the editorial decisions of American television. The Bush Administration made a decision not to depend on them as middlemen. "It's C-SPAN with spin," said Morley Safer, co-editor and correspondent for CBS 60 Minutes, who covered Vietnam for the network. "If they're deciding what to cover, they're only going to cover, it would follow, the news that puts a nice gloss on the occupation." Mr. Safer added, "And, it's a way of trying to control the bad news, it's as simple as that. Or at least ease the blow, I suppose."

"It's certainly an attempt to influence the debate," said Paul Slavin, senior vice president of ABC News. "They have their opinion and they have the right to put out their opinion as long as they don't restrict access to the media to report the story."

Mr. Smith, the Coaliton Provisional Authority's senior media advisor and a Bush family friend, said it would be a live feed consisting of press conferences and daily highlights, with open satellite coordinates available to anyone--including the local affiliates to whom President Bush recently gave exclusive access in his end-run around the networks. Mr. Smith said it would free up the American public--and the CPA--from reliance on network news "interpretation."

on liberal guilt

from Michael Tomasky

hoping that Bush will pay the ultimate political price for the problems in Iraq is a legitimate partisan yearning. But it’s also, it can be argued, a legitimate moral one: After all, he started the nastiness. He suited up to declare victory just as, it turns out, the war’s second phase was beginning. And then he foolishly - incredibly, actually - said “Bring ’em on” when questioned about the attacks on U.S. soldiers back in July. So maybe it’s not liberals’ consciences that should be guilty here.

tedious mettage

I'm trying this without italics, because I'm told they're hard to read - more annoying? Less annoying? What?

These are, by the way, rare non-rhetorical questions.

well, some of our young people is learning

Any of this sound at all familiar?

intrablog metarant

( only if you're into this kind of thing )

oh, my.

(voting isn't closed on the readibility post below, but)

via Skimble: Paul Krugman on Molly Ivins' and Lou Dubose's and Joe Conason's new books

On a recent Friday afternoon, the Interior Department announced a change in rules for US mining companies. (They always announce the outrages on Friday afternoon, because few people read the Saturday papers or watch the Saturday TV news.) Reversing a Clinton-era decision, Interior now says that companies mining precious metals can appropriate as much federal land as they want to dump the waste from their operationsÑand modern mining techniques generate a great deal of waste. Environmentalists were appalled, not just because of the direct effect on the landscape, but because chemicals can leach out of the exposed waste, polluting a much wider area.

To understand why and how officials made that decisionÑand why we needn't waste time parsing the administration's claims that it was all about promoting economic growthÑit helps to have read Chapter 9 of Bushwhacked, by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose. That chapter, entitled "Dick, Dubya, and Wyoming Methane," tells you all you need to know about the Bush Interior Department. We learn, in particular, that J. Steven Griles, the deputy secretaryÑand probably the real power in the departmentÑhas spent his career shuttling back and forth between being a government official and lobbying for the extractive industries. And he has never worried much about ethical nicetiesÑlittle things like recusing himself from decisions that affect his former clients. Moreover, Griles isn't likely to be disciplined, even when he brazenly supports industry interests over the judgments of government experts. After all, just about every other senior official at Interior, including Secretary Gale Norton, has a similar résumé.

So it's a very good bet that the new rules on mining-waste disposal don't reflect a careful economic analysis of the pros and cons. Nor, by the way, do they represent a general ideological bias in favor of free markets and private property, since this wasn't a ruling about what companies can do on their own property. It was a major extension of their rights to make private use of public land. Or to put it another way, this decision was about extend-ing corporate privilege, not protecting property rights. Needless to say, this particular extension of privilege was worth a lot of money to a select group of mining companiesÑa very nice return on their prior investment in the Bush administration, not just through campaign contributions, but through deals that enriched individual government officials.

The point about the mining-waste ruling is that it isn't at all exceptional. Instead, it is typical of the Bush administrationÑin its callousness toward the general welfare, in the brazenness with which special interests were able to buy a decision to their liking, and in the contempt officials showed toward the public and the press. (Indeed, the ruling received only brief mention in the national press.) We're living in a replay of the Gilded Age, in which robber barons openly bought and sold government officials and their policies. And just as the Gilded Age brought forth a golden age of muckraking, our modern descent into money politics has brought forth a new wave of outraged reporters. Ivins and Dubose are worthy heirs of an honorable tradition.