Normal ordinary guys, playing seemingly strange music in a mirrored and fractal like box in the middle of emptiness. Ok, so the music is not that strange, it's a shuffle!

...will be remembered as being like the people on this show.

Garfield is a lot better without Garfield. It is a study in madness!

Mister Wonderful is a fantastic (and fantastically short) story available for free in its entirety online at the New York Times website. I highly recommend it; once I started reading it I just couldn't stop until I finished reading all of it.

Chris Matthews is Alan Partridge.

Take a break from New Hampshire, enjoy some music.

“A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself.”

Thou Shalt Always Kill (via boing boing)

Multi-instrumentalist Andrew Bird of hotel commercial fame

Running through the obstacle course of Quantum Computing is quite daunting, but I definitely found this classic clip of Thomas Friedman amusing, if not a bit saddening that this grown man, who used to be, and to many still is, revered for his mustache of wisdom purveys such a childish outlook on the world and the sober prospect of war.

I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I’ve been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn’t have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I’m a
creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally I am an atheist.
I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.

The FAT Squad!

The New Yorker has a fascinating story on the murder of Tom Wales (by Jeffrey Toobin, who knew?)

Tom Wales assassination is a perfect example of the ever present danger of harm or death from those who were resistant to the pursuit of justice. Not to say that the judiciary, or the world, is perfect, but by all accounts it certainly seems that Wales was a man who cared deeply about his work and his commitment to civil society. The story is interesting in that it may not have been the pro-gun faction that truly had it out for Wales but the defendants of a case that he himself as the prosecutor ultimately dismissed. But I digress. I find that John McKay also acted admirably following Wales' assassination. In particular was despite the fact that he held different (Republican) priorities than his predecessor, he persisted in honoring and pursuing the investigation of Wales' murder. If only the Bush administration felt the same way. Sure, the murder occured in turbulent times for the nation, right after 9/11 but that still does not excuse the neglect on the part of the Justice Department and FBI for over five years. John McKay wouldn't have any of it, and still pursued the Wales case to his superiors. And soon he was fired.

As the coda to the story Toobin mentions an interesting recent chain of events. Gonzales is asked about McKay's firing and says he does not recall. An e-mail comes out implying that the reasoning for McKay's firing was his refusal to pursue fraudulent Republican claims of voter fraud in the closely contested Christine Gregoire/Dino Rossi governor's election in Washington state. Sampson, Gonzales' former chief of staff then claims McKay was fired because he pursued the Wales case too agressively.

How absolutely sickening must this administration be? 

Here's a chaser for that brief foray into economics (don't worry econ geeks, there's more to come later, once I'm back in an academic setting again).

Tondee's Tavern, a good source of Georgia political news and opinion on the Democratic side of the aisle, is reporting that Vernon Jones, Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Georgia in 2008, is now in support of the Fair Tax. Dale Cardwell, who is also a candidate for Senate in the Democratic primary, has already decleared his support of abolishing the IRS. That just leaves Rand Knight to play the moderate Democrat among the conservative Democrats in the Senate primary.

To put it simply, and I say this from my perspective or understanding of the Fair Tax proposal, is that it is income regressive. The Fair Tax seeks to eliminate all income taxes, as well as other taxes such as estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, etc. and replace these taxes with a national sales tax. What makes this tax regressive is that it places a greater burden of taxation as a percent of income for the poor and middle class than it does on the rich. This is because it is a tax on consumption, and as we move further up the income ladder, we spend less on goods, and save and invest more. While the price of goods we buy increases as income increases, at some point it hits a ceiling. So for example, a poor family making $450 a week may consume about $300 a week in food, gas, and other living expenses, whereas a family making $2000 a week may consume about $1000 a week in living expenses. The proportion of income spent on living expenses is greater for the lower income brackets than it is for the higher brackets. Therefore, more of a lower income brackets income is taxed by the fair tax than the higher income bracket.

Pardon the long explanation but it brings me to this point. The prime creators and supporters of the Fair Tax are Republicans. The plan was pitched by Neal Boortz and John Linder (along with undoubtedly some fellows at an anti-tax think tank), and has been pushed through Republican channels as an alternative to our current progressive tax system.

Please tell me why self-proclaimed Democrats in a Democratic primary actively supporting a Republican plan? I say in sarcasm that surely the lessons of 2006 would have taught Democratic candidates that becoming Republican-Lite is not the way to win elections.

Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative
one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first
arrives at what is new.

Ten Reasons to drop your cell. I vaguely remember a time myself without instant communication, and while I sometimes struggle to understand what just such a life of isolation entailed, I also understand that people spent much of their time working and reading and such. So I can empathize with those who view such time with nostalgia and with those who cringe in horror and dismay at the lifestyles of those who were unfortunate enough to have been born for 99% of recorded human history.

Slate money writer Daniel Gross conjectures that the enthusiasm over Europe is fueled by corporate love of low European corporate taxes. In some way, it seems as if most of Europe has struck a fine balance between taxation and welfare. In the US, advocates of lower taxes often make arguments on behalf of the average Ameriecan when really the goal is to lower taxes on the upper class and corporations (an approach that was explicitly argued through trickle-down economics in the Eighties). No one in the US could politically argue a rise in taxes on all consumers and a cut in taxes for corporations.

Now, is the European system of taxation right? I can't offer my opinion at this point without further research. It does seem that due to the low value of corporate taxes, an increase in income taxes and value added taxes would not be as vigorously opposed to by the upper class as it would be in the United States.

Now I no longer use Windows, but when I did, I found that one of the best tools for accessing the myriad functions and files of your computer was Launchy. I highly recommend it (and wish that there was a Linux version!)

It's like they were raised in an incubator of tabloid journalism, reruns of Inside Edition, and tawdry conventional wisdom regarding politics, and then magically hired by the most prestigious news organs of the country.

Adam Nagourney will never be fired. Someday he'll have a widely read column like Dean David Broder. 

Direct mail pioneer (and one of the modern conservative godfathers) Richard Viguerie attacks defenders of Fred Thompson.

~Fred Thompson is in the race largely due to conservative projections of their own insecurities on some manly father figure. Too bad that person is an effete Hollywood actor who failed to champion conservative causes during his legislative tenure (or any cause during his tenure as is becoming more apparent). Fred Thompson is a notoriously lazy man, and the conservative "movement" are in for quite a hard time getting anything done with him. They won't care of course, as long as they have someone to project onto.

-The  new most craven line from the right is that Bush strayed from conservatism.

Communism cannot fail, it can only be failed. 

Long day, going to bed. More stuff tomorrow, but for now Black Dog by Led Zeppelin

Joanna Newsom may sound like Lisa Simpson in Middle Earth, but you better believe I'll be catching her haunting work on the harp when she brings her orchestral show to Atlanta. 

Link (Tour dates) via Pitchfork. 

Anyone up for some Weeaboo?

Rupert Murdoch, a few Bancrofts away from turning the WSJ news page into the WSJ editorial kabuki.

Arlen Specter delivers another empty threat. No surprise here. The senior senator from Pennsylvania, as Democrats must remember, will always pledge fealty to the Republican party. Republican uber alles! (via crooks and liars)

Iraqi PM wants Petraeus out. Iraqi people want us to leave. Iraqi lawmakers back withdrawal.

Wayback Machine:

"We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a
sovereign nation. Twelve million people went to the polls to approve a
constitution. It’s their government’s choice. If they were to say,
leave, we would leave." ~ President Bush, May 24th 2007

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Miss mah buckit!