perfidy

Winds of Change's "Armed Liberal" has a thought-provoking post up on the topic, as related to electronic voting and the US on the world stage, that should be widely read. Although I disagree in part with his conclusions (the most important problem?), that doesn't mean I disagree with the underlying premise whatsoever.

Before he gives us another musical masterpiece, and we all live to regret it. Oops! Too late! Junkie XL is back with RadioJXL. I bought the double CD ($13 at Tower, for the moment); I bought the online extras for $6.99. You should too.

Highlights so far are Broken (vocals by Feeder's Grant Harrison), and Tennis...really fantastic stuff if you're into the Electronica thing.

Just like Merrill Lynch, I'll rate this as a strong buy.

I picked up a pair of M-Audio BX-8 reference monitors for my home studio (Cakewalk Sonar, Propellerhead Reason, Spectrasonics Atmosphere, Echo Audio MiaMIDI), and rapidly encountered the terrible low fidelity of your average MP3 files. I have a ton of CDs, and I've carefully encoded using "recommended audiophile settings" with high bitrate MP3s, over the past couple of years. The new speakers have shown me that MP3 is crap.

What is NOT crap is AAC, Apple's format for iTunes and iPod. I've done encodings at the 160k bit rate, and they are dramatically better than the equivalent rate MP3s. Next stop is Ogg Vorbis, for another quality check. I like the ideas behind Ogg, but the fidelity just has to be there...

Readers may not know that our own Johno is a fairly badass bass player. Next time I'm around I think I want to hear the amplified version, instead of the thwacky sounds we should only hear after all the oil is gone and we're living off seal fat in igloos.

Noted author, songwriter, raconteur, salsa merchant, barbecue chef, friend to transvestites, and all-around hero to Johno, Kinky Friedmanis running for Governer of Texas. That's right. The craziest Semite west of the Pecos, and genius behind the song "They Just Don't Make Jews Like Jesus Anymore" is running for the same post that bred our currect pars-dent.

"I want to fight the wussification of the state of Texas. I want to rise and shine and bring back the glory of Texas," Friedman said. "I am a writer of fiction who tells the truth."

According to the Houston Chronicle,

"There are no skeletons in my closet. They are all bleaching on a beach somewhere," he said.

You want to know Kinky's stand on gun control?

"I do not carry a gun myself, so if someone is going to shoot me, they better remember to bring their own weapon."

On abortion?

"I am not pro-life, I am not pro-choice, I am pro football."

On the serious side, Kinky would like to establish a Texas Peace Corps where people could volunteer and help the state. He was a member of the Peace Corps in Borneo, where he taught agriculture to people who had been successfully farming for 2,000 years.

He would like to see nondenominational prayer in school and make Texas a state that does not allow animal shelters or pounds to kill abandoned or stray pets.

He has no plans to get a make-over for the campaign. He will smoke his cigars and wear his cowboy hat low over his curly hair.

"I got a straight perm a few months ago. It was so bad that it made me look like Hitler as a used car salesman," he said.

Let's all move to Texas, buy a shotgun, and cast a vote for Kinky!

I have discovered a new version of the famed whack-the-penguin game so graciously shown to us by Minister Buckethead in January. Check out the gory version here. The trick is to get the severed penguin head to hit several landmines in succession, launching it much farther than the yeti can do on its own.

Some have been complaining about the delays in the adoption of the Iraqi constitution. Der Kommissar has an interesting take on the events surrounding the adoption of another country's constitution.

Erstwhile Cincinnatti Reds owner, Nazi apologist, and walking argument for enforced eugenics Marge Schott died Tuesday, March 2, 2004. I don't know what withered Valhalla waits for people like her, but I bet it looks like a Waffle House.

There may be some proof that Microsoft is behind SCO's recent raising of capital. SCO has been trying to suppress Linux usage through a series of highly doubtful IP lawsuits. But...a while back they were suddenly funded to the tune of $50 million. There is nothing that this company can conceivably do that merits that money, so many of us have been wondering about the thinking.

"I realize the last negotiations are not as much fun, but Microsoft will have brough in $86 million for us including Baystar. The next deal we should be able to get from $16-20, but it will be brutial as it is for
go to makerket work and some licences. I know we can do this , if everyone stays on board and still wants to do a deal. I just want to get this deal and move away from corp dev and out into the marketing andfield dollars....In this market we can get $3-5 million in incremental deals and not have to go through the gauntlet which will get tougher next week with the SR VP's."

If this memo is true, it all makes sense. The $50 million was nothing to Microsoft, who wants Linux damaged. The investors who supplied it are...not interested in their investment...

Is this anti-trust? Will this White House investigate Microsoft?

This landed on Winds of Change. Maybe it's a bit clearer than the ones I've written before on the same topic.

Supply/demand charts don't mean a thing to people who don't have jobs. We're not particularly close to one of the historical lows for employment at the moment. Employment to population _is_ worrying low at the moment, and it seems to keep dropping.

Let's be clear on what's happened since trickle-down economics became popular. You can easily look up the studies for yourself on income and employment (Saenz and Piketty, IRS site, CBO site), but the gist of it is this: Since the late 70's, capital gains taxes have been cut in half, as have income taxes on the wealthiest 2% or so of the population. The line being force-fed to the public was that this would "stimulate" the economy and raise all boats with the tide. What has in fact happened?

Constant dollar income from 1972 to 2000 rose by 4%, if you are in the _bottom_ 99% of income earners. If you're in the top 1%, constant dollar income increased by over 500% (Saenz, Piketty). Furthermore, if you were in the 99% to 99.5% bracket, your income increased by about 40% (which weights the upper bracket even further).

Meanwhile, as we were dramatically cutting taxes on the wealthiest political donors, we _increased_ social security taxes, circa 1983. Why did we do this? To "save" the system, so it would have enough money to pay for baby boomer retirements, amongst other things. Note that because social security taxes cut off at 87k (today, somewhat less earlier), social security taxes fall disproportionately on the poor and middle class. Three quarters of Americans pay MORE in social security taxes than they do in income taxes.

Instead of setting aside the money, the geniuses in BOTH parties simply added it to the general fund and spent it, leaving a shiny IOU in place of the cash.

So poor and middle class people have been _overpaying_ into the social security fund. Where is the extra money going? Why, it was given to the highest income earners in the form of a tax cut! So we cut taxes on the wealthiest because there is a "surplus", and we pay for it by transferring money out of the social security silo, to balance the general fund's budget.

There is only ONE fair solution...if too much money is in the social security fund (and over the past 20 years there has been), GIVE IT BACK TO THE PEOPLE WHO PUT IT THERE. We call them the poor and middle class, in this country. Why on earth would we give THEIR RETIREMENT MONEY (and YOURS) to the highest income individuals?

Our "conservative" friends tell us that by letting top income earners avoid taxes, we somehow stimulate the economy. Exactly how much "stimulation" does the economy need to undergo to make up for the MASSIVE THEFT of retirement savings from the poor and middle class.

Go figure out for yourself...the general fund has borrowed over $1.8 trillion from social security. What part of that did YOU contribute? Would you be better off with that in your retirement account, or are you better off with trickle-down BS and tax avoidance schemes for the wealthy?

I think the election is all about the economy, and all about ethical fiscal management of public resources. There are a lot of folks who orbit this blog who'd want to say it's about security. I agree, but security has both a long term and a short term. Short term is military, and is not really all that much of an issue. The course has been set, and a President of either party isn't going to vary too much. Longer term we need a solid economy to _sustain_ that security. Taxes as a percentage of GDP are at their lowest levels (around 15%, down from 19.5% recently) since the 1950s. What, YOUR taxes are way higher than that? You're right. They are; you pay way too much in tax, between federal income, social security, and medicare. The reason you pay way too much is that there are others who don't pay their share.

Guess it's not hard to figure out which side of this I'm on. But here's the thing: Exactly what does Kerry have to say about this situation? So far...nothing substantive. Hopefully it'll come. Bush's policies have clearly favored the same failed trickle-down policies we've been suffering under for the past twenty years.

We have two decades that shows us that the effect of cutting taxes on the the wealthiest of Americans has the effect of...reducing how much tax they pay.

This essential flaw has been masked by steadily increasing and incomprehensible public debts. Out of sight, out of mind...

The recent announcement that NASA scientists have concluded that surface of Mars - at least where the opportunity rover is exploring - was once a wet place has space enthusiasts rather excited. For those who don't see why this is a good thing, nevermind. It's a space thing and you wouldn't understand.

Just kidding. The fact that at least one place on Mars was certifiably wet has many implications. It means that there was once another place in the solar system that was habitable. This does not by any means guarantee that there was at any point life on Mars, but by studying the geological history of Mars, we can learn things that we could never learn by studying the Earth alone. Science moves much faster when researchers have two things to compare. We will learn from Mars how life didn't evolve under conditions similar to those on Earth, and from this learn more about how it did on Earth. We can learn about climate, and how it goes wrong. (Maybe Mars was hit by global warming? The sky is falling!)

Also, the fact that there was once surface water raises the big question, "Where is it now?" If this water is bound up in the rocks, or in subsurface permafrost or ice deposits, that means that we could potentially get at it, and use it for human settlements or even for terraforming.

And besides, it's just plain cool to imagine what Mars might have looked like with oceans and seas. Like this:

A view down the Valles Marineris.

Or imagine sailing on these seas:

Or sailing up to the very base of the tallest mountain in the Solar System:

... and a case of scotch. Let's go to Disneyworld! Well, not quite . But Roy Disney did lament the lack of rifles at the stockholder's convention, and expressed frustration that things will be much harder to sort out using peaceful methods. In another surprising statement, Roy compared the prospect of Eisner's departure with the death of the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz. Many were shocked that Roy referred to a Warner Bros. film.