Thursday, November 18, 2004
Linkage A-Go-Go
We'll keep it relatively brief and effortless today--if you're looking for brain food this lunchtime, try these:
Howard Dean proves why he's the only one who can save the Democratic Party.
Paul Waldman explains why audacity is the Repugs' greatest product.
Tapped, Atrios, and Kos all talk about the latest Repug tax plan. It includes such fine ideas as cutting the very tax incentive businesses have to provide health insurance to their workers in the first place, eliminating federal deductability of state and local taxes (which will be particularly effective in screwing the blue states, where such taxes tend to be higher), and shifting more of the tax burden from wealth to work. This is bad public policy on nearly every front, and as evidence of what Bush and the Repugs really think of those Americans not fortunate enough to be independently wealthy, it's vile. What would it take to bring out the piano wire and lampposts, if not this?
Kevin at Lean Left says what I've been thinking about the flap over ABC's Monday Night Football opening sketch earlier this week--marveling at the apparent fact that Nicolette Sheridan's naked back is more offensive than the miles of cleavage displayed by the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders and babes in the Coors Light ads, and far worse than the increasingly innuendo-laden ads for erectile dysfunction drugs. (I'm no prude, but I wonder whether it's necessary to show women talking about the quality of their partner's erections on TV.) Just as the Janet flap at the Super Bowl permitted Americans to spray big clots of outrage all over their favorite easy targets, so has this. That Mr. and Mrs. Average American care more about this than about getting screwed for a generation by bad tax policy doesn't give a guy much hope that we can save the country.
If you were a literary classic, which literary classic would you be? (I'm Orwell's 1984, which surprised me not.)
We'll keep it relatively brief and effortless today--if you're looking for brain food this lunchtime, try these:
Howard Dean proves why he's the only one who can save the Democratic Party.
Paul Waldman explains why audacity is the Repugs' greatest product.
Tapped, Atrios, and Kos all talk about the latest Repug tax plan. It includes such fine ideas as cutting the very tax incentive businesses have to provide health insurance to their workers in the first place, eliminating federal deductability of state and local taxes (which will be particularly effective in screwing the blue states, where such taxes tend to be higher), and shifting more of the tax burden from wealth to work. This is bad public policy on nearly every front, and as evidence of what Bush and the Repugs really think of those Americans not fortunate enough to be independently wealthy, it's vile. What would it take to bring out the piano wire and lampposts, if not this?
Kevin at Lean Left says what I've been thinking about the flap over ABC's Monday Night Football opening sketch earlier this week--marveling at the apparent fact that Nicolette Sheridan's naked back is more offensive than the miles of cleavage displayed by the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders and babes in the Coors Light ads, and far worse than the increasingly innuendo-laden ads for erectile dysfunction drugs. (I'm no prude, but I wonder whether it's necessary to show women talking about the quality of their partner's erections on TV.) Just as the Janet flap at the Super Bowl permitted Americans to spray big clots of outrage all over their favorite easy targets, so has this. That Mr. and Mrs. Average American care more about this than about getting screwed for a generation by bad tax policy doesn't give a guy much hope that we can save the country.
If you were a literary classic, which literary classic would you be? (I'm Orwell's 1984, which surprised me not.)
