So now two people I know fairly well are running, as Republicans, for the House. Both are long shots.

Life in these United States

Man it's easy to spread rumors

jerseyhoya wrote:Life in these United States

Man it's easy to spread rumors

Yeah, I think I might have to take a firmer line on texting and so forth in class.

Werthless wrote:http://www.nolanchart.com/survey.php

I'm a libertarian. Who knew?

TheBrig wrote:

Werthless wrote:... because who doesn't love political quizzes that are only 10 questions long, here's a site that was apparently on Glenn Beck's show.

http://www.nolanchart.com/survey.php

Mine came out libertarian, with me slightly more liberal than conservative.

I came out literally dead center.

That might be one of the worst of these type quizzes ever.

End government barriers to international free trade. The regulation of trade tends enrich selected interest groups and industry captains at the expense of everyone else. We must move away from the inflationary approach of the Federal Reserve by re-adopting a hard money approach and dissolving the Federal Reserve system. Ever wonder why prices of everything (including real estate) keep going up over time? The Federal Reserve system is the culprit. President Woodrow Wilson, who signed the Federal Reserve Act into law regretted his decision three years later saying, "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country."

WTF? What does free trade have to do with the Federal Reserve system? I'd say I really didn't fully agree with half my answers.

I came out on the centrist/statist border. Probably has something to do with teaching the Good Book (Leviathan) for the last two weeks.

President Obama's advisers are nearing a recommendation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, be prosecuted in a military tribunal

I can't believe how great this administration was at campaigning, and how much they suck at stuff like this. Well done anyway, in the end. Fry the bastards.

jerseyhoya wrote:Nutter proposes a 2 cent per ounce sweet drink tax. Uh, Mike, that's a lot.

It's a little odd if it's designed primarily as a revenue enhancer, since that seems high enough to really make a difference in consumption. It really only makes sense if he knows he'll have to compromise and wants to start high enough that he ends up where he wants to be.

Oh I'm a centrist liberal or a liberal centrist, whatever being on the line means. But I think I knew that already.

pacino wrote:

Phan In Phlorida wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Nutter proposes a 2 cent per ounce sweet drink tax. Uh, Mike, that's a lot.

Uh, yeah. That is. A $1.35 tax on a 2 liter bottle of sodee.

why should a 2 litre of soda be 89 cents

Don't really care how much soda costs 1,200 miles away, especially since I don't drink much soda. Using your 89 cents price, that's around a 150% tax. If you're in favor of taxing certain things to price them out of reach for some people, then I agree. If you can't afford something, you shouldn't have it. Hmm, maybe I can get someone to ship some of that expensive Philly soda for me to sip whilst lounging on the sundeck of my boat...

swishnicholson wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Nutter proposes a 2 cent per ounce sweet drink tax. Uh, Mike, that's a lot.

It's a little odd if it's designed primarily as a revenue enhancer, since that seems high enough to really make a difference in consumption. It really only makes sense if he knows he'll have to compromise and wants to start high enough that he ends up where he wants to be.

I'm guessing the proposal wasn't exactly thought through all the way, or properly proof read. Like maybe it's supposed to be .2 cents an ounce. Like that call to Verizon customer service that time that went viral.

Or maybe not. But anyway, I read the article, and noted that baby formula was excepted. OK, I sort of understand why you'd not want to tax that. But um, if baby formula really has that much sugar, should, um, babies be drinking it? I'm no expert on babies or nutrition or any thing but it seems to me that if there's enough sugar in that stuff that it needs an exception to a soda pop tax, well then hmm, maybe someone should look into that.

Estimated revenues are between 30M and 70M, or something like those numbers. In other words, they're having a difficult time projecting the revenues because it's such a large tax that will likely change behavior. Now people (ie. me) will do their shopping outside the city. Go Philly!

I'm more worried about the cost of mixed drinks personally. I couldn't care less about soda for soda's sake.

I could picture being at a restaurant, someone asking if they do free refills...yes, but you have to pay 40 cents a glass in tax.

David Brooks in with his own variation of the "Tea Partiers are basically a hippies/New Left riff" riff

Brooks is big on cultural/political institutions. He seems incapable of imagining an Edward Abbey sort of radicalism, or conservatism (not that Abbey had a particularly lucid worldview, but where motives were concerned, he seemed disinclined to give individuals much more benefit of the doubt than he did institutions - possibly because he himself was so effed up).

In Brooks' eyes, conservatives by definition believe in in the fundamental good of institutions. So, he concludes a) the TPs and the hippies share a radical, and fundamental, anticonservatism and b) both "movements" are doomed to fail, implicitly because they are 'innocent' of the right, & might, of institutional forms.

Just to be clear, I don't agree with Brooks' conception of conservatives as necessarily being reflexive apologists for institutions.

jerseyhoya wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

pacino wrote:

Phan In Phlorida wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Nutter proposes a 2 cent per ounce sweet drink tax. Uh, Mike, that's a lot.

Uh, yeah. That is. A $1.35 tax on a 2 liter bottle of sodee.

why should a 2 litre of soda be 89 cents

I'm gonna get me a van, and load it up with low tax soda pop from Jersey, drive across the Ben, and sell it at all the local playgrounds and schools and $#@!.

Screw that. You'd have to pay the bridge toll. Just go on the other side of City Line. I can just imagine how pleased a grocer who lives right near the city limits would feel. $2.88 tax on a 12 pack of Coke? Yeah, I'd drive the extra few minutes.

well if your'e literally on city line then there are a few places that would see a boon from this, but not many

my guess is the acme on city would see a big upkick, as if it isn't already bursting at the seams with customers.

I thought this was 2 cents a soda, not 2 cents an ounce. Seems like a lot.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC211h9AY-4[/youtube]

How many members of the Senate Dem caucus would be worse than Reid for Majority Leader? Byrd cause he's dying. Maybe one or two others.

Christ

drsmooth wrote:Just to be clear, I don't agree with Brooks' conception of conservatives as necessarily being reflexive apologists for institutions.

It's the exact blueprint laid by Edmond Burke, and has been the academically accepted definition of conservatism since then. Neither Burke nor Brooks would use the phrase "reflexive apologists," but the need to revere and preserve institutions is the driving force, because in their view, otherwise society falls apart.

drsmooth wrote:David Brooks in with his own variation of the "Tea Partiers are basically a hippies/New Left riff" riff

Brooks is big on cultural/political institutions. He seems incapable of imagining an Edward Abbey sort of radicalism, or conservatism (not that Abbey had a particularly lucid worldview, but where motives were concerned, he seemed disinclined to give individuals much more benefit of the doubt than he did institutions - possibly because he himself was so effed up).

In Brooks' eyes, conservatives by definition believe in in the fundamental good of institutions. So, he concludes a) the TPs and the hippies share a radical, and fundamental, anticonservatism and b) both "movements" are doomed to fail, implicitly because they are 'innocent' of the right, & might, of institutional forms.



Just to be clear, I don't agree with Brooks' conception of conservatives as necessarily being reflexive apologists for institutions.

I hate that I find my self in agreement with Brooks on these kinds of things so often. Maybe he's right. Probably somewhere there's a Brooks article where Neo-cons=Trotskyites.

And again, as I noted above, the new left and the tea partiers do share an enormous sense of entitlement, demand instant gratification, seem to reject any argument that is coherent, and neither seem especially attentive to personal hygiene.

By the way, the opposition of Rousseau to all that is decent and civilized is a true fact. Rousseau, and those inspired by him, are a true force of destruction and perhaps evil in the world. Hostility to Rousseau is far more pronounced on the traditional right than the left.

"Dignitary Protection Detail" for Monday March 8, Cheltenham Township. Is Barry comin' to town???

Rumor is that he'll be at Arcadia.