Reason Morning Links: A Government Cut In Two

• Congress comes back with taxes on its mind.
• The American poverty rate "is on track for a record increase."
• The administration prepares to pitch a $60 billion Saudi arms deal.
• The Pentagon ponders a plan to forego a hammer or two, buy 10,000 books.
• In Iraq, another episode of post-combat combat.
• The White House frets that divided government will mean "stalemate and gridlock."

Our gridlock-anticipating headline appears in honor of Claude Chabrol, France's Hitchcock, who died over the weekend. (I thought about using Le Boehner's Surge instead, but it was too much of a stretch.) RIP.

Comments

[Johnny Longtorso]

Be sure to read the part toward the end about Greek progressives burning a bank and killing people because they dared to work during a strike.

Stick it to The Man, eh Tony?

Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds

[Johnny Longtorso]

As he finishes his story the finance minister stresses that this isn't a simple matter of the government lying about its expenditures. "This wasn't all due to misreporting," he says. "In 2009, tax collection disintegrated, because it was an election year."

"What?"

He smiles.

"The first thing a government does in an election year is to pull the tax collectors off the streets."

"You're kidding."

Now he's laughing at me. I'm clearly na?ve.

[Mike M.]

It's rather ironic, but in the long run nothing makes people more selfish and less civic-minded than enormous government and the welfare state dependence that comes from it. It breeds massive corruption and contempt, and Greece is the perfect example of that.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The American poverty rate "is on track for a record increase."

Just change the definition of poverty again. Duh.

[Rich]

This. I suggest: Any household with fewer than two color TVs.

[hmm]

Fuck, I'm poor. I never knew. =(

Thanks for ruining my life!

[Rich]

You ungrateful twerp, I'm trying to get you on the dole!

[West Texas Boy]

Just change the definition of poverty again.

Part of the problem is that it's constantly being adjusted upward. Used to be, "poverty" meant holes in the walls and no food and rats and the like.

Now it just means, "an arbitrary income number selected by politicians to keep the proportion of society underneath it relatively constant."

[Rhywun]

"Child poverty" means they get stuck with a crappy LG or Samsung instead of an iPhone.

[Johnny Longtorso]

Sebelius: insurers who criticize ObamaCare may get locked out of system

Administration Tells Regulated Industry That There Will Be "Zero Tolerance" for Alleged "Misinformation" in Industry's Statements About Government Policy

[CaptainSmartass]

Raise your hand if any of this is at all surprising.

[Warty]

There will be zero tolerance
For the creator of hallowed intentions
There will be zero tolerance
Fate is your deciding God

[Rich]

"Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections," Sebelius said.

Simply outrageous. I expect to see insurers simply respond "Bring it on", followed by Sebelious simply leaving the administration.

[Warty]

A whole bunch of shit happened in Turkey. I'll have to ask the Turks in the lab if it's as ominous as it sounds.

And, of course, have some Turkish metal.

[Brett L]

And the Turks played Washington Generals to the US national team's Harlem Globetrotters this week in the world's least meaningful basketball tournament.

[Mokers]

The tournament actually means a lot because the US normally sends their "B" squad and doesn't usually put too much effort into the tournament. Even without anybody from the Olympic roster and other top players limited from playing because of injury concern, we still cleaned up in this tournament. Of course it helps that we were the only team Kevin Durant was playing for.

[John]

It also means that the US doesn't have to qualify for the Olympics next summer. So they can let all of their NBA players have a summer off for once.

[Timon19]

You have Turks in your labs too, eh?

[CaptainSmartass]

In before Suki.

[hollywood bistro]

I like your blog,and also like the article,and thank you for provide me so much information :))

[Johnny Longtorso]

Why Do White House Staffers Have Trouble Paying Taxes?

[Johnny Longtorso]

Capitol Hill employees owed $9.3 million in back taxes last year, data show

[SIV]

The Defense Department is attempting to buy the entire first printing - 10,000 copies - of a memoir by a controversial former Defense Intelligence Agency officer so that the book can be destroyed, according to military and other sources.

It's not the Koran so it's OK.

[Brett L]

"Both sides now appear to have agreed on the contents of the second printing, but negotiations are focused on what to with the 10,000 copies already published."

Apparently, the fight was over active duty intel agents being named. This should be a perfectly libertarian solution. The DIA objects to the first printing, but it was already cleared by the Army Reserve. They offer to buy the entire first run, and negotiate acceptable anonymizations in the second run.

Tempest. Teapot.

[SIV]

Shaffer's book was reviewed and cleared in writing by the Army Reserve earlier this year, but this summer the Defense Intelligence Agency objected to the use of the names of American intelligence officers, among other issues.

Seems absurd as there are review copies of the first printing in circulation. I can't see any objections to destroying books that you own and the Pentagon is buying them from a willing seller(the publisher).It isn't like what the FDA did with Wilhelm Reich's books.

[Azathoth]

Whew! Thanks. And here I was thinking that there was something wrong with the government using my tax dollars to buy an entire print run of some book to burn it.

Particularly after the government has come out as being against the burning of books.

[Rich]

I hope the books are taken out by a missile fired from a Predator! How cool would *that* be!

[hmm]

After the predator takes out the guys dog. (assuming it's a guy)

[Johnny Longtorso]

Financial Times links can act funny, so be warned:

FT: America's public servants are now its masters
...In 2008, the average wage for 1.9m federal civilian workers was more than $79,000, against an average of about $50,000 for the nation's 108m private-sector workers, measured in full-time equivalents. Ninety per cent of government employees receive lifetime pension benefits versus 18 per cent of private employees. Public service employees continue to gain annual salary increases; they retire earlier with instant, guaranteed benefits paid for with the taxes of those very same private-sector workers.

More troubling still is the inherent political corruption. Elected officials tend to be accommodating when confronted by powerful constituencies such as the public service unions that agitate for plush benefits and often provide (or deny) a steady flow of cash to election campaign funds. Their successors will have to cope with the inherited debt burden ? and ultimately the nation's taxpayers are stuck with the bill.......

[John]

http://www.australianews.com.a.....2d761900e5

Australian professor smokes a joint rolled with a page of the Koran.

[Warty]

That's beautiful, right there.

[Bathroom Protester]

Anybody know where I can pick up some Koran toilet paper?

[The Gobbler]

I hear mosques have tons of the stuff.

[The Rev. Terry Jones]

Dammit, Gobbler, my nose just squirted bourbon all over my keyboard!

[The Beard of the Profit]

By this morning (13/9/10), however, Stewart was sounding a good deal less confident. "I'm screwed," he wrote on the Brisbane Atheists website. "I think I will lose my job over this. Damn it."

It's just a f...ing job, who cares.

[John]

That is fucking wrong. We don't have blastphemy laws in the West. Why the hell should he loose is job?

[SugarFree]

Don't be stupid, John. Australia is clearly in The East. It's right under China for fuck's sake!

Buy a map, n00b!

[John]

They are a part of the English Commonwealth. The "West" is about more than geography. They place is just California with deadly snakes and funny accents.

[SugarFree]

Oh, John... must I really put a smiley-face on sarcasta-posts?

[John]

I know you were kidding. So was I, although Australia really is just a British California with horrifying fauna.

[dbcooper]

Pop quiz - which poisonous animal kills more australians than any other?

[The Gobbler]

Man

[Brett L]

@dbcooper - Are drop bears poisonous?

[John]

Spiders. They also have deadly jellyfish. One of the five most poisonous snakes in the world is "The Common Brown Snake" of Australia. "The Common Brown"?

[dbcooper]

I was going to say the "jack jumper ant" but I may have been mislead by a wildlife documentary.

[dbcooper]

It is supposed to be the most lethal in Tasmania at least.

[Steve Irwin]

Stingray?

[Newt Gingrich]

Muslims.

[Butts Wagner]

Steve Irwin?

[DADIODADDY]

deadly, not dead.

[SugarFree]

"If you want an accurate picture of Australia, just imagine a kangaroo kicking the face of unintelligible surfer... forever."

[The Beard of the Profit]

Plus, Allah is omnipresent.

[John]

http://online.wsj.com/article/.....el_opinion

The always good Mary Anastatia O'Grady on Texans along the border who have turned against the drug war.

[SugarFree]

Fat guy fits 30 quarters into his belly button, breaks own record of 20.

NSFW due to massive moobage.

[Warty]

I hope this is you. This is you, right?

[SugarFree]

While pleasantly plump and fish-belly white, I do not have the womby vaultages for such a feat.

[Abdul]

Shit, I put two $100 bills into a stripper's belly button last night. That's 800 quarters! Did she get world record?

[Corduroy]

I had to look, dammit.

[Almanian]

He used to lure me in like that, too, but I learned the hard way...

[T]

No sympathy. If you're dumb enough to click on a link SF explicitly tells you is NSFW, you deserve what you get.

[Rich]

"If the only option I have is to vote for those at [$250,000] and below, of course I'm going to do that," Boehner said.

And if the only option I have is to vote for those at $0.50 and below, of course I'm going to do that.

[SugarFree]

Lady Gaga and the death of sex by Camille Paglia.

...despite showing acres of pallid flesh in the fetish-bondage garb of urban prostitution, Gaga isn't sexy at all ? she's like a gangly marionette or plasticised android. How could a figure so calculated and artificial, so clinical and strangely antiseptic, so stripped of genuine eroticism have become the icon of her generation? Can it be that Gaga represents the exhausted end of the sexual revolution? In Gaga's manic miming of persona after persona, over-conceptualised and claustrophobic, we may have reached the limit of an era?

The predictable Jezebel hissy-fit.

[Warty]

So basically her underlying thesis is still "as a lesbian top I too deserve to have male privilege, and that means that whatever my imaginary penis does or does not want is the most important thing to consider"?

So this is also men's fault, I see.

[SIV]

Paglia seems to have confused Lady GaGa with Katy Perry.

[Warty]

I thought Katy Perry was Lady Gaga with a black wig.

[SugarFree]

One is covered in Olmos-levels of acne and the other one has a nose that could feed a Somali pirate camp for a month.

[Rich]

LOL

[SIV]

Pop Chicks in latex (SFW I suppose)
Katy Perry
Lady GaGa

[Red-blooded]

That Lady Gaga pic isn't safe for anything but 3 A.M. after a bottle of whiskey.

[Ragin Cajun]

Is there a difference?

[Brett L]

I think one only uses the autotune most of the time.

[JEP]

One kissed a girl and liked it.

[(Redacted)]

And the other is bisexual.

[Rich]

the death of sex

We're talking the "*little* death", right?

[Warty]

Is there sex after death?

[Rich]

Not metal (except perhaps in a metaphorical sense) and NSFW.

[Warty]

Anything with James Randi in it is metal, at least as far as I'm concerned.

[Rich]

I bow corrected.

[DADIODADDY]

only for necrophiliacs

[John]

She does kind of sound like an old lesbian geezer here. Honestly I don't think Lady Gaga's music is that bad. And I think Paglia is on crack in praising early Madonna music. That was bubble gum pop crap that has aged very poorly. Who listens to Like A Virgin anymore? That song hasn't aged nearly as well as some other 80s pop like The Cure or Prince.

If Paglia is supposed to be so smart, why can't she figure out that Gaga's persona, such as it is, is just another in the long line of music acts dating from at least Little Richard up through Alice Cooper and Marlyn Manson that sells because 14 year olds like to shock their parents?

[SugarFree]

"Back in my day, you didn't need dental dam 'cause girls knew how to clean their pussy! Get off my lawn, you damn genderqueers! Pick a side! Where are my leather adult diapers? I want a banana, I don't care about the symbolic mouth-rape involved in eating one! Damn kids, with their interblogs and rss-whatnot!"

[JEP]

The real shame is that those 14 year olds don't know when to let things go and become adults. They hang on to those same "shocking" things through high school and into college.

They don't really mature again until they realize they're over 25 and might want to start doing something real.

[CaptainSmartass]

And by then, whatever was shocking when they were 14 is mainstream. So their kids have to take it to a whole nother level when the time comes.

[Invisible Finger]

The government infantilizes them for 18+ years, it shouldn't be surprising that it takes them beyond age 25 to figure out how to make decisions for themselves.

[Jesse Walker]

Who listens to Like A Virgin anymore?

Well, I've been listening to this version a lot lately...

[wylie]

sells because 14 year olds like to shock their parents

But why do i get the feeling most of the commenters here were getting their music selections from their parents or teaching their parents about new stuff?

My mom really loved when i got into Sublime. Conversely, when she got the Oh Brother soundtrack, I stole it immediately.

[?]

the icon of her generation

If a "generation" is defined as "two or three years," yeah, maybe. What I learn from reading Paglia is that she's mostly full of shit.

[John]

Mostly yes. She is funny and clever. But she uses her talents on stupid topics and spends most of her efforts dreaming ridiculous reasons why someone like Lady Gaga is important.

[Rhywun]

She's made a career out of ridiculing man-hating feminism, pointing out how worthless college is for most folks, and vigorously promoting individualism over tribalism. So what if she mostly writes about pop culture. If I hadn't come across her stuff on Slate about a decade ago... I'd still be reading Slate today.

[Maverick]

Much better article about why to tune-out Gaga.

[Invisible Finger]

20 years ago Tori Amos took the exact opposite approach to stardom. Went from tramp shtick to boring piano balladeer. Thankfully it will be less than ten year before Lady Gaga too will be ignored by practically everyone.

[Slut Bunwalla]

Just like Madonna, she will eventually have a fan base consisting entirely of flamboyant gay men.

[Slut Bunwalla]

I was referring to Lady Gaga there, not Tori Amos (whose last album sucked donkey balls, by the way).

[Rock Action]

Uh, there was no need to clarify that one. The few pairs of testicles at a Tori Amos show will rarely belong to the owner, and they're likely floating in a jar behind the juice bar.

All her albums suck donkey balls. History's dustbin, thank you very much.

[The Gobbler]

WTF happened to the Reason font?

[SugarFree]

Rather than mocking you for just now noticing last week's change, noscript for Firefox takes care of it.

[The Gobbler]

I was traveling all of last week and never looked at Reason until this morning. It really looks weird. Though on the plus side, it isn't blinking.

[SugarFree]

You didn't miss much. Last week was all mosquerbating and font-bitching.

[The Gobbler]

There's a mosque issue? That's odd.

But more importantly, how did Peter do last Monday? Did he hit the weekly double?

[hmm]

Which is better than fontquerbating?

[SugarFree]

"Ooh, baby. Yeah. Show me your serifs."

[hmm]

Comic Sans, Comic Sans, Comic Sans, Comic Sans!!!

Doh! too early.

[Jerry]

It got unionized.

[Rich]

You mean the less-than-popular browser-correctable "font of wisdom"?

[Edwin]

the "Combat mission" being over never meant that anybody expected all combat to end. It represents a change in the ultimate goals of the occupation over there.

Leave it to libertarians to make shitty arguments by conflating literal interpretations of monikers with actual, much more detailed, policies

[Warty]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[Libertarian Edith Bunker]

Oh. Ohhh... OHHHH!

[SugarFree]

The line between stupidity and parody has never been thinner.

[Spoonman.]

HAHAHAHA! Yeah, it wasn't a lie, it was just a "moniker" covering a "much more detailed policy" that means something completely different.

[Brett L]

Mission Accomplished.

[Warty]

If you write a sentence that contains something like "conflating literal interpretations of monikers", you're probably trying way too hard to sound smarter than you are.

[wylie]

Nah, i think it was worded that way to depict the implied level of obfuscatory....SHIT, now I'm doing it.

[Rich]

Good band name, though.

[Ron L]

Yeah, and he had his fingers crossed when he said that, too,

[Jozef]

From my backyard:

Farmer sued by county for growing too many vegetables and "having unpermitted employees"

[SIV]

Literally? You?

Or do you just live nearby in Clarkston or DeKalb County.

[Jozef]

I live in DeKalb. I didn't realize people could misinterpret my comment...

[Almanian]

Well, look at all the people who misinterpreted the end of the Iraq "combat mission" as end of the Iraq "combat mission", as Edwin notes above.

People misinterpret all kinds of things here at H&R...

[The Gobbler]

A whole different Playboy channel _ for the blind

http://www.accessatlanta.com/c.....ntlid=sldr

[Clich? Bandit]

You should work for reason. That is a perfect Brickbat. But I have one question for you...Do you know what the term DAILY means? If so then i am sorry, you wouldn't fit the culture.

Seriosuly...you have interns Reason...use them

[Clich? Bandit]

Ohh, and regarding that Brickbat about Blackhawk, CO. It is a self limiting proposition if you are dumb enough to ride a bike there. Hwy 6 is through a narrow, windy, slot canyon. Your choices of exit in an emergency would be 40 foot drop into icy river or Subaru Outback with ski rack.

Truly you have a dizzying intellect

[hmm]

Some Subaru's need challenging.

You're in quite the mood today Mr. Bandit.

[hmm]

no clue what Subaru is possessing.

[R C Dean]

The White House frets that divided government will mean "stalemate and gridlock."

Be still, my heart.

[Ron L]

One man's trash is another man's treasure...
Only Obama would see that as trash.

[cynical]

I imagine the entire political class sees that as trash. Of course, we see the entire political class as trash...

[Doc Merlin]

We can only hope!

[Warty]

"That doesn't really change a thing, it is still dangerous," said 22-year-old Specialist Byron Reed, on his second deployment in Iraq, as he prepared to escort a convoy to Camp Speicher from Balad air base in Salahuddin province.

[MarkG]

The protrayal that it's all kitten holding and passing out soccer balls is just crap. It will be dangerous for the troops for quite a while. The ISF are good, but not great. Last week 2 soldiers died as the base I spent 2009 in. We were lucky, no one died while I was there, but not for a lack of trying on the insurgents part. Of course, in this case, the Iraqi Army soldier decided to play insurgent while actually on the base. Makes it tough to have a good relationship with your counterparts if you feel threatened.

[GoNavy]

Are you still receiving combat pay?

[MarkG]

Not me, but the zone still qualifies.

[CavMedic]

MarkG-are you talking about the shooting in Tuz? I was at Bernstein in 2005.

[MarkG]

Yeah. I missed it in the news last week, but that's the same Iraqi Army unit I advised last year.

[CavMedic]

Small world.

[Slap the Enlightened!]

Reasons To Be Cheerful.

[peoria self storage]

I like your blog,and also like the article,and thank you for provide me so much information :))