Is This A Joke?

Do Republicans seriously expect to lose to President Obama in next year's election?  They can't possibly be trying to put forward any serious proposals to govern this country.  That is all I can guess based on their proposed tax plans, which are beyond stupid.  Here's Newt Gingrich's:

GOP Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is proposing a massive tax cut aimed at the highest earning American households. Gingrich’s plan would add about $1 trillion to the federal deficit in a single year. And while most of the nation’s lowest income families would get no benefit from these tax cuts, the top 0.1 percent (who make an average of more than $8 million) would get about a quarter of the windfall, according to new estimates by my colleagues at the Tax Policy Center.
The Gingrich plan, which has gotten relatively little attention, gives taxpayers a choice. It is similar to the proposal offered by Texas Governor Rick Perry, only even more generous. Taxpayers could stick with today’s revenue code– Gingrich would permanently extend the Bush/Obama tax cuts. Or they could pay under an alternative system based on a flat 15 percent tax rate regardless of income. Capital gains, dividends, and interest income would be tax-free. The Alternative Minimum Tax would be abolished. Nearly all deductions and credits would be eliminated, except for the earned income, child, and foreign tax credits and the deductions for mortgage interest and charitable gifts. All taxpayers would get a $12,000 per-person exemption.

What a dumbfuck!  Capital gains, dividends and interest income would be tax free?  So let me get this straight.  Republicans believe that rich people are better off than everybody else because they work harder and are smarter (I disagree).  They also believe that the current tax code discourages said hard-working individuals from doing work (I disagree with that, also).  But their tax plans often don't tax unearned income from investments.  So if a person has, say, $2 million dollars in the bank, he or she can sit at home and probably have more income than the median household in the nation, but pay nothing in taxes.  If the same, supposedly hard working and intelligent person gets a job, he or she is going to have to pay 15% of that EARNED income in taxes.  Would that encourage or discourage somebody from working?

But what is truly puzzling is that Gingrich doesn't even try to make the numbers add up.  An increase in the deficit of over $1 trillion a year?  WTF?  So the only way to balance the budget is to what, close the whole damn government?  Either this man is completely innumerate, or he thinks the average citizen is dumber than a post.  I can't decide, but I'm leaning toward him thinking we are all stupid.  The Republican Party is one giant clown show.  Anyone who would vote for these clowns needs his or her noggin examined.

Moerlein Lager House

The Moerlein Lager House is scheduled to open February 27 down on the riverfront.  Cincinnati Business Courier (h/t Cubs dad):

A pre-opening gala benefiting Cincinnati Park’s Explore Nature program is scheduled on Saturday, Feb. 25.
Moerlein Lager House will include a working microbrewery producing a full line of Christian Moerlein Brewing Co. craft beers, plus a restaurant serving spent-grain breads, hand-carved sandwiches and smoked rotisserie meats, foods similar to those served in Cincinnati’s beer gardens in the 19th century. It will have seats inside for 500 and an outdoor beer garden for 600.
The lager house is in the new Smale Riverfront Park, located near the banks of the Ohio River.
Moerlein Lager House will be open Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to midnight, Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m., and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.

That sounds sweet.  I'll definitely stop there before a Reds game next season.  For more on 19th century Cincinnati saloon culture, check this out.

Chart of the Day

Via the Big Picture:

Happy St. Lucia Day

For all the Scandinavians out there, have a happy St. Lucia Day.  For those on the Island of St. Lucia, have a happy National Day:

Saint Lucy (283–304), also known as Saint Lucia, was a wealthy young Christian martyr who is venerated as a saint by Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and Orthodox Christians. Her feast day in the West is 13 December; with a name derived from lux, lucis "light", she is the patron saint of those who are blind. Saint Lucy is one of the very few saints celebrated by members of the Lutheran Church among the Scandinavian peoples, who take part in Saint Lucy's Day celebrations that retain many elements of Germanic paganism. Saint Lucy is one of seven women, aside from the Blessed Virgin Mary, commemorated by name in the Canon of the Mass. Hagiography tells us that Lucy was a Christian during the Diocletian persecution. She consecrated her virginity to God, refused to marry a pagan, and had her dowry distributed to the poor. Her would-be husband denounced her as a Christian to the governor of Syracuse, Sicily. Miraculously unable to move her or burn her, the guards took out her eyes with a fork. In another version, Lucy's would-be husband admired her eyes, so she tore them out and gave them to him, saying, "Now let me live to God"

The oldest record of her story comes from the fifth-century accounts of saints' lives. By the 6th century, her story was widespread, so that she appears in the Sacramentary of Pope Gregory I. At the opening of the 8th century Aldhelm included a brief account of her life among the virgins praised in De laude virginitatis, and in the following century the Venerable Bede included her in his Martyrology. In medieval accounts, Saint Lucy's eyes are gouged out prior to her execution. In art, her eyes sometimes appear on a tray that she is holding.

Traditional celebrations:

Saint Lucia's Day sometimes Lucia for short) is the Church feast day dedicated to St. Lucy and is observed on the 13th of December. Its modern day celebration is generally associated with Sweden and Norway but is also observed in Denmark, Italy, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Malta, Bosnia, Bavaria, Croatia, Slovakia and St. Lucia, West Indies. In the United States it is celebrated with cookies on the mantel in states for a large number of people of Scandinavian ancestry, often centered around church events.
In traditional celebrations, Saint Lucy comes as a young woman with lights and sweets. It is one of the few saint days observed in Scandinavia. In some forms, a procession is headed by one girl wearing a crown of candles (or lights), while others in the procession hold only a single candle each.

The day was thought to be the shortest of the year, thus the pagan roots and the obsession with candles, although that gross eyeball thing may also figure in with the lights.  I only noticed the day because it is annually noted on the calendar in the Old Farmer's Almanac.

Crop Input Prices To Increase

Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier:

Producers got some good and bad news Wednesday, Dec. 7, at the AG Expo in Osage. Agriculture experts forecast another financial windfall next year raising corn and soybeans, but profitability beyond 2012 is in serious doubt as input costs eventually overtake grain prices.

Chad Hart, Iowa State University Extension grain economist, told more than 100 producers and ag business officials at the Cedar River Complex Events Center that the cyclical nature of grain profitability will most likely catch up to producers in 2013. Landowners renting or selling ground and companies selling fertilizer, equipment, seed and other crop inputs have watched farmers rake in excellent profits in recent years and they want a bigger share of the pie.

Hart warned farmers that tough economic times lie ahead. Representatives of businesses at the expo didn't necessarily disagree.

"In 2013 you will be happy that you have money socked away," Hart told a producer at the expo. "Farming is competitive. I expect costs to catch up with prices."

Corn and soybean values have about doubled since 2006. Production expenses haven't escalated as much, but that's about to change.

Ouch. After seeing next year's fertilizer bill, I can't imagine it getting even higher.  We're protected on the cash rent side, but the other inputs bite us on the ass.  I'm definitely not looking forward to 2013.

Internet Gaming And The Fall Of Full Tilt Poker

James McManus at Grantland:

On September 20, Bharara raised the stakes even higher. He amended his original complaint to allege that Tilt's board of directors defrauded players by misrepresenting that their funds were available for withdrawal at any time. Then came the kicker: They'd used those funds to pay themselves $443,860,529.89. "Full Tilt was not a legitimate poker company, but a global Ponzi scheme," he said. "Insiders lined their own pockets with funds picked from the pockets of their most loyal customers while blithely lying to both players and the public alike about the safety and security of the money deposited with the company." He alleged that between April 2007 and April 2011, Bitar received about $41 million, Lederer $42.8 million, Furst $11.7 million. Ferguson was allocated $87,486,182.87 in distributions, of which he'd received about $25 million. The other $260 million had been dispersed among owners with fewer shares. Most of the money had allegedly been transferred to accounts in Switzerland and other overseas banks, and Bharara released the account numbers. He said the company had faced a growing shortfall in 2010 because it was unable to collect funds from U.S. players. To maintain its "safe and secure" image, it credited players with about $130 million it had never actually received. When players put the phantom funds into action and inevitably lost part of them to opponents in other countries, a massive shortfall developed. Bharara claimed the practice continued even after April 15, and that in June, Lederer and Bitar reported to fellow owners that there was only $6 million on hand, with global liabilities of more than $300 million.

That'll make me pay attention.

TimeScapes

TimeScapes 4K from Tom Lowe on Vimeo.

A Story You Have To Read

Here's The Awl's description of Bloomberg Businessweek's "The King of All Vegas Real Estate Scams":

Oh yes: this is the story that has it all, baby: Four Loko, insurance scams, foreclosures, a retired ladies detective club, RICO complaints, fake absentee ballots, the FBI, Las Vegas, offshore bank accounts and actual broken kneecaps. Stick with it, it gets crazier and crazier.

Here is one of the interesting characters in the story, which involves a scam involving Homeowner Association lawsuirs:

The change at the Vistana came fast that winter. In January 2005 the three new board members on the five-person board canceled a mediation session with Rhodes Homes, fired their attorneys from Angius & Terry, and replaced them with a firm called Spilotro & Kulla. John Spilotro was well known in Vegas not only because of his success as a criminal lawyer but also because of his famous uncle, Anthony “The Ant” Spilotro. During the ’70s, Anthony Spilotro moved from Chicago to Vegas allegedly to help run various mob-related businesses, including the Stardust Resort & Casino. In the years to come he ran roughshod over the city, forming a notorious burglary outfit called The Hole in the Wall Gang and touching off a spasm of street violence that drew national attention, and ultimately, a federal crackdown on organized crime in Vegas. In 1986 police found Anthony Spilotro’s body several feet under an Indiana cornfield. They suspected he’d been buried alive. In the 1995 Martin Scorsese-directed movie Casino, Joe Pesci plays a character based on Spilotro. A quarter-century later, the surname Spilotro still gives some people in Vegas the heebie-jeebies. “When I heard that name,” recalls Murray, “I went, ‘Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.’ ” (Spilotro did not respond to a request for comment. He has not been accused of any wrongdoing.)

It's a long story, but it never gets boring.

Eyes Like A Hawk

Dr. Ivan Schwab on how animals see, via the Dish:

Birds, on the other hand, possess rich color vision, in many cases better than our own. Most birds have four cone visual pigments, although this varies. In general, birds have an additional ultraviolet pigment in their cones and many more cones than we have. Furthermore the visual pigments that would be similar to ours span different wavelengths. Their visual experience is richer than our own in ways impossible to describe or understand. Not only do they see more colors, but the interpretation of colors would be different. Think of combining different colors of paint—if you combine more colors radiating from the same object, like a flower, you will see different colors. A hummingbird, then, would see a red flower as a different color because of the ultraviolet channel input.
You may ask what good are these extra color channels in birds? Of course, it’s hard to know completely since we can’t even understand the perception of the color “ultraviolet,” but here is an example. When a mouse is being hunted by a hawk, it will often urinate out of fear and to make itself as light as possible for escape. Mouse urine radiates ultraviolet and that actually helps the hawk follow the mouse trail. Fresher urine radiates more ultraviolet light. The ultraviolet arrow will point to lunch for the hawk.

Using Drones For Domestic Police Work

LA Times (via Balloon Juice):

Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said.

Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.

He also called in a Predator B drone.

As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.

But that was just the start. Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said.

If they aren't already using drones for pre-arrest surveillance (stakeouts and intelligence gathering), I'd be damned surprised.  It appears to me that is exactly what the last line of the quote implies.  My guess is that technology is well on its way to trampling the Fourth Amendment.  Data mining and drone surveillance will likely be used to "find" criminal activity, turning up suspects without having any reasonable cause to investigate them.  You better watch what you say on the phone, text or email, since we know the government is sorting through all of our communications.