Heard any good Giffords jokes lately, schmuck?

Anyway, speaking of kicking, the person most deserving of pity in this post-season (if he isn’t already dangling from a rafter somewhere) is Billy Cundiff, the first-rate placekicker whose missed chip-shot field goal allowed the Patriots to get to the Super Bowl in the first place.

Sure, he made a very rare drop (for him) at a most inopportune time, but Brady allowed a safety on his first down, and lots of other mistakes were made by both teams, including the coaches (allowing 12 men on the field is the coach’s fault). The refs made mistakes too.

I feel bad for Welker. He’ll torment himself over it for the rest of his life. What do you get out of taunting him?

“Thank goodness for confirmation bias. I’m mildly dyslexic, and the New York Times just reported that dyslexia is a sort of perceptual super power. I assume my dyslexia super power allows me to detect truth in ways that regular mortals cannot. Apparently we dyslexics can detect patterns better than people who are tragically normal. I know this is true because I have excellent powers of perception. And I know I have excellent powers of perception because I’m always right. And I know my logic makes sense because it forms a perfect circle. I’m just not so sure about you.”

Replace “dyslexia” with “monocular-vision” and you get the peter-head in a nutshell.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hxKVbZ0awfSvfkBPv3rh79me_Saw?docId=CNG.a7acbb8a05b443b493ed5f589a6c264c.651

We’ll have to see whether it is the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat for His Awesomeness. It sure is a great year for political junkies, however.

Anyway: 52%? Not so fast.

This thing’s still a horse-race; a lot can happen between now and November.

Fair enough: Williamson shows a way to balance the budget without raising taxes. But how do you actually do it and is it worth it?

If you cut 20% off Medicare and 10% off Medicaid, how do you decide who doesn’t get an operation?

Pushing education spending from the federal government to the states merely shifts the burden for a zero sum gain.

If you want to cut off foreign aid, don’t complain to me when Israel gets overrun by its neighbors.

If you want to end government grants for medical research, then you should pray that you’ll never get cancer or Alzheimer’s.

While one could quibble with Williamson’s suggestions, I would give him credit for at least putting some ideas on the table. My point is simply that this kind of quantifiable analysis is missing from the political debate, for the simple reason that any politician who suggested cutting Social Security by 20% or ending crop supports would be out of a job toot sweet.

The fact is that spending is so wildly out of control, and the electorate so addicted to government goodies, that an actual balanced budget is just a fantasy at this point; the reality is that we’re screwed. The political will to really do something before it’s too late just isn’t there, among either the people or their “leaders”. All the bickering in Washington is really just about whether we go over the cliff sooner rather than later.

But if anybody had the balls to really address the problem, there are plenty of folks on the Right with suggestions on offer for a balanced budget, and yes, without raising taxes. Here’s what such an approach might look like.

I’ll remind you also, regarding raising taxes, that your guy said he would raise the capital-gains tax even if he knew that doing so would produce less revenue. It is this sort of thing that enlivens both the conservative and libertarian bases with to pry this man out of office before we see what he’ll do when he doesn’t have to worry about re-election.

Paul Ryan’s plan does not purport to balance the budget, but only to reduce it, and it claims to do so using wildly implausible assumptions (such as projecting that the rate of health care cost increases will be no greater than the rate of inflation, which hasn’t happened in decades),

Romney and the other candidates have vociferously supported balanced budget amendments. while being vague about how they would get there. This is for a simple reason: you can’t balance the budget without raising taxes, which is anathema to a party which believes that taxes are always too high and should never be raised for any reason.

There is a word for politicians who campaign on raising taxes and cutting benefits: loser. I will cheerfully concede that the Democrats have also refused to embrace political suicide by telling the simple truth that you can’t make significant progress on the budget deficit any other way. However, I think they are far less guilty (if at all) of making balanced budgets the centerpiece of their Weltanschauung while offering nothing but rhetoric on how to get there.

I’m sorry if I disappointed you as regards martial arts vs. sitzfleisch.

It is certainly the case that studying southern kung fu (Hung Ga in particular) does teach a person to endure suffering patiently. But that’s for training, and these interminable disputes with Peter have nothing whatsoever in common with the way an experienced martial artist confronts a dangerous opponent. In such a situation there is no room for patient fencing and jousting and humorous asides; one focuses all one’s energy and attention on killing or disabling one’s attacker as swiftly and certainly as possible. Every moment that the fight is prolonged is a further opportunity to get hurt or killed yourself.

Let me assure you also that the marital arts play no part whatsoever here.

I am eager to hear what the conservative agenda actually are for balancing the budget, dealing with the uninsured, restoring American competitiveness, dealing with a resurgent China, etc. There may be think tanks which generate white papers somewhere, but you certainly don’t hear serious proposals from the Republican Presidential candidates.

What bilge (and what a favorite trope of yours). The Republicans have offered all sorts of detailed plans, for years now. Each of the candidates has put out lengthy descriptions of what they intend to do (if you were to bother even to look). Paul Ryan offered a detailed budget plan last year that attracted a good deal of support.

Meanwhile President Obama plops down budget proposals so unserious that that even Harry Reid won’t support them.

As for Dodd-Frank: the question here is whether the cure is worse than the disease. If that’s so, then repeal is the wiser course.

Based on my very limited understanding of the martial arts, my intuition was that your patient ability to muster and direct your energy toward a seemingly futile task was a consequence of some aspect of your expertise in the martial arts (or, perhaps, marital arts vis a vis the lovely Nina). Sitzfleisch seems counter-intuitive.

For example, a plan for the budget which uses real numbers on a spreadsheet to say which programs will be cut and what revenue will pay for things. Romney’s plan to balance the budget is to lower taxes and raise military spending without cutting entitlements. How does he achieve this feat of prestidigation? We don’t know. His pitch is that since he made a lot of money as a corporate raider, he therefore is qualified to manage the economy (presumably similar to the two other Presidents of the past century who were businessmen: Herbert Hoover and W.) If Romney gets elected, it will be the Bain of our existence.

As for Dodd Frank: those who oppose it will claim that compliance will be unimaginably cumbersome, just as those who support Keystone will claim that it creates tens of thousands of jobs. Those on the other side will argue that the bankers’ claims are wildly exaggerated and Keystone only creates 6000 (mostly Canadian) jobs. I am disinclined to get into the nitty gritty to offer a qualified opinion. I’m simply saying that there are no alternatives on the table to Dodd Frank except repeal, and if there is a better mouse trap, let’s see it.