Jan
21
2009

URLs du Jour

2009-01-21

  • OK, I laughed at this:
    Shares of In[t]uit … fell to their low on the day on strong volume after Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner reluctantly admitted during testimony before the Senate Finance Committee that he used the company's TurboTax software to prepare his returns.
    The share price since recovered, however, I think on the general realization that there's no way in Hell that Turbo Tax would have botched this.

    It is, however, a computer program, so the operative cliché is: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

  • Clayton Cramer thinks he's spotted Day-One Barackrobatics. After promising "I'm not going to try and take away your guns.", the new White House website supports bringing back the federal Assault Weapons Ban, which … would take away (some) people's guns.

    Doesn't count, unfortunately. Bringing back the Assault Weapons ban was also a campaign pledge. Are his stated positions contradictory? Yeah, pretty much. He is large, he contains multitudes.

    (Yes, this is an effort to restart the Pun Salad-invented word "Barackrobatics", referring to an Obama flipflop, backtrack, gyration, or climbdown on the issues. Unfortunately, judged by Google hits, our word is getting beaten like a rented mule by "Obamafuscation": 269,000 to 6. Clayton prefers "liar" over both of these neologisms.)

  • On the same theme, Greg Pollowitz of Planet Gore notes that November's campaign promise:
    • Enact a Windfall Profits Tax to Provide a $1,000 Emergency Energy Rebate to American Families.

      Obama and Biden will enact a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits to give American families an immediate $1,000 emergency energy rebate to help families pay rising bills. This relief would be a down payment on the Obama-Biden long-term plan to provide middle-class families with at least $1,000 per year in permanent tax relief.

    … did not survive the transition to whitehouse.gov. Oh well, stupid idea anyway. Hope you haven't already spent that $1000.

  • Lost starts back up tonight. At A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago, Isaac Spaceman has a handy recap of what's happened up 'til now, in the form of an imaginary dialog with the rescued castaways.