To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
For some time, I thought that Sarah Palin was uninformed, uneducated, and uninterested. I didn't think she was stupid. Turns out, she is uninformed, uneducated, uniterested, and stupid. She is the perfect storm of vapidity.
If you want living proof of her dull mental power, look no further than her description of Paul Revere's famous ride.
After getting, quite litterally, every detail of the event incorrect, after even being called out by Fox News, she of course claimed that wrong is right, up is down, black is white. It got so very sad that Palin supporters -- and what a bat-shit-crazy lot they must surely be -- took to Wikipedia to alter the entry for the Revere ride to fit her warped reality.
Of course, Palin blamed the media for her woes, claiming a "gotcha question." What was the unfair, hard-nosed, mean-spirited question that she was asked that prompted her Revere Ramble? "What have you seen so far today and what are you going to take away from your visit?" I shit you not. As Jon Stewart says, "It doesn't make it a 'gotcha question' just because it got ya."
As usually, comedy was the best response to Palin. Check out Stephen Colbert here. Jon Stewart dealt with it here.
My wife and I took a day trip over the holiday weekend and visited the factory of Lamson & Goodnow. I love to cook and while my skills are not up to the level of my tools, I do love to use high-quality knives. I've always used German or Japanese knives, but that may be changing.
Lamson is the oldest knife manufacturer in the United States. Indeed, they provided cutlery to the White House for President Grant and they still manufacturer their wares in the same factories built in 1850. Their knives are beautiful and I purchased two to test, a 6" utility knife and a 6" boning knife. I chose their "Fire" line, which features acrylic handles instead of wood. This allows the knives to be much more water resistant to the point that soaking in water is allowed, something I would never do with my fine wooden-handled knives.
I like them so much that I plan to purchase two others... to start! :-)
Prices on their web site match suggested retail for merchants. However, at the factory I paid 25% less. Shelburne Falls is a lovely town in which to spend a day, so I recommend the drive. You won't be disappointed.
Hearing some politicians talk about taxes, one might be convinced the United States has one of the highest tax rates in the world.
But the reality is the federal tax rate, broadly measured, is the lowest it has been in 60 years, Bruce Bartlett writes in a new column. A look at the effective tax rate, which expresses taxes as a share of the country's economic output, belies the stream of political rhetoric arguing that taxes are relatively high, says Bartlett, who was a senior policy analyst under President Ronald Reagan.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has updated and refined a widely cited chart, laying out the origins of the country's current fiscal trajectory. And as before, the lion's share of the problem comes from ongoing George W. Bush-era policies -- particularly deficit-financed tax cuts, which eliminated Clinton-era surpluses and left the Treasury poised for a huge hit when the financial crisis and economic downturn further eroded federal revenues.
