amazing

Paul Ryan's Budget Would Lower Taxes For Wealthy, Raise Them For Everyone Else: Report

Paul Ryan’s ‘legitimate problem’

By Dana Milbank, Published: August 22The Washington Post

When Todd Akin sneezes, Paul Ryan catches a cold.
The Republicans’ soon-to-be nominee for vice president is supposed to be delivering a message about jobs and the economy, but he’s finding he cannot escape his longtime House colleague, now a national pariah for his exotic views on rape.

 

“His statements were outrageous, over the pale. I don’t know anybody who would agree with that. Rape is rape, period, end of story,” Ryan told Pittsburgh’s KDKA-TV in the first in a series of local TV interviews.
Except it wasn’t the end of the story. The questions were just beginning.
“Rape is rape. Rape is rape, period. End of story,” Ryan replied to another query.
“Rape is rape, and there’s no splitting hairs over rape,” he answered yet again.
Ryan is surely aching to talk about something other than Akin. But the outrage set off by the Republicans’ Senate nominee in Missouri has consumed the political world. It has been particularly harmful to Ryan, who has served for more than a decade with Akin, recently hailing him as “a great asset” on Ryan’s budget committee and an example of “exactly the kind of leadership America needs.”
More problematic in this situation: Ryan has the same antiabortion position as Akin — no exceptions — and some of the nearly 40 abortion bills he has co-sponsored have provided no exemption for rape victims.
This is more random bad luck for Mitt Romney, who has had more than his share in recent days. His running mate, chosen for his green-eyeshade savvy, has unexpectedly become a lightning rod in the culture wars, in an area where Republicans are at a decided disadvantage. Only 20 percent of Americans agree with Ryan and Akin that abortion should be illegal in all cases, according to a Gallup poll in May.
Akin, in an interview Wednesday morning with NBC’s Matt Lauer, confirmed that Ryan had called to try to push him from the race after his “legitimate rape” remark and his fanciful claim that women’s bodies could reject the sperm of rapists. “He felt that I had to make a decision, but he advised me that it would be good for me to step down,” said Akin, who rebuffed Ryan.
“It’s as you would imagine,” Ryan said when asked aboard his campaign plane later for his version of the call. “And I’ll keep it between us.” Ryan repeated his view that Akin “should’ve dropped out of the race, but he’s not. He’s going to run his campaign. We’re going to run ours.”
Would he call Akin again?
“I have no plans to,” the candidate said.
Surely Ryan would like to call Akin all kinds of colorful things for throwing Republicans badly off message on the eve of their convention. Romney, party officials and even Rush Limbaugh have called for him to quit. Akin’s dwindling list of supporters is down to a motley assortment of abortion hard-liners who applaud his no-exceptions stance.
Ryan has already surrendered that position. “Look, I’m proud of my record,” he told reporters on his plane, but “Mitt Romney is going to be president, and the president sets policy. His policy is exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. I’m comfortable with it because it’s a good step in the right direction.”
Does he now regret his sponsorship of legislation that made a distinction between “forcible rape” and other kinds — a position eerily similar to Akin’s “legitimate rape”?
“That bill passed, I think, by 251 votes,” Ryan replied. “It was bipartisan.” He neglected to mention that it passed after removal of the “forcible” language.
The candidate tried to guide the reporters back to friendlier topics. “This is fantastic,” he said of his brief time on the trail. “The encouragement from the crowds is just amazing. It’s an infectious enthusiasm.”
Perhaps, but that’s not the dominant strain infecting Ryan’s candidacy at the moment.

Adam Savage's toolbox

Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities. On Instagram, I'm @pescovitz

BB pal Adam Savage of MythBusters liked using antique leather doctor's bags to hold his tools. But the bags couldn't handle the 50+ pounds of tools that he needed while working at Industrial Light and Magic. So he remade the bags out of aluminum and added scissor lifts for easy reach. "The finished boxes housed everything I needed, but I repeatedly rebuilt the insides until finally no tool had to be moved out of the way to get to another," Adam wrote in Wired. "That’s first-order retrievability

Little face Mitt

      YIKES............

Mitt Romney's tax bill under Paul Ryan's budget? 0.82% (Your taxes will probably go up, though)

  Paul Ryan wants to kill all tax on capital gains, interest, and dividends -- income you get from owning things, rather than doing a job. Under this plan, Mitt Romney's $21,000,000 in 2010 income would be largely tax-exempt. Only his speaking and author fees -- $593,996 -- would be taxed, and only at 25%, for a net tax of $177,650 on $21,661,344 -- that is, 0.82%.

Undead Disney Princesses: Snow White, Ariel & Cinderella as Zombies

Thai artist Witit Karpkraikaew has imagined Disney princesses as undead brain-eaters in this series that shows Snow White, Ariel and Cinderella as gruesome zombies.

via

A strident atheist/feminist/meth addict who collected both medicare and medicade under a alias...perfect.....

Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand Fan, Brings Writer's Philosophy To Presidential stage....

WASHINGTON -- When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney selected Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as his running mate, he wasn't just picking a self-proclaimed nerd and policy wonk, he was picking Ayn Rand's latest and best literary agent.
Rand's windy, melodramatic prose has been a conservative and libertarian inspiration for decades. Her novels "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" are deemed essential philosophical tracts in defense of capitalism and the will of the individual over a society based on shared sacrifice. Rand titled one of her books "The Virtue of Selfishness."
In a recent New Yorker profile, Ryan called her a key inspiration in his life. His coming-of-age moment featured Rand.
"I grew up on Ayn Rand," Ryan told the Atlas Society, a group of Rand devotees, in a 2005 speech. "That's what I tell people ... you know, everybody does their soul-searching, and trying to find out who they are and what they believe, and you learn about yourself ... I grew up reading Ayn Rand, and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are."
Ryan went on to say that Rand's works are required reading for his staff. "The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand," he went on to say. "And the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism."
Rand's works featured prominently in a 2009 Ryan video critique of President Barack Obama. The congressman said that he was not surprised that Rand's novels have spiked in popularity since Obama took office. "It's that kind of thinking, that kind of writing that is sorely needed right now," Ryan said. "And I think a lot of people would observe that we are right now living in an Ayn Rand novel, metaphorically speaking."
In April, Ryan attempted to distance himself from his prior infatuation with the novelist, telling the National Review in an interview, "If somebody is going to try to paste a person's view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don't give me Ayn Rand." (A spokesman later suggested that Ryan was not repudiating Rand's philosophy, but that Ryan did not make staffers read "Atlas Shrugged.")

Rand followers are apparently overjoyed at Romney's choice of Ryan as his vice presidential pick.
"I think the announcement is great news," Aaron Day, CEO of the Atlas Society, told Politico. "[T]he influence of Rand on Ryan as it relates to the role and nature of government is a huge step forward for the liberty movement."

that didn't take long..........

Clear-bottomed swimming pool atop skyscraper

This cantilevered clear-bottomed swimming pool is on the 24th floor of the Holiday Inn Shanghai Pudong Kangqiao

Pink Floyd: The Story of Wish You Were Here

Eagle Rock Entertainment recently released the Pink Floyd: The Story of Wish You Were Here on Blu-ray, a documentary that tells the story behind Pink Floyd‘s creation of their iconic 1975 studio album Wish You Were Here, the follow up to the highly successful album The Dark Side Of The Moon.

Short summary of the film:

This program tells the story of the making of this landmark release through new interviews with Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Nick Mason and archive interviews with the late Richard Wright. Also featured are sleeve designer Storm Thorgerson, guest vocalist Roy Harper, front cover burning man Ronnie Rondell and others involved in the creation of the album. Original recording engineer Brian Humphries revisits the master tapes at Abbey Road Studios to illustrate aspects of the songs construction.
Bonus Features: The Blu-ray contains additional bonus material not featured in the TV broadcast version, including further interviews with Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Nick Mason plus Roger Waters and David Gilmour performing excerpts from the Wish You Were Here album.

images

ah yeah 2.............

ah yeah.............

Ye Animated Git, An Animated GIF Illustration Project by Zach Cohen

Ye Animated Git is an animated GIF illustration project on Tumblr by Israel based illustrator and animator Zach Cohen. The project mixes Zach’s unique black and white hand illustrated art style with an appropriate touch of poetry.

artwork created by Zach Cohen

The Ghostly Remains of “Borscht Belt” Hotels and Resorts

Andrea Saul, Romney Spox, Gets Pilloried For Mentioning Candidate's Most Important Achievement

So, it's come to this. Today, a spokeswoman for Mitt Romney responded to an attack ad disseminated by a super PAC supporting President Barack Obama. The ad was a controversial broadside, worthy of a response. The spokeswoman spoke against the ad with conviction. She offered a counter argument that was precise and logical and fair. The spokeswoman cleanly invoked her candidate's greatest legislative achievement, in an eminently reasonable way, in her candidate's defense.
And that spokeswoman's response is being hailed as one of the 2012 campaign season's most colossal cock-ups.

Sigh. Here's what happened. This week, Priorities USA Action, a super PAC run by former Obama adviser Bill Burton (who is surely not "coordinating" his efforts with the Obama campaign, because that would be tsk-tsk illegal!) put out a brutal attack ad. It tied the activities of Bain Capital to the death of a woman who lost her health care coverage as a result of her husband losing his job at GST Steel, one of the celebrated casualties of Bain's business practices. As Alex Burns reported:

The commercial casts Mitt Romney’s business background in a severely negative light, but it's not a typical slash-and-burn attack ad. Instead, it features former GST Steel employee Joe Soptic speaking to the camera about what happened when the plant where he worked shut down. "I don't think Mitt Romney understands what he's done to people's lives by closing the plant. I don't think he realizes that people's lives completely changed," Soptic said. “When Mitt Romney and Bain closed the plant, I lost my health care and my family lost their health care. And a short time after that my wife became ill.”

In 2006, Soptic's wife passed away, and a future attack ad was born.
In the immediate aftermath of the ad's deployment, the Romney camp issued a relatively standard response, referring to the ad as dishonest and accusing the president and his allies of using such attacks to distract from economic issues. And nothing more might have come of this had Romney's team stuck to that story.

But on Fox News this morning, Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul went "off-script," and amid a larger declaration about the ad being despicable and some pushback on the facts of the ad, she offered this statement in Romney's defense: "To that point, if people had been in Massachusetts, under Governor Romney's health care plan, they would have had health care."

After that came the deluge of conservatives savaging Saul for getting lost on the road to Damascus, essentially accusing her of giving away the election.
The thing is, though, Saul's logic in citing Romney's creation and implementation of CommonwealthCare in Massachusetts is impeccable. Her baseline argument: If you are going to hit Romney with the Bain practices that allegedly led to this woman losing her health insurance, you surely must credit him for his legislative accomplishments, which enabled thousands of uninsured people to obtain life-saving care. That is, for the most part, pristine reasoning.
The only problem, of course, is that this wasn't offered in 2008, when it would have been hailed as a brilliant defense. We've once again come face to face with the perplexing weirdness at the center of Romney's entire presidential effort: in 2012, Romney is not allowed to run on the singular achievement of his career -- Massachusetts health care -- that earned him a spot in the world of GOP presidential contenders in the first place.
I've said this before: for all of the grief that Romney has taken for his multitude of flip-flops over the years, those are not, collectively, as damaging to Romney's ambition as the way the Republican Party has flopped on him. In 2008, RomneyCare was held to be an accomplishment with edge -- he'd neatly co-opted a key Democratic Party plank, universal health care, and delivered it to his constituents, using the individual mandate concept dreamed up by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Coupled with his time spent rescuing the Salt Lake City Olympics, Romney had reason to brag about his managerial acumen and problem-solving ability.
But after Romney's idea got re-co-opted by the Obama administration, Romney became another victim of the vagaries of tribal politics, which dictated that anything that even vaguely resembled ObamaCare was now anathema. Romney has tried to manage this mess by explaining away his own accomplishment as something that he never envisioned being imposed by the federal government. That argument hasn't gained much traction, probably because people essentially remember that his health care accomplishment was front-and-center during his 2008 run.

And if the reaction to Saul's statement proves anything, it's that the tribe has only become less inclined toward Romney's health care law. The fury, in this instance, was led by Red State founder Erick Erickson, who earnestly tweeted: "OMG. This might just be the moment Mitt Romney lost the election. Wow." Ever since then, he's been blogging about Saul's statement as if it were a massive disaster, assuring his readers that "Mitt Romney’s ardent supporters are fit to be tied today." Rush Limbaugh has since piled on, telling his listeners that "Andrea Saul's appearance on Fox was a potential gold mine for Obama."

The sentiments being expressed by Erickson and Limbaugh, it should be noted, are not universal. Erickson himself has written about some of the negative reaction to his remarks, and while no one he cites defends Saul, there are apparently some who are giving Erickson grief about his outsized reaction. Erickson, however, haughtily dismisses these concerns:

Andrea Saul cited Romneycare approvingly, conservatives rightly piled on, and Romney supporters are defending the guy. “You’re hurting him,” cried one.
“Thanks for making this the big story of the day, Jackass,” cried another.
Andrea Saul made this the big story of the day. She is hurting Romney. She is an official voice of the campaign. This was an unforced error of monumental idiocy and the blowback is deserved, appropriate, and -- most importantly -- absolutely necessary.

He goes on to approvingly cite the remarks tweeted by fellow RedStater Dan McLaughlin:

What conservatives are doing re Andrea Saul's comment is the same as how you housebreak your dog. Romney needs to know not to go there.

Tie Andrea Saul to the roof of a car and drive her to Canada, I guess!

At any rate, Saul's comment is now bound, inevitably, for the Kinsley Gaffe Hall Of Fame -- the "Kinsley Gaffe" being, let's recall, when "a politician tells the truth -- some obvious truth he [or she] isn't supposed to say." But I'm not sure people understand that this particular Kinsley Gaffe deserves an asterisk -- it's only a gaffe by dint of the fact that so much has changed between 2008 and 2012. And for that reason, I'm not sure people fully understand just how outrageous it would be for Saul to be subjected to "housebreaking" over this flap.

nice.......

Animals Acting Like Sharks Week, A Funny Video by Revision3

As a play on Discovery Channel’s Shark Week (and because they don’t have a big budget), internet TV network Revision3 created Animals Acting Like Sharks Week, a funny low budget video full of cute critters acting like and dressed up like sharks.

Mexican-US illegal migration has been largely static since the 1950s

 
Princeton's alumni magazine has an excellent profile of Douglas Massey, Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs and director of Princeton’s Office of Population Research. Massey studies patterns of US migration, particularly illegal immigration from Mexico. His research is the only rigorous census of Mexican-American illegal immigration flows, and its conclusions are that the US perception of Mexican migration is completely backwards, and that the major immigration problems are the result of bad policy, not changes in volume:

The MMP’s reports are freely available to anyone through its website, http://mmp.opr.princeton.edu. But statistics can be sterile things. Get Massey going, and one gets an earful about the true state of affairs along the border. To wit: * We are not being flooded with illegal Mexican migrants. The total number of migrants from Mexico has varied very little since the 1950s. The massive influx many have written about never happened. * Net illegal migration has stopped almost ­completely. * Illegal migration has not stopped because of stricter border enforcement, which Massey characterizes as a waste of money at best and counterproductive at worst. * There are indeed more undocumented Mexicans living in the United States than there were 20 years ago, but that is because fewer migrants are returning home — not because more are sneaking into the country. * And the reason that fewer Mexican citizens are returning home is because we have stepped up border enforcement so dramatically. Mull over that last point for a minute. If Congress had done nothing to secure the border over the last two decades — if it had just left the border alone — there might be as many as 2 million fewer Mexicans living in the United States today, Massey believes.

.'

Unboxing the astoundingly cool, dirt-filled ParaNorman press-box

By Cory Doctorow at 4:45 am Thursday, Aug 9 • 0 Comments • Share

Cory Doctorow

Aug 17-20, St Petersburg SF&F Assembly Rapture of the Nerds tour with Charlie Stross

:
Lexington, Brooklyn, Brookline, RochesterContext (essays)
With a Little Help (short stories)
For the Win (YA novel)
Makers (adult novel)
I've just come back from a four-week working vacation with my family in LA, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Mountain View. As is customary on the morning after a long-distance family trip, I dragged my jet-lagged butt into my PO Box, where there was the usual mountain of stuff waiting for me -- bills, books for review, and a heap of junk mail as tall as me. But today, there was also a bubble-wrapped crate, quite heavy. Groaning a little at the thought of dragging this to the office, I peeled back the bubble-wrap...and then hastily jammed it back again, as the crate disintegrated and began to dump green potting soil on the carpet of my mailbox company. We taped the whole thing back up again and I got it to the office in the back of a taxi. Once here, I grabbed a knife and set the crate down on a revolting, sodden sofa some miscreant dumped in the parking lot, thinking that whatever the box spilled out onto that wreck could only improve it. As I sliced away the bubble-wrap again, the crate completely fell to pieces, revealing an upside-down wooden coffin. I'd opened it from the bottom! Digging through the greenish soil (which was odorless, though it did leave powdery smears on my clothes), I discovered that the top of the box sported some live sod, and under that, a piece of semi-rotted burlap that semi-protected the coffin's lid, which was intricately laser-cut with an 18th-century date and a monstrous icon. Dusting off the coffin, I brought it back into the office, scraping as much of the crate's remnants as I could into the dumpster.
Prising the lid off the coffin, I discovered an absolutely gorgeous soft poseable maquette of a zombie from ParaNorman, the forthcoming Laika film. ParaNorman was clutching a rolled up scroll with a hand-written note telling me about the movie and making some shrewd guesses about how I'd relate to it. I generally find elaborate PR stuff to be kind of tedious -- like getting torrents of the cheeziest SkyMall tchotchkes in the mail. But the ParaNorman folks really know what they're about. It was pretty gutsy to send me a giant box of dirt with a doll in it, and the doll needed to be extremely cool to overcome the automatic inward groan at the thought of having to deal with a massive MOOP spill when I opened the crate. There are a million ways that this could have misfired, but it didn't. Bravo, seriously. As for the movie? Hell, I don't know. I was a big fan of Laika's treatment of Neil Gaiman's Coraline, so I would have gone to see this even without the weird-ass, amazing press kit. On the other hand, I probably wouldn't have hyped the movie beforehand, so they're doing something right. I don't know what I would do if every PR pitch came with a package this elaborate -- I'd end up drowning in potting soil, for one thing. But this is the most creative and awesome thing I've ever gotten in the mail, and they've earned this post. Here's the trailer:

ADVERTISEMENT

Four comics panels that never work

By Cory Doctorow at 10:47 pm Wednesday, Aug 8 • 16 Comments • Share

Cory Doctorow

Aug 17-20, St Petersburg SF&F Assembly Rapture of the Nerds tour with Charlie Stross

:
Lexington, Brooklyn, Brookline, RochesterContext (essays)
With a Little Help (short stories)
For the Win (YA novel)
Makers (adult novel)
Here's Mark Waid's fitting tribute to Wally Wood's "Twenty-Two Panels That Always Work" -- four panels that don't. Also available as a handsome print, suitable for framing and display near to one's drafting table. Mark Waid's Four Panels That Never Work (via Making Light)

Vintage train fan excited about rare vintage train is the new "Double Rainbow" (video)

By Xeni Jardin at 10:30 pm Wednesday, Aug 8 • 22 Comments • Share

xeni jardin

Boing Boing partner, Boing Boing Video host and executive producer. Xeni.net, Twitter, Google+. Email: xeni@xeni.net.

[Video Link] Double rainbow, all the way. Oh my god. (via Newley Purnell)

Back yard DIY PVC rollercoaster with a 12-foot drop (video)

By Xeni Jardin at 10:13 pm Wednesday, Aug 8 • 16 Comments • Share

xeni jardin

Boing Boing partner, Boing Boing Video host and executive producer. Xeni.net, Twitter, Google+. Email: xeni@xeni.net.

[Video Link] About this video, which is a few months old but new to me, I can put it no more eloquently than Eric Meyerson of Youtube: "There's a fine line between 'world's best dad' and 'Darwin Awards.'"