The Noble Pundit

A Political Quiz

I don't often like the quizzes that make the rounds of the blogosphere and am usually very suspect of any emails I get asking for a link to one. But this one from Donald Hagen is a riot. Some of the questions:

What are the best forms of taxation?

CONS: - Flat taxes, where everyone pays the exact same dollar amount. Clearly, it doesn't require a Harvard MBA to see that flat taxes are truly the fairest way to equally distribute the tax burden among all citizens.

Incredibly, many so-called fair-minded liberals are against flat taxes, and argue that progressive income tax brackets are the "fairest" form of taxation. Now what sort of twisted logic is that? And yes, Ronald Reagan was absolutely correct when he observed that graduated income tax brackets were invented by Karl Marx.

Now the surprising irony about the widespread popularity of graduated tax brackets, is that despite their image a as a politically powerful segment of society, the wealthy remain the only group of people that it is still perfectly legal--and in fact, expected--to discriminate against.

And to make matters worse, the media constantly perpetuate negative stereotypes about the affluent minority. In novels, movies, and TV shows wealthy characters are always portrayed as a vile heartless blend of the very worst qualities of Ebenezer Scrooge, Scarlet O'Hara, and Snidely Whiplash.

LIBL: - Graduated Income Taxes

- Corporate Income Taxes

- Luxury Taxes

- Excess Profits Taxes

- Gift Taxes

- Estate Taxes

- Gasoline Taxes

- Windfall Profits Taxes

- Sin Taxes

- FICA Taxes

- Property Taxes

- Alcohol Taxes

- Guzzler Taxes

- Cigarette Taxes

- Employer Paid Taxes

- Sales Taxes

- Oleomargarine Taxes

- Junk Food Taxes

- Corporate Polluter Taxes

- Hotel/Soak the Rich Out of Towner's Taxes

- Business Regulation Compliance Costs/Taxes

- Behavior Activists Disagree with Taxes

LBRT: - Voluntarily pay for government services when you voluntarily use them. If these services are such a great deal, then governments won't have any problems finding an ample number of willing customers.

I would rather live in a nation with wealthy neighbors, than wealthy governments.

COMM: - Taxation is unneeded if you cut out the middleman, and simply enslave the populace directly.

A former defense contractor announces the development of a new hazard avoidance feature for cars. When the safety system's onboard radar detects an impending collision, the car automatically deploys a rocket-powered ejector seat that shoots its occupant 37,000 feet into the air, then parachutes him gently to Earth. Needless to say, this feature would raise the price of cars by a factor of ten. We should...

CONS: let auto manufactures study the devices, and make their own determination about the suitability of adding ejector seats to their product lines.

LIBL: require every car company doing business in America to make ejector seats standard equipment by the release of next year's model year. Make it a Federal offense to disconnect or tamper with emergency ejection equipment.

LBRT: wait until the auto industry's engineers design ejector seats that are economically feasible. In the meantime, let consumers who want the ultimate in motoring safety, purchase ejector seats for their own cars in the after market.

COMM: force the incorporation of ejection seats in mass transit systems.

These are just a couple of the questions on the quiz. A number of the answers are downright hilarious.

FWIW, I ended up choosing between the Conservative and Libertarian answers most of the time, but I have to admit the Commie answers were much simpler (and usually funnier).

Some Good Morning Humor

For those of you who like to link politics and sports, here is an excellent parody of what could have been yesterday in the Daytona 500 had the DNC entered their candidates.

It just about had me on the floor.

Hmmm.... Is Communism Poised To Take Over The World (Again)?

The Commissar over at The Politburo Diktat is attempting more subversion of capitalist America.

First he tries to cast doubt one the President by pointing out that he got traffic tickets. How can we possibly have such a scofflaw as President? Next thing we'll know he'll be double parking Marine One!

And then in a blatent attempt to reintroduce the banner of communism in a more politically acceptable manner, he suggests naming the Comcast/Disney corporation - Commey. Think of how such a name would slowly subvert our children as they enjoy their annual pilgrimage to Commey World. They could not defeat us in an militaristic or economic fight, so the new plan appears to be defeating us by taking over our culture.

Does any comrade know where I can pick up a good Russian dictionary?

Battle Hymn Of The Loser

Via Jay Solo....

The Battle Hymn Of The Loser, a quite nice pæan to the memory of the defeatable Al Gore. Go take a look for a good laugh.

Pictures From Mars

My dad sent me this in an email today. Apparently, it is the first picture to be sent back from The Red Planet.

Top Ten Secrets From Saddam's Papers

Letterman took his shots at Saddam last night in his Top Ten List:

Top Ten Secrets Learned From Saddam Hussein's Papers

10. "Saddam" is Kurdish for "Duane"

9. Had just acquired a New York City cabdriver's license

8. Surprisingly, dots his "I"s with hearts

7. You won't find a bigger Clay Aiken fan

6. Four of clubs? Gay

5. His "divine plan for world domination" was written on back of Blimpie's coupon

4. Continued to name himself "Iraqi of the Month" right through November

3. Was working on a book of "You Might Be a Dictator If..." jokes

2. Funneled money to ABC to throw Trista and Ryan a fabulous wedding

1. He wrote letters to "Penthouse" under name "Sexy in Spider Hole"

God, In All His Names, Learns Photoshop

Got to love it when the Man Upstairs decides to screw around with us. Here is His version of Photoshop fun, from two slightly different points of view:

Allah takes his shots....

And Yahweh takes his...

It's good to see that God still has a sense of humor.

Morning Humor

Something Awful has a collection of Halloween stories that didn't quite make it (look for today's post).

I particularly liked the first one The Cursed Bean.

Of course, the link for Preggie Pops is a little more, um, odd. Just another little something to make you go "Hmmm" to start the morning.

Priorities

In the World News section:
Middle East: Radical Islamists
Call for Boycott of All
American-Made Products
Except Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

I can buy that. It's hard to resist the little cholesterol rings. The minute they reject the sugar laden, heart attack inducing, Southern delicacy is the day that I finally have to admit that they are no longer rational or reasonable to deal with.

The bad part about this post is that I now have to stop on my way to work tomorrow and buy some KKs. Oh, well.