Obama, I think you just won my vote

He came out and said he'd support a constitutional amendment to end Super-PACs. No doubt there is some political motivation here since Romney is dominating the Super-PAC game but the rules around campaign finance are certainly contributing to the current disaster in DC.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-29/obama-says-amendment-may-be-needed-to-limit-campaign-finance.html

Music + Dancing = Beheading

In case anyone doesn't already think Afghanistan is a screwed up place - 17 people were beheaded for attending a party. This is the closest I've come to supporting the war since 2001.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/27/afghanistan-beheadings-idUSL3E8JR1GG20120827

Gentlemen, its been a good run

Op-ed in the NYT asks - Men, Who Needs Them? I can't argue with this kind of logic:

If men were cars, who would buy the model that doesn’t last as long, is given to lethal incidents and ends up impounded more often?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/opinion/men-who-needs-them.html

I didn't realize this was legal...

If you have a life insurance policy you can sell it to someone else, they will pay your premiums and collect the money when you die. If your life expectancy is 40 years then this policy isn't worth much because there are a lot of premiums left to play but if you have cancer and your life expectancy is say 1 year then this policy is very valuable. But then whoever owns the policy wants you to die as soon as possible so they get the biggest possible payout. Apparently banks and hedge funds can buy pools of these policies from brokers. Is it just me or do I see another wall street scandal coming?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/magazine/are-you-worth-more-dead-than-alive.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all

Songs stuck in my head part 1

I periodically get songs stuck in my head and listen to them like a hundred times over the course of a week so I thought I'd share what's been going through my head of late:

Talk about the passion ~ REM

Part of me ~ Katy Perry

Without me ~ Eminem

Wrong 'em boyo ~ Clash

Real wild child ~ Iggy Pop

Mitt Romney = everything that's wrong with the tax code

Mitt Romney said today that he's paid at least 13% taxes over the last 10 years.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/08/16/us-usa-campaign-romney-idINBRE87F10T20120816

Yes that sounds pretty ridiculous, to give you an idea of just how ridiculous this is I did some math. Let's say you were unemployed last year and collecting unemployment benefits all year at the national average rate of $300 per week. So over the year you collected a total of $15,600 of benefits. Naturally our tax code says that unemployment benefits count as income and are therefore subject to income taxes. The first $8700 is taxed at 10% and the remaining $6900 is taxed at 15%. That means you would have paid a tax rate of 12.2%. Think about this for a second - this means there are millions of unemployed Americans defaulting on their loans, losing their houses and they're paying essentially the same tax rate as Mitt "250 million dollar" Romney.

Moving and Minimalism

Every time I move I'm appalled by how much stuff I have so inevitably I throw out or donate a lot of stuff (i.e. 4 of the 6 sets of xmas lights that I found). I don't think I could get down to 15, 39 or 60 things as described in this blog post but maybe I'll start a donation bag with old winter clothes next month.

http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/you-probably-have-too-much-stuff/?src=me&ref=business