I realize there are far more important things to worry about in the world, but as I read local blogs about West Hartford news, I keep running into people who refer to our town council members with phrases like “our Democrat mayor” or “the Democrat majority.”

Democrat is a noun. Democratic is an adjective. Beyond that, “Democratic Party” is a proper noun and the official name of the party. So, it’s “our Democratic mayor” and “the Democratic majority” in American English.

If this were a slip or a typo, I’d ignore it and certainly wouldn’t bring it up but I’m seeing it enough that it’s clearly a tactic from Republicans more interested in making cheap partisan shots than showing basic respect for neighbors and fellow citizens who happen to disagree with them politically.

Let’s all grow up, please?

If you’re paying for a subscription, you really ought to stop now. In an editorial lamenting the “high” US corporate tax rate, the venerable Wall Street Journal published this graph:

That chart is egregious. We learned in high school how to draw best-fit graphs and drawing a line through the furthest outlier doesn’t quite seem to fit the bill. Hell, even Microsoft Excel will draw a better graph than this guy did.

If you want an economist’s debunking of this stupidity, I offer you Mark Thoma’s analysis as well as Kevin Drum’s post, where I originally found this story.

BTW, another serious issue with the graph is that it doesn’t actually take into account corporate tax breaks and exemptions (loopholes) written into the law. In other words, it doesn’t look at the effective tax rate for corporations, which is, obviously, much lower than the WSJ reports.

On top of that, the original research ignores reality. Norway, the very point that turns this into the authors’ version of a Laffer curve, supplements it’s low marginal corporate tax rate with an extra 50% tax (bringing the rate to 78%) on the domestic oil industry, which shares the two properties of being tied to Norway (can’t move to another country) and still highly profitable in the face of such taxes. So, uh, that whole point about lower taxes bringing higher tax revenues is, um, not really applicable to Norway.

The study referenced in the article was released by The American Enterprise Institute which must be a think-tank full of right-wing, poorly educated idiots. How else can you explain releasing this?

This is why I’m not a fan of Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT). He seems like he would be a good representative and one that could represent the “grown-up” Republicans of yore. But then he’ll just turn around and bend to the party spin and say some stupid things. It’s become pretty clear that he’s not really focused on any principle. How else could he describe electrocuting prisoners as not torture, but “a sex ring?” Watch:

He doesn’t deserve to be in Congress and I hope the people of the 4th District elect Diane Farrell. Consider donating if you’re in her district.

(via TPM)

In case you didn’t get the Daily Show clip I posted earlier, all you need to know is that Fox blowhard Bill O’Reilly has decided to, uh, “defend Christmas.” I’m not really sure against whom, but apparently O’Reilly and a number of right wing groups are upset about people saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. They then, apparently, blame that on liberals or secularists.

I was showing the clip to a coworker and mentioned that I don’t really get the whole “war on Christmas” claim… I’m a left-of-center moderate (who’s not Christian) and I live with a very liberal woman and neither one of us mind people saying Merry Christmas. Heck, we even say it ourselves. After thinking about it for a while, we couldn’t think of one person we knew who minds seeing Merry Christmas. Heidi lays it out on her blog.

I just don’t get the victim complex of these right wing fundamentalists. It’s completely baffling.