Gov. Perry counters 9-9-9 with his own numbers in a preview of tomorrow's rollout at the WSJ: 20-20.

The plan starts with giving Americans a choice between a new, flat tax rate of 20% or their current income tax rate. The new flat tax preserves mortgage interest, charitable and state and local tax exemptions for families earning less than $500,000 annually, and it increases the standard deduction to $12,500 for individuals and dependents.

This simple 20% flat tax will allow Americans to file their taxes on a postcard, saving up to $483 billion in compliance costs. By eliminating the dozens of carve-outs that make the current code so incomprehensible, we will renew incentives for entrepreneurial risk-taking and investment that creates jobs, inspires Americans to work hard and forms the foundation of a strong economy. My plan also abolishes the death tax once and for all, providing needed certainty to American family farms and small businesses.

He also wants to cut the corporate rate tax to 20%. And he's got what Cain's plan lacked: awareness that taxes are only half the problem:

All of these tax cuts will be meaningless if we do not control federal spending. Last year the government spent $1.3 trillion more than it collected, and total federal debt now approaches $15 trillion. By the end of 2011, the Office of Management and Budget expects the gross amount of federal debt to exceed the size of America's entire economy for the first time in over 65 years.

Entitlement reform is on the menu.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:52 PM | Comments (242)
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Game 5. Chris Carpenter up for the Cards, CJ Wilson for the Rangers.

ALSO! Is this really a Herman Cain ad?

It's, interesting.

(it's all over Twitter)

more...

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:04 PM | Comments (124)
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Since we're looking for content . . . a bit on an issue near and dear to my heart:

Gabe Newell, a co-founder of Valve, a video game company and groundbreaking online game distribution company, shares something that should be obvious, but oddly isn't, at least not to everyone:

"The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. ItÂ’s by giving those people a service thatÂ’s better than what theyÂ’re receiving from the pirates," he said.

Word. When IP owners place barriers between their product and the customer's enjoyment, they incentivize bad behavior. I'm happy to pay for games and music and videos and whatever. But if IP owners make it impossible to get to or even moderately inconvenient to get to the work---say, with delayed releases, paralyzing DRM restrictions, etc.---somebody's going to provide an alternative.

For example:

According to Newell, Russia -- which is often ignored as a market due to its high level of piracy -- is one of Steam's highest grossing countries.

"Russia now outside of Germany is our largest continental European market," said Newell, adding that "the people who are telling you that Russians pirate everything are the people who wait six months to localize their product into Russian.

I've certainly enjoyed Steam's offerings, particularly their ever-growing catalog of older games that I want for nostalgia value.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:03 PM | Comments (84)
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By "publishing" they mean leaking information like the names of informants in Afghanistan.. (Julian Assange went on to opine that if they were killed due to his disclosures, they deserved to be killed.)

The dire financial picture comes 10 months after PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, and other payment services significantly curtailed WikiLeaks' ability to raise funds by refusing to process payments from supporters. Assange told journalists in London that donations to the site have all but dried up since the embargo was put in place. Last year, the average cumulative total was about 100,000 euros, compared with 6,000 euros to 7,000 euros this year.

“If WikiLeaks does not find a way to remove this blockade we will simply not be able to continue by the turn of the new year,” Assange said at a press conference. “If we don't knock down the blockade we simply will not be able to continue.”

By the way -- remember when Wiki "accidentally" revealed the password for the secret files, containing the completely-unredacted version of US cables? Which contained the names of all the people working with us in hostile countries?

I was searching for an article about that. I didn't find that, but I found this -- apparently that secret file was sent out as an "insurance policy," guaranteeing that Julian Assange couldn't be killed without consequences. If he were killed, he'd reveal the password for the secret files.

Well, the password was revealed already, supposedly accidentally.

So...

Posted by: Ace at 02:40 PM | Comments (153)
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All systems for double-posting are a go.

Posted by: Ace at 02:40 PM | Comments (39)
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Mike Pence will be running against Democrat John Gregg.

Which candidate will Rupert Boneham take more votes from? Based on this...

Boneham, 47, of Washington Township, said he is a man of the people whose priorities would be more jobs, better schools and maintaining correctional facilities.

"I hope Indiana is ready for someone like me that does care and does understand what we are going through," Boneham said Saturday at a pizza party thrown at an Indianapolis VFW post.

... I don't know. It's a populist appeal; it seems to skew to the left. He wears a lot of tie-dyed shirts so I guess he's a hippie.

The UPI report says he's a Survivor winner. He's not. He lost, but was popular for reasons completely lost on me, so the show did a one-time only "America Votes Someone Who Lost the Game A Million Dollars," just to make sure a popular contestant finally won something.

Posted by: Ace at 02:22 PM | Comments (56)
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Once again, I am stymied.

Posted by: Ace at 02:05 PM | Comments (118)
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They're to debate, if I understand this right, only on entitlements, with one third of the debate given to each of the big three (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid).

“We initially wanted a forum with all of the candidates,” O’Sullivan says. “But when we heard Gingrich say he wanted a more serious debate, like the Lincoln–Douglas debates, we wanted to do that, especially since watching the recent superficial debates has been frustrating.”

Organizing the event was relatively easy, he adds. “We had a relationship with Herman Cain. He spoke at our tea-party event six months ago. We contacted him, asking if he was interested in a Lincoln–Douglas debate on entitlements. Then we got in touch with Speaker Gingrich.”

As of yet no one is slated to broadcast it, but everything winds up on the internet.

Gingrich offered some advice to Cain recently -- that candidates should spend more time "knowing things."

Of course Gingrich would press this qualification, as he scores very well according to it.

But I think he's right. So does Mark Steyn, for what it's worth.

Although the advice about "knowing things" is general, he is speaking about Herman Cain specifically, and Cain's need to offer "deep answers" about the policy behind 9-9-9, rather than just offering up the slogan and talking points.

I wouldn't much like to go three hours toe-to-toe with Gingrich. Obviously the debate has big potential upside, and big potential downside, for Cain.

On the other hand, Gingrich's big thing lately is to be nice to his opponents.

Posted by: Ace at 12:35 PM | Comments (334)
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The science is settled. You're not going to disagree with a computer model, are you?

There are other models that show Obama losing, but not at that low level of support.

Thanks again to JohnE.

Posted by: Ace at 11:35 AM | Comments (195)
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Unexpectedly.

I am beginning to note our current cadre of putative "experts" is surprised by "unexpected" news that our non-experts actually expected (and predicted).

Perhaps "expertise" now means "idiocy."

Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the chairman of the National Transitional Council and de fact president, had already declared that Libyan laws in future would have Sharia, the Islamic code, as its "basic source".

But that formulation can be interpreted in many ways - it was also the basis of Egypt's largely secular constitution under President Hosni Mubarak, and remains so after his fall.

Mr Abdul-Jalil went further, specifically lifting immediately, by decree, one law from Col. Gaddafi's era that he said was in conflict with Sharia - that banning polygamy.

He would also ban banks from charging interest. So, boomtimes ahead for Libya.

Those two planks may not be especially threatening to the West, but they indicate an allegiance to a barbaric way of life and government (and warfare!) that will likely cause problems for us down the road.

I've had mixed feelings about these uprisings. Some say that tearing down despots is a necessary step in the process of political maturation.

Others say that such despots will be replaced by vicious thugs worse than before.

Here's the thing: I think both are right. I think that democracy, for this part of the world, will only come after a long series of violent spasms and failures. I think one purge will give way to the next. I think one tyrant will replace the next, and then share his fate.

I don't know if these can ever be decent societies. I doubt they can be. But if they are to be, the people of these lands are probably going to have to learn all the lessons of history that the West learned from ca. AD 1300 to the present. The Islamic world has been essentially frozen in the middle ages forever.

I suppose, if they were smart, they could skip over the long, violent process of discovering that a liberal (classic sense) democratic republic is the only system that really works, by studying our example, and applying the lessons our ancestors learned.

But of course they despise us, and despise democracy because they despise us, so they will endeavor to prove that "their" ways can work.

I think they will try virtually everything before attempting the model of the despised Western infidels.

So yeah, I think this is necessary, if they're ever going to get out of their barbaric rut. But that's all long term. Very long term.

In the short term, we get to watch them butcher each other, and of course occasionally butcher our own citizens.

Posted by: Ace at 10:55 AM | Comments (190)
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