David Simon completely nails the bankrupt response to the Petraeus thing, and to all such scandals. A taste:

The arguments about character? That human sexuality isn’t the most compartmentalized element of our nature? That if someone will lie about sex, they’ll lie about other things? Really? No, sorry, fuck that tripe. Character has become the self-righteous rallying cry of far greater hypocrisy than any cheating husband. It’s the excuse that makes our prurient leer seem meaningful and reasoned.

The biggest paper in Oklahoma — named, of course, The Oklahoman — has taken the position, quite literally, that science should have no place in public policy.

It should not surprise you to learn that right wing billionaire Philip Anschutz is its owner.

It’s become a familiar line since Obama took office. Some $news_org will interview a high-earner to say something really fucking stupid like “I’m gonna make sure we don’t make more than $250,000 so we don’t have to pay higher taxes!”

These people are stupid, stupid, stupid, because they apparently have no idea how they’re taxed, and how incremental, graduated tax systems work. If the top tier starts at $250,001 of income, and somehow Obama gets a tax hike passed on that bracket such that the new rate is 50%, it doesn’t affect the taxes paid on the first $250,000 of income at all. The top tax bracket applies ONLY to the dollars earned over $250K.

Here’s a great rundown:

On more than one occasion, I’ve received an e-mail asking for advice on how to keep from slipping up into the next tax bracket. The motivation behind such e-mails is typically a misconception of how our progressive tax system works. What many people don’t realize is that our federal income tax brackets reflect marginal rates, not a rate that is applied to your entire income. Here’s a quick example based on current income tax rates…

For a married couple filing jointly in 2008, the 10% tax bracket covers income from $0 to $16,050. From $16,050 to $65,100 the tax rate is 15%. And from $65,100 to $131,450 the tax rate is 25%. A couple with a taxable income of $100k will be in the 25% tax bracket, but they won’t have to pay 25% in federal income taxes on the full amount. Rather, they’ll pay just 10% on the first $16,050, 15% on the next $49,050, and 25% on the last $34,900. This works out to $17,687.50, or an effective rate of just under 18%.

It IS true that, as income increases over the top stated bracket (over $388,350 in 2012), more and more of one’s income is subject to the highest bracket. Someone with an adjusted gross income of $390,000 pays the top rate on less than $2,000 of income, but someone earning $10,000,000 pays the top rate on nearly all their income. (This is not a bug.) But even at that level, they’re richer for every dollar earned; there’s no sense in curtailing or limiting income under the current US tax code.

This is, hands down, my favorite picture of the president and a visitor to date.

A group representing the core of the GOP House caucus published a copyright reform position memo on Friday that made ALL KINDS OF SENSE.

Consequently, of course, it’s been retracted, presumably to sprinkle it with insanity.

My longtime pal Philip grabbed another couple columns of data for each state (and DC) and threw ’em into a Google Docs spreadsheet. You saw before that college degree penetration correlates almost perfectly with Democratic voting in this cycle; here’s what we found when we looked at high school diplomas and income.

Diplomas

Not as clear. The top ten states break 60/40 for the Democrats, but the bottom ten are 80% Republican.

Income

The top ten states by income break 90% for Democrats, and the bottom ten are all GOP.

The more educated the state — as measured by the percentage of citizens older than 25 with a college degree — the less likely they can win it.

Naturally, we see good ol’ Mississippi on the right, but at least they’re not the WORST educated state. Thank God for West Virginia.

It holds up w/r/t regions and states, too; follow the link and scroll down for a county-by-county rundown of Florida. The blue areas are where universities are.

Check this out over at Mother Jones. It’s hard for me to envision a way the GOP can defend district-drawing tactics that give them the lion’s share of House seats in states where most people vote for Democrats, but there you have it.

To be clear, Dems have done this, too, and still do in some places, and it’s wrong when they do it, too. It seems to me that a state’s overall vote split and overall House split should be very, very close to each other. And if they’re not, then something is very wrong.

Lots more at MeFi. Make time.

The National Organization for Marriage is taking its show on the road — by which I mean they intend to step up their campaign to paint some American companies as gay-friendly specifically in places where being gay is very, very dangerous:

Their international outreach is where we can have the most effect…So for example, in Qatar, in the Middle East, we’ve begun working to make sure that there’s some price to be paid for this. These are not countries that look kindly on same-sex marriage. And this is where Starbucks wants to expand, as well as India. So we have done some of this; we’ve got to do a lot more.

Make no mistake about this: they are playing with fire, and will be responsible if their hate-mongering gets a minimum-wage barista beaten or killed for wearing a Starbuck’s hat.