AS SEEN ON TV: Does the Point ‘n’ Paint work?

WHO ARE THE RUBES? Well, one of ’em was Christopher Buckley.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: “Does anyone really think Team Obama’s focus on Limbaugh reflects their success so far in office?”

I think it’s an effort to distract people from this chart of the Dow since the “stimulus” passed.

To their credit, it’s sort of working.

PARTYING THE RECESSION AWAY.

ANOTHER “TEA PARTY” PROTEST I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT, in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Well, it’s viral.

Plus, more pictures from Cleveland.

NANCY-ANN DEPARLE TAPPED to lead Obama health-care reform plan. I know her from college (and she also clerked for the same judge I did). She’s plenty smart.

OUCH. L.A. Times: Another Obama pick owes back taxes, but it’s OK because, now caught, he’ll pay up.

UPDATE: Okay, there’s this bit, too: “Not sure if we have room here to list every other would-be Obama appointee who turns out to have some tax problems. There was Timothy Geithner, who’s now Treasury Secretary in charge of the IRS. But being as articulate as he is and so well-versed in handling other people’s money, he was deemed essential to the fight against the economic downturn and that’s worked out real well. Just look at the markets.”

Ouch, again.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Roger Simon emails: “Why don’t we nominate everyone for the Obama cabinet? That way everyone will have to pay his or her back taxes and the IRS will be spared zillions in personnel, lawsuits, etc.? It might even lead to a balanced budget.” An idea so crazy it just might work!

HMM: German Stimulus Cash To Fund Army.

OH, GOODY: U.S. rescue efforts may risk double-dip recession.

Plus, what’s the exit strategy? “‘Major industries have become dependent on federal assistance, and they will be followed by cities and states bearing mind-boggling requests,’ investor Warren Buffett wrote in his annual letter to shareholders. ‘Weaning these entities from the public teat will be a political challenge. They won’t leave willingly.'”

HEH: Tax protesters rattle U2 with hypocrisy jibes.

There do seem to be a lot of tax hypocrites out there these days, don’t there? They deserve to be razzed. And will be:

Murphy said that he would be “very surprised” if protesters didn’t target the band’s tour. “I think this issue is going to haunt U2,” he said.

The spread of internet-based campaigns will make it relatively easy to assemble protesters and organise demonstrations anywhere in the world.

Do tell.

DON’T ANY OF THESE PEOPLE PAY THEIR TAXES? (CONT’D): Tax Problems Surface for Trade Rep. Nominee Kirk. “Former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk, who is President Obama’s nominee to be the U.S. Trade Representative, failed to pay almost $10,000 in taxes during the past three years because of a series of mistakes, the Senate Finance Committee announced today. Kirk’s errors involved honoraria from speeches, on which he should have paid taxes; the cost of sports games, for which he deducted too much; and improper treatment of accounting fees on his income taxes. Kirk has agreed to file amended returns.”

No mention of any penalty there. Think the rest of us would get such a pass? Plus this: “The news about Kirk’s mistakes comes as tax-related issues have become a topic of great sensitivity for the administration, following incidents with several high-profiled appointees whose nominations were threatened or derailed because of tax mistakes.” Gee, do you think?

UPDATE: “Not another one!”

TEA PARTY CONSPIRACY THEORY: EPIC FAIL. The Playboy blog item that I debunked earlier has been taken down. So has a TPM Muckraker piece making similar claims. And it turns out that the story wasn’t true. This is no surprise to me, but it’s something of an embarrassment for those who fell for it. It also seems as if they should have apologized for the error, not just taken down the posts. Yet as far as I can tell, neither site has acknowledged the error; they’ve just sent the offending matter down the memory hole.

Of course, maybe they were just embarrassed by Andrew Sullivan’s “Koch-tease” joke.

UPDATE: Some background on the viral campaign, here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: They fell for it over at DailyKos. No surprise there . . . .

MEN’S SHOES ON SALE. I can’t buy shoes over the Internet, but judging from earlier discussions here, lots of people do.

THE DOW-JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE since the passage of the stimulus bill. Looks like a vote of “no confidence” to me.

UPDATE: Can you say “going John Galt?” Upper-Income Taxpayers Look for Ways to Sidestep Obama Tax-Hike Plan. “A 63-year-old attorney based in Lafayette, La., who asked not to be named, told ABCNews.com that she plans to cut back on her business to get her annual income under the quarter million mark should the Obama tax plan be passed by Congress and become law. So far, Obama’s tax plan is being looked at skeptically by both Democrats and Republicans and therefore may not pass at all.”

But wait, there’s more:

Dr. Sharon Poczatek, who runs her own dental practice in Boulder, Colo., said that she too is trying to figure out ways to get out of paying the taxes proposed in Obama’s plan.

“I’ve put thought into how to get under $250,000,” said Poczatek. “It would mean working fewer days which means having fewer employees, seeing fewer patients and taking time off.”

“Generally it means being less productive,” she said.

“The motivation for a lot of people like me – dentists, entrepreneurs, lawyers – is that the more you work the more money you make,” said Poczatek. “But if I’m going to be working just to give it back to the government — it’s de-motivating and demoralizing.”

Via Doug Bandow, who comments: “Now that’s going to help us get out of the recession! Punish hard-working professionals and convince them to cut back services for the rest of us. Great thinking Mr. President. Or, to paraphrase George W. Bush: Heck of a job, Barack!”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Jorge Gonzalez writes:

I don’t make enough to put me in the $250K+ bracket that Obama will be targeting. Despite that, I am doing everything I can to lower my tax footprint by maximizing my 401K contributions and perhaps working less overtime at work. I simply do not want to work harder so I can fund these socialist programs that will damage our economy.

Considering what others in the targeted $250K+ bracket are planning on doing to decrease taxable incomes, the Obama economic plan is looking much much worse by the minute!

When you punish the productive, you get less productivity. Meanwhile, reader Brad Bettin writes:

The problem with changing behavior to get below a certain threshold is the politicians will simply lower the threshold. It’s bad economics, but the politicians don’t understand (or particularly care) about economics.

The bigger problem is the underlying narrative – Obama, et al. are selling the mindset that high earners are bad Americans who should be treated as such.

There’s a reason your Lafayette, Louisiana attorney didn’t want his/her name used …

It’s true that they’ll lower the threshold, but the more they do that, the worse their “tax the minority to feed the majority” plan works. To raise enough money to fund his plans, Obama will have to tax ordinary middle-class folks heavily. By accelerating this trend, those who avoid the higher brackets bring about a political reckoning sooner. Will Wilkinson has some related thoughts.

I’ll just add that to the extent the withdrawal of high-earners pushes markets down, it inflicts a lot of pain on non-rich demographics via declines in 401(k), IRA, 457, 403(b) accounts, etc. This is likely to lower satisfaction with Obama, too.

MORE: The Obama bear market?

STILL MORE: Reader Neil Sorens writes:

I have a friend in Denmark who tells me that workers there don’t especially value pay raises because they’ll lose 70% to taxes. Instead, their preferred bonus is extra vacation time, as the government can’t claim 70% of that (yet).

Me? I’ll probably go back to school and ride out the recession with education entitlements instead of doing anything productive. The best way to fight entitlement programs, after all, is to bleed them dry instead of feeding them.

I wonder if our intrepid social engineers simply don’t understand basic human behavior and the correlation between productivity and quality of life, or if they simply see economic equality as a more noble goal for society than high quality of life.

Economic equality, political power, whatever.

Plus, “take this TARP and shove it.” “The markets are of course imperfect, but they offer a rough means of distinguishing between the disease and the cure. Obama isn’t responsible for what happened before he got elected (except, of course, to the extent that he bears responsibility as a Senator). But the Dow stood at 9,625 on Election Day. I don’t see how what has happened since then can be seen as anything but a vote of no confidence in Obamanomics, both as projected during the campaign and as implemented since Obama’s inauguration.”

MORE STILL: The Dow Jones Limbo Dance.

Plus this: “Maybe the Dow will rally tomorrow, and here’s hoping it does. But so far the markets have greeted Obama’s program with a resounding thud. . . . Obama is temporizing with his financial crisis in favor of moving quickly on his big spending plans, and watching the Dow trip steadily downward by the day. It’s as if FDR skipped the bank holiday and focused first on passing the CCC. The last day before Obama was inaugurated, the Dow was at 8,281. Today, it closed at 6,763. Two political points: 1) Every day the markets continue to slide, it makes it harder on Obama to blame the mess on President Bush and forswear any responsibility himself; 2) if I were Eric Cantor or John Boehner, I’d be talking about a ‘real recovery package’ every day— payroll and corporate tax cuts, regulatory reforms for the financial and auto industries, relief for small business. None of it is going to pass, of course, but it will dispel the idea that they aren’t for anything and show they are zealous about trying to check the economy’s downward slide.”

And Donald Sensing observes: “One thing I am convinced of. I am now 53, and I will not see for the remainder of my life the value of my house return to the level that identical houses in my neighborhood were selling for in 2006. Once the present administration gets through socializing the economy of this country, I am far from convinced that the DJIA will return to its previous peak, or even close to it, during my lifetime.”

HOPE AND CHANGE! Glenn Greenwald asks, Is Obama embracing the lawless, omnipotent executive? I can’t say I find this (lack of) change surprising.

PJTV: The Insta-Wife with Kellyanne Conway, Michelle Malkin, Jeri Thompson, et al. talking about “going John Galt.”

A FLOATING CITY? Extreme Engineering.

GOOD NEWS: Nanotechnology may replace platinum catalyst for fuel cells with doped carbon nanotubes.

SOLAR PANELS DROP TO $1 A WATT: Is this a Milestone or the Bottom for Silicon-Based Panels?

NOT PREPARING FOR THE APOCALYPSE: Gold marked down 30%.

FASTER, PLEASE: “Scientists have developed what appears to be a safer way to create a promising alternative to embryonic stem cells, boosting hopes that such cells could sidestep the moral and political quagmire that has hindered the development of a new generation of cures. The researchers produced the cells by using strands of genetic material, instead of potentially dangerous genetically engineered viruses, to coax skin cells into a state that appears biologically identical to embryonic stem cells.”

THIS SEEMS LIKE A GYP: Ex-President Clinton loses out on Tesla Roadster test drive, for now. I think if you’re an ex-President you ought to get to test drive cool cars.

“WE ARE JOHN GALT.”

LOSING CARBON ENTHUSIASM: India Sends Tough Signal To West. “India will continue to resist pressure to accept legally-binding cuts in its emissions of earth-warming greenhouse gases (GHG) at key climate change talks later this year, the country’s chief climate change negotiator has said.”

Plus, Europe’s Carbon Market Plummets, Exposing Frailties. Also, Emissions trading scheme may bring down Queensland government.

VODKAPUNDIT SIDEKICK WILL COLLIER is now blogging on his own. Check it out!