"The high-income tax increase sapped 0.25 percentage points from GDP in 2013, estimates Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pennsylvania."

"Politicians who support tax increases operate under a misconception that there is little real effect, Maloney said.

“A higher tax rate reduces our ability to recapitalize and reduces our ability to expand,” he said. “You keep your forklifts a little longer, you do whatever you can to stretch the dollars you’re left with.”"

"According to Zandi’s estimates, the payroll tax cut subtracted 0.6 percentage points from U.S. economic growth, more than twice the effect of the high-income tax cuts."

“Clearly, taxes affect behavior; they affect some behaviors more than others. What has not been established is that the level of taxes has a clear and important impact on economic growth. And one reason is that this is not a well-posed question. How government activity affects prosperity depends not only on the level of taxes, but also on what the money is used for.”

"Thus, the proper answer to a question as broad as whether tax increases are “positive” or “negative” for growth is: “It depends.”"

I've love to see a role reversal here: nerdy guy posing suggestively on the table with his dorkish glove while the pretty chick pots balls around him.

What a strange video.

Because experts have already examined the evidence and found it sufficient. That evidence has been used in the development of medicines, and has used to make predictions later shown to be true.

You, on the other hand, want to overthrow the accepted worldview. So you better have some pretty extraordinary evidence as well as the understanding to back it up. I see neither from you.

The experts have only proven the idea of microevolution, and that is where the usable science comes from. You're telling me that you believe whatever they say on that basis. Isn't that anti-intellectual?

And there is tonnes of evidence of macroevolution. You and your ilk just misuse the term and ask to see a monkey to give birth to a human.

But that's just your lack of understanding.

How about just one piece of evidence for macroevolution? That would do nicely.

Of course it does. They're magic, they exist outside of time and space and can do whatever they feel like. It's the exact same "explanatory power" that god has, i.e. none whatsoever.

Yes, and there were good reasons to think thunder was gods fighting and rain happened when you danced. And now we know those are nonsense.

What you're doing is simply giving the teapot the same essence and characteristics of God, and then calling it something else. That doesn't exactly disprove the idea of God, does it? I think you are trivializing the subject without understanding it. There are good reasons, philosophically and scientifically, to believe that an all powerful being created the Universe. There are logically sound reasons for deducing such a being exists. Have you ever studied the history of philosophy? The subject is a little bit more indepth than you are giving it credit for.

Besides, you are conflating the origin of the universe with evolution. We have a pretty good idea about the origins of the universe, but it's kinda by definition a difficult question to ask. But we know that evolution is true to a ridiculously high certainty.

How am I conflating the origin of the Universe with evolution? So far, the best idea they've come up with is that nothing created everything. Not exactly encouraging, is it?

I really don't have to study it. You have to provide some evidence to back up your assertion, which I will then trivially disprove with 5 seconds on google.

Again, this is anti-intellectual isn't it? You dismiss the evidence against your belief while being totally ignorant of what it is. Worse yet, you rail on those who do believe it without understanding their positions. You have also said that if evidence were to be posed, you would simply seek out someone who agreed with your view and copy and paste their views on it. Where exactly in that process is your own brain being used?

You're not just wrong, you're fractally wrong. You're like a kitten who can't work out why he can't eat the fish on the tv. You would require significant education to even understand why you're so wrong.

I used to believe what you believe. I stopped believing it because of the evidence, not in spite of it. It's easy to dismiss me but if you actually do investigate the major claims of evolution you will find, not indisputable proof, but a pile of weak, circumstantial evidence.

In fairness, that would be my first pose too.

Many many moons ago when I was seventeen we started doing life drawing at my school. there were a few models they used but the most common two were a lady about thirty, nice looking, slightly plump but attractive and Alan. Alan was a thirtyish year old gay guy who was just very average looking. Physique wise he was 5' 10" or so, maybe just under 200lbs, slightly balding, wore glasses. Nothing offensive but as a seventeen year old lad I obviously started off preferring drawing boobies to schlong.

Thing is, I always drew better when drawing Alan because I just wasn't as distracted I suppose. He was a really nice guy and we got to know him pretty well over the year or so we did the class. I'd grown up doing a lot of sailing at a club with communal showers for the men so naked guys were no mystery to me. I wasn't offended by him and he certainly never did any poses like the guy in this video.

Fast forward ten years and I'm at a friend's house party. I know about half the people there and there's a lot of people from her work that I don't know. She worked at a medieval castle as a wench for their banquets and a lot of her actor colleagues were there. I kept catching the eye of this guy, forty years or so old, 5' 10" and just over 200lbs, pretty bald. You know when you get that feeling that you know someone? The face is familiar but you can't for the life of you remember where you've seen him before. Worse was the feeling that it was someone I knew quite well, not just someone I'd bumped into in the supermarket or something like that.

He looked puzzled by me too and we eventually got talking in the kitchen about where we knew each other from. We went through everything, from what we did for a job, where we'd worked, where we lived and drew blanks every time.

We went further and further back in time until he stopped, grinned and said 'you didn't go to Woodland's school did you?'

In that instant I knew exactly who he was, laughed and completely without thinking blurted 'Alan! I didn't recognise you with your clothes on!'

Of course it went quiet and I had to explain to my wife why I didn't recognise the gay guy with his clothes on (not helped by the fact that it was an all boys school). I still have paintings and drawings of him in my attic somewhere, which my wife was 'thrilled' to be shown!

Life drawing is great, and you don't need a 'fit' or attractive model. Anyone will do, in fact the more normal the better I think. It helps you look at what's there rather than any sort of ideal you might have in your head.

I really wish KnivesOut wasn't banned. He was already hobbled (rightly so). So he didn't pose any further "threat" to the sift. It's not the first time someone has attempted "Sifticide" by going on a kill spree on their way out the door, and I'm really glad Eric caught it and put the breaks on it. Maybe the guy was just having a really shit day and fucked up. In the end though, he wasn't trying to fuck with other people or other member's sifts. Just a bit of rage quit. Might have felt different about it the next day and apologized. Then gotten unhobbled and moved on. Now he can't do that.

100% correct about the body cams. All police should have them. All cop cars have them, there is no logical reason that all police don't also.

As far as this video not showing the beginning of the event, there is definitely enough footage here to show the cop had no reason to physically assault the victim. There was zero threat and the victim wasn't placed under or resisting arrest. Just an out of control thug cop intimidating and abusing a civilian. There's no way around it.

There are ways the cop could have gotten what he wanted, legally and without being a disgrace to good police everywhere. Call it in. Get the warrant. Search the vehicle. Done. It's that simple. The kids posed no "public safety issue". They were there under the control of the officer on the scene, unarmed and posing no threat to the cop or anyone else. This is all evident in the video.

It's not falsifying details. It's nonsensical to pose the problem so that surface irregularities are taken into consideration. Or the fact like in this video the feather started below the bowling ball.

It's a trivial 3-body problem. You can represent them by three balls, one of mass Heavy, one of mass Medium, one of mass Light. As long as Medium and Light start at the same distance from Heavy, Medium and Heavy will always hit first. You can run this test in an orbital simulator if you don't believe me.

Hi Engels,

I just wanted to address what is a common misconception about the teachings of Jesus Christ, which is that He taught the oneness of mankind, or that we could all achieve some kind of evolutionary process of consciousness expansion. This is simply false; Jesus Christ taught that He is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that there is no other way to reach God except through Him. He taught that we are all sinners, alienated from God, and that His suffering and death on the cross and resurrection from death was the universal atonement for our sins and the hope of all mankind, which we receive by putting our faith and trust in Him.

The popular culture has distorted our understanding of Jesus, but this distortion is easily remedied by studying the scriptures. A reading of the gospel of John, for instance, will show you that the Jesus you have heard about and the Jesus of the bible couldn't be more different. I would challenge you to do so and learn more about Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who He truly was and was not, and what He taught about Himself. It is a question He posed to His disciples:

Matthew 16:13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"
Matthew 16:14 And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
Matthew 16:15 He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"

Is it just me, or did he look like he was posing at the end? One of those bodybuilder poses.

Had to agree with you. Just way too scattered around and with too many terse unrelated hero-takes-dramatic pose shots.

Even a trailer should have some sense of flow. They got some of it right by building around the central musical theme, but didn't fill in the rest.

Yeah, not going to happen. Most mainland Chinese, even those who are studying in HK, have very different political outlook:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/hongkong/11131802/Analysis-Hong-Kongs-democracy-protests-pose-little-threat-to-China.html

Also, the scale of this protests is not unique, even for HK standards. Annual protests routinely drawing hundreds of thousands of people.

The "spanish" guy sounds like an idiot when he pronounces it "maripotha". He is affecting a Spain accent, which makes no sense in this case because only the letter "z" and the letters "ci" and "ce" are pronounced with a SLIGHT "th" sound in some areas of Spain.

I don't want to go off on a Dennis Miller rant here but that always bugs the shit out of me. It's said quite often that people from Spain speak with a lisp, because some king back in some century had a lisp, so everyone was ordered to speak the same way. Sounds interesting, right? Sounds like some stupid myth to me. If it was a lisp then the letter "s" would be pronounced like "th".

While I'm on the subject nothing irritates me more than native English speakers who study Spanish but then speak it in their flat American or British accent. They make no effort to emulate the specific Spanish vowel and consonant sounds, it sounds moronic. But they make sure to throw in the "lisp", as if that's all it takes to sound authentic. Only they can't even manage that, they end up sounding like Daffy Duck. Usually it's college kids studying for their Bachelor's in Posing that do this crap, with a minor in Hipster Studies.

I have studied Spanish for years and I admit it takes effort to change your whole vocal apparatus to have a conversation in Spanish and maintain the accent. But otherwise why spend all that time learning a language only to speak it with your McAccent.

"Some people would say" -- does not necessarily indicate future tense.
I would say (see?) it is often used to more politely present a point.
Other people would say (again..) that he is referring to what people might say to tyson if they were present in the interview, and so he is saying what they would say if they were present.

For all any of us knows, two or three people asked him to ask the question and he's completely accurate and right. As i already stated, i'm interested in that question even if you aren't, so he's completely right in his statement, other people WOULD say that. Me - and probably others. Though you don't address any of that in your reply.

I don't understand what you mean in your first paragraph about the public - i never said that you had interviewed them nor that you should (??). What we are discussing is the value of mike tyson's endorsement, and an endorsement is for the listeners, the public. So what i am referring to is the viewing public of a TV show on which mike tyson has appeared and offered his personal endorsement to.

In fact, you specifically said that he has a duty of care to his audience to explain his sources, so it seemed to me that your primary concern was the public's full understanding of the interview... is that not the case? I think you may have contradicted yourself here - i asked you what that duty of care was, and that's a hard question to answer without referring to the "public thought". Perhaps that's why you didn't bother addressing it in your reply. I'm doing my best to keep the discussion going, but i don't understand what this paragraph refers to or what it means.

Finally the legal battle that you linked to me. As i already reminded you, we are not his judges and it is not a courtroom, so it is utterly irrelevant to the case. Furthermore, the world is bigger than one country and this is an international website with a plethora of opinions. In exchange i'd like you to read the introductory paragraph about protection of sources which finishes with several particular comments about the united states, and one addressed directly about the US - the land of the free and home of the exiled whistle-blowers. Please remember as you read that this refers to a legal setting, and really has nothing to do with the example in this video about which you incorrectly assert that he has a duty to expose his sources. Which you still have not made clear. However i wanted to make clear that i think protection of sources is imperative to combating corruption which is absolutely rife in this day and age of illegal wars, illegal detention, worldwide spying and tracking of individuals by the NSA and Great Britain's intelligence agencies, expenses scandals, etc.

You haven't answered even half of the questions i posed to you in my first comment, i'm all ears. Or eyes. Whatever.

Chaucer, don't be a misogynist. There's NEVER any justification for hitting a woman. It doesn't matter if she's slapping you, punching you, charging you, strangling you, stabbing you or shooting at you. There's no such thing as self-defense when the victim is a man and the attacker is a woman. Clearly women pose no threat to men so there's no need to respond to their physical attacks. Take it like a man and then beg for forgiveness when she's finished with you.