{"id":6634,"date":"2011-12-06T06:24:36","date_gmt":"2011-12-06T11:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morningseditionists.com\/msblog\/?p=6634"},"modified":"2011-12-06T07:05:35","modified_gmt":"2011-12-06T12:05:35","slug":"tuesday-66","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/2011\/12\/06\/tuesday-66\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2011\/12\/nasa-kepler-finds-first-planet-in-habitable-zone.php\">NASA has discovered the first of what will no doubt be many planets<\/a> outside our solar system &#8211; they&#8217;re calling it &#8220;Kepler-22b&#8221; &#8211; that&#8217;s in the &#8220;Goldilocks Zone&#8221; (that is, not too hot and not too cold to support liquid water &#8211; a requirement to support life as we know it).  It&#8217;s about two-and-a-half times larger than Earth, in a 290-day orbit (pretty close to our year) around its sun, and estimated to have a temperature of about 70 degrees (which sounds pretty good this time of year).  Sadly, it&#8217;s 600 light years away, so odds are we won&#8217;t be able to winter there (until they work out this whole warp speed thing). Although there&#8217;s no guarantee that there&#8217;s liquid water on the Kepler-22b (let alone life), NASA believes it&#8217;s much more likely to contain intelligent life than the Tea Party.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of the teabaggers, they sure do love them some Newt (<a href=\"http:\/\/tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2011\/12\/pelosi-democrats-gleeful-at-prospect-of-running-against-gingrich.php\">Democrats, too.<\/a>  <a href=\"http:\/\/2012.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2011\/12\/libertarians-do-not-like-newt-gingrich.phphttp:\/\/\">Libertarians, not so much<\/a>).  Having dispatched Herman Cain for, apparently, being a serial philanderer, Republicans are embracing the Newt (because it&#8217;s OK when a white guy does it).  Not only is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/stories\/1211\/69843.html\">Newt sticking it to Mittens in Iowa with his lead swollen to 33-18<\/a>, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/stories\/1211\/69844.html\">Newt is likewise engorged in South Carolina<\/a> &#8211; up 38-22.  Iowa and South Carolina.  No reason they shouldn&#8217;t dictate who gets to President &#8211; as long as it&#8217;s OK with New Hampshire, of course.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, assuming you&#8217;re not a millionaire, get ready for your taxes to go up in January. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2011\/12\/05\/politics\/congress-new-payroll-plan\/index.html\">Republicans apparently have no qualms about letting the payroll tax cuts for regular people expire<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You know what?  While I&#8217;d just as soon not pay higher taxes, I&#8217;m willing to let my tax cut expire as long as they let the millionaire&#8217;s tax cuts expire, too.  See, the average payroll tax cut saves the little people about $1,000 a year.  $20 a week.  Now, twenty bucks is twenty bucks, don&#8217;t get me wrong.  But <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/issues\/2011\/08\/millionaire_tax_rates.html\">the average millionaire is paying $136,000 less this year<\/a> thanks to the Bush tax cuts. <\/p>\n<p>In other words, I&#8217;m going to work for (quite a bit) less than they&#8217;re saving in tax cuts. <\/p>\n<p>For those teabaggers out there who are mathematically challenged, here&#8217;s a simple tip: 136,000 <strong><em>does not equal<\/em><\/strong> 1,000.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, 136,000 is way, way, WAY more than 1,000 (about 136x more).  <\/p>\n<p>So, I offer two possible &#8220;compromises&#8221; for you all.  The first one is that you millionaires go back to paying what you were paying before, and so do I.  The second one is that I keep saving $1,000, and you rich folks can go ahead and keep a grand of that $136,000.  <\/p>\n<p>$1,000 = $1,000.<\/p>\n<p>Cool?  Cool. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NASA has discovered the first of what will no doubt be many planets outside our solar system &#8211; they&#8217;re calling it &#8220;Kepler-22b&#8221; &#8211; that&#8217;s in the &#8220;Goldilocks Zone&#8221; (that is, not too hot and not too cold to support liquid water &#8211; a requirement to support life as we know it). It&#8217;s about two-and-a-half times [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6634"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6637,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6634\/revisions\/6637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}