We all see a lot of those “political leanings” quizzes that supposedly tell you about your political leanings – on Facebook, on Myspace, or just on random pages you Googled. Supposedly, these tests are unbiased, but Quantum theory tells us that what we observe, we inherently change. So I’m going to take my stab at a totally unbiased political quiz that tells you how much you lean to being a dirty commie.
Keep track of your answers – you’ll use them later.
1. Should we raise or lower taxes?
A. …

Case Study Monday, ladies and gentlemen: an eastern European country that runs the Flat Tax! I always wondered what it would be like to just try these wacky conservative economic ideas on countries in real-life; turns out Estonia has been running the Flat Tax for a while.
Estonia, formerly of the Soviet Union, runs on the Flat Tax system. This means that everyone above a certain poverty line pays the same percentage of their income to the government. Not only that, but they’ve privatized many of their …

Today I’m going to be predictable and make fun of liberals.  I wouldn’t have to turn into Mr. Predictable Conservative blogger if the liberals weren’t so doggone ridiculous about how they’ve handled the California wildfires.
How so?  Let me count the ways.
Harry Reid is blaming global warming, naturally.  The evidence against that argument?  Someone set the fire.  You could make the argument that climate change made the area susceptible to a rapid expansion of the wildfires.  But you still can’t leave out the fact that SOMEONE SET THESE FIRES.
Is my point …

There are a couple of good things about the California wildfires.  First, the media is forced to cover a large news story with actual relevance that has virtually no bipartisan angles.  A million people in Southern California are evacuating their homes – isn’t that a bigger story than the “four miners” incident that saw almost similar amounts of news coverage?
Second, emergency response seems to be way better than the Katrina days.  If it wasn’t, you’d definitely hear about it. Virtually everyone who’s evacuated to QualComm Stadium (home of the Chargers) …

In case you missed the Republican debate last night, don’t read the news reports about it, and about “blah blah Hillary.”  here are my thoughts on how each candidate did:
Rudy Giuliani:   C-
Rudy’s a little too sharp to ever tank a debate, but he did little last night to appeal to the core conservatives who are worried that he’s a social liberal.  Faced with attacks from Thompson that Rudy has supported federal funding for abortion and supported sanctuary cities, Rudy didn’t address the issue and side-swiped it, talking about lowering …

I’ve wrapped up my Low-Information Diet for this week.  If you haven’t been keeping track, the Low Information Diet means cutting back on media influence, notably TV and internet news.
This means I haven’t watched any Fox News, CNN, MSNBC – even no Colbert Report.  And I typed “CNN.com” into my browser several times before catching myself.  My intake of news has been limited to incidental contact – seeing a blurb about Britney Spears after I log out of Yahoo Mail or catching a newspaper headline as it sits there in …

I’d say the Presidential race is “heating up,” but I’ve been boycotting all forms of news this week so I really have no idea what’s going on.  I’m pretty sure there’s still a Presidential race going on, though.
Since I’m always asking people what their criteria are for voting for President (or, at least, it’s something I ask myself), I decided I would take a personal tally and set the priorities for my vote.  These go from most important to less important.

#1:  Is the candidate pro-life?
-Generally I’m against the government being …

Note:  This is Day 2 of Dan’s Low-Information Diet week.
So yesterday was my first day of plugging out from the world of news.  Am I missing anything?  My guess is no, since no one I’ve talked to has brought up anything in the news.  Anything important enough for me to pay attention to would somehow find its way to me.
Yesterday I deleted the little BBC news icon on my Web browser, just so I wouldn’t check it to see what the headlines were.  Even so, I found myself typing in …

This isn’t my usual post, but I have to write it to let you know that I’m undertaking a little experiment. Since I’m always making fun of TV news, but I actually still watch it, it’s time to put my money where my mouth is.
In Tim Ferriss’ book The 4-Hour Workweek, he talks about a Low-Information Diet as being ideal to freeing up the most time possible:
Most information is time-consuming, negative, irrelevant to your goals, and outside of your influence. I challenge you to look at whatever you read or …

Ann Coulter’s latest controversial comments, which will probably help her career if anything, took place on CNBC’s “The Big Idea” with Donny Deutsch, which sounds interestingly similar to “douche.”
Somehow, Ann and Donny got into a discussion about religion, at which it was pointed out that Deutsch is a Jew. As far as I’ve seen, Coulter was talking about how it would be a lot better for people if more people were Christians, and that Christians view themselves as perfected Jews.
Here is what apparently was said:
COULTER: No, we think — …