High Five a Blind Guy and Other Stories

Watch Ryan Seacrest try to high-five a blind guy.  Hat tip to Ryan Cormier’s post Fail of the Day for the video from Pulp Culture (DE).

Left in the West (MT) writes about the Radical Right’s fight against the Estate Tax:

From where I’m sitting the Obama proposal – a 45% rate for estates of $3 million or more, or $7 million – doesn’t look to affect the “somewhat” rich at all. And this is a good time to remind readers that the Estate Tax doesn’t tax a person’s wealth, but a person’s inheritance. The children of the ultra rich are free to accumulate as much wealth as they can earn by dint of hard work, subject to the usual tax rates we all enjoy. In the end, we don’t dispute taxing lottery winnings – yet birth is the ultimate lottery, isn’t it? And the children of million- and billionaires, the ultimate lottery winners. And I don’t think it’s too much to ask these folks to pay a special tax to support the infrastructure, national security, and the standards of education for the workforce that enabled their ultra-rich parents to accumulate their bloated gains.

fake consultant on Left in Alabama (AL) revisits Molly Ivins writings about W., especially the columns prior to the time when we all got to know George 43.

Our friend jhygirl on 4&20 blackbirds (MT) writes about the Republican attempt to not allow same-day voter registration in Montana.

Gannett is still stumbling as Katie Allison Granju (TN) reports that employees of a Gannett TV station in Tennessee are being offered a mandatory one week vacation, unpaid of course. BTw, Katie wrote about Starbucks and MSNBC beaming the inauguration to the coffee shops. If that is too much for you, stop by Delaware Liberal where we will be live blogging the event all day.

Sarah Plain and Simple just fantastic. Her proposed state budget is a bit padded ($74.41 for a barrel of oil) as Syrin tells us over at Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis (AK).

Claiming that her budget will decrease general fund spending by 7% and that the state would enjoy a $338 million surplus, Palin’s budget is relying on an unrealistic, perverted projection of the price of oil to make her budget float. Will this help her appear less reckless? In addition, as her administration has done in the previous year, they’re spending money – this time $238 million from the Alaska Housing fund – but not accounting for it in their budget calculations.

The administration is basing its 2010 budget on the hope that the price of oil will average $74.41 beginning next July and through the fiscal year. Taxes on oil represent ninety cents out of every dollar the state collects.

Maybe it’s that she too enamoured to be doing a good job with her new action figure friend, Joe the Plumber, as mudflats (AK) reports. And, finally, if you think it is cold in Delaware, mudflats let’s us know that we might not want to go to Anchorage, Alaska.