Grade Inflation Infographic

Created by: Masters Degree

GOP Presidential Candidate Field Is 100% Norquist Tools

The most telling moment from last night's GOP debate in Ames, Iowa:

“I’m going to ask a question to everyone here on the stage. Say you had a deal, a real spending cuts deal, 10-to-1, as Byron said, spending cuts to tax increases…. Who on this stage would walk away from that deal? Can you raise your hand if you feel so strongly about not raising taxes, you’d walk away on the 10-to-1 deal?”

As Daily Kos points out, "A 10-to-1 deal would mean a deal with 91% spending cuts and 9% tax hikes. That's not a compromise, that's a huge victory for supply-side fundamentalism. Only a true right-wing lunatic would reject that kind of a deal."

Yet, every single one of these tools raises a hand. 

Hands guided by Grover Norquist and the ridiculous Taxpayer Protection Pledge that he makes every Republican (and a few Democrats) sign promising that under no circumstance they ever support any and all tax increases.   

As long as voters continue to elect candidates whose driving force is to "drag [the government] into the bathroom and drown it in the tub" (as Norquist himself quipped,) America might just meet that fate.

Elliott Smith "Figure 8" Mural Restored On His Birthday

On August 6th, on what would have been Elliott Smith's 42nd birthday, an artist took to restoring the iconic Silver Lake mural which appears on the cover of Elliott's 2000 album Figure 8.

The mural has become a popular place for fans to leave memorial tributes and messages to the deceased artist. It's also seen its share of general vandalism and tagging over time, so a restoration was needed. A previous restoration took place in 1998, but it did not include a stencil of Elliott himself.

Here's the wall before:

And here, after:

Elliott Smith - "In The Lost And Found (Honky Bach)"

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