Guy Fieri is confused. Bourdain is openly hostile to the media food complex, but competitive cooking shows and harlequin gluttony are actually killing the food networks.

Bear Fat Contessa is my personal favorite.

You don’t understand the difference between discretionary spending and federal outlays? Military spending is 55% of discretionary spending. Discretionary spending is 29% of the federal budget. Therefore, military spending is 16% of the total budget. If you include VA benefits (part of mandatory spending), military…

So........the Ford Fusion ripped off an Aston grille.........and the new Lincoln MKZ rips off a Jag grille.

Allowing sophisticated collateralization is not harmful to society, unless you’re a caveman. Fundamentally altering market-risk with a predictable, lazily-administered schedule of mortgage guarantees is harmful for society.

Liberalizing the market for CDO’s did not create the asset bubble. The bubble was created by government guarantees for mortgages via the GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which expanded rapidly after the anti-redlining bill in 1994. Look at what happened to the US homeowner rate after 1994. Growth of the home ownership…

I lived in the Tri-State Area for 12 years (NJ) and SoCal for 5 years. I’ve lived in Texas for 18 years. I have plenty of cultural exposure to the US.

I appreciate that you’ve lived and experienced some things. If you’d like to understand your life experiences, look up the macroeconomic data I’ve referenced. Your success in the tech sector is not indicative of STEM employment, particularly not for for people in the lower income quintiles.

I’m not worried about giving the money back to the military. I’m merely pointing out that the military once supported STEM employment, manufacturing, and middle class income. Military spending has been reduced by more than 50%, but nothing has been used to stimulate STEM employment or manufacturing. In fact, the…

If you think corporate conspiracy trumps macroeconomic forces, I can’t help you.

Good for a modern bike, but I’d like to have the 500 bolted into a single cradle steel frame.

You should at least glance at federal budget data.

Of course we are doing it wrong. Why do you think our entitlements cost so much more than in other countries? Primarily because we shower the upper-middle class with benefits, and we encourage ridiculous shoot-the-moon medical procedures for terminally ill patients in their final year of life (30% of the Medicare…

They pay FICA tax at 15.3% on the first dollar they earn, and their employers pay unemployment taxes and other regulatory burden (like Obamacare) on each employee. They also pay imputed income taxes, FICA taxes, corporate income taxes, excise taxes, etc in every good they purchase.

That’s part of it, but Toyota and Honda also sell 2 Camrys/Corollas or Accords/Civics for every 1 Impala/Cruze or Fusion/Focus.

“Taxes were higher in the 1950s” is a political talking point used to influence an uneducated electorate. It’s true the marginal rates were higher. It’s also true that tax revenue as a percentage of GDP was the same as it is today. The IRC of 1986 cut rates and eliminated tax shelters (at-risk, passive activity). It…

“Cheapness” is not hurting American labor. Our problems are caused by high taxes and regulatory burden on lower-middle class workers, and a 50-year-old shift in federal spending away from the American middle class and into our lavish retirement/healthcare benefits.

ISIS would never do something counterproductive or irrational, like terrorize the city of Paris. We can be sure ISIS didn’t plan Paris because it goes against their rational proclivities, like setting up a religious caliphate and committing genocide against any culture that attempts to stop them.

Behold

The heterogeneous nature is based partially on the superior feelings of certain groups, but sometimes the model for homogenization is an irrelevant concept. For instance, IFRS doesn’t particularly care for bright lines regulations, which means that court rulings, tax authority rulings, SEC (or similar) rulings will…