Check out the original interview here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFC9jv9jfoA&eurl=http://www.google.com/reader/view/

I like the way Obama talks to the guy, admits that his tax rate may possibly increase, and gets specific about exactly where it could go up.  He also points out that if his proposed tax breaks for actual working class people had been in effect, Joe might have been benefited – and been in a postiion to buy the business before now, instead of working 10- to 12-hour days all these years for somebody else.

This morning I found this story that said Joe had now decided to vote Republican: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/10/15/joe_the_plumber_the_video.html?hpid=topnews

And I thought, well, of course, I could see why he might vote Republican: Joe is rich.  He makes more than twice what my husband and I earn combined. We are way older than Joe, but we put off entering the work force while we were earning Ph.D’s, and we don’t work in nearly as lucrative fields as plumbing.  I’m an English professor.  [P. S.: Good for Joe! I work hard, but I bet I don't work nearly as hard as he does].

Of course, Joe is rich, but he still might be afraid to vote Republican because, unless he has no 401K invested in anything based in stocks or credit,  but keeps his retirement money in gold bullion under his bed, he might be afraid to keep the financial deregulation that just caused a stock market crash, banking panic, and incipient recession.  But I digress.

This morning, I decided to check Joe’s math.  First of all, he’d have to NET MORE THAN $250K to pay higher taxes on any of it, and as Obama clearly explained last night, his tax raise would entail a rate shift from 36% to 39% — ONLY for what Joe netted OVER $250K!

So say Joe improved his profit margin and went from netting $250K to $275K.  That’s ten percent, a big jump for one year.  Under the current 36% rate, he’d be paying $9K tax on that $25K.  Under Obama’s plan, Joe would pay $9750 on that top $25K.

So, because he’s going to pay an extra $750 on twenty-five thousand dollars extra profit, Joe is not going to buy the business? Is Joe claiming that the extra $750 tax bill is going to prevent him from getting credit?

Has Joe been working so constantly that he has somehow not heard that the stock market has crashed, banks are terrified to lend money even to each other, and so credit is already much, much harder to get and will be for who knows how long?

I’m skeptical, because I can’t see a puny $750 tax increase on income over $250K dissuading me.  Credit is going to be harder to get anyway.

Somebody please explain this to me.

I was a bit disappointed on the facial hair choices (Dr. Nick’s goatee being the closest to my own) so I went for the “clean look” which I haven’t worn in awhile. It’s fun to do and worth checking out especially because this kind of procrastination has at least an end product.

Here’s the link:

http://www.simpsonsmovie.com/main.html

 Also if you want to be hardcore you can send them your photo and they will Simpsonize it for you!

Two episodes in, I unequivocally love this show.  Reaper makes Chuck pale in comparison.  The two share a basic concept—male underachievers who unwittingly enter a world of high intrigue and danger—but where Chuck rips off Alias hardcore, Reaper more gently takes off from Buffy International Airport.  On his twenty-first birthday, Sam Oliver (Bret Harrison) fends off his suddenly solicitous parents and heads to The Work Bench, where he punches a clock with his goonish best friend Sock (Tyler Labine) and love interest Andi (Missy Peregrym).  After a number of mysterious occurrences—Sam develops telekinesis and has odd visions of a burning house—a revelation appears, in the form of an unctuous managerial type (Ray Wise) who happens to be the devil.  Before Sam was even conceived, the devil says, his father was dying; to save his life, he and his wife promised the devil the soul of their firstborn.  Drafted by Satan, Sam becomes Hell’s bounty hunter, forced to track down escaped, malevolent souls in an entertaining fashion.

To return to the Chuck comparison:  The shows do share a concept, but whereas Chuck appears purchased into existence, Reaper is that concept as produced by Kevin Smith and the crew from Mystery Science Theater.  (By the way, Kevin Smith produced and directed the pilot.)  Reaper’s biggest asset is its ramshackle charm.  The special effects are delightfully cheesy, and the cast eschews high thespianism in favor of a laid-back, slacker camaraderie and charm.  Ray Wise has drawn attention, deservedly, for his turn as the devil, but my favorite character is Sock.  The character is pure stock (see Morgan on Chuck) and usually pure annoyance, but Labine manages to make me enjoy his presence.  Probably he got an assist from Smith, who in his movies did the same for Jay, but still, that’s quite a talent.  Reaper is my clear favorite this fall.

Journeyman grade:  C +

Of the two new shows that bracket Heroes on NBC’s Monday lineup, Chuck is the one that dares to ask, “What if Sydney Bristow didn’t mean to become a secret agent?”  Chuck (Zachary Levi) is a computer tech at Buy More who hasn’t gotten over the time his college roommate Bryce stole his girlfriend.  Eventually Bryce graduated to stealing government intel, and emails the goodies to Chuck just before dying at the hands of Jayne from Firefly.  Somehow the intel downloads into Chuck’s brain, and suddenly Chuck is the object of a frantic government search conducted by Jayne (here named Casey) and Sarah, who’s as badass as an Erika Christensen doppelganger can be.

Journeyman is the show that dares to ask…I don’t know, “What if you couldn’t pick a decade to live in?”  Dan Vasser (Kevin McKidd) is a newspaper reporter with a checkered romantic and family history.  His wife Katie (Gretchen Egolf) used to date his brother Jack (Reed Diamond), back before Dan’s wife-to-be Livia (Moon Bloodgood) died in a plane crash.  Or did she?  One day, with no warning, Dan starts shifting through time.  Livia may have something to do with it; she may not have died in the plane crash.  Dan saves the life of a guy named Neal, then saves the lives of Neal’s wife and son—from Neal, who was going to kill them.  Meanwhile, all the time shifting makes his family think he’s on drugs, and causes some tension at home.

We may have a winner, but only one.  Thus far, Chuck manages to capture all the goofy excitement of Alias without the overbearing angst or Byzantine plotting that crippled the series from season 3 on.  There’s a winning scene where Sarah (Yvonne Strzechowski) takes out several NSA agents on a dance floor while Chuck bops happily, unaware that malevolent forces are plotting his destruction.  As with Alias, the pilot focuses on the schism between Chuck’s daily life and his secret activities.  That daily life includes Chuck’s friend Morgan (Joshua Gomez); his sole function is to remind viewers that Chuck is a nerd, so I hope he’s the series’s second casualty.  As Chuck, Levi has a genial, earnest, slightly melancholy presence that lends itself nicely to the story of someone caught by forces beyond his control.  Chuck could stand to distance itself a little more from the Alias template, but I have high hopes from this first episode.

Journeyman doesn’t fare so well.  Look, I sat through 16 Years of Alcohol through Kevin McKidd, but for god’s sake, the guy has got to start reading scripts instead of contracts.  Dan shifts from 1997 to 2007, and somehow no one in 1997 notices that he’s suddenly ten years older?  What is he, Goldie Hawn?  And in 2007, Katie and Jack stage an intervention after Dan suddenly goes AWOL, twice.  Okay, he also caused a car wreck, but they could try taking him the hospital before assuming he’s on drugs.  (There had better be some history to explain Katie and Jack’s response.)  I like that we don’t learn everything right away—how Dan and Katie ended up together, why the time shifts are happening—but even with those questions unresolved, the breakneck plot pacing overshadows McKidd’s best attempts to lend Dan some individuality.  There are several good ideas here, many of them recycled from other shows, but the creator/writer, Kevin Falls, needs to juggle the plot points more adeptly before Journeyman will be solid sci-fi.

God, the WB lives.  Its teen-centric programming philosophy rises again in the form of Gossip Girl, a nighttime soap (based on a YA book series) about fabulously rich New York City teenagers who don’t get along, or have just met.  The hive’s former queen is Serena Van Der Woodsen, a (reformed?) bad girl who ran away to boarding school in Connecticut after sleeping with:  Nate, the boyfriend since kindergarten of Serena’s (now ex-) best friend:  Blair, the crowd’s reigning queen who is possibly opening her orbit to include:  Jen, the school’s new girl, daughter of a grunge-era rocker, and sister to:  Dan, who gets a crush on Serena at first sight.  Also featured:  Chuck.  Every show about high school has an obligatory psychotic jackass.  He’s this one’s.

The hook of this show is Gossip Girl, a faceless, nameless blogger who chronicles the main characters’ angst and posturing.  Gossip Girl is voiced by Veronica Mars herself, Kristen Bell, which is why I bothered tuning in, and now I can knowledgeably say it:  Bell’s talents are wasted here.  Gossip Girl had maybe ten lines, and though Bell gave it her all (check out her intonation on the show’s title if you care), it’s still barely a legitimate paycheck.

The rest of the show is just 09ers being 09ers, and though the writers try to give them some depth, I keep thinking of Paris Hilton.  Gossip Girl would probably be more interesting if its characters were in their twenties—a little more mature, capable of greater responsibility, and part of a social circle that didn’t exist just because they all went to the same school.  There’s some serious stuff here, including a sibling’s attempted suicide and not one but two near-rapes, but it’s all safely ensconced within the realm of spoiled-teen melodrama.  I like the idea of Gossip Girl’s meticulously blogging each power clash and petty victory as if they were regional defense pacts, but I’d like it more if those victories had consequences beyond a better seat at the lunch table.  Pass.

I hardly needed to watch Back to You to know what I thought.  Assembled on set from parts made elsewhere, this is the sitcom that unites Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton as themselves…I mean, as a pompous local-news anchor who returns to his old station in disgrace, and a brittle local-news anchor who doesn’t like having her turf invaded.  (Respectively.)  The marketing pitch was probably “You know what you’re getting into.”

I was surprised, though, that I liked it.  Or at least I was entertained.  It’s kind of like Ron Howard’s adaptation of The Da Vinci Code:  though it’s not very original and a lot of it is preposterous, it moves along with confidence and efficiency.  I could see the jokes coming about ten seconds ahead of delivery, but the fact that they always arrived on cue was impressive by itself.

Maybe I’ve just lowered my standards since watching K-Ville.

Anyway, the twist, which producers apparently asked TV writers not to reveal ahead of time, is not that Grammer and Heaton—I’m not even going to bother with the names of their “characters”—had sex, but that their one-night stand bore fruit in the form of a daughter.  I caught this one ten seconds ahead of delivery, but really, that’s slow on the uptake.  What else could it have been?  The chemistry that local-news anchors are required to feign with each other was always going to be the motherlode for this show, so it’s not surprising that Back to You wants to literalize that chemistry in the form of a moppet.  Grammer (or at least his character) meets the girl for the first time on the day of his return broadcast, and it looks like the revelation throws him for a loop.

It’s nice that Back to You wants to show the softer side of its unpleasant leads.  On the other hand—well, I’m with Entertainment Weekly:  there’s so much to be said about local-news hell that I’d rather the show skip the well-trod avenues of parental travails.  Still, the fact that I want this show to do anything at all besides leave the air as soon as possible?  A bit of a surprise.  Not a replacement Veronica Mars—oh, hell no—but if it makes it to syndication, I’d admit to watching an episode here and there.

Now that Veronica Mars is off the air, I have to rebuild my TV-viewing slate from scratch. What better way to do that than sampling all of this fall’s new series? And what better way to alleviate my pain—because, come on, most of those shows are going to suck—than by warning other hapless viewers away from the networks’ lesser offerings?

First up is K-Ville. Premiering September 17 on Fox, this procedural (strike one! Like we need to see any more from that genre) concerns the efforts of the New Orleans police to maintain law and order post-Katrina. Marlin Boulet (Anthony Anderson) saw his partner Charlie Pratt (Derek Webster) run off amid rescue efforts, and his wife and daughter decamp to Atlanta in the midst of rebuilding. Boulet is out to clean up his city, he’s determined to win his wife back, and he won’t let his new, attitudinal partner Trevor Cobb (Cole Hauser) or overbearing supervisor (John Carroll Lynch) slow him down.

If I could select one police procedural to represent that television genre to aliens from another galaxy…K-Ville would not be it. New Orleans circa 2007 is a topic that could carry a show on its own—no he’s-a-cop-on-the-edge-of-a-nervous-breakdown-who-doesn’t-play-by-the-rules bullshit required—but the pilot is so packed with information that the city’s history, culture, and current state of devastation are relegated to references of comic-book depth. (Boulet really likes gumbo.) Jonathan Lisco, the show’s writer-creator, must have taken the crash-and-burn of last year’s serialized dramas to heart; he refuses to defer any information beyond hour’s end. This makes it hard to get invested in the characters. From the start, Boulet suspects Cobb of lying about his past; by episode’s end, Cobb’s past is revealed, and while I won’t spoil the surprise, I’ll bet we can count on him to deliver cynical one-liners and self-lacerating judgments, which I’d rather just supply myself. Anderson and Hauser are okay actors (probably), but the writing is so flat (and the direction so ADHD) that they can’t invest these guys with any depth; they’re reduced to marks-and-cue-cards acting, which is probably all that K-Ville wants of them anyway.

Really, K-Ville (it’s short for “Katrina-ville”) is less a procedural than a shoot-em-up, but the action is awful. In the first of two car chases, the show cuts directly from Boulet and Cobb, roaring down the street after the guy who shot Boulet’s neighbor, to the scene where they find the shooter’s vehicle crashed and overturned. The whole point of a car chase is to see the vehicles crash and overturn; if you don’t have the budget to do your crash right, spend it elsewhere. Like, try pretending you’re serious about your New Orleans setting and investing some script dollars accordingly. This isn’t a keeper.