Without Question, The Cotton Bowl Should Have Been Played On New Year's Day in Prime Time; WSJ Links

Talk about missed opportunities.

WSJ Links

I hate to waste paper, so I will post the WSJ links on this otherwise very short post.

Note: the links will often take you to the WSJ site which requires a subscription. If you "copy" the headline into a google search, you will get to the article.

Section D: how funny. Regular readers know that there are only a few things I talk about other than oil. One of them is the Honda Civic, my favorite car of all time.

And here it is, the back page of section, taking up almost the entire page, five columns across: Honda Civic gets back to where it once belonged. I was thinking of buying an end-of-year model (I gave away my 2011 Honda Civic) but then read the reviews of the 2012. Glad I waited. Smile.

Section C: ah, yes. My favorite section. I missed this section the past week or so while traveling. I subscribe, but I don't read the WSJ on-line except when reading linked stories.

• WSJ: have we lost the war on drugs? Time to decriminalize drug use and the drug market? Taxed right, it could balance the budget, I bet.
• Not surprising: don't burn your books -- print is here to stay. The e-book had its moment, but sales are slowing. Readers still want to turn those crisp, bound pages. Amen.
• Matt Ridley: how fossil fuels have greened the planet. Oh, yeah. Matt says: "satellites show that the amount of green vegetation has been increasing for three decades straight."
• Book review: why jazz happened. Mark Myers. 
• Book review: the man who built the modern south, Katherine and RJ Reynolds, Michele Gillespie.
• I would not have linked Stefan Kiesbye's top five personal choices, but when he includes Gertrude Stein's Melanctha, I have to at least link the article.
• Awesome! My granddaughter and I love to talk about honey. Building the buzz for artisanal honey.

Section B: Okay, this is it. The truth: how much will your taxes jump? When you look at the categories, you realize that the WSJ is out of touch with mainstream America. Sadly, these are the categories:

• single person; income, $230,000; tax increase - $3,000 (it will be much worse if he/she gets married to high income earner; see below; talk about an anti-marriage bill)
• single parent, two children; income, $260,000; tax increase - $3,300
• retired couple, income, $180,000; tax increase - $0 (nice)
• married couple, four children, income, $650,000 - tax increase - $22,000

Harry Reid's base made out like bandits: retired couple, $180,000 -- no tax increase, and retirees often qualify for Medicare, the biggest expense (medical) some folks have; and retirees often qualify for $4.99 "Slam" at Dennys' (or whatever it is).

Section A:

• Front page: tepid job growth fuels worry. 
• Front page: deeper troop cutback weighed; this would help control military health care costs; just buy more drones;
• Front page: life and death online; who controls a digital legacy? Am I missing something? This is a  no-brainer. Alison lost a "long battle" with colon cancer, age 27, and during that "long battle" never gave her passwords to her digital life to her parents or significant others; why does anyone think her parents and significant others should have access to her private accounts now?
• Front page: LA yanks plug on free parking for electric cars; airport nixes mad scramble for coveted sport; frequent fliers now regret 'expensive, underpowered' rides; "editor's pick; YUP.

And that's just the front page, folks.

• California law blamed for crime rise: in October, 2011, California decided to relieve its overcrowded penal system by sending some low-level criminals into the custody of local sheriffs instead of into state prisons.  The next quarter, the most recent for which numbers are available, marked the first rise in property crimes since 2004. My hunch: decriminalize drugs and everything will be okey-dokey (see above).
• Op-ed: The Kyoto Scorecard. The UN's anticarbon scheme didn't work out as planned. Well, duh. Did you know that The Kyoto Protocol expired four or five days ago, on January 1, 2013. Expired. As in dead.