"President Obama on Sunday displayed the freedom that comes with not having another election ahead of him..."

"... golfing with Tiger Woods in an enclave of privilege here along Florida’s blustery Atlantic coast."

It's not just Phil Mickelson — plenty of high-income athletes want out of California taxes.

Mickelson was just the one who was PR-deaf enough to let us know how he feels.

Why do you think Tiger Woods lives in Florida?

In November, voters in California approved a ballot measure raising the top rate on income over $1 million to 13.3% (the increase applies retroactively to last year). ... Mr. Woods grossed $56.4 million in 2012. As a Floridian, he will keep about $7.5 million that he otherwise would have owed to the state of California. His net tax savings over his 16-year career come to about $100 million. Mr. Mickelson last year earned $60.7 million. Paying the 13.3% California rate, he will owe the state $8 million.

That takes Mickelson down to $52.7 million, putting him behind Woods, when he was ahead of him on the money list. Aggravating! (I know, I'm failing to take account of the way state taxes are a deduction on your federal income taxes and everything else that affects after-tax income.)

The benefit of living in a state without an income tax can be diminished by the "jock tax" that states impose on money earned by athletes when they're playing or training in the state. (Luckily for baseball players, spring training is in no-tax Florida or low-tax Arizona.) But in sports like tennis and golf where athletes can train anywhere in the world, a preponderance happen to migrate to states without an income tax.

These celebs — with their endorsements — need good PR, as the Mickelson slip proved. State tax proponents could get proactive and actively shame the sports stars who live in Florida without an adequate cover story. 

For instance, Serena and Venus Williams grew up in Compton, Calif., but moved with their father to Florida in the early 1990s.

When golfers go Depardieu.

Actor Gerard Depardieu has been putting on a big show of running from France to escape high taxation.

Now, here in America, "Golfer Phil Mickelson May Call It Quits Due To Climbing Tax Rates."

If you think perhaps Mickelson is being a bit of a baby for threating [sic] to end a career that’s earned him a spot on this list of 10 wealthiest athletes on the planet because of some tax increases, understand that he’s getting hit on the state level, too. In November, California passed Proposition 30, which increases the top income tax rate on resident millionaires to 13.3%, a drain on Mickelson’s take-home pay that may force him to sell his 9,500 square foot mansion and flee his home state in search of more friendly pastures.

Do Americans care whether Phil Mickelson lives in the United States or not? It's hardly the equivalent of Gerard Depardieu and France. Or is it? Maybe I'm not getting America's attachment to its athletes.

Which, if any, Americans are in a position to protest — effectively protest — taxes by threatening to leave the country? Threatening to leave a state seems more plausible. I would think there are a lot of athletes in team sports who could let it be known they are taking taxes into account, but presumably that's all haggled over in private negotiations. A team in a high-tax state is going to have to put up more money than a team in a low-tax state. It really is the golfer — the athlete in business for himself — who has some choices about where to live. But other than the one-off character Tiger Woods, America doesn't care about golfers.

"SCIENCE: Men and women apologize differently."

Writes Instapundit, but the link goes to a story about one woman's apology. If you keep reading there's a small grab bag of "science":

Without defaulting to the conventional wisdom that men have to protect fragile egos, there’s an aspect to apologizing that implies defeat, which the more competitive male gender is less inclined to concede. Tiger Woods, Anthony Wiener, and Bill Clinton all had personas shaped by winning and success, and their late-coming, highly crafted apologies lacked authenticity. They seemed more driven by those self-preserving, secondary motives of escaping punishment and guilt. It felt like none of them would have apologized had he never been caught, implying the regret originated in being exposed rather than in feeling bad.

And all of that drivel is true of the apology from the woman (Kristen Stewart) that's supposed to feel so sincere! Well, there's the answer: The perceiver of the apology has subjective feelings and is judging the woman differently (and patronizingly!).

One of few scientific studies on the psychology of female versus male apologies determined that men are less inclined to apologize because they have a different threshold for perceiving offensive behavior; that is, that they don’t always get what they’ve done wrong until someone slaps them upside the head for it. 

Now, you're not talking about whether men and women apologize differently. You're talking about whether they apologize at all. And, come on, Kristen Stewart got "slapped upside the head," as you say. And, by the way, her apology — going by the quote at the link — doesn't even say she was wrong. It says she's sorry she hurt people, and what she did was a "momentary indiscretion" that interfered with what she wants in life.

Now... here it comes... brain science!

Disparities between female and male brains may also impact how apologies are shaped and delivered. Men tend to have proportionally more white matter in their heads, indicating a thick web of connections that strengthen organizational skills, spatial relations, and problem solving. But women are understood to have greater connectivity between the left side of the brain, where logic and facts are mostly processed, and the right side in charge of non-linear thought like creativity and perception. The flow of signals between left and right may explain why women are generally better at connecting emotions with language.

As usual, "science" says women are better! Considering that the article was written by a man, we do have a data point. Despite the great connectivity between the hemispheres of my brain, I see a bunch of  data points going nowhere. An actress, caught in a lie, dribbled out some blather. Maybe emotion is clouding my language. Sorry. (Could you tell how sincere that apology was?)

"He’s not Jimmy Carter. He’s Tiger Woods — a natural who’s lost his swing."

"He has so many different swing thoughts in his head, so many people whispering in his ear about what the polls say and how he needs to position himself to get re-elected, that he has lost all his natural instincts for the game."

Racist or just fatuous?

Racist or fatuous?
	Racist.
	Fatuous.
	Both.
	Neither.
pollcode.com free polls

Tiger Woods steps on President Obama's 11 a.m. news conference.

Which 11 a.m. appearance are you going to watch?

Obama?

Obama plans to hold a press conference at 11 a.m. in Washington today, his fifth public remarks on the debt in a week, as he presses lawmakers to reach an agreement to raise the $14.3 trillion U.S. borrowing ceiling before an Aug. 2 deadline. The president and bipartisan congressional negotiators agreed to meet every day until they reach a deal, said one legislative aide on condition of anonymity.

Or Tiger?

[T]he news that Tiger will sit down with The Golf Channel's Kelly Tilghman on Monday morning at 11 AM ET seems a bit strange....

What could it be?... Here are a few of the possibilites.

-- Tiger won't play golf for the rest of 2011...

-- Tiger needs to have surgery to fix his knee/Achilles.

-- Tiger might comment on his relationship with Anthony Galea, maybe just to clear the air after Galea was indicted last week on counts of transporting illegal drugs across the border for a number of athletes.

-- Tiger might be giving us an idea of when he will return to golf.

Which press event will you tune to at 11 a.m.?
	Obama
	Tiger
	Neither
pollcode.com free polls

Tiger Woods, expelling bodily fluids in the wrong place again.

This time, it's spit.

"Obama wants to take our penises."

One of many out of context quotes — 2 of which are from me — in this montage of sexy highlights from the last 5 years of Bloggingheads:



ADDED: Here's the context of my reference to "masturbating boys":

"SO WITH TIGER WOODS’ GOLF GAME NOW SUCKING LIKE A BILGE PUMP..."

"... can we entertain the hypothesis that his prior slutting around was actually essential to his performance?"

Asks Glenn Reynolds.

Here's what I said back in February, when he made his big "apology":

Deep down, what does he really believe? If I were writing a fictionalized version of his story, I'd have him believe that he is the greatest golfer of all time and that this grand stature authorizes him to do what fits his fabulous mind and body. People get to see the manifestation of that mind and body on the golf course and in those idealized advertisements, but outside of that he must do what has worked, and that means having the anchor of a beautiful family and the whole range of intense sexuality that belongs to him — because he is what he is. Now, he's been called to account by conventional minds and all those people who make money through him — the PGA, the sports networks, advertisers — and they are dragging him down to their mundane morality with no concern for what it took to build the superior mind and body that is Tiger Woods. He is cornered and contemptuous, but he must abase himself for these little people and act as though he agrees. The outrage!

And I said, maybe he needs to throw of the image his father impressed on him and be openly the man he really is, someone more like Hugh Hefner.

What was most essential to Tiger's performance that he's missing now?
	Lots of dirty sex.
	The love of his wife and stability of his family.
	Being regarded as an icon of excellence, which he fed on since early boyhood.
	That big, seemingly endless flow of money, from advertisers feeding on his image of excellence.
pollcode.com free polls

“Shirley Sherrod, who didn’t know who Andrew Breitbart was 72 hours ago, now knows him well enough to say that he wants to put all blacks back into slavery."

"If I were David Axelrod, I’d be calling this woman and beg her to stop talking. And, yes, she does owe Andrew an apology."

Apologies, apologies, apologies. I'm more on the side of standing by what you have done (unless you actually believe you were wrong). Defend yourself!

For example, here was Rush Limbaugh on the radio yesterday:

People have asked me about this woman Sarah Spitz, who's now "apologized," and they want my reaction to it. And this is another thing I'll react to it but I really don't want to. This bores me as well, this whole concept of forcing people to apologize for things they meant to say. Why is she gonna apologize? She meant to say it, she wrote it, stand by it. You want to watch me die, Sarah? Say it! Where are your guts? Well, she's "apologized."...

[It's] the latest trend in apologies, "That's not who I really am." You know, "That's not the person I am." Bull! It is who you are! You are a commie! You are a full-fledged Marxist liberal! You do wish I was dead. It is who you are.

I don't care whether it's Tiger Woods saying, "You know, that's really not who I am." It is. It is who you are! What, did somebody steal your personality for a day and grab hold of your hands and start typing on your keyboard and it wasn't you? "This is not who I am. I want everybody to know, as a publicist I understand and this is not who I am." It is who you are!

Ha. Exactly. I said the same thing about Tiger Woods, by the way, back in February.

Should Elin settle for $750 million from Tiger...

... if it includes "a lifetime 'confidentiality clause' that would prevent her from writing a book or doing any interviews about the split"?

Should Elin take the money and shut up?
	Yes. That's so much money!
	Yes. We'll all be better off if that nasty material never sees the light of day.
	Yes. Elin, you will be better off looking for the future and not dwelling on the past.
	No. Tiger must pay for what he did and shouldn't get anything back in exchange.
	No. You need to explore and air this all out for your own good.
	No. I want to read all about it! Come on! Dish it out!
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: LOL.

"Socially, artistically, it was totally worth it."

"Financially, it wasn't worth it."

"It is what it is. Whatever it was, it wasn't good enough.''

Tiger Woods misses the cut... by 8 shots.

What is, at long last, driving Elin Nordegren to divorce Tiger Woods?

Supposedly, her friends are saying the last straw was that Nike ad, the one with him staring blankly while the voice of his dead father gives him a talking-to.

Who's behind "Crash the Tea Party" movement urging people to show up with racist signs...

... etc.

It could be either anti- or pro-Tea Party.

Think about it. It's damned easy for anyone to screw up Tea Parties by showing up with the racist signs the media and liberal blogs would love to exploit. But, that being the case, it's also quite useful for the Tea Party to get everyone to think that any bad signs probably came from their opponents. There are too many layers to this. I think that mostly hurts the Tea Partiers. It generates too much chaos and uncertainty. If you don't know what's real and what's fake out there in that world of political action, don't you want to pull back into your more intimate relationships with people you actually know?

***

By the way the "Crash the Tea Party" website is most notably selling T-shirts. Maybe that's really the whole idea — T-shirts, not Tea Parties. Buy the merchandise. Maybe there's no real politics, just a guy with a little wit, trying to make a buck. He just got some big links, so, in his way, he earned it.

***

As I was writing this post, I looked up from my window table at a café in Madison, Wisconsin and saw a middle-aged man, shambling along in Birkenstocks, wearing a T-shirt with a big, faded:



Everybody always needs a new T-shirt.

***

And as I wrote the words "your more intimate relationships with people you actually know" my very next thought was: I wonder how Tiger's doing at the Masters today? You see my train of thought?

Teed up for teasing. It's Tiger Woods.

In the new Nike promo:



Ha! Absurd. I know there are all sorts of instant parodies out there, and I haven't clicked on any yet. The original is already ridiculous. Shameless.

On the other hand: the leaderboard.

OR: You could say:

Without speaking a word, he humanizes himself. Tiger's close bond with his demanding father always felt like the one warm, relatable dimension of an otherwise cold and remote personality....  (By the way, is it me or is there something very Hamlet about the way a haggard Tiger gets interrogated by the ghost of his father on the misty ramparts of a golf course?)

Oh, please.

At the Masters, Tiger Woods will have 90 bodyguards to protect him from the women he screwed.

"None of these girls are allowed anywhere near him... If one photo comes out of a beautiful lady touching him, it would be a disaster."

So not just "these girls" — the ones he fucked — but any "beautiful lady"? Doesn't that make you — female readers only — want to doll yourself up and head down to Augusta, Georgia to see if you can sidle into a photo frame with Tiger?

Ordinary spectators are not allowed to have cameras at a golf tournament. They even search your bag. You'll be at the mercy of the authorized photographers inside the event. But won't they try to frame Tiger with pretty ladies in the background? (Don't they do that anyway, without even any sex scandal to for resonance.) What if a beautiful woman stands stands on the other side of the hole when Tiger is putting? She'd be framed in professional photographs. And she'd distract him with her feminine radiations. She'd be kicked out of the golf course, I bet.

"If I were Elin... man, I would have hit a lot more than she did. I would have kept hitting!"

"You would still be swinging the golf club?" "Yeah, (Elin) stopped. She was respectable. I'd get the baseball bat, I'd get everything out."

That's Sandra Bullock, the supposed "girl next door" type, being, presumably, cute and adorable. We're expected to find that especially poignant now because Bullock did not know at the time that her husband was cheating on her too. Poor, darling Sandra!

There will not even be a tiny dent in Bullock's lustrous reputation for her endorsement of — or lighthearted joking about — murderous domestic violence.

"This is how sports agents and crisis managers imagine speaking from the heart, but only in the abstract."

"It is somewhat the same way when they imagine sincerity. They think we're all as easy as the other women in [Tiger] Woods' (former) life."

"It's such an important issue in America right now - the sex addiction outbreak."

We're all really concerned about him and hope he gets better."