Chips, Cards, and the Flat Tax

LAST NIGHT, OUR POKER game was the touchstone for a varied range of conversational topics. Some may make certain presuppositions about the tenor or content of the gab at the traditional Thursday night poker game. See if any of these match your stereotype of what 11 men crouched around a swatch of green felt, chips vying with beers for space, might discuss:

• Whether the progressive tax system favors the rich and/or unfairly burdens the poor
• The virtues of a flat tax
• The budget deficit vs. the national debt, and how we briefly ran a surplus before 9/11
• General consensus that elimination of wasteful government spending must precede any worthwhile revision of the tax code
• The cost of the Iraq war
• The recent hangings in Iraq and the practice of execution by hanging, in particular whether death is instant
  

Amid this, quite a lot of poker was played, including some dramatic all-ins. With time, however, the New York Giants returned to the table as a talking point, along with what the draft might bring, and from there, we did eventually debate the merits of such female luminaries as Rachel McAdams, the Jessicas Biel and Alba, and Scarlett Johansson.