But The Economy is Still Bad
 

Damn - forgot to STP. My bad.

But The Economy is Still Bad
 

so when you said "I can't wait til those guys are prison rec yard love dolls." you envisioned consensual sex?

Is this a special fantasy you have?

http://static.flickr.com/54/13950544...92861a.jpg?v=0

But The Economy is Still Bad
 

You sure visit some interesting web sites during working hours.

But The Economy is Still Bad
 

I thought that the Keller / Beecher storyline was kinda sweet. And Keller was hot and got naked a lot. And I once had an erotic dream about Ryan O'Riley.

Adebisi did scare the crap out of me, though. And Schilinger was a bastard. And whatsihisname deserved to have his penis bitten off.

So I guess Oz taught me that prison love can happen (especially if one of the murdering bastards is hot, hot, hot), but ultimately prison is a scary place that I'd rather not be.

But The Economy is Still Bad
 

"You know, it's funny. Out there I hated them, but in here, well, sometimes you need your dick sucked"

-Simon Adebisi, circa 1997

But The Economy is Still Bad
 

it seemed like it would be a good show but I never went through the trouble of renting season 1 to understand it. you recommend it?

But The Economy is Still Bad
 

Dadadadadadada.

But The Economy is Still Bad
 

so you think it's bad despite this? Maybe because, what, the comparison period is bullshit? I'm confused.

And, since I'm ketchupping, " I, (daughter’s name)’s father, choose before God to cover my daughter" -- in horse breeding, aren't stallions said to cover mares? Why are they using "cover" here? THAT creeps me out.

But The Economy is Still Bad
 

You seem truly obssessed with all things incestuous and preternaturally sexual. Is there something about your past you are trying to hint at?

(I won't even get into the bestiality aspect.)

But The Economy is Still Bad
 

I copied this so that you can't change it before Fringey gets in.

But The Economy is Still Bad
 

We aren't all drunks and cowards.

Memorial Day
 

It is not just for picnics . . .

Headquarters, Grand Army of the Republic
Washington, D.C., May 5, 1868

I. The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land. In this observance no form or ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.

We are organized, comrades, as our regulations tell us, for the purpose, among other things, "of preserving and strengthening those kind and fraternal feelings which have bound together the soldiers, sailors, and marines who united to suppress the late rebellion." What can aid more to assure this result than by cherishing tenderly the memory of our heroic dead, who made their breasts a barricade between our country and its foe? Their soldier lives were the reveille of freedom to a race in chains, and their death a tattoo of rebellious tyranny in arms. We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. All that the consecrated wealth and taste of the Nation can add to their adornment and security is but a fitting tribute to the memory of her slain defenders. Let no wanton foot tread rudely on such hallowed grounds. Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and found mourners. Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten, as a people, the cost of free and undivided republic.

If other eyes grow dull and other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remain in us.

Let us, then, at the time appointed, gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with choicest flowers of springtime; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from dishonor; let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us as sacred charges upon the Nation's gratitude,--the soldier's and sailor's widow and orphan.

II. It is the purpose of the Commander-in-Chief to inaugurate this observance with the hope it will be kept up from year to year, while a survivor of the war remains to honor the memory of his departed comrades. He earnestly desires the public press to call attention to this Order, and lend its friendly aid in bringing it to the notice of comrades in all parts of the country in time for simultaneous compliance therewith.

III. Department commanders will use every effort to make this order effective.

By command of:
JOHN A. LOGAN,
Commander-in-Chief.

AMT
 

They're all on my "let the AMT replace the income tax" bandwagon now:

WaPo

AMT
 

The reason that so many in Congress oppose the idea is exactly the reason pointed out in the article you link to: AMT taxes capital gains and dividends the same way as it taxes wages and business income.

The people creaming the loudest for a "flat" tax really want a tax on every kind of income but theirs.

AMT
 

As does anyone creaming for any change.

AMT plus unlimited Roth IRAs. How about that? (i.e., you pay income tax rates on dividends and k-gains, but only when you withdraw the money from the IRA.

AMT
 

Does one pay those w/r/t Roth IRAs now? I thought withdrawals were tax-free.

AMT
 

Same here. I thought that with the Roths, you pay taxes on the income going in, but the withdrawals weren't touched.

AMT
 

Oops, my mistake. You do pay before putting it in. The money you take out is untaxed. Same difference, mathematically, and for this policy purpose. Either way dividends and gains are untaxed (or taxed only once).

AMT
 

The whole "expanding Roths to everyone" is bullshit on two levels -- (a) they want the immediate revenue to offset other tax cuts/this will fuck future revenues and (2) huge, huge shelter for the wealthy. HUGE.

AMT
 

On (a) starve the beast
On (b) so? They're paying the taxes now, in full. In exchange, it won't be taxed upon withdrawal. So, what you're doing is taxing consumption and not savings. (and, mathematically, it's identical to allowing a deduction now and taxing later, on withdrawal).

AMT
 

You know where I stand. The Supremes declared back in 1916 that income was any accretion to wealth. Last time I checked, that included cap gains and dividends. It's like Warren Buffet said, it's absurd that some janitor pushing a broom should be taxed on the way he earns a living and a stock trader like Buffet should get away tax-free.


ETA the pun was intentional.

AMT
 

On (a), do you really think this works? Or are you setting out their rationale? Because they aren't starving the beast -- they are maximizing crop yields now at the expense of crop yields later. Or some metaphor like that.

On (b), how is it mathematically the same? The earnings never get taxed. Oh, wait, I guess if we were *saving* and *investing* the current tax revenues, then in theory the returns would be the same as the returns on the money in the Roth IRA.

I think that ignoring temporal issues in this context is unwise. It seems to me this is all about timing, and that the purely formulaic mathematical economic stuff is just being used to cloud the underlying timing issues.

It does sound nice, though.

I think *when* money comes in is not irrelevant.

AMT
 

on a, apparently not.

What's mathematically the same is:

A. Allowing a tax deduction for IRA contributions, with taxation on all withdrawals.

B. Allowing no tax deduction for IRA contributions (and thus requiring payment of tax on them, with no taxes later.

It's just a time shift of tax receipts, but properly discounted to present value (based on the actual earnings).

I concede that the budget shenanigans of allowing a 1-year unlimited roth conversion to create revenues is bogus, but I support it because I support the increased use of allowing savings to grow tax free (whether taxed at the outset or upon withdrawal).

AMT
 

That doesn't mean that it must include all such things, or all the current exemptions would be unconstitutional.

I'm pretty sure (although could be corrected), they were referring there to the outer limits of Congress' authority.

AMT
 

You're right on both points. As it happens, for the reasons stated earlier, I believe that it is inherently inequitable to tax wages but not tax dividends and capital gains. I also believe it is inherently inequitable to tax consumption rather than income, and for the same reason.

Both favor the wealthy at the expense of the working poor, the lower and the middle classes. People who need to live on the bulk of their income suffer more of the incindence of tax under either a flat tax that excludes dividends and capital gains or under a consumption tax.

AMT
 

On the former, I see your point (although I don't know if "suffering the incidence" accurately describes everyone paying the same percentage of their income in tax).

On the latter, there is no reason that one could not have a progressive consumption tax. Indeed, using IRAs/Roths/tax-sheltered savings accounts, in combination with progressive tax bracketing should resolve your concerns (assuming sufficient progressivity).

AMT
 

Let's just say that when the government draws the poverty line for a family of four with two kids under 18 at $19,206, I'm more than a little bit skeptical about their ability to provide sufficient progressivity.

Here we go again........
 

You know, I've been critical of Rep. Harris on this board, and I've come to the conclusion that at least some of this criticism was less than warranted. Sure, her claim to fame was as a Republican appointee centrally involved in one of the most contested elections in modern American history, and my initial opinion of her as a potential federal elected official was consequently pretty low.

Even after getting elected to the House of Reprsentatives, I remained skeptical.

But I understand now that my perception was too limited, based solely on news reports about her laughable campaign miscues, about dining with alleged felons, and of still photographs of tight clothing. Only when I saw a recent clip of her on TV did I understand how she's put it all together.

Watch for yourself (via Wonkette), and learn the secret to the first set of TITS! to be elected to the United States Senate.

Gattigap

Here we go again........
 

Until the tight clothing part, I thought for a minute you were talking about Al Gore

Here we go again........
 

Please. You've been posting "Run, Al, Run!" messages in the comments section of DailyKos and Atrios for weeks now. Don't even try to deny it.

Here we go again........
 

Close.

I'm the guy behind the "Draft John Kerry. Again!!!" campaign.

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2004/ALLPOLIT...rry.salute.jpg

Here we go again........
 

The Economist is right again.........
 

Pombo v McCloskey in California

White knight in a battle-bus
Jun 1st 2006 | PLEASANTON AND STOCKTON
From The Economist print edition

An elderly Republican tries to clean up his party


“I DON'T know if I'll win or not, but the cause is just.” That is why Pete McCloskey, who ran against Richard Nixon for the Republican nomination for president way back in 1972, has returned to the political fray, touring California's 11th congressional district from the spruce Bay Area commuter town of Pleasanton in the west to the flat farmland of the San Joaquin valley in the east. The cause, emblazoned on the ancient bus that serves as the McCloskey mobile campaign HQ, is to “Restore Ethics to Congress”.


McCloskey's not expecting to winIn general, that means wringing the corruption out of a Republican Party stained by successive scandals, from the money-laundering charges against Tom DeLay, the former majority leader, to the admitted corruption of Jack Abramoff, a super-lobbyist, and the jailing in March of Randy “Duke” Cunningham, a California congressman. In particular, it means unseating the district's seven-term incumbent, Richard Pombo, in the Republican primary on June 6th. One non-partisan group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, claims that Mr Pombo, a DeLay protégé, is one of the 13 most corrupt members of Congress, guilty of everything from peddling his influence as chairman of the House Resources Committee to feathering the family nest. These accusations are unproven, but Mr Pombo has long been a target for the Sierra Club and other environmentalist organisations. They say he has tried to weaken the Endangered Species Act, privatise government-owned land and open protected areas, including Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to oil-drilling.

So is Mr Pombo, a 45-year-old rancher fond of flaunting his cowboy hat, destined to fall? His campaign manager, Carl Fogliani, scoffs at the notion. Mr Pombo has plenty of money (perhaps $1m still on hand, after a fund-raising visit last week by Dick Cheney); the district's farmers overwhelmingly support him; and, unlike Mr McCloskey, who had to find a temporary home in unprepossessing Lodi in order to run, he is a true son of the district. As for those accusations of corruption, the Fogliani line is that they are all baseless—and donations from Jack Abramoff have been given to charity. Meanwhile, the Pombo name is hard to avoid: a property firm founded by his uncle is the largest landowner in the district, with billboards to prove it.


Ironically, Mr McCloskey, an impressively robust 78-year-old who served in the House of Representatives for the San Francisco peninsula from 1967 to 1982, also thinks a Pombo victory the more likely outcome. He agreed to stand only because he and like-minded veteran Republicans could not find a local candidate. He cheerfully tells bemused lunchers at Pleasanton's Blue Agave restaurant that his chances are not great, and spends surely too many minutes for campaign efficiency poring over trinkets in a bric-à-brac shop.

Yet the Pombo camp is not taking victory for granted. It may be true that “Agriculture loves Richard”, but the media have warmed to Mr McCloskey and the quixotic campaign that he calls “the Revolt of the Elders”—an effort that began more than a year ago when ten former congressmen, all Republicans, wrote to Dennis Hastert, the speaker, demanding higher ethical standards in the House. Moreover, it must help Mr McCloskey that he is a genuine war hero. He volunteered for the second world war, won the Navy Cross, the Silver Star and two Purple Hearts as a marine in the Korean war, and volunteered also for the Vietnam war before turning against it.

The question is how much it will help. Arguably, Mr McCloskey has always been a maverick within the Republican Party. He was the first lawmaker to call for the repeal of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that took America into Vietnam, and the first to call for the impeachment of Nixon. Today, he is proudly out-of-step with the conservative-dominated party. He is pro-choice, he supports stem-cell research and Oregon's assisted-suicide law, he favours withdrawing from Iraq within a year and he is a zealous protector of the environment (he was a co-chairman of the first Earth Day in 1970 and co-wrote the Endangered Species Act of 1973). In other words, he could easily fit into the Democratic Party; and although he admired the first President Bush, his disdain for George W. is such that in 2004 he endorsed John Kerry.

His disdain for Mr Pombo is still greater. Hence his pledge, should he lose in the primary, to campaign for the Democrat come November. Would that be enough to unseat Mr Pombo in a district where 46% of the voters are Republican and just 39% Democrats? Maybe not, since in 2004 Mr Pombo beat the Democrats' Jerry McNerney by 61% to 39%. On the other hand, while the Pombo team are keeping their internal polls to themselves, the Washington scandals are taking their toll. A recent poll commissioned by the Defenders of Wildlife predicts that this time Mr Pombo would lose to the Democrat (either Mr McNerney or Steve Filson). As Pete McCloskey tells the voters, “Congressmen are like diapers. You need to change them often, and for the same reason.”

The Economist is right again.........
 

I find it very, very interesting that you are pumping this guy.



And will you follow his pledge?

AMT
 

Is there a rule-of-thumb on when it makes sense to roll your regular IRA into a Roth? I supposed it's a calculation based on age, years until retirement, income, and weather in Toronto. Fringe?

I'll avoid the "what's good for the country" issue in favor of the "what's good for Sidd" issue (if the govt is going to fuck the country up with massive deficits for decades to come, I don't think I should try to offset the cost of that personally. Maybe if I had a spare 10 trillion around, but not otherwise.)

The Economist is right again.........
 

Politics is always the lesser of two evils. I may not agree with all of Pete's views but it is better than having somone that is totally corrupt.



No - I will not.

The Economist is right again.........
 

Is it Pombo's corruption that bothers you, or his policies? If the former, then billing the McCloskey campaign as part of the "moderate Republican revolution" is a little off-base.

The Economist is right again.........
 

If politics is always the lesser of two evils, and you don't want to have someone who is totally corrupt in Congress from that district, why wouldn't you support a Democrat running against Pombo?

So here's a question for Spanky and all the other folks who supported the President's efforts to change Social Security:

The GOP leadership in Congress this week is pushing for a permanent repeal of the estate tax, a move that would do harm to the government's balance sheet about equal to Social Security's 75-year deficit. That would be OK because it would benefit a small number of very rich people, while Social Security should be changed because the benefits go to people who are more likely to vote for Democrats, right?

Did we already have the discussion of dedicating some portion of the estate tax to the SS trust fund instead of general revenues? Pure class warfare, I know, but at least you can hit the people before they die to pay off the invidious structural debt created by the early years of unkeepable promises of SS.