Nutjobs Ranting About Politics.

[SlaveNoMore]

viet_mom
PS - I'm looking on this board for info about the rumors about forgery of President Bush's National Guard duty.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/007760.php is all over it

Kevin Drum is now apologizing for his rant:

UPDATE: I now have copies of the memos the White House released, and they are just versions that CBS faxed to the White House the day before the 60 Minutes segment aired. There's no indication that the White House had its own copies of these memos and had been sitting on them.

Apologies.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I'm not following you. You said above that debt is cheaper. This seems to suggest the opposite result (i.e, the argument I initially made).

The dividend paid will always reflect a discount for the foregone interest deduction. If Uncle Sam is paying 35% of my interest, then, to simplify things, I won't pay more than 65% of a dollar's worth of interest in dividends instead, unless my shares are in trouble, because otherwise, I lose money.

An exception can be made where, like Microsoft, you have a very large shareholder with, effectively, a controlling interest in the corporation. Suddenly, he likes dividends, because he can get cash out of the corp more cheaply than he could by selling stock.

You suggested above that it benefits companies, not investors. My point is that they are really one in the same, i.e., what is good for the company is essentially the same as what is good for its shareholders. You can't really disagree with this (well you could, but you would be wrong).

My goodness, you are naive. In any large, publicly traded corporation, with a few exceptions (see Microsoft), there is no connection between the shareholders, none of whom own more than a fraction of a percent of the corp's stock, and its professional managers, who are paid bonuses and salary based upon the corporation's quarterly and annual performance.

They don't give a shit about the individual shareholders. In any event the only shareholders who matter are insurance companies and large pension and mutual funds. Those institutional shareholders care only about quarterly and annual performance of the stock, because that's what their fees are based on.

The people who wanted the dividend tax cut are people who own big chunks of stock that they got as options when they were CEO, trust fund babies, and a few self-made guys like Gates. These people have friendly boards that will declare dividends if the stock is in play (which puts their jobs in play) or the corporations have a lot of loose cash they can't decide what to invest in. If they pay it out to shareholders, the shareholders get cash at a lower effective tax rate than selling some of their stock.

Instead of freeing up corporate resources to invest in R&D and more jobs, the corps are paying dividends because they have cash they figure they won't make enough on if they invest it and holding it makes them attractive takeover candidates.

You could disagree with this, but you'd have to understand it a whole lot better first.

[baltassoc]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Our favorite golddigger, Zsa Zsa, is at it again:

• Teresa Heinz Kerry says "only an idiot" would fail to support her husband's health care plan.
  
  But Heinz Kerry, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, told the (Lancaster) Intelligencer Journal that "of course, there are idiots."

Ya got to admit its funny, though. Not convinced? See if it's funny this way:

Vice President Dick Cheney says "only an idiot" would fail to support the President's plans for Iraq.

But Cheney told the (Lancaster) Intelligencer Journal that "of course, there are idiots."

See? Funny.

Come on guys. I know how you like to issue ad feminam attacks against the wives of Democrat presidents / presidential candidates, but give her a little credit.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

• The Bush administration's recruitment of staff for the CPA is one of the great scandals of the American occupation, although it has so far received little attention from the press. Republican political connections counted for far more than professional competence, relevant international experience, or knowledge of Iraq. In May, The Washington Post ran an account of three young people recruited for service in the CPA by e-mail, without interviews, security clearances, or relevant experience. They ended up responsible for spending Iraq's budget; because they knew little about the country or about financial procedures, they did so slowly. The failure to spend money was of course the source of enormous frustration to jobless Iraqis and undoubtedly produced recruits for the insurgency. According to the Post, the threesome, who included the daughter of a prominent conservative activist, had never applied to go to Iraq and could not figure out how they were selected. Finally they realized that the one thing they had in common was that they had applied for jobs at the conservative Heritage Foundation, which had kept their resumes on file.
  
  In some cases, the quest for political loyalists meant dismissing qualified professionals who had already been recruited. In the June 20 Chicago Tribune, the reporter Andy Zajac described how, in April of 2003, the Bush administration replaced the chief CPA health official, Dr. Frederick Burkle, a medical doctor with close working relationships with humanitarian organizations and long experience in conflict zones, with James Haveman, a political crony of Michigan's Republican former governor. Unlike Dr. Burkle, who for months had been planning the restoration of Iraq's health care system and who was ready to put a program in action as soon as Baghdad fell, Haveman did not arrive in Iraq until June 7, 2003. Although he had never worked in a post-conflict environment, Haveman strongly denied that he lacked international experience, apparently considering his travel to twenty-six foreign countries (as he told the Chicago Tribune) a relevant qualification.
  
  The privatizing of Iraq's economy was handled at first by Thomas Foley, a top Bush fund-raiser, and then by Michael Fleisher, brother of President Bush's first press secretary. After explaining that he had got the job in Iraq through his brother Ari, he told the Chicago Tribune—without any apparent sense of irony—that the Americans were going to teach the Iraqis a new way of doing business. "The only paradigm they know is cronyism."

NYRB

[Gattigap]

The crack high of the RNC seems to be fading. Even the latest Fox News Channel polls have Bush's lead down to 2 percent.

Bring Back Zell! Bring Back Zell!

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I wouldn't be surprised if CBS got burned, but so what? The most damning thing in my book is that Bush was ordered by a superior officer (see the order here) to report for a flight physical within 10 days, and blew off that direct order.

So what. As CinC, he doesn't have to take orders, he gives them.

I think that the Kerry fucktards don't get that the undecideds don't give a fuck about GWB's NG service. Kerry's 1971 testimony, which POWs say caused their torture to increase, that is something undecideds about.

[SlaveNoMore]

Gattigap
The crack high of the RNC seems to be fading. Even the latest Fox News Channel polls have Bush's lead down to 2 percent.

Bring Back Zell! Bring Back Zell!

It's 4 with Nader in the mix.

All eyes are on the ABC poll later today.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
It's 4 with Nader in the mix.

All eyes are on the ABC poll later today.

Rumor has it, Bush by 7.

[Aloha Mr. Learned Hand]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
It's 4 with Nader in the mix.

All eyes are on the ABC poll later today.

Drudge says Bush 52-43.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by bilmore
Rumor has it, Bush by 7.

I got a horse right here
The name is Paul Revere
And there's a guy who says that if the weather's clear
Can do
Can do
This guy says the horse can do....

[bilmore]

Originally posted by taxwonk
I got a horse right here
The name is Paul Revere
And there's a guy who says that if the weather's clear
Can do
Can do
This guy says the horse can do....

Okay, if the docs truly are forged, I'm changing my 64% for Kerry to a 79% for Bush.

Horse or no horse.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by bilmore
Okay, if the docs truly are forged, I'm changing my 64% for Kerry to a 79% for Bush.

Horse or no horse.

Why? Did they allegedly come from Kerry's printer?

(Beyond the glib comment, there's an honest question in there somewhere. I thought the latest stuff came from DoD in response to a FOIA request. Is that wrong?)

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Why? Did they allegedly come from Kerry's printer?

(Beyond the glib comment, there's an honest question in there somewhere. I thought the latest stuff came from DoD in response to a FOIA request. Is that wrong?)

Exactly. None of this changes the facts in (e.g.) the Boston Globe's reporting. Whether documents were forged or not, Bush went to Boston and failed to register with the local Reserve unit. Etc. (eta: The White House released some additional documents this week as a result of a FOIA suit brought by the AP. CBS also found additional documents, which may or may not be forged. The two are distinct. I hear rumors of stories based on still more -- perhaps explaining why Bush wouldn't take the physical -- yet to come.)

But I also agree that not many people care. To the extent that this story is helping Kerry, it's because (1) it takes momentum away from Bush, and (2) exposes his lies about his service (many of them quite recent). To the extent that it's hurting Kerry, it's because it's drowning out his message: If you like the way Bush is running the economy/Iraq/job creation/education, vote for more of the same; but if you don't, vote for me.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Why? Did they allegedly come from Kerry's printer?

(Beyond the glib comment, there's an honest question in there somewhere. I thought the latest stuff came from DoD in response to a FOIA request. Is that wrong?)

The stuff on which 60 Minutes and the Globe based all of this new "he disobeyed an order" theme came from someone who looked in a dead guy's private files. Was supposedly written in 1973, and said things like "I'm tired of covering for Bush", or something to that effect. But, seems the font, spacing, and special characters weren't available on typewriters back then, and, if you take a computer with Word, set to the default settings on New Roman Times (developed in the '90's, I think) and type out the memo yourself, you can lay it on top of CBS's copy and it's a perfect match.

It's actually hilarious.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Exactly. None of this changes the facts in (e.g.) the Boston Globe's reporting.

There were facts in there? Gee, I thought I saw a claim this morning that the facts were provided by the docs. Must have been mistaken.

But I also agree that not many people care.

Well, of course not. Things can change drastically in an hour or two. From the headlines this morning, I guessed that a lot of people cared. Now they seem to be looking bored and saying "forged? ah, who reads this stuff anyhoo?"