Bill Clinton in an Alexander Haig Moment at The White House

Reagan was wounded, literally, when Al Haig tried to assure the country that someone was in control at The White House (video here).

Obama is wounded politically (keeping the wife waiting he says), so Bill takes over at The White House! Watch that video here.

The Religious Origins of the Income Tax's "Standard Deduction"

The standard deduction was designed to make it easier for people to claim their charitable contributions, without itemizing them. Note how the standard deduction early on was fixed at 10% of annual income, the common tithe prescribed in the Bible, not to exceed $500 (the median income in 1944 was less than $2,400):

Almost from its inception in 1913, the federal income tax has allowed taxpayers to subtract from their taxable income amounts spent for particular uses. For example, beginning in 1917, taxpayers could deduct donations made to charitable causes. To claim the deduction, taxpayers had to itemize their allowable expenditures. That itemization imposed a burden on taxpayers, but relatively few people were affected because only about 5 percent of households had to file tax returns.

World War II dramatically increased the reach of the income tax: by 1944, nearly three-fourths of households had to pay the tax. With that expansion came concern about the complexity of tax filing. To simplify tax returns, in 1944 the Congress created the standard deduction, then equal to 10 percent of a taxpayer's annual income, up to a maximum of $500. Taxpayers could select the standard deduction as an alternative to itemizing their expenditures on specific activities, reducing their taxes as if they had made that level of deductible expenditures but without having to comply with recordkeeping and reporting requirements. By taking the standard deduction, people are generally claiming deductions that are greater than their actual expenditures would have been if they had itemized.


Obviously the government made a concession to the entire population, Christian or not, and allowed everyone to deduct their "tithe," whether they made it or not.

Now if we could just get government to take no more, and no less, than 10% from everyone, on everything. The government would have plenty of money, and so would we.

Let me channel my inner Santelli: "President Obama, are you listening?"

So let it be written. So let it be done.

More here.

Cancun 100 Year Record Low of 54 Degrees, For Global Warming Summit!

The story is here.

Sure, They Screen The Luggage BEFORE It Gets On The Plane

I've been told that whopper since TWA Flight 800 went down in 1996 off Long Island.

If they did, then why screen at customs ON ARRIVAL?

A guy from Ghana passes through customs at Dulles, has his suitcase opened, and they find the following:

The suitcase contained two elephant tails, bloody sheets, five chicken feathers, chicken blood, a dried hedgehog, two dried chameleons, grass, seed pods, tree bark chips and a jug filled with soil, herbs and blood, authorities said.

The story is here.

Have a nice flight.

Just Six More Reasons Why I'll Never Buy Another GM

From Gary Jason at The American Thinker, here:

The Obama administration rigged the [GM] bankruptcy to favor the union, rigged the IPO to favor the union, and has purchased much of the inventory unsalable in the free market, again to benefit the union (and the environmentalists). But of course, the unions (and the environmentalists) pumped many millions of dollars into Obama's campaign. They also pumped many millions into trying to keep Democratic candidates in office in the last election.

This is corrupt, crony car capitalism, all paid for by coerced taxation, from an administration that promised a new era of transparency and honesty in government.  But at the end of the day, the cabal at the top behaves just like the dirty Chicago machine that spawned it.

Why Rush Limbaugh Can't Tell The Truth About Income Taxes

Rush claims no one in America is undertaxed.

He doesn't want to mention, of course, that nearly half of America doesn't pay income taxes.

And why don't they pay taxes? Because that's been the goal of Republican tax policy since the 90s:

"The dramatic increase in the number of people who owed no income taxes since the mid-90s was driven almost entirely by the creation and expansion of the per-child tax credit, a policy driven by the Right."

-- Keith Hennessey, April 15, 2010, here

The Democrats hate Republicans as much as they do because Newt Gingrich and George Bush out-liberaled the liberals. How dare they!

DADT Repeal Fails in Senate By Three Votes

Not quite a stake through the heart, though. But we can always hope.

Story here.

Democrats Think Obama Caved In To Republicans, Can't Trust Him

Democrats were already being critical of the regime back in July as we mentioned here because it seemed to some of them that the White House was already conceding that Democrats would lose control of the US House.

Now that the president User in Chief has flip-flopped one time too many, acquiescing on the 28%, 33% and 35% tax brackets for earners making $200,000 a year or more, passed under the Bush administration in 2001 and 2003, Democrats appear to be in revolt.

Disrespectful language is being used, according to this story.

Imagine that.

American Workers are Slaves, In Thrall to the Corporations

Joan Vennochi for The Boston Globe focuses an unflattering spotlight here on State Street Corp. whose profits are soaring as it fires personnel. The example is representative of the wider reality:

[W]hile wage and salary payments to workers declined by $121 billion or about 2 percent since the last quarter of 2008, pre-tax corporate profits rose sharply — up by $572 billion or 57 percent over the same time period.

Land of the free, home of the brave? We've got corporations right where they want us.

Final Uncalled House Race Update: NY-1 Remains a Democrat Hold

The Republican challenger has conceded to the Democrat incumbent. The story is here.

The net gain for Republicans in the US House in 2010 remains at 63, putting the Republicans in the majority with 242 seats to the Democrats 193.

No one foresaw such an eventuality two years ago when the Democrats decisively swept Republicans aside on Obama's coattails and acquired an overwhelming majority numbering 256 seats. That tide wasn't completely reversed in this election, but for a party deemed dead for all intents and purposes the comeback is a remarkable thumping, thanks in part to the activism of the Tea Party movement, which was created spontaneously out of thin air in February and March of 2009 in response to Democrat stimulus spending and mortgage modification programs.

The battle to stop and reverse Obama's programs designed to transform American culture and institutions has now been joined.

Beware Obamao's red guards.

Bob Sellers Joins The New American Nightmare

This is the American workplace, 2010. No loyalty, and a cavalier consideration for the life changing consequences of treating people and their livelihoods as mere pieces on a chess board.


Maybe if it were still a Christian nation people wouldn't treat each other this way as often.

Full story here.

On the Fourth Gospel

"The Fourth Gospel portrays a Jesus who is, simply, unparalleled."

-- Imam John

If You Want Fewer Poor People in America, Tax Them Already!

Here's Rush Limbaugh, with his whole brain tied behind his back, today:

"Nobody in this society is undertaxed, so why applaud an extension of tax rates? Where are the cuts?" -Rush

When nearly half the population pays no income taxes at all, you cannot say no one is undertaxed. All of them are undertaxed, by definition.

The poor have a responsibility to contribute to the general welfare no less than the rich do, so for them to pay no taxes means they are not doing their fair share, and are in no way equal to everyone who does pay taxes. They are AINOs, Americans in Name Only, who pay no taxes. Just ask Joe "It's Time to be Patriotic, Time to be Part of the Deal" Biden.

If there were any conservatives left in this country, they would be calling for taxes on the poor, to reduce their surplus population.

Wake up Rush, before conservatives start calling you a big fat idiot.

The Tax Elephant in the Room: The Poor Don't Pay Their Fair Share

Once again, the Republicans are about to blow it.

What's needed for the country right now, attempting to leave politics out of the discussion for a moment, is a tax system which is reasonably fair and predictable for the long haul. But what we've got, thanks to George W. Bush, is an unfair system which is deliberately gamed at the extremes, at the expense of the middle. And extending it for another two years just kicks that can of crap down the road.

Under it, nearly half of Americans, those at the low end, pay no federal income tax whatsoever, and millions of them actually get subsidies through the tax code in the form of a big fat "refund" check when they paid no taxes in the first place. These were expanded under Bush, and are defended as offsets of payroll taxes. Do the poor really need yet another offset, in the form of a temporary reduction in the payroll tax rate, especially considering that Social Security is an unfunded liability which is going broke fast?

Compared to the rates they replaced under Clinton, Bush's rates on everyone but the rich are projected to cost the treasury something like $3 trillion going forward, while only an additional $700 billion in tax loss expenditures are predicted to be forfeited from the well to do. Yet the Democrats characterize this as tax cuts for the rich. In point of fact, it's been massive tax cuts for everyone else, especially for the poorest, in the form of subsidies like the Earned Income Credit, the Child Tax Credit, and the creation of the lowest 10% bracket.

Those at the high end, people making in excess of about $106,000, get a huge payroll tax break of their own. They pay zero in payroll taxes above that ceiling at the same time that they pay the vast majority of federal income taxes with a top rate around 35%.

People who've lived a little remember when the poorest among us had one income tax rate, 15%, and the richest another, 28%. What makes those rates in principle unfair now?

Under them today's poorer Americans might actually pay some taxes for a change. And don't they have a responsibility to do so? Didn't Joe Biden tell us paying taxes was the patriotic thing to do? Back in the day the Senator's son got the deferment while the white trash got his ass shot off in Vietnam. Now the "deferment" goes to both the poor and the rich.

Wealthier Americans would see a decline in the rate of the federal tax they paid, that is true. But a broad-based single higher rate on income could be paired with an increase on the payroll tax cap. Why should people who make millions pay no Social Security tax on that income? Social Security is a regressive tax because it taxes the poor end the most and not the rich end. By distributing its pain on everyone equally maybe we would actually have an incentive going forward to put that boondoggle on a more solid footing once and for all, along with the rest of government.

To which end, Republicans should not compromise with the devil. If he won't bow and extend the Bush tax rates, and only the rates, permanently, then Republicans should let them expire. At least the rich will pay a little more, and the rest of us a lot more, and especially the poor. And Obama will get the blame.

On Insanity

"You know you are insane if you've listened to Glenn Beck for fifteen minutes and you're not embarrassed yet."

-- Imam John

Caroline Baum Says "There Isn't Anything Government Can Do" For Housing

It's right here:

Owners’ equity in household real estate, or the value of assets minus liabilities, fell from a peak of $13.1 trillion in 2005 to a low of $5.9 trillion in the first quarter of 2009, according to the Fed’s Flow of Funds report. That’s a whopping 55 percent decline in four years. By the second quarter of 2010, owners’ equity had climbed back to $7 trillion.

Even with the 87 percent rebound in the Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index from the March 2009 lows, household net worth is still below its 2007 peak.

Housing, which along with manufacturing has traditionally led the economy out of recession, won’t be pulling its weight this time -- even with historically low mortgage rates. And there isn’t anything the government can do except let prices fall so the market can clear, something it’s been unwilling to do.

Aside from the fact that the rebound in equities would directly benefit fewer than half of US households, what's this about government impotence? Government can do plenty.

If the fascists over at the Federal Reserve can loan a bunch of fascist bankers and fascist industries $9 trillion from 2008 to 2010 at nearly zero percent interest, surely it can come up with $6.1 trillion for homeowners to close the gap in lost equity in household real estate.

Oh, but I forget! Most homeowners aren't fascists like the oligarchy!

My bad.

Love the makeover, though, Caroline. You look mahvelous.

George Will Notices That Sarah Palin Will Never Be A Ronald Reagan

What took you so long, George? This was all pretty clear already in January, here and here.

“After the 2008 campaign she had two things she had to do: she had to go home to Alaska and study, and she had to govern Alaska well,” Will told “This Week” anchor Christiane Amanpour. “Instead she quit halfway through her first term and shows up in the audience of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and other distinctly non-presidential venues.”

More at this link.

Global Warming? Better Luck Next Year. Britain 2010 The Coolest Since 1996.

As reported here by The UK Daily Mail:

[A] remarkable climbdown that has huge implications . . . for debate over climate change as a whole[:] for the past 15 years, global warming has stopped.

$9 Trillion in Fed Bailouts Saved the Elites, But $50 Billion for Unemployed Will Bankrupt Us?

Here's an excerpt from "The Con of the Century," by someone worth reading who gets it:

[U]nemployment insurance will cost roughly $4 billion per month and most of this money will go back into the economy. Congress is stalling on this yet the media is completely silent on the $9 trillion in Federal Reserve loans? This should be the headline story over and over until people realize how big the bailout was (and how this false dichotomy is being used as propaganda in the media as if $4 billion a month is going to bankrupt the system). The banking elites just want to shift the blame to “poor” people while ignoring the elephant in the room which are the trillions of dollars in Fed loans.

Man Gets 13 Years Instead of Castration

Is there no justice in this world? Polanski didn't even get jail.

The story is here.