Biden campaign rakes in $30 million for star-studded Los Angeles fundraiser
This kind of politics is universal.
The lapdogs lick it up here.
Glenn Loury last worked in a factory, when, in 1972? More than 12% of the civilian population had a manufacturing job back then. Today fewer than 5% have one. But in neither case was there anything universal about being working class.
What have miners, sailors, tailors' apprentices, metalworkers, waiters, bank officials, ploughmen, and scavengers in common with one another?
-- Oswald Spengler
Since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Iran-backed Houthi rebels have lobbed missiles, drones and other weapons at commercial vessels and warships nearly every day. Although most of the weapons have been shot down, at least 77 cargo ships have been hit, and one British-owned ship carrying 20,000 tons of fertilizer aboard was sunk. ...
The Biden administration has limited its military response to the Houthi attacks, hoping to avoid being drawn into a wider Middle East conflict.
More.
As we write the coal-carrier MV Tutor has been hit and abandoned in the Red Sea with one crew member believed to be drowned after being trapped in the flooded engine room.
'I know what's going on,' she told Finnerty. 'All these reporters — and they're almost always men — think I'm strange, that I must live off in my own world not to see what he's up to. I know exactly what he's up to.'
There were so many women.
Jackie suspected that even Lee, her sister, had slept with Jack once. She knew about Jack and Pamela Turnure, her own press secretary. She knew about Jack's euphemistic 'pool parties' held almost daily in the White House — often attended by his brothers Ted and Bobby and various lackeys — and the young secretaries who'd join them. Women ran up and down the back stairs whenever Jackie was away, leaving behind blonde hairs and bobby pins.
One she didn't know about was 19-year-old Mimi Beardsley, who worked in the White House secretarial pool. Jack had invited Mimi to the White House residence, gotten her drunk, and taken Mimi's virginity on the bed he shared with his wife. In that same bed, Jackie once found a pair of women's knickers. 'Would you please shop around and find who these belong to?' she asked Jack coolly. 'They're not my size.'
More.
The average estimated-tax penalty in fiscal-year 2023 climbed to about $500 from about $150 in 2022, according to Internal Revenue Service data. Meanwhile the number of affected tax filers rose to 14 million from 12 million. Overall, the agency assessed $7 billion in estimated-tax penalties in 2023, nearly four times the $1.8 billion it assessed in 2022. ...
Filers who don’t pay in enough tax throughout the year owe a penalty in the form of an interest charge on their underpayment that’s set quarterly. In 2021, the year that prompted most of the 2022 assessments, the IRS’s rate on underpayments was a rock-bottom 3%. The penalty is based on the short-term Treasury rate plus three points, and it climbed to 6% as rates rose in 2022. That pushed up charges on underpayments assessed the next year.
In 2023 the rate rose to 8% for the fourth quarter. It’s still there–so underpayment penalties will continue to sting taxpayers who owe them. ...
The IRS’s computers can impose undeserved penalties on some estimated-tax filers, because they automatically treat income as though it’s earned equally throughout the year. So if a filer does a fourth-quarter Roth IRA conversion and pays tax on it at that time, the system will assume the income was earned all through the year but the tax was only paid in the fourth quarter.
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But there was something quite inhuman in what the left-wing activist did. She treated human beings as if they were mere means to her end. She acted out admiration to perform reputational harm. She presented herself falsely to inflict damage. That the content she produced was disseminated by honest grown-up journalists is to their discredit.
She claims to oppose polarization but fans it, further alienating those who already lack trust in institutions like the court and professionals like journalists. She presents another warning to those who hold or are adjacent to high office: You can’t assume good faith on the part of fellow citizens who seek you out.
More than that, it is deeply Stalinist. In Stalin’s time private life was dead, and private comments too. Neighbor spied on neighbor and reported back subversive comments to the Central Committee. People became spies, rooting out ideological error.
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The federal government now needs about $6 trillion in revenue annually for the budget, social security, and medicare.
Imports of goods and services last year were valued at $3.83 trillion. You'd have to tariff all that at 160% or so to come up with $6 trillion. When pigs fly.
Trump promised big cuts to spending and to the size of the government workforce in 2016. Never happened.
This won't either.
The White House isn’t ruling out a potential commutation for Hunter Biden after his conviction
The position from the White House is a shift from what it said in September, when Jean-Pierre was asked whether the president would “pardon or commute his son if he’s convicted.” The press secretary responded at the time that “I’ve answered this question before. It was asked of me not too long ago, a couple of weeks ago. And I was very clear, and I said no.”