Now, ask the average American how much they paid in taxes last year. Many will say, “Actually, I got a check for $400!” This folks, is nothing but government educated ignorance. The fact is that the government isn’t just “giving” you these tax refunds out of the goodness of its heart. That is YOUR money.
This is a very good point. An excellent point. Except … that Neal Boortz is the primary supporter of the Fair Tax. Under the Fair Tax, the typical family would received a tax “prebate” of $400+ every damned month.
(I’ve blogged on the prebate before. One correction: I don’t think getting checks to everyone every month will be that much of a problem. My other criticisms stand.)
Amazing. The Chilean earthquake moved Concepcion by ten feet.
I’m not sure if this is aggregate cheating or cheating rates. One thing is clear. Them real estate agents is frisky.
You have to wonder when our politicians will get called out for this green jobs nonsense. Especially as you can call anything — including making environmentally damaging corn ethanol — a green job.
When Obama won the Nobel Prize, he promised to give the $1.4 million cash prize to charity. Looks like he fulfilled that promise. I can’t think there’s a single name on there that will cause controversy, although I’m some idiot will find something they don’t like.
Is the “War on Fat” going to be Michelle Obama’s equivalent to Nancy Reagan’s “War on Drugs”? Possibly.
It looks like the computer code at East Anglia isn’t as bad as the Bad Skeptics claimed it was. Think they’ll withdraw that statement? Don’t bet on it. Every climate denial checklist from now on will include that debunked claim, along with global cooling, the withdrawn study on sea level rise, etc.
We’re also seeing lies built upon lies. Lie One was that the CRU data was faked. So now Lie Two comes alog — the CEI claiming that NASA admitted that their climate data is inferior to the fraudulent CRU data.
Of course, the e-mails say nothing of the kind. The e-mails say that in studying the climate, you can’t proclaim one data set (NASA’s) to be the end-all, be-all; that you should use all four temperature lines.
But that doesn’t matter to the Chinese Whisper factory that is Bad Climate Skepticism. What matters is that Algore and a whole bunch of dirty hippies believe in global warming. So it must be fake.
A Texas judge has ruled that the procedures surrounding Texas’s use of the death penalty are unconstitutional. I’m not sure what to make of this. My feeling is that the biggest problem is slimeball governors like Rick Perry who may have executed and innocent man, is replacing members of the investigative board to cover this up and may be about to execute another innocent man. So long as we have governors and prosecutors who are more interested in getting their man than carrying out justice, we will have problems.
A sad story of game addiction. I sometimes worry about internet addiction myself. I’d be a lot more productive without the blogosphere. Quitting is something that weighs heavily in my mind at times.
I’m sorry. Does this mean Lindsay Lohan is admitting to being a lush?
Is the “missing women” problem starting to fade? God, I hope so.
I posted this at the other site, but thought I’d mirror it here.
Liz Cheney’s group has come out with an ad I find highly disturbing:
It’s one thing to worry about a conflict of interest in the Justice Department. But this goes a step beyond, tarring any lawyer who works on behalf of terror suspects as essentially a member of Al-Quaeda. As such, it’s pure McCarthysim.
The attorneys who challenged the Bush administration’s national-security policies saw themselves as fulfilling their legal obligations by fighting an unconstitutional power grab. At heart, this was a disagreement over process: Should people accused of terrorism be afforded the same human rights and due process protections as anyone else in American custody? But rather than portray the dispute as a conflict over what is and isn’t within constitutional bounds, conservatives argue that anyone who opposed the Bush administration’s policies is a traitor set to undermine America’s safety from within the Justice Department.
“Terrorist sympathizers,” wrote National Review’s Andrew McCarthy in September, “have assumed positions throughout the Obama administration.”
We can disagree about military commissions, civil trials and the extent of terror suspects’ rights. But when you accuse those with whom you disagree of treason, you’ve crossed a line.
Even former military prosecutors have expressed views similar to those of the “Gitmo Nine.” Col. Morris Davis (retired) served as the former chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo Bay military commissions and has since argued that they should be abandoned. But initially, when the commissions were formed, he volunteered to be chief defense counsel. “I thought for the good of our system, they needed zealous representation,” says Davis. He dismissed the charge that having represented a detainee indicated “sympathy” for terrorist goals. “I don’t think that anyone, because they signed up to represent a detainee means they’ve signed up with al-Qaeda.”
Davis later points out that John Adams regarded his zealous defense of the British soldiers responsible for the Boston Massacre as one of the noblest acts of his life (it’s a highlight of both the book and the mini-series). We’ve had no problems with lawyers who defended Nazi war criminals or commie traitors. But let someone advocate for a terror suspect and the world is ending.
And I want to repeat that: terror suspects. Thanks in part to the efforts of these traitorous lawyers, we’ve found out that many of the “worst of the worst” were, in fact, completely innocent of terrorism. But to the Liz Cheneys of the world, we should lock up and torture anyone who might be a terrorist. We should never even bother to find out if they’re actually, you know, terrorists.
(And please don’t come back with the bogus stats of those released who have “returned to fight” until you’ve read this and this.)
If lawyers defended accused child molesters, would Cheney brand them the “Neverland Nine”? Or would she go after Manson’s defense lawyers and claim they want to murder people? Actually, I don’t really want to know the answer to that.
This is not a trivial thing. When you attack lawyers for arguing a case with which you disagree, you are attacking the rule of law itself.
Post Scriptum — In other Right Wing Terrorism Dementia news, you should read Matthew Alexander’s dissection of Marc Thiessen’s pro-torture book. Alexander if a former military interrogator who helped get Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. Thiessen is … a form speech writer for Dick Cheney. Read the whole thing. And yes, as long as Liz Cheney and her ilk are wielding influence with the GOP, this issue remains highly relevant).
Post Post Scriptum — And while we’re on the subject: our weak, spineless President just sent another high-ranking AQ member to spend eternity with 72 people debating whether Captain Picard or Captain Kirk was better.
I knew that the documenting of Maryland SWAT raids was going to be upsetting. But even I didn’t expect it to be this bad.
Over the last six months of 2009, SWAT teams were deployed 804 times in the state of Maryland, or about 4.5 times per day. In Prince George’s County alone, with its 850,000 residents, a SWAT team was deployed about once per day. According to a Baltimore Sun analysis, 94 percent of the state’s SWAT deployments were used to serve search or arrest warrants, leaving just 6 percent in response to the kinds of barricades, bank robberies, hostage takings, and emergency situations for which SWAT teams were originally intended.
Worse even than those dreary numbers is the fact that more than half of the county’s SWAT deployments were for misdemeanors and nonserious felonies. That means more than 100 times last year Prince George’s County brought state-sanctioned violence to confront people suspected of nonviolent crimes. And that’s just one county in Maryland. These outrageous numbers should provide a long-overdue wake-up call to public officials about how far the pendulum has swung toward institutionalized police brutality against its citizenry, usually in the name of the drug war.
No one will do anything about it now because no one wants to seem weak on crime. What’s it’s going to take is some kind of high-level tragedy. The minute some rich white person gets gunned down in one of these raids, the politicians will start to pay attention.
Sting. Hypocrite. Note also the story of the Aral Sea. The article blames its destruction on the current Uzbek dictator, but this was mostly the work of the Soviet Union — that wonderful, charming nation whose evil many on the Left (like Sting) were hesitant to acknowledge.
The fuck of it is that most bureaucrats won’t see this as unreasonable.
Ben Bernanke fires a warning shot across Congress’ bow on the deficit. I am really beginning to wonder if a default and inflation lie in our future. Is anyone in Washington prepared to make hard choices?
The war against resistant bacteria continues. This is one of the biggest health crises looming over our heads. My biggest fear of healthcare reform is that it will hamstring the innovation we need to prevent the next plague.
I think this take on why liberals and atheists have higher IQs is right. High IQ makes you intellectually wander from the default culture.
The Fed buyout of foreclosed properties is chasing away buyers who do not have powerful political connections. Again, we see the Dave Barry Principle at work. ‘People are suffering and predator lenders/speculators are making lots of money. The feds want in on that!’
For once, National Review has a point. Linking insurance to employment is an accident of WW2 wage controls, not a sensible policy. True healthcare reform would at least loosen that connection.
A couple of morons have popped up lately with “The Bible Says to kill gays!” thing (they apparently having not read the New Testament too closely). I’m just curious if they also think people who work on the sabbath should be killed.
Foreign Policy has a stunning and disturbing pictorial on the armed conflicts going on around the globe.
The call it “Planet War”. You’ll forgive me an editorial comment, but the planet is more peaceful than it has ever been. Many of the conflicts they portray are sporadic or do not involve actual fighting (the Korean face-off, for example). What’s incredible about the pictorial is that, up until recently, this was the norm for humanity. Now, there are few enough conflicts that a blog can do a pictorial piece covering all of them in depth.
Here’s a good reason for me to not regret moving from Texas.
A scary story about the US government poisoning the alcohol supply during prohibition. Ironically, however, this makes me more skeptical of conspiracy theories. If they can’t keep killing 10,000 citizens quiet, how are they supposed to keep aliens quiet?
The best journalism of 2009. The first story, about parents leaving their kids in cars, is one of the most wrenching stories I’ve ever read.
Nice. Congress is using the Toyota acceleration problems to bypass confidentiality for their buddy lawyers who are suing Toyota on other issues.
Also, there’s been another big Taliban capture for our weak President who is losing the War on Terror. I mean, just in case your opinion of the WOT was influenced by reality.
I’m all in favor of laws that prevent airlines from keeping passengers trapped on runways for hours on end. But the current rules have encourages airlines to simply cancel delayed flights. What Law of Unintended Consequences?
It’s possible that Texas will soon execute another innocent man. Or not. Without testing, there’s no way to tell. At some point, does Governor Perry have any shame?