Separated At Birth

Is it just me or does that moronic, self-proclaimed skin head that wanted to lop off a bunch of heads look like a cast member of Sesame Street? (Note to self: Must get Photoshop.)

Ares

So. Much fuss is made by the Rs about the Obama tax plan, and they say it would have 45% of the tax base paying no taxes. While, as a taxpayer, I like to believe that my fellow Americans are pulling that wagon with me, I know that all of them are not.

For those earning too little, I bear no ill will. Since I was raised by a single mom working pink collar jobs, I know what its like to be in a family headed by a hard worker who just doesn’t earn enough.

For those earning too much, however, I would like a little change. I am not naïve enough to believe that there will ever be an employee of the I.R.S. savvy and well-equipped enough to find all the myriad tax shelters and refuges of the very wealthy.

And yes, I know that the very wealthy pay a large, large portion of the taxes already in this country. But, and I quote W. here, quoting John F. Kennedy “to whom much is given, much is expected.” (Interesting side note: he has used that quote at least four times in the last year or so; in announcing his intention in early 2007 to reauthorize PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, in remarks in honor of World AIDS Day last November, in a BBC interview in February 2008, and in a USAID speech in July 2008. Does he know he’s quoting a Democrat? Does he care?)

So, when I turned on my television the other night for little mindless viewing, I was amused to see Ari Fleischer (yes, the one who left the Bush administration a while back) singing the party song about that 45% who will not pay taxes under an Obama presidency.

And it got me to thinking (always a bad sign, but bear with me).

Let’s flip that, shall we? What that really tells me is that 45% of our working folks earn SO LITTLE that they should not be taxed. Nearly one half of Americans, working jobs, who earn so little that they should not be taxed. And its contrary to all we are taught as Americans—that if you work hard, play by the rules, and do the right thing, you will get ahead.

None of this changes my mind about who I will vote for Tuesday week. But it does remind me how very lucky I am—I have a roof over my head, heat in my house, and (too much, really) food to eat. I am lucky to live where I live, at the time I live, and to have the freedoms and abilities I have. I am happy to do my part, and for those who might take advantage or try to get over, well, that’s for them to live with.

Athena

Marmot Monday

Marmot Monday

Marmot Monday

Get Well P.J.

Disturbing news was just received at the A&A Global Operations Center. Seems P.J. O'Rourke, Ares favorite and writer I'd most like to be, has been diagnosed with cancer. Those that are familiar with P.J.'s work will probably say "what took so long". From his own literary mouth....

I looked death in the face. All right, I didn't. I glimpsed him in a crowd. I've been diagnosed with cancer, of a very treatable kind. I'm told I have a 95% chance of survival. Come to think of it -- as a drinking, smoking, saturated-fat hound -- my chance of survival has been improved by cancer.

I still cursed God, as we all do when we get bad news and pain. Not even the most faith-impaired among us shouts: "Damn quantum mechanics!" "Damn organic chemistry!" "Damn chaos and coincidence!"

I have, of all the inglorious things, a malignant hemorrhoid. What color bracelet does one wear for that? And where does one wear it? And what slogan is apropos? Perhaps that slogan can be sewn in needlepoint around the ruffle on a cover for my embarrassing little doughnut buttocks pillow.

Furthermore, I am a logical, sensible, pragmatic Republican, and my diagnosis came just weeks after Teddy Kennedy's. That he should have cancer of the brain, and I should have cancer of the ass ... well, I'll say a rosary for him and hope he has a laugh at me. After all, what would I do, ask God for a more dignified cancer? Pancreatic? Liver? Lung?

You can read the rest of it here. Surely P.J. is laughing loudly at the irony. God speed and best wishes for a rapid recovery. Hope you're back on your ass in no time.

Ares

Athena PS: my darling friend Annie, a 23-year survivor of colon cancer (who was given a 20% chance of surviving, by the way) would say PJ needs a brown ribbon. If he had been so lucky as to be diagnosed with colon cancer, she would have dubbed him an honorary member of the Semi-Colon Society. She's a real punster, that one, as well as a gem of a human being.

bailout, shmailout

So, this week's prize for best manipulation of the political machine goes to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Goodness knows the last word is far, far off in the entire Wall Street debacle, but I'm here to talk about my personal favorite snapshot of the moment. All the geniuses we've sent to Washington to serve in our nation's Congress have apparently not figured out one of the basic rules of legislative sausage-making: don't call a vote if you don't think you can win.

Yesterday the $700 billion bailout bill was called for a vote, and while we're all shocked--SHOCKED!!!--that the vote failed to pass, what is more shocking is who did NOT vote for it.

The President and Vice President reportedly worked the phones furiously, attempting to persuade Republican legislators to vote for the bill. When all was said and done, Speaker Pelosi delivered the votes she promised. However, the Republicans failed to deliver, and 2/3 of the House Republicans voted against the bill.

As a side note, the President's approval rating is 27%, which only reinforces why the bill lost despite the frantic politicking.

Now, Congress is currently controlled by the Democrats, though narrowly, so this could be called their loss. But this match still goes to the Speaker. She brought the votes she promised.

I make no predictions about how this fiasco will end, but I am proud to see that John Boehner, a mighty, mighty jerk, got beat by a girl.

PS: this is a much more succinct description of my question about the whole nasty mess.

Athena

Ares Postscript: Constitutional scholar and Ares & Athena favorite Larry Sabato says in his experience Rasmussen tends to have the most accurately reflected polling data. Rasmussen puts congressional approval ratings at 9%! Holy Margin of Error, Batman.

Marmot Monday

Another Name for Atlanta

I think Atlanta is a Latin word that means "metropolis full of f****** morons". Why, you ask? Gasoline. For those not local, Hurricane Ike disrupted gasoline supplies to the southeast because of refinery shutdowns. Mind you, the effects of the hurricane on supplies took a few days to make themselves known. Then, quite suddenly, the media noticed there was a supply disruption and gleefully reported on it every chance they got. Using tried and true phrases like "worry about" and "fears of..." they created a feedback loop. Fear about shortages are now making the shortages worse, which allows for a wider display of shortages by the media. (I'm looking at you AJC/WSB/WXIA/Fox5.) Now panicked people are sucking stations dry. My local QT usually gets a tanker delivery every day or two. Saturday they had 5 and were empty by 3 pm. There are confirmed reports of people convoying behind gasoline tanker trucks then mobbing the destination. Deep thinkers are even dialing 911 to ask where there is gas. Anybody seen my copy of The Road Warrior?

Ares

Rafael, Someone You Should Know

A little bit of injustice has settled in our midst. Not the grand "fightin the man" kind of injustice, but rather a miscarriage of honor. For those uninitiated, Rafael Peralta, USMC, threw himself on a grenade during the battle for Falluja back in 2004. Other service members have since been awarded the Medal of Honor for the same actions since. A final ruling was issued last week and the recommendation for the Medal of Honor was downgraded. Some are saying it's because Rafael was an illegal immigrant, others are saying the medal was downgraded because he was already wounded. What nobody questions is that Rafael loved his adopted country and the Corps with a fullness most of us cannot fathom. The true issue here is that Rafael loved the men he was with so much that he couldn't bear the thought of them being hurt when he could do something about it. So he took very deliberate action that resulted in his own death, and allowed every one of his team mates to survive. If you've ever served in a capacity where you place your life in other people's hands and they place theirs in yours its the kind of commitment that brings hardened, grown men to tears. The least we can do is accord such commitment a place of honor, which is where you come in. Sign the petition. It costs nothing and you won't get on somebody's mailing list. This is one of those times it's easy to do the right thing.

God speed Sergeant. "Day is done, gone the sun...."

Ares

Fall

Welcome to Autumn. I can't find gas for my car, the stock market is melting down, there's a clown's theater of an election going on, and all I can think is "Damn the weather sure is nice". Here's to that first robin of Autumn.

Ares

Marmot Monday

Marmot Monday

Why We Fight

Unfunded

So this week brings word of yet more pension fund failures. This installment is brought to you by Cobb Our-S***-Doesn't-Stink County, Georgia, and the state of Nevada. (Okay, Nevada hasn't tanked yet but there's nothing to check its demise.) Let's be clear, these are not failures of the market. These are failures of the people that manage these funds. There's a four word term I want everyone to practice repeating: Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Get familiar because they're going to write your checks one day. For some reason public sector fund failure doesn't bother me as much a private sector one. After all, there's only so much you can do with government financing. But when a big fat company like United Airlines simply doesn't make its fund payments, causing it to fail, and then goes running to bankruptcy and passes off it's fund to PBGC, that's criminal with malice and aforethought. Bonus round: The United CEO got $37 million in stock and bonuses upon the company's emergence from bankruptcy.

PBGC's increasing load piggybacks nicely with the US Government going into the mortgage business. (Aside note: My understanding, and I could be wrong, of the Freddie/Fannie failure is that it wasn't their bad loans but their inability to continue packaging and reselling their debts. Some guy named Ponzi first came up with that idea.) Dovetailing with this theme congress is setting up to see who can give the biggest handout to the domestic auto industry. Because we really need subsidized Tahoes and F-250's. Behold, the era of small government is upon us. To those that argue for the privatization of social security I say what's the point? Athena, where was it you read a few years ago where someone described the US Government as the world's largest insurance company with guns?

The terrain is changing beneath our feet. Without much in the way of public consent and little in the way of discourse the fundamentals we've counted as solid are being renegotiated. Thirty years from now, when the academics and pundits sit down to write histories of the days we're living now, we are going to be excoriated for hubris. In the mean time, mom better get to work on a Plan B.

Ares

Feelin a Little Fred

Fall must be on the way because I'm starting to dig into existentialism again. It gets as regular as the leaves turning with me. The pause that finally comes with the break in the weather allows a pullback and some meta inspection. The only possible explanation for digging into Nietzsche in early September is that I'm trying to will a change in the weather.

Anymore I'm finding a bit of fascination with the concept of the Ubermensch. The whole idea got hijacked by Adolf and twisted around by a bazillion amateur thinkers thereafter. Fred wanted humanity to redefine itself upward outside the constricts of the church and without resorting to nihilism. The industrial revolution, and the resulting shrinking of the world that occurred with the telegraph/telephone and steam engine, drove a lot of people out of eons of spiritual comfort zones and into a low grade mania. Fred saw where this was heading, nihilism and war, and tried to call a flag on the play. He called the first 50 years of Europe's 20^th century from the cheap seats. But he was just a philosopher, and a dense one at that. They paid as much attention to philosophers then as they do now.

What does any of this have to do with anything? Not sure, but I think all of this is my own personal flight from idiocy. A little too much time among my fellow man, and a viewing or two of Idiocracy, and I start digging into the deep thinkers so I can tell myself I'm not like “them”. Athena and I have a rhetorical question we've been asking each other for years: What's the prize for being smart? Okay, maybe her and I aren't that smart, but there's some blatant self-awareness at work. What's the reward? Anymore I see some virtue in being a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. The further you seem to get from vice, habit, routine, and entertainment the more intractably complex things appear. Fred could have used a beer and some Cartoon Network. Might not have thunk himself to death. (Or visited the hooker that gave him the clap that eventually killed him. In the context of that I always thought it would have been deliciously ironic to put All to Human on his gravestone.) Taking a bit of my own advice I think I'll crack a Sam & see if Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is on.

Ares

Marmot Monday

Marmot Monday

Marmot Monday

Couch

I know this picture has made the rounds, but I still laugh every time I see it. The good news is that the army has new camouflage. The bad news is that it only works if we invade grandma's house.

Ares