Month: January 2009

Do Any Of These Guys Pay Their Taxes?

Bet you pay yours, huh?  Looks like these guys do not feel they have to.

Former Sen. Tom Daschle, tapped by President Obama to lead his healthcare reform campaign, failed to pay more than $128,000 in taxes in the three years before Obama nominated him in December to head the Department of Health and Human Services.

The disclosure — involving unreported income and the use of a car and driver provided to Daschle — comes 2 1/2 weeks after Obama’s choice to head the Treasury Department, Timothy Geithner, admitted that he had not paid about $43,000 in taxes.

But a spokeswoman for the former Senate majority leader and close Obama ally stressed Friday evening that the tax errors were the result of simple mistakes that Daschle had worked in good faith to correct.

Is he gonmna blame Turbotax too?
The bulk of the unpaid taxes — first reported Friday by ABC News — stems from a lucrative business relationship that Daschle began with a wealthy investor shortly after Daschle left the Senate in 2005.

That year Daschle was paid $83,333 a month — or $1 million a year — to advise a private equity fund, according to a confidential draft report prepared by Republican staffers on the Senate Finance Committee.

The South Dakota Democrat was hired by Leo J. Hindery Jr., a longtime friend of Daschle’s, to consult for InterMedia Advisors. The private equity fund invests in media companies, including the Christian publishing house Thomas Nelson, the Gospel Music Channel, and Cine Latino, a leading Spanish-language movie channel.

Who will be next to step up and admit to not paying their taxes?  I pay mine maybe they should pay theirs before they get caught.

A Chicken In Every Pot And Broadband In Every House

I recall, I believe, this was promised by Obama during either the primaries or the election as a way to increase the education of the people of the country.  Personally, I think it is a helluva idea.  The economy has pretty much taken that idea off the table for now and probably for the first four years of the Obama admin, but there are others who are moving to get the jump on the rest of the world.

All UK homes should have access to broadband and faster download speeds by 2012, the government has said.

An interim report on the UK’s digital future also looked at plans for public service broadcasting.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said digital technology was as important today as “roads, bridges and trains were in the 20th Century”.

Culture Secretary Andy Burnham told MPs it would help Britain secure a competitive low carbon economy in the next five to 10 years, adding the country “led the world in content creation”.

The report called for everyone in the UK to have access to a broadband speed of up to two megabits per second (Mbps).

This would make internet connections capable of handling much more video and sites that offer greater interactivity.

By the time of the final report, the government will know whether internet service providers (ISPs) can build next generation networks themselves or if government help will be needed.

Must Women Have Litters?

Eight kids at once. The mind boggles. The mind is also pretty creeped out by the thought of one tiny baby after another coming out of a woman as if she were a mouse.

It’s basic energetics. Every individual has only so much energy. Some energy is spent staying alive – that is, finding food and not being somebody else’s food – and what’s left over can be spent on reproduction. In other words, there are limits to reproduction.

Of course, the various slices of that reproductive energy pie also vary between males and female of all species. Males don’t gestate or lactate so they pass on the most genes by flitting from female to female making as many babies as they can, and then walking away. The female reproductive pie is much more complex. There are costs to pregnancy, lactation for mammals, and then whatever else is needed to bring a kid up to sexual maturity so they can pass on genes as well.

But there are all sorts of ways, from an evolutionary point of view, for females of a species to distribute that energy and bring up babies successfully. She might have as many babies as she can in one shot, litters that is, and have them as often as possible. For that kind of female, reproduction is an assembly line of cheap production per kid. Or a female might opt for the other end of the scale and make one baby at a time and wait for a very long time to see if that one investment pays off.

Take a look at a naked woman and see for yourself how many babies a woman is designed to care for – two, at most.

Bye-Bye Blago

I guess I will jump on the bandwagon and post on the impeachment of our favorite gov Blago. With a vote of 59-0 the governor of Illinois was thrown from office and the new governor Pat Quinn has been sworn in.  Now my question is why was he impeached?  What did he do to warrant the impeachment?  What was his crime?  So far all I have gotten is he is unpopular and some even think he is an a/hole.  But if that is valid grounds for impeachment then the guys in Congress might want to tighten up a bit or they could be next on the people’s hit list.

Was Blago a jerk?  For sure.  But so are a wealth of politicians, but so far that is not a crime.  He has been accused of many things, but that is all they are at this time…accusations.  Will this clean up state government….yeah about as well as Duke Cunningham getting caught did…in other words…not much.

Have we heard the last of Blago?  Not a chance.  He is good fodder for the media.  He will be back.

Oh My God! Say It Ain’t So!

I knew the American public was a gullible bunch of retards….I mean they voted for GW Bush twice…made the Pet Rock a phenom…and the Salad Shooter a must have…..but this is just plain SICK!

As reported in the USA Today:

The Cult of the Snuggie threatens to take over America! Or at least, a substantial number — 4 million — of late-night couch spuds.

The Snuggie, an oversized fleece blanket with sleeves, stars in a ubiquitous TV ad so cheesy it’s practically art, and apparently wildly entertaining. The ad shows people wearing Snuggies at a sporting event, cheering and high-fiving each other while dressed … sort of like medieval monks

Indeed, Snuggies seem to be everywhere. See them on Facebook — nearly 250 groups, pro and con; one fan club lists 5,999 members. Watch them on YouTube — nearly 300 parody videos posted, including one titled “The Cult of the Snuggie,” with 146,000 views as of Tuesday.

The Snuggie concept is not new, nor is it the only such product on the market, but the Snuggie proves once again that an attractive price (two for $19.95, plus free book light online and on TV, about $14.99 for one in stores) and clever marketing can take you far in American retailing.

Snuggies went on sale in August, began TV advertising in October and started shipping to retailers in December. Already, 4 million have been sold. But the Internet is crowded with angry testimonials from consumers who say they were overcharged or never got their order or waited much longer than four to six weeks for their Snuggies to arrive.

You people are just sick!

2009 Anal-Ocity

And the hits just keep coming.

This one is from conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, who echoed the sentiment of RNC hopeful Ken Blackwell, when he stated:

“Obama’s plan would buy votes for the Democrat Party, in the same way FDR’s New Deal established majority power for 50 years of Democrat rule, and it would also simultaneously seriously damage any hope of future tax cuts.  It would allow a majority of American voters to guarantee no taxes for themselves going forward.  It would burden the private sector and put the public sector in permanent and firm control of the economy. Put simply, I believe his stimulus is aimed at re-establishing “eternal” power for the Democrat Party rather than stimulating the economy because anyone with a brain knows this is NOT how you stimulate the economy. If I can be made to serve as a distraction, then there is that much less time debating the merits of this TRILLION dollar debacle.”

2009 is off to an amazing year for dumbass statements—gonna be a great year for Info Ink and the Assie Awards.

BTW–a note for my readers–I would like to thank all you for your participation and for having my back and please if anyone runs across an anal statement please send it to me in the comments and I will post it and give you credit for the discovery.  After all, you guys pick the winner and you should be in on the nominees also.

THANKS again for all your help with INFO INK.

About Damn Time!

Declaring that ending pay disparity is not just a women’s issue, President Barack Obama signed legislation Thursday that gives workers more time to take their pay discrimination cases to court.

Lilly Ledbetter, the Alabama woman whose story was the impetus behind the new law, stood alongside Obama as he signed the first bill of his presidency. Also in the East Room of the White House were labor, women’s, civil rights advocates and members of Congress for whom the bill was a priority.

“Equal pay is by no means just a women’s issue, it’s a family issue,” Obama said. “And in this economy, when so many folks are already working harder for less and struggling to get by, the last thing they can afford is losing part of each month’s paycheck to simple and plain discrimination.”

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act effectively nullifies a 2007 Supreme Court decision that denied Ledbetter an opportunity for redress.

Ledbetter, 70, has said she did not learn about the sizable discrepancy in pay between her and her male co-workers until near the end of her 19-year career at a Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden, Ala. She sued, but the high court said in a 5-4 decision that she missed her chance to bring the action.

The court said a person must file a discrimination claim within 180 days of a company’s initial decision to pay a worker less than another doing the same job.

Under the new law, each new discriminatory paycheck would extend the statute of limitations for an additional 180 days. That was the interpretation before the Supreme Court was asked to step in.

The Bush White House and Senate Republicans blocked the bill in the last session of Congress. But Obama strongly supported it — he talked often about Ledbetter during the presidential campaign — and the Democratic-controlled Congress made it a priority in its opening weeks.

Native Americans Get Stimulus

About time!

American Indians stand to gain almost $3 billion as part of the economic stimulus moving through Congress, money that could help some of the nation’s poorest communities rebuild roads, improve health care and boost employment that has lagged behind the rest of the country for decades.

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday included $2.8 billion for Indian tribes in its portion of the nearly $900 billion economic stimulus bill, and a House version to be voted on Wednesday includes a similar amount. That includes hundreds of millions of dollars for schools, health clinics, roads, law enforcement and water projects.

Indian Country has a long way to go in terms of reviving tribal economies. According to the National Congress of American Indians, real per-capita income of Indians living on reservations is still less than half the national average, unemployment is twice that of the rest of the country, and eight of the 10 poorest counties in the United States are on reservations.

That group originally asked for $6.1 billion in the stimulus, an amount that they said would generate more than 50,000 jobs.

Hamas Thinks Peace?

Senior officials in the Islamic group Hamas are indicating a willingness to negotiate a long-term truce with Israel as long as the borders of Gaza are opened to the rest of the world.

“We want to be part of the international community,” Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad told The Associated Press at the Gaza-Egypt border, where he was coordinating Arab aid shipments. “I think Hamas has no interest now to increase the number of crises in Gaza or to challenge the world.”

That raises the question of whether Hamas, which receives much of its funding and weapons from Tehran, can be coaxed out of Iran’s orbit. That question looks less preposterous than it did before President Barack Obama began extending olive branches to the Muslim world and Israel’s Gaza offensive reshuffled Mideast politics.

Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister in Gaza, said in comments aired Thursday that the Palestinians must heal their internal rifts and he welcomed aid for Gaza from any source. He also seemed to leave a door open for better relations with the U.S.

The militants appear to be in the throes of an internal power struggle between hard-liners and pragmatists. Which group comes out on top will likely depend on who is able to garner the most benefits in postwar Gaza.

With hawks urging more violence, the window of opportunity to boost the voices of relative moderation is likely to be short.

Israel and the West appear to have leverage to get Hamas to moderate its stance. The group’s demand for an open border with Egypt, for instance, could be conditioned on allowing Fatah to help monitor it. And bringing funds and materials to begin repairing the estimated $2 billion in damage caused by Israel’s offensive could be conditioned on Hamas agreeing to stop its violence.

House Votes Along Party Lines

The bill passed by a vote of 244 to 188, with no Republican support and 11 Democrats voting against it. Members of both parties said that despite Obama’s overtures to Republicans – including a trip this week to Capitol Hill to woo members in person – the congressional leadership of both parties approached the stimulus legislation with the same unrelenting partisan tactics Obama attacked during his campaign and inaugural address.

Yesterday’s vote to approve the package of $275 billion in individual and business tax cuts and $544 billion in new spending – too much spending, according to the Republican minority – showed that Obama could get his way on major issues without the type of cross-party support he had hoped to get on a bill he has described as crucial to the country’s economic recovery.

All of Obama’s good will tour was for naught all the kind words from the Repubs in the House was for naught….they were gonna vote against it from the start because they were told to by their leadership.  The era of the OBama bi-partisanshipo lasted about 8 days.  Now the battle in the Senate will begin and it will not be as easy as it was in the House.