Day: March 25, 2011

2011 Anal-Ocity #12

Holy Crap!  When it rains it pours!  I am always looking for the most moronic and anal statement made by people in the public, whether it is the media, the Tube or a public person like a politician and over the years I have found many and I DO mean many….but from time to time I find one that just cannot be real and after research I find that it is REAL…..and then a trigger goes off in my head and wonder just how a person could say something so moronic and then believe the lunacy they spout…..and then there are those that listen to and then repeat the anal statements……I question their mental capacity…

This time it is a conserv analyst that one would see on several different cable shows offering up his analysis…..one Frank Gaffney!  In a piece he wrote for the Washington Times, a conserv newspaper, he called the “Qadafi Precedent”:

“Gadhafi Precedent” could be “used in the not-too-distant future to justify and threaten the use of U.S. military forces against an American ally: Israel.

May I say again…..HOLY CRAP!

And people listen to this person as a qualified expert….About all I can do right now is shake my head in disbelief….and then think about how accurate John Stuart Mill was when he said…..”Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservative”……I apologize to my conserv friends but someone in the conserv movement needs to stand up and call these types of people what they are….MORONS!

Whistling Past That Minefield

This post is a continuation of my post “Tip Toe Thru The Humanitarian Minefield” from a couple of days ago……a post about the snow job of humanitarian reasons for war…..once again Bosnia and Somalia were humanitarian situations………. (for those who do not remember history)

I recently read an editorial that asked a couple of good questions…….”Those who say a military attack on Gaddafi’s bases would bolster a democratic opposition movement against a bloody dictatorship must answer the following question: Why are the great powers not applying the same criteria in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the regimes they back employ brutal violence against any opposition? And what of Bahrain, headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet, where Sheikh al Khalifa has shot down unarmed protesters with Saudi support? What about Gaza, where these same powers stand by as the Israelis massacre Palestinians? What about Yemen, where the Western-backed President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Friday shot dead some 50 protesters?”  (I got this in an email do not know sent it, so if I step on toes I apologize)

All good questions and none have seemed to ask nor answered the questions of why one over many others…..Not a single government or newspaper that supports a military strike against Libya has taken the trouble to explain these glaring contradictions. However, the real target of the violent action against Libya is clear, if one considers the logic of recent events.

The West has lost a couple of key allies in the ME…Tunisia and Egypt, at least for now…..could this be a plan to sure up support in the region?  CYA as it were.

Syria has joined the list of despots that are killing their own people….and since Assad is not our despot will the US intervene?  This will be interesting to see how the West reacts to the Syrian situation…..watch the rhetoric and pray for saner minds…..

Then Who Pays Taxes?

Daily Agitator

I recently wrote a post about companies that do not pay taxes at all or at a reduced rate….and post got me to thinking about just who pays the taxes that are the income of the country?

When we talk about taxes, the Right has this tag line that X% of Americans pay NO taxes at all…..for them sometimes this is a good thing and when needed it is a travesty that more people do not pay taxes….so far I have NOT seen this in any form but if we take their words for it…..then there is more……this from Paul Bechhuit of Buzz Flash.com……

— General Electric made $10.3 billion in 2009, but received a $1.1 billion tax rebate.

— Forbes said about Bank of America in 2010: “How did they not pay any taxes on $4.4 billion in income?”

— Oil giant Exxon made a $45 billion profit in 2009, but paid no taxes in the United States.

— Citigroup had 4 quarters of billion-dollar profits in 2010, but paid no taxes.

— Wells Fargo made $12 billion but purchased Wachovia Bank to claim a $19 billion tax credit.

— Hewlett Packard’s U.S. income tax rate was 4.3% in 2008 and 2.3% in 2009.

— Verizon’s 10.5% tax rate, according to Forbes, is due to its partnership with Vodafone, the primary target in UK Uncut’s protests against tax evaders.

— Chevron’s tax rate was 1% in 2008.

— Boeing, which just won a $30 billion contract to build 179 airborne tankers, got $124 million back from the taxpayers in 2010.

— Over the past 5 years Amazon made $3.5 billion and paid taxes at the rate of 4.3%.

— Carnival Cruise Lines paid 1% in taxes on its $11.5 billion profit over the past 5 years.

— Koch Industries is not publicly traded, but their many tax-free benefits have been documented by the New York Observer and the Institute for Public Accuracy.

— In 2008 CorporateWatch said Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp paid “astoundingly low taxes” because of tax havens.

— Google “cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years by shifting its money around foreign countries.

— Merck, the second-largest drugmaker in the U.S., last year brought more than $9 billion from abroad without paying any U.S. tax.

— Pfizer, the largest drugmaker in the U.S., erased $10 billion in taxes with an “accounting treatment.”

If the people pay little or NO taxes and corporations do the same thing….just who is paying taxes?  It has got to be the small businesses……if it is then there needs to be a change in the tax codes….small business get a lower rate and corporations pay their share with NO deductions or help from the government……now you know why the country is in monetary trouble….NO one is paying their taxes!

What percentage do you pay?

We know that idea will not fly!  Corporations have friends in high places…like YOUR representative!