Big Ol' Smitty

I literally linked that like in the last page.

E-mail received from my university's president today:

Let me go ahead and summarize the vast majority of posts made by panthermatt in this thread:

I had some cobbler Sunday night that had strawberries and peaches in it. As a Kentucky boy, I know me some cobblers. But strawberries in a cobbler was new. It was pretty good.

*screams for ribs*

But price can shift (with on a supply or demand curve shift) based upon the expectation of future changes in demand or supply.

Al Franken would run circles around Sarah Palin in a discussion of national issues. He started out as a political satirist, like PJ O'Rourke.

Gas prices are lowering because of expectations of lower demand due to the international financial crisis. I thought this was common knowledge.

Now KOABolsheviks is advocating running over the white man! That's not change we can believe in!

KOAB has hired ACORN to falsely register gimmick posters. Ronald "The Ass Gipper" Geagan? Who you crappin', KOAB?

Also, his middle name is Hussein. KOAHusseinB! Is that the kind of guy you want as poster of the year?

Ultra rare KOAB pic...follow the link... CLICK HERE!

If KOAB wins the poster tournament, well...by golly... He's a Muslim!

This game may prompt me to buy an XBOX 360, since my PC is whack.

I was wearing a tie when I posted that, if it's any consolation.

1. How often do you visit TSM? How long are you here on a typical visit? How many minutes, or hours, do you spend here daily? Depends of the time of year. Sometimes I go months hardly visiting at all. Other times I check in daily. 2. Which folders do you spend the most time in? Why? Which ones do you skip over? I go to CE, General Chat, Chocolate, Movies, Food, Graphics, Video Games Don't spend much time in sports, wrestling stuff. 3. Who are your favorite posters? What makes a poster "good"? Czech, Edwin, Nightwing, Agent, Incandenza, and especially Marvin. Most important trait is being hairless/albino and to bring that hot sweet Glenn Beck knowledge to the table. 4. Who are your least favorite? Why? KOAB by far. If I ever meet him in public, well, it won't be pretty. 5. Who is your favorite mod? Can you actually name the mods we have? Agent & Czech, even though they're kind of bitches. 6. What brought you to TSM in the first place? Do you still come for the same reasons? Do you still watch wrestling? I think a buddy of mine told me about it. Hell no I don't watch wrestling. I'm offended you even asked. 7. When was the board at its best? 2004-8 8. What is the one thing, above all else, that keeps you coming back here? The money. Definitely the money. 9. If you could change one thing about TSM, what would it be? KOAB's face. 10. How much longer will TSM be around? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7JuArhpTB8

Glenn Beck weighs in, at long last: http://minnesotaindependent.com/14940/glen...ndorsement-ever 'Bout what you might expect, I suppose.

WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

I can't imagine that Reinhold Niebuhr wrote much about working class folks voting Republican due to cultural issues, since he died in the early 70s and the Republicans didn't adopt this strategy until the Nixon era.

So, we lowered taxes on rich people... and the economy consistently got better? It's a big overgeneralization, I know, but it still happened. No, the most dramatic economic growth in American history actually happened between WWII and the 1970s, prior to the oil shocks and prior to the tax cuts of the 80s. Go back and look at the growth during that period. The economic gulf between the US and the rest of the world was staggering. There is still a wide gulf, but the rest of the world has actually caught up since. That is of course, not to say that the high marginal tax rates on the rich were the cause of the growth from WWII through the 70s, but it would be very difficult to argue that high marginal tax rates on the rich are prohibitive of economic growth, given that the most dramatic economic growth in world history occurred in the US in a time period where the tax structure was this way.

One more point--"the rich don't even pay the taxes they're supposed to!" is not a powerful argument in favor a flat tax. It's may be a powerful argument in favor of closing tax loopholes, but really impugns tax dodgers far more than the tax structure.

Jingus, I think you're mixing up income taxes, capital gains taxes, and corporate income tax. The tax where there are myriad loopholes for corporate accountants to avoid is the corporate income tax. The reason Warren Buffett pays lower taxes than the average middle class person is because of the capital gains rate. For whatever reason, we have decided that we should tax capital gains at a lower rate than money earned through work. A progressive income tax rate may "punish the rich", but what we have now, what we had under Clinton in the 90s, and what Obama has proposed (which is an income tax cut for the middle & working class & a return to Clinton-era levels for the rich), all still feature far lower rates in the highest bracket than at any time between WW2 and the 1980s, when the United States probably saw the most amazing economic growth of any country at any period in history. The marginal tax rate on the very richest under Obama would be 35-39.6 percent. The highest rate (beware...PDF!) under, for example, President Eisenhower, was 92 percent! Ike lowered it to 91 percent. We had a 94 percent bracket toward the end of WWII! There were still 50 percent brackets under the most famous tax cutter in history, Ronald Reagan. If Obama's tax plan is "socialist" then Presidents FDR through Carter must have been downright Maoist or Stalinist and President Reagan Marxist-Leninist.

He's not saying that. He's saying that comparatively, your average bum may or may not make as much as someone in a third world country. Seeing as that there are a shitload of people who live on a few dollars a day, and that homeless assholes can make upwards of $20 a day, this is true in some cases. But he said that the average American homeless person was relatively rich on an international level in the context of saying "we need to define what rich is." Taking this idea further, marvin would probably suggest that all Americans are relatively rich and that therefore, contra Teddy Roosevelt, we don't need progressive income taxation. We already know he supports the crackpot "Fairtax" national sales tax plan. My point would be Americans don't gauge their wealth by comparing themselves to African slum dwellers, and any economic plan that tried to do this would be asinine. So while you're technically correct, pbonester, the point that our fair-skinned friend was making was very different. edit: Nightwing beat me to the punch.

Okay, marvin, if you want to define the lifestyle of an American homeless person as rich, go ahead and do that. I don't think many people will agree with you. still fly's point seemed to be that it made sense for the government to invest and not cut spending during downturns, and this is not a crackpot idea--it's a very mainstream economic view. And no, marv, that's not changinism.