Big Ol' Smitty

Oh, do tell. I'm not excited about Hillary at all, but most the attacks on her tend to be bullshit, Marv's hero Glenn Beck not liking her voice or some crap like that.

Run, lift weights, & play video games.

I got pretty bad motion sickness when I saw this last night. I had to just put my head down and listen for several stretches of the movie, and then I got my wife to drive home because I thought I might barf at any moment.

Women are stupid because they have higher pitched voices. How dare they.

What's that, Marv? Couldn't understand you with Glen Beck's dick in your mouth.

Ripper and BL have me LOLing.

Eat a shitload of nachos.

Politically Themed Songs!

Obama won more delegates in NV, oddly.

Milky & Czech.

baby listen carefully/while I sing my comeback song

Average Presidential Approval Ratings, FDR through current President # Polls Approve Disapprove Unsure Average Net Approval Kennedy 40 70.8 16.6 12.7 54.2 Eisenhower 119 64.9 21.4 13.8 43.5 Bush I 134 62.1 27.2 10.7 34.9 FDR 97 62.4 31.5 6.2 30.9 Johnson 83 56.1 30.5 13.6 25.6 Clinton 838 56.7 36.3 7.0 20.4 Reagan 136 52.2 37.3 10.5 14.9 Nixon 96 48.0 37.8 14.1 10.2 Bush II 1289 51.5 41.9 6.1 9.6 Ford 36 46.5 36.9 16.7 9.6 Carter 91 46.7 38.4 15.0 8.3 Truman 65 42.0 43.2 14.7 -1.2 This didn't paste well, but this is a table that shows the average of all approval rating polls for all presidents since approval polling began. Oddly, according to this poll, Bush I is the third most popular president of the modern era, easily edging out FDR & Reagan. If you want a better look at the table, go here.

-State Senator Barack Obama, Illinois, Oct. 26th, 2002 This is a big reason why I have decided to support Obama.

I didn't think the article was very interesting. He didn't really actually talk about what happened with the phone jamming much at all.

Milky-Gives 110% in every post. Slayer-Corny as hell, but endearing. Czech-Sorry VX, leftwing solidarity loses out to the glue that holds TSM together. Al Keiper-coin flip

FactCheck.org I already explained why this can't happen while maintaining revenue neutrality. But you don't have to take my world for it [/readingrainbow]: FactCheck.org Because they would end up with less money than they had before. A "3% increase in tax burden" is not the same thing as a "3% tax increase". If you increase the tax burden on a group of people by 3% given a 2 and a half trillion dollar budget--that's a 75 billion dollar tax increase on that group. That doesn't mean your taxes would go up by 3%, that means that group will be paying 75 billion more dollars in taxes that year.

William Jennings Bryan wanted bimetallism. McKinley wanted the gold standard in the 1896 election. Bryan gave the whole Cross of Gold speech...gold wasn't a good thing in that speech.

I'm going to bed but I'll try to respond/discuss more if I have time tomorrow.

Upon further thought, the claim that the FairTax will lower prices by 20% is prima facie ridiculous. Again, the claim is revenue neutrality. Payroll and income taxes collect about 2 and half trillion bucks a year for the federal government. The FairTax would have to replace every single one of those dollars. If prices somehow dropped 20%, then the gubmint would just have to jack up the tax rate to replace revenues. So either the prices won't drop 20%, or the tax rate will be a lot higher than 23%.

The 23% number is what the FairTax advocacy groups claim will be required to remain revenue neutral...most economists think you would actually need a higher rate in order to do so. Somehow a 30% income tax is going to cause a 20% drop in prices? Oh do tell. Marvin, you could (tenuously) make the argument that tax rates would decrease for everyone at the margin, but you're not doing that. The FairTax would increase the tax burden on middle class families. Let me repeat that, MIDDLE CLASS FAMILIES WILL PAY MORE TAXES THAN THEY DO NOW WITH THE FAIRTAX.

Right now a great deal of government revenue comes from income and payroll taxes. Every year, Americans put shitloads of energy into avoiding paying those taxes. My brother doesn't pay income taxes and he makes more than I do. Right now, sales taxes are pretty low, so most people don't put much effort into avoiding them. If the majority of the tax burden shifts from income & payroll taxes to a sales taxes, Americans will begin to put much more effort into avoiding sales taxes. Hello black market.

Marvin, the tax claims to be revenue neutral...that means the tax will generate just as much income as income and payroll taxes do now. The rich will pay a smaller percentage of their money in taxes, since they spend less of their money on average. Not even the FairTax proponents dispute this. The poor will get the "prebate" to make up for their increased taxes. Tell me Marvin, where does the rest of that tax revenue going to come from? Here's what happens to the tax burden under a national sales tax with a "prebate": FactCheck.org