chucK

gremlin-only posts are the way to go

I think fair and just is one person, one vote. It amazes me how so many people vote for politicians whose primary goals include redistributing wealth away from those voters. I mainly favor "progressive" strategies because of self interest. Though repugnance of letting people die in the street is part of my equation, the practical side is that I'd like my environment to not be a jungle where I need to carry a gun just to keep desperately poor people from trying to rob/kill me for subsistence. I guess I fall in the "teach a man to fish, and you'll feed him for a lifetime" crowd, rather than the current conservatives who seem more like the, "if we take away his food, he'll have to learn to fish, or die" type.

I tacked about five miles onto my commute to save $ 200K on a house. I think that was a good tradeoff considering it meant the difference between buying a house and not. I can still run to or from work if I'm feeling energetic.

Not sympathizers, just people that like him the same or less than President Bush. check out Pew Global Research, for some information. I think it's quite naive to believe that Al-Zarqawi does not have significant support. You think he and Al Qaeda are doing all this on their own. A small band of bad apples? If that is the case, you must not think much of the US military and our allies who , I believe, are trying their best to combat Al Qaeda.

Probably more like "when it comes to Jordanian Republicans"

JayB, Home ownership is the AMERICAN DREAM. You don't believe in removing some burden for good folks in the pursuit the American Dream? Love it or leave it, I say. I like the current proposal. Though it does not completely remove the deduction as you are hoping. It only caps the amount of interest you get to deduct. Does make the mortgage deduction more progressive. I seriously doubt GWB is going to get behind this plan as it reeks of "tax the rich". Though he will probably sell his opposition as helping us middle-class folks like him. ---------------------------------------------------- Some critique of your posted article. Apologies in advance for the cherry-picking. "There's a cancer at the heart of our increasingly complex tax code." First, the mortgage deduction is not complex. You get a statement from the bank saying how much you spent on interest and property taxes, and you put that on schedule A. For me, that is basically the only thing on schedule A. Oooooh, tough stuff! I sure hope they take this away, so I don't have to wrangle with that sched A form . Plus, what the current reform plan proposes is to limit the deduction. You still get a deduction but under the new plan you would have to make sure that you were under a certain level. Sounds like more complexity to me. I think it's a cynical ploy used by the flat tax people and other tax "reformers" to exploit the common peoples' (those without access to accountant) fears of the complex form, in order for them to give up their tax advantages. The home mortgage deduction is among the single largest such incentives. "among the single largest such" Note bolded words. Remove the bolded words and you've got a very strong-sounding statement. The bolded words were probably put in to change it from an out and out lie to merely misleading. "Clearly, we've gotten some bang for all these bucks. The United States has an enviably high rate of home ownership and a highly developed infrastructure—secondary markets in mortgage-backed securities, online mortgage companies, etc.—that supports the construction and purchase of homes." Sounds good to me! It's the American dream! But the once-modest deduction has evolved into a very large and highly inefficient rent subsidy. The deduction plainly causes distortions. People are willing to pay more for houses and buy bigger houses than they otherwise would because they can deduct the interest from their taxes. This may be true. I think the current plan would be good. It would remove this aspect of the mortgage deduction (if it's true anyway). Then there are home-equity loans. The proceeds from home-equity loans can be used to pay for an addition or repairs, but also for a television or for a trip to Jamaica. And the taxpayer foots a portion of the bill. What does this have to do with encouraging homeownership? I'm unsure of whether this part should be removed. Home equity loans can be used to resurrect an unlivable home. I can see, though, how this could be subsidizing people spending money elsewhere in the economy. Oh the horror! Taxpayers who don't itemize deductions—generally people in the lower income brackets—don't receive any benefit from the home-mortgage deduction. This is a crock of shit. I itemize solely because I have the home-mortgage deduction. And the more you borrow, and the higher your tax bracket, the more valuable the deduction becomes. This would be taken care of with the current proposal which caps only the higher end deductions. Losing the deduction would have the same effect on his personal finances and mentality as a rise in mortgage rates from 6 percent to 8 percent would. A bummer? Certainly. But such moves have happened frequently without causing crises. And if the elimination of the deduction were accompanied by a reduction in rates elsewhere, it would be a wash for many homeowners." Something tells me that middle class people would not be getting rate reductions elsewhere. And what about the effect on the middle class person's main investment, their home? Surely that is going to lose value, perhaps precipitously unless this is done very carefully. " And so it's no surprise that earlier this year, when President Bush penned instructions to the advisory panel on tax reform, he told them to "recognize[e] the importance of homeownership." So you going against GWB there JayB ! Even more shocking, perhaps I am agreeing with GWB!!! Somehow, however, I don't think GWB is going to be supporting the current proposal of capping the deduction for only the huge mortgages.

Hey Jayb, Did you ever send any money here?

It's still there. I just checked. It's here , in the rock climbing forum .

John Murtha (D - Pennsylvania) rocks : "Vice President Dick Cheney jumped into the fray Wednesday by assailing Democrats who contend the Bush administration manipulated intelligence on Iraq, calling their criticism "one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city." Murtha, a Marine intelligence officer in Vietnam, angrily shot back at Cheney: "I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done."

So I take it from the light-hearted banter and little thingies that the fall presented above did not result in any serious injury?

Question 1: Which figure shows that the top marginal rates have consistently lowered? Question 2: Do you have any sort of control comparison? Perhaps another first world economy where the top marginal rates have not consistently lowered? Your consumer ownership statistics, for example, could be just as easily explainable by technological advances.

Jayb, I'm not sure I get your argument. Your posted tables and link seem to show that income and consumer-goods ownership levels have steadily risen over the last few decades. Is this supposed to somehow imply that tax breaks for the rich help out the poor? The connection is not obvious to me. Could you elaborate?

Cool. Thanks for hauling 'em away. If you didn't show I was going to distribute them around waiting rooms at the UW Hospital Guerilla climbing info distribution

Anybody else want these? Bigwalling has not yet shown. Tomorrow is recycling day! Let me know if you want 'em

Can this be true? Robert Scheer writes: "It was enormously telling, in fact, that the only part of the Senate which did see the un-sanitized National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq -- the Republican-led Senate Select Intelligence Committee -- shockingly voted in the fall of 2002 against the simple authorization of force demanded by a Republican president."

I guess I got on a spam list for the GOP somehow. It's interesting to find out what their current official slander is now. Here's an excerpt of the current one supposedly from "Chairman Ken Mehlman" "It's time to set the record straight about Iraq. That's why we've released this new web video, "Democrats: Dishonest on Iraq." Watch it now on GOP.com. <http://www.republicanvictoryteam.com> Watch, and you'll see Senator Hillary Clinton talking tough when it came time to confront Saddam, saying "I can support the President, I can support an action against Saddam Hussein because I think it's in the long-term interests of our national security ..." Or Howard Dean calling Iraq an "international outlaw." Or House minority leader Nancy Pelosi stating unequivocally, "Saddam Hussein certainly has chemical and biological weapons. There's no question about that." Watch Democrat after Democrat on tape <http://www.republicanvictoryteam.com>, reaching the same conclusion the President reached about Iraq. " I haven't checked out the video (yet). But it amazes me that they can put Howard Dean in that list. Howard Dean is the only Dem I can remember who was openly arguing against going to war in Iraq. Anyway, looks like the campaign is in full swing! p.s. I understand it's against netiquette to post personal emails, but I don't think this should apply to unsolicited mass-mailings (i.e. spam).

de nada

Index Town Wall!

I take umbrage at you unfairly stereotyping an entire thread, its posters, and liberals based on one cherry-picked and mischaracterized post! Stupid pigeonholing conservatives

More for ya Jon.... "Late Sunday, U.S. troops surrounded and took control of an Interior Ministry building in Jadriyah following repeated allegations that Iraq security forces were illegally detaining and torturing people suspected of participating in the insurgency." link On one hand, this is positive news. It's a report coming out of Iraq that shows that the US forces are actively protecting the citizens of Iraq. Unfortunately, it also indicates that the government getting set up may be horribly corrupt and ruthless. Meaning...guess who gets to stay even longer? This just won't fit in anybody's current talking points!

Here's one for you Jon!

Great Op-ed by E.J. Dionne in the Wash Post today, Another Set of Scare Tactics excerpt: "The big difference between our current president and his father is that the first President Bush put off the debate over the Persian Gulf War until after the 1990 midterm elections. The result was one of most substantive and honest foreign policy debates Congress has ever seen, and a unified nation. The first President Bush was scrupulous about keeping petty partisanship out of the discussion. The current President Bush did the opposite. He pressured Congress for a vote before the 2002 election, and the war resolution passed in October. Sen. Joe Biden, a Delaware Democrat who is no dove, warned of rushing "pell-mell" into an endorsement of broad war powers for the president. The Los Angeles Times reported that Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, protested in September: "We're being asked to go to war, and vote on it in a matter of days. We need an intelligence estimate before we can seriously vote." And Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, put it plainly: "This will be one of the most important decisions Congress makes in a number of years; I do not believe it should be made in the frenzy of an election year." But it was. Grand talk about liberating Iraq gave way to cheap partisan attacks. In New Mexico, Republican Steve Pearce ran an advertisement against Democrat John Arthur Smith declaring: "While Smith 'reflects' on the situation, the possibility of a mushroom cloud hovering over a U.S. city still remains." Note that Smith wasn't being attacked for opposing the war, only for reflecting on it. God forbid that any Democrat dare even think before going to war."

I think the press is currently doing a very good job at quoting Bush's misleading soundbites and then putting them in perspective in the next paragraph with a bit of the opposition party view. One of the main reasons the press didn't do this back in the run up to war, is because there was no opposition party at the time. The most the democrats were saying was, "Hey wait! Let's give this a little more calm reflection". This was accompanied by popular protests in the street. I think these all got good coverage. Anyway, what I'm saying is that if you want the press to print the positions of two sides, you actually gotta have two discernible sides.

He gave a bunch of money for the Inaugural festivities, but that's pretty much SoP, necessity even, for any huge corporation no matter who gets elected. It's especially important for huge corporations with continual abusive monopoly litigation exposure. The fact that he's given 100 (?) times more money to fight disease in Africa among other causes is reason to think positively of him and his foundation.