Taxing Thoughts

From Talking Points Memo:

Let’s watch really closely how the walk-back unfolds. And taking what was undoubtedly a hotly-debated stab at walking back the administration’s WMD claims this afternoon was Secretary of State Colin Powell.

A little more than an hour ago NPR ran an interview with the Secretary on All Things Considered. Here’s one of the key passages in which the interviewer asks Powell about why no toxins were found on the alleged chemical/biological weapons trailers found in northern Iraq

MS. BLOCK: There were no toxins found in those trailers.

SECRETARY POWELL: Which could mean one of several things: one, they hadn’t been used yet to develop toxins; or, secondly, they had been sterilized so thoroughly that there is no residual left. It may well be that they hadn’t been used yet.

It’s no wonder that Democrats get labelled with the dreaded ‘L’ word.

“When I’m president, we’ll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day,” said Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri. (while referring to the then upcoming Supreme Court decision on affirmative action in university admissions)

The Supreme Court is the highest court of the land. I don’t always agree with their decisions, but their decisions are supposed to be respected. If you don’t like their decisions, then change the law or the Constitution, but I don’t see anywhere in the Constitution where the President can unilaterally overrule the Supreme Court!

And in true dumbass fashion-

Ever wonder how much of a cut the musicians get when people download their songs for $1 a piece?

- 40 % goes to the website
- 30% goes to the label
- 8% goes to the publisher
- 10% goes to middlemen
- 12% goes to the artist
Source: Business 2.0

From TBOGG:

The tangled web starts to unravel

Jake Tapper writes about the lies that took us into war over at Salon (it’s Salon Premium). Here is an interesting taste:

Korb also suggests that this affair could seriously affect the ability of the U.S. government to function efficiently. “What this administration has done to military and intelligence professionals in government is disgraceful,” he says, citing Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who was publicly rebuffed by Wolfowitz and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after predicting — correctly, it now seems — that it would take “several hundred thousand troops to keep the peace in postwar Iraq.” Korb also cites the formation earlier this year of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of a few dozen former intelligence officials from Army Intelligence, CIA, FBI, Defense and State Departments, to protest what they saw as a misuse of intelligence for the purposes of building a case for war. “This will also have long-term ramifications,” Korb says.

With the way that the economy is going and all of the different things that the government is doing to royally screw all middle and lower class Americans (like the recent ‘dividend tax cut’ and the passing of the estate tax repeal in the HOR), I was going to post a major bitch post, but then I came across this post by Jeff Cooper and decided that he said everything that I wanted to say and more, but more eloquently (and it’s nearly a month old)!

What’s Going On?

On Tuesday, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) made some very scary comments about how illegal file traders could be fought.

During a discussion on methods to frustrate computer users who illegally exchange music and movie files over the Internet, Hatch asked technology executives about ways to damage computers involved in such file trading. Legal experts have said any such attack would violate federal anti-hacking laws.

“No one is interested in destroying anyone’s computer,” replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt music downloads. One technique deliberately downloads pirated material very slowly so other users can’t.

“I’m interested,” Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone’s computer “may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights.”

From Wired:

Orrin Hatch: Software Pirate?
By Leander Kahney

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) suggested Tuesday that people who download copyright materials from the Internet should have their computers automatically destroyed.

But Hatch himself is using unlicensed software on his official website, which presumably would qualify his computer to be smoked by the system he proposes.

The senator’s site makes extensive use of a JavaScript menu system developed by Milonic Solutions, a software company based in the United Kingdom. The copyright-protected code has not been licensed for use on Hatch’s website.

“It’s an unlicensed copy,” said Andy Woolley, who runs Milonic. “It’s very unfortunate for him because of those comments he made.”

…

From ArgMax:

Bill Gates and the Estate Tax

I just got back from a press conference sponsored by United for a Fair Economy and Americans for a Fair Estate tax. Bill Gates (Sr.) made a very compelling case for keeping the estate tax arguing that one important reason that the super-wealthy have been able to make/keep vast sums of money is that they are fortunate enough to live in America. And, as good Americans, they owe some of their wealth to the country that made it possible for them to become so wealthy.

FYI - only 2 percent of estates owe any tax, and the first $1 million for individuals, or $2 million per married couple, is tax-free. So, if you leave $1,000,001 to your heir (after deductions for charity), your heir is responsible for only 18 cents in taxes.

From the watch:

The American Dilemma

As many people warned before Bush took us into war, the problem was not the war itself. The really ugly problem would be dealing with the aftermath. Well, now we are well and truly stuck in a quagmire, with no end in sight. Today when the costs of empire are being exposed and both our soldiers and the Iraqis are dying, it looks increasingly like there are no good answers to our dilemma: how can we extract ourselves from this mess without creating greater carnage and leaving even more disaster in our wake?

From Angry Bear:

Bizzaro World

What did I tell you? Two posts ago, I called the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page “just plain wacky”. Six posts ago I recommended a fairly new libertarian blogger, Amy Phillips. Now Amy reports on more wackiness from the virulently pro-war editorial page of the WSJ: WSJ editorial writers are using the lack of WMD to attack anti-war politicians.

I know, it doesn’t make any sense the first time you read it. There must be a typo, you think. So I’ll say it again: WSJ editorial writers are using the lack of WMD to attack anti-war politicians.