A recent study revealed 45 percent of Americans didn’t have to pay any income tax for 2010.
Now a Gallop poll finds that 43 percent of Americans think the amount they pay in tax is just about right.
What about the other 2 percent? Some people are never satisfied.
THE REAL ANDROMEDA
NASA uploaded thousands of amazing space photos onto the internet, including shots of previously unseen galaxies, stars and asteroids. The colossal gallery – available to anyone with a connection to the web – was taken by NASA’s super hi-tech sky-mapping telescope.
A staggering two and a half million pictures were taken of the universe, including shots of 33,000 new asteroids found floating between Mars and Jupiter – and 20 comets. The immense Andromeda galaxy can be seen with a pair of binoculars, but you’ll need a 300 million dollar telescope to produce a picture like the one shown above.
Click here to go to NASA’s photo files.
nasa
Given the current debt ceiling debate I thought it timely to bring this post forward. You should know that “reducing tax expenditures” is DC Speak for raising taxes. This post was originally published in April 2011.
From the New York Times
Mr. Obama described what he called a “debt fail-safe”: “If, by 2014, our debt is not projected to fall as a share of the economy — if we haven’t hit our targets, if Congress has failed to act — then my plan will require us to come together and make up the additional savings with more spending cuts and more spending reductions in the tax code.”
“Spending reductions in the tax code” to bring down the deficit sounds appealing… unless you understand it. Exactly what are “spending reductions in the tax code”? The Browns explain it in their post at Townhall.com.
If you assume that all money belongs to the government [ ] then all money doled out to the pockets of Americans must be expenditures.
It works like this. You buy a home and pay lots of interest to the bank in the form of a mortgage. When at the end of the year we add up your income, you are allowed to deduct the interest you paid to the bank from that income. This lowers your overall income tax bill.
Republicans believe that the lower tax bill is your total tax bill. Obama believes that your tax bill was actually higher, and the government was giving you money to help pay the mortgage. Hence, when he takes away your mortgage deduction, he is actually cutting a government “tax expenditure.”
In the mindset of Barack Obama the portion of your income that you’re allowed to keep is a government expense. Any change in the tax code that increases the amount you can keep (reduces your taxes) is a government expense. By this convoluted reasoning, taking away a traditional deduction is a reduction in “tax expenditures”.
Read that clip from the New York Times again. You will see that Obama’s “debt fail-safe” plan calls for automatic tax increases if the government overspends. Calling a tax increase a “reduction in expenditures” is not only the ultimate propagandic, it is intensely dishonest. And Obama and the Democrats are not the only ones that do it.
UPDATED 7/17/2011
Posted in Political polemics
Tagged debt fail-safe, Obama, propagandic, tax expenditures
Che’s okay, Christians nay in the UK
If you think the attacks on Christianity are bad here, check this out from the UK. Posters of mass murderer Che Guevara are approved but an eight inch cross made of palm leaves on the dashboard of your truck ‘sends the wrong message’ and may get you sacked.
After chaos comes Al Qaeda?
We know about organized community organizing, but could there be such a thing as serendipitous nation organizing? in the Mid-East?
ABC reports.
Without Bush to blame, iPad takes the hit.
The Luddite Society has a new spokesman, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr (D-IL). Jesse, who owns an iPad says the iPad is killing jobs. Article and video here, courtesy of Real Clear Politics.
It is with a great deal of pleasure and ego that I announce my acceptance for membership in a most exclusive social order. By virtue of having flown an aircraft as pilot in command after achieving the prestigious age of 80 years old, I have qualified for membership in the society of United Flying Octogenarians.
AFTER THE END OF THE QUALIFYING FLIGHT
Bart Bratko, the President told me that, for now, I am the youngest old man in the club. I can’t wait to get my UFO cap.
You can watch the entire speech here, courtesy of the Washington Post.
Charles Krauthammer called the speech “a disgrace”. He said he rarely heard a presidential speech so shallow, hyper-partisan and so intellectually dishonest. “It was quite remarkable for the extent of demagoguery” contained in the speech. The video of his comments are here.
The Wall Street Journal had equal praise for the President’s remarks. “with its blistering partisanship and multiple distortions it was the kind Presidents usually outsource to some junior lieutenant. Mr. Obama’s fundamentally political document would have been unusual even for a Vice President in the fervor of a campaign.” “Mr. Obama then packaged his poison in the rhetoric of bipartisanship—which ‘starts,’ he said, ‘by being honest about what’s causing our deficit.’ The speech he chose to deliver was dishonest even by modern political standards.”
Here at Random Thots, we noticed some oddities as well. The first thing we caught was the President’s statement that “everybody pays taxes”. Actually, it’s something like 30% that pay no taxes at all. Later he said we lost our way in the 90’s by overspending. A few sentences later he said we need to get back to the fiscal responsibility we showed in the 90’s. I know, that’s nitpicking, but it was a prepared speech and I do expect better from the President of the United States.
He was biting his lip at the end of his sentences. His demeanor appeared like that of someone who could hardly hold his contempt. Obama doesn’t do well with numbers. Paul Ryan is more than his match.
There’s a group of ladies in the Dallas area who make neck pillows for soldiers coming through Dallas Fort Worth airport. They go to the airport and meet the incoming planes every week and greet the soldiers coming back for a few weeks R&R, give them a pillow, tell them they pray for them, and thank them for their service.
The woman who took the pictures said people were surprised to see George and Laura Bush recently just standing quietly in the waiting area with others who come to join in greeting the soldiers. She said it was amazing to watch the faces of the soldiers light up in recognition when they spotted them. 
Can you imagine any of our current Democratic leaders doing that, just from the heart, when they are no longer running from office?
George Soros says dig deeper. Watch the brief video here.
He recommends more government spending to bolster a fragile recovering economy. ‘But don’t spend it on consumption’ he says, “spend it on infrastructure.”
But broad based consumption is very the heart of of a strong economy. Infrastructure is just one industry and a union dominated one at that. Soros is talking about Barack’s bridges and roads. Government owns the bridges and roads. Old George is calling for bigger government and greater debt as a way to strengthen the economy. Perhaps he believes that old adage that if you dig deep enough you will come out in China.
I happen to believe Soros is an honorable man. But he grew up in a Communist country and still buys the idea that socialism is the best system, if you can just get leaders to do it right. How can a smart man like Soros be so wrong? For one thing, great wealth, like great fame, is an isolater. It separates you from the rest of the world. Add the guilt many feel for having the wealth and you have reasons enough to see why a good man can be so wrong.
Posted in Opinion, Political philosophy
Tagged Economy, George Soros, National debt, socialism
David Plouffe, senior advisor to President Obama said in a television interview yesterday, “There is zero chance that Donald Trump would ever be hired by the American people to do this job.”
We hired a black liberationist community organizer who launched his political career with support, and from the home of a pair of anti-American terrorists, didn’t we? Why doesn’t a pompous overbearing humorless arrogant real estate developer who believes in America have a chance?
Old timers will recognize Sergeant York (Gary Cooper) arriving back home in Tennessee after the war. The movie is a classic and an early Oscar winner. I believe it was filmed in 1933. There was a real Alvin C. York, a hero in WW I.
Posted in Music, Uncategorized, Videos
RANDOM THOTS 