The first open thread was for you. This one is for the government.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.
An almost top 10,000 blog!
So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.
Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?
Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.
White supremacy is terrorism.
They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.
They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.
They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.
No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.
We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.
You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.
Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.
Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?
If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.
When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.
Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.
Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.
Good lord, these people are nuts.
Only Democrats have agency, apparently.
Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.
You cannot shame the shameless.
demimondian
It isn’t tax day, John. Tax day is tomorrow, this year.
The Other Steve
I don’t really feel I should have to pay taxes, considering my money is just going into that shit hole called Iraq.
Rome Again
Lesson for the future:
Don’t move from a non-state taxed income state to a state-taxed income state during tax season and file in the new state. What a mess!
“Well it’s alright now, I learned my lesson well…”
Punchy
Fixed. Yes, I realize, however, I could have put any one of about 200 things in bold that would have been just as egregious.
Rome Again
Me neither. Besides roads to drive on, I feel I get very little benefit from my tax dollars, personally.
srv
True story from my days at the Austin Service Center. Tax returns arrive and get stripped from the checks. A processing number is printed on the return, noting if any payment was processed. The envelope is then stapled to the return. The returns would be bundled up into bins, usually 100 returns per bin. The bins would then be stacked on carts and pushed out to the examiners, who ‘perfected’ the returns by bin.
One day, we get this cart, and there’s a shirt stuffed into a bin. There’s an envelope attached and a hand written processing number on it. It’s the back of a shirt, and on it, the taxpayer has perfected all of the required entity information, tax entries, affirmation line, and signature.
A perfectly legal filing, BTW.
Jake
But wait, don’t our tax dollars also go for fine services like abstinence only programs and also the salaries of public servants like Abbie Goner and Condiment Rice and…uh…
Hmmmm. Well. Roads are good.
ThymeZone
CNN reporting 20+ dead, 28 wounded in Virginia Tech campus shooting.
Jake
Thanks TZ, I looked earlier and saw a headline listing one dead but this is the headline in the WaPo.
What fresh hell is this?
Jake
Also, I hope John C. is high and dry.
Although The Road is Under Five Feet of Water is a good reason to file late.
Wilfred
Non-payment of taxes was a legitimate form of non-violent protest during the Vietnam War. If enough people refused to file and/or pay it would have a tremendous effect on the war. Me? I haven’t set foot in the United States for almost 6 years, nor will I as long as the current administration is in power.
Of course, you’ll get in trouble with the government, but at least you’ll mean what you say. This just sounds like chickentaxhawking.
chopper
i got soaked by NY this year. moved from virginia to tax city.
oh well, i guess you live in the city you gotta pay the price.
Rome Again
If online life was truly anonymous, I would have been at the forefront of this endeavor years ago, alas, it’s not!
ThymeZone
By far the most interesting I have seen so far.article on this subject
Punchline? Only one religion can be taught as “truth” in any curriculum.
Dave_Violence
Virginia has higher taxes than NY. NY doesn’t tax assets.
chopper
i don’t have any assets outside of a car.
plus, in NYC i pay state and city taxes. the city taxes are about half of the state taxes, which are high to start.
trust me, i had it much better in VA.
mrmobi
So, John, a thread for the government, eh? So even BJ keeps two sets of books, so to speak.
Also, I love Supreme Leader Bush, and he hasn’t made a mistake yet.
HyperIon
behind the WALL!
Pb
Ho-hum, sounds like a slow day in Baghdad…
Whoops! I thought we were fighting them over there so we didn’t have to fight them here!
jg
Its either us or the rich and as we’ve all been schooled by He who shall not be named, the rich are smarter than us and will use their money in clever and creative ways to grow the country and lift us all. Or they’ll pocket it, which I believe was the beef the MLB players had with the owners when the idea of a salary cap and revenue sharing was being floated.
ThymeZone
Hmm. Sorry about that. Since I am a subscriber, I don’t always notice what’s behind the Times Select barrier and what isn’t. Much content is behind a free subscription barrier, and if you are a Select subscriber, the difference is not apparent.
This particular article and its comment section is so interesting, I would recommend it as being worth the time to do the 14-day trial just to read it. But …. that’s asking a lot, I know.
Mary
Jesus. Christ.
CBS radio just reported that the Justice Department now says that at least TWENTY NINE have been killed.
Sstarr
What I just read says that one person was killed in a dormitory, and the remainder were killed in a building called “Norris Hall.” The article implied that it was an engineering building.
I can’t imagine that anything other than an automatic weapon is responsible for this massacre.
Punchy
Sorry, but that snark shit aint funny. 20+ young adults just murdered. Have some respect, please.
God. Damn. Part of me wants to cry. What a fucking mess.
demimondian
Has anyone heard from RSA this morning?
Tsulagi
Could be wrong, but the report I heard on radio while driving was the gunman used two 9mm handguns.
Jake
God help those kids and their families.
Shit like this is why I don’t have time to worry about ferrin terrists a-comin’ here to cut off my head an’ make me worship Allah. There are too damn many blood thirsty freaks running free as it is, they don’t follow any particular belief system other than “I’ve got a gun and you don’t” and they strike without warning.
I should worry about Osama bin Laden, why? [/rant]
RSA
Thanks for the thought; I’m further south, in Raleigh, NC. Craziness abounds.
Rome Again
Rome Again
I’d lay 10/1 odds that the gunman has an anglicized name.
And I blockquoted that accidentally, apologies. It’s MONDAY!
Pb
Punchy,
Don’t worry, it wasn’t meant to be funny at all–neither situation is “funny”. Check the link while you’re at it. Only 20+ young adults murdered (in Iraq) would normally be excellent news that ‘the surge is working’–but now we’re already getting comparatively ridiculous comments on this particular event that “Nothing like this has happened before” and “It is difficult to comprehend senseless violence on this scale”–because it’s in America. It’s a huge mess.
Of course it’s horrible for the locals, who have probably never seen anything like this firsthand–and I know I haven’t. I used to live in Virginia, rather near Virginia Tech, actually–and I stayed at the campus for a couple of weeks over the summer–it’s a beautiful place. And I’m sure that many, many places in Iraq were too at one point, even though I’ve never been there.
The difference, however, is that I as an American and my government are directly responsible for what’s currently going on in Iraq, which is literally thousands of times worse than this event in any dimension that you could care to name. And it will get a lot less coverage than this event, as well.
Jake
I think the “Beltway Snipers” may have struck that far south once or twice but I don’t remember. I do know VTech had a shooting last summer when an escaped con tried to hide out on campus and killed one of the guards. Not that you can ever get used to this shit. You just can’t let it drive you under the floor boards.
Shit like this on the other hand makes me want to bite through a fucking wall:
20+ people dead (so far) and the White House pops out some passive voiced bullshit comment about the right to bear arms? What. THe. FUCK?
Punchy
Who the fuck just shoots at completely innocent, probably cowering, shaking, begging, trembling co-eds at least 50-something times? There must have been a re-loading or two…a chance to stop and rethink the whole thing…I kind of hope it was drugs, b/c I just cannnot fathom a sober, clear-thinking person could be this insanely ruthless…
Rusty Shackleford
Anybody know where Dick Cheney is hunting today?
(sorry for the joke)
Rome Again
Crazed schizoids?