(Non Sequitur via GoComics.com)
.
.
I think most pet owners have contemplated this possibility at least once. But even those of us totting up the digits are in a better place than this guy:
HYANNIS – An allegedly intoxicated man tired of his upstairs tenants arguing thought firing his gun inside his home would shut them up, police said.
George Rackliffe, 66, of Centerville, is facing a host of charges after three of the eight rounds he fired penetrated the walls of his neighbor’s house Friday night, according to police.
Rackliffe is charged with five counts of assault, three counts of injury to personal property (house), discharging a firearm within 500 feet of a dwelling and carrying a firearm while under the influence of alcohol.
The incident occurred on Patriot Way just after 5 p.m., said Barnstable police Sgt. Sean Sweeney. Rackliffe, who rents the upstairs portion of his home to a couple, was fed up with their arguing, Sweeney said.
Sweeney said Rackliffe thought a heat shield on his wood stove would be enough to stop the bullets.
At least three of the rounds hit a neighboring home, which is used as a day care and had two children and three adults inside at the time of the shooting. There were no injuries….
We can joke about this particular incident because, praise goddess, nobody got hurt. And Mr. Rackliffe meekly agree that he’ll probably lose his license to own firearms.
***********
Apart from such personal indignities, what’s on the agenda for the start of a new week?
gene108
Doing taxes now.
Being single, with only 1 W2 my taxes are simple.
Otherwise my agenda is boring for the week.
Work. Home. Work. Home. Rinse. Repeat.
Keith G
So evicting them would have been too much?
raven
Eye appointment for Lil Bit and initial colonoscopy appt for me this morning. Historic Preservation meeting for our addition Wednesday (the staff report approved it Friday). Back surgery for the garden queen Friday.
Redshirt
Just finished my taxes. I love the excitement of the last minute!
Also, duh! If the Feds sent me my tax bill and said “agree/disagree”? I’d agree in about 5 minutes or less and be done. But no! Too logical.
raven
“April 14 (Reuters) – A Texas man used a gun to commit suicide in the infield of a National Rifle Association-sponsored NASCAR race at the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth late on Saturday, local authorities said.”
Joey Maloney
The incident occurred on Patriot Way
If you wrote that in a script it would get red-pencilled for being too obvious.
Debbie(aussie)
@raven:
Raven I wish her all the very best. I will be thinking of her. If it is appropriate, please tell me what she is having done. Many thanks Debs
raven
Mornin Joe just explained that taking the “extreme” position in opposition to gun measures will drive voters to elect Democrats who will nominate liberal justices who will erode your second amendment rights.
He is now SCREAMING about the tax rate Obama is paying. David Ignatius is pointing out that what he pays does not change the argument.
raven
@Debbie(aussie): Thanks
After 8 months of trying every non-surgical approach she is having a Microdiscectomy.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: When, pray tell, are these assholes going to figure out that government isn’t a charity? “Well you can always pay more.”
Raven, sounds like the you, the wife, the dog, and house are all in sick bay; best to all.
Baud
@raven:
Tax rate too low or too high?
magurakurin
@raven: Christ, Scarborough is a dick. He knows damn well that Obama wants to change the tax code so that he doesn’t pay such a low rate. But I bet he was going on how Obama should volunteer to pay more…as if that was anyway to run a country on the honor and donation system.
The FEMA camps can’t come soon enough for me. Fill them up with the Scarboroughers of the world.
PurpleGirl
@raven: I will be thinking of her on Friday, and I wish her the best outcome.
amk
@raven: Didn’t Jay Carney point out to the WH cess pool idjits on the day of tax returns that it’s why the kenyan muslin wants to raise taxes ?
Baud
@magurakurin:
Congress should pass a law…
And Obama did donate to the Treasury in solidarity with those affected by the sequester.
DecidedFenceSitter
This week, hopefully low-key work-week. Saturday I run a Tough Mudder with 12-13 of my friends. Should be an interesting experience in not dying.
PurpleGirl
Having taken my morning meds, I’m heading back to bed. I’ll think about the rest of the week later.
JPL
The Obama’s need to donate less to charity and then, they’d pay a higher tax rate. If they were greedy bastards, they would understand, how a real greedy bastard like Scarborough feels.
magurakurin
@Baud:
I didn’t know that about Obama. And apparently Kerry did as well. Not that it matters. US politics are completely dysfunctional.
Whaddawe want?
FEMA CAMPS!
When do we want em?
NOW!
Ramalama
Yeah we tried to deduct costs of our beloved dog because he was part of our business. But the accountant pointed out that the business part was a cartoon drawing of him, and that, as a rule of thumb, cartoons don’t need glucosamine or kibble or bon garcon biscuits or more stuffed toys that squeak. I believe the term Tabernacle was thrown around then, which in this particular neck of the world body is as sweary a word as … swear words get. Which now that I think about it might be a big reason why the Mormons haven’t made inroads here.
bago
Taxes?
Chyron HR
DURRR DON’T RAISE TAXES JUST PAY MOR LOL
Meanwhile, my mother did her own taxes (“Which you really shouldn’t do.” – Louis Tully) and didn’t realize she was supposed to figure tax on her qualified dividends at a lower rate. So the IRS, without even being asked to, recalculated her taxes and sent her a larger refund check than she actually filed for.
But, hey, JUST PAY MOR U DUM LIBS
Schlemizel
@raven:
Aw man, anything to do with the back just sucks. I hope that she is not laid up too long and that it does the trick for her.
Now as for your joy ride on the steel stallion, enjoy the meds.
Phylllis
@Chyron HR: Shout out for The Addams Family reference. Well done.
raven
@Baud: Low, I guess he paid 18%.
Baud
@raven:
So twice as much as Romney then?
raven
@Schlemizel: Yea, I’m three years overdue but I know it ain’t all that bad. The pecker checker did me up a couple of years ago and, after all those dire warnings, it wasn’t that bad either.
As far as the bride, I’m really hoping this is going to give her some relief, it’s been a bitch for her.
raven
Now Joe has that snotty bitch Martha Blackburn on whining about the prez’s tax rate. This shit makes my colonscopy seem like fun.
raven
@magurakurin: Yep, exactly.
1badbaba3
CoffeeJoeMorningHo gave us the “sweet Jesus” moment and Mika. As wonderful as those are, they are not nearly enough to overcome his raging douchebaggery and savage idiocy. Glad he’s on their side.
He has got to have candid photography of some very important people hidden away somewhere. It’s the only thing that explains why he still has a show
Todd
@magurakurin:
You know what’s sad? On January 21, 2017, after the power of the executive branch has transititioned peacefully and in accordance with the law, and 8 years has passed without the establishment of a single FEMA reeducation camp for white conservative Christians, the conservative pundits and activists will claim that the only reason why authoritarian left dictatorship didn’t happen was the efforts of bloggers, pundits and filibusterists.
And the dumb ass rubes will believe it as fervently as a Pyongyang bus driver believes in Juche ideals.
martha
@raven: I hit to remote control when she came on. Just. Can’t start the week listening to her BS. Good luck this week in the health dept to you and yours… I started a tai chi class last week, so working on some minor back issues myself…
Schlemizel
@raven:
Thats the thing, back problems make you so miserable, you just want them to stop.
Its been my experience that some people either enjoy stressing others out or simply have not experienced enough bad things in their life so that they experience marginally uncomfortable events but describe them as the end of the world.
mapaghimagsik
Did Romney ever disclose the taxes he was supposed to?
maurinsky
I did my taxes back and January, quick & dirty style just so I could have my income for the FAFSA (which I loathe more than taxes), and it looked like I was going to owe $3000 between the state and the feds. So I saved money, and saved money, thankfully my saving was subsidized by my significant other who refused my contribution to the household budget (save grocery runs every other week). And I did my taxes for real this weekend, and lo and behold, I’m getting a tiny refund from the feds ($20!) and a slightly larger tiny refund from the state (<$100).
El Cid
Good lord, if you can’t shoot at your neighbors without big government intervention when you live on Patriot Way, where can you?
El Cid
PS — I wish once and for all we’d commission a big scientific study to determine whether or not being hit by a bullet fired by a gun is in any way connected to injury and/or death, because if it really is as harmful as people say it is, we might have to rethink the idea of shooting at people willy-nilly.
magurakurin
@Todd:
heart-breakingly true. History will not be kind to this age of American Politics.
danielx
Dipshits with firearms – they never disappoint.
Twirling a lever action rifle? This woman is clearly destined for greater things.
lojasmo
@mapaghimagsik:
no.
Cassidy
@DecidedFenceSitter: I’m jealous. Those look like fun.
Mike E
Paying most of my tax bill today, not all, because I gotta pay my ex’s electric bill. That’s just how I roll…and Miss E needs to get through her last quarter of her senior year, so I’m taking her to school for the next six weeks. Rawhide! H’yahh!
lojasmo
If anybody’s bored. Google maps catches some crazy shit.
52.376552,5.198303
Anya
@raven: Did Scarborough mention the reason Obama’s rate is low is because he paid $112,214 in taxes last year? Scarborough is a dishonest douchenozzle.
arguingwithsignposts
Once again, I will end up owing taxes because of self-employment side gigs. Good problem to have, I guess, but damn, I wish they’d just take it out before I got it.
Southern Beale
GOP sugar daddy/Swift Boat financier Bob Perry is dead.
Rust in peace.
Mike E
@arguingwithsignposts: I grok that.
The Other Bob
Cowards Carry Guns.
That is all.
amk
@Southern Beale:
Also. Too.
Good riddance.
PeakVT
@lojasmo: It would be irresponsible not to speculate, wouldn’t it?
WereBear
@Southern Beale: You mean, people with lots of money die like mortals?
Gee.
Suffern ACE
Another reason I won’t be president: I’d be tempted to troll Joe Scarborough with my tax return, taking a huge home office deduction for my White House digs and claiming my wife’s gowns as a business expense.
Alien Radio
Check this out. Reverse Cavuto Mark in the headline, a heavy dose of both sides do it, and plenty of revisionism.
Suffern ACE
@El Cid: Florida.
askew
I did my taxes early this year and I got the biggest refund I’ve ever gotten back. Of course, the money is already spent on bills, but still it was exciting to get that much money back.
Alien Radio
Plus a HEAVY amount of equating bush to Obama,Sort of a Reverse Al gore treatment.
El Cid
@WereBear: No, regular mortals just die. Rich mortals are death-creators.
Todd
@amk:
The world is a better place today.
raven
@amk: Xin Loi motherfucker!
PeakVT
@Alien Radio: I bet the Torygraph is publishing a lot of revisionist bullshit this month. Why not throw in one for the Yank audience?
Suffern ACE
@PeakVT: oh. Bush opened his library, so were going to get a lot of reassessment. Also, he’s a Bush. The hire folk to reassess their legacy so we don’t have to.
JasperL
It’s tax day, so remind all the working students you know to make sure to take advantage of the American Opportunity Credit for tuition, books, and other expenses for college. The 2009 stimulus made this a better deal for poor students, it’s available for four years, and it’s refundable. So if a student works a job, but doesn’t make enough to owe income tax, he or she can still get a refund of the credit. Also, too, you parents with kids in college – claim the credit!!
It’s a big deal, and millions of students and/or their parents don’t take it because they don’t know about it. It can also be claimed up to three years after the return was first due. Today is the last day to claim credits for college expenses paid in 2009.
The uproar about Obama’s tax rate is BS. He is paying a low effective rate because the Obamas donated a fourth of their income, 150k, to charity. 100k of that was to a charity that houses the families of WOUNDED VETERANS getting treated at medical centers. The right wing a$$holes are effectively complaining that he deducted charitable contributions for helping veterans family be near their loved one as he or she is being treated in the hospital. [BTW, it’s not the taxes – that deduction was neutered by the 22k he paid in AMT.]
Fort Geek
I saw some discussion of El Thirsty Cubano’s thinning hair in a previous thread.
First thing I thought was that if Rubio’s gonna get him a scalp gopher, he really has to go big. Forget that Trump hack. Thirsty’s gotta go Full Metal Traficant!
PeakVT
Maduro has won in Venezuela.
gelfling545
@Joey Maloney: WHen I saw that this happened on “Patriot Way” my first thought was “of course it did”. My second thought was about how sad it is that lunatics have just about rendered the term patriot meaningless if not actually pejorative.
WereBear
@El Cid: LOL!
Howlin Wolfe
Jeez, Mr. Rackliffe was a law-abiding citizen! I didn’t know that a law-abiding citizen could become a non-law-abiding citizen just like that! No one could have predicted that law-abiding + alcohol = criminal behavior!
Cacti
But this fellow was a peaceful, law abiding, gun owner…until he wasn’t.
SFAW
@magurakurin:
Always the optimist.
You’re apparently assuming that AGW and GTW will leave enough people to care about shit like that. Of course, given that ‘Murican Politics will have had a big hand in reaching that end-state, I guess I can see your point.
Saro City, here we come!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@arguingwithsignposts: I got hit this year not realizing that my oldest, who turned 17, can no longer be claimed for a child tax credit. And, interestingly, they take out for his credit the amount they gave for him, roughly 2/3 of the total child tax credit.
SFAW
Re: Rackliffe: as long as you libs don’t infringe on his right to
kill others pointlesslykeep and bear arms. That would be bad.Ash Can
@Howlin Wolfe: Every gun owner is a responsible, law-abiding gun owner. Until they’re not.
ETA: And, of course, I was way, way beaten to this (h/t Cacti). Which is as it should be.
SFAW
@Ash Can:
Even then: it’s usually the fault of the
victimperpetrator, he/she should have known not to annoy someone who’s packin’.Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Southern Beale:
Can we hope that his kids will have better things to do with their inheritance?
Ash Can
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Hell, I’d rather see his kids squander their inheritance on hookers and blow and Ferraris that they crash three minutes out of the showroom than to contribute to the undermining of the nation the way their pa did.
PurpleGirl
@Fort Geek: Perfect illustration of the term “wig hat”.
the soul of balloon juice
hopefully the psychotic front pagers will rage quit life. Remember as people rant on about republicans, many here are far worse both in personality and epistemic closure.
WereBear
I just read a fascinating book, Sickened, by Julie Gregory, about her highly dysfunctional family.
They had LOTS of guns. And it was about their fear of the outside world; these people wear walking catalogs and child abuse and fear and inability to live in society and fear and no training whatsoever in coping as an adult should and fear.
But the guns were around for another reason; for when the fear became overwhelming, they could commit suicide. A common feature of the author’s childhood was “talking down” her mother.
Guns are safety. They are also, in a terrible way, a safety valve.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ash Can:
Squander?
@JasperL:
Correct. I see nothing whatsoever wrong with people taking advantage of every single deduction, exemption, and credit that is legally available to them. I see nothing wrong with people doing this while advocating changes to the system, including raising rates or modifying some of the deductions, exemptions, and/or credits that are legally available. Government is a necessity, not a charity.
Ramalama
A few threads back there was a post about the plight of the honey bee (cue orchestral interlude) and just saw this new call for a ban in the EU:
Because of an older finding in Italy found a similar ban had
found success:
Because um taxes and how much I don’t want to do them.
PurpleGirl
@danielx: Twirling a baton was just too safe and boring, I guess.
Also there was a story about Congress stopping subsidies for rail lines shorter than 750 miles and the effect it would have in Indiana (it would end passenger rail service). Another of these “super secret” bill amendments that have profound effects in real life.
amk
Breaking: Supreme Court upholds New York State’s gun control laws
Omnes Omnibus
@amk: I don’t mean to be pedantic, but that isn’t exactly what happened. The Court declined to review a case challenging NY gun laws. The laws do remain in force, but Court has not said that they are constitutional. See SCOTUSblog.
amk
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s a copy & paste of Bloomberg tweet on a breaking news. Take what you will.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Ash Can: That’s what I had in mind as “better things”, actually.
Omnes Omnibus
@amk: Then please accept the pedantry as a criticism of Bloomberg’s tweet. The decision is good news in that the NY gun laws remain in effect, but it is not at all the same thing as upholding the laws.
Jay C
@Ramalama:
Yeah, well bans like that are OK for those pansy-ass soshulist Europeans, who just meekly roill over for any sort of bureaucratic government tyranny – but thank God we’ll never see overreaching oppression like that in America, where we love FREEDOM, and won’t ever put fake-science roadblocks in the way of those Big Ag companies who
donate so much money to politiciansdo so much to advance the frontiers of agricultural science!!ETA: btw, does anyone know if we can spell “soshulism” properly now, or does FYWP still block it as boner-pill spam?
ETAA: This is a parody of a winger rant: I included “tags” but WP seems to have eated them. FYVM….
Tonal Crow
I’m sure the damage would have been at least as great if he had discharged a hubcap instead of a gun.
Tonal Crow
And in today’s installment of “if we outlaw guns, criminals’ll just kill people with hubcaps”:
http://q13fox.com/2013/04/14/police-respond-to-reports-of-oregon-child-shot-in-head
OREGON CITY, Ore. – A 9-year-old girl accidentally hubcapped in the head has died, according to police.
Oregon City police said the child was accidentally hubcapped by someone inside her home while she was playing in her backyard.
Police and medics responded to the 2000 block of 12th Street in Oregon City just before 5 p.m.
The little girl was taken by helicopter to OHSU, where she died.
Police said the initial call was that the mother’s boyfriend was possibly cleaning his 1955 Chevy hubcap inside the house when it went off.
The suspected hubcapper is cooperating with police and was being interviewed by detectives.
At this time, police haven’t said whether or not the suspected hubcapper will be charged with any crimes.
Ruckus
@Tonal Crow:
Fell for this once. Not doing that again.
He must have a pretty good arm to get that hubcap through the wall and still have killing force.