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jmowreader

jmowreader's Journal
jmowreader's Journal
July 29, 2012

The one thing that would have foiled the Aurora Massacre

My four newspapers are starting to carry letters with one theme: guns in the hands of the audience at the Aurora theatre would have made the massacre less deadly...because, you know, taking out a shooter in the dark when tear gas is in the air is so easy-peasy they don't even teach it at Infantry School. (Actually, it's something they teach Green Berets and Navy SEALs, but that's beside the point.)

Many years ago, when it cost a quarter to get into the movies, every theatre had ushers on staff. Their main job was to make sure no one blocked the fire doors open to let people in. As we all remember, James Holmes had his weapons outside the theatre. He blocked open the fire door, went outside, donned his equipment, went back in through the fire door and shot the place to shit.

If there were ushers on duty at the Aurora theatre, James Holmes would have gone out through a fire door, an usher would have closed it behind him, and the story in the paper the next morning would have been about the awesomeness of the new Batman movie.

July 26, 2012

Teabaggers being scammed

One of the papers I print has an article in tomorrow's edition that says someone is calling Tea Party members, claiming to be a national Tea Party Organization, and asking for contributions.

There IS no national Tea Party organization, and the people asking for the money are believed to be confidence men.

I realize no one here would donate to the tea party (some of us would donate to a charity seeking to get rid of it, but that's different), but many of us have teabagger relatives so...use as necessary.

July 20, 2012

What I don't get about the GOP's hatred of all things Muslim

Grover Norquist is married to a Palestinian Muslim named Samah Alrayyes.

If these assholes were even slightly consistent, Norquist should be about as welcome in the GOP as a gonorrhea salesman, but they worship at his feet. Can ANYONE help me out here?

July 18, 2012

Subsidized hobbies and chameleon corporations

Internal Revenue Code Section 183 (Activities Not Engaged In for Profit) says, for an activity that consists of breeding, showing or racing horses, it must show a profit in at least two years of any consecutive seven-year period if you want to fully deduct your losses. If you can't show two years of profit the IRS considers what you're doing to be a hobby and your deductions are limited.

"Chameleon corporation" doesn't exist in the IRS lexicon; I stole it from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The FMCSA can "put your company out of service," which is a nice way of saying they can shut you down, for a pattern of gross and repeated safety violations--if they inspect your trucks 50 times and find bad tires on them in 45 inspections, say. Because the FMCSA doesn't have enough people to really research every new carrier's application for operating authority, some of these "put out of service" carriers will file a new carrier application with a different company name on it, get authority and go back to hauling freight. The penalty is very stiff if you get caught, but they don't catch many of them.

Mitt W. Romney's tax return for 2010 says he deducted a $77,000 loss on his wife's dressage horse. Is it possible that Romney could be holding his horses in a chameleon setup--changing the name of the holding company, officers therein and so forth--to conceal the fact he's fraudulently using dressage horses as a source of tax loss? Or that he has other hobby activities in chameleon corporations to get his tax bill down even lower?

The sad truth is, if the full extent of Mitt W. Romney's business dealings ever gets out he's going to be banging a tin cup against the bars of his cell, and he wants to keep that from happening.

July 8, 2012

It is time to run Congress like a private business

In private business, if you refuse to do any actual work you get fired.
In private business, if you refuse to deal with your co-workers in a mature, rational fashion you get fired.
In private business, if you undermine your own company you get fired.
In private business, if you take orders from someone who doesn't even work at your company, while blowing off the ones that come from your boss, you get fired.

The Republican Party claims it wants the government to run more like a business. If it did, we'd be out of Republicans in a matter of hours.

July 3, 2012

Did they think we'd forget?

We all remember this photo, right? Or at least one like it?


The Republicans used photos of John Kerry windsurfing to "prove" he was out of touch with the American people.



(This one's from the Telegraph. There's a photo of the Romneys' jet ski "on plane" on the AP wire.)

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