FSB photo showing alleged International Man of Mystery Ryan Christopher Fogle, seated at right. I like the touch of the one guy with the digitally blurred face.
It depends on what the definition of “news” is. Here’s mine, at this particular moment:
- FBI launches criminal probe of IRS conduct (WashPost) — One of two front-page stories out of a Holder presser today. The Post reveals an IG report on the mess as well.
- Russia to Expel American, Saying He Is a C.I.A. Officer (NYT) — If the latter-day KGB’s colorful allegations have any truth to them — if he indeed offered a potential agent $1 million a year — I want to go on record now as saying I am available to help CIA in any way I can. If I can lay my hands on the information, it’s yours. Do I get a decoder ring? And do I get to meet Anna Chapman?
- Holder: AP story posed major security threat (The Guardian) — Today’s other Holder story. By the way, he had called the presser to talk about Medicare fraud. But neither big headline that emerged was about that. Sort of like with the Obama-Cameron thing yesterday.
- Columbia couple sues state over toddler’s sexual reassignment surgery (thestate.com) — From the WTF file. However this lawsuit comes out, I don’t see how anyone is a winner…
- Wal-Mart Goes Solo on Bangladesh Initiatives (WSJ) — Following on actions by European retailers yesterday.
- Horror at Syria ‘heart-eating video’ (BBC) — I hope you weren’t eating dinner as you read this. I think maybe somebody in Syria has watched “Red Dawn” a few too many times…
Related Posts
The FSB detention and release (think of “catch and release” by sports anglers) is a worn-out ruse to:
1. Make U.S. voters believe the U.S. under Obama has been diligently aggressive toward Russia. WRONG! Anyone with half a brain can recall (March 27, 2012) “Hot mic moment: Obama overheard telling Medvedev he needs ‘space’ on missile defense”.
2. The current ‘catch and release’ presages a practically unilateral U.S. arms reduction agreement that Obama wiil sign BEFORE the mid-term election.
Just wait, if in doubt. As our military is being hollowed out by lowered morale, our strategic defenses our being decimated by a president with neither love nor respect for the United States.
Here’s a horrific story from the upstate. This was in USA Today (by way of the Greenville New) just now:
DACUSVILLE, S.C. — Two children were found dead in their beds, and their mother has been charged with shooting them to death.
Suzanna Brown Simpson, 35, a “model” volunteer at the children’s elementary school, was charged Tuesday with two counts of murder, one count of attempted murder in connection with her husband’s gunshot wounds, and one count of possession of a weapon during a violent crime, according to warrants signed by authorities.
You have at least four more news stories on your front page than The State has had in recent memory…..
I’m old school. Six is par for a decent front page. You can get by with five occasionally, and on a big news day, if your layout works, you can squeeze on seven.
Of course, when I was a front-page editor, we were still using the old broadsheet-sized page. With the way pages have shrunk over the past decade, it might be hard to get more than five without being too crowded. I don’t know, I haven’t tried — on paper.
put in bigger pictures = less text.
In any case, my Virtual Front Page is an idealized page. So you get six. I don’t let myself go over six because that would be lazy. Being an editor is about choosing.
That said…
I emphasize local news FAR less than I did on any newspaper I edited. But then, I see the scope of this blog, and the interests of my readers, as being more universal.
On any of the newspapers at which I’ve made front-page decisions (in Tennessee, Kansas, and occasionally here back before I moved to editorial), if I had fewer than three local/state stories on the front, I felt like the newsroom wasn’t doing its job, and local readers weren’t being served.
But I raise the bar a bit on the blog, so I average between 1 and 2, I’m estimating…
I think you have a good mix of local, state, and national.
Thanks. That’s what I aim for…
I see this Fogle guy was “officially posted in Russia as the third secretary of the political department of the United States Embassy.”
I guess I’ve been reading too many spy novels, but I sort of thought that if you wanted everyone to know a guy was CIA or MI6 or whatever (because so much of the best humint comes from volunteer agents who approach the officer, so he needs to be identifiable), you classified him as a “political officer.”
But I may be way off base with that.
… but if I’m not, where’s the surprise here? Doesn’t the FSB know all of the official resident spooks?
It feels kind of like they’re shocked, shocked to learn intelligence-gathering is going on. Which you know they’re not. So what’s this silly spectacle all about?
I keep thinking of what Bill Haydon said, in “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” about a ridiculous situation in the fictional spy world: “Stupid bloody cabaret…”
And what’s with all the FSB guys wearing cargo pants? Or are those old army fatigues? I’m guessing they get a lot of ex-Spetsnaz.
They don’t look at all like Russian spooks. They look like Americans who are getting ready to wash their cars or rake the yard.
Now Putin — HE looks like a KGB man. He’s old school. I appreciate that about him, because I’m a traditionalist…
Putin is one of the few people who scared me when I saw them in person. He’s no taller than Tom Cruise, but he is all menace; even in a suit in the Waldorf-Astoria.
You know this wigged third political guy’s take down was all political theater. Maybe on both sides?
Lee Greenwood is also very short and also possibly evil. Nicolas Sarkozy is tiny as well, he had a special step-stool that he used behind the podium when giving speeches to make him seem taller, or at least be able to see over the podium.
Two things scare me. One is Vladimir Putin.
You: What’s the other?
Me: Excuse me?
You: What’s the other thing that scares you?
Me: Carnies. Circus folk. Nomads, you know. Smell like cabbage. Small hands.
And while I’m engaging in broad, stereotypical thinking, I didn’t think those FSB guys looked Slavic, either. They just look very Western European/American to me. Maybe it’s the clothes. Maybe I don’t really know what slavs look like…
What’s wrong with cargo pants?
Brad, many days there are barely six news stories in The State. Shameful….
There is a way to end the IRS issue completely going forward. Eliminate the entity known as a non-profit and eliminate the charitable deduction from income taxes. Remove the incentive to cheat on both sides of the equation and you don’t have to expend any resources to enforce it.
The tax code is a behemoth ripe for abuse and that abuse requires enforcement which then requires oversight from an Inspector General. It’s a cycle of unproductive uselessness created out of thin air by the tax code.
I’m for a national sales tax (low, like 1%) combined with a flat income tax with no form filing required except for businesses. No deductions, no exemptions, no social engineering via the tax code, no incentives, no loopholes. Pick an income, say 3 times whatever a year’s pay at minimum wage would be. Tax everything above that with at most three brackets.
Doug – Your “low, like 1%” national sales tax would creep up slowly until it was a full-on 20% VAT. Besides, it would need to be like 10 or 15% to maintain current levels of tax revenue.
I don’t think we’ll see a national sales tax until all of the people with Roth IRA’s and Roth 401(k)’s are retiring. At that point they’ll be too much money available that’s already been taxed once that people like bud will be lusting to get their hands on. Once you have a couple trillion of tax-free money in people’s retirements, it’ll just be too tempting a revenue source. Obama and some other liberal groups have already started laying the groundwork for this, suggesting maximum amounts of post-retirement income for qualified plans.
People like bud? Really. And after I largely agreed with Doug.
Here’s some common ground. I agree that we should probably move away from so much social engineering based on the tax code. Where I would disagree with conservatives is on the need to balance the budget every year. Instead it would be best to run deficits during times of hardship and surpluses during times of plenty. That would require discipline on the part of congress but that’s the ideal. With the current deficit approaching an amount less than half what it was under George W Bush’s last budget this can be done. But everyone has to be on board. We can start with a reduced military budget. That alone will probably get use close to where we need to be on the spending side.
With the new tax code along lines outlined by Doug we can maintain rates over long periods of time with some tweaking to effect the needed stimulus (low rates) or prevent overheating the economy and thus engendering inflation (high rates). Triggers could be built in so everyone knows in advance what rates will be. In addition, ALL income is taxed the same whether from wages or dividends. Inheritance would be taxed the same as income but only on amounts above $1 million. That would help keep rates overall low.
Governments don’t really have any incentive to reduce spending during times of plenty. It’s a good concept though, borrowing money and spending to stimulate when the business cycle is off, paying it back and reducing spending during boom times. It just doesn’t happen. The government seems to be more like a malignant tumor, always growing, rather than an accordion that expands and contracts according to the economic climate.
The deficit is shrinking due somewhat to an expanding economy, reductions in overseas contingency operations, and of course, also due in large part to large tax increases.
So here’s my proposal:
1) Determine a maximum federal tax rate, let’s say 10%. I think that’s a fair amount.
2) Figure out the dividing line between growing/shrinking the economy.
2) Pass a constitutional amendment to limit overall individual federal taxes to the 10% amount
3) Pass a constitutional amendment limiting deficit spending to the years when objective economic targets are not met. Said amendment would also specify how money would be borrowed and repaid. – Say, instead of a balanced budget annually, it would require a balanced 10 year spending pattern.
If you limited the feds to 10% total tax take, individual states could have more flexibility to tax and provide services as they saw fit. MA could tax to their hearts content and have really fantastic public services, and SC could continue to provide crummy ones if they wanted to. The states could then emphasize their competitive advantages or disadvantages to lure businesses and residents.
It’s called discipline. If the voters would choose elected officials based on their competence to actual act in the long-run interest of the people then we could run budget surpluses during the good times. Unfortunatelly there are too many Tea-Party types to actually have a chance at making it work.
Doug, that’s not a bad plan. Since I believe in a fairly progressive tax environment I might have 4 or 5 brackets but otherwise this is good.
It’s not really a flat tax if it has brackets, then is it?
Why would the sales tax have to be high if the income tax remains? It’s more of a catchall for the making sure everyone pays something into the government, even those whose income is below the minimum level.
I consider the elimination of deductions, exemptions, loopholes, etc. the pathway to a flatter tax. If there is a system that can be created that doesn’t require filing a form in April, it is a vast improvement over the current braindead system.
Anyway, the whole concept of “non-profit” organizations is a ruse. If you take in money and pay employees, you’re a business. And that includes churches.
Doug – sorry, I misread your earlier post. No reason for the national sales tax to be high if the income tax remains substantial. Still, I don’t think it’s wise to open the door to additional taxation opportunities.
Add a condition that the national sales tax could only be raised by a super majority (2/3) of Congress approving.
And only once per presidential 4 year term.
Hey, speaking of taxes, did you see there’s ANOTHER scandal with the IRS? Apparently they “improperly accessed and stole the health records of some 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges.”
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/irs-face-lawsuit-over-theft-60-million-patient-health-records
No worries, though. This is only the agency tasked with enforcement of the ACA. I’m sure everything will be fine.
VFP for May 16:
1) Entire country of Venezuela has diarrhea after recent elections, forced to import 50M rolls of TP.
2) Richland county voters can rest easily now that we have hired Orangeburg’s old director of elections.
3) Benghazi and IRS scandals continue to deepen after WH data dumps.
4) Obama’s net worth drops by 50% since 2010 thanks to a bad economy. Still has more money than you do.
5) Navy tests potential for underwater drones for conflict with Al Qaida in Atlantis.
6) Sanford Derangement Syndrome added to DSM-V.
7) Accused drunken driver and alleged philanderer SC rep. Ted Vick (D-Cigarettes, D-Furniture) arrested again on suspicion of DUI at SC Statehouse.
Ah, ’twas but a stone in his shoe, per an embarrassing defense by his lawyer, Todd Rutherford, who should be ashamed of himself.
I am pleasantly surprised that the Capitol Police took action in the garage; this must have been a pattern that they felt could no longer be ignored… We should all thank them, Vick included.
From the sound of it, it is amazing he made it all the way down Main Street from Cowboy! I guess practice makes, well, not perfect, but you know…..
I am embarrassed to have Todd Rutherford (D-Shyster) as my state rep.
Not to mention the suicidal cone that jumped in front of his car.
Todd Rutherford isn’t ashamed of anything, he’s a lawyer, he’s a career politician and he’ll defend anyone who gives him money.
Legislative Fu
Master Vick – “Quickly as you can, snatch the pebble from my shoe.”
Attorney Rutherford tries to grab the pebble and fails.
Master Vick – “When you can take the pebble from my shoe, it will be time for you to leave.”
There’s also the breaking story of how Richland County hired an elections director who has about the same reputation in Orangeburg as Lillian McBride has in Richland County. When peope started pulling their applications out of the running, Richland County just went with the last candidate standing rather than re-advertise. More and more of Darrell “Jesse” Jackson’s controlling his “constitency”
Just in case you need a topic for today’s news:
Scientists Study Violent Winds of Uranus
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/05/17/scientists-study-violent-winds-uranus-neptune/