What was with the stupid hat? Click on pic to see what I mean. Where’s Gilligan?…
Will I ever catch up with the episodes of “The Vietnam War?” Maybe, maybe not. In the meantime, here’s an Open Thread:
- Is nuclear fiasco beginning of the end for SCANA? — And if so, does it mean anything, Mr. Natural?
- GOP Tax Proposal Expected to Benefit Wall Street Firms — That headline is leading The Wall Street Journal at the moment. Which means it’s a good-news, feel-good story, right? Bud and Doug, have at it. I’m going to step out of the way now…
- Death of a famous sleazebag — Not that I’m minimizing Hef’s achievements, mind you — he managed to tap into the sleaze in all of us guys, after all. And back in the ’60s, he fooled a lot of us into thinking his was the sophisticated way to go. He wasn’t content to make us sexual materialists — he was about bachelor pads crammed with all the latest cool stuff. But didn’t his smirk always make you feel kind of creeped out a little? Perhaps someone will write an in-ter-esting article about it all.
- Alabama defeat weakens and isolates Trump as his problems grow — That headline is leading The Washington Post right now, and you know what? I think it’s completely wrong. Trump didn’t lose in Alabama. The people who voted for the winner love him, and hate McConnell. Isn’t that the impression you have? To me, this is another triumph of Trumpism, never mind that he sorta kinda backed the wrong guy.
- ‘Miracles really do happen’: Scalise returns to Congress, 15 weeks after shooting — For an actual feel-good story…
- Jared Kushner registered to vote as a woman. It’s not his first paperwork mistake. — Until we get this sorted out, I think he should be barred from using bathrooms in the White House.
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2) Glancing through the bill I don’t know who’d complain about what’s in it. It’s better than what we have now.
3) Brad, I believe any man who led Hugh Hefner’s life would have had a permanent smile on his face too.
4) As a Trump supporter, I prefer the guy who won over the guy Trump supported. This guy is a ball buster who doesn”t put up with any crap that goes on on Capitol Hill. So I don’t know what you and the other liberals are so happy about other than the fact that Trump didn’t get his man.
5) What I want to know is why this is was “breaking news” that had all of the major channels switching over to it this morning.
6) Does it matter? Or is this just scraping the barrel reporting by the liberal media?
“So I don’t know what you and the other liberals are so happy about…”
I have no idea what that’s based on, besides you trying to irritate me by calling me a liberal. It’s the opposite of what I said. Did you read what I said?
The people who voted for Moore love Trump. Did anyone follow that link I provided to the story about Trump campaigning in Alabama? The rally was filled with people who loved Trump and planned on voting for Moore.
So, as I said quite clearly, I don’t see how this shows a big setback for Trump. Yeah, I get why people who look at things very simply might think so (“He backed the other guy, so he lost!”), but you just have to go a step further to see that in the big picture, it isn’t…
As a proud lifelong liberal I can confirm without hesitation that Brad is most assuredly NOT a liberal. 🙂
Well as a confirmed conservative, I sure disagree with about 99% of the things he stands for.
You’re not a conservative, Richard. You’re a Trump supporter. That’s not even close to being a conservative…
Well let’s see, I have the same view and beliefs as I did prior to 2016. So what would you label me prior to Trump running?
Not a conservative.
Conservatives are, well, conservative. They have a deep respect for a society’s mores, traditions and institutions. They don’t vote for people who will tear all of that down…
But frankly, I seldom feel right labelling people. I don’t like people trying to label me, so I feel I shouldn’t do it to others.
And I get impatient with people who like to label themselves. The more eager they are to do so, the less impressed I am by what they have to say…
I think Trump showed us how well he did in geography today. He let us know Puerto Rico is surrounded by “water, large water, ocean water”. I don’t know about anyone else but it came as a total surprise to me when I heard the news. And to think all this time when I worked in Puerto Rico, I wasn’t aware it was an island surrounded by “huuuugggeee amounts of ocean water.” How could I have been so blind?
5. Because there hasn’t been much feel good news for like ever. I’m sensing this news doesn’t make you feel good. To each his own.
2. The tax plan could be ok with a bit of tweaking. Mainly tax loopholes for business should be eliminated. Also the elimination of the estate tax is a bad idea. Why is the bottom bracket increased? On second thought maybe this isn’t ok.
Yeah, I would think you’d hate it.
Estate tax, a tax on assets that have already been taxed. If we get rid of this we might as well tax peoples savings and retirement account balances every year.
The proposed tax overhaul is so ham-handed I do not understand why Gary Cohen stuck around after Charlottesville. Its bizarre. All that time and this is all they had to reveal? It’s a plan that is tailor-made to Trump’s pocket… and otherwise seems short on forethought (and detail).
* Retention of carried interest (at what discounted rate if the corp rate is cut to 20%?)
* Deletion of the AMT
* Deletion of state/local tax deductibility
Those things alone will flounder this “effort”. I did get a kick out of Trump’s line “you will be able to file your taxes with a single sheet of paper.” Yeah, right!
Brad generally deals in reality and wants common-sense solutions. Yeah, he’s a liberal, (as defined by the rabid right.)
I haven’t studied the tax bill in detail but I like a lot of what I hear – cutting the brackets to three is great. Raising the personal exemption significantly is great too. The goal should be to have a tax code that allows 80% of Americans to file their taxes on a post card. Eliminate as many of the loopholes, deductions, shelters, etc. as possible. I’m 100% in favor of eliminating the estate tax. I’ve never understood why it existed in the first place even though I’ll never have to worry about. It drives the rich to hide and shelter assets and creates a government bureaucracy that has to analyze the value of assets. It also creates situations where people with wealth on paper have to sell assets just to pay the taxes. Plus, in my view, it should never be applied to assets acquired during one’s lifetime — taxes have already been paid on those assets typically – either on the money used to acquire them or the income they generate.
As for eliminating the state tax deduction, that makes total sense. Why should a person get a break on contributing to the country as a whole just because they decide to live in a state that taxes them highly? Living in New York, California, etc. shouldn’t give you an advantage on federal taxes over anyone else. Just as having more kids shouldn’t decrease your tax burden (that’s backwards).
Fixing the tax code is only 30% of the problem, though. The real problem is spending more than the tax revenues bring in.
What harm did Hugh Hefner cause? From a journalism standpoint, for those of us (I mean them, them!) who read Playboy for the articles, there were plenty of great interviews and other reporting that were meaningful. Many of the greatest writers of the time wrote for Playboy – Mailer, Bradbury, Gabriel García Márquez, Vonnegut, etc.
I’m not going to argue with a libertarian about the harm caused by Hefner.
But the latter part of your comment brings something to mind….
What’s the last “interesting article” you remember appearing in Playboy? And you don’t have to admit to being a regular reader to answer that. Back when there were impressive pieces — I mean, articles — in the mag, they made news themselves. You didn’t have to read them to hear about them.
The last I remember was the Jimmy Carter interview in 1976, which made a LOT of noise.
But I can’t remember hearing about anything since then. And that, the young folks tell me, was a long time ago.
In the 60s, in the first blush of the sexual revolution, all sorts of writers and other talented people appeared in the magazine. It was all part of the mainstreaming of (soft-core) pornography, giving it a patina of intellect and sophistication. It was, in those days, a respectable place to be published.
Why did that change as we went through the ’70s? Maybe it had something to do with the women’s movement, which made the whole Playboy Philosophy look as tawdry as it really was. (Or, was it that Penthouse and Hustler made Playboy look quaint?)
In any case, I assume the magazine’s intellectual relevance declined as its point of view became less socially acceptable…
Hefner was a pimp. He handed out drugs like candy to young girls and had sex with them. I won’t call him what he really is….
Yeah… it was called the sexual revolution. Were you around in the 1960’s and 1970’s? Everyone was handing out drugs like candy… and those “young girls” were of legal age. I don’t recall him coining the phrase “sex, drugs, and rock & roll”.
My late mother-in-law, a woman not much given to judging people, used to say he was the Devil.
I don’t know about that. The man seemed too ridiculous to be Satan. But I can certainly see how she reached that conclusion, given the insidious way he affected a generation and more of young men and their attitudes toward women. You know all that stuff we saw in the early seasons of “Mad Men?” THOSE were guys living the “Playboy Philosophy.”
And of course, Satan might make himself ridiculous so that we don’t take what he’s doing seriously…
How did you ever survive the 60’s and 70’s with such filth and degradation surrounding you?
It was a magazine with photos of attractive naked women who volunteered to pose for the photos and appeared to enjoy the benefits that came with the job. Even when he was an old geezer, nubile young women wanted to hang around with him by choice.
I’ll ask again – who was harmed? Aside from your mother in law getting the vapors?
I would never, ever be able to explain to your satisfaction the erosive effect of Playboy on society, because you don’t believe anyone’s actions can HAVE an erosive effect on society.
Because you, sir, are a libertarian…
Speaking of people’s different cognitive styles…
One conclusion we should all be able to draw from watching Burns’ Vietnam series is this: Beware numbers people being in charge.
As a word guy, I can clearly see what went wrong in Vietnam: McNamara and Westmoreland were EXTREME numbers guys. McNamara had brought from the business world a mania for measurement. (Was it in the series or did I here it somewhere else that the Pentagon ran a computer model to see how we were doing in Vietnam, and it concluded that we’d won a couple of years earlier?) And Westmoreland was all about reaching that maximum number of enemy killed — you might call it “Peak VC” — after which the enemy would be automatically losing.
If you live your life by numbers, you tend to ignore factors that can only be expressed in words. Words such as, Them people ain’t never gonna give up….
Let’s see how you tear this story apart.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/09/29/trump-stops-air-force-one-taking-off-speak-injured-police-officer/
Sorry. I don’t get your point…
Just thought you needed some extra Trump bashing material today. If you ever do, you can just pull up the USA Today site.