Taxation is theft. It’s not just theft of money, it’s theft of time, energy, and emotionally draining. When I’m dictator-for-a-day, I’ll be hard-pressed to decide which to level to the ground first, the IRS, DHS, BATFE (though I could be persuaded to repurpose that one to promote ATFE), or the DEA (ditto). Anyway, I spent a good chunk of yesterday and will be all day today sorting through papers, PDF forms, and god knows what else to comply with an insanely complex, ambiguous, and thoroughly evil regime. At the end, I’ll likely still be beset by Mafia-like goons, but in their way, worse than the Mafia. Tomb Raider assures me that “taxes are the price we pay for living in a civilized society.” If this is “civilized,” I’m a Catholic.
Birthdays today include a guy who gave a light wave; a woman with something of a magic touch; a guy who just kept telling us about the same old shit; a politician with a bit of the old voodoo charm; the guy who ruined baseball; one of the few girls WC Fields adored; along with Edith Massey, one of my favorite cult stars; the single strongest influence in my science career; queen of the old school country sound; a guy I used as a filter to see if someone was stupid enough to ignore; the patron saint of the NYPD union; star of the exception to my “I hate movies that end with a number” rule; I bet you didn’t know it was this guy’s birthday; a tragically underrated rock guitar wizard; and another inventor of the great game CharDee MacDennis.
Let’s move on to Links.
Remember when a nuclear world war was about to start?
Team Blue, of course, is true to form. Nonetheless, why the fuck was the US involved in this?
And of course, every idiot Leftist is also true to form.
Of course, the media were blaring about “settler violence.”
Speaking of idiot Leftists, here’s local news.
“Where are we?” “I dunno, let me look at the sign.” “Goslow.”
I mean, c’mon, it’s not that hard.
I really like these guys, just sweet and charming. Ravens have a particular significance to me, I’ll leave it at that.
I’m embarrassed that I’ve forgotten so much Re-mag (D-Mag, there were various nicknames for it when I took it) that I couldn’t narrow this down. Time makes fools of us all — but it had a head start for me.
Morning, OMWC.. morning all… glad it doesn’t quite look like PPP managed to kick off WWIII yet through incompetence and feeding Iran money (haven’t read the links yet, but I’m sure this is in there). After the pandering to Dearborn — I honestly wouldn’t be entirely surprised at this point if he gave a speech literally giving them a free pass to do what they want. But that’s my pessimistic side.
Still think the solution to Russia and Iran is to drive global oil prices down (drill, lessen demand by more gas/nuclear, etc.).
And while I sympathize about the IRS — the Intelligence Community for self-preservation of such a mythical wish fulfillment executive would have to go first. Otherwise you’d never have a chance at trimming anything else.
Ha! Guessed this one… but it was admittedly a guess.
For me, it would have been a toss-up between her and Patsy, though Patsy was arguably more “citified.”
Growing up in SW OH, I was surrounded by folks whose kin had run out of gas on the way to Detroit. Saw Coal Miner’s Daughter with a friend and her mother who had grown up in the area where the film was shot and recognized many of the locations. She had some great stories about the culture shock when she moved across the river and encountered Yankees for the first time.
Happy birthday, Ricardo Montalban! 😉
Of course we all know of OMWC’s love of Jaws 2… (whistles innocently)
I hope it’s Fahrenheit 451 – I love that movie.
Angie Dickinson in the original Ocean’s Eleven.
It is indeed. Great film, and very prescient in a lot of details about the future.
First time I saw it, I was like, “this is so wonderfully quirky.”
Isn’t there a fairly recent remake out there? I bet it stinks.
Seen both. The remake is crap.
Heh… he was actually my guess for the “ruined baseball” one… but I’m not a huge baseball fan either.
star of the exception to my “I hate movies that end with a number” rule;
Walter Matthau in The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3?
I contend that even worse than taxation itself is the scheme of income tax withholding. Sold as a “service/convenience,” it masks the true extent of the confiscation and makes stupid people think they’re getting a great deal when they finally get some of it back.
Yeah; I remember in early 2019 how the media ran stories of people getting smaller refunds because the IRS had changed withholding rates, and basically encouraging people to think they’d been screwed.
As I’ve mentioned a number of times, I made about $3K more in 2018 than 2017, and the line on the 1040 for “this is how much tax you have to pay before subtracting for withholding” was maybe $20 more than on my 2017 return. Doing a bit of back-of-the-envelope math using the 2017 tax rates, I was taxed somewhere between $300 and $400 less under the new rates. And I’m not one of the rich the left claim they want to soak.
Yes, but Pelosi said that was peanuts iirc… and you shouldn’t care.
After all, it would barely fill up her special ice cream freezer.
…crumbs…I believe…you know, damn near a month’s worth of utility bills for your’s truly…crumbs.
It is a great con — along with mandatory employer matched contributions and all. If you never see the money, it was never really yours (folks think)… so they can just skim the cream off the top… you’re used to just the milk!
I just did another back-of-the-envelope calculation, and (payroll tax deductions + employee match) divided by (gross income + employee FICA match) was 21%.
Except, last year we were between houses. Earned a fair amount of interest on the funds. Now we owe a lot, with a penalty for not withholding (giving them money earlier) enough.
If the interest is more than the penalty you’re still ahead.
Don’t get me started on the people who conflate withholding and actual tax rates. “My bonus is taxed heavier than my income”
In CA, isn’t that actually true?
the guy who ruined baseball;
Happy birthday Abner Doubleday!
Taxation is theft.
Au contraire, the New York Times thinks taking every tax deduction is theft.
You Don’t Have to Take Every Tax Deduction, and You Shouldn’t
OFFS… because all of that tax money is wisely and purposely spent… so you should make sure to give all you can so government can do things for all of us that only all of us can do… blather blather blarg blarg, right NYT?
Sorry, I couldn’t make it past about 3 or 4 paragraphs when it got to the “He makes sure to pay his fair share so the government can do more!” crapola line (paraphrased).
Gifts to the United States
U.S. Department of the Treasury
Reporting and Analysis Branch 2
P.O. Box 1328
Parkersburg, WV 26106-1328
The disconnect between the wealthy who spout off and their money managers described in a mailing address
https://www.usdebtclock.org
The feds are borrowing $80k a second. There’s no taxing our way out of that.
I’ll be giving them a quarter second’s worth tomorrow.
“…Black-white…” – every fucking article these days. It gets tiring. “…$500 billion transferred…” – not taking is giving. I’m forwarding this article to my accountant for a laugh.
Yup… pretty much up until the Berlin Wall fell it was a strong possibility.
To be fair — if there were an exchange between Israel and Iran — I think most other countries would stay out of it. Unlike a random strike on Russia, China or the US — countries would see this one coming so wouldn’t be worried there was a first decapitating strike headed their way — and know that jumping in and escalating it would go to MAD levels pretty quickly.
While I wouldn’t at all be surprised that Iran has the bomb (thanks Obama and PPP) and MRBMs (thanks North Korea!), I don’t think they have all that many of them… so more likely we’d be talking in the 10s of strikes at most. Sucks for them, sucks for the Middle East fallout wise… but I don’t think it would go full global, personally. (None of this should be taken as “I want it”… I just can’t help thinking about what’s likely to happen if it does go nuclear).
I don’t think Iran is dumb enough to actually go full on nuke, personally — I think they feel they could get away with this, it saves them face after what they claim (right or wrong) was an Israeli strike on their forces (puppets?) in Syria, etc. They can settle back to letting proxy forces fight again and let the useful idiots in the West keep pushing for their diplomatic victories.
“so more likely we’d be talking in the 10s of strikes at most”
More than enough to wipe out Israel. Holocaust 2, Nuclear Boogaloo.
Hmmm… trying to get Swiss to give the morning links a second glans, are you?
I wanted to think of a good pun, but I just couldn’t rise to the occasion.
Sometimes you come up with a good one — sometimes your sense of humor gives you the shaft.
This is a case of morning would.
ALOL
Narrator: Grumbletarian is laughing not at the joke, but at the small size of JI’s “morning would”.
Hopefully our betters in government avoid getting us dragged further into this conflict. But when I see GOP senators tweeting passages from the Bible, I get nervous.
Wait a minute, we have betters in govt? When did that happen?
[golf clap]
The grad students don’t realize they already have a student union?
Not a surprise, I guess.
Party last night and now time to pay up? Half the fear of tax time is wondering is that somehow, something was missed.
– Tomb Raider assures me that “taxes are the price we pay for living in a civilized society.” –
Unless you manage to get in the country illegally. Then the price for schmucks like me goes up to make sure illegal aliens don’t have to pay the price to be in a civilized society.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1778821185637175666.html
The man just can’t help making a fool of himself.
He’s trying to position himself to be Trump’s VP by spouting protectionist nonsense.
Can we just stop funding other countries’ wars, and stay out of WWIII?
That’s all I ask. And maybe cut some spending.
I played https://squaredle.com/xp 04/14:
*23/23 words
🎯 Perfect accuracy
I played https://squaredle.com 04/14:
*67/67 words (+14 bonus words)
🎯 In the top 6% by accuracy
🔥 Solve streak: 326
I played https://squaredle.com/xp 04/14:
23/23 words (+4 bonus words)
📖 In the top 34% by bonus words
I played https://squaredle.com 04/14:
67/67 words (+23 bonus words)
📖 In the top 24% by bonus words
🔥 Solve streak: 249
I wasn’t in the mood this morning. Hints and slacking on the bonus words.
I played https://squaredle.com 04/14:
67/67 words (+33 bonus words)
📖 In the top 3% by bonus words
I played https://squaredle.com 04/14:
67/67 words (+19 bonus words)
🎯 In the top 29% by accuracy
🔥 Solve streak: 2
TF? I was over 200 streak after completing yesterday’s. Hmph.
t
‘
Someone on TOS stated it quite well:
“Taxes are not the price of civilization. Taxes are the penalty for not being civilized. A civilized society doesn’t need government”
Via the boner pills article…’Just because these medications are easier than ever to access doesn’t mean you should fall for the hype.
Recreational use of the drugs can carry significant risks, the pro warns.
Here’s why.’
TLDR; “We aren’t getting our cut!”
Somebody sure as hell is…. I can’t help but notice practically every ad on broadcast TV when my wife watches game shows is for drugs of one sort or another. All the ads when I try to watch YouTube are either mobile apps (microtransaction cattle farms) or drugs.
I know they made a ton off the mandatory government vax purchases… but in general, the drug pushers must be making serious bank. And we wonder why people seem addled and their health is messed up….
Rule of thumb: Never take a prescription drug that has its own TV commercial.
‘I can’t help but notice practically every ad on broadcast TV when my wife watches game shows is for drugs of one sort or another. All the ads when I try to watch YouTube are either mobile apps (microtransaction cattle farms) or drugs.’
Demographic marketing. Middle-aged and old fucks watch broadcast TV and take prescriptions for every little ailment, and unless I’m grossly misinformed(very likely) credit and debit card transactions are farmed off to places like YT who then tailor ads specifically to your purchase history…As does Hulu.
I’m not assuming that’s why you and the wife are seeing those ads, just saying you may fit within their presumed demographic. The ads you see outside broadcast TV are probably far different than the ads a young black guy from Long Beach is viewing…which is actually pretty fucking creepy when you think about it.
I don’t think it’s really marketing, since the people watching those shows can’t actually buy what’s being marketed.
I think it’s protection money, or bribes. Nobody in the ad business is going to court the wrath of such a major revenue source. So, if a story comes along that makes Big Pharma look bad, it will get no coverage, deprecated on the search engines, etc.
‘…if a story comes along that makes Big Pharma look bad, it will get no coverage, deprecated on the search engines, etc’
Very possible. See also; cable news. They know how their bread is buttered…but then again that might support my original argument… demographically speaking, middle-aged and old fucks watch cable news.
If?
I think only the U.S. and New Zealand allow DTC advertising.
I’ll have to ask my boss about that l. He’s a Kiwi.
I gave in years ago to paying for YouTube Premium (or whatever) so I don’t have to see ads.
In 2020 my kids (then 13 and 9) were being inundated with “I’m Any McGrath, a marine and a mother” ads which specifically targeted young people with their bullshit trans identity politics nonsense. And it was the same 2 ads over and over, oftentimes back to back.
Piss all over YouTube ads.
So what you are saying is I have AIDS? HULU shoes me a lot of Biktarvy commercials.
“taxes are the price we pay for living in a civilized society”
One of the more brainless collectivist tropes, begging as it does the questions of how much? And on what? IOW, the only questions that matter when talking about taxes.
I just heard this week from my former employer that they fucked up the calculation of how much income I would have to recognize when I retired and some deferred comp vested. I now owe another $15K in taxes. Oh, and they didn’t catch it until after the cutoff for making tax distributions from the deferred comp plan, so its the functional equivalent of paying taxes on unrealized gains because I have to come up with it out-of-pocket.
Civilizations collapse when they become too expensive.
Sorry you got screwed on your taxes.
Why — from each according to his ability… to each according to his needs, obviously!
You won’t need to recreationally pop Viagra on Slutty Sunday.
https://archive.is/M0wRT
Your archive links ain’t loading.
I’m sure this is racist somehow…
https://nypost.com/2024/04/12/lifestyle/womens-butt-sizes-around-the-world-revealed-these-countries-have-biggest-smallest/
They are measuring hips not butts.
You’d get a more accurate answer by ranking countries by percent of women with African ancestry, minus women with Asian ancestry.
Filipina is asian though.
Their results also doesn’t consider proportion. Sweden is up there because Swedes are tall.
Takes a LOT of worthless education to think that you can measure the amount of muscle and fat on butts by measuring something that is neither of those.
Tomb Raider assures me that “taxes are the price we pay for living in a civilized society.”
Bless her heart.
She left out the prefix un- in front of “civilized.”
https://thepostmillennial.com/man-sentenced-to-prison-for-7-5-years-after-janes-revenge-firebombing-of-pro-life-office-in-wisconsin
https://thepostmillennial.com/far-left-trantifa-extremist-given-no-jail-time-for-attack-against-ohio-pregnancy-center
CWABOA
I’m not getting too worked up over some young hipster dipshit not serving time for defacing a building with graffiti. Pay the fine and restitution then move on.
So… Last night’s I Do Cars was a three cylinder Nissan variable compression ratio engine. WTF? I had no idea such a thing even existed. I still don’t know why.
Added complexity. Added weight. Added parasitic drag. Added <strikeinternal forces monkey motion. Added things to go wrong.
Why? Don’t ask me. If you want variable cylinder pressure, put a gear driven blower on it. At least it will sound cool.
Today I Learned: the Oxford English Dictionary is paywalled.
Off to a
goodstart.Sorry about that. Don’t worry, I’m about to piss off for the day. It’s going to be unseasonably hot this afternoon in the KCMO area and my yard isn’t going to mow itself. Now’s as good a time as any…maybe give it until 10am. No reason to upset my new neighbors just yet.
21st Century War
Iran started telegraphing several days in advance, gives time for Israel/US to prepare
“We’re gonna come atcha”
Biden gives a stern one word warning, “Don’t” No one knows what that means but it sounds serious.
Iran lights a few bottle rockets, get shot down by Israel/US
Hometowns everywhere rejoice, parades, everyone gets re-elected. Everyone gets to look tough, few casualties, little damage. Everyone wins (at home)
Dogs were wagged.
“No one knows what that means but it sounds serious.”
He’s just cosplaying tough, no-nonsense Blue Collar Joe from Scranton.
File under: Things Everybody But NPR Liberals Already Know
American kids are being walloped by a hurtful combination, says social psychologist Jonathan Haidt: too much screen time and too little autonomy.
In his new book, The Anxious Generation, Haidt argues that these two key factors have combined to cause the mental health crisis now facing America’s teenagers. A study by the health policy research organization KFF shows that 1 in 5 adolescents reports symptoms of anxiety and depression. Haidt’s book offers a series of recommendations for flipping both of these factors around.
——-
But as many parents know, granting kids more autonomy while delaying access to smartphones can be way tougher than it sounds.
Parents confront resistance from many directions: school policies, neighbors, other parents and even the law. Some parents have even faced prosecution. So I wanted to talk with Haidt, who is a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, about the details of implementing some of his recommendations.
Stop amplifying every goddam threat and fear, no matter how ridiculously improbable.
Amazingly, also, saturating kids in a “therapy culture” where every little event is scrutinized for psychic trauma creates kids who suffer psychic trauma from every little event.
“I think my arm is broken, Coach”
“Rub some dirt on it, 2 laps for complaining and you ain’t startin’ Friday night”
I couldn’t have kept electronics away from my kids no matter how hard I tried. Between school handing out laptops willy nilly and libraries lending out mifis, my kids had access to everything as soon as they hit 2nd grade.
Also, my kid seized his autonomy from almost the moment he was born and couldn’t be corralled—at least, not by us. We’ve all just been waiting for the day he turned 18 and everything is so much nicer now. He’s taken to restaurant management like a champ and can’t figure out why people can’t look around and see what needs to be done.
Prosecuted for not buying their kid a phone?
my yard isn’t going to mow itself.
That too. I picked up some Agent Orange at Tractor Supply the other day. I need to eradicate the vegetation taking over my driveway.
Oh Liverpool… why do you do this to me? Watching them throw away a season is ugly.
Finally listened to Old Man Music when a blip in my wifi signal spoiled my delayed listening to my usual Sunday morning SiriusXM choral music program. It’s inspiring me to flip over to the “North Americana” channel instead. Thanks for sharing it!
This “wifejak” meme is trending on X. Man, those examples are just too accurate. My wife’s said every one of these, including the memory foam pillow, lol.
Uncontrolled immigration boosts GDP
In big cities, the migrant crisis has also been a financial drain. Places such as Denver and New York are spending millions of dollars to provide housing and social services for immigrants coming across the southern border, and with a border deal on ice in Congress, it’s a problem seemingly without a solution on the horizon.
“This does not come cheap, and no one can see the end of it, so you don’t know how much management adjustment you have to make programmatically,” O’Cleireacain said.
Don’t worry, those people are making us all richer. I read it on NPR.
Technically, it does increase GDP. Uncontrolled immigrations begets more government spending. Government spending is an input into GDP. GDP goes up. Since government spending at the margin is debt financed, this is like saying your income is up because you put more on your credit cards.
Of course, GDP ex government spending is flat to down, depending on how much of a drag that misallocation of capital is.
Technically, it does increase GDP. Uncontrolled immigrations begets more government spending. Government spending is an input into GDP.
Exactly.
As for net gain (or loss) that’s a different issue.
OT – did you watch the “I Do Cars” deconstruction of Nissan’s variable compression 3 cylinder?
Why not take an engine with a short block that has twice the complexity of a normal ICE and put widely into service in your economy cars?
A perfectly satisfying single vehicle accident where nobody else is impacted.
Must get in front
lol
Those wrinkles aren’t going to shake out.
That was satisfying. He almost makes it looked like it was his plan all along.
did you watch the “I Do Cars” deconstruction of Nissan’s variable compression 3 cylinder?
I did indeed. That seems like a textbook example of an answer to a question nobody asked. What on earth do they think they achieved by that?
I’m assuming before the big EV push they thought this was going to give them large fuel efficiency gains with the complexity tradeoff.
My guess is sunk costs. We’ve gotta make it!
Excellent crash. On his lid, thanks to a perfectly placed sleeping policeman.
they thought this was going to give them large fuel efficiency gains with the complexity tradeoff.
That might work in the lab (for EPA testing purposes), but in the real world people are just going to thrash the bejeezis out of that thing until it blows up. Nobody, as far as I can tell, chugs around in gaia-lover mode. It’s all flat out, all the time. As above, I say if you want variable cylinder pressure, put a gear driven blower on it, so you can hear it howl like a pre war Mercedes.