Basher51's Bluff and Bluster

I read Nicole Koglin's blog about going to a Badgers game.  That led me to wonder, are you Fox 6 sports folks ever able to just watch a game, any sport, just for relaxation or the pure joy of athletic competition?  Or is it the curse of your occupation that you always see a game (or race) from the standpoint of a sportscaster, you're doing your job?

I guess you can frame my question this way:  If you had a son playing high school football, could you attend the game as a parent and not attend it from the standpoint of "covering the game"?

Say that at your job you find out that if certain financial targets are met you will be rewarded handsomely.  So, you start cooking the books and playing fast and loose with the profit and loss statements. You start making wildly speculative deals on mortgage paper that you know to be practically worthless.  Suddenly, you are $90,000,000 richer!  Even after you get caught doing it, it costs you nothing.  In fact, you become a close advisor to the Annointed One destined to be our next president.  So, how do you celebrate?  By buying a $5,000,000 bachelor pad.

Yup, its' good to be Franklin Raines.  You can screw honest hard working people out of their money, be a close advisor of the next president, and still never have to be called to account by the press.  He's lucky that he's not a Republican or he'd be held to account for his outrageous behavior.

I've been reading pundit's reports about last night's presidential debate.  "Boring" was the erm that seemed to be used most often regarding the debate.  Excuse me, but isn't a boring debate what all of the reformers wanted?  All of those folks keep telling us that they want the candidates to "just talk about the issues" and "get rid of that gotcha stuff".  So, they got that in last night's debate and then they complain that the debate was boring.

Give me a break.

This is wrong on so many levels.  First off, the obvious question is:  "And who will be monitoring The One's campaign ads?"  But then, given that campaign ads from BOTH SIDES and their allies frequently include just enough truth to pass muster, how will these folks decide if an ad is "truth" or  lies and deceit?

But beyond that, here are law enforcement people and officers of the court who are sworn to uphold the law in an equal fashion.  Did they forget that the statue of Lady Justice is blindfolded?  Or that the US Supreme Court building has engraved on its facade "Equal Justice Under The Law"?  Here these folks are proclaiming that they are going to be looking out for lies directed at The One, but apparently could care less about lies directed at Big Mac.  They public proclaim that they are biased and somehow a guy arrested for attempted burglary is supposed to believe that he is going to get a fair shake from these people?  What if someone has a McCain bumper sticker on his car when he gets pulled over for drunk driving?  Can he now expect fair treatment from the courts?

I think that the answer is that in Missouri, if you are smart you will have Obama bumper stickers on your car...and on your burglar tools.

Yep, The One is reaching out to Republicans and conservatives all across this land.  The liberals are just gushing tolerance and compassion.  The One, The Great Uniter himself, with his long and substantial record of reaching across the aisle and embracing hope and change, is inspiring his acolytes in New York City.  Those of you offended by middle fingers might want to look away.

A few people might not know this, but whenever a stock's price falls two things can be said:  One person is selling that stock and another person is buying it.  Rarely does a stock ever drop to $0.  Before that happens the exchange will usually halt sales of it and allow the firm to be de-listed. 

So, even when the Dow Jones falls 350 points, someone is buying stocks.  I'm tempted to jump in and get my hands on some bargains.  No, not in the financial sector.  But I'm considering some industries such as mining and allied industries.  Even the food sector is looking good.  To be sure gold and prescious metals are sky-rocketing right now.

After the crash in the 1980's there were some great deals that I wish that I had picked up.  I did buy Schlumberger, and oil technology company that just boomed.  I could have bought Mobil at something like $38 a share.  What?  Was I nuts?  What was I thinking not grabbing that?

There are bargains out there right now for those who are willing to risk it and play for the long haul.  So, what stocks are you considering?

Why is it that SUV's "careen out of control", but the drivers never lose control of their SUV?  It makes it sound like a Ford Explorer suddenly got a mind of its own and took off on a killing spree?

While I'm at it, how come a Volkswagen Passat never "careens out of control"?  Chevy Impala's never seem to "careen out of control" either.

But SUV's always seem to "careen out of control".  Never the driver--just the vehicle.

Just curious......

This is the great uniter at work.  Sounds like the "new kind of politician" and bipartisanship, and post-partisan politician is pretty much out the door.  Back to the same old name calling, negative campaigning, and hyper-partisan flapdoodle that we've all heard before.  So, lacking the new tone in Washington that was once his main point, what does he really have to offer?  His experience?

By the way, the federal budget is something way over 10,000 pages long, maybe even 30,000 pages.  I recall seeing a picture of it once.  It was about 25 volumes of hard cover with each one roughly 3 inches thick.  And he is trying to tell us that he is going to go through it "page by page, line by line"?  So, even with the great powers of The One, I figure that little project will take him aobut four years, so,  what else will he have accomplished?

"The One"  has been proposing this "middle class tax cut" idea.  It is a total fraud.  Never mind that Clinton tried it and then cried big crocodile tears about how, after he was elected, he couldn't make it work.  Of course he couldn't make it work.  There is simply no way for anyone to make it work.

A middle class tax cut is an almost economic impossibility because of a multiple of reasons all related to simple economics.  First we need to understand "quintiles", that's simply a fancy way of saying that the entire population is broken down into five groups ranging from the poor to the mega wealthy.  The poor are the bottom quintile and the wealthy have the top quintile.  The three middle quintiles compose the middle class with the true middle class being in the third, or middle quintile.  That middle quintile contains the vast majority of America's wage earners.  Consider the basic bell curve.  The middle income is at the apex of the bell curve with the poor and wealthy at the opposite ends.  The old adage of "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" is quite true.  People float up and down the quintiles all during the life.  Right out of college most folks are near the bottom.  But after a few years they are close to the top middle income quintile.  Once you enter the top quintile, you can't go up any further.  So, the folks in that quintile just get richer but stay in the quintile.  The same goes for the poor.  Most folks in that catagory rarely spend a lifetime there.  But those who do land there and have little capacity to move up, typically just get poorer.  Now, while there are more middle income tax payers, the very wealthy pay the most in taxes.  That is simple math.  The wealthy make more money and they are in the highest marginal tax bracket. 

But why can't we simply cut the taxes on the middle income and raise the taxes of the very wealthy?  Seems simple enough and it seems a fair and just way to do things.  I agree. But that doesn't make it possible.  For one thing, there are a ton of middle income tax payers, many more than there are wealthy tax payers.  In fact, you simply can't have it any other way and still be a functioning economy.  (Witness most third world countries which have virtually no middle class.)  So, if you cut middle income taxes by $1000 each, as The One has proposed, you would need to generate an equal amount of money from the wealthy taxpayers or you have a shortfall in tax income to the government.  No decent Democrat wants that!  In fact, no one wants that since it would have a catastrophic effect on the economy. But since there are such a small number of wealthy taxpayers compared to the number of middle income tax payers, you will have to make a very large increase in the wealthy tax rate to make up for the shortfall.  Now, regardless of whether you think that the wealthy can afford it or not, the government does not want to make a huge increase in the top marginal tax rate.

The reason for that is simple.  In the USA we tax income and not wealth.  Again, you wouldn't want it any other way. (Think about it.)  Wealthy people, especially the mega wealthy, are already wealthy and don't need to make income.  Middle income folks need income as they cannot live off of their wealth.  Jimmy Carter learned this fact in the late 1970's when his adminstration ended up with an 85%+ top marginal tax rate.  Suddenly this country was bereft of wealthy people.  They simply decided to not earn income.  At least they didn't earn it in the United States.  And what income they did earn was shuttled to tax shelters such as municipal bonds, off shore banks, and tax havens.  The number of divorces among the wealthy also increased as they found that being unmarried and filing separately moved them into a lower tax bracket.  (I remember seeing a "60 Minutes" that showed a couple getting divorced on December 1st and remarried on January 1st.) Wage earners such as tax attorneys and accountants were making a lot of income.  But the mega wealthy...well, I also remember seeing stories on the news about billionaires who weren't paying much if any income tax.  They had put it all in shelters and had shut down their income production here in the USA.  So congress devised the alternative minimum tax to punish the wealthy for not creating income that could be taxed.  And now, since the dollar amount that is considered wealthy is always increasing, that AMT almost bit all of us since it was never indexed to inflation.

But wait, you say, what about a middle income tax break stimulating the economy?  Yes, it would stimulate the economy, but not to a suffcient amount as to really spur the economy. Middle income folks don't spend their money like the wealthy do.  They can't afford to do it.  Note that the government actually had to run advertisements to encourage spending earlier this year when they sent out "stimulus checks".  It still had an almost negligible effect.  For one thing, middle income folks are the bulk of the people who are stretched thin on credit right now.  Wealthy folks aren't and the poor don't get credit--well, they didn't until the congress mandated that they get home loans.  But the stimulus necessary to overcome the $1000 per middle income taxpayer rate cut would be a nearly record setting stimulus to the economy.  It would have to be since the majority of Americans are middle income.  That just isn't going to happen given traditional middle income spending patterns.  And those patterns don't change.  Trust me, merchants have tried to do it for at least 100 years and are still failing.

So, the folks who decide who will pay how much in taxes are left in a quandry.  They have to determine the "tipping point", that tax rate that sufficiently gouges the wealthy to appease the envious and covers a middle income tax cut shortfall, yet doesn't shut down the wealthy income engine.  Frankly, given the disparity between the number of middle income taxpayers who would receive a tax cut and the amount of income tax revenue that could be accrued by raising the top marginal rates, I am postiive that The One is going to see his promise of a middle income tax cut fly out the window just like Slick Willie's.  "Well, close the loopholes that the wealthy use to avoid paying their fair share."   First off, the wealthy pay their fair share in that according to the IRS the top quiintile pays about 86% of all income taxes.  But secondly, as I said before, they don't have to.  Income that is taxable is optional to most of the wealthy.  So, for the government the trick is to raise taxes on the wealthy just enough to keep them paying and making money that can be taxed.  They don't want to shut off the spigot.  But shut it off they would if they tried to pay for a middle income tax cut by raising the top marginal rates.  And closing the loopholes would be devastating to the economy.  Clinton tried it just a little and just about destroyed several major industries that served the wealthy, such a boatbuilders, high value home builders, and so forth.  And again, if you close the loopholes the wealthy will cease doing the things that create taxable income.

Proof that generating taxable income is optional for the wealthy?  Remember when Lee Iaccoca became chairman of Chrysler?  He vowed to only take a $1 per year wage for his job until Chrysler earned a profit.  Lee Iaccoca did not go broke.  He paid all of his bills.  His compensation package was structured in such a way as to avoid being income.  It was all perfectly legal and it still is.  And those things are still going on.  Copmpensation packages for everyone from CEO's to professional athletes are structured in such a way as to expose the barest minimum of their compensation to income tax liability.

So, that is why you won't see a middle income tax cut even if The One is elected president and congress remains in Democrat hands.  It is a practical, financial, and economic impossibility.  But don't get your dobber down.  One way that the middle income would get a tax break is the way that The Gipper did it--across the board tax cuts.  Then you have a real stimulus to the economy because everyone, especially the ones who pay the most in taxes, gets more money in their pockets and therefore into the economy.

And government bean counters don't have to try to figure out what the tipping point is.

Someone hacked into Sarah Palin's private e-mail account and has spread the information from it all over the internet.  Private family photos, information, personal communication...all of it.

Odd, the liberals who last year were so up in arms that they were demanding the impeachment of the president because we were listening to phone calls among al Qaeda terrorists have so far been astoundingly silent.  They were so worked up about privacy rights yet today, not a one of them has spoken.

Are the rules different when it is a female conservative politician whose right to privacy has been violated?

ColbyDog, ifilus, and the other liberal bloggers here:  Where are you on this?  Why aren't you up in arms over this injustice?

Yep, this Saturday at 7PM at the Fine Arts Center of Hamilton High School in Sussex, the Booth Brothers, Southern Gospel music's most rewarded act, will be performing again.  They were in town a year ago and just brought the house down with awesome harmonies, high energy, and just a fun show.  I think that it took two days for my hands to stop hurting from all of the clapping that I did.

Opening for the Booth Brothers is Eternity, our own local Southern Gospel quartet.  If you've never liked Southern Gospel music, then this group is for you.  They are into harmony and fun and they are definitely not your grandpa's version of Southern Gospel.

If you want some out of the ordinary fun this Saturday, try out this night of terrific music.  You'll laugh until you cry and your teeth will hurt from vibrating to the tight, tight harmonies that both groups sing.  And The Message?  How can "God loves you!" be boring?

Reading some of the blog postings here and seeing some of the advertisements by the politicians one would be left to believe that there is simply nothing good about his country. How wrong they are!

One of the reasons that I've always loved guys like Ronald Reagan, Teddy Roosevelt, John Wayne is their uniquely American optimism.  They lived and breathed it and if you were around them it was contagious.  They believed that there is nothing that this great country couldn't accomplish.

What in your opinion is right about the USA?  What is noble and pure about this country? If you were trying to convince a foreigner to come here, what you you say to convince him?

ColbyDog, ifilus and all of you other members of the "blame American first" coalition, here is your chance to say something positive.  If you don't have anything that you could brag about regarding this country, then post to your own blog about how bad this country is.  This blog is all about how good we are.

I was out of town on business most of last week.  While driving in some fairly remote areas I had a chance to shut off the car stereo and do some thinking.  Something has been missing from this presidential campaign--the Hollywood lefties haven't been promising to leave the USA if a Republican is elected.

Typically this promise is one of the things that I look forward to the most during a presidential campaign.  If nothing else the promise of Streisand, Sarandon, Robbins, et al leaving the country has energized my hope for a Republican victory.  It is also one of the most delightfully comic displays of the the Hollywood left's massive egotism.  To think that someone could consider themselves so incredibly important that their threat to leave would cause someone else to vote differently is quintessentially Hollywood (a land where ego knows no bounds).  Tragically, none of these Hollywood types has ever followed through on their promise to leave.  I suspect that it is out of fear that no one would miss them, or perhaps no other country would have them.

So, come on Hollywood lefties, we just KNOW that you want to say it!  All of us on the right are eagerly looking forward to you pronouncement.  Please, please, please promise us that you'll leave if McCain is elected.  The election wouldn't be the same without it.