We Interrupt Your Weekend With a Brief Announcement

Random guerilla blogging is taking place from various locations in midwest North America this weekend.

We had to pass on this bit of information, which the Hamster (welcome back to blogistan, Eric!) has pointed us to:

Interest Expense FISCAL Year 2003 (so far!)

April $ 14,060,171,915.01
March 13,418,109,210.36
February 15,835,291,826.89
January 13,163,133,814.72
December 84,988,921,666.59
November 19,552,154,628.66
October 13,677,410,886.48
=========
FISCAL Year Total $ 174,695,193,948.71
----------------------

Time to go watch New Jersey and Ottawa battle for the right to have the Stanley Cup for a year. Can you imagine? A significant portion of the population of a number of countries are fixated on who gets to put their names on a big piece of silver. Go figure!

Treasure Trove

There have been a few names popping up in the comments over at Eschaton, CounterSpin, dKos, and other blogs of like mind. While spinning through some lexicons pointed to by the cognoscenti there, I came across a couple of sites, and a couple of things.

Over at a blog named This is Class Warfare, we find a succinct and, in our eyes, accurate assessment of Why Conservatives Want this Tax Cut:

- Wall Street is God: Investors, Shareholders, Debt Holders, Brokers, Banks and Executives. This is the main reason for everything. The entire focus of he tax cut is aimed at helping either directly or indirectly these people. With the small working class tidbits acting more as a candy coating to help us swallow it down.

- Military spending is Great: This puts money into the hands of private corporations which are owned by stock holders. It also competes with other non-desirable social spending and in times of low tax revenue it drives the deficits.The majority of military spending goes into production of goods not salaries for the personel

- Social Spending is Bad: This puts money into the hands of the poor, which they will only use to buy things like food and clothes and other needs. Not good for many of the big corporate interests. It also has the negative effect of creating jobs directly which means the labor pool shrinks and wages could go up, which is bad for wall street. Social Spending can only be good when it is directed at a private interest where a portion of the money gets back to Wall Street.

- Debt is Good: This causes the tax revenue that might be spent on government programs to be spent instead on paying off the debt that is held by the debt holders. Anything that diverts tax revenue directly into the hands of either private investors or investor owned corporations is desirable. And since military spending is never cut other things will be.

- Taxing Wall Street is Bad:This is money that is off limits to government. The thinking is, why tax it if we're working so hard to get it returned anyway?

- Income taxes are Evil:The income tax has no upper caps and will tax 100% of everybody's incomes. What's worse is that it taxes rich investors at higher rates than poor non-investors, which violates the golden rule above.

- Payroll taxes are less Evil: Since they have an upper limit cap, rich investors may only pay a very small percentage of their income to the payroll taxes but lower income people get taxed on 100% of their income. Besides....

- Privatizing Social Security is Good: Once again, anything that transfers tax revenue into Wall Street is desirable. It has the added benefit of coming mostly from the poor, because of the just mentioned cap on payments by the wealthy. Even if the money gets washed away in a frequent wall street tsunami rich investors will still have their own money to fall back on while the poor just get to live on the streets, or better yet, go back to work.

- Unemployment is Good: Having lots of people out of work and desperate for jobs is good for the large wall street corporations that demand cheap labor to keep profits high. Therefore things like unemployment benefits are to be kept to a minimum, only to be used when politically necessary.

- Inflation is Bad: The costs of goods goes up, but so does the cost of labor. What doesn't go up is the value of loans.

- Consumption taxes are Good: If they replace income taxes, then 100% of lower income people will have their money taxed as they spend it. While the investor class will only spend a small portion of their overall income on consumption they will spend the majority of it on investment. Once investments and returns are tax free all Wall Street money will float around in a tax free zone of ultimate happiness while the workers fund the military with their wages spent buying groceries.

Plus, we found these lovely pictures over at Yar’s Revenge:










Won’t you look them up in the links zone on your next visit?

Surfing on the Net

I have been puttering around the Funny Farm of late. We apologize for our lack of whimsy and a general air of malaise round these parts. But I have to tell you of a journey I just started here in cyberspace. It started, as it so often does, with Atrios' page. Which led me to Matthew Yglesias' page, and a discussion about the scientific community’s flirtation with the multiverse. Which reminded me of one of my favorite cartoons by Max Cannon:

A Letter to BartCop

You didn’t think I’d pass up a chance to point to something you might see on a Big Board? Besides, I put some good thought into this one. And maybe some of you are out there dropping coin to support one of your favorite sites, and would like to be informed on how to change your ongoing setup once it is in motion. Or, you like the gag last night on The Daily Show almost as much as I did.

Anyways,... here’s what I said:

To : BartCop
From : The Funny Farm

Re: The New Perkel payment system

Hey Bart!

For some reason - don't know if you cancelled my recurring subscription, or I did it by mistake - but the end result is: I am no longer supporting BartCop. Before I go back to Chinaco Silver (25/month) status, I would like to know:

1. Does Marc get any vigorish from the 2CheckOut people? Do you get more of my money that way than through PayPal? Which service do you prefer us to use?

2. I only see a $10 button for the 2CheckOut option. How do I still drop you 25 skins each month?

As always, thanks for keeping the hammer in motion. I was a little disappointed that you didn't mention the Daily Show's offering last night. Did you see the bit where they mentioned how upset Field Marshal AssKKKroft and the Injustice department are with Canada for considering decriminalization of the green? I think I might be willing to risk a couple of First Degree Bogarting fines in the Great White North. Besides, with the exchange, even a $500 fine in that country is what, ten-fifty American?

Oops,... forgot the Drinky McDumbAss factor. It seems our dollar is becoming less attractive in the international market these days. As in, not worth as much as it used to be. Yet another way Putsch has united us in misery. So those cheap Canadian junkets might start costing a bit more. I guess Ari Fork Tongue will have to start spinning about how those awful Canucks can't play by pResident Pinhead's rules, like they're supposed to...

Before I turn this into another essay, can you tell me if there are any plans for BartFest 2003 yet? I know Tommy's there (hey Dude! Still got the calendar I gave you at BartFest?) and I'm hoping he'll try and get you interested in some kind of discussions on the topic. Because I for one could sure as hell use some time where I don't have to deal with Ditto Monkeys for a while.

Let me know what your preferences are with regard to the Paypal / 2checkout systems. And keep up the good work!

(: Tom :)

Disclaimer: I didn’t put any links into the email I sent Bart. And I edited a couple of grammatical errors.

Some Funnies for your Fry Day

Thanks, I Needed That

Just got done with a Daily Show segment about Canada easing up on the green. Hahahahahaha! I can only imagine the howls of derisive laughter emanating from the smoking rooms of the Bush Twins. Or is that the Twin Bushes?

Two best gags of the segment:

First degree bogarting as a fineable offense

And a bumper sticker:

How’s my diplomacy? Call 1-800-EAT-SH*T

Another Screw Thank You Very Much From the Bush Badministration

Anyone visiting the Funny Farm on a semi-frequent basis (and, they know who you are - they always have. It’s all for the best, you know?) knows that the word struck through in the title is something much more, er, emphatic, when used in everyday language.

But anyways,... on to the latest tidbit - courtesy of Eschaton/Atrios. It seems that Drinky McDumbAss and the God Squad^TM are staging holding another photo op to promote the elite cash grab tax cuts for the rich and corporations ‘jobs and growth plan’. And the workers might have to work Saturday to make up for their attendance at the photo op:

[snip]

About 340 workers at an Omaha plastics factory will lose pay or have to work next Saturday to make up for time lost during a visit by President Bush on Monday to promote his "jobs and growth plan," their boss said today.

[snip]

Airlite's plans were reported in today's Omaha World-Herald. It was the second time this week that Bush's aggressive schedule of photo opportunities brought unwanted publicity. Several Democrats on Capitol Hill complained last week that the president's May Day speech on an aircraft carrier had been a political use of military assets. ---- well,... duh!

[snip]

Bush said in his prerecorded radio address today that his message in his travels next week "will be simple: The surest way to grow this economy and create jobs is to leave more money in the hands of the people who earn it."

In the Democratic response, Gov. James E. McGreevey (N.J.) called for a "return to the days of balanced budgets, responsible spending and investments -- investments in education, roads and small businesses."

The president and first lady Laura Bush are spending the weekend in Santa Fe at the home of Roland W. Betts, a New York developer who was a Bush fraternity brother at Yale University and his partner when he owned the Texas Rangers baseball team.

Bush golfed today at a course beneath the snow-capped Rockies, and joshed coyly with reporters when they lobbed their customary questions at the first tee.

"When I say I'm not answering questions, it means I'm not going to answer questions," Bush said. "But thank you for asking. I understand you're trying to do your job." Later, when a reporter tried to ask about golf and began, "Uhhhh," Bush scolded, "I don't think you heard me correctly."

[snip]

Of course, they’ll still have to make up the time. After all, the other shifts still have to work that day. They probably have to work more to make up for the lost production and such. There are memories around here of the time pResident JetBoy and pRime Minister Cretin Chretien shut down the Ambassador Bridge for a significant period of time for a photo opportunity. And on a Monday yet again. I can only imagine how much pretending to run AmeriKKKa eats into one’s tee times... not to mention someone actually trying to work for a living. Thanks, Putsch!