Sometimes talented people say stupid things and wish they hadn’t. I’m sure she’ll put this all in the context of The Great Struggle Against Evil.
Category: Just Stupid (page 7 of 12)
After the situation that the U.S. government created with the whole Katrina mess, it’s hard to come down on how other people handle a disaster. I mean, people are still recovering in Louisiana and Mississippi. The U.S. just does lip service to areas that were devastated in 2005.
Luckily the military in Myanmar makes it so easy to throw stones. After hemming and hawing about permitting help to their country, they are now distributing the aid but slapped on their generals names on the boxes.
My favorite part is
State-run television continuously ran images of top generals — including the junta leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe — handing out boxes of aid to survivors at elaborate ceremonies.
Nothing like setting priorities. Over 20,000 people are reported dead, they are about to see a real disease problem, and these people are looking for good press.
I know that politicians use anything for a photo op and our politicians do that as much as anyone. But this is a military junta, who do they think they are fooling?
Myanmar is not the U.S. so I do not think we will see someone telling the generals to go flip themselves. But I can hope.
Amazon is suing New York state over the “Amazon Tax” law. I hope they win for a couple of reasons.
- This law is just aimed at fixing something the state does not like: people buy items from out of state and don’t pay the use tax. If anyone actually pays this tax I would be surprised. I’m not commenting on if people should of should not pay use tax (it’s the law) but sales tax is collected by the store for the state. If the tax is not collected at the time of purchase, who keeps good enough records for all their transactions?
- I understand that this law was Eliot Spitzer’s idea. The man was a grandstander who went for big headlines over something useful. Sheriff of Wall Street? More like gadfly of Wall Street. His “penalties” did not really change anything but it did get his name in the papers.
Years ago NY sent officials to photograph NY cars in New Jersey shopping malls. They sent letters to the cars owner saying “Bad Monkey, you should pay your use tax.” This did not go over very well and the idea was quickly abandoned.
If the State of New York does not like federal law they can take it up with Washington. If they want to compete with online stores versus brick based stores in NY then they should fix the tax laws to actually compete and not convince people to go online or even out of state.
It’s tempting for law makers to target companies like Amazon and other online stores. It does not personally cost the lawmaker anything. But it also does not solve anything either and that probably makes it more appealing to the law makers.
First there was the steroids, possibly lying to congress thing. Now Roger Clemens appears to have been also cheating on his wife? And more than once? He should have retired and gone with “No comment” months ago. Once he took the “How dare you question me” position he guaranteed that the press would go after him.
All three detectives in the Sean Bell killing have been found not guilty. This may have been the “correct legal outcome” from the trial, but Sean Bell was killed and that should have consequences.
Looks like Wesley Snipes is going to jail. Honestly, he should have known better and the civil proceedings have yet to be decided. Wonder how much of an example he’ll be made of in a civil trial?
His two co-defendants didn’t do so well either. One was sentenced to 10 years, the other 4 and half years. What I don’t understand is this: no one likes to pay taxes, period. The idea of not paying taxes for some pseudo legal rational is ridiculous.
There are lots of smart people out there and some of them actually practice law. If it were that easy then everyone would do it.
Either that, or sell books and make money off of the people who buy into this nonsense.
This will no doubt become a law, at least in Kentucky: Kentucky Lawmaker Wants to Make Anonymous Internet Posting Illegal
Just wow. If some people on the street were shouting at you and had guns, and did not claim they were Police, what would the likely outcome be?
Normally, a nut as a judge is just odd. If he makes enough bad calls he gets pulled off the bench. Some really odd people have been on the bench for years.
The “debate” about water boarding is ridiculous. It’s torture, no arguement about it. The U.S. government tried and convicted other people for doing it. Until the Jack Bauer crowd came into power, it was reprehensible. Now these fear mongers have gotten the U.S. to use phrases like “water boarding, which some consider to be torture”. This is just unbelievable. Whatever happened to people just speaking plainly?
Antonin Scalia is a nut. His idea that “smacking someone in the face” could be justified is beneath that of a Supreme Court Justice. Forget the constitutionality of torturing people, or that it’s a crime under the law. In his Jack Bauer world anything can be justified and the hell with the law or the constitution.
I wish this nut job would just get his cameo on the new season of 24. Just get this stupidity out of his system and then maybe he can actually concentrate on his job instead of being Vice President Cheney’s towel boy.
Glenn Beck, who I generally feel is a I-wanna-be-Bill-O’Reilly entertainer, wrote an article I agree with. Giving people debit cards for the “stimulus” package is a good idea, assuming the package will actually work.
