What’s the problem? I live in a gated community and drive a Hummer – the roads are good enough for me…
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This is what galls me. They scream about high tax rates!!! but use all sorts of deductions and exclusions and so on to reduce their taxes, often to the refund level. I think one of the reasons it stays that way is just to allow them to scream high tax rates!!! and still get it reduced.
If all the deductions etc. were eliminated, and the base tax rate reduced to an average of what they actually pay, it would be a whole lot lower, and people would scream. Then maybe there would be political will to increase the tax rates for the rich and big corporations. And the Good Witch is waiting to take me home to Kansas, too.
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Huh. I wasn’t aware that the First Amendment protected the publication of information sourced illegally by someone other than the publisher. Is this why Glenn Greenwald was shielded? Or was he protected by something equivalent in UK law?
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I remember a PJ O’Rourke quip from the early 90’s (which he may’ve borrowed from someone else?) that went something along the lines of “If you don’t vote for the democrats when you’re young you have no heart, if you don’t vote for the Republicans when you’re older then you have no brain.” At the time it seemed both witty and reasonable. But I doubt he’d be repeating it this cycle.
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I’ve heard a variant falsely attributed to Churchill, but it goes back to 1875, apparently:
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Indeed:
This year he seems to be arguing that, old or young, just leave your heart out of it this time and vote with your brain, assuming you have a working one.
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Some of what she said about us and our children is true. The fact that she doesn’t seem to recognize why we feel that way, especially about her and her rapacious corporate donors and the government bureaucracies that they support, is a huge problem.
Between my siblings and myself, we have seven adult children. Four of them live with their parents because they can’t afford to make ends meet without our help. Certainly we don’t begrudge them that; we love them and want them to make their way in the world. They can’t because of policies that both Democrats and Republicans have put into place over the last 30 years against our wishes.
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I apologize if I’m mischaracterizing her statement; I only scanned it briefly, and it seemed to me to be very similar to her statement about Trump supporters: some people being completely unreasonable, and others having a legitimate grievance work the system, and, of course, there’s more reporting about the former half of the statement than the latter.
My point was more that I’ve seen people groaning here about it, so we’re not upholding a double standard here by just accepting bad things when they’re said about Trump, and saying “that was obtained illegally, and by the way, Clinton did nothing legally wrong!” when the information is about Clinton.
A double standard was implied; my only point was to reject the double standard.
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He also seems to have turned from an amusing humourist into a sexist dick. Oh well, his writing from the 80s and 90s remains funny.
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I haven’t read much O’Rourke recently. Disappointing to hear that, though. Any of his writings in particular that show this side of him?
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An example from the linked article is “she’s the crone in crony capitalism”. It’s a nice piece of word play, but appears to me to be inherently sexist. There’s also the repeated allusions to Hillary being a witch, which is again rooted in sexism.
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Maybe, but this description of the Republican presidential nominee is spot fucking on;
#Lord of the Flies, with his own 757.
That guy is sooo an overgrown “Jack Merridew”.
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But he paid ZERO Federal taxes, so regardless of what you think the appropriate role of the Federal government is he didn’t pay his fair share to fund it.
Most definitions I’ve seen of “patriot” boil down to “someone who supports their country.” A person who thinks they should be exempt from paying Federal taxes isn’t a patriot, they are a parasite.
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Well. His writing’s gone to crap. So nobodies missing anything good by avoiding him for his sexism.
(edited for grammar)
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I had to look up ‘crone’, as I’d never seen the word. O’Rourke is definitely a playful writer. Given how much sexism is embedded in the English lexicon, it seems inevitable that he’d run afoul now and then, regardless of intent.
The use of certain pejoratives is heavily skewed towards one gender or the other. Okay, not exactly a newsflash. But I can’t recall the last time I ever heard someone call a woman a ‘dick’, just as I can’t recall a man being called a ‘bitch’. A ‘little bitch’, yes, but that’s different (and egregiously sexist). ‘C—t’ seems to be an outlier, in that its use is only slightly skewed towards the female gender (where I live anyway), despite its female-specific referent.
Now, referring to a female as a ‘vixen’, ‘witch’, or ‘whore’—these are female-specific terms with a moral attribution whose sole intent is to disgrace. To me, these are the worst of the lot.
Personally, I prefer the gender-neutral ‘dumbass’, ‘goose-stepper’, or ‘sycophant’. Or even better yet, writing in such a way as to avoid name-calling altogether.
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Basically, yes, it does. There are a million caveats to that, but then there are a million caveats to 1A protections in the first place. (“Fire” in a crowded theater and so forth.)
There are two big catches. The first is that you–the NYT in this case–cannot in any way solicit, encourage, or otherwise cause the illegal act that shakes loose the information in the first place. If you do, you’re part of a criminal conspiracy. But you’re not an accomplice after the fact in a case like this.
The second is that if you know who your source is, law enforcement can make you tell them, and if you refuse you’re looking at contempt of court or obstruction charges.
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I’ve personally done both, and it’s oh-so-satisfying.
Also, have you never seen Jesse Pinkman of Breaking Bad?
He was forever calling other men “bitch,” and again, it was so satisfying…
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Jesse. How could I forget Jesse.
I guess my post says more about where I live than anything else. I don’t know any guys who call out their dude-friends as ‘bitch’ but I can definitely see that being the case elsewhere.
We do have people around here who use the word ‘retard’, which is gender-neutral and holy-fucking-shit insensitive.
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