Rangel Rule Act of 2009, HR 735

Rangel Rule Act of 2009, HR 735

would prohibit the Internal Revenue Service from charging penalties and interest on back taxes against U.S. citizens. Under the proposed law, any taxpayer who wrote “Rangel Rule” on their return when paying back taxes would be immune from penalties and interest.

Now that is an example of a good law: it's just, it makes sense and it pokes fun at an individual who richly deserves it. 

Too bad it's got a snowball's chance of passage.

Big Brass Ones

From Venture Hacks ..

"Marines view warfare as a domain of unexpected obstacles and fleeting opportunities." – http://bit.ly/xnzi. Sounds like a startup.

"[A marine] views war as a domain of inherent uncertainty, where the side that can best exploit uncertainty will win." http://bit.ly/1KgHzk

Replace 'warfare' with 'life' and you've got that right.



Here are some guys living the real deal, with great big brass ones: One battle, one Navy Cross, four Silver Stars.

On Nov. 16, 2005, (Lance Corporal Joshua) Mooi’s battalion was targeting al-Qaida operatives in New Ubaydi, along the Euphrates River. The missions were part of operation “Steel Curtain.”

Mooi’s platoon came under attack from insurgents firing automatic weapons and lobbing grenades from several fortified homes, officials said. Mooi fought back and helped recover four Marines hit by enemy fire.

Six times, he “willingly entered an ambush site to pursue the enemy and extricate injured Marines,” his (Navy Cross) award citation states. “Often alone in his efforts, he continued to destroy the enemy and rescue wounded Marines until his rifle was destroyed by enemy fire and he was ordered to withdraw.”

His “relentless and courageous actions eliminated at least four insurgents while permitting the immediate care and evacuation of more than a dozen Marines who lay critically or mortally wounded,”

Navy Secretary Winter also approved Silver Stars for:

2nd Lt. Donald R. McGlothlin, the platoon commander who was killed as he laid suppressive fire against insurgents in an effort to shield the evacuation of wounded Marines from the house, his citation states.

Staff Sgt. Robert W. Homer, 2nd Platoon’s sergeant, who fended off enemy grenades, small-arms fire and serious shrapnel wounds to lob suppressive fire and help treat and evacuate wounded Marines before he was ordered aboard a medevac helicopter, according to the citation.

Cpl. Javier Alvarez, a squad leader who directed several magazines of suppressive fire as Marines tried to aid and evacuate the wounded and who himself was seriously wounded after he grabbed an enemy grenade before it detonated, the citation states.

Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Jesse P. Hickey, the platoon corpsman who saved several Marines’ lives, at times running into the kill zone through enemy automatic fire to treat severely wounded members despite suffering injuries to one of his arms, according to his citation.

Our condolences to the family of Lieutenant McGlothlin.  Nothing can replace a loved one, but he died for his Marines and will not be forgotten.



My favorite Motivational Poster, ever.

George, you got some 'splaining to do

Joe Haldeman wrote this a few days before the Inauguration ...

Obama’s face does show some new strain, Dave – I hope that doesn’t mean that he’s found out we’re all doomed. I try to visualize a conference room with Obama listening to Bush and Cheney as they try to make a reasonable case for their actions. “Y’see, Barry, th’ Middle East is like a big cattlefield with four herds onnit. Mebbe five, mebbe three. Y’ follow? Th’ You-nited States is like the Marshal . . . “

Cheney: “Just tell him about the big fucking bomb in the harbor.”

That would certainly explain some things.

Star Trek and Space Elevators

Paramount is redoing Star Trek. Which is, I think, awesome.

Yes, I like Star Trek but, please: TOS is a product of the friggin' sixties, TNG is so very 80s and .. it's all so very crufty at the point.

Clear the decks, I say: junk the canon, kick the tires, light the fire, set course for the stars, warp factor six.


It's a detail in the trailers that I was pointed to: they've got a space elevator in there.

Somehow over the last six years or so, it's become some kind of habit for lazy story tellers: if you've got a story set in the future, you gotta have a space elevator. Doesn't matter if it fits or not - shove that puppy in there.

Space elevators are to 2009 what unisex body suits were to the 60s - The Future.

I just don't think they fit in the Trek universe.

Think about it: they've got matter transporters, faster than light drives and abundant and cheap energy. The latter is not stated, but c'mon: they've got enough energy to move some pretty friggin huge spaceships around normal space, plus whatever input it takes to turn the magic FTL drives on. Whatever problems the 23rd century has, they've solved the energy crisis.

They don't need a space elevator. Man-sized cargo they shove around with a matter transporter. Larger stuff would get sent to orbit on a shuttle. A space elevator would take a long time (relativley speaking) to get stuff to earth orbit and then you gotta tranship it.

No. In a universe where you can move matter around at the push of a button, with widely available travel faster than light and aliens are guys wearing prothetics on their faces, you don't need a space elevator.


It's here in the real world that we need a space elevator.

Pork - Tulsa Style

And what does Tulsa - my home town - want me to pay for? $9 million dollars worth of bridge. To replace this one.


View Larger Map

As it happens, I used the bridge for a summer in 1995 to get to work from the parking lot on the far side.

And it is a hazard - built in the 1930s it's falling down.

Interstate bridges, I can see why Federal tax money should be used. State highways, sure. But why in the heck are we being asked to pony up money to replace a bridge whose sole reason is to enable commuters to get to work in downtown Tulsa?

Honest disinterest

read  *click*  read  Ohhh...

hidden_field, Nixie! Duh, hunh? I should have realized that ...

What? I was sleeping.  I don't see a cookie and you're not going outside .. oh, you're babbling.  Again. I'll just go back to sleep.

Good Lord. I'm talking to the dog. About coding.  At least she's honest in her disinterest.

Stimulus Watch

Watch the government piss away [1] your money! On the Web! [2]

StimulusWatch.org was built to to help the new administration keep its pledge to invest stimulus money smartly, and to hold public officials to account for the taxpayer money they spend. We do this by allowing you, citizens around the country with local knowledge about the proposed "shovel-ready" projects in your city, to find, discuss and rate those projects. These projects are not part of the stimulus bill. They are candidates for funding by federal grant programs once the bill passes. Learn more by reading the FAQs.

So .. what are you - my out of state virtual friends - being asked to pay for in my fair state of Wisconsin? Welp, I'm glad you asked!

• $500,000 to eliminate bus fares for one year in Sheboygan.
• $2,000,000 for new sidewalks in Superior.
• $3,800,000 for a recreational trail in Green Bay.

Anyway - this is what my state wants from the stimulus pork: Subsidized bus fares, sidewalks and walking trails.

We thank you kindly for your participation.


[1] Sort-of Stimulus Watch. Anyway, it's Transparent Government. Whatever that means.

[2] This would work, I think, if the people spending taxpayer money had a sense of shame. Which we can see that they don't. [3] It's not enough to to simply watch the bastards at work, we gotta raise a ruckus, get people involved.

For Pete's sake, last year I had to take the day off and cart my family down to Madison just to make sure the Lege didn't enact a bill that would have shut the school down.

You can do this once, or twice. But you can't get all excited about every bit of pork the government wants. There are more of us than there are of them but for them it's a full-time job. We're busy making a living and can't afford the time needed.

[3] No, seriously - we've got candidates for the highest office in the land who are not ashamed at lying, but only chagrined they've been caught. People who want cabinet positions who (whoops) forget to pay taxes. Congress critters who pay back taxes only when people raise a shit storm .. and don't have to pay any penalties. Who, not to drag on and on, feel that because they're on the People's Business they can act like immoral shits.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Rufus is, I think, on to something here: Barack Obama is playing Jimmy Stewart.

In fact, I finally placed the archetype- forget the Black Panther nonsense; he's playing Jimmy Stewart. That has nothing to do with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington- a fine film, by the way. What I'm talking about is the image of masculinity that Jimmy Stewart represented. It's very much a 1950s, post-war model of masculinity- power without overt presentation. Quiet power.

People think of Jimmy Stewart as sort of corny nowadays, but what you spot- and I think Hitchcock spotted it- when you watch his dramatic roles, is that Jimmy Stewart represented a very American sort of power that never announces itself. It's more yeoman farmer than commando. The great George W.S. Trow describes Stewart's reference to, ''this kind of straightforward, brave man with enormous power, in a way, wherever he went, whether he was a hospital administrator, or a doctor... or a man on Wall Street- these American men educated in the liberal arts, but not very deeply, securely lodged in an American success construct, which they perfectly understood and moved forward in with considerable confidence...'' Well, that's it.

Understand here that I am speaking of this as an archetype, not taking into consideration what sort of person Obama is in reality. I'm not saying that the man is brave or straightforward- just that this is what he's evoking. What the documentary people don't get is that Obama presents himself as the Jimmy Stewart archetype, the 1950s school principal, the masculinity of these figures who moved in a matrix that was designed to protect them. Power that never announces itself. Remember that these men lived in a society that valorized well, men, and industrial production; both of which were reaching a sort of historical peak.

Title Reference

Kin, Clan and Back Stabbers

The NYT found a trend .. or maybe just a circle of close friends.

Like Lili’s dolls, the circle that radiates out from this two-bedroom ranch house in the New Jersey suburb of Moorestown is a largely female world. Fran and her daughters spend much of their time outside school and work with a small group of other single mothers and their girls. Among them is Fran’s friend of 10 years, Nancy Clark. Fran is 49; Nancy is 50. Six years ago, they went together to China to adopt Lili and Nancy’s daughter Katelei, whom they called “salt-and-pepper twins” because Lili had fair skin and Katelei is darker.

What they've got are reasonably successful single women who have adopted daughters and decided to put off the husband thing until later ... or never.

They are friends, and also more than friends. The trips to the Outer Banks that Fran’s group takes represent a step toward an all-female, platonic, chosen extended family.

I myself think that the idea of 'Dad' or 'Father' is kind of important in a child's life - but plenty of people grow up without a father, or with guys who should never have been fathers; talking people who should have jumped off a cliff rather than procreate.


But as I read I thought that the ladies in the article have managed to reinvent the idea of a clan, with all of the disadvantages and none of the advantages.

You've got a large and diverse group of people that can help you, support and who will be there for you.

But you're stuck where you are - leaving the hollar city where your clan is based means leaving your entire network behind.  When you've got a husband life partner the 'where-thou-goest' rule comes into play: move to a new city and your core support system is right there, tagging along behind.

And .. your circle-of-friends don't have to help you or be your buddy.

A kin-based clan is family: you may not like Cousin John a whole bunch and you'd rather die than listen to Aunt Sarah's nth rehash of some complicated family business back in 197-friggin-8 but you've got a lot of reasons to be at their back and for them to be at yours.

All these ladies have is friendship.

And brother I've learned the hard way that some friends can be there for life and some can be liars and fakers and complete and utter back-stabbers.  You'll never know which they are until you're deep in the stuff and you reach out a hand .... and your lifeline is pulled out of reach.


Via.

Tree in the Fog

I no longer know where this comes from - but isn't it pretty?

The Threat to America

Jerry Pournelle was at a conference on threats to the United States ...

I won't go into the main body of what I talked about, but my conclusions were simple: I believe that the worst threat to the United States is our failure adequately to educate the smartest 25% of our students; that there are no hopeful counter trends; and the result will be disaster. Add to that our failure to train or teach skills to the lower half of the population, and the disaster is made worse. These trends have related causes.

The underlying cause is our attempt to provide every public school child with a university prep education. Bill Gates becomes involved because his foundations promote the idea that "every American child deserves a world class university prep education"; and the attempt to do that insures that very few American children will receive a world class university prep education, and most of the smarter children will receive an education that is indifferent at best. The failure of our schools to educate the smart kids will put the United States into a terrible competitive position that will only get worse. We will continue to live off our capital, both intellectual and financial.

The problem here is that I don't have any startling information: everyone knows the facts here. One fact is that this is not Lake Wobegone. Half of the American children are below average. That means that the only way to make sure that no child is left behind is to see that no child gets ahead.

It does not matter how much we want it to be so, roughly half the children will not learn Algebra in high school, or indeed at any other time of their lives. They will not be well served by an attempt to give them a world class university prep education -- and the attempt to provide it for everyone will insure that the students who could profit from a university prep education won't get a good one. There are few teachers who can give adequate attention to the brightest 25% of the class while trying to give everyone in the class a world class university prep education.

This situation has developed over the years; but we were put into an unrecoverable attitude by No Child Left Behind, which told teachers that their goal was to see that every child in the class made some minimum score on a national test. The result was predictable and predicted, but that didn't stop it. Since the brightest half of the class would get the wanted score, the way to improve the class average is to concentrate on those just below average and get them to achieve passing marks. This happens all over the country.

Repealing No Child Left Behind won't fix our education system. The only thing that will fix it is to understand that half of the American Children are below average. Below average children have no need for a world class university prep education. They can't profit from it, and they learn very little that is useful to their future lives from a world class university prep education. That is not to say that there is nothing they could be learning in school that would not be useful in their future lives. There are many skills that can be taught in school that will be relevant to the future lives of the half the children who are below average. It's just that those skills are not part of a world class university prep education.

Note I said skills. Learning skills is important: but skills are learned by practice; most are not relevant to what we call a university education. (The skills that are relevant should generally be learned much earlier than in high school: a good example are the addition and multiplication tables, which are learned by rote. Everyone can and should learn the addition and multiplication tables to 20. Some pupils will take a long time to learn this, while others will learn them in no time.) This is obvious, and quite relevant to the central axiom that half the children are below average. A good part of early grade school should be skill training: learn to read, learn to do arithmetic, learn the mechanics of writing. All those are necessary for a university education; but there will come a point at which half the children simply will not be able to learn what they must learn in order to acquire a world class university education -- and while there may be doubt about some of the pupils, it will for the most part be obvious who belongs to which group.

Go further. Among the half of the children who are above average, only about half of those will profit from a world class university prep education, and only about half of those ought to go to universities at all. The rest should go to what we used to call colleges, a role that the community colleges are taking over. Sorting out who ought to be prepared for the university and who for colleges is another topic for another time, and it's a large subject. It's important but if we can accept the notion that half the children are below average, we can begin to understand than not all those above average are a good fit for university education. First steps first.

He's no Jimmy Carter

Conservation ...

The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.'

“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”

... it's for the rest of us.

I myself don't give a rip what a person does with their thermostat - if you pay for it, crank that puppy.  But if you're gonna try to scold me into wearing a sweater

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,"

and then going home and strolling around in shirt sleeves .. well that's lame.  And in this case I suspect I'm paying to heat that drafty old barn on Pennsylvania Avenue.

At least there is this: Jimmy Carter turned down the thermostat and wore a sweater. President Obama, in this respect, is no Jimmy Carter.

Pandemonium

It's full of cute ...

Go home, put on a movie

They're working hard for you ...

Mr. Obama's tendency to work late into the night will also pose problems. Politico.com reports that the White House staff is "preparing for a return to long nights, heavy weekend shifts." Requiring a senior staff that meets at 7:30 a.m. to work until 11 p.m. or 12 a.m. will quickly cause burnout and diminish the quality of advice and oversight.

Perhaps too hard?

I don't know running a large organization from fishing for cod in the Atlantic, but I do know about working long hours.

Meeting at 07:30 means getting to the office at 07:00 at the latest - you gotta get your stuff lined up for a meeting. Which means leaving for the office by 06:15, so awake by 05:45.  So .. 5 1/2 hours of sleep at best after getting home after working until midnight.

Every .. day.

And this is the senior staff - the younger and dumber junior staff will man up and come in earlier and leave later than their bosses.

You can work seventeen hour days for a while, when it's important. But you can't really do that on a regular basis without burning out. You start making dumb mistakes and your thinking gets sloppy.

Which might not be a great idea when you're the guys who want to run the country.

How is a brain surgeon a kind of artist?

From.

An Imperial Rescript - Rudyard Kipling

Said Mr. Pournelle, "It is generally worthwhile consulting Kipling. Not always, but very often."

An Imperial Rescript Rudyard Kipling

Now this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser decreed, To ease the strong of their burden, to help the weak in their need, He sent a word to the peoples, who struggle, and pant, and sweat, That the straw might be counted fairly and the tally of bricks be set. The Lords of Their Hands assembled; from the East and the West they drew -- Baltimore, Lille, and Essen, Brummagem, Clyde, and Crewe. And some were black from the furnace, and some were brown from the soil, And some were blue from the dye-vat; but all were wearied of toil. And the young King said: -- "I have found it, the road to the rest ye seek: The strong shall wait for the weary, the hale shall halt for the weak; With the even tramp of an army where no man breaks from the line, Ye shall march to peace and plenty in the bond of brotherhood -- sign!" The paper lay on the table, the strong heads bowed thereby, And a wail went up from the peoples: -- "Ay, sign -- give rest, for we die!" A hand was stretched to the goose-quill, a fist was cramped to scrawl, When -- the laugh of a blue-eyed maiden ran clear through the council-hall. And each one heard Her laughing as each one saw Her plain -- Saidie, Mimi, or Olga, Gretchen, or Mary Jane. And the Spirit of Man that is in Him to the light of the vision woke; And the men drew back from the paper, as a Yankee delegate spoke: -- "There's a girl in Jersey City who works on the telephone; We're going to hitch our horses and dig for a house of our own, With gas and water connections, and steam-heat through to the top; And, W. Hohenzollern, I guess I shall work till I drop." And an English delegate thundered: -- "The weak an' the lame be blowed! I've a berth in the Sou'-West workshops, a home in the Wandsworth Road; And till the 'sociation has footed my buryin' bill, I work for the kids an' the missus. Pull up? I be damned if I will!" And over the German benches the bearded whisper ran: -- "Lager, der girls und der dollars, dey makes or dey breaks a man. If Schmitt haf collared der dollars, he collars der girl deremit; But if Schmitt bust in der pizness, we collars der girl from Schmitt." They passed one resolution: -- "Your sub-committee believe You can lighten the curse of Adam when you've lightened the curse of Eve. But till we are built like angels, with hammer and chisel and pen, We will work for ourself and a woman, for ever and ever, amen." Now this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser held -- The day that they razored the Grindstone, the day that the Cat was belled, The day of the Figs from Thistles, the day of the Twisted Sands, The day that the laugh of a maiden made light of the Lords of Their Hands. Rudyard Kipling

If firearms are a substitute phallic symbol . . .

First they build the gun, then they wrap the airplane around it.



I've heard that saying, but seeing that gun next to a punch buggy puts it into perspective.

What I want from my government is benign neglect

NPR's 'All Things Considered': The relief for Americans that President Obama spoke of in his Inauguration speech are on the floor of the House today for a vote ...

Excuse me, President Obama?  Which part of

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

translates to these bits of crap from the stimulus package?

$19.99 billion in mandatory spending for the Food Stamp program.
$726 million for the after-school snack program.
$650 million for additional Digital TV transition coupons.
$200 million to pay Americorps volunteers.

Graham crackers and juice for the kiddies is bold swift action to revitalize the economy?  Food stamps are going to lay a foundation for new growth?  Television for the love of sweet thorny-headed Christ.

Pigs .. to .. the .. trough.


Legislators in committee dickering over provisions of the Stimulus Package

We seem to have collectively decided in November that something must be done and the government was the one to do it. 

I can't deny that - for a lot of reasons - we're in a pickle.

But the problem with having the government do this is that - at best - a few thousand people in Washington decide what is best.  To quote Tommy Lee Jones from 'Men in Black'

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.

Or to be more charitable: they're making some very important choices on your behalf, for you, based on their own self-interest. 

Whatever comes out of a mess like that in the best of all possible worlds might work. But more often for everyone except those few thousand people the results will be sub-optimal.

Do we need the government to do something?  Probably.  But the very best thing the government could do at this point is to just go away.

We'll export our values on the points of our bayonets

Russ Feingold wants to export Wisconsin Progressive values on the point of a constutional ammendment.

“The controversies surrounding some of the recent gubernatorial appointments to vacant Senate seats make it painfully clear that such appointments are an anachronism that must end. In 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution gave the citizens of this country the power to finally elect their senators. They should have the same power in the case of unexpected mid term vacancies, so that the Senate is as responsive as possible to the will of the people. I plan to introduce a constitutional amendment this week to require special elections when a Senate seat is vacant, as the Constitution mandates for the House, and as my own state of Wisconsin already requires by statute. As the Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee, I will hold a hearing on this important topic soon.”

He explained on WPR this morning that what works for Wisconsin will of course work for all of the other fifty states. Because, I guess, we know a lot more than you guys do about managing your own affairs.

You'll thank us later.

Run down south and get some sun

Little Monkey has fully internalized Wisconsin humor. This is natural - whatever memories he has of Texas and it's warm, balmy breezes, the rolling black prairie burning under a bronze sun ... they're faint and distant. All he knows is snow, ice, long winters and summers that are perfect but far too short.

Anyway.

Monkey and I were watching the weatherman on the local news. I was paying minimal attention - cold today, cold tomorrow yadda-yadda. He jabbed me.

We should go to Fond Du Lac.

Hunh? Why?

It's warm there.

And he smiled.  It was 7 in Fond Du Lac. It was 1 here.

So I guess to warm up we'll just run south to Fond Du Lac and take in the sun, ya betcha.