"I consider this case closed."

K:

Meant to get at you about Liebs: clearly an object of scorn round here. I was giggling bout this the other day. Turns out Ned Lamont was not responsible for Joe's website crashing back in the summer of '06. Investigators determined Joe was. "I consider this case closed," says the Senator, and well, he knows better than anyone that there's nothing there to discover! And dismissing the federal investigation as "old news"! A classic!

Suppose we should believe him about future attacks, weapons in the sand, cybercriminals and islamofascists then.

Pictures later.

Aye, I saw the McCain tax-relief bit in the paper. I figured he was just making nice with his right flank. "See, I get it. Any problem, no matter how nutcrushingly vast, can be solved with a tax cut. Right fellas? Fellas?" Ergo all problems will be solved when we have no taxes.

Okay but for real, could he extend the tax holiday to state gas taxes? Because that, smoking and gambling are the only sources of revenue left for PA to plunder. Man, and let's not even talk about how the 400-year-old system of townships up here leads to giant property tax bills, de facto segregation, shit schools and permanent provincialism. Or how about the Philadelphia city income tax. That's right fukkas, the city takes 7 percent of my pay, and feeds it to black mafia. Let's not talk about Imam Shamsud-din Ali, a.k.a. Clarence Fowler either. Or Kenny Gamble. One day.

Nevertheless, my first response was to come up with a tax that solves problems, Northern liberal that I be, and I got one.

Pass a windfall oil tax and prorate it to our commitment in Iraq. 2% cut of industry revenue -- not profit -- for every 140,000 soldiers serving. When we drop to 70,000 troops, the tax drops to 1% of revenue.

Here's the neat part. An escalator built-in to the tax for our continued presence, viz.: one-half percent for every six months. So the tax can't be whittled down to a manageable burden; it sticks around until we're done. And it gradually de-escalates as we pay down the cost of the war.

Charts 'n' graphs: Table 1: Gradual de-escalation, 2008-2013.

Basically, everyone who says that a windfall oil tax can't pay for anything is part right. Taxing profit won't pay for shit; thass feeding off the ass-end. And who wants to do that? Take the food from out they mouths, on the other hand, and you can do things. You can't pay for universal health care. But you can cut into the deficits we've been running. By 2013, the Dark Steer Windfall Tax will be chugging along at 5% of industry revenue, estimated at 2 trillion dollars. So 100 billion. Not a lot, but a start.

I strongly dislike this campaign; I think if Obama runs to his right he's going to look phony. This is the lesson of the "bitterness." And he's doomed to run to his right. I grow weary of crystalballin'.

So, a message to the candidiates: my endorsement is up for grabs, in case any one of you has a brazole big enough to implement the Dark Steer Windfall Tax...

C'mon...who's got the ten-and-a-half?

--
ds