"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

Stay the fuck off the road, money...

Walnuts McCain dropped another banger today. Speech on... well, I dunno, really. Purportedly on some means to jumpstart the economy. Democrats characterized as tax and spenders, blow money on monuments to Woodstock guarded by black separatist revolutionary communists or somesuch. "Oh, they'll build a wall around our economy and stop the free flow of... und so weiter."

So mostly it was the usual claptrap. But, as Salon's Andrew Leonard points out, the central point of the speech seems to be the alleviation of the gasoline tax for the summer. Now, of course, this is a short term measure meant to provide a short term boost for the economy. But, really, where's the presidential candidate who will tell the American people what they really don' wanna hear?

That cheap oil ain't comin' back. Me and you, we're old enough fogies to remember fillin' up the parents' cars after a night downtown with whatever change was left on us coming back from the coffee shop. Them days is done and done. China's on pace to consume ten million barrels a day by 2025, and... doesn't India have sub-2000 dollar cars?

All that's to say, we're not getting back to a "comfortable" price per gallon in the foreseeable future. Sure, there's some dissenters, but even they won't go so far as to say we're going back to anything anywhere close to what Americans think they're entitled to pay. And even if his little gas tax cut work, it wouldn't help. Taxes account for only--what?--fifteen percent of the cost of a gallon? Sheeeeeit. It costs my ass forty bucks to fill up my Focus here in Cville. That's gonna save me six bucks. Woo. That's not gas price relief. That's a pack of cigarettes and a twenty-two of Pilsner Urqell.

So one of the candidates needs to tell Americans to sit back and observe where they at. Or, more pointedly: "Stay the fuck off the road, money." Walk your fat ass to the bus stop. Solves our fuel problem and our obesity epidemic at the same time. Or bike. Or at least buy a more fuel efficient car. And we need the car companies making better cars. Why does this seem so easy to me? Reinvestment in national infrastructure, focused effort to wean ourselves from oil. These things will create jobs and drive our economy into the future. If the Dems run on the future, being the party of the future, there's no way Walnuts stands a chance. Hell, there's even room for Clinton on the ticket in that case (in the veep slot). She's the extension of the Bridge to the 21st Century. And BarryHussein is the other side of that bridge.