for the Tax Day Thread and for contacting Ender about the spam-bots.

Wherever you are going have fun.

And in all seriousness, the top 1% ONLY reaped two thirds the gains made in the last economic expansion.  (as per www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm Center on Budget & Policy Priorities).  They really need more.  Why are all these greedy poor & middle class Americans holding back on giving our oligarch leaders their fair due.....all of it.  Everything.  And the really sad John Galt aspect of it is that even if they did get it all, even if they did get everything, they'd still bitch about getting shafted and not getting enough.

That is what the Tea Partiers are protesting for.

 That problem of paying off debts after the birth of a nation.... or how to  pay the soldiers that fought for 'freedom' from the Brits.

 The delima of paying the debts of a new nation,  and the soldiers who fought the Revolutionary War created a familiar problem, somehow the new nation had to raise money to pay for itself and to pay the soldiers who fought the war of the revolution.

 Veterans of the Continental Army  also aggrieved because they had been conscripted, had to fight with no pay!  Once discharged they were treated poorly some even locked up in debtors prison.

 How to pay of the debt for the Revolutionary War? A Whiskey Tax but there was a backlash/ The taxes of the newly liberated spurred the whiskey rebellion. The farmers who used their excess grain to make Whiskey were angry that elite urbanites would dare tax their products. The urbanites were looking for ways to pay the war debt and the conscripted soldiers who fought for Independence for this new nation.

James Madison addressed this concept by stating that "Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as the abuses of power." 

 IN other words, not only those in power can abuse their position, but individuals can be found guilty of the same, essentially acting recklessly and irresponsibly.

 Our first President, George Washington,  took to his horse and rode into battle to fight the unruly commoners that refused to pay their taxes, in the battle known as the Whiskey Rebellion. Washington was sending a message to those drunk with liberation that in order to have a union you have to pay for it somehow. The war over taxes is nothing new.

I knew it was a lie at the time, but now we know the truth:

Obama Issues Directive to Shut Down Guantánamo

Published: January 21, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Obama signed executive orders Thursday directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within a year, government officials said.

...

we're still waiting, Mr. President.  Do your executive orders mean anything?  Thus far it seems that they don't.  Keeping Gitmo open is just another example of how Obama is just like Bush.  The only difference is that Bush was at least honest about it.

In other news ...

Gitmo Gets Its Groove Back

President Obama's inability to follow-through on his promise to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay has, remarkably, put him in line with the American public.

According to a new CNN/Opinion Research poll, support for closing Gitmo has dropped 12 points since Obama took office, and now sits at 39 percent.

...

Hmm.

Obama was going to make government more trusted, or so he seemed to say. The results are in:

President Obama Goes Golfing... Again

We've been hearing for years from Barack Obama that he would be the one to restore confidence in government.  Well, the results are in and things are not exactly going as planned.

 

A new Pew Research Center poll shows that only 22 percent of Americans say they trust the government; an overwhelming 76 percent say they trust the government only sometimes or not at all.

Now by comparison the average level of confidence in the government during the Bush administration, well, that was 37 percent — which was the most trusted administration since the Reagan years when 42 percent sided with their government.

By the way, only 33 percent of Democrats say they trust the government. So looks like the Anointed One and his party have some work to do before the November elections.

...

And remember how everyone used to complain about Bush not being on the job enough?  Well, it seems Obama has been spending more time golfing in the first year that Bush did in eight:

Gone Golfin'

The president may not be setting any records for restoring trust in government any time soon. But he has been able to put his name in the history books, well, for other reasons.

This weekend marked the 32nd time the Anointed One has stepped on to the golf course as president. And get this, after just a year in office he's already played eight more rounds of golf than George W. Bush played during his entire eight years.

The president was scheduled to travel to Poland for the funeral of that nation's president who was killed in a plane crash last week, but because of the volcanic eruption in Iceland, he had to scrap his plans.

I'm glad he was able to find something constructive to do with all that free time. What about maybe creating jobs?

Well said.

someone finally tells the truth about Waco.  We all knew it but no one would confirm it.  Bill Clinton was actually the butcher of Waco, not Janet Reno as we had all been led to believe.  Dick Morris finally comes clean:

Limbaugh runs with Dick Morris' dubious Clinton-Reno-Waco story

From the April 19 edition of Fox News' Hannity:

MORRIS: And let's understand what was Timothy McVeigh's motivation. God knows what was going in that crazy head of his but there's some speculation, and he himself had said, that it was the reaction to the Waco takeover. And Bill Clinton orchestrated that takeover. And in fact was so ashamed at what he did in Waco that he was not gonna appoint Janet Reno to a second four year term. And she told him in a meeting right before the inauguration day for his new term that 'if you don't appoint me, I'm gonna tell the truth about Waco.' And that forced Clinton's hand in reappointing her. So I think Mr. --

MORRIS: I have no idea. But I know that he told me, Clinton told me, that 'I couldn't not appoint Reno because she would have turned on me over Waco.' That's the phrase he used.

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): I don't remember you telling this story before.

MORRIS: No, it's never been said before.

HANNITY: Woah.

MORRIS: I think that President Clinton might want to examine his own connection with the Oklahoma City bombing in terms of Waco before he starts accusing people in walkers and wheelchairs who are trying to keep their Medicare of being provocateurs.

HANNITY: So, what was the truth about Waco that Reno threatened to use against him?

Media Matters is trying to pull their typical left-wing CYA for Clinton but it just doesn't wash.  The best they could do to attack the new revelations was to point out how "drastically different" Morris' story was this time from one of his accounts in his books.

From Because He Could: [emphasis added]

Reno's loyalty in assuming the blame for Waco in 2000, years after the event, might have its origin in an interesting conversation she had with Clinton in the first few weeks of his second term. As I've noted elsewhere, Clinton told me that he despised Reno; he once told us that her appointment was the "worst mistake" he had ever made. As he shaped his second-term cabinet, he told me he was going to fire her. He sent her every signal of this intention, reappointing or replacing every one of his cabinet members but her. Clinton was obviously hoping that she would resign, to make it easier to get rid of her. But he couldn't get her to quit. So he scheduled a face-to-face meeting with her, at which, he told me, he planned to fire her.

Instead, he decided to let her stay.

Dumbfounded, I asked him why. "I told her," Clinton said, "that no attorney general had ever served for eight years, and that I thought it was not a good idea for anyone to do so. But she was desperate to keep the job. She says she'll quit [as attorney general] after a year -- but she begged me to reappoint her first, so it won't look like I was firing her because of Waco."

I thought it odd that Reno and Clinton should still be talking about Waco, almost four years after the raid. But the very mention of the issue suggests that another dynamic might have been at play here: Reno may well have been demanding reappointment as her price for taking the fall for Waco-- shouldering the responsibility that should have been his. [pp. 56-57]

Umm, yea.  Those two accounts are "drastically different".  The only difference I see is that this time Morris confirms that Clinton actually told him this rather than beating around the bush to give Clinton continued cover (or possibly fearing some form of physical danger should he expose the truth at the time).  Now that Clinton appears to be neutered in terms of his controlling interest in the Democrat goon squads, I guess Morris feels safe enough to finally come clean.

I had one many years ago.  An old Mac IIci.  But I've had two PC's since so relearning the 'mac' way is intersting.  I have to say I'm impressed.  A very nice toy.  I don't game much so I won't miss that.  Been thinking of loading Windows 7 for those programs that only come out in PC.  We'll see.

The world is OK right now,  The calm before the storm.  Elections too close.  Politicians & party's start making less & less sense.  And don't get me started on those Sarah Palin enthusiasts....

 Why are you not demonstrating and getting people out in mass to support ending too big to fail and some regulation of banks? 

Seriously. That should be your big issue. It was the geniuses at the big bank investment firms that busted the economy and had to come groveling for your tax payer dollars. The bankers got the bailout money. I thought that was your pet issue...... the bailouts.

 I don't understand why the tea party people aren't camped out in front of Goldman Sachs, demanding and end to privatizing the profits and socializing the risk.

Linking this here as I think it might be of interest to some of us, and I 've not read it yet and don't want to lose the link ;-)

 I find myself in agreement with Glenn Beck. He states that the NYC Times square bomber has a constitutional right to be read his Miranda Rights since he is a US citizen.

 Good for Glenn. He is correct. I praise him for taking this stand which is contrary to most of his cohorts on Fox.

 "The others" are insisting that since this was an act of terrorism the guy should lose his citizenship? No that is not the way it works. Tim McVeigh was tried and convicted as US citizen. You don't revoke your citizenship when you commit a crime.