Click license plate for story.

'24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not'

Sure, the shirts were on their property, but BY WHAT RIGHT did these officials believe that they had the power to confiscate a bunch of clothing because they didn't like the message on the shirts?

Former Vice President Al Gore, pledging to help John Kerry fight 'outrageous and misleading' Republican attacks, said Wednesday that he will donate more than $6 million to various Democratic Party groups.
...
Gore, who has been relatively quiet since then, said in the statement: "The outcome of the election is extremely important for the future of our country.

Translation: I'll spend whatever it takes to make sure that bitch Hillary doesn't wind up back in the White House.

Oh, and about Sen. Kerry's mentioning that his purchase of a Chrysler 300M because it was "important for his family to buy American cars ":

Chrysler 300M and 300M Special are manufactured at DaimlerChrysler's Brampton, Ontario, assembly plant

I guess he never bothered to look at the car's window sticker.

This was in the papers on Friday, but found it entertaining enough to still pass on. It was written up in a lot of places, but the New York Daily News gave the most details. I saw all the flashing lights in the park on my way home, but didn't detour across to see what was going on. They have been repaving the road, so I just figured that someone had fallen on the chopped up pavement.

I guess you do see thing in New York City that you wouldn't see elsewhere... Especially if you are birdwatching.

Gay lovers go out on limb

"Two lovers, naked as jaybirds and apparently as crazy as looneybirds, climbed a tree in Central Park yesterday - and put on a bizarre four-hour show that drew cops and hundreds of gawkers. "
...
"At one point, the older of the couple broke off a branch and threatened to throw it at cops, before demanding a vanilla diet Pepsi.
When police handed up a regular old diet Pepsi, the 32-year-old hurled the can to the ground, screamed, "Vanilla!" and declared, "What I say goes!" "
...
"Yesterday's surreal antics prompted tourists like Louise Sharp, 24, of Scotland to change their sightseeing plans.
"We were going to go to the Empire State Building, but we thought we'd stay here instead," Sharp said. "

Continuing a discussion about John Kerry's taxes, "texcritic" writes:

I would guess that the property taxes on Kerry's homes are paid by his wife. As someone said, you can't really tell much when one spouce's returns are not disclosed.

Kerry claimed to have a 1/2 interest in his 6-million dollar Mass home (which he mortgaged for $6 Million. His income tax forms don't show any deduction for local property taxes, so I guess he didn't pay his share of the property taxes.

Here comes my question that it will likely take a tax & a campaign finance lawywer to answer: If Theresa is paying John's half of the income tax on a property that he mortgaged to finance his campaign, does this equal an improper in-kind donation to his campaign in violation of campaign finance laws?

[I'm assuming for this question that the ~8,000 deduction for local taxes that Sen. Kerry took on his Schedule A is merely his Mass state income tax.]

This week: The Comedian on eBay:

Canon EOS 10s (Up to 5 FPS!), a Canon RC-1 Wireless Remote, a Nikon AS-15, EOS 28mm 2.8 EF Lens, EOS 50mm 1.8 EF Lens (x2), a Canon RA-N3 Remote Switch Adapter & a few car brochures.

I'm not giving up on film, I'm just sticking to the FD system for now.

Call for wording

I made the following graphic at the suggestion of a Freeper, but I'm stuck for further wording, if any, that it needs to be finished. Ideas? Send to me @ "comedian" at my new gmail.com address.

Let the games begin.

A top Vatican cardinal said Friday that priests must deny communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights, but stopped short of saying whether it was right for John Kerry to receive communion.

Kerry Says His 'Family' Owns SUV, Not He.

I don't own an SUV. The family has it. I don't have it

I wonder it this would work for people caught holding illicit contraband.

     "I don't own twenty kilos of cocaine. The family has it. I don't have it."

The article continues

Kerry thought for a second when asked whether his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, had a Suburban at their Ketchum, Idaho, home. Kerry said he owns and drives a Dodge 600 and recently bought a Chrysler 300M. He said his wife owns the Chevrolet SUV.

First off, how can Kerry afford a new car with that $6 Million loan costing him more each month than he makes?

And a Dodge 600? Come on, I don't think those things have been made in 15+ years.

Here's how I'll tell the world about my new email account.

FWIW, and not to be insensitive, but the pictures for which a military contactor was fired for taking were not of coffins, rather they were flag draped Human Remains Transfer Cases.

Future headline: School Sued After Student Burns Down Home

First it was the french fries. Then it was the potato chips and candy bars.

Now, the Dover school system will be serving hot lunch without the buns for hot dogs, hamburgers or chicken patties.
...
Food service professionals also are hoping to change fund-raisers so students sell non-food items like candles rather than brownies, cakes, pies or candy bars to raise money.

Really now, have any of these people ever witnessed how reckless & infatuated kids can be with candles, matches, lighters and fire in general? Is a skinny, burned to death child better than an obese living one?

Better Dead Than Fed

Eating votes, that's a bad thing, right?

I came up with this one as a joke, but a few comments over on FR made me think I should actually put it on some products.

If this is real then it's time to start cleaning the rats out of La Mirada, California.

Rep. Hostettler caught in a lie about the loaded gun he was caught trying to bring on to a US Airways flight.

...

Glocks do not have external safeties. His statement is the equivalent of stating, "Well, I didn't have my finger on the trigger."

Shame on you Rep. Hostettler, shame on you.

The Comedian on ebay

This week, Canon EOS 650 camera body, Canon EOS 750 (with lens) & a Canon Speedlite 300EZ.

 
for·a·gainst - adverb.

1. To be both for and against something at the same time: e.g. “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” (Glen Johnson, “Kerry Blasts Bush On Protecting Troops,” The Boston Globe, 3/17/04)

This must be the source of many of the "nuances" Kerry is famous for.

From GeorgeWBush.com.

More funnies: Guess whether these movie review quotes are about Kill Bill vol. 2 or are about The Passion Of the Christ

You'd figure that if a group of Al Quaeda got caught red handed with a bunch of weapons of mass destruction you would have heard of it by now.

Right?

Oh, that's right, it doesn't fit into the liberal media mantra "There's no WMD, Bush lied."

Brilliant, brilliant funny stuff be here.       [Found via C&S]

Heh.

 

A shot I grabbed of my VW Jetta a few weeks ago. I liked it so much I set up Jetta posters & postcards over on Cafepress using this picture.

 

My new favorite TV quote.

        "I'll let my sledgehammer figure it out for me."
                                      -- Bill Dauterive on King Of The Hill.

As promised here is a sample image scan from my new/used Polaroid SprintScan 35 Plus. Click the image to see a 1:1 portion of the image at the full resolution of the scanner. For reference, the image showing the board represents about 95% of a full 35mm frame.

I made this graphic up for my wife. My wife, who is herself a damn smart and successful graduate of a top 5 law school says, "I want to be Dr. Rice when I grow up."

 

  Today's Deal of the Day

Apparently the USPS, now that it is out of the business of running its own fleet of airlines, is selling off all of its Air Cargo ULD containers. They have over 4000 of them for sale at 25+ locations around the country. Rumor has it they are selling for under $200 a piece. Photos and more info @ DoveBid - Air Cargo ULD Containers. Weatherproof. These would make a great shed or out building for whatever purpose you have. Heck, in a pinch you could probably live in one of these. 10'W x 7'L x 7'H. (Each weighs ~600 lbs, so you'll need a way to pick it up and get it home.)

 

A classic that deserves to be revisited: A Nation of Cowards.

I know what I'll do, I'll attack one of the most beloved companies in the world. Just think of the publicity...

[Click image for a link to story.]

A closer look at Senator Two Face's taxes and medical costs.

Amazingly this AP theme piece on Gas Prices mentions that "The national average is a record in nominal terms but is well below the inflation-adjusted peaks reached in March 1981.", but it fails to mention several other salient points on the issue. A knowledgable (Ex-?) truck driver posting in the Yahoo Message board for this article brings perspective that the AP doesn't.

I used to haul gasoline in California. There are about 40 different grades of gas for various markets. You can't burn San Francisco gas in Los Angeles, nor Sacramento gas in San Diego. You also can't build new refineries so all are operating at 100% or higher. Any slow down for maintenance or whatever and the prices spike because every refinery is set up for its special market and can't produce what is needed in the next town.

Did you ever notice that when the prices spike, all the politicians holler that the oil companies are raping the people. However, the same politicians will tack on a penny or two extra tax every time the prices tumble. No one notices that the taxes increase every time the price hits rock bottom. That tax is still there when the price returns to normal.

In an article about a bill proposing to set a standard on & potentially create liability for high speed police chases comes this interesting perspective

Currently, the law prohibits lawsuits against police for negligence as long as there is a written policy on pursuits. [California State Senator] Aanestad said the lawsuit threat in his legislation would make officers think twice before beginning an unnecessarily dangerous chase.

Aanestad, an oral surgeon, made the comparison to a doctor who can be sued for malpractice but nevertheless still treats people in emergency situations.

'I have lived my whole life putting people to sleep and doing surgery on them, realizing that any mistake can jeopardize my career and the life of somebody else. And that doesn't stop you from doing your job.'

For many this is true, but for quite a few doctors that exact threat, through the indirect vehicle of insurance premiums, has caused quite a few doctors to choose to stop doing their jobs. Does Senator Aanestad want to start forcing police officers to start making similar value judgments?

I don't know whether to be horrified or joyous at the recognition, but something I created generated a reference over at Fleshbot.[NOT safe for work.]

In a post entitled "Amazon's Sex Guides" Fleshbot saw fit to mention my "So you'd like to... Bring Yourself to Orgasm " guide that I wrote as a total goof quite a while ago.

Amazing that the guide has been read 2,000 times.

Tuba Boy = maximizer.

Tuba Boy just sent the following picture this morning, which he captioned, "Ooops, who forgot to turn off the water?" I wonder if I'll get this up on the web before he gets to work?

(NYC street photo taken with Tuba Boy's Treo 600)

Tax Freedom Day 2004, the earliest it has been since 1967. Unfortunately, however, NCAA basketball isn't the only thing Connecticut is #1 in.

The Comedian on ebay

This week: Electronic Outburst Platinum Edition, Magic Hat "Chaotic Chemistry" Bottle, and a mess of car brochures.

Gov. Schwarzenegger Wants a Part-Time Legislature

I want to make the Legislature a part-time Legislature," the governor said. "Spending so much time in Sacramento, without anything to do, then out of that comes strange bills. I like them when they're scrambling and they really have to work hard. Give them a short period of time. Then good work gets done, rather than hanging. That's when they start getting creative with things.

Awesome.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, Tuba Boy clearly is still my co-blogger, I simply dropped his name from the latest banner logo because I didn't want anyone to think that the picture was of the two of us.

Want to turn your 35mm camera into an 9+ megapixel digital camera and you want to do it on the cheap?

Eckerd Drug's photo labs are liquidating their old film/slide scanners on ebay for what truly qualifies as firesale prices. I picked up a Polaroid SprintScan 35 Plus (A 2700 dpi model) for $57.01 plus shipping. Seven years ago this was a $1,400 dollar scanner. You'll need to buy (or have) a SCSI card to make it work, but you can pick those up pretty cheap too.

I don't have any scans handy on the machine I'm using right now, but I'll post a few later on.

In keeping with the tax theme, I feel the need to point out the New York City Marriage Tax Penalty, which piggy backs on the New York State Marriage Tax Penalty.

In short, if two people in New York City, making about $100,000 each, get married, their city and state taxes go up over $2500. Yup, get married, pay $2500 more in taxes.
The penalty starts to phase in with a combined income of $150,000, where the immediate penalty is over $600.

The basic problem in the tax equation, is that above $150,000 combined income, New York State and New York City drop the normal graduated tax scale, and hit YOUR ENTIRE INCOME with a FLAT TAX. Thus, where everyone else pays a certain percent on their first $65,000, etc., once you break the limit, BANG, you pay a full (and higher) amount.
(Thus, although rare, the case exists where a couple making $600 less than another couple, but with the split of $150,000 in the middle of their income, the lower earning couple actually makes more!)

I found a good, but somewhat complex (probably too many numbers for a lot of people) article posted by nyfiscalwatch.com which explains the system in detail.

In combination with the article The Comedian posted about how states are getting better at collecting taxes, maybe someone should think about making the system more fair. There really is no good reason for the marriage penalty tax at all.

A simple fix would be just let people still file normal single individual, instead of a married but penalized separately. But no, we need to keep a silly system that benefits couples with divergent incomes, and burn the ones with similar salaries. Does it make sense to you? It doesn't to me.

The many homes of Democrat Presidential candidate, John F. Kerry.

Jealous, no. But I do question how someone with all this ostentatious & highly visible wealth could possibly be a man "of the people."

Every now and then I come with an idea that I think may turn out to be brilliant, but towards which I am far too uninspired to put forth any effort researching it to either prove or disprove it.

My latest idea is what I want to call "The ebay Effect."

Much has been made about the effect ebay has had on shattering market entry costs & flattening the difference between dealers, hobbyists, resellers & shoppers, but I think that there may be a (secondary isn't the right word, so I'll call it) corollary effect that ebay is having on the labor market in this country.

Ebay makes it very easy to enter almost any market as a small businessman, so easy that one could quite easily change from supplanting income with an ebay shop to using ebay as a primary income source without the government becoming any the wiser. A laid off person could shift rather seamlessly from casual ebaying (for extra money, or just to get rid of junk) to full-time (or at least enough-to-pay-the-bills-time) ebaying without ever showing up on a government database as having found a job to replace the one that was lost.

(There are other very low cost of creation jobs available through affiliate programs, royalty programs and advertising programs, but mostly I think ebay has created this effect, if it exists.)

Every liberal media critic of President Bush likes to speak of people who have fallen off of the unemployment rolls because they've stopped looking for a job, but no one seems to be checking to see if these people have leveraged the internet to create their own, off-the-books replacement income sources.

As for me, I'm still working full time at the daily grind, but I make enough on my secondary activities that if my wife and I both lost our jobs we'd still be able to afford a place to live and plenty of food. And hardly anybody reads my pitiful blog.

Again, I wonder if people really have an idea what the term Orwellian means?

New Software Seeking State Tax Scofflaws

...
LeBovidge says it's unfair to call database-mining Orwellian.

'We're asking people to pay their taxes that are legitimately due,' he said. 'And if we don't have people pay the taxes that are due, then we have to ask the people that are stepping forward to pay more. And that's not fair.'

LeBovidge now unabashedly dreams of a day when people won't even have to fill out their income tax forms: The government will have so much information about people's finances that it can simply fill out tax forms and mail them to taxpayers to be endorsed.

Now that's Orwellian.

The CANON DL2000 scam cam.

Really, why isn't somebody from Canon USA using the ebay trademark protection scheme?

More on the Scam Cam

Some ebay sellers resort to titling their auctions as being for Cannon cameras, instead of Canon cameras. Also, I note that this listing for the scam cam is for the "Q 5200" model.