Archive for 2020

AH, BOOKWORM, YOU MUST REMEMBER INTERNET ARGUING IS A SPECTATOR SPORT. YOU’RE NOT CONVINCING THE CRAZY, BUT YOU’RE GIVING SUPPORT TO THOSE WHO DISAGREE AND DON’T DARE SPEAK, AND ALSO CONVINCING THOSE ON THE FENCE. KEEP FIGHTING:  The Trump haters and Biden lovers are irritating me.

A REAL TAX EXPERT, NOT FROM TWITTER UNIVERSITY, SPEAKS:  No, You Idiots. That’s Not How Taxes Work. – An Accountant’s Guide To Why You Are a Gullible Moron.

Worth reading, but in my opinion this type of image is why he’s a RETIRED accountant and makes far bigger bucks off fiction:

Trump has those resources. I bet he’s got a room full of accountants, and their leader is probably a grizzled old CPA with an eye patch and a raven who sits on his shoulder. The raven also has an eye patch and an accounting degree. This man has wrestled bears, and he’s going to take advantage of every tax break in the US Code for his client, and do so gleefully, knowing that many of those laws were signed by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: If your protest blocks and attacks a car, you’re going to get run down. And you’l probably deserve it, too. “If you stand in front of a running automobile while your friends are physically attacking it, you’re probably going to get run over. By that point, the fight-or-flight instincts of the driver have taken over.”

IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, EVEN: Meet A Secret Trump Voter: ‘Being a lesbian who’s voting for Trump is like coming out of the closet again.’ With a greater risk of violence. “Readers of this newspaper who conjure an image of a Trump voter probably think of people like Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the couple who pointed guns at protesters outside their St. Louis home in late June. But if Trump defies current polling and wins again, it’ll be thanks to a discreet base of support from voters like Chris, who fit into none of the cultural or demographic stereotypes of the Trump base.”

Plus:

Then there’s the pandemic. “Is Trump trying to play it down?” she asks. “Yeah. But when this first started, the news media was saying that millions of people were going to die. And look at it: 200,000, compared to the population.”

What worries her more are the effects of the response to the pandemic in a liberal city like New York. “Crime is in my neighborhood now. There’s a homeless encampment near me that’s growing and growing. They have a living room and a shower curtain and that’s where they go to the bathroom. I have a guy who walks in front of the store every day. In a diaper! And there’s lawlessness coming into the store every day, with an attitude of ‘Who’s gonna stop me?’” Regarding Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, she adds, “I can’t put into words how inept this guy is.”

Heh. Indeed. Also: “If the Democratic Party and its allies can’t hold on to a voter like Chris, who else might they be losing?”

WHEN A RULING CLASS HATES THE COUNTRY IT RULES. On Facebook, Hiawatha Bray writes:

I was watching Monday Night Football when they were playing promos for Hulu. I heard a line of dialog come over the speaker; I wasn’t actually looking at the screen at that moment, but I heard the dialog and was appalled.

“You know why America loves a crime story? Because America is a crime story.”

No. America, for all her many imperfections, is not a crime story.

And it is a deep wrong for wealthy and powerful people to transmit such an awful message to our countrymen. Want to know why we’re in so much trouble? Because we’ve produced a national elite who cheerfully broadcast such rubbish, and spit on the achievements of those who’ve gone before us.

I remember Medgar Evers. He was a veteran who served his country, came home, and wasn’t allowed to vote. So in his spare time, when he wasn’t at work selling insurance, he served as Mississippi field secretary of the NAACP, and registered black people to vote.

And he was shot in the back at his own front door by a white man, in an act of damnable cowardice. Now that’s a crime story.

But Evers was buried at Arlington, with full military honors. Within two years, the voting rights he demanded were protected by federal law. And 31 years after Evers was killed, the man who did it was convicted of murder and would die in prison.

Because I don’t live in a crime story. I live in the United States of America.

Our ruling class continues to inject this poison because it hates the country it rules. It’s all Gramscian Damage.

WELL, THAT’S ENCOURAGING: Office 365 outage ongoing after roll back fails.

UPDATE: Microsoft Office 365, Azure plagued by disruptions for hours: Many users unable to connect to popular collaboration software, cloud system. “The company initially said it had identified the Office 365 problem it linked to a recent change to the software, and restored an earlier version. That fix, however, failed to restore normal service, the Redmond, Wash.-based company said. About two hours later the company said it was seeing improvements after putting in place mitigation steps.”

SEEN ON FACEBOOK: “I’m looking forward to seeing Trump debate Chris Wallace tomorrow evening…”

WELL, EVEN THE NYT’S TICK-TOCK PIECE SHOWED SELF-DEFENSE: Kyle Rittenhouse’s Defense Team Releases New Video. “One thing that’s become slightly clearer since I previously wrote about the case is how the conflict between Rittenhouse and those pursuing him got started. We at least have a plausible theory on that now: The first individual Rittenhouse killed, Joseph Rosenbaum, may have confused him with a different civilian — also wearing a green shirt and carrying a rifle — or become angry that Rittenhouse was putting out fires. After a civilian used a fire extinguisher to put out a fire that protesters had started in a dumpster, Rosenbaum yelled at the other green-shirted man, who apparently was standing nearby. Rittenhouse was also seen carrying a fire extinguisher shortly before Rosenbaum started chasing him.”

Yeah, putting out fires is doubleplusungood.

FLASHBACK: How The Bidens Dodged The Payroll Tax. “They used an S-corp to avoid paying more than $500,000 in levies for Medicare and ObamaCare.”

PRACTICE, PRACTICE: Battle of the Preppers. A brief history of the pros who prep the candidates for presidential debates.

OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.

OPEN THREAD: Discuss the events of the day.

UPDATE: Oops — this was supposed to be sked for tomorrow. But by the time I noticed, too many people had already commented to just reschedule it. Enjoy your double open threads.