Category — Uncategorized

Mustang Bobby has a nice piece on the thirtieth anniversary of Jonestown, the first of many major cult suicide/murder pacts in recent history.

The deal was supposed to be that in exchange for putting up with hurricanes six months of the year we didn’t have to put up with ice and snow. Well, thanks to global climate change I will be moving plants inside, putting the tent over my Mother’s water garden, ensuring that the light bulb I use to warm the concrete slab for the feral cats is working, putting a bigger bulb in my Mother’s shed where the paint and some of her plants will be stored, and a dozen other things that are required when we have a FREEZE down here.

I know it helps to kill the fleas and the fireants, but my house is designed for cooling, not heating, and then for a twenty degree variance, not the forty to fifty degrees that will be needed tonight. We have air conditioners, not furnaces. Just a few days ago it was 82°.

Based on the temperature map I think Fallenmonk can forget about fresh picked tomatoes for Thanksgiving.

John McKay noted that It’s that time of year, with the Christianists firing the first shot in the annual War Against The War On Christmas™.

Newsday reports on the next assault out in Suffolk County, Long Island: Patchogue parade loses fireworks in ‘Christmas’ dispute

Grucci, which donated $5,000 in fireworks to last year’s parade, will not assist with the event if “Christmas” is not in the title, said Grucci vice president Philip Butler.

“They are using all the themes of Christmas and plagiarizing all those themes and not using the name,” said Butler, who has campaigned in the past against what he describes as the secularization of Christmas.
…

Of Patchogue’s lack of fireworks, Mayor Paul Pontieri said: “When I think about fireworks, I don’t think about Christmas anyway – I think about the Fourth of July.”

[Read more →]

Personal service corporations pay a flat 35%
[Yes, the table is correct and things are that screwed up.]

The Standard Deduction is $5,350 and the Personal Exemption is $3,400, so the first $8,750 isn’t actually subject to any income tax.

[Read more →]

Just in time to keep the Baptists off my Mother’s lawn tomorrow, the pump is in and working.  I replaced the breaker on the circuit with a GFCI – type.  Not cheap, but cheaper that using separate GFCI sockets in all of the external outlets.  I also installed an extra ground to the outside breaker box I used to replace the switch on the pump.

I overdid it, but it would have been a shame if one of those Baptists was electrocuted by a lawn sprinkler after parking illegally.

The Ig Nobel prizes have been awarded. Go to CNN for the explanations, because the Annals of Improbable Research, which awards them, is hammered with traffic.

A contender in the future has to be this piece of British research: Sick leave ‘link to early death’. According to the BBC story they have discovered: people who get sick die before people who don’t.  [I blame it on the break down in extended families – normally your grandmother would explain this to you, usually after the death of a pet.]

Hank’s New Ride

It’s ready to roll out of the garage as soon as the House falls into line.

Robert Peston finds something puzzling: B&B collapse to cost City £9bn

All of which begs a big question: why on earth didn’t those big banks club together to rescue B&B rather than let it collapse and be nationalised.

Surely that would have been cheaper for them.

Their apparent inability to act collectively for their common good is not altogether encouraging.

The City in the UK = Wall Street in the US. £9bn = $16.6 billion US. Financial Services Compensation Scheme [FSCS] in the UK = Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation [FDIC] in the US.

The FSCS and FDIC are both funded by the financial institutions they insure, not tax dollars. If the money runs out, the banks get an assessment for more.  Wall Street and The City have not been acting in their own best interests, and that’s why governments have to get involved.

MSNBC tells us that Citigroup buying Wachovia banking operations

NEW YORK – In the latest byproduct of the widening global financial crisis, Citigroup Inc. will acquire the banking operations of Wachovia Corp. in a deal facilitated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Citigroup will absorb up to $42 billion of losses from Wachovia’s $312 billion loan portfolio, with the FDIC covering any remaining losses, the government agency said Monday. Citigroup also will issue $12 billion in preferred stock and warrants to the FDIC.

The FDIC says that Wachovia didn’t “fail” and they just “assisted” in the purchase. Yeah, right.

This was the last of the major banks with problems, so what is Congress mucking about for?

When in doubt about tax matters, consult the IRS, which tells us that “The Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004 set a uniform definition of a qualifying child, beginning for Tax Year 2005”.

Residence — has the same principal residence as the taxpayer for more than half the tax year. Exceptions apply, in certain cases, for children of divorced or separated parents, kidnapped children, temporary absences, and for children who were born or died during the year.

Registering to vote can affect tax status.

I told you that there were substantial reasons not to like Palin, and Paul Krugman scores a direct hit: she’s a cat phobic.

Also at Crooks and Liars: Obama Reverses Positions on 527s.

While it is nice the Democrats have accepted the real world, waiting this long means that the outside organizations have no time to raise the money to be really effective. They have spent months casting aside natural allies and cutting off the sources of funding, and now they have the funds and can’t help because of the finance laws.

SilentPatriot at Crooks and Liars is misinforming people in the post on Montgomery county, Virginia election officials warning students:

It reads, in part: “The Code of Virginia states that a student must declare a legal residence in order to register. A legal residence can be either a student’s permanent address from home or their current college residence. By making Montgomery County your permanent residence, you have declared your independence from your parents and can no longer be claimed as a dependent on their income tax filings — check with your tax professional. If you have a scholarship attached to your former residence, you could lose this funding. And, if you change your registration to Montgomery County, Virginia Code requires you to change your driver’s license and car registration to your present address within 30 days.”

The information on the taxes can vary, but is often true depending on the way taxes are filed. You need to consult your parents before you do it.

[Read more →]

UPDATE: This is the new data through the 8^th, and they have shifted down from a top temperature of 33° to 32°. There is still a huge pool of warmer water in the Western Gulf.

This is what the Gulf looked like on the 6^th, and based on the new track forecasting for Ike which is pointing at central to south Texas, it isn’t good news for weakening the storm prior to landfall unless it is really moving slowly and churns up the Gulf, bringing up the cooler water underneath.

There is a ridge of high pressure that currently runs from Brownsville, Texas [26N,97W] across the Gulf to the Atlantic East of Lake Okeechobee [27N,81W -the big dot on the maps of South Florida]. Ike will be bouncing along that ridge, which is why all of the tracks now turn the storm from West-Northwest to West after it enters the Gulf.