The Frankish Reich

Yes! Fire away. And by the way, a textbook kill shot. Give him a medal.

Exactly. This is a SECURED AREA. This is not someone knocking at the closed door of a dentist office. Oh, and the other protesters outside (the ones who hadn't smashed windows, etc.) were chanting Hang Mike Pence just to ensure that everyone understood that We Come in Peace. I've said it before: I've worked in secured areas within secured facilities. Anyone coming into the building/compound without being screened who then tries to barge into an inner secured area, with a cop/security officer trying to stop them, should be presumed to have ill intent. And then add to that the obvious ill intent that goes with calls to hang someone presumed to be inside.

Was the Capitol Police officer who shot her a human metal detector?

First, thanks for the shoutout in your response. On Babbitt: yes, she was unarmed. But of course she also didn't go through security (nobody did, that was kind of the whole thing), and she did try to smash her way into the inner chambers, obviously ignored a law enforcement officer trying to stop exactly that, and she wasn't exactly a small woman all by herself. So a lot of this is after-the-fact second guessing of a law enforcement officer's decision that deadly force was warranted.

As others have said, you have no idea of how he reacted when the FBI arrived. You would agree that if he brandished a gun they were justified in shooting him? What if he actually pointed a gun at them after they arrived yelling "FBI?" You don't know the facts. I don't either. But his pattern of past behavior suggests that pointing a gun at them is certainly believable.

It has an appeal. But think about business owners. Investments in the business. Business expenses. Etc., etc. Are we going to tax "income" as in "revenue?" Or earnings? And if we're taxing "earnings" we're auditing the write-offs. Just like we do now. Again: Trump (just because we know his situation better than anyone else). He got in trouble by being cheap (and also arguably by trying to conceal an embarrassing fact). He wrote off the Stormy Daniels payoff as a "business expense." Is the New IRS just gonna take his word for it? Or will they have to audit him if there's a pattern of unusual "business expenses?" If getting the IRS off our backs is a big point of tax reform, a flat tax may get us to the 50 yard line, but a total rethink will advance the ball all the way to the goal line.

They actually match really well. Guy who pointed a gun at utility workers before more or less likely to have pointed a gun at federal agents now? And think about it: afraid of 5G. Threatening federal officials. Where have we seen similar patterns of paranoia? And they say this QAnon stuff is all made up by the libs. Yeah. Right. Oh, and notice the Trump supporter in the photo in the article and how he proudly displays a "F*ck Biden" flag. What about all the children who must be protected from such vulgarity!

I'm not so sure. Understand that I am using this as an example, not a political point: Trump's taxes. What "income" counts? Those years he didn't pay income taxes, did he have "income?" It's still a mess. Meanwhile, he consumed. A lot. A VAT is often regressive, but there are ways to at least partly ameliorate that through grants, etc.

Everytime I see the name O'Cyrus I have Cyrus Kouandjio PTSD.

Anecdote: early 80s. I am living in a college dorm. Another very political Republican guy in the dorm thought it was funny to send a letter (remember those?) to a friend in which he covered the envelope with catch phrases like "death to the fascists" "death to Reagan" etc. A joke, apparently to a fellow young Republican. One fine morning a couple of Secret Service agents came knocking at his door down the hall from me ....

I just saw this Doug Burgum/Governor of North Dakota/Republican candidate guy. He's making the right kind of noises about tax policy, so maybe there's hope that at least someone will get a debate going.

I'll have to look at that. Thanks for pointing that out. In general, "flat tax" sounds good, but the devil is in the details. How do you compute income for that flat rate? It becomes very complex, and you sometimes wind up with something just as cumbersome as the current tax code. That's why consumption taxes are generally preferable.

"Early morning raid" (read: service of arrest/search warrant) is normal practice. Anyone making a threat against the President is going to get a visit from federal law enforcement. You should expect that. If you don't, you are a fool.

The last (semi) serious attempt to actually rethink how the USA raises tax revenue was Herman Cain's 9-9-9 thing. It wouldn't have worked as he proposed it, but at least it showed some outside the box thinking. Good luck finding that anywhere in the 14 presidential candidates for 2024.

Right. I've always been one of those "the importance of good special teams is underrated" fans. Neglect them at your own risk.

Right. In a no salary cap/owner will spend whatever it takes world, sure, I'd lock him up. But every extra million spent on him is a million less to spend on the secondary (Poyer and Hyde aren't getting any younger), LB, and of course O line.

What's the over/under on the number of games Tua is able to finish? If by some magic they could be assured that Tua will stay healthy all year, I would be scared of these Dolphins. But the backups are Mike White* and Skylar Thompson. Almost as incredible as them not shoring up the O line to protect a particularly fragile QB is them failing to bring in a competent backup. This will not end well. *And I kind of like Mike White, at least theoretically on an offense that can protect him. That was not the Jets, and it is not the Dolphins.

Yeah, but they also brought in Vlad Ducasse.

WWG1WGA I think that was the code Mike "Flynndicated" Flynn used.

Exactly. There are now two camps of the QAnon adherents. Those who still believe the same nonsense but act like it's ridiculous that others label those beliefs as "QAnon." See Rhino, Deranged and Rhino, Ghost. And those who no longer believe but pretend that they'd never have believed such nonsense in the first place. See Everyone Else. Hmm, you seem to know an awful lot about Q branding ...

Well played. 😀

That's the definition of "pandering." Compromising a core principle because it helps you to win an election.

Kind of what I mean. He found himself an election issued and dived in head first.

Does he? Because he's getting involved in culture wars all over the place to try to boost his brand. As I've pointed out, he's even violating core Republican principles to get his name attached to anything "anti-woke." Why would I believe that he'd change course if he were in charge of the federal Department of Education?

Every state is different on the devolution of the State's so-called "police powers" (a term that doesn't have anything directly to do with law enforcement, but encompasses the state's authority to regulate the health, safety, and morals of its populace) to local authorities. So you'd have to look at the state at issue. But that's not the question. Whether the state has the authority to get deep into the weeds of what a school library may or may not carry in its collection is a different one than whether a state should do that (rather than leaving the decision to the local parents/board). Imagine the tables are turned. (Which they often are!) A liberal state legislature/governor passes a law mandating that school libraries include all sorts of books about LGBT identities and choosing your own gender and all of that, and says that these books should be accessible to children starting in the 2nd grade (let's call that the Vivek Age). In my state, the People's Republic of Boulder says, "great, but we've already been doing that." Colorado Springs (until recently one of the most conservative cities in the USA) says "who are you to tell us what books our school librarian should order!" And they'd have a point. My point.