With growing momentum, particularly among political wannabes to tax the rich, we should look at how much they are (or aren’t) paying now. For the tax year 2005, the last year for which the IRS has complete data, we find the Federal government collected $1.998 trillion consisting of: $272.763 billion (13.6%) in corporate taxes $766.315 [...]

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You know the old saying that if life gives you a lemon, make lemonaide? Well, the Philippines is now planning to start a new trend: Volcano Tourism. The hottest “tourist destination” in Luzon are the eco tourism groups visiting the devestation around Mt Pinatubo. There are nature tours of the region,  which stress the devestation [...]

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There’s a lot of political buzz about General Sanchez’ speech, but luckily, thanks to the internet, Powerline actually has a link to the speech HERE. Alas, most of the speech is not being reported, and even good news papers. I read the WAPO report of the speech, but they played down a lot of the [...]

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When shall we three meet again? the three hags on the blasted heath ask in scene one of the William Shakespeare play Macbeth, the answer is “upon the heath, there to meet with Macbeth”. The story behind this classic play is well known, there are no winners, there are only losers, it is only a [...]

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It’s that time. Time for your kids to start the process of learning how to recognize simple letters, repeat them themselves and eventually understand how they work together to form words. Where do you start?There’s so many ways to teach them and so many products design to help you teach them. The family-friendly minds at [...]

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President Bush, on September 27th, signed into law, the College Cost Reduction and Access Act. There are several important and QUESTIONABLE provisions in this legislation. Student loan forgiveness for public service employees. Without getting into details, it appears that loans will be forgiven for most any public service employee after 10 years of on-time payments. [...]

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George E. Thompson’s book of poetry titled “Experience, Strength and Hope” is a book that details the author’s strong religious faith that stemmed from his experiences with grief. The title reflects on the themes which are found in the 103 pages of poems that make up this book. These themes are meant to be an [...]

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The Nazi Hunter is a nice pacey thriller about a man who chases ageing Nazis on behalf of the US government. He works for an arm of the Department of Justice tasked with finding war criminals hiding in the US. The man is called Mark Cain and his notoriety provides him with a case that [...]

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Starring Leroy ‘Nicky’ Barnes playing himself! This is a fascinating look at the less than clean underbelly of the New York drug scene in the 70′s. Filmmaker Marc Levin using a combination of archival footage and new interviews bring this story to life. Nicky was the archetypal poor black kid growing up in maybe not [...]

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Yesterday I happened to catch a re-run of one of Christiane Amanpour’s CNN series, God’s Warriors, which portrays the hate oriented sects of the three major Western religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, bent on hate and killing programs directed variously at each other. The one yesterday did the extremists Jewish settlers set on driving all [...]

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From The Gathering Storm Blog What’s the most popular comedy series in Iraq? The Jihad Suicide Hotline. “Jihad Suicide Hotline” “I don’t know what to do. I love my job and I have a girlfriend.” “So you don’t want to kill yourself?” “No.” “You coward! Your girlfriend is a tramp! She sleeps with all your [...]

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Now that the leading Democrats and Republicans are whacking away at Hillary, I wonder whether Bill will be able to restrain the impulse to whack back that all of us feel when our loved ones are attacked? There is a certain irony in these attacks, incidentally, in that the Republicans are accusing Hillary of being [...]

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“It’s a daunting engineering task, but, that’s what makes it exciting” says Canadian Filmmaker James Cameron. James Cameron may be better known for his work with the Titanic project, but what he brings to NASA’s dinner table is a unique understanding of hostile environments. It is for that reason that he is part of the [...]

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[Those of us who have direct memories of the horrors of WW2 are wondering how the U.S. could have adopted the most vicious tactics of our enemies then -- an illegal attack on a nation, torture, violations of basic Constitutional and international standards, murders unpunished -- in sum what Frank Rich calls here Gestapo tactics.  [...]

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News Item: Al Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize Alfred Nobel, in case you weren’t aware, is the man who invented dynamite.  He also got very rich off his discovery.  His invention, however, troubled Nobel greatly when it was put to use in war.  He then set up a foundation with what he considered blood money [...]

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[It is pretty clear from the article below that the Bush health plan for children will kill off some of them in the U.S. if he is able to sustain a veto against health protection for them.  Such is a disgrace in a nation where Republicans boast our wealth.  No other developed nation allows its [...]

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A pregnant woman being murdered. Innocent people being shot at close range. An old man’s body found riddled with holes from a power drill. Another man found dead, hanging on a meat hook.Did you miss this story? The article was written by David Corn in The Nation and also published in The Washington Post. The [...]

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