We should keep a tally of McCain’s “fight”s.

I am excited–have been saving my Ben and Jerry’s specifically for this occasion.

We definitely need a drinking game for this debate. During the first debate, it would have been McCain saying, “He just doesn’t understand” and Obama calling McCain “John,” or maybe his saying, “I agree with John”

The second debate would have been every time that either candidate gave a stupid answer. Second thought, that wouldn’t work, because we’d have had to drink after every answer.

So what’s the drinking game for tonight?

“My Friends” = take a drink
“Clean Coal” = take two drinks
“Folks” = a sip
“hero” = finish the bottle

i’m trying to wrap my head around a mormon drinking game.

someone needs to enlighten me.

The only reason I’m watching is to see how awkward it will be when McCain tried to inject “Barack Hussein Obama is friends with terrorists!” into one of his answers.

Hey, I’ll take McCain making me laugh like Mr. Subliminal over that last debate any day. In fact, skip the debate and do 30 minutes of stand-up and I may switch my vote.

Mark, perhaps we should set up an alternative NLCS party thread.

Watching the second debate was an excruciating experience. There are many things I’d rather do than go through that again – like sawing between my toes with a razor blade or watching the Shopping Network.

However, there might be one reason to watch tonight’s debate.

I have a theory that McCain is on the edge – if there is actual eye contact between the candidates, McCain will pick up a chair and huck it at Obama.

“Personally, during the second, town-hall style of debate, I’d have like to have seen some Gore-type tactics used by one of the candidates”

McCain tried this but it didn’t work out in the last debate. He only looked like an Alzheimer’s patient wondering around the stage -lost, until Obama took him by the shoulders and turned him around smiling broadly at the very end.

That moment -McCain’s lost old man walk about moment- is equivalent to Bush daddy glancing down at him watch back in 92 but probably worst.

Also McCain has had the wrong strategy from the start. When Obama talked the economy, health care and tax cuts to the middle and poor class, McCain put the war in Iraq and war on terror, leadership/experience at the centre of his campaign. But now McCain has had to change to the economy and now that he’s down so far he’s looking to change again! No one ever won an election by changing their message half way through the campaign.

#13, 14-

I’m with you. When the Dodgers are playing, I’m watching.

#6 Steve,

You forgot “Maverick” of all things.

Okay, everyone, this is good–this is the type of pre-debate commentary that I’m looking for.

Steve: Main Street and Wall Street also need to be on there. Maybe golden parachutes. Definitely “recovery.”

Anyone reading DKL’s comments: As the official poster of this post, I do not endorse debate-watching activities that may or may not result in intoxication coupled with nasal decongestion. But have fun with that, DKL :).

Phillies/Dodgers fans: Would you mind popping over every once in a while and giving us an update on the score? Just as a public service?

27 minutes and counting, according to my laptop…

my nominations for drinking game.

McCain:
“I have the experience”
“look at the record, not just the rhetoric”
“we’ve gotta save our seniors”
“how can you believe ‘that one’ given what he has done in the past”

Obama:
“silly season in American politics”
“Here’s what I’ve said.”
“with Joe Biden at my side”
“these personal attacks”
“distracting attention from what really matters to Americans”
“ACORN has actually done a lot of good” (ok, cheap shot)

“Can you believe it?” That’s not a Russert line. That’s a Joe Castiglione line (radio broadcaster for the Red Sox).

Okay, folks, we’re at T minus 6:30, and I’m watching C-Span. The camera actually just zoomed in on Mitt Romney, of all people. He was muttering something to the person next to him (couldn’t tell who it was) and he looked annoyed.

Right now, everyone in the hall is pretty quiet–this is more reverent than a sacrament meeting. Okay, and now a lady in a black dress and pink scarf is giving people instructions–and now Bob’s on.

Okay, enjoy!

Fashin commentary #1:

Bob Scieffer: red and blue tie
Obama: Red tie
McCain: blue tie

undecided as to points for whom… And slightly confusing, politically…

I like McCain’s tie in abstract, but I’m not sure about it with that suit.

It has really struck me in this election cycle that America, apparently, no longer has a working class. Now everyone who is not rich is middle class. I feel more working than middle, but whatever…..

True, ESO–is it because everyone has middle class ambition? Is working class now an insult? Does the middle class vote the most?

Joe the plumber. What’s not to love?

Sharp attack by McCain. Literally evokes an “Average Joe.”

I want McCain to spread his wealth around

McCain asks why you would want to increase anyone’s taxes right now. Um, maybe because we have to pay for stuff?

Wealt redistribution: discuss.

[still waiting for McCain to mention earmarks]

How does Obama go through the budget line-by-line without a line-item veto (which the Supreme Court — with pretty good reason — has determined will take a Constitutional amendment)

Hmmm–maybe I zoned, but I didn’t hear him talk about line-by-line, although I would welcome such an amendment. I thought he was talking about programs.

There are the earmarks. And the projector–I was hoping for a new illustration.

So what is it we need, then– a hatchet or a scalpel?

“If you wanted to run against President Bush you should have run four years ago.” Ouch. McCain lands an uppercut.

Tagore–both–clearly “Americans are angry”

McCain looking surprisingly fresh…Obama looking a little rattled….

Does it really matter though?

I wonder how his proposed Town Halls really would have changed things? They seem to say the same things over and over again at these debates–I am guessing those meetings would have been the same.

I love how a Republican wants to make campaign spending an issue the first time they have been trumped.

Who cares if the ads are negative? It’s a campaign. People should expect negativity.

Ya, McCain brought his game….but that smiley look is creeepy…

DKL–I recognize that as a separate (not inconsequential) issue. It has been a standard stump line in both McCain’s and Palin’s speeches that they are being “out-spended”–it is part of their underdog spiel.

Now I’m waiting for McCain to explode…it might happen.

“I have the scars to prove it” is my favorite McCain-ism. The lighting tonight is not friendly to McCain.

Ugh. Let’s get off this topic. They’re both annoying.

McCain has been reading DKL

To be honest, I don’t care that much about Ayres (sp?) or ACORN. To be fair, I also don’t give much credence to Troopergate (in fact, I think that calling it Troopergate elevates it to a status that it doesn’t deserve)

McCain is lying about Obama launching his campaign from Ayer’s house. He then pulls the annoying “facts are facts” just like he did with Romney.

ESO: Obama’s political career was actually launched in second grade when he wrote to his teacher that he wanted to be president

Yep. That’s when an ACORN worker registered him to vote for the first time.

Oh, now John cares about special need…..

ESO: ACORN works in Indonesia, too?

Evil is an outreach project.

Cockamamie:
Of all the ‘ridiculous or absurd’ things, cockamamie is indeed a corruption of decalcomania (dee kal kuh MAY nee uh). There’s one citation from Arthur Kober’s Parm Me (1945) that spells the noun as “cockamanie,” but the usual form of both the adjective and the noun is “cockamamie.”
http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20000403

McCain has been pretty effective in keeping Obama on the defensive.

Naomi–I also deleted one such comment. I do think he has a comb-over, though.

McCain’s head is going to explode.

McCain keeps leaning back and sitting up straight in his chair when he’s not answering questions. That makes his neck look think and his head look big. He needs to keep leaning forward when he’s not answering questions, so that he looks the same whether he’s answering questions or not.

McCain is lying about Obama wanting to meet with Chavez.

ESO: comb-over–yes. But I secretly think that he’s still a rather handsome man. They both are, as a matter of fact. I think McCain kind of looks like Steve Martin. ANyone else?

DKL: You’re right! Too bad he won’t have another debate to utilize your recommendation…

“we should have physical fitness and nutrition programs in schools…”

Makes me wonder when the last time he set foot in a school is?

McCain is slinging a bunch of BS, but it’s keeping Obama on defense. Obama hasn’t thrown nearly as many punches.

I predict a new comic book with Joe the Plumber as a super hero by inauguration day. Oh, and a made-for–TV movie.

Okay, just got back from being a fan at my first ever professional hockey game, and the Rangers lost.

McCain was congratulating Joe for being rich. Who is Joe?

That tight little smile on McCain’s face creeps me out.

Is McCain wearing a bracelet?

People don’t know this, but Bork was pro-choice back when he was nominated for the supreme court. There are plenty of pro-choice judges who believe that Roe v. Wade is bad law. The questions of whether abortion should be legal and whether it should be a constitutional right are logically independent.

I want to play poker with McCain

Looks like Obama is in line with the CHI… ;)

The eyebrows

Again – Shieffer is the man.

I want to know why CNN worships uncommitted people from Ohio. Hey everyone, I found this guy living in a closet in Toledo! Let’s all gather round to hear what he thinks!

REALLY New Orleans and New York are beacons for education?

ESO: true. Does Ted Kennedy still support it? I’ve never fully understood the Bush + Kennedy concordance on NCLB… Do the Republicans or the Democrats like it more? I’ve never fully understood the politics of that bill.

America has been testing behind other industrialized nations for several decades — still no disaster. This is simply an artifact of how we administer the tests in the US. In other countries, they administer them by age. In the US, we administer them by grade. Then we compare the US results of based on maximum age in a standard grade-level with the age groups in other countries. So that, for example, 17 year olds in grade 12 get grouped in with the 18 year olds in grade 12, and then compared to 18 year olds in Germany. Between the ages of 12 and 20, age correlates quite highly with performance.

Does Joe have an autistic child?

CJ Douglass: Again – Shieffer is the man.

No. Shieffer is a man. For the purposes of this debate, Joe the Plumber is the man. Shieffer will have to content himself with “Adjutant to the Man.”

I just went to http://www.mydebates.org, and I was shut out!!!! I love being one of the masses…

McCain established the 9/11 Commission? Was that part of his Blackberry creation policy?

McCain shook his hand!

THe wives!!! Opposite colors! Do you think this was planned?

Tom Brokaw just declared Joe the Plumber the winner of the debate.

I’m swearing off politics, news programs, and newspapers for the next four years and 20 days. What a discouraging 90 minutes that was.

Okay, just got back from being a fan at my first ever professional hockey game, and the Rangers lost.

just your first? and your team lost? sorry.

but did you have fun? it’s an NHL game, of course you had fun!

mfranti, hockey _is_ fun … about two minutes into the game, a fight broke out. It kind of amazes me how hockey players are allowed to really go after each other with their fists, and they just get penalized for a period of minutes and go right back to playing.

#147 Matt,

From an undecided voter-

One has the temperament of a good President, but his plan for America is ridiculous.

The other is cranky and weird, but his plan for America is less ridiculous.

nsm 150

that’s an answer i respect! ;)

I don’t get the autism stuff, does McCain think Palin’s child has autism, or does he think autism and Down Syndrome are the same thing? Or does someone with a child that has Down Syndrome become an expert in all types of Special Needs? It was all wacky.

It was close, but Obama won and McCain didn’t get any kind of home run that he needed.

DKL #45,

“Almost all of them earn way, way more than $250K, though Obama made the unbelievably ignorant assertion in the last debate that most small businesses aren’t earning more than $250K. Thus, you’re increasing taxes on most small businesses, which decreases their ability to employ.”

Proves how little you know about the real world. Most ‘small businesses’ do make less that $250K profit, I don’t know where you got your stats from but they are wrong. And paying tax on profits has absolutely no bearing on whether one hires more staff or not. That’s an old republican myth that they keep repeating to get elected. One hires according to staffing needs, how much value new people can add to the business and whether or not extra staff will increase gross earnings. Taxing profits at 35%, 40% or 25% makes no difference at all on the number of new staff hired. A recession does though, the one Bush Jnr is leaving behind certainly will affect job creation, and letting corporations move to Ireland does, especially to share holders -the republican ones off course!

” Shieffer is the man.” Those of you who like Shieffer, you MUST read how he was involved the day JFK was killed. He IS THE MAN!!

Charlie,

Depending on where you draw the line on what a “small business” is, you’re right that _most_ small businesses make less than $250K profit. An average McDonald’s, for instance, does somewhere under $2 mil in sales per year, and will show a profit margin of about 7% – that is somewhere around $140,000 a year in profit. An average Subway will do about 20-25% of that business, and depending on many factors may have a narrower margin … you might be feeling lucky to squeeze $20-30K a year out of an average Subway. I’m only talking about the restaurant industry, where my personal experience lies. I understand that food is a high overhead, low margin business, and that other business models can produce more comfortable margins. But even if you were running business at a 20% margin, you’d need to be doing $1.25 mil in sales and very few small businesses are going to be doing that. Certainly not Joe Plumber’s local routes.

Your statement about taxes not impacting hiring is a little confusing, though. It is true that you hire according to need, and hope that you have a robust enough staff to maintain or grow sales. However, in many or most cases a small business owner will need everything he can scrape out to maintain his livelihood. So that profit is, for all intents and purposes, a part of his payroll cost (though taxed differently). Something putting a squeeze on his profits can’t be distinguished from something putting a squeeze on his operations. When something puts a squeeze on – and this is infinitely more true when he is unable to secure credit, the situation we’re in now – something will have to give. And that something is almost always payroll, because it is the cost that you’re most able to control – particularly in an emergency. Raising taxes on any business will have a negative impact on the total amount being spent on payroll. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. But the idea that one maintains staff always at the level you even reasonably need isn’t reality – certainly not for many small business owners.

~

Charlie: Proves how little you know about the real world. Most ’small businesses’ do make less that $250K profit, I don’t know where you got your stats from but they are wrong.

Sorry, Charlie. I’ve built and scaled small business before — multiple times. This is one area where I’ve got real-world experience in spades. Any small business of an appreciable size makes more than $250k. I’m not talking about fast food joints, but small businesses with big payrolls and employees who earn six figures — the kind that are the backbone of innovation and good employment.

So I’ll tell you what: You go run a business of any appreciable size with skilled employees who earn real money, and then come back and we’ll talk about what you know about the real world.

Charlie: And paying tax on profits has absolutely no bearing on whether one hires more staff or not. That’s an old republican myth that they keep repeating to get elected. One hires according to staffing needs, how much value new people can add to the business and whether or not extra staff will increase gross earnings.

Let’s say you’ve got 25 employees in a major US metro area. You will probably have an annual payroll between $2M and $2.5M. This puts your revenue between $5M and $6.25M. At a 10% EBITDA (which is fine, but not very good) you’ll have between $500K – $625K in profit before taxes. At this point, you and your partner are probably managing everything directly, and in order to continue to scale you have to hire at least one high level manager who can handle operations, technology, customer service, or sales, so that at least one of these is taken off of your plate and your partner’s plate, allowing you to continue to focus on the areas in which you make a key contribution to the business. How many of these high-level types do you hire? Do you risk going with a young and aggressive person on the cheap? or do you hire a more seasoned candidate for more? It depends on how much you pay in taxes, and if you go with the young and cheap person because taxes prohibit you from affording the more seasoned one, then presto! you’ve replaced a high-paying job with a low-paying job.

Furthermore, you have to hire for support people for accounting/bookkeeping, HR, and admin as your business becomes too large to continue to outsource these functions. How many of these do you hire? At what level of competence do you hire them? Since these turn out to be cost centers, it’s easy enough to scrimp on them, and with higher taxes, a business will, of necessity, hire fewer for less money.

Also, you need to have capacity to do work before you can sell it, and a very short hiring cycle is 6 weeks. You match this against a sales cycle that has been discounted for risk, and just to be conservative, you overestimate your production capacity because dedicated employees of a small business will work nights and weekends. But lets say that your business is growing. If you want to compete with larger firms that have better capacity, then you can’t make customers wait while you hire for their job. Thus, at some point you’ve got to hire people ahead of some big potential sales, risking that they’ll be sitting around doing nothing for a while. The amount of cash on hand impacts your ability to hire at the right point on the growth curve and weather this risk, which, in turn, impacts how fast you grow and how many people you hire. Taxes reduce this amount, thereby slowing growth and slowing hiring.

You could go with contractors, which has 2 advantages. First, you don’t have to show contractor expenses on cashflow estimates beyond a 12 month time horizon. Second, you can ditch them whenever. But the downside is that they are, on average, 2 times as expensive as hiring full time employees. If your business is cyclical, you can save a bundle. But if you’re business is growing, then you’ll probably be keeping them, and you’ll be wasting a lot of money. Furthermore, if you have trade secrets, or if you deal in confidential information, then you have a strong disincentive to use contract labor.

Then there are equipment expenditures. A small business buys or leases computers, desks, chairs, printers, cubicles, staplers, pads of paper, monitors; sometimes servers, automobiles. Some of these expenses can be capitalized, others can’t (as can labor that is devoted to creating — but not maintaining — product). But even with capitalization, you’ve got to pay for it somewhere. It’s a zero-sum game, the more you pay in taxes, the more you scrimp, the less you buy, the less revenue for other businesses.

And how about benefits? Many small business owners take pride in the benefits that they provide. Increasing taxes on small corporation directly impacts their ability to help employees to fund their benefits packages.

Lastly, one business strategy for small businesses is to keep the run-rate low by paying people less in salary and more in bonuses and profit sharing. So that, for example, a business can put some percentage of an individual’s salary into their 401K account as a bonus that doesn’t get hit by payroll taxes. Taxes have a direct impact on this.

In short, your statement is idiotic. Running a small business successfully means spending less than you earn, which means scrimping strategically to make things work for the money you have. Increasing taxes damages small businesses by reducing the pool of available cash. This impacts purchases and leases, it impacts benefits, and it impacts hiring.

Charlie: Taxing profits at 35%, 40% or 25% makes no difference at all on the number of new staff hired.

Nice try. Don’t lecture me on the economics of small business. This is all just off the top of my head. Give me more time, and I could probably write a book about how taxes impact small business growth.

BTW, neither Obama nor McCain know any of this. They have no experience in the private sector. They’ve never actually worked the way that Americans work who are impacted by economic turmoil. You know who does know it, even if she’s not up on all the business vocabulary? Sarah Palin. She and her husband actually do run a business that makes money. But supposedly she’s not interested in the world around her — it’s just idiots like Obama and McCain who are.

TP – I think both parties manipulate the idea of what a small business is – to your point.

But in the case of Joe the plumber, Obama’s right – he’s not making more than a 1/4 mill. Plumbers make bank – but not that much. Besides, Joe is part of a union anyway – McCain’s got no shot at his vote.

What appalls me most is liberals’ willingness to talk about how great it is to tax other people’s money — like your knee-jerk presupposition, CJ Douglass, that you know more about what Joe should be doing with his money and its taxes than he does. Pretty awful stuff.

“Honestly dude, you should be mormon at all speaking like that.”

That should be ‘shouldn’t be a mormon at all’ …

#166: you know more about what Joe should be doing with his money and its taxes than he does. Pretty awful stuff.
I am missing something: Your smart business men pissed away 700 Billion by knowing best what to do with it. Now they are going to their Uncle Sam (who knows nothing about handling money), for a loan!?

“then these two partners will have $500K added to their personal income tax returns, “…as it should be!

“even though the partners will not actually receive this money”, then they are bigger idiots than you are!

As I said, I tried but of course you know it all here, right? I just wish I could see your face when your economy disintegrates under the weight of all that extra money printed up by your republican friends, done so they could deliver those upper class tax cuts. I wonder what dumb excuse you will come up with then? Probably blame the poor again!

CJ,

It looks to me like Democrats want to actually pay for all the spending we’ve done over the past 8 years.

Neither Obama (Dems) nor McCain (GOP) can pay for what they propose. Obama, less so.

It’s well-documented by numerous 3rd-party studies.

Pretty Awful Stuff

Charlie: “even though the partners will not actually receive this money”, then they are bigger idiots than you are!

So I demonstrate that you don’t know how small-business taxes work by describing how they actually work, and your response is that the way they work is idiotic?

By hypothesis, retained profits are retained and not distributed. Companies do retain profits for a variety of reasons, but usually to have cash on hand and to meet the terms of creditors or high-ticket clients, who don’t like to do business with small companies without it. You may think this is idiotic. Next time you run a small business, you can feel free to never retain a cent of profits.

Charlie: As I said, I tried but of course you know it all here, right?

I know it must be frustrating to try to recite what you’ve read somewhere only to run into someone who’s able to demonstrate from real-world experience that it’s wrong. But it’s not quite fair of you to assert that I think I know everything, because I don’t. I just think that I know more than you.

#177: They did last time, that’s the Budget was in surplus.

#179: If it is so easy, why didn’t Bush 1 or Bush 2 do it. But I agree, a lot of this is “Once Upon a Time” stuff

DKL #176

My dear friend DKL:
(I’m trying something new here to see if I can get through that think skull of yours)

Now you’re implying that all profits are retained profits! Sure! Going from idiotic to the ridiculous.

What you are missing here is that the 5% odd extra tax under Obama or the 8% odd gain under McCain are negligible amounts for any small business and simply will not affect the employment market at all. A recession will affect the employment market as will a depression! And if two partners are make $1m a year -they are doing OK. A 60% increase would make a difference, not 3% or 5%. Plus Obama said clearly that if there is a recession he would put off the tax increases because of the recession. But you don’t believe that off course, I know.

But under McCains plan, all his tax cuts, your deficit increases by some $4.5 trillion. Under Obama it increases by $3 trillion (over 10 years). That’s where your problem is because one day, either you or your kids will have to pay that debt one way or another. this GOP theory that you can lower taxes, replace revenues with debt will only turn you into a Bolivia (but wall st is already there). Do you think that they can actually cut spending when they haven’t done so during the ‘good’ years? or will they cut spending during a recession? really!

You seem to be ok with making the US a new Bolivia!

“If you freeze government spending, then tax revenue will grow at roughly the same rate as the economy grows”

VOODOO economics, as the republican president bush (daddy) preached. But history teaches us that both Reagan and Bush daddy/Bush jnr tried this and the growth in tax revenues never compensated for the original drop in receipts due to the tax cuts -hence that debt. The reason is because at least half if not more of the those tax cuts to the rich ended up in real estate or Wall st which today are going bust.

“1% per year indefinitely” – really? up to 100$!! right!!

“Taxes on small businesses are already too high”, Sure, for restaurants, mechanics, painters etc. Not for those making more than a quarter of a million profits. This is the point you keep missing but I doubt most independents do, which is why Obama is ahead even though the man has a thin resume, a strange name and he’s black.

-The numbers come from the Tax Policy Center, Link here.

“without substantial cuts in government spending, both plans would sharply increase the national debt. Including interest costs, Obama’s tax plan would boost the debt by $3.5 trillion by 2018. McCain’s plan would increase the debt by $5 trillion on top of the $2.3 trillion increase that the Congressional Budget Office forecasts for the next decade (see Summary Deficit Table).” But they do condition this with that “without…cuts..” and I was slightly off going on memory only in 182 so I’ll let you pass on this one and since Johnny McCain will probably cut some spending (in a recession) since he doesn’t really understand economics, right?

They also claim that:

“McCain would lift after-tax incomes an average of about 3 percent, or $1,400 annually, for middle-income taxpayers by 2012. But, in sharp contrast to Obama, he would cut taxes for those in the top 1% by more than $125,000, raising their after-tax income an average 9.5 percent.” You middle class? if you are you are voting to pay more taxes under McCain.

What even they neglect, because they just don’t cover this area, is the changing influence of the US dollar. Many now trade in euro’s only so all those extra printed bills will some come home to hatch, something you haven’t commented on yet. I suspect its because you don’t know what that’s about!!!

Charlie, you’ve now completely moved on from attempting to describe how small businesses work, and you’ve introduced a whole series of altogether unrelated arguments based on my response to you statement about McCain freezing government spending. I take this as a concession that you’ve lost the argument on small businesses.

Before we moved on to these new topics, I wanted to address this issue. At some point, you’ll likely find a topic in which your position is actually arguable, and then you’ll say, “Ah-ha! I was right all along.” But it’s important to keep an actually tally of how many topics you’ve expressed inarguably wrong opinions about.

Charlie: the growth in tax revenues never compensated for the original drop in receipts due to the tax cuts

Actually, Federal tax revenue grew 50% during Reagan’s presidency. And though he raised taxes twice after his initial cuts, tax rates remained substantially lower during his administration than during Carter’s administration.

Charlie: [using your logic, you could raise taxes] “1% per year indefinitely” – really? up to 100$!! right!!

It’s your logic, not mine. If taxes are 99%, then the difference between 99% and 100% is negligible, and that makes the tax-hike OK.

Charlie: But they do condition this with that “without… cuts..”

Government tax receipts grow when the economy expands — nobody disputes that, because it’s simple math. The dispute over supply-side economics is whether the tax-lowering stimulating effect offsets the net present value of the lost revenue. According to Laffer, it does when marginal rates are decreased, but not when rates are decreased without respect to the differences between marginal tax rates.

Charlie: You middle class? if you are you are voting to pay more taxes under McCain.

That’s the argument that G. H. W. Bush tried to make against Clinton in 1992. Anyway, since most middle-class families don’t even pay taxes, you can’t argue that they’re taxed too much.

Furthermore, Obama’s tax scheme is basically redistributive — he gives everyone under a certain income bracket gets money taxes, whether they have taxes to which they can apply it or not.

Charlie: something you haven’t commented on yet. I suspect its because you don’t know what that’s about!!!

Don’t even go there. I helped write a book on currency exchange. You really have no idea who you’re dealing with, do you?

I suppose that this argument is going to go on and on, as you drop topic after topic as each of your successive argument proves inadequate, and you set your sites on tangential topics in a futile hope of breaking free from this cycle of defeat.

Charlie: Obviously a piece of right wing blinded piece of propaganda as valuable to students as Pastor Deacon Fred Smith’s preaching!!!

The book was a financial analysis of cross-currency rates of the 5 major currencies since the currency trading commenced in 1972. It had nothing to do with politics.

Charlie: Oh, and about small business, point was that for the guy making 250K or more, a 3% increase is nothing. You then changed that to a perpetual increase of 1% .

This isn’t changing the subject. It’s offering an a fortiori argument. If 3% is negligible, then 1% is a fortiori negligible — every year. The fact that it leads to 100% taxation constitutes a reductio of your position that it’s OK to raise taxes 3% because that’s negligible. You can’t claim that I’m changing the subject by offering a formally valid proof that you are mistaken.

You’ve failed to demonstrate a serious grasp on the issues that you’ve brought up regarding small businesses and taxation (as my arguments demonstrate). Furthermore, you lack a basic grasp of how to craft, interpret, and respond to reasonable arguments (again, as my arguments demonstrate). Look, I’m egalitarian enough to engage someone like you to a point. Any more, it makes as much sense to argue with you about these topics as it does to argue with my 7 year-old over whether she should clean her room.

Bye.