Sonny Tufts
Member

It's almost 20 years old, but Robert K. Massie's Peter the Great is a good read.

Like many folks of limited intelligence you equate my being critical of Trump with being a liberal or a fan of Biden. Neither is the case. Pointing out the patently obvious fact that Trump is a narcissistic liar who thinks he's the Saviour of America, who is being played like a cheap fiddle by Putin, and who (in the words of former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson*) is a fucking moron, doesn't mean I agree with the Democrats, all too many of whom are pie-in-the-sky ignoramuses who have the economic acumen of an amoeba. *One of the "best people" that Trump said he would hire for his administration. In fact, the huge turnover in administration personnel (including many who earned criminal convictions) simply demonstrates that all Trump wants is a bunch of yes men who will kiss his ass and massage his oversized ego, and that when you aren't obsequious enough, you're out.

When you're dealing with a chronic and habitual liar like Trump, you have to be tough or he'll spew B.S. all night long.

A federal real estate tax would be a direct tax that under the Constitution would have to be apportioned -- i.e., the revenue collected from each state would have to be in proportion to its population. But since real estate values aren't distributed among the states by population, the result would be different rates in each state, with landowners in value-poorer states paying a higher rate than those in higher-value states. This would make such a tax politically difficult if not impossible to enact.

What else is she supposed to do when some bloviating Senator (whose party is irrelevant -- they're all gasbags, although Whitehouse outdid himself today) is making a speech instead of asking her a question?

Since interest on the national debt is $378 billion for FY 2021 you'd be in the hole from the start.

Scalia was right. Flag desecration laws are the expression of right-wing political correctness. They elevate the physical flag over what it stands for.

This is certainly an accurate depiction of the Narcissist-in-Chief's opinion of himself, except the cartoonist left out the crown.

The charges were announced on Monday:

Under IRC Sections 877 and 877A, a person who renounces his citizenship and who either (a) has a net worth of at least $2 million, (b) had an average annual income tax of at least $155,000 for the 5-year period preceding expatriation, or (c) fails to certify he has complied with federal tax law for the 5-year period, is subject to U.S. income tax for 10 years after renouncing his citizenship. Of course, collecting the tax might be difficult if all of his assets have been moved overseas.

Sure.... and since Trump has nothing else to do, he should posthumously pardon Al Capone and Leona Helmsley. :rolleyes:

So would you volunteer to work in a Covid ward in a hospital (without protective equipment, of course)?

Trump also received REGN-COV2, an experimental antibody therapy cocktail under a "compassionate use" request that the drug manufacturer said on Friday is rarely granted: "There is limited product available for compassionate use requests that have been approved under rare, exceptional circumstances on a case-by-case basis." Ya think the average Joe would've been able to get it?

What an insipid statement. Does he really think the average Ameican can get the kind of medical care he got?

It's more of a confirmation that Trump hasn't learned anything about the virus and that his monumental narcissism is alive and well. Trump is "allowed" to do whatever he wants.

I've always wished that Gibson could have pitched to those of today's players who crowd the plate or who wear body armor. They wouldn't have liked the experience. As Dizzy Dean once said while he was announcing a game on TV after a pitcher threw a brushback pitch, "I ain't never seen a batter yet who could get a hit while lying on his back."

NBC News reported last night that the Qanon website is hosted by a pig farmer in the Philippines who also has racist and porno websites. https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/what-is-qanon-far-right-conspiracy-movement-s-growing-influence-92966469972

You should learn something about taxes yourself. The vast majority of his companies, if not all, are limited liability companies ("LLC's"), which pay no federal income tax. Instead, their income and losses flow through to the owners of the LLC's and are reported on their individual tax returns. See https://extapps2.oge.gov/201/Presiden.nsf/PAS+Index/181BAF52E298FD70852585B70027E054/$FILE/Trump,%20Donald%20J.%202020Annual%20278.pdf

Anyone who thinks Trump won't tell at least one lie in the debate is the poster boy for naivete.

I wasn't asking why you opposed the income tax, only why you believe it to be unconstitutional. And btw, the income tax is an excise and it existed well before 1913.

So which theory do you subscribe to -- the 16th Amendment was never ratified; the income tax is a direct tax; Congress can tax only in the so-called "federal areas"; requiring the filing or a return violates the 4th and 5th Amendments; or something else?

Not quite. The report said that for tax years 2005-2007 he paid $70.1 million in federal income tax. He also paid $24.3 million in alternative minimum tax for seven years between 2000 and 2017. But in 2010 he claimed a refund of $72.9 million, based upon alleged business losses of $1.4 billion. Assuming the losses were genuine he was entitled to carry them back to prior years and receive a refund. But a refund of that size has to be approved by the Joint Committee on Taxation, a bipartisan congressional committee. It apparently did so based on an audit that was sent to it before approving the refund but that was reopened after the refund was made and that has remained open to this day. The sticking point may be claimed losses of $700 million for 2009 relating to Trump's alleged abandonment of a partnership interest that may be related to his failed Atlantic City casinos. Far from finding that Trump was "totally clean", the legitimacy of the refund and the claimed losses has yet to be finally determined. As far as the "tens of millions of dollars in taxes that his businesses produced and paid", the fact is that Trump's businesses lost tons and tons of money, not to mention that most of them are flow-through entities (such as limited liability companies) that pay no federal income tax anyway. The only taxes these entities would likely have paid were employment taxes and various local taxes.

Only via impeachment. Good luck with that.

Not so fast. FDR's attempt to pack the Court in 1937, at a time when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, failed. While it's true that Justice Owen Roberts's "switch in time that saved nine" may have made the attempt moot, the idea was unpopular among the public and Congress even before Roberts's switch. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Procedures_Reform_Bill_of_1937 Moreover, Trump can't pack the Court at present because the Republicans don't control the House. Unlike the confirmation of a Justice, which involves only the Senate, an increase in the number of Justices requires the approval of both houses.

The bill attempts to avoid this by making it inapplicable to current justices. But the language of the Constitution is clear, and it should have been obvious to the bill's sponsors that the 18-year term limit is unconstitutional.