Dave Barry on the Economic Stimulus Payment
This year, taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format:
Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.
Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.
Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. Only a smidgen.
Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.
Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?
A. Shut up.
(Source: Miami Herald)
32 comments:
Well, yes, but sooner or later some of us are going to have to enter into a serious discussion on the possible PROS as well as the CONS of a world UNITED in PEACE sharing our strengths equitably with everyone on the planet.
We conservatives have kind of stuck ourselves with the notion that this vision is a "COMMUNIST PLOT" with no possible virtue in it whatsoever.
That may be true, but if we are to maintain even a PRETENSE of "fairness," "balance" and "objectivity," we ought to go through the exercise of DEFENDING the concept of ONE WORLD living together in HARMONY.
IS that necessarily a MARXIST idea, or might it be a CHRISTIAN one at its deepest level?
~ FreeThinke
PS: Dave Barry is always amusing, but clever humor is always rooted in reality and has serious implication behind the laughter. FT
lol..he sure dont pull any punches girl does he? :)
FT....it's the absolute truth. Barry has a way of focusing and telling us the truth thru humor...TRY to buy something that's not MADE IN CHINA. If 40% of what Americans spend with these ridiculous checks goes to China, we lost. if ANY of it goes there, we lost.
Re: our "Fairness" and "balance"? Of course, it sounds wonderful, and we should try to be fair. But, in my opinion, it's a little like those who feel that if America dumped its nukes in the trash, everyone would. I will NEVER forget reading a lefty prof who said "if WE have nukes, why SHOULDN"T N. Korea or Iraq?" This is a mentality which doesn't make UNITY AND PEACE feasible in my opinion.
The planet shares quite enough of us "equitably". A little TOO equitably for my taste.
It DOES seem like we think it's a commie plot if we claim this vision of UNITY has no virtue whatsoever....I'm not sure it isn't.
Thanks, FT!!
what is the economic stimulus payment?
isn't that where my husband keeps his wallet?
hehehe...
*8]
i'm getting sick of this new word v thing!
HA!
I have a better economic stimulus package:
Why not exempt the first $40,000 of every individual taxpayers' income from taxation.
In other words, everyone must file taxes as if they made $40,000 less than they actually did.
I'll take the "con" side if nobody else wants it. ;-)
If I get any money from these bureaucrats, I'll only keep it in reserve to help pay next year's taxes. The loop is closed. Money stays between Washington, DC and our bank accounts.
I think they eventually will want to keep ALL the money and just put everyone of us on a dole of THEIR devising that will allow us to live at a carefully monitored subsistence level, while THEY get to play golf, take cruises on their private yachts, travel in their private railroad cars and private jets,and generally ride roughshod over all of humanity.
Their goal is to make it impossible for individuals and private enterprise to flourish. We will be reduced to helpless hopeless dependency on an almighty State.
Anyone who resists, will be imprisoned, tortured and killed.
The Feudal System never died out, it just transformed itself into Corporate Fiefdoms instead of Inherited Titles for Landed Gentry.
Now, there is a seemingly unnatural alliance between Corporate Magnates and the Marxists who SEEM to OPPOSE them. In reality the two forces are working together to keep feudalism alive and well
The International Corporate Elite working with an International Banking and finance System that knows no loyalty to ANY particular "nation" are effectively "running" larger and larger sections of the International Community with their "outsourcing" practices that undercut organized labor, keep wages low and working conditions poor.
The Marxists and the Magnates have discovered that by working together they can form a permanent privileged elite (A NEW type of REPLACEMENT for the LANDED GENTRY) that will keep the rest of the world in chains forever, because there will be no new territories to explore and conquer and no new "frontiers."
The vast majority of men and women are designed by nature to be slaves owned and operated by a few smart and ruthless enough to keep the rank and file in line.
Socialism keeps 'em softened up and unlikely to rebel, because all their (basic) needs are always supplied. There's just NO HOPE WHATSOEVER of ADVANCEMENT. And if you should be brilliant enough to discover or invent something tremendous, IT will belong to the ALMIGHTY INTERNATIONAL STATE, and YOU, the inventor, will get nothing "special" for having discovered and developed it.
Like it or not THIS is where we are being directed by the political forces that barely bother to PRETEND to serve our interests anymore.
The best argument against everyone living together in peace and harmony was made by Thomas Malthus in his Essay on the Theory of Population.
Once we all live in peace and harmony, the ONLY check on the continued growth of population becomes the wider and wider spread of MISERY and VICE.
We are currently living inside an "energy bubble". Unless we go nuclear, THAT bubble will soon burst. And the more the world cooperates, the SOONER THAT day will come.
Capitalism is a wonderful thing on a small scale. But when it becomes mercantilism or universalism... it metamorphosizes and transforms itself into a plague which preys upon ALL mankind...whinnyed the Houynyhnm. It becomes predatory. And it becomes unhealthy for and weakens ALL mankind.
G_d struck down the Tower of Babel and dispersed mankind, separating men with a confusion of languages to prevent just such an eventuality. He's not only done this once in the past, but THOUSANDS of times. And He will do so again.
ANONYMOUS...is that you, FT?
I agree with you......It's almost the definition of Conservative v Democrat these days; Conservatives don't want to go down with no fight and and an open palm.
JSF: Z's theory is capitalism doesn't work without God.
or "Godly principles", more aptly said.
Nice addition 'z', with which I must agree...
Hesiod, "Works and Days"
Muses of Pieria who give glory through song, come hither, tell of Zeus your father and chant his praise. Through him mortal men are famed or un-famed, sung or unsung alike, as great Zeus wills. For easily he makes strong, and easily he brings the strong man low; easily he humbles the proud and raises the obscure, and easily he straightens the crooked and blasts the proud, -- Zeus who thunders aloft and has his dwelling most high. Attend thou with eye and ear, and make judgements straight with righteousness. And I, Perses, would tell of true things.
So, after all, there was not one kind of Strife alone, but all over the earth there are two. As for the one, a man would praise her when he came to understand her; but the other is blameworthy: and they are wholly different in nature. For one fosters evil war and battle, being cruel: her no man loves; but perforce, through the will of the deathless gods, men pay harsh Strife her honour due. But the other is the elder daughter of dark Night, and the son of Cronos who sits above and dwells in the aether, set her in the roots of the earth: and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with is neighbour as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter, and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar, and minstrel of minstrel.
Perses, lay up these things in your heart, and do not let that Strife who delights in mischief hold your heart back from work, while you peep and peer and listen to the wrangles of the court-house. Little concern has he with quarrels and courts who has not a year's victuals laid up betimes, even that which the earth bears, Demeter's grain. When you have got plenty of that, you can raise disputes and strive to get another's goods. But you shall have no second chance to deal so again: nay, let us settle our dispute here with true judgement divided our inheritance, but you seized the greater share and carried it off, greatly swelling the glory of our bribe-swallowing lords who love to judge such a cause as this. Fools! They know not how much more the half is than the whole, nor what great advantage there is in mallow and asphodel.
LOL! Barry nailed it!
Sad but true.
JSG: "Mallow and asphodel": Hesiod is right; we ARE food for the poor people. He also says "exceptional men get beyond the human condition and close to the divine"
Now, some exceptional men have been taught by Marxists not to get close to the divine, facilitating capitalists who take advantage of the poor instead of trying to build them up ... hence, giving socialists, Marxists and other Democrats a chance to whine that capitalist pigs are ruling the country.
We're going to have to 'stir up the shiftless to toil' because I'm tired of PAYING! :-)
(and yes, I did do my homework, prof!)
Hi FT,
The world can never live in peace and harmony as long as the earth is populatd with human beings.
It is a foolish pipedream, as unworkable pairing cats and mice.
People have outdone themselves down through the ages to find ways to compete for advantage.
Humans have fought over territory, no matter how small, a plot of land,
religion, no matter how loving, race, even hues of the same color.
They have formed tribes, caste systems, you name it. In Rwanda they were divided over the measurement of the width of their noses, and genocide was the result.
It is the human condition. So, to eliminate borders, in the hopes different peoples will learn to live together, is folly.
To assume that, if wealth were spread among peoples the world over, peace would result, is to me, a ludicrous assumption.
What unites people is commonality. In my opinion a Nation State of a people gives them something to unite around. Loyalty to one's country. But, even with that, over time people get lazy and take it for granted.
Soon they are arguing over minutiae, and dividing into squabbling groups as we have in America.
And FT, we have to remember, Christians were thrown to the lions and people cheered. It's the nature of the beast.
Pris
From FreeThinke:
Farmer John, is that YOU? I can tell you this, brother, you are not"Just Some Guy." You are distinguished for your remarkable tastes in study material, and your protean ability to remember what you have learned, or at least LOCATE it quickly and easily. Often, you are inscrutable, but unfailingly interesting.
I, Alas! study very little, except classical music these days, but I do THINK, and have some ability to articulate the opinions I have formed from studying life around me for over sixty years, reading countless novels, attending many plays, Opera, Concerts, movies, museums, viewing travelogues, and studying architecture from a purely aesthetic point of view, etc.
Also, I watch too much television, and instead of being SUCKED IN, I have developed a fierce resistance and hearty hatred of both the Popular Culture, and the insidious Marxist Ethos that mass media of ALL kinds has been foisting on the American Public since 1923 at least.
Oscar Wilde said, I believe, "Whatever is popular is wrong."
Oscar may not have been a wise man in the way he conducted his personal life, but he was a brilliant man of letters all the same with a great heart and the kind of wisdom that cannot be taught at universities. Oscar is yet another link in the chain that proves how horribly Mankind treats its geniuses.
I am faintly familiar with Malthus, and tend to agree with his sentiments as you expressed them.
Put in the most succinct and simplistic terms:
BIG is BAD
SMALL is SUPERB
Our original design as a nation was to be a FEDERATION of INDEPENDENT STATES loosely united by a deliberately WEAK central government.
Abraham Lincoln, who is stupidly regarded as a great hero, when he was in fact a TYRANT who was DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for the DEATHS of 635,000 men. He also turned many more into maimed, disease-ridden, shell-shocked amputees, and created hundreds of thousands of widows and orphans and plunged millions more into dire poverty.
Lincoln's willfulness DESTROYED our Founders FEDERALIST VISION, and opened up the highway that led to increasing Federal Intervention and Meddling that began with Teddy Roosevelt and carried on with Woodrow Wilson's accursed League of Nations. Because of the Depression that followed WWI, nearly fill-blown Marxism got its filthy hands on us via the misguided expediency of FDR, and despite winning WWII and enjoying a significant period of euphoria in the late forties and early fifties, our DOOM as a Free People was sealed long before many of you were born.
"Someday," the longing for freedom will again arise and a few brave souls will be willing, even EAGER, to sacrifice "their lives, fortunes and sacred honor" once again, but this is unlikely to occur till at least a century or two of sugar-coated servitude and junk-fed oppression under The New Feudalism becomes stifling enough to foster the necessary spirit of Resistance, Rebellion and Sacrifice through Death.
Death really IS preferable to a life of involuntary servitude. And without the solace of religion, which of course we be outlawed, or the ability to explore history and appreciate our past accomplishments (all true knowledge and culture will be misrepresented and distorted beyond recognition then gradually OBLITERATED), life will revert to prehistoric levels, and humankind will have to begin its gradual ascent all over again from the ashes of the wasteland earth will become after the Rule of Universal Peace-Oriented Socialism has finally been deposed --- probably with the aid of many millions of suicide bombers.
FT
I love this. Dave Berry is a great humorist; I wish I had one tenth of his wit. I have directed several to this post, Z . . . it's too funny to miss.
FreeThinke has made a mature observation, but its too late now. It is interesting that we the people are FORCED to take a loan from the government, to be paid back (in spades) when the government calls in their marker. To me, it is sort of like placing a bet with the mob.
The word government has become synonymous with "stupid." I would love it if not a single soul showed up to vote in November.
The DANGER OF CHINA;
I'm in contact with several high Ranked Marketing Experts in LA in my field;
According to all of them, in less than 10 days, CHINA will become the first economic power in the WORLD.
Did you know that China pays ZEROS roalties to all your inventions?!!
Yes, they get your tech., your Patents, they manufacture as much as they want and pay no rights, no entrance fees, no royalties, absolutly nothing.
The South Corean have started to do the same, they take your patent, your circuit, and your how to make, and pay nothing.
This is the DANGER;
The Chinees have understood and decoded your way of success, and your way of the first power of the world, CAPITAL.
So they produce as much money as they can, and they buy as much High Tech companies as they can, but all these operations are CENTRALIZED by their Communist system, and the result will be, the whole power and richness of the world in the hands of the few chinees leaders.
The people have no role and no word in this system of Chinees COMMUNIST STATE of CAPITALISM.
In China, the chinees worker is kept, and incarcerated by several tenth of thousands in the CAMS of each Factories with one meal per day.
NOW, imagin the expansion of the CHINEES ECONOMIC POWER!!!! the world will be transformed on the slaves!!!
CHINEES SUCCESS is the end of the humanity.
LOOK AT your candidates, Rep. Or Dem.
Right or Left,
Which one has the GUTTS and ClairVoiyance to understand that and BARRAGES THAT?
SAM
Good one Z! I am drawn to Beamish's stimulus package as well. Speaking of U.S. China trade, its the subject of my second last post...
btw, have saved a piece of cake for ya at AI...
Sorry;
What a big Mistake;
It was;
in less than 10 YEARS and not 10 days.
SAM
SAM....We may see an Obama or Hillary a president; in that case, America's over. Neither of them have the will to argue with what China has in store ecnomically or militarily. I'm not sure McCain can with a Dem congress, either.
They own us now, anyway. What are we going to do, send everything back to CHina that says MADE IN AMERICA on it? We'd have nothing left.
Our high schoolers would laugh out loud to hear "look for the union label"
Our 'big fat check' will go to pay the taxes we owe this year.
It's just back to the IRS for us.
:-(
But, we've never gone out and spent our refund, when we do get one. We invest it in our retirement.
zin;
the paradox of this china's story is that, the China is destroying your ECONOMIC USA with your own ARMS.
The CHINA provides you nothing but the GARBAGES, they are getting paid to import you their GARBAGE PRODUCTS and to destroy your ECONOMICS.
Look at the Japan;
The Japanees have absolutly no Technology, just copying, they have copied everything from everywhere from the second WW.
The Chinees with their Centralized Communism has taillord a kind of extremelly cheap products with the Garbage materials and the SLAVE workers which are not paid, BUT, you'r paying them, they have their products in your country, you can not to buy their products, you can buycote the China made and Corean MADE.
Believe me, you will be eaten, and the rest of the world will be served as appetizer to the 1,2 billions of CHINEES.
Do not forget the India, 800 millions already, and all your software work in the USA Companies are already transfered to INDIA.
If you'r Capitalist, stay on, why do you open your GATES to all these eaters?
How do you compare your solide and ROBUST FORD AND CADILLAC to the Garbages like HYUNDAI?
Have you lost the taste of the good materials?!!
SAM
SAM..actually, our 'robust' Fords and Cadillacs aren't as robust as they used to be. One rarely sees a Japanese car repair shop because they don't much need it!!
What do you propose America DO??
I will DEFINITELY agree that we buy China's GARBAGE and our jobs are in INDIA.
We are in a mess, SAM. It happened so fast it makes my head swim. This is the only reason for which I am glad my dear, America-loving, patriotic father is passed on. Honestly. I often think that..."What would Dad think of THIS?" It's hard enough to see the demise of your country without worrying about those you love seeing it, too.
THIS IS AMERICA! But,we've invited illegals in, we've allowed people to shame us about a righteous war, we've allowed things on television and film we'd have never dreamt of only five years ago, we've demeaned the very faith which founded this country.
OH, I HOPE somebody comes and weighs in on this subject! It's depressing and I need some OPTIMISM.
What do YOU think America can do, SAM? Do your friends have solutions? (are you coming here?)
You caught me, FT.
As for my memory, it pays to admire the many portraits of Daedalus that the Greeks have painted for us, but unlike the average connoiseur, to also peak around to the back of the painting and examine the fasteners which secured the portrait to the wall.
Plato, "Meno"
SOCRATES: What do you mean? Can he be wrong who has right opinion, so long as he has right opinion?
MENO: I admit the cogency of your argument, and therefore, Socrates, I wonder that knowledge should be preferred to right opinion--or why they should ever differ.
SOCRATES: And shall I explain this wonder to you?
MENO: Do tell me.
SOCRATES: You would not wonder if you had ever observed the images of Daedalus; but perhaps you have not got them in your country?
MENO: What have they to do with the question?
SOCRATES: Because they require to be fastened in order to keep them, and if they are not fastened they will play truant and run away.
MENO: Well, what of that?
SOCRATES: I mean to say that they are not very valuable possessions if they are at liberty, for they will walk off like runaway slaves; but when fastened, they are of great value, for they are really beautiful works of art. Now this is an illustration of the nature of true opinions: while they abide with us they are beautiful and fruitful, but they run away out of the human soul, and do not remain long, and therefore they are not of much value until they are fastened by the tie of the cause; and this fastening of them, friend Meno, is recollection, as you and I have agreed to call it. But when they are bound, in the first place, they have the nature of knowledge; and, in the second place, they are abiding. And this is why knowledge is more honourable and excellent than true opinion, because fastened by a chain.
MENO: What you are saying, Socrates, seems to be very like the truth.
SOCRATES: I too speak rather in ignorance; I only conjecture. And yet that knowledge differs from true opinion is no matter of conjecture with me. There are not many things which I profess to know, but this is most certainly one of them.
MENO: Yes, Socrates; and you are quite right in saying so.
Far too many scholars today are of the opinion of Theuth vis a vis the usefullness of the art of writing.
Plato, "Phaedrus"
SOCRATES: At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
PHAEDRUS: Yes, Socrates, you can easily invent tales of Egypt, or of any other country.
SOCRATES: There was a tradition in the temple of Dodona that oaks first gave prophetic utterances. The men of old, unlike in their simplicity to young philosophy, deemed that if they heard the truth even from 'oak or rock,' it was enough for them; whereas you seem to consider not whether a thing is or is not true, but who the speaker is and from what country the tale comes.
PHAEDRUS: I acknowledge the justice of your rebuke; and I think that the Theban is right in his view about letters.
SOCRATES: He would be a very simple person, and quite a stranger to the oracles of Thamus or Ammon, who should leave in writing or receive in writing any art under the idea that the written word would be intelligible or certain; or who deemed that writing was at all better than knowledge and recollection of the same matters?
PHAEDRUS: That is most true.
SOCRATES: I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.
PHAEDRUS: That again is most true.
SOCRATES: Is there not another kind of word or speech far better than this, and having far greater power--a son of the same family, but lawfully begotten?
PHAEDRUS: Whom do you mean, and what is his origin?
SOCRATES: I mean an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner, which can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent.
PHAEDRUS: You mean the living word of knowledge which has a soul, and of which the written word is properly no more than an image?
So mothers everywhere, NEVER stop reading and re-reading the OLD Nursury Rhymes to your children. They make WONDER-FULL portraits! And who knows, perhaps someday a curious child will look behind the portrait and examine (and question) the fasteners which held it in place those many years, like I did.
btw - I think we are in agreement as to Lincoln and "Union". But then, I thought that the Articles of Confederation would have made the Constitution un-necessary... (I'm a Franklin-o-phile)
Farmer John,
One may give one's true opinion (one's honest feelings and deepest personal convictions) and be partially or entirely in error.
Truth (which I see as one of several synonyms for God) exists in the abstract, but it is often inscrutable. Few if any mortals are equipped to recognize it fully.
Ergo, we are stuck with our opinions and insights, which too many of us MISTAKE for Truth.
Pure Truth is hard to get at, and much of it remains unknowable, though it may be staring us straight in the face.
FreeThinke
That's why it's important for the philosophically inclined to learn about BOTH Letoides, to "know themselves" (something that they actually can learn to know)... and not merely the shallow superficial "Narcissus" self (surface reflections) but also look deep enough to see the monster that stares back from within the darkness of the abyss (like Artemis) in ADDITION to the "abstract" world of logic, perfect forms, infinite lines and absolute values of mathematics and theology like (Apollo - born on the "floating" island of Delos).
I don't believe Socrates was being ironic when he confessed at his trial that the oracle stated him to be the wisest of Greeks, for he was one of the few mortals who knew that he didn't know (with perfect certainty) ANYTHING.
See the 'levels' upon which the Trojan prophet Laoccon's feet are placed... z. ;-)
He wasn't wrong... people just didn't believe him (just like his female counterpart, Cassandra).
btw - Don't forget about the "pair in the air"!
You really think the feet are like that intentionally, JSG???
Given "who" the characters are supposed to represent... Youbetcha!
FJ: OKAY. TELL me again. S L O W E R
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