U.S. Electile Dementia paralytica 2024

[Dr Sardonicus]

Here in the good ol' USA, one of the demands from the Anarchist 20 to which Kevin McCarthy acceded to gain their acquiescence to him becoming Speaker of the House, was that there be a floor vote on a plutocrats' wild fantasy called the "Fair Tax Act."

Earl LeRoy "Buddy" Carter (R-GA) has already introduced this bill (HR 25). It calls for abolishing the income tax, capital gains tax, corporate taxes, and the IRS - and making up for the loss in government revenue with a national 30% sales tax.

McCarthy, however, never promised to support this measure, and he has publicly stated that he opposes it. Enough other R's also oppose it that it is very unlikely to pass in the House.

Even if it passed in both the House and the Senate, President Biden would veto it. There are certainly not enough votes to override a veto, so this will not become law.

Proponents are resorting to a mind-bogglingly stupid trick to try to pretend the proposed rate is less than 30%.

Under the proposal, if you bought something priced at $10.00, you'd pay $3.00 in sales tax. That's a 30% sales tax. "No, no!" say these lying weasels. "That $3.00 is only 23% of the total $13.00."

No. What would be taxed is the $10.00. And the proposed tax really is 30%.

I'd have to review How to Lie With Statistics to see if it has a similar "shifting the baseline" example...

[rogue]

Watching the House of Representatives in DC is like watching a circus with many Republicans looking like subjects of the freak show.

[Dr Sardonicus]

The Chinese spy balloon tracking across the US has prompted one of the most idiotic suggestions I've seen in some time:

If Joe Biden and his administration are too weak to do the obvious and shoot down an enemy surveillance balloon perhaps we just let the good people of Montana do their thing... I imagine they have the capability and the resolve to do it all themselves.

-- Donald Trump, Jr. Feb 3, 2023

The lowest altitude I've seen this thing reported at is 46,000 feet, which is well over 8 miles (13 km) high. What kind of weaponry Junior imagines "the good people of Montana" might possess is beyond me.

And amidst all the Republican Biden-bashing for not ordering the military to shoot the balloon down, one prominent Republican offered a reason to be cautious that goes far beyond official concerns about falling debris harming civilians. On a Friday Feb 3 interview on Fox News, James Comer (R-KY), Chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee said:

My concern is that the federal government obviously doesn't know what's in that balloon. Are there Bioweapons in that balloon, did that balloon take off from Wuhan? We don't know anything about that balloon.

At this point, if the military were to shoot the balloon full of holes, it would probably splash down after the better part of a week, far out in the Atlantic Ocean.

UPDATE: The US military did shoot the balloon down after it drifted off the US East Coast. But they didn't just "shoot it full of holes." They blew it out of the sky with an air-to-air missile fired from an F-22.