First Looks category archive

Hot to trots:

Nineteen portable toilets have been deliberately set on fire at construction sites since Nov. 6, according to a San Francisco Fire Department spokeswoman. No one has been injured, but the breezes blowing in from the Pacific have taken a hit.

Marketwatch summarizes “how to detect unfair or deceptive credit-card practices . . ..”

This story is worth a read for anyone who still has a credit card.

The Backwards Bush Clock over there

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on the sidebar has been retired.

Bush is and will remain backwards, but his clock has run out.

Now, God willing, the polity will return to reasonable fights over sane policies, rather than unreasonable fights over insane policies.

God be with us as we return to reality.

Here.

.

The Booman discusses the difference between governing and kvetching.

What Susie said.

Courtesy of Philadelphia City Paper and others, Tuesday, The Plough and Stars, Second between Market and Chestnut, Philadelphia, Pa., 6 p.

Addendum:

I won’t tell anyone about my secret parking place. Rox reports that over 1000 persons have RSVP’ed.

Damn, I better print up some more business cards for tomorrow!

John Cole wrote this so I didn’t have to (it refers to this news story):

While James and the Supreme Court are focusing on worthwhile Constitutional issues, this seems to me to be missing the point, and akin to trying to cure heart disease by making better defibrillators. We need to look at what got us to this point that school officials would even CONSIDER performing a strip search for over the counter medication. This is a manifestation of decades of drug war mania and the ensuing zero tolerance idiocy.

The medicine they were looking for was prescription Ibuprofen.

The only difference between over-the-counter and prescription Ibuprofen is the strength of the pill.

You can turn standard (200 mg.) OTC Ibuprofen into Rx Ibuprofen by taking three of them, instead of two.

By the way, after making the girl strip to her underwear in front of a committee, school officials found nothing.

Except a half-naked 13-year-old girl.

It is difficult for me not to think that the whole scene must of have been a little weird.

If I had a picture of her in that state, I would go to jail for a long time, have my reputation trashed in the newspaper and on television, have my picture splashed all over the place, and be required to register with the authorities for the rest of my life.

But they, of course, are (drum roll) School Officials Fighting the War on Legal Non-Addictive Painkillers.

By the way: In Delaware, students are prohibited from having any medicine, whether or not it’s prescription, on them while in school. They are supposed to turn any medicine into the school nurse at the beginning of the school day.

Pop Quiz: What’s the difference between medicine and medication? (Answer below the fold).

Read more »

What happens without responsible regulation (part umpty-ump of a continuing series):

U.S. health authorities told consumers on Saturday to avoid eating products that contain peanut butter until they can determine the scope of an outbreak of salmonella food poisoning that may have contributed to six deaths.

Note that this does not apply to the peanut butter you find in the market. It applies to peanut butter sold to manufacturers, such as those who make peanut butter cookies, and to institutions, such as schools, hospitals, and nursing homes.

Addendum, Later the Same Evening:

Some of Susie’s family ended up in the hospital. They are still waiting for test results to find out if it’s peanut-butter-cracker-related.

Judging by all the helicopter activity down by the river where the railroad tracks run, I would say that the Obama Express just passed by.

No blanket pardons for unconstitutional conduct.

Yet.

Criswell predicts mass retirements from the Supreme Court over the next year.

Read the comments here.

I marvel at the commenters’ restraint.

And, do not forget, it wasn’t just Bush.

It was the whole rotten Republican necon cabal.

It was, in short, conservatism triumphant.

Good riddance, and how much more damage can they do in four days?

We shall see.

No doubt, we shall see.

As I remarked to someone in an email today, I have not yet been disappointed by expecting the worst from George W. Bush and his crew.

Addendum:

Ian Williams in the Guardian:

So what is his greatest political achievement, putting to one side the ethical dimension and the incompetent governance thing? Surely he deserves an Oscar for his performance as a statesman, which was so convincing that most of the American media bought his lies and grovelled to him, and maybe a Golden Globe for persuading “Yo Blair” to play best supporting actor next to him for so long – even at the expense of his own career.

And his subsidiary achievement? Making Bill Clinton look good. Now that’s impressive.

John Cole:

What Has Been Seen Can Not Be Unseen

Dick Polman analyzes Tim Geithner’s tax problems as regards his nomination for Secretary of the Treasury.

I can’t say I hold a great brief of Mr. Geithner, nor for anyone who has been in any way associated with the Fed or Wall Street, even tangentially, within the past eight years.

I can, nevertheless, request some clarity in the discourse:

Apparently, what Geithner failed to pay was the self-employment tax.

That is separate from the income tax that we all know and love.

Persons who are self-employed or who are contractors who do not have tax withheld must pay the self-employment tax in addition to the income tax. It covers the social security and medicare taxes that would have been withheld had they had employee status, as well as the employer’s contribution to those taxes. For most contractors and self-employed persons, it is equal to or greater than the income tax itself.

I first encountered it about 12 years ago, when I did a little consulting gig on the side of my regular job. I wouldn’t have known about it if I hadn’t just stumbled over the requirement. I had completed my 1040, then read something and realized, gee, there’s a whole nother form I have to fill out. (Technically, it’s the Form 1040 Schedule SE.)

I have a friend, a person of good will, who failed to pay it for several years when he first entered “contractor” status, even as he faithfully paid his income tax. Now he’s in audit hell as a result.

Why? He didn’t get lucky the way I did and stumble over it, and no one told him about it.

Yeah, I know, that’s not an excuse. It is, however, a reason, and, in my friend’s case, a quite legitimate reason. I assure you, he sincerely wishes he had known about, realized about, and paid the self-employment tax.

Especially when his caller ID says, “We’re from the IRS. We need to talk.”

Apparently, IMF considered Geithner to be in a contractor status and did not withhold Medicare and social security taxes.

If Geithner did his taxes himself, he can be condemned for being stupid.

If he had a tax advisor (and at his pay level, he certainly ought to have had one), he needs to see about getting several dozen refunds of his fees. Keeping clients out of trouble is what tax advisors are for.

The point I’m making is this: Some persons are talking about this as if Mr. Geithner failed the file his 1040s.

It’s a little more subtle and a little more complicated than that.

(Aside: When my mother went back to teaching, she learned somewhere along the line that she had to pay social security for the cleaning lady. I remember her stuggling with the forms every quarter. Wonder how many tax evaders out there aren’t paying the social security and medicare taxes for their home help?)

The first official Presidential portrait taken with a digital camera.

Via Phillybits.

Andrew Sullivan talks about meeting Mr. Obama.

Please. Just. Go. Away.

President George W. Bush will give a farewell address to the nation Thursday night, billed by the administration as a chance to reflect on his tenure and welcome Barack Obama without fighting old battles one last time.

Afterthought:

Dan Froomkin, responding to a question in his chat earlier today (emphasis added):

Dallas: Hey Dan, The whole “disappointment” that there weren’t weapons of mass destruction in Iraq seems to me to be pretty perverse. I mean, shouldn’t we be glad that Saddam didn’t have weapons of mass destruction? I think the disappointment should be directed towards the decision to go to Iraq based on the false assertion of WMD (or, with Bush spin applied) the intelligence indicating that there were WMD in Iraq when there weren’t. Has that struck you as odd?

Dan Froomkin: Odd, yes. I think it’s Bush shorthand for “I’m disappointed that we were wrong about the WMD.” But even that doesn’t cut it. For one, there is a powerful argument to be made that, as the Downing Street Memo said, the intelligence was being fixed around the policy. And then there’s the fact that he won’t say that, had he known there were no WMD, he wouldn’t have attacked anyway. So what’s he disappointed about?

The answer is that, like the Mission Accomplished banner and not landing Air Force One in Louisiana, he’s just sorry things looked bad. He doesn’t seem to have any genuine regrets at all.