Merry Xmas

To my family in Jolly Old England! Happy New Year!

New Blackwater Logo

My feeble attempt...

I wonder...

... how far this idea could go with, say, a week's worth of Iraq war funding put into it? Your local wastewater treatment plant (and yes, you have one) could be running your car. I like.

Wake up Cat

This is VERY familiar...

Downy Woodpecker

Out in the backyard eating something from a dried out plant stem... hopefully involving Japanese Beetles. Why, no... the tripod WAS'NT handy, why do you ask?

A better hummingbird Video

I think these are kinda cool...

Malaki better polish up the ol' resume...

Bush says he supports him.
I give him a month.

Why am I not surprised?

From the NYT:

"The growth in total incomes was concentrated among those making more than $1 million. The number of such taxpayers grew by more than 26 percent, to 303,817 in 2005, from 239,685 in 2000.

These individuals, who constitute less than a quarter of 1 percent of all taxpayers, reaped almost 47 percent of the total income gains in 2005, compared with 2000.

People with incomes of more than a million dollars also received 62 percent of the savings from the reduced tax rates on long-term capital gains and dividends that President Bush signed into law in 2003, according to a separate analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, a group that points out policies that it says favor the rich.

The group’s calculations showed that 28 percent of the investment tax cut savings went to just 11,433 of the 134 million taxpayers, those who made $10 million or more, saving them almost $1.9 million each. Over all, this small number of wealthy Americans saved $21.7 billion in taxes on their investment income as a result of the tax-cut law.

The nearly 90 percent of Americans who make less than $100,000 a year saved on average $318 each on their investments. They collected 5.3 percent of the total savings from reduced tax rates on investment income."

Time for a BIG change. Yet, somehow I suspect the majority of Americans feel that it is their own fault they aren't getting by as well as their parents did.

Love the Government spokesdroid's comment:

'Mr. Fratto said the fact that nearly all of the growth in incomes was among those in the upper reaches of the income ladder and that the majority of investment tax breaks went to those making more than $1 million “is not a very interesting story.”

You may be mistaken Mr. Fratto-it's just not interesting to TV news.