24 thoughts on “New Year’s Weekend Open Thread”

1. To wish all a happy New Year. May 2012 be your best year so far!

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   1. Happy upcoming 2012 all.

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         1. Happy New Year.

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3. What’s the Deal with Romney’s Taxes?

   This is Romney’s problem. While we don’t know the specifics of Romney’s tax returns, we know enough about his finances and sources of incomes to know that he is likely the poster-boy for the Buffett Rule. As Romney likes to say, he’s unemployed. He doesn’t draw a salary. But he seems to still be making big big money off capital gains which are currently taxed at a very low rate. He doesn’t seem to have drawn a salary at any time recently. So he likely pays no payroll taxes. And that’s before you get into legal but aggressive tax-sheltering. It seems virtually impossible that Mitt Romney doesn’t pay the sort of effective tax rate that would make people’s eyes pop when compared to middle income and even relatively wealthy (by normal standards) people who pay considerably higher rates.

   In the present environment I don’t think someone paying an effective rate below that of working people would have a prayer. Even many of the tea party people will have trouble with that.

   And there’s no way he’ll avoind releasing them – if he doesn’t it will become an all-encompassing issue with everyone wondering what he’s hiding.

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   1. The GOTP will see this as proof of the wisdom of a flat tax.

      The left will care – the right? Not so much.

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   2. Could be helpful in getting Obama re-elected in general.

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   3. won’t be a big deal. Though it may well help prevent Romney from engaging in that kind of criticism of our President

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4. My wish for you and the thousands who have suffered loss of income, poor health and injury in these difficult times.

   God Bless and Happy New Year.

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   1. We’re not celebrating the New Year so much as saying a hearty good riddance to the old one but all the best to you and yours, Pita, and everybody here at ColPols.  

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5. an arbitrarily chosen point in the orbit of our small planet that has now been transitted several billions times already . . . I prefer to think of it as an opportunity to say good fucking riddance to an especially worthless 2011 . . .

   All the best, all the days of your life, starting today.  

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   1. Raymond Lo, a master of feng shui – the Chinese art of arranging objects and choosing dates to improve luck – said he wasn’t surprised that 2011 was such a tumultuous year because it was associated with the natural elements of metal and wood. The year’s natural disasters were foreshadowed, Lo said, because wood – which represents trees and nature – was attacked by metal.

      2012 could be better because it’s associated with ocean water, which represents energy and drive and the washing away of old habits, Lo said.

      “Big water also means charity, generosity,” Lo said. “Therefore that means sharing. That means maybe the big tycoons will share some of their wealth.”

      http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45…

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   2. All the best.

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6. How SOPA Could Ruin My Life

   But rather where we get into even more trouble is when you look at the details of SOPA, and how it might affect someone like me. Their definition of what piracy is ends up including most of the internet, including my own site, and the punishments for even minor infringements could be catastrophic and run me out of business completely.

   The fine print of the law says sites that distribute copyrighted content could be subject to summary censorship, ie Torrent sites and the like. But it also encompasses any sites that LINK to copyrighted content, which is the bomb that blows up any semblance of sense this bill might have had.
   
   …
   
   Those opposed to the bill were the only voices of reason in the room. I remember a line in particular that said, “We’re operating on the internet without any doctors or nurses on the room,” which illustrated how practically every tech giant and pioneer on the web has opposed this draconian bill, as guess what, Google and Blogger and Bing and Reddit by definition, all link to copyrighted content, and would be subject to this new law.

   This would probably also mean the end of ColoradoPols. One case of one person in one comment linking to copyrighted material and the site is shut down.

   What will be left are some corporate sites – and that’s it. And the only person on the committee that understands the Internet is Jared Polis (and he’s doing a great job of trying to kill this disaster).  

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7. have a Happy New Year; make loads of money, get laid a lot, enjoy much personal happiness, eat great food without weight gain, etc I think it is realistic to think that things will only get marginally better.
   
   But, I think this board is going to get very interesting in the next couple of months and politics is going to be very engrossing.

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   1. May your wishes come true for all of us.

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   2. You live in the USA.

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8. Dave Barry’s 2011 Year in Review

   But all of these developments, unfortunate as they were, would not by themselves have made 2011 truly awful. What made it truly awful was the economy, which, for what felt like the 17th straight year, continued to stagger around like a zombie on crack. Nothing seemed to help. President Obama, whose instinctive reaction to pretty much everything that happens, including sunrise, is to deliver a nationally televised address, delivered numerous nationally televised addresses on the economy, but somehow these did not do the trick. Neither did the approximately 37 million words emitted by the approximately 249 Republican-presidential-contender televised debates, out of which the single most memorable statement made was, quote: “Oops.”
   
   …
   
   In Washington, Congress is under mounting pressure to do something about the pesky federal debt, which continues to mount as a result of the fact that the government continues to spend insanely more money than it actually has. Congress, after carefully weighing its three options – stop spending so much money; get some more money somehow; or implement some combination of options one and two – decides to go with option four: continue to do nothing while engaging in relentlessly hyperpartisan gasbaggery. Incredibly, this does not solve the debt problem.
   
   …
   
   In domestic politics, the Republican party is rocked by polls showing that 43 percent of all likely voters – nearly 55 million people – claim to have been sexually harassed by Herman Cain. With Rick Perry stumbling and “Mitt” Romney continuing to generate the excitement level of a dump fire, the GOP frontrunner becomes none other than that fresh-faced, no-baggage, anti-establishment Washington outsider … Newt Gingrich!

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9. Mars!

   Two former participants in the CIA’s Mars visitation program of the early 1980’s have confirmed that U.S. President Barack H. Obama was enrolled in their Mars training class in 1980 and was among the young Americans from the program who they later encountered on the Martian surface after reaching Mars via “jump room.”

   It’s like the Onion, only they’re serious.

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10. The first morning of the New Year. Time to drum up some optimism and hope for the best in the coming year. An easier than usual New Years Day morning for me as I didn’t feel like doing anything celebratory last night. Hope you all enjoy the day. Here’s to a fresh start.

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11. 

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12. Day 1

    Day 2

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    1. Interesting experience, eh? I look fwd to your reports:-)

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