Or not…
I got myself and my company fired this week for being overly candid (and vociferous) in expressing my objections to the lazy, careless, incompetent support I received from the organization’s staff before and during a CLE seminar via, yecchh, Zoom. Essentially I cared more about the quality of the program than they did.
Well, it’s not the first time I’ve done this over the years; it’s reassuring to know I haven’t changed.
Here, in Friday’s Open Forum, candor is valued above all.
Have at it.
As for my misadventure, let us never speak of it again….
Ethics Alarms 
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/nyt-editorial-says-prosecuting-trump-first-step-to-end-democracy-crisis/ar-AA117ZdG?ocid=spartan-dhp-feeds
NYT has officially become Pravda.
Here is something worth commenting about.
“Male and Female He created them” (3-5000 BC, pretty sure this was before the 18th Century….)
I have one for Ethic weenies. Podcast Movement at #PM22:
There tweet yesterday:
Hi folks, we owe you an apology before sessions kick off for the day. Yesterday afternoon, Ben Shapiro briefly visited the PM22 expo area near The Daily Wire booth. Though he was not registered or expected, we take full responsibility for the harm done by his presence.
There’s no way around it: We agreed to sell The Daily Wire a first-time booth based on the company’s large presence in podcasting. The weight of that decision is now painfully clear. Shapiro is a co-founder. A drop-in, however unlikely, should have been considered a possibility.
Yes, they are apologizing for him being in the room, not a planned speaker or presenter.
Of course they are. Nice people shouldn’t be polluted by being near conservatives, just like in 3rd grade you sat far away from those classmates who had the cooties.
I wanted to do ‘bad takes’ thing on the Student Loan announcement, but I haven’t got around to it. Instead I wanted to put out a few of the most stupid.
1. Comparison’s to the PPP loan.
No, the government forcing you to close down your business or making it so people can’t patron your business is not the same thing. The PPP was a loan that could be turned into a grant if a majority (60% in think) was spent on payroll. You can’t even claim its the free-market at work, it was direct government heavy handedness. There was no way to prepare for it. Fire, flood, acts of god, most of those could be covered with insurance. There is no insurance against this (at least there was none).
I saw the WH personally called out Marjorie Greene and while she’s a troll, she owns a business. As far as I can tell, she used those funds correctly. If she didn’t, she should be investigated for that. Either way it has nothing to do with student loans.
Sorry, not just MTG. They are doing it to a lot of republicans who have PPP. Good job there uniter. I’m sure this will work out well for you.
2. Jesus would have wanted it this way.
This one just baffles me. Jesus was often about forgiveness, but he was also about personal responsibility. The parable of the talent illustrates this. There are a number of people who try to use Jesus’s actions to justify government heavy-handedness and that’s nothing Jesus ever did. Even if I thought I should forgive someone of a debt, (which I think an argument might be made from it), it would only apply to the debt I gave them. That transaction does not exist here. The debt is transferred to other people. This would be like me saying, okay, I’ll forgive your debt, but since I still need the money, I’m going to make your buddies pay for it.
3. College is too expensive/were taught we have to go to a college to succeed. Perhaps, but that does not make it the governments problem to fix. You were also taught that you would have to pay the loan you take out (I had this same thing repeated to me for every loan I have ever had).
I think I can pretty much sum all these arguments as non-sequiturs or strawmen.
Here’s my question…can my mortgage identify as a student loan?
Honestly this has me pretty annoyed. I went to college on a scholarship. Then I went to grad school on a scholarship. My husband went to college and some of grad school on scholarships. We paid for his doctorate and after I got my first real job, we worked hard at paying off the loan as soon as we could. Granted, for all our college, we only had about $18K debt and it was only for his doctorate, but that was us trying to be fiscally responsible most of the time.
If we go this route for student debt, it seems to me that car loans may come next. They are the same size and student debt. Why wouldn’t I whine that I deserve a new car every ten years and the government should pay for it. Or my house…
I know I’m getting a littler hyperbolic here, but the idea that I have to pay for some one else’s lifestyle pisses me off. Personal responsibility folk!
I paid off one loan for law school and the rest are pretty close to the end. Will I get a check for what I paid off? Never miind the ridiculous amount of interest? Nope, I’m the chump on this one.
Yep, where is my payment? I paid off my (very small) student loans, and more recently paid off my mortgage. Why should the government be giving handouts to folks making as much as a quarter million — and requiring blue collar workers to pay for it.
That’s even assuming it is legal in the first place. If he really had the authority to do this, it seems to me he would have slipped it in 18 months ago with his first few hundred executive orders…
Well for many years the interest on most mortgageweres tax deductible. Fewer are now because of a change in the rules but some are still deducting mortgage interest.
They are (mostly) all still tax deductible. Fewer people make use of the deduction because increases in the standard deduction make it more beneficial to use that instead of itemizing, but generally speaking the tax deductibility of mortgage interest hasn’t changed.
This is an on purpose trend by Congress, originating around the time of the Reagan administration. Policy has been to increase the standard deduction over the years to reduce the number of people itemizing. You can debate whether this has been a good or bad idea, but that’s what they’ve been doing. Up through 1969 it was 10% of AGI with a maximum of $1000 (regardless of filing status — part of the ‘marriage penalty’).
I literally wrote a check August 18th for my kids tuition. I feel like a damn fool. Attending a local college, with scholarships. Now I realize I am “fortunate” to be able to write a $5600 check, and I am “grateful” I’m not completely strapped for cash, but… that doesn’t mean I’m lucky. My husband and I have other debts, we have a college savings plan we paid into… my newest car is a 2018, I don’t party, I don’t eat out much, so maybe later I’ll have more empathy for those who want a bit of their tuition and living expenses paid off but I paid off my college debt and my two kids tuition so they didn’t need to have loans, and now I’m burdened anyways with college debt from others. I’m upset right now about it. Both can be true, you know. The college loan train is predatory and duped kids into getting insane amounts of loans when they felt they had no choice, and I don’t want to pay for their life choices in perpetuity. You can say that is really unfair and I’m not responsible for it.
Even the President is in on this equation of PPP loan forgiveness for Republicans complaining about the $500b-ish of written off student debt. That he did this on the anniversary of 13 US Service Members being KIA trying to carry out a surrender to the Taliban is especially maddening. The KIAs and the false equivalency of PPP loans to student debt are the top two things that I have nothing nice to say about. This sets a new standard for gaslighting.
The government told everyone to stay home & keep their businesses shuttered. This is a Taking under the 5th Amendment and the government has to pay for Takings. These loans were taken out to help shuttered businesses keep their staff on the payroll and out of the unemployment office. If you fulfilled the requirements set forth for these loans, they would change from loans to grants that did not have to be paid back. This was all disclosed before anyone signed for a PPP loan.
College debt was never presented as anything but traditional, unsecured loan that the borrower agreed to pay back. No one was forced to go to a college that required going into debt to pay tuition. No one in mid-March had a choice other than laying off employees and breaking states’ Unemployment Insurance funds. (Speaking of, was this ever a genuine concern with the Federal Government plus up that paid more than people’s salary.)
The only alternative for businesses was to fold up shop. Another letter to my Democrat Congressman in California.
It’s the same guy who voted for an Assault Weapons Ban after I asked him what an assault weapon is. The response was that assault weapons are assault weapons, and assault weapons are bad because crime. At least he’s not in favor (yet) of packing the court.
I was hoping for a far more educated opinion than mine on this. Apparently some are calling into question if it is constitutional to have a magistrate give out search warrants to anyone, Trump or not.
https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/26/can-magistrate-judges-constitutionally-issue-search-warrants-against-trump-or-anyone-else/
That is a very interesting article. I have no idea if the legal arguments it presents are sound — but we do have lawyers present here.
My question would be — if it were determined that search warrants cannot, in fact, legally be issued by a magistrate judge — doesn’t that then mean that everything the FBI seized during the raid is therefore inadmissible in court?
At least that’s what I learned from watching many episodes of Law and Order.
So let’s turn to one of the truly important issues for all time: Baseball!
I’ve been following Albert Pujols’ numbers lately, and despite all expectations, he has an actual shot to get to 700 home runs. Currently he’s at 693, needs 7 more to get to the milestone, and only 4 more to pass someone else whose name need not be mentioned here.
What’s interesting to me is that he is back with St. Louis this year, and statistically is having perhaps his best year since his first one with the Angels. He is hitting .276 with an OPS of .879, which is actually not shabby. Not Pujols in his prime, but he isn’t in his prime anymore. And, granted, he’s not playing every day — he has played in 75 games with 210 at bats, so perhaps about half time overall. He hasn’t had an OPS over .800 for 10 years.
And, the NL has the designated hitter this year, so that’s also a help I imagine.
I am definitely rooting for him to make it. The Cardinals have 37 games left in the regular season and are odds on to make the playoffs, so that would be at least 3 more games, more if they win their wild card series. Still — I doubt if the odds are in his favor, but he’s a heck of a lot closer than anyone thought he would be at this point.
Yep, where is my payment? I paid off my (very small) student loans, and more recently paid off my mortgage. Why should the government be giving handouts to folks making as much as a quarter million — and requiring blue collar workers to pay for it.
That’s even assuming it is legal in the first place. If he really had the authority to do this, it seems to me he would have slipped it in 18 months ago with his first few hundred executive orders…
I was today years old when I learned that Notre Dame is being restored.
“On 15 April 2019, while Notre-Dame was undergoing renovation and restoration, its roof caught fire and burned for about 15 hours. The cathedral sustained serious damage as a result. The flèche (the timber spirelet over the crossing) was destroyed, as was most of the lead-covered wooden roof above the stone vaulted ceiling. This resulted in contamination of the site and the nearby environment with lead. After the fire, many of the proposals for restoration suggested modernizing the cathedral’s design, but the French National Assembly rejected this approach, enacting a law on 29 July 2019 that required the restoration to preserve the cathedral’s “historic, artistic and architectural interest”. The task of stabilizing the building against possible collapse was completed in November 2020, and reconstruction began in 2021. The government of France has said it hopes the reconstruction can be completed by Spring 2024, in time for the opening of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. President Emmanuel Macron confirmed on 14 April 2021 that the cathedral site will be formally returned to the church on 15 April 2024, and that the first mass since the fire will be held in the cathedral nave on that day, even if the reconstruction has not been finished by then.”
I dunno, I feel like it’s a win.
Wait, so is the new roof going to be covered with lead, too?
I paid off 20k in student loans fast, knowing my guaranteed good paying job would make that easy. We can complain all we want and rightfully so, but since when does the current iteration of the dem party care? Their ethics alarms are nonfunctional but their thirst for power is unlimited. Hopefully this will backfire. The debt relief is mostly for those who vote D (asindumb) anyway.
Commence light reading:
If your college degree doesn’t have enough value for you to pay it off…
It certainly doesn’t have enough value for me to pay it off.
You either understand history or you trust the government.
You can’t do both.
If the spending bill costs zero, why raise the debt ceiling?
The trouble with natural immunity is that it’s free.
Lawyer ad: If you or someone you know dated a poet, you may be entitled to compensation.
Mom, why do people eat chicken soup when they’re sick?
Because it is a much better solution than using an illness as cover to implement global communism.
Fight for your freedom like you fought for toilet paper.
Oh, so you’re against the private ownership of guns?
I’ll bet you don’t believe in fire extinguishers either.
I mean, you can always just call the fire department right?
“You don’t need 30 rounds to hunt with.”
True, but the Founding Fathers did not write the second amendment because the deer were coming.
Biden is already showing America what a great president Trump was.
Proglibot says: We believe in science. Just not the chromosome thing–we don’t agree with that one.
If Trump is a hatemongering evil man like the media constantly tell us, then why aren’t HIS followers the ones killing cops, destroying property, looting stores, and assaulting innocent bystanders?
Rod Serling: Imagine if you will; A voter base so brainwashed that even when their candidates promise to raise taxes, disarm them, and leave their borders unprotected, they will still vote for them simply because of their party name.
Think about it: Biden and Harris say that if Trump is reelected there will be more violence. Conversely, the violence will end if Biden wins. That means democrats are controlling the violence.
It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to put a Biden sign in your yard and remove all doubt.
How quickly people forget. Remember “Tebowing”?
Remember how the League told him to keep his displays and opinions off the field? Remember how he was mocked and berated by the media for taking a knee in thanks to God?
Wasn’t that First Amendment stuff too? Yeah, it was.
From the internet: originals are better with the graphics but WordPress does not allow me to copy/paste my stored political cartoons. I’m not logged in when commenting.