The Razor

I spent most of yesterday in the yearly ritual known as “doing taxes”. After I filed , I decided to explore some scenarios given my own tax situation. Much to my surprise I found that the Marriage Penalty is alive and kicking; Married people in my situation pay an extra $2,200 to the feds being married as opposed to being single. This surprised me since I had believed that the Marriage Penalty was a myth – especially for couples like ours with disparate incomes.

I learned this by doing complete returns in the software: married filing jointly and single plus head of household. Under the married filed jointly it appears that our combined incomes pushed us into a higher tax bracket where we got hit harder by progressive taxation. Under the single/head of household scenario the one with the lowest income filed as single and took the standard deduction, while the other with the greater income claimed the Kid and itemized deductions. The net difference between the two scenarios was $2,200. I even checked the tax tables online just to be sure.

I’m not keen on social engineering using public policy, but I suspect that social engineering is less an issue than increased tax revenue. If the IRS was losing money from a loophole I have no doubt they’d close it.

I’d forgotten how bad the Clinton era was for the gay community; evidently so has the gay community.

One of Clinton’s first acts as president was to introduce “don’t ask, don’t tell,” enshrining active discrimination against open homosexuals in law; in the first five years of his presidency, discharges of gay soldiers rose 70%. In 1996, Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which allows states (and the federal government) not to recognize same-sex marriages of other states, and then touted his support of the measure on Christian radio stations. The Clinton Justice Department refused to offer an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case of Romer v. Evans, which challenged a Colorado constitutional amendment seeking to ban cities and towns from instituting antidiscrimination laws protecting gays. Clinton also signed a bill barring HIV-positive people from entering the country and one that discharged HIV-positive soldiers from the military. “It’s really outrageous the pass that Clinton has gotten from gay and lesbian people considering the harm he did to the gay rights movement,” Sammon says.

Clinton’s did not stop harming gays once he left office. In 2004 he reportedly encouraged Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry to not only support anti-same-sex marriage constitutional amendments at the state level, but the Federal Marriage Amendment as well. The Clinton administration—looked upon by liberals, gay ones especially, as a golden era in American history—proved that leading Democrats can be pro-gay by convenience, not conviction, and that when homophobia works for political advantage liberals are no less hesitant to employ it than conservatives.

Obama is no different:

In October, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign invited Donnie McClurkin—a notorious “ex-gay” singer and minister—to participate in its Southern Gospel Tour event in South Carolina. McClurkin claims that homosexuality can be “cured” through prayer and that gay people are “trying to kill our children.” While Obama later claimed that he did not agree with McClurkin about gays, he had no problem giving the performer a platform to preach his bigotry, knowing that such views are widely held among the conservative Southern black voters whose support he needs to win the Democratic nomination.

How long is the gay community going to put up with being used by the Democrats? When are they going to realize that their natural allies are the Libertarians – or perhaps more accurately the libertarian-minded. Many of the latter are found today in the Republican party. After all, if the Party wants government out of people’s lives that should include their bedrooms. But until gays wake up and stop being used, things won’t change.

Not only does the Kid’s elementary school have a “Positive Behavior Support Team Coordinator” it has at least two of them. I have their signatures on a letter notifying me that he was selected his homeroom’s “Student of the Month”. He’s a good kid and I’m happy he’s doing well; but is hiring a herd of “Positive Behavior Support Team Coordinator” really the best way of spending taxpayer dollars?

Is it just me or does the job title sound a wee bit Orwellian?

I have been  ruminating on the term “Iraq War”, and the more I think about it the more I believe we have a nasty semantics problem on our hands. The issue came to the fore in another thread over at Dean’s World where a poster said that Obama will not withdraw from Iraq. He suggested that Obama would simply declare the “war” over and call the troops stationed there “peacekeepers.” This of course is simply semantics being used to justify the breaking of a campaign promise. No one who supports Obama simply because of his anti-war stance would accept this semantic change, which is why I continue to believe that should Obama win Iraq will lose.

Commenters to the thread made the case that what is happening in Iraq is best described as “war” or an “occupation”, but I have problems with both terms. The former term ignores the reconstruction and reconciliation efforts of our military, while the latter ignores the fight against al-Qaeda and Iran’s Quds force. But the semantics of the issue go much deeper than that when you look at the definitions of the words:

War: 1 a (1): a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations…

In Iraq there is no hostile conflict “between states or nations.” The Iraqi government is our ally, and our opponents are stateless and disorganized (with the exception of Iran, which is using the cover and support of various Shi’a militias to attack the Iraqi government and the United States).

Note the usage of the word “declared” in the definition: wars have a beginning and an end. Consider Vietnam: the war officially began with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and ended with the official surrender of South Vietnam to NVA forces in April 1975. If the USA left Iraq as Sen. Obama declares he will do once he becomes president, who would the remaining Iraqi forces surrender to? Al-Qaeda? Al-Qaeda is neither a state or nation: it’s at best an ideology. How do you surrender to an ideology? Given the reconstruction efforts and the fact that you need an enemy with a state or a nation to have a war, perhaps occupation would be the better term. Unfortunately the dictionary shows the limits of this term as well:Occupation: 3 a: the act or process of taking possession of a place or area : seizure b: the holding and control of an area by a foreign military force c: the military force occupying a country or the policies carried out by it.

On the face of it this word works better than the term “war” to describe the US military effort in Iraq; the US clearly is setting Iraqi priorities and policies and is doing so using military force. Where the word fails is in the attacks against al-Qaeda as mentioned earlier, but with the failure of the definition to note the effort to build (there’s no ‘re’ – Iraqi infrastructure was a shambles long before the attacked Iraq in 1991) infrastructure, private and government institutions and create a non-sectarian Iraqi military. The term also implies permanence, and the US has made its occupation conditional on the ability of Iraqi government and military to support an independent and peaceful Iraq.

So how about Peacekeeping?

Peacekeeping: the preserving of peace; especially : international enforcement and supervision of a truce between hostile states or communities (emph. add.).

Finally a term that appreciates the divisions within a state. Peacekeeping is necessary particularly in places with mixed ethnic and religious communities, as in Baghdad, and in southern Iraq where the Shi’a and Mookie are harassing the locals.

In short we are actually doing all three: warring, occupying and peacekeeping in Iraq. There isn’t a single term that sums up all our efforts Language fails us, and may fail Iraq if Obama takes power and ends the “Iraq War” as well as the “Iraqi Occupation” and the Iraqi Peacekeeping Mission”. History will ultimately be the judge, but a lot of good that will do the Iraqis who suffer from the catastrophe that follows Obama’s decision.

I fired a brand-spanking new Ruger Mark III tonight.

And was unimpressed. I still rank the Beretta Neo as my favorite .22 pistol, although the  Browning Buck Mark  has proven to be a more than adequate substitute while the range’s Neo gets its sights fixed. I’ve also had a pleasant time shooting a heavy  Smith & Wesson  revolver that looked like a .357 but fired .22’s. I thought the weight would be a problem, but I was able to shoot two boxes of ammo without tiring.

I’m no expert, but the Mark III trigger seemed mushy: I like a tight, smooth trigger that allows the gun to fire “unexpectedly”. However a plus for the gun was it’s kick: it didn’t buck much at all and so I was able to fire relatively quickly while maintaining accuracy.  Overall I managed to shoot well tonight with relatively tight groupings at 10 yards.

Between the range and my CO2 pistol, I’ve gotten pretty good I think. I set up some cans in the backyard, stood 17 yards away and knocked 3 out of 4 cans off a bale of hay in my first 4 shots in front of the Wife – who was impressed (kind of). I still have a ways to go though. Right next to me at the range tonight a guy was firing a .22, a .38 and a .45 at a target that had multiple bullseyes set back 10 yards. His groups were extremely tight – less than 1.5 inches for all three guns.

Is Comrade Bob done? Stick a fork in him and see. Meanwhile things are looking good for Morgan Tsvangirai. I wish Zach Barbera was around the blogosphere to appreciate this day given his lengthy postings on Zimbabwe in the early days. Zach’s writings stand as some of the best blog posts ever, and his analysis remains spot on.

Here’s what the AP writes about the farm seizures:

The unraveling began when Mugabe ordered the often-violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms turned over to blacks, mainly relatives, friends and cronies who allowed cultivated fields to be taken over by weeds.

Today, a third of the population depends on imported food handouts. Another third has fled the country and 80 percent is jobless. Life expectancy has fallen from 60 to 35 years and shortages of food, medicine, water, electricity and fuel are chronic.