Oh yes, I'd like to state that when I did at some point make less than $12,000 per year, which at the time was below the poverty level, I did get back any taxes I paid throughout the year. But as someone has stated more succinctly, there is a diminishing marginal utility thingie.. uh, you are cutting into someone's ability to afford food, shelter, clothing and basic medical supplies if you tax them when they make below a certain amount of income. As someone who made over $30,000 (after college) I did pay taxes on income which were not returned after my annual forms were filed. The idea that people who live in extreme poverty should be denied the right to vote *because* they're poor is rather.. uh... it's wrong. That would be actual disenfranchisement.. that's what that word actually means. Those are the people whose voices most need to be heard, the ones who need help and are having a bit of a problem.

The last time any state decided to dissolve the Union, there was the bloodiest war in US history. These right wing leaders and protesters talk about things like revolution and dissolving the unions and reloading, they're borderline violent and illegal. At least when the left was being a bunch of whiney-baby sore losers, they only talked about doing LEGAL and PEACEFUL things like leaving the country or voting people out of office. I mean there are places where these reds can go if they leave the country, to live among other social conservatives who don't believe in handing out welfare to single mothers. I will buy them their plane tickets to go join the Taliban, if they would like.

If this would truly become a pandemic if people did *not* alter their behavior by restricting travel, then wouldn't it be more appropriate to say that the restriction of travel is reducing or off-setting the healthcare costs (rather than say that the modified behavior is an additional problem).

That was fucking brilliant!

Well, while this guy is a douche nozzle, I agree that it was my mother who insisted that I get an education and secure a way to support myself before contemplating marriage. My father did agree with her and back her message, but it came from her because she didn't want me to ever end up like she did in her first marriage: completely dependent on an abusive and neglectful husband, with no other way to support herself and her child. It's a good thing her father was still alive or she'd have had nowhere to turn to start over.

The State of Georgia offers the Choose Life license plates. It made me want to ram into the one car I saw with one.

I've somewhere read about women sleeping with guards to get pregnant in order to avoid being executed. It's a possibility more pleasant than that she was raped, anyway.

But.. now the GOP can smear Dems by saying they voted *not* to close Gitmo.

I don't see anything wrong with allowing kids to be kids, or with making sure they aren't ashamed of their bodies. This may come as a shock to some, but parenting does involve bathing children (while they are naked!!), wiping waste off of their genitals and anuses, encouraging them to urinate and defecate in a toilet, explaining to them why they should not rub their genitals in public, and all kinds of things which would mortify some of these letter writers and offend someone's puritanical sensibilities. But that's life. Children are not sterile little dolls, they are curious about their bodies and they require a lot of instruction on some very potentially embarassing topics.

I thought it was a cute story.

Remember, one of the goals is to achieve energy independence, which corn would allow us to do.

I'm curious why we don't seem to be hearing anything about harvesting methane releases from landfills. We certainly have a lot of landfills and if we don't harvest the methane seeping out of them, it just becomes a greenhouse gas (not to mention a potential explosion hazard). This seems like it would be a win-win, but I've only ever heard of it implemented in studies or on very local scales.

In Atlanta, almost every day there is a plane flying slowly around the city dragging a huge banner depicting the googly-eyed money-stack. I think he's kind of cute.

If this fails, it will be because of the anti-choice people. He's calling them out and if they refuse to work on contraception or rights for pregnant women (not for the fetus), they will be outed for what they are (to a wider audience, anyway).

You should switch to Geico so you can use that wad of cash to purchase a surface to air missile!

If you're in thousands of dollars of debt, cancelling HBO is a good start. All that loose change in the couch adds up, too. If you are in debt, this is how you start to get out.

I know that I'm not in their target demographic, but how can this be anything other than insulting: The only thing - the *only* thing - in their "Tech Tips" (where you'd expect them to perhaps explain what a GB is and why you need some) is a list that can be summarized thusly:

Here's what you can do on your computer!

1. You can read books on it!

2. There are diet websites! You love to diet!

3. There's recipe websites! You love to cook!

4. You can make a grocery list!

Seriously?!

If a fetus is a person, shouldn't protesters have to get the fetus' permission to display the photos of their corpses? Also, shouldn't the protesters be charged for having and distributing child pornography (because the fetuses are naked)?

nice Bob Dylan reference

Isn't that guy a terrorist? Why should anyone care about what he thinks, other than to increase security on whatever he's opposed to?