Not if the liberals push it through to give out $2,000 stimulus checks every month. Many people never would go back to work. Inflation would keep us broke forever.
Sorry, whatever normal we return to, the world remembers Trump. And the fact that we almost kept him. And that in our bizarre system he would have won with a few thousand well placed votes. I’m guessing that won’t fade in our lifetimes.
Bloomberg’s a little more sanguine than I am, lets hope they’re right: China is losing the soft-power war to America — Hal Brands writes America is “a second-half team,” starting to win the soft-power game and accumulate allies, at the very least. It’s a bit like that thing Winston Churchill didn’t say, about Americans always doing the right thing after exhausting all other alternatives.
Apparently the concept of normal is an ideal Rorschach test for normative values among the factions of modern American society.
Ammosexuals see the actions of their fellow gun nuts as justification to surreptitiously plow the stimulus checks they deride into more Parkerized phallus projection products; crypto deficit racists tweet away on their dog whistles, warning of impending doom from dark skinned spending; various stripes of repressive religious types fret over their loss of reach to repress those who have been educated enough to see what a farce all religion is..
Before Brandon Straka was storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, he was a hair-dressing, #WalkAway-tweeting MAGA influencer—taking in tens of thousands of dollars in government pandemic money.
According to The Daily Beast’s review of records from the Project On Government Oversight’s Covid Tracker, Straka is one of at least nine individuals facing charges stemming from the Capitol riots who received special coronavirus funds through small business loan programs over the last year. And Straka is far from the only notable insurrectionists among the group.
Collectively, these business owners took in more than $227,000 from three small business relief initiatives—the Paycheck Protection Program, Economic Injury Disaster Loans, or Disaster Assistance Loans—and they are facing charges ranging from entering a restricted building to assaulting police officers with a deadly weapon.
In Straka’s case, he personally received $20,800 in PPP funds and got an additional $12,354 in PPP money for the WalkAway Foundation.
✁
Another high-profile loan recipient, Dominic Pezzola, is facing some of the stiffest charges of any insurrectionist. Pezzola, a member of the far-right Proud Boys, broke a window into the Capitol and was one of the very first rioters to breach the building.
He also stole a police officer’s riot shield and is facing 11 charges, including obstructing Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman from doing his job.
Pezzola, who is the owner of D Pezzola Flooring, received $12,502 in PPP funds. He potentially faces 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. But Pezzola’s jail time may still pale in comparison to Julian Elie Khater. ✁ ✁ ✁
The Pentagon is bad at making memes, but it still tries.
On October 29, 2020, U.S. Cyber Command’s Cyber National Mission Force—a DoD team that “ensures commanders can maintain the freedom to operate in the cyber domain”— posted a picture of a Soviet bear dropping a Halloween candy bucket full of malware.
Candy labeled with words like “X-Agent,” “XTunnel,” and “ComRat” flew from the poor bear’s candy basket. The tweet got 364 likes and was retweeted 190 times.
Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act Request filed by Runa Sandvik, a senior advisor for Norway’s Armed Force Cyber Defense, we have a 23 page report detailing Cyber Command’s creation of the image.
The Pentagon doesn’t meme like you or I. Before the DoD’s cyber warriors can s#!tpost, images must be approved, tweets drafted and redrafted, and everything has to go through the chain of command.
From conception to deployment, the picture of the Soviet bear dropping malware candy took 22 days.
The first email to mention the image comes from a redacted email sent on October 7, 2020 at 11:24 A.M. “Intended date of disclosure is 29 OCT,” the heavily redacted email said. The message contains the rough sketch of an idea—to tell the public about specific kinds of malware.
✁
Cyber Command’s response to the report contained a detailed explanation of why it’s making bad memes.
According to Cyber Command, they “impose costs on adversaries by disclosing their malware,” and the graphics “are used and included to increase engagement and resonate with the Cybersecurity industry.”
Though it did admit that “the graphics may not be shaping adversary behavior.”
Stantis’s legacy will be a series of pussyfooting strips so vague that future generations will be able to use them unaltered, like the prophecies of Nostradamus.
New Yorker cartoon: Young girl is lying in salon chair, being gushed over by beautician: “You’re one of the lucky few with normal skin!”
For years I couldn’t understand what the joke was, and then I realized — if only a few have it, how can it be “normal” skin? Of course, what is meant is skin without extreme characteristics — not too oily, not too dry, etc. Very Goldilocks.
Zoom profits increased over 3000% in 2020 but they aren’t going to pay federal taxes. They pay their employees in stock options and can therefore write this off. If the employees hold the stock long enough, they pay the reduced capital gains rate even though this is their income.
Rather than complaining about the debt / deficit, the Repubs should turn into actual conservatives instead of being regressives and eliminate deductions like this. The 2017 tax cut included a tax deduction for LEASING a private jet – you can’t even pretend that “creates jobs”.
The richest 1% of Americans are successfully hiding huge amounts of income from the IRS according to a new study.
“More than 20% of the wealthiest Americans’ income isn’t being reported to the Internal Revenue Service, according to a new study that calculates U.S. tax evasion is far higher than previously estimated,” Bloomberg News reported Monday. “Random audits of the rich can detect some tax evasion, but the study’s authors found that the IRS easily misses income hidden in sophisticated ways, including in private businesses and offshore structures. Collecting all unpaid income tax from the top 1% would boost revenue to the U.S. Treasury by $175 billion a year.”
And it could be even worse than estimated.
""We stress that our estimates are likely to be conservative with regard to the overall amount of evasion at the top," the study’s authors wrote.
“While many forms of income, including wages, are automatically reported to the IRS and easily uncovered in a basic audit, the profits of private businesses and complex investment partnerships are harder to track,” Bloomberg News explained. “The hidden income at the top means that income and wealth inequality could be more skewed than researchers have previously estimated, the authors concluded. The study was conducted by two IRS researchers, John Guyton and Patrick Langetieg, and three professors: Daniel Reck of the London School of Economics, Max Risch of Carnegie Mellon University, and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California at Berkeley.”
braindead Premium Member over 3 years ago
The ‘old normal’ is pre-Newt.
fuzzbucket Premium Member over 3 years ago
Not if the liberals push it through to give out $2,000 stimulus checks every month. Many people never would go back to work. Inflation would keep us broke forever.
admiree2 over 3 years ago
Well, something has to become abnormal then so which one is it?
William Robbins Premium Member over 3 years ago
Sorry, whatever normal we return to, the world remembers Trump. And the fact that we almost kept him. And that in our bizarre system he would have won with a few thousand well placed votes. I’m guessing that won’t fade in our lifetimes.
Bloomberg’s a little more sanguine than I am, lets hope they’re right: China is losing the soft-power war to America — Hal Brands writes America is “a second-half team,” starting to win the soft-power game and accumulate allies, at the very least. It’s a bit like that thing Winston Churchill didn’t say, about Americans always doing the right thing after exhausting all other alternatives.
NeuralCapsule over 3 years ago
Apparently the concept of normal is an ideal Rorschach test for normative values among the factions of modern American society.
Ammosexuals see the actions of their fellow gun nuts as justification to surreptitiously plow the stimulus checks they deride into more Parkerized phallus projection products; crypto deficit racists tweet away on their dog whistles, warning of impending doom from dark skinned spending; various stripes of repressive religious types fret over their loss of reach to repress those who have been educated enough to see what a farce all religion is..
RobinHood over 3 years ago
It’s National Cheesesteak Day, so normal is to celebrate down at Jersey Mikes.
Silly Season over 3 years ago
Before Brandon Straka was storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, he was a hair-dressing, #WalkAway-tweeting MAGA influencer—taking in tens of thousands of dollars in government pandemic money.
According to The Daily Beast’s review of records from the Project On Government Oversight’s Covid Tracker, Straka is one of at least nine individuals facing charges stemming from the Capitol riots who received special coronavirus funds through small business loan programs over the last year. And Straka is far from the only notable insurrectionists among the group.
Collectively, these business owners took in more than $227,000 from three small business relief initiatives—the Paycheck Protection Program, Economic Injury Disaster Loans, or Disaster Assistance Loans—and they are facing charges ranging from entering a restricted building to assaulting police officers with a deadly weapon.
In Straka’s case, he personally received $20,800 in PPP funds and got an additional $12,354 in PPP money for the WalkAway Foundation.
✁
Another high-profile loan recipient, Dominic Pezzola, is facing some of the stiffest charges of any insurrectionist. Pezzola, a member of the far-right Proud Boys, broke a window into the Capitol and was one of the very first rioters to breach the building.
He also stole a police officer’s riot shield and is facing 11 charges, including obstructing Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman from doing his job.
Pezzola, who is the owner of D Pezzola Flooring, received $12,502 in PPP funds. He potentially faces 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. But Pezzola’s jail time may still pale in comparison to Julian Elie Khater. ✁ ✁ ✁
~
https://www.thedailybeast.com/congress-helped-their-businesses-during-the-pandemic-then-they-attacked-the-capitol
Silly Season over 3 years ago
More new normal…
Pentagon cyber-warrior meme attacks!!!
~
The Pentagon is bad at making memes, but it still tries.
On October 29, 2020, U.S. Cyber Command’s Cyber National Mission Force—a DoD team that “ensures commanders can maintain the freedom to operate in the cyber domain”— posted a picture of a Soviet bear dropping a Halloween candy bucket full of malware.
Candy labeled with words like “X-Agent,” “XTunnel,” and “ComRat” flew from the poor bear’s candy basket. The tweet got 364 likes and was retweeted 190 times.
Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act Request filed by Runa Sandvik, a senior advisor for Norway’s Armed Force Cyber Defense, we have a 23 page report detailing Cyber Command’s creation of the image.
The Pentagon doesn’t meme like you or I. Before the DoD’s cyber warriors can s#!tpost, images must be approved, tweets drafted and redrafted, and everything has to go through the chain of command.
From conception to deployment, the picture of the Soviet bear dropping malware candy took 22 days.
The first email to mention the image comes from a redacted email sent on October 7, 2020 at 11:24 A.M. “Intended date of disclosure is 29 OCT,” the heavily redacted email said. The message contains the rough sketch of an idea—to tell the public about specific kinds of malware.
✁
Cyber Command’s response to the report contained a detailed explanation of why it’s making bad memes.
According to Cyber Command, they “impose costs on adversaries by disclosing their malware,” and the graphics “are used and included to increase engagement and resonate with the Cybersecurity industry.”
Though it did admit that “the graphics may not be shaping adversary behavior.”
~
https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7m9dy/read-the-pentagons-20-page-report-on-its-own-meme
RonnieAThompson Premium Member over 3 years ago
Have a Covid free day my friends. Stay safe. Save a life, get vaccinated.
Radish... over 3 years ago
Two shootings in less than two weeks and gun loving republicans refuse to stop the carnage in any way. Yep, republican normal.
Kip W over 3 years ago
Stantis’s legacy will be a series of pussyfooting strips so vague that future generations will be able to use them unaltered, like the prophecies of Nostradamus.
Bradley Walker over 3 years ago
New Yorker cartoon: Young girl is lying in salon chair, being gushed over by beautician: “You’re one of the lucky few with normal skin!”
For years I couldn’t understand what the joke was, and then I realized — if only a few have it, how can it be “normal” skin? Of course, what is meant is skin without extreme characteristics — not too oily, not too dry, etc. Very Goldilocks.
Michael G. over 3 years ago
Never is there a rogue comet when Earth would benefit from one.
Nantucket Premium Member over 3 years ago
Zoom profits increased over 3000% in 2020 but they aren’t going to pay federal taxes. They pay their employees in stock options and can therefore write this off. If the employees hold the stock long enough, they pay the reduced capital gains rate even though this is their income.
Rather than complaining about the debt / deficit, the Repubs should turn into actual conservatives instead of being regressives and eliminate deductions like this. The 2017 tax cut included a tax deduction for LEASING a private jet – you can’t even pretend that “creates jobs”.
librarian4hire over 3 years ago
The richest 1% of Americans are successfully hiding huge amounts of income from the IRS according to a new study.
“More than 20% of the wealthiest Americans’ income isn’t being reported to the Internal Revenue Service, according to a new study that calculates U.S. tax evasion is far higher than previously estimated,” Bloomberg News reported Monday. “Random audits of the rich can detect some tax evasion, but the study’s authors found that the IRS easily misses income hidden in sophisticated ways, including in private businesses and offshore structures. Collecting all unpaid income tax from the top 1% would boost revenue to the U.S. Treasury by $175 billion a year.”
And it could be even worse than estimated.
""We stress that our estimates are likely to be conservative with regard to the overall amount of evasion at the top," the study’s authors wrote.
“While many forms of income, including wages, are automatically reported to the IRS and easily uncovered in a basic audit, the profits of private businesses and complex investment partnerships are harder to track,” Bloomberg News explained. “The hidden income at the top means that income and wealth inequality could be more skewed than researchers have previously estimated, the authors concluded. The study was conducted by two IRS researchers, John Guyton and Patrick Langetieg, and three professors: Daniel Reck of the London School of Economics, Max Risch of Carnegie Mellon University, and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California at Berkeley.”
http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/GLRRZ2021.pdf