“It’s the Brent Spence Bridge. It doesn’t really need repairs. It’s got decades of good life left in its steel spans. It’s just overloaded. The bridge was built to handle 85,000 cars and trucks a day, which seemed like a lot back during construction in the Nixon era.”

“And the new $2.3 billion Cincy bridge is not scheduled to even start construction for probably four years, long after Republicans have scheduled the Obama presidency for completion.”

http://tinyurl.com/3tek6xj

“UNITED NATIONS — A last-ditch American effort to head off a Palestinian bid for membership in the United Nations faltered. President Obama tried to qualify his own call, just a year ago, for a Palestinian state. And President Nicolas Sarkozy of France stepped forcefully into the void, with a proposal that pointedly repudiated Mr. Obama’s approach.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/world/obama-rebuffed-as-palestinians-pursue-un-seat.html?_r=1&hp

Gotta hand it to ya, John.

That one’s a dandy!

The Mongolian guy is probably just grateful he wasn’t the Japanese premier with George H.W. Bush barfing into his lap.

Mongolian’s are mostly Buddhists, a self-effacing bunch. So, Obama was probably just helping him efface.

A family member of mine is on a project in Mongolia at this moment. Would you believe they have a Ramada Inn there?

Birthers of the world, unite!

Just in case anybody has even a passing thought that there might be any validity to the Social Security number story, it was completely debunked 6/13/11 by Snopes.com.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/ssn.asp

I wonder how the President of Mongolia feels?

“Richest 1 percent pay 31% of their income…” Uh, make that their “adjusted gross income.” Big, big, big difference! Still, they do indeed pay a disproportionate share; in large part because they control an ever increasing disproportionate share of national income; not to mention an even more disproportionate share of wealth.

There is no objective measure of “fair share.” What’s the reference point? Are the taxes under Bush and now Obama more or less fair than under Clinton?

What’s fair? Going “dutch,” by taking whatever the government spends and dividing the tab equally among all taxpayers? A pure flat tax, which would, by definition, make tax rates go way down for upper income and way up for middle income? A progressive tax, such as we now have? How progressive? A consumption tax, which would re-tax accumulated savings on which people had already paid tax?

We should have a standard deduction for all, get rid of all “below the line” exemptions and deductions and most “above the line” adjustments to gross income and reset the tax rates taking into account the broader tax base. Replace traditional 401k’s with Roth’s. People with comarable gross income should pay comparable income taxes.

“(In reality, the top 10 percent of earners pay nearly 70 percent of all income taxes, according to the IRS. People in the richest 1 percent pay 31 percent of their income to the federal government while the average worker pays less than 14 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.)”

And neither does the IRS or CBO, apparently.

http://tinyurl.com/3vkyvy4