JoeWeber

Well I'll be dipped in doo-doo and rolled in crumbles. You do have a bit of self awareness.

I was so focused on jabbing you in the ass, I fucked up. Please accept the most sincere apologies I can offer you. Now, I won't disagree I can be an intolerable moron at times but after a full head of hair and an acceptable manhood my sense of humor is my most prized possession. Please take that back.

I was hoping this would be debunked, but so far no. Trump supporters and future repeat voters, and I do mean you Brent, airdvr, Ron and anyone else, your President tweeted this photoshopped image of himself. Do you honestly believe he is of sound enough mind to control our nuclear arsenal? Our military? Our Domestic and Foreign policy? Or even hold your daughters hand? You voted for him so you own this. What will it take for you to come around?

It was a quip, nonetheless I stand corrected. Also, I have no doubt your mere presence can be a deterrence

Nice try. Just the act of typing Canada and Mexico in your travelogue should have caused an instant desire to hit the delete button. I'll just assume you were on missions to understand the world and not on the cheap pharmaceutical bus. Also, and you're forgiven because the right so often gets it wrong, Puerto Rico is us. Sorry Brent, but world travel isn't like skydiving where you can jump at a few places decades ago, quit the sport, and still claim to be a skydiver. The world is way bigger than a dozen countries that are mostly all accessible by a comfortable train ride, never suffering time zone lag. That, and it's the cheap shoe producing nations in the East, which you've denigrated twice now, where our main focus should be. Not 1980 Lithuania.

Aren't you precious? You tucked yourself away in upper back woods Georgia decades ago to escape America and you have the unmitigated gall and audacity to question my desire to live here? And it's not like you're getting your affairs in order to return to the fold. Nope, you spend your days ringing your hands over the horrid dissipation of American society, praying for Jesus, Q or, for all I know, Rip Van Winkle to swoop in to save the day all while stock piling hat tin foil on your 40 acre hidey hole somewhere back in the sticks even further away from America. How does knowing that I enjoy travel, meeting people from other cultures and am fully convinced that understanding, as best I am able, those who share our planet give you the idea that I hate capitalism? Trust me, I love capitalism; it's been good to me. That, to be blunt is why when those who either have put no thought into the problem or don't own a pot to piss in or a window to toss it out of start discussing taxing the rich I'm inclined to request a little non-subjective clarity. I simply believe, and don't drop your ammo, that the best way to protect it's benefits is to include a certain fundamental fairness into a system that has always operated in shades of grey. For you, to put it mildly, everything is Black or White.

Cute reference. Have you ever been to the Philippines? No? No surprise. I don't need you to fight for me. More importantly, I don't want you to think I need you to fight for me. Get out, man. Go to the weird places without an American flag sewn on your shoulder. You might learn something.

Q?

And what you had was the security blanket of a uniform and the perspective of your mission. Grab your flip flops, a back pack and have a Tiger beer with anyone in Indonesia for a different outlook. And while you are at it, try to remember that you served to protect my point of view.

No shit, California? That's brave. Took me 2 months to learn Vietnamese before we went there in '94. I get it that you get three Germany points but were those military visits? What about the rest? Military? Nothing in Asia? Sorry, man but there is no love. You have not been around. That's the problem with us in America. Big assed loud mouths and no clue what is really going on.

Cute. Smack my silly ass down and tell us where you've been and when, FYI, I maxed out my last two passports and needed to send them in for extra pages and that wasn't enough.

Brent, Not counting being under military control, how well traveled are you? I ask because you seem parochial and isolated in your views and opinions. To be completely direct, well traveled doesn't mean Cabo or talking to people who've actually gone somewhere. It means going yourself and experiencing people and places and things that aren't found in Happy Valley. That means lots of things and many countries. Have you done that?

airdvr is a creature of conservative memes. Notice how he never answers directly when confronted. Seriously, airdvr, when the article starts off with a mob association reference like "two large men" does your radar not start blinking? You wrote: "It's a long read but in my mind these guys are dirty". Did you even read the long read or just think it was cool and posted it like the FB nonsense?

What if the numbers are $15,000 and $15,000,000? But before you even get there you need to know how much money you need to run the government. Maybe your 10% is really 25%. Maybe someone is mixing bread pieces into the eggs for dinner and the other still doesn't notice. Maybe while someone can't afford gas to use the roads they are paying for in equal proportion the other is racing around in their new S Class getting tickets and crashing and using the police and medical services the other poor bastards are helping finance. In the meantime the tax system all but guarantee's the most of us get poorer and poorer while a few get richer and richer. I'm not at all against the accumulation of wealth. I also probably think the number that makes you "rich" is bigger than many would agree is, well, rich. But unless we're all going to live in the woods a fair system of taxation that doesn't upset the apple cart is a basic requirement.

No, the terms "flat tax" and "rich" should be defined by the OP. Just 4 posts ago airdvr again claimed that the term rich was subjective which made a flat tax is the "most fair". That makes zero sense. mistercwood is most right in saying that unless there is a reasonable untaxed baseline a flat tax is inherently unfair. But, what is that amount? Is it the same number in San Diego as Outer East Nowhere? Somewhere on the way to happily taxed over someone needs to say a number that is fairly derived. In the same vein, if someone is going to lament the taxing out of existence the rich they ought to be able to put some number to it.

Now I get it. I was looking at the whole thing and only saw a zoo load but really it's a hoop dive.

time for a period not a comma wassup with Obama? some people say the dude has had his day he needs to go away he's making such a fuss cause he's not one of us that's just what I hear he's stokin' you with fear 'cause he's not from here aint no illusion or collusion it's confusion you know they all lyin' you know how hard I'm tryin' and tellin' you the truth from me the way it needs to be you can see your minds are free you know what I meant we're in the same tent all 63 million of us and Brent

Big deal. O.K., you win. Your new avatar is like talking to someone with a big zit on their nose. I concede defeat.

Hey! That's my asshole line. For sure you can come up with your own asshole thing to say.

Champion bit of investigation reporting Coreece. I've been unsettled by the idea that some posters have auras and the rest of us do not, but that was just silliness. You, however, have simply blown the thing wide open. The question is, now that we know what Bill actually looks like what do we do?

Well done. You are now officially a part of the problem.

When you titled your original post did you not have some notional definition of "rich" in mind? This isn't a poetry competition; the idea here is to inspire others engage in a dialogue on the posted topic. Please forgive me if I'm unwilling to sign on to taxing the crap out of the rich until I'm informed who is on the list. So what sort of rich were you thinking?

Ron doesn't think. Everything he spouts is another type of revealed truth. He is convinced that only those predisposed to accept these prepackaged wisdoms, and without question, could ever understand the meanings. My guess is that on some level he feels genuinely sorry for us. So he does the right thing and soldiers on trying his best to save us from ourselves.

Scale. Things are either too big or too small or happen too slowly or too fast for the overwhelming majority of observers to perceive. Hence, our circumstance.

Rich was your word: "Tax the rich, feed the poor, 'til there are no rich no more". It was also central in meaning to your point, not subjective. Maybe it would be best if you agreed it was a crap post and we'll drop it.