The house is insulated. Who _doesn't_ have their own washing machine? Open the windows and suffer from the hay fever as the pollen comes whistling in on the wind. There are NOT 100's of ways to reduce usage without suffering from "too hot" or "too cold" or a bunch of other things that we all moved out of caves and tents to avoid.
...when the self-driving car is forced to do exactly the 55 mph speed limit, and the traffic that normally does 85 there continually runs into you from the rear.
Its 20 miles to town on a divided highway. What do you suppose happens there? Cars clump up and drive in a platoon, never seeming to have watched a NASCAR race long enough to see what happens when the lead car has a problem, and everyone crashes. If it isn't a platoon, then its this one guy either following too D close for any kind of safety, or parking himself exactly in my blind spot. On the drive back from town, the right turn via the turn pocket just before the traffic light to attain the 4 lane divided highway always seems to attract some moron in a big, huge pickup truck that tries to come racing around me on the left, dive right, and slam on the brakes 'cuz he can't negotiate the turn pocket faster than a snail in molassass. Plus, the cops are always out there with radar and lidar and vascar and choppers and airplanes and etc. trying to lift $100 or more from me if I forget to set the cruise control at their ridiculously low speed limit that is set that way just to generate ticket $$$. And then there's a phalanx of traffic lights out in the country fer cryin' out loud, and a pile of morons that take 30 seconds to get moving because they're blabbing or texting on their cell phones. That is, if they're not already moving and drifting into my lane while watching their damned gadget instead of the road. Fun driving? Where is that?
Say what? You would take an autonomous taxi, of course, that would get you from point A to point B without a driver to have to talk to. It might even be coin operated (bill changer, actually.)
and his hip once? Wow. I've been driving for 50 years, and haven't broken anything, and I drive a _lot_. Bought a new car a year ago last March. It now has 65,000 miles on it, and I put 'em all there. Tell me about bike safety.
The modern approach to bullying seems to be far too passive. I saw the recent movie (within the last year), a documentary about bullying, and absolutely no one was helping those kids, not the teachers, not the parents, not the cops.
The cure for bullying is to beat the F out of the bully. The adults involved were all dedicated to non-violence. F that! A bully is beating on you, you grab whatever it takes to win, if not present fight, then the next one. Bullies understand pain, pretty much everybody does. The mere threat of a good beating is often enough, and if you "acquire" something heavy or long, they often get disinterested. That's the way to handle bullies. And, OBTW, unplug the frappin' computer and neutralize the cyberbullying.
What's hard about it is that its in the Hymalyas, and from the sound of things, people that see it in the clear would say, "Oh, that's a bear" and people that have it come out of a snowstorm and try to eat them think its the abominable snowman...
Noooooo.... no VAT tax. That impacts manufacturers in this country, thus diminishing the incentive to operate a business here, which is what we have now and why we have our high unemployment. Tax JUST over-the-counter sales on NEW items for sale, and services, and the US industry then can operate tax free, meaning that they can build factories with all the investment they receive, and create jobs HERE and make US prosperous. Note that, by removing the income taxes from US industries, their product prices will go down because they can manufacture cheaper, and the products from Japan and Korea and elsewhere do NOT go down, and then everyone gets hit with the 30% tax. IOW, its a built-in tariff.
Don't want to pay a 30% tax for a new Ford Explorer? Then buy a used Ford Explorer. But you'll have thousands of dollars in your pocket, that you didn't have before, because YOU are no longer paying income taxes, including the hideously regressive payroll taxes ("The poor" send 15.3% of every dollar they make to Washington to pay the payroll tax. Under the Fair Tax, the payroll tax would be abolished.)
SB, you're simply not comprehending this. "The poor" pay $0 Fair Tax..
" Let's say the tax is 10% of gross income, apply that to a median family making $50,000 per year."
Again, you're not comprehending this. The Fair Tax is NOT an income tax. It is a consumption tax, a sales tax on retail sales and services.
You do the envy thing with "the rich", when the facts are that "the rich" spend out the wazoo on large-$$$ purchases, and THAT will be taxed. The rich get hit much harder by the Fair Tax than the income tax, which they can largely avoid.
So the solution is to do all your business in some other country, and just sit here and take the profits, and let the rest of America starve (yes they are - 1 in 6 people in the USA struggles with hunger.)
One country without an income tax? Just because Johnny jumps off the bridge, do you have to do it too?
The facts are that the income tax is full of holes, loopholes, ways to avoid it, etc. that the Fair Tax, the best proposal for a consumption tax, does not.
Companies / businesses do not pay the Fair Tax at all, which is what would make the USA the best place on the planet to manufacture. That would lift the country out of its current poverty, when there's a factory on just about every street corner, employing 3 shifts of workers to make the world's goods. Without the income taxes raping their operations, outsourcing would increase TO the USA, with foreign factories shutting down as the businesses move manufacturing operations here.
There is no "effective" corporate tax rate. If some company, like GE, manages not to pay income tax at all, the effective tax rate is NOT 0%, it is something like 75% of what the income tax would have been if they'd just went ahead and paid it, but the money goes instead to lawyers and accountants that guide the company's every business decision to take advantage of the maximum deductions available. Then, the US gov't gets $0, it costs GE about 75% of the 35% of their overall profits, and that's a good reason for abolishing the income taxes right there - the US gov't got $0 from GE.
I've calc'd it out, _I_ would pay less tax, the rich would pay MORE tax 'cuz of the fact that they stop paying the 15.3% payroll tax at $113K, and just about everyone that works would pay less. We close loopholes like crime, when the criminals, be they thieves, prostitutes, drug dealers, or whatever, pay the consumption tax every time they buy a Big Mac or a big screen TV or some big boat.
And the Fair Tax doesn't tax savings, or investment, so a lot more of that $$$ would be available to build factories here, and the amount I was saving for retirement before I retired was substantial, and on which I would not have been taxed. I was making around $95K, and now that my retirement income is around $70K gross, my take-home is just about equal to what it was. IOW, I would be taxed by the Fair Tax on about $70K, not the $95K.
This system is a boon to working class Americans, and will bring near-universal prosperity to America and Americans. That's why I write about it at every opportunity. I want this country to have the sort of prosperity I experienced as a kid, growing up in the 50's and 60's. Dad worked in a factory, didn't need a college education to do it, and made good money. We did _LOTS_ of stuff that people nowadays can't do because of the overall degradation in wages compared to prices. We need to get back to prosperity, and I think the Fair Tax is the best way to do it.
It doesn't matter that very few corporations pay 35% to the gov't, it costs them ALMOST that much in lawyer and accountant salaries to guide the business's ever decision throughout the year to avoid the tax through deductions. GE avoided 100% of the tax a few years ago, but it cost them up the wazoo for the phalanx of those lawyers and accountants to do that. Whether its paying the tax, or paying lawyers, the "paying" part damages those companies that do business _here_ and rewards companies that do business anywhere else, because _everywhere_ else has lower corporate taxes.
The wealthy push for sales taxes? Really? What wealthy do you know that are pushing this? Not Steve Forbes, who pushes his "flat tax" all over Fox News, which WOULD rape the poor and let rich guys off nearly scot free in comparison to both the current US taxes and the Fair Tax. Not any of the big $$$ guys, this is a grass roots movement. The well-monied are not helping. Why? Because the sales taxes, specifically the "Fair Tax" (google it) hits "the rich" much harder and with more certainty than the income taxes, which they _do_ tend to avoid by sending money overseas, making money overseas, cheating (much easier when its only YOU that must lie to the gov't about how much you made) etc. Sales taxes, OTOH, have to have both the buyer and the seller committing felonies to effect this sort of cheating, and what's the reason a seller would do that?
And look at the reality. If you look hard enough on the net, you'll find that John and Teresa Kerry make about $5M between them, and pay about $1.8M in taxes. But what about that $70M yacht that they bought? Where'd that money come from? Well, they're making a lot more $$$ than the $5M they're reporting, aren't they? And, under the Fair Tax, that $70M yacht would have sent $21M of tax money to the US treasury, something that the US treasury won't see from the Kerry's for about 12 years.
As for the "regressive" sales tax, again, look at the Fair Tax. Every AMERICAN gets a "prebate" of monthly cash to pay the Fair Tax on everything they buy for the month up to the poverty level. IOW, the poor pay $0, legally. People at 2X the poverty rate effectively pay 50% of the Fair Tax. People at 5X the poverty rate pay 80% of the tax.
Britain does not have a "fair tax." They busy themselves shooting their industries with big taxes, but at least have the gumption to remove the VAT taxes when they ship stuff overseas for export. _WE_ don't do that with the income taxes, and so when a Ford or Chevy built here goes overseas, it is burdened not only with US corporate tax, PLUS the taxes that cost the companies billions but are paid by others such as payroll and individual income taxes paid by their employees that make employees more expensive to hire. Then it arrives in Europe and gets taxed as well. No wonder Ford, Chevy, et al fall all over themselves to manufacture outside the USA.
So, the rich only spend 25% of their income? Tell it to Nick Cage, whose accountants said he would have to make MORE than 8 movies a year 'cuz he was spending MORE than his 8-movie income would allow. Then there's Michael Jackson, who spent himself so far into debt he was forced to schedule a concert tour to make some more money, that arguably killed him, at least indirectly. There's LOTS of rich that spend up the wazoo. Take a look at the pie charts here: (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2182646/Spending-America-How-poor-middle-class-rich-divided-incomes.html), the rich can be seen to save more for retirement than the masses, but not that much more - they're buying more expensive stuff is all, and spending nearly 85% of their income, still, not 25%. Sure, some SUPER-wealthy may get down to your 25%, but there are so few of those guys that it won't make any difference for the rest of us - our doctors / lawyers / hedge fund managers will still be spending 85% of what they make, and will definitely pay more in absolute terms to the US Gov't.
Yeah, they _do_ owe you a job. The implied social contract is that if you do a good job, you get to keep your job. Those that violate it are low-life, backstabbing trailer trash.
The way to do it is not to coerce it, but incentivize it. Just make the USA the best, cheapest place to do software. Yeah, its easy - the big $$$ is paying either the income taxes, all of them, or paying enough lawyers to find enough deductions so's you DON'T pay the income taxes, the lawyer salaries being almost as expensive as the taxes anyway. Get rid of income taxes, and you have companies outsourcing _TO_ the USA.
Really, the silver bullet for this nonsense is to get rid of the income taxes. All of them.
Outsourcing to India or anywhere-but-here gets the operations out from under a 35% corporate income tax, a 15.3% payroll tax for their help, etc. That's a lotta $$$, and the gov't is incentivizing it all with the tax system. Abolish the income taxes, pass the Fair Tax, and run the country on a sales tax instead. Prosperity will be ours.
I've been trying to eat normally and lose weight thru exercise. I mostly can't do it.
I have to eat a _little_ abnormally, restricting my intake to about 1800 calories, and exercising 1000 - 1400 calories maybe 4 times a week. 1 - 2 hrs on an elliptical crosstrainer.
1800 is break-even. the 4 exercise sessions result in a bit over a pound of loss per week.
Trouble is, I'm 66, and injure my back quite often. Its weak. Just a little overstress from leaning the wrong way, or turning the wrong way, and I lose a week to let it heal. So, keeping that up is nearly impossible.
I've lost 13 lbs, but that's over a year. Hoping to do some exercises to strengthen my back, and try again. I've done the insane low-calorie diets, too - Nutri-system is not all that insane, and comes in at about 1400 calories and I lose about 3 lbs a month. I also did MediFast at 500 calories a day and that works, losing 2 - 5 lbs a week, but it is dangerous, and MediFast doesn't sell it any more for that reason.
I don't think I'm going to achieve my 40 lb target loss no matter what I do, but I'm a little distracted right now, and intend to resume a full attack on the situation in about 2 months, trying simply not to gain anything in the meantime.
Why... because... if the moderator is a liberal, then only liberal comments will get thru, and vice-versa, _OR_, the site will be viewed as implementing such a thing, and become less interesting for that reason.
Think I could argue gun control on HuffPo with an NRA viewpoint and not get banned? Doubt it.
The self-driving car I buy will be able to turn off the "self driving" feature... or I won't buy it...
But otherwise, it'd be nice to be asleep in the back seat when some cop mistakes my car for being responsible for the 88 mph speed on his radar that was really created by the 18 wheeler 1/2 mile farther down the road.
'Cuz... _MY_ car will have Sirius and Innernetz and Sat TV, and _MY_ will have my computer, work tools, and recreational stuff already in the trunk, and _MY_ car will have my Ham Radio and CB radio installed in it, and _MY_ car will my bike rack on top of it, and _MY_ will have a trailer hitch for my boat, and _MY_ car will be the SUV on the days I need to haul a lotta crap, and _MY_ car will by my SUV with the super-agressive ATV tires on it when the snow falls, and _MY_ car won't need to be emptied of everything that's mine when I get to work, and _MY_ car won't have another person in it within an hour to find my cell phone, wallet, computer, or anything else I might have left in it to run off with it or use it and run up a bill for calls to Zambia on it.
Because... "my" car is going to have Sirius radio and probably an innernetz connex and maybe sat TV. My car will have all my crap that I need for this-n-that, maybe tools, maybe my computer, already loaded in the trunk or back seat so's when I go out the garage to go to work, all the stuff is there. When I get to work, I don't completely have to unload it or risk losing it. If I leave my cell phone in it, it isn't going to be found and used by the next person in the car. My car will be the color and style that I want it to be. My car will be and SUV when I need that sort of capability, and have the nastiest-aggressive tires I can find when it snows (Try to find a rental SUV that will get you out of the snowed-in mountain pass - they all have bald tires, y'know?) My car will have my Ham radio installed, and maybe a CB just for entertainment. My car will have a trailer hitch for towing my boat, and a bike carrier for biking around the town or the country for exercise. My car will have my own alarm to protect all the crap I normally keep in it. My car will have _my_ dashcam on it to capture the stuff that goes on out on the highway just in case I need to prove to someone what happened. Etc. etc. etc.
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The house is insulated. Who _doesn't_ have their own washing machine? Open the windows and suffer from the hay fever as the pollen comes whistling in on the wind. There are NOT 100's of ways to reduce usage without suffering from "too hot" or "too cold" or a bunch of other things that we all moved out of caves and tents to avoid.
Engineers CAN'T solve it, politicians have to solve it, which means it won't be fixed for at least the 1st 20 years.
...when the self-driving car is forced to do exactly the 55 mph speed limit, and the traffic that normally does 85 there continually runs into you from the rear.
...about driving?
Its 20 miles to town on a divided highway. What do you suppose happens there? Cars clump up and drive in a platoon, never seeming to have watched a NASCAR race long enough to see what happens when the lead car has a problem, and everyone crashes. If it isn't a platoon, then its this one guy either following too D close for any kind of safety, or parking himself exactly in my blind spot. On the drive back from town, the right turn via the turn pocket just before the traffic light to attain the 4 lane divided highway always seems to attract some moron in a big, huge pickup truck that tries to come racing around me on the left, dive right, and slam on the brakes 'cuz he can't negotiate the turn pocket faster than a snail in molassass. Plus, the cops are always out there with radar and lidar and vascar and choppers and airplanes and etc. trying to lift $100 or more from me if I forget to set the cruise control at their ridiculously low speed limit that is set that way just to generate ticket $$$. And then there's a phalanx of traffic lights out in the country fer cryin' out loud, and a pile of morons that take 30 seconds to get moving because they're blabbing or texting on their cell phones. That is, if they're not already moving and drifting into my lane while watching their damned gadget instead of the road. Fun driving? Where is that?
Say what? You would take an autonomous taxi, of course, that would get you from point A to point B without a driver to have to talk to. It might even be coin operated (bill changer, actually.)
Oh, behave! You KNOW that 2 hr commute to/from will be expected to be unpaid work, and you'll still be "at work" for 8 hours, work 10, get paid for 8.
and his hip once? Wow. I've been driving for 50 years, and haven't broken anything, and I drive a _lot_. Bought a new car a year ago last March. It now has 65,000 miles on it, and I put 'em all there. Tell me about bike safety.
You are dead on here. Bullies understand pain. This is _the_ way to handle it.
Talk? How about a good course in Karate? That't the ticket to bullying, you make it painful, the bully finds someone different.
The modern approach to bullying seems to be far too passive. I saw the recent movie (within the last year), a documentary about bullying, and absolutely no one was helping those kids, not the teachers, not the parents, not the cops.
The cure for bullying is to beat the F out of the bully. The adults involved were all dedicated to non-violence. F that! A bully is beating on you, you grab whatever it takes to win, if not present fight, then the next one. Bullies understand pain, pretty much everybody does. The mere threat of a good beating is often enough, and if you "acquire" something heavy or long, they often get disinterested. That's the way to handle bullies. And, OBTW, unplug the frappin' computer and neutralize the cyberbullying.
What's hard about it is that its in the Hymalyas, and from the sound of things, people that see it in the clear would say, "Oh, that's a bear" and people that have it come out of a snowstorm and try to eat them think its the abominable snowman...
Noooooo.... no VAT tax. That impacts manufacturers in this country, thus diminishing the incentive to operate a business here, which is what we have now and why we have our high unemployment. Tax JUST over-the-counter sales on NEW items for sale, and services, and the US industry then can operate tax free, meaning that they can build factories with all the investment they receive, and create jobs HERE and make US prosperous. Note that, by removing the income taxes from US industries, their product prices will go down because they can manufacture cheaper, and the products from Japan and Korea and elsewhere do NOT go down, and then everyone gets hit with the 30% tax. IOW, its a built-in tariff.
Don't want to pay a 30% tax for a new Ford Explorer? Then buy a used Ford Explorer. But you'll have thousands of dollars in your pocket, that you didn't have before, because YOU are no longer paying income taxes, including the hideously regressive payroll taxes ("The poor" send 15.3% of every dollar they make to Washington to pay the payroll tax. Under the Fair Tax, the payroll tax would be abolished.)
SB, you're simply not comprehending this. "The poor" pay $0 Fair Tax..
" Let's say the tax is 10% of gross income, apply that to a median family making $50,000 per year."
Again, you're not comprehending this. The Fair Tax is NOT an income tax. It is a consumption tax, a sales tax on retail sales and services.
You do the envy thing with "the rich", when the facts are that "the rich" spend out the wazoo on large-$$$ purchases, and THAT will be taxed. The rich get hit much harder by the Fair Tax than the income tax, which they can largely avoid.
So the solution is to do all your business in some other country, and just sit here and take the profits, and let the rest of America starve (yes they are - 1 in 6 people in the USA struggles with hunger.)
One country without an income tax? Just because Johnny jumps off the bridge, do you have to do it too?
The facts are that the income tax is full of holes, loopholes, ways to avoid it, etc. that the Fair Tax, the best proposal for a consumption tax, does not.
Companies / businesses do not pay the Fair Tax at all, which is what would make the USA the best place on the planet to manufacture. That would lift the country out of its current poverty, when there's a factory on just about every street corner, employing 3 shifts of workers to make the world's goods. Without the income taxes raping their operations, outsourcing would increase TO the USA, with foreign factories shutting down as the businesses move manufacturing operations here.
There is no "effective" corporate tax rate. If some company, like GE, manages not to pay income tax at all, the effective tax rate is NOT 0%, it is something like 75% of what the income tax would have been if they'd just went ahead and paid it, but the money goes instead to lawyers and accountants that guide the company's every business decision to take advantage of the maximum deductions available. Then, the US gov't gets $0, it costs GE about 75% of the 35% of their overall profits, and that's a good reason for abolishing the income taxes right there - the US gov't got $0 from GE.
I've calc'd it out, _I_ would pay less tax, the rich would pay MORE tax 'cuz of the fact that they stop paying the 15.3% payroll tax at $113K, and just about everyone that works would pay less. We close loopholes like crime, when the criminals, be they thieves, prostitutes, drug dealers, or whatever, pay the consumption tax every time they buy a Big Mac or a big screen TV or some big boat.
And the Fair Tax doesn't tax savings, or investment, so a lot more of that $$$ would be available to build factories here, and the amount I was saving for retirement before I retired was substantial, and on which I would not have been taxed. I was making around $95K, and now that my retirement income is around $70K gross, my take-home is just about equal to what it was. IOW, I would be taxed by the Fair Tax on about $70K, not the $95K.
This system is a boon to working class Americans, and will bring near-universal prosperity to America and Americans. That's why I write about it at every opportunity. I want this country to have the sort of prosperity I experienced as a kid, growing up in the 50's and 60's. Dad worked in a factory, didn't need a college education to do it, and made good money. We did _LOTS_ of stuff that people nowadays can't do because of the overall degradation in wages compared to prices. We need to get back to prosperity, and I think the Fair Tax is the best way to do it.
It doesn't matter that very few corporations pay 35% to the gov't, it costs them ALMOST that much in lawyer and accountant salaries to guide the business's ever decision throughout the year to avoid the tax through deductions. GE avoided 100% of the tax a few years ago, but it cost them up the wazoo for the phalanx of those lawyers and accountants to do that. Whether its paying the tax, or paying lawyers, the "paying" part damages those companies that do business _here_ and rewards companies that do business anywhere else, because _everywhere_ else has lower corporate taxes.
The wealthy push for sales taxes? Really? What wealthy do you know that are pushing this? Not Steve Forbes, who pushes his "flat tax" all over Fox News, which WOULD rape the poor and let rich guys off nearly scot free in comparison to both the current US taxes and the Fair Tax. Not any of the big $$$ guys, this is a grass roots movement. The well-monied are not helping. Why? Because the sales taxes, specifically the "Fair Tax" (google it) hits "the rich" much harder and with more certainty than the income taxes, which they _do_ tend to avoid by sending money overseas, making money overseas, cheating (much easier when its only YOU that must lie to the gov't about how much you made) etc. Sales taxes, OTOH, have to have both the buyer and the seller committing felonies to effect this sort of cheating, and what's the reason a seller would do that?
And look at the reality. If you look hard enough on the net, you'll find that John and Teresa Kerry make about $5M between them, and pay about $1.8M in taxes. But what about that $70M yacht that they bought? Where'd that money come from? Well, they're making a lot more $$$ than the $5M they're reporting, aren't they? And, under the Fair Tax, that $70M yacht would have sent $21M of tax money to the US treasury, something that the US treasury won't see from the Kerry's for about 12 years.
As for the "regressive" sales tax, again, look at the Fair Tax. Every AMERICAN gets a "prebate" of monthly cash to pay the Fair Tax on everything they buy for the month up to the poverty level. IOW, the poor pay $0, legally. People at 2X the poverty rate effectively pay 50% of the Fair Tax. People at 5X the poverty rate pay 80% of the tax.
Britain does not have a "fair tax." They busy themselves shooting their industries with big taxes, but at least have the gumption to remove the VAT taxes when they ship stuff overseas for export. _WE_ don't do that with the income taxes, and so when a Ford or Chevy built here goes overseas, it is burdened not only with US corporate tax, PLUS the taxes that cost the companies billions but are paid by others such as payroll and individual income taxes paid by their employees that make employees more expensive to hire. Then it arrives in Europe and gets taxed as well. No wonder Ford, Chevy, et al fall all over themselves to manufacture outside the USA.
So, the rich only spend 25% of their income? Tell it to Nick Cage, whose accountants said he would have to make MORE than 8 movies a year 'cuz he was spending MORE than his 8-movie income would allow. Then there's Michael Jackson, who spent himself so far into debt he was forced to schedule a concert tour to make some more money, that arguably killed him, at least indirectly. There's LOTS of rich that spend up the wazoo. Take a look at the pie charts here: (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2182646/Spending-America-How-poor-middle-class-rich-divided-incomes.html), the rich can be seen to save more for retirement than the masses, but not that much more - they're buying more expensive stuff is all, and spending nearly 85% of their income, still, not 25%. Sure, some SUPER-wealthy may get down to your 25%, but there are so few of those guys that it won't make any difference for the rest of us - our doctors / lawyers / hedge fund managers will still be spending 85% of what they make, and will definitely pay more in absolute terms to the US Gov't.
And don't forget that the
Yeah, they _do_ owe you a job. The implied social contract is that if you do a good job, you get to keep your job. Those that violate it are low-life, backstabbing trailer trash.
The way to do it is not to coerce it, but incentivize it. Just make the USA the best, cheapest place to do software. Yeah, its easy - the big $$$ is paying either the income taxes, all of them, or paying enough lawyers to find enough deductions so's you DON'T pay the income taxes, the lawyer salaries being almost as expensive as the taxes anyway. Get rid of income taxes, and you have companies outsourcing _TO_ the USA.
Really, the silver bullet for this nonsense is to get rid of the income taxes. All of them.
Outsourcing to India or anywhere-but-here gets the operations out from under a 35% corporate income tax, a 15.3% payroll tax for their help, etc. That's a lotta $$$, and the gov't is incentivizing it all with the tax system. Abolish the income taxes, pass the Fair Tax, and run the country on a sales tax instead. Prosperity will be ours.
Ha! Sure you could, but that's a helluva walk.
I've been trying to eat normally and lose weight thru exercise. I mostly can't do it.
I have to eat a _little_ abnormally, restricting my intake to about 1800 calories, and exercising 1000 - 1400 calories maybe 4 times a week. 1 - 2 hrs on an elliptical crosstrainer.
1800 is break-even. the 4 exercise sessions result in a bit over a pound of loss per week.
Trouble is, I'm 66, and injure my back quite often. Its weak. Just a little overstress from leaning the wrong way, or turning the wrong way, and I lose a week to let it heal. So, keeping that up is nearly impossible.
I've lost 13 lbs, but that's over a year. Hoping to do some exercises to strengthen my back, and try again. I've done the insane low-calorie diets, too - Nutri-system is not all that insane, and comes in at about 1400 calories and I lose about 3 lbs a month. I also did MediFast at 500 calories a day and that works, losing 2 - 5 lbs a week, but it is dangerous, and MediFast doesn't sell it any more for that reason.
I don't think I'm going to achieve my 40 lb target loss no matter what I do, but I'm a little distracted right now, and intend to resume a full attack on the situation in about 2 months, trying simply not to gain anything in the meantime.
Why... because... if the moderator is a liberal, then only liberal comments will get thru, and vice-versa, _OR_, the site will be viewed as implementing such a thing, and become less interesting for that reason.
Think I could argue gun control on HuffPo with an NRA viewpoint and not get banned? Doubt it.
The self-driving car I buy will be able to turn off the "self driving" feature... or I won't buy it...
But otherwise, it'd be nice to be asleep in the back seat when some cop mistakes my car for being responsible for the 88 mph speed on his radar that was really created by the 18 wheeler 1/2 mile farther down the road.
'Cuz... _MY_ car will have Sirius and Innernetz and Sat TV, and _MY_ will have my computer, work tools, and recreational stuff already in the trunk, and _MY_ car will have my Ham Radio and CB radio installed in it, and _MY_ car will my bike rack on top of it, and _MY_ will have a trailer hitch for my boat, and _MY_ car will be the SUV on the days I need to haul a lotta crap, and _MY_ car will by my SUV with the super-agressive ATV tires on it when the snow falls, and _MY_ car won't need to be emptied of everything that's mine when I get to work, and _MY_ car won't have another person in it within an hour to find my cell phone, wallet, computer, or anything else I might have left in it to run off with it or use it and run up a bill for calls to Zambia on it.
That's why...
Because... "my" car is going to have Sirius radio and probably an innernetz connex and maybe sat TV. My car will have all my crap that I need for this-n-that, maybe tools, maybe my computer, already loaded in the trunk or back seat so's when I go out the garage to go to work, all the stuff is there. When I get to work, I don't completely have to unload it or risk losing it. If I leave my cell phone in it, it isn't going to be found and used by the next person in the car. My car will be the color and style that I want it to be. My car will be and SUV when I need that sort of capability, and have the nastiest-aggressive tires I can find when it snows (Try to find a rental SUV that will get you out of the snowed-in mountain pass - they all have bald tires, y'know?) My car will have my Ham radio installed, and maybe a CB just for entertainment. My car will have a trailer hitch for towing my boat, and a bike carrier for biking around the town or the country for exercise. My car will have my own alarm to protect all the crap I normally keep in it. My car will have _my_ dashcam on it to capture the stuff that goes on out on the highway just in case I need to prove to someone what happened. Etc. etc. etc.
Yeah, they said 2035. I guess that qualifies.