Friday, November 17, 2006

The Horzontal Double Dummies

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Nobody’s Opinion; Has anyone besides me noticed that the subject of “Taxes” never comes up, hardly anywhere? Taxes are never discussed much even though all of us here on the planet are taxed on every thing we do, unless it’s illegal.

The only time it’s even discussed is the week before April 15th, deadline when the entire local news guru’s are warning you to HURRY UP FOR GOD’S SAKE…YOU ONLY HAVE THREE DAYS LEFT! God forbid you should even think about not paying taxes. Who knows what would happen to you. You might end up in a Chinese gulag or worse yet, doing weekly recycling meetings at your local city hall.

Or stuck in Africa trying to find Wesley Snipes.

I don’t know why I’m even thinking about this around the upcoming holidays, but I ran across a piece in the special issue of FORBES magazine today. It was a story about this guy named Tom Siebel and how he avoided paying any taxes on the $58 million he made when he sold his Siebel systems to Oracle.

Tom made 58 million dollars and didn’t have to pay taxes…but if you and I don’t keep copies of every single little expense, we could be looking at fifty years sitting next to some murdering member of the Bolivian drug cartel.

He did it with a wonderful lawyer trick that I suppose is widely practiced by those somebodies with huge amounts of money floating around that they don’t want taxed. It’s called the “horizontal double dummy,” a name in other circles usually reserved for ex-wives.

Here’s what they do, (the rich somebodies) and it’s perfectly legal. They form a holding company called, whatever you like, he called his Ozark Holdings.

Then you form two transitory subsidiaries, the “dummies” of the deal. One dummy merged with Oracle, and the Oracle stock was exchanged for Ozark Holdings stock; the rest was exchanged for cash. Then at the time of the merger, Tom dissolved the dummies and Ozark Holdings was renamed Oracle.

You see, for a merger to qualify as a tax free transaction, at least 40% of the consideration paid by the buying company has to consist of stock. Oracle wasn’t willing to issue that many shares.

Isn’t this a corker? While poor people are out shooting each other for Play station 3’s, this guy just manipulated a few lawyers and made 58 million dollars---no sweat. And most importantly, he was not only NOT arrested for tax evasion, but he got written up in Forbes Magazine as a very savvy businessman.

While Martha Steward is put in jail and loses BILLIONS over something she told her broker, this guy is considered an upstanding citizen?

Yes, if you are rich, there is a lawyer for you. I’m beginning to wonder if ANY of the billionaires pay any taxes at all. We keep hearing about how seventy percent of the wealthy pay eighty percent of the taxes.

So where does the wealth begin? At $60,000? What happens if after a certain number the wealth just sort of…merges? It becomes untouchable.

So THIS is why for the last twenty years all the companies are merging.

How about that O.J. Simpson? We have all been told that he will get paid over 3 million dollars for his book and interview. The court says he owes money to both Nicole and Ron’s family.

I wonder…will the government get its share before Nicole and Ron’s family?

Has O.J. “merged” with the horizontal dummies and vertical lawyers?

In the meantime, we nobodies pay the accounts receivable taxes, building permit taxes, CDL License Taxes, cigarette taxes, Corporate Income Taxes, Dog License Taxes, Federal Income Taxes, Federal Unemployment Taxes, Fishing License Taxes, Food License Taxes, Fuel Permit Taxes, Gasoline Taxes (42 cents per gallon) hunting licenses taxes, inheritance taxes, inventory taxes, IRS interest Charges, IRS penalties, liquor taxes, luxury taxes, marriage license taxes, Medicare Taxes, property taxes, (my personal pet peeve) Real Estate Taxes, service charge taxes, Social Security Taxes, Road usage taxes, Sales Tax (another one of my personal favorites) recreational vehicle taxes, school taxes, state income taxes, state unemployment taxes, telephone federal excise tax, telephone federal universal service fee tax, telephone federal, state and local surcharge taxes, telephone minimum usage surcharge taxes, telephone recurring and non-recurring charges taxes, telephone state and local taxes, telephone usage charge taxes, utility taxes, vehicle license registration taxes, Vehicle Sales Taxes, watercraft registration taxes, well permit taxes, workers compensation taxes….

And the one that makes up for all of these--the lottery tax. If you win the lottery the government takes half of your winnings. And they always say “John Brown and his merry co-workers just won 350 million Dollars in Saturday Night’s Powerball!” When in fact, they only won 175 million dollars, and they are lucky if they see that.

Tell me I’m not right.

Personally, I was wondering today while standing in line for my groceries, if there was a website that said: “Today, the government made one trillion on all groceries bought in all fifty states.” And every grocery store in the United States was listed, and all the taxes collected for that day, reported.

For all us nobody’s to look at.

And then tell us exactly what that money from all the groceries was going to. Just do that on groceries alone, daily, weekly, monthly…I’d like to know.

OR even worse, the amount of tax revenue just made off of gas sales. (42 cents a gallon!)

Bill O’Reilly today, being even more pessimistic than this nobody, said that the status quo of politics was never going to change, but there might be a tax revolt sometime in the distant future.

I don’t know. Once Hillary passes her vast medical care system, we won’t be able to revolt. They will turn off our respirators.

After reading about this horizontal double dummy deal, I’m ready to merge myself.
All I need is some stock to merge with. I’m thinking seriously about merging my upstairs with my downstairs, and going for that double dummy deal.

I also plan to by laying down when I do it, just to make it effective.

I already am a perfect horizontal double dummy. And that’s taxable!

Hey, no WONDER they want to legalize prostitution! Think of all the merging!

Nobody’s Perfect; I have NO idea what I’m talking about, still, it seems obvious that if the subject of taxes ever came up and was revived by any reporter in the news seriously (besides by Steve Forbes) that reporter might find out that the old trick of horizontal double dummy would not work for him.

Nobody Knows: One hundred years ago, none of those taxes existed and our nation was the most prosperous in the world, had no national debt, and the largest middle class. Just where IS Michael Moore when you need him?

Nobody Cares; Now, President Bush, reprimanding anyone citizen of the United States for even thinking about “protecting” our markets, should think twice…and go forth with free trade. He is quietly “merging” the United States with China, which makes him a real walking dummy, and the rest of us horizontal double dummies for putting up with it all.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

If You Build It They Will Come...Playstation 3


Nobody’s Opinion: Tonight, somewhere in New York, sitting like real idiots in the cold, are more than 500 people (probably men) waiting in line to buy the new Sony PlayStation 3. The police have to be there because somehow 100 people got in line illegally.

Those sum-bags!

Hard to believe, but if this doesn’t tell you we are a nation prone to addiction, I don’t know what does.

But, nooooooo…there is no addition to video games in America. We are addicted to chocolate, porn, BIG gas-guzzling cars, cigarettes, soda, hamburgers, alcohol, cocaine, American Idol, credit cards, diet pills, French fries, drugs, old re-runs of the Three Stooges, but don’t EVER say we are addicted to video games.

At least not to any man.

America could be conquered easily. All that is needed is for millions of Playstations 4 or X-Boxes 8 to be released into the American market, and everyone at work, would say, “Gee Boss, I’m not feeling good” or “My wife is pregnant and she’s not feeling good,” or “Hey, I’m not going to lie to you, I’m going down to get the new Playstation 4, fire me if you like, but then, I won’t get one for you.”

Notice I said “millions.” That’s why this is a fantasy, because the video game makers purposely made only around 400,000 just to create demand.

They’ve been doing this every year since the first Nintendo unit came out with Mario Brothers. I ought to know. My son was five when the first “Mario Brothers’ game was released and mothers everywhere had to literally go from store to store PRAYING that she would be the one to get the last game. I began to HATE Christmas, because the big game companies would continue to put out a NEW console, which of course would play the NEW games, all this to collect the billions of dollars out of America’s hardworking pockets.

Yeah, we are pathetic.

I remember the first Atari game; Pong…or ping pong…anyway, I was good at that one. I was so good, that I beat every single guy I played, which was not good.

And because I could not purposely LOSE, I gave it up.

Then when the first Nintendo came out, I would watch my son and his friends play for hours upon hours, upon hours…and every year, the biggest gift was the newest console or game. I must admit, sometimes it was a great babysitter.

A mother would tell herself…look how much fun he is having! Look how cute Mario is! Look how he is developing his brain and hand and eye coordination!

Yes, great rationalizations come with mothers all over America getting to relax and take a bath while the kids play video games. I learned whole concerto’s on piano.

Thanks to Nintendo, I learned how to play four instruments.

And then, all of a sudden, the kid is grown. Your husband and the kids are doing nothing but playing video games. You are getting older, and a little attention or even help taking out the trash would be nice. It was always, “Wait until we are finished with this level.”

Every year of course the games got more expensive.

And even now, every time I went to the mall, my husband would start getting that look on his face, like he’s going to be sick---and when I would know we were coming close to the video game store.

Saying he was in a trance is not enough, a nude girl coming up and asking for his phone number would probably not have fazed him.

Just for fun, I used to pass it up…

It’s really sad. Why don’t men just admit it? It’s called addiction.

Then suddenly, the games got more violent. They went from Bruce Lee fighting to fantasy games…where blood and guts almost resemble the actual thing.

A man or boy could cut off heads, arms, hands…blood spurting everywhere…somewhere along the line, killing became really fun, and killing cops, running over pedestrians, was even better.

Whatever happened to Mario jumping on the mushrooms?

And instead of actually going outside and playing a game of football, now, they can play a whole fantasy game with their favorite players inside.

Is it any wonder the kids are fat?

Last month, I was walking my dog, and I came upon three boys. Two were about eight and one was five. The two bigger boys were picking on the smaller boy, (nothing new here) so I said…being as it was a wonderfully warm fall day, “Why don’t you boys play touch football?”

“Okay, I’ve got one.” And inside the kid went, and outside he came.

Having been able to throw a perfect spiral when I was a girl their age, I told one of the boys to run.

Guess what. None of these boys could throw. What’s worse, they couldn’t catch the ball if it had been as big as their living room couch. No one in their lives had shown them.

Why? Because they were fatherless, being raised by single mothers.

BUT, they all had video games.

So, what have I learned all these years watching a whole generation of kids grow up doing nothing but playing video games?

That with the introduction of video games, the kid’s genes have mutated into super computers that know exactly what to do in any game. Don’t try to beat a kid. They have mutated superior 3-D visual genes. Their brains have a new section just for that.

The Japanese have gotten back at us big time. Not only have they conquered us economically, they have brainwashed and addicted millions of men to video games.

They didn’t not have to invade us militarily. That’s probably why high-tech weapons are being developed. All those men being raised on Nintendo, Sony, and Sega, the genetic changes in the bodies drive them to create new programs.

And if there is such a thing as subliminal messages, who knows just what addicting messages are being droned into the millions that play the games.

That’s why the woman will end up saving the world.

Wait, that can’t happen either.

Where will this end? Will real “sex” be replaced like they have predicted, with video games? Will I be replayed by a 3-D video Brittany Spears in a few years?

Will Tiger Woods keep coming out every single year with a new version of Tiger Woods Golf?

Just how many games of golf can he play?

The answer is…as many as can be made, or more importantly, cannot.

The only good news is, most women are not yet addicted. Somebody has to wash the dishes. I’ve never met a woman yet addicted to cleaning.

Nobody’s Perfect; At least the men, sitting out in the cold tonight, in all the major cities of America, even if addicted, are smart enough to put up tents. In the old days, people would stand there with just their raincoats on, and get really sick.

Nobody Knows; I was getting a real kick out of some of the managers at Sony saying “We are going to lose money on every single unit sold.” Where once it was considered high at $199, now with the inflation (that doesn’t exit) it’s $599.

Poor guy.

The reason it cost so much is the IBM cell processor and the Blu Ray DVD drive…so this guys says.

Right…somebody slap that guy.

Nobody Cares
; Yes, men are superior when it comes to those 3-D screens. I actually tried to play a game once, and got so sick and silly, I fell over.

But then again, very few women are stupid enough to stand outside a store for over three days…two hours is usually all she can spare.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Nobody's Absurdities, No. 27

Nobody’s Opinion: Don’t cha just love it? O.J. Simpson is going to be on television once again to show just how he did NOT kill his wife and her “lover” by telling us just how he would have done it if he COULD have, thereby proving in his mind to the world once again, that he was not there.

ABSURD.

And with that statement of “Just how low can we go?” Here are more absurdities to ponder, except, you’d better do it quickly, because the absurdities are rolling in fast!

**********

George Clooney was voted “Sexist Man Alive” today by People Magazine.

Really…how much longer do we have to bear this?

It’s one thing when we can’t get rid of old Presidents, House majority leaders, CIA directors, or aging murderers, but now we have to put up with seeing the same old boring faces on People magazine.

Please, George Clooney is about as sexy as the gopher in “Caddy Shack.” In fact, the gopher is much cuter.

I thought the guy playing in the new Dr. Who series from the BBC is MUCH sexier than old man Clooney.

In fact, half the men population is sexier than George Clooney.

You do know what this means, don’t you? The ONLY people who can afford subscriptions to People magazines are the aging boomers.

The mistake the editors of People are making is in thinking that even if women are aging, it doesn’t man they don’t like young fresh meat!

Because that’s all Clooney is…old meat.

What? You thought women were different than men?

**********

Speaking of old meat, I’m not sure I’m feeling all that comfortable after finding out today just how long this Mr. Gates (Rumsfeld’s replacement) has been working in the top levels of government.

He was in the CIA before Nixon, then the NSC, during Ford and Nixon, and then continued serving all the Presidents going back into the CIA. I bet he’s been in the NSS, the CSS, the BSS, and the NAACP too.

He is Secretary of Defense, but never went to boot camp, which is okay because neither has Nancy Pelosi.

I suggest a new bill be introduced that says all elected officials must serve at least four years in our military, or forget it. I want to see Nancy in army boots.

Gates also co-authored research of the Iraq war with that lover of American freedom, Zbigniew Brzezinski. I’m sure it must have been him that put in the notion that the United States stopped supporting all those pesky people all over the globe who are trying to get out under dictatorships and established…”democracy.”

Another tough old piece of meat is Mr. Baker, and his partner in Global crime…Trent Lott, both put back into the power circles.

Yeah, Trent who like John McCain…was always there when ever the Democrats needed him. Always voting for the liberal causes, and yet, saying they were conservatives.

And speaking of McCain, have you noticed how BOTH parties are knocking RUDI?

Hillary must get in, and Rudi is the only one who could take her down.

But then again, that won’t happen. Because neither party is going to let him get near the election. You can bet your CIA cap on it.

This nobody wants to know…where’s the fresh meat?

**********

Just when I was wondering where all the planes have gone here in St. Louis, the news comes out today that a hostile takeover of Delta Airlines is being attempted by U.S. Airways, funded of course by all our friendly One World Banking Government bankers called Citicrop…who are cropping in all the money, and going for the elimination of all cash, so as to put the power of all transactions…online.

Where one day it will all disappear and we will all work for free! We will not even need money, because our government will support us all!

Think I’m kidding?

Anyway, back to the planes.

I live near St. Louis’s main airport. Once, I would watch every night, at least nine planes waiting to land and at all times of the day.

Now, I get really excited if I see one. It’s enough for a big celebration around here.

“Look honey! A plane is landing!”

This will leave just three major airlines for the American Consumer. Soon we will only have one left, and that will be controlled by the government.

U.S. Airways, the last remaining Airline will have to make room for China’s Boeing 747’s.

**********
James Carville has announced today, he wants the Democrats to get rid of Howard Dean.

Now that Hillary is making the run for the home stretch, they have to make sure she is seen as a “compassionate conservative progressive.” (Right Steve?)

Howard Dean will become Nancy’s lover, and John Murtha will become Vice President.

Hey, don’t laugh, it could happen. If O.J. Simpson can get another chance and kill his wife all over again on Fox news…we could see anything.

Be prepared.

Nobody’s Perfect; Nancy Pelosi came out with that BIG blooper right after she became speaker about how, now that the Democrats have control, it was going to be the most ethical, moral, upstanding, honest…blah, blah…only to have all those types of her pick of main guys Mr. “I’ll get you the deal, just give me the money” Murtha spread all over the news as the most ethical guy he is. The tapes were great.

Nancy’s idea of ethical is like Stalin’s…he was a grandfatherly like figure, and she is a grandmotherly like figure. Too bad they couldn’t have hooked up.

Nobody Knows; I watched the Glenn Beck show tonight, and two things really struck me. First, there was a BIG “censure” put up when the former Prime Minister of Israel was talking.

And second--- he had on a Muslim man who lived here in the United States, who had said that he didn’t approve of what the radicals were doing.

The question is, Ahmadinejad himself says one thing here, but in Iran says, “Death to Israel.”

What makes us believe that all Muslims here who claim to love us, aren’t just waiting around for the final command?

What proof do we have…mmmm?

Nobody Cares
; If O.J gets by with this nonsense on TV, I think we should get equal time in “How we would kill O.J. Simpson if we could.” on the air, and many nobodies could act out just how they would kill O.J

Well…why not?

I might watch that. I might make him sing and dance first, and say the Pledge of Allegiance. Maybe have a few jihads as judges.

(Just kidding.) Well…I’d at least put him in jail where he belongs.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Humpty Dumpty, Beheaded

Nobody’s Opinion: Last Saturday, my husband flipped out. I’m not sure what caused this breakdown. I should have known it was coming Friday night, when he ate a whole pan of Sara Lee Cherry Cheesecake after dinner.

It could have been the elections, but he really doesn’t pay much attention to these things. Maybe it was the full moon, or the change in temperature. Maybe he’s going through male menopause. Maybe he heard some news of his first wife at work. I don’t know.

All I know is Saturday, at exactly 12.22 p.m.; he came in the door, and threw down about 20 gallons of paint and said, “I’ve invited some of the guys and their wives to come over for the holidays, so I’m going to paint the house.”

Oh.

Nothing like deciding to tell me about it.

Now, he’ll do all the painting. He’s a great painter. But, it’s up to me to do take everything down and put it all back together. And every one who is anyone knows that the week before Thanksgiving you have ENOUGH to do besides “Oh…by the way, let’s paint the house.”

So I am being very kind…I am not going to lose it…BUT, I AM HAVING VISIONS OF KINGS BEING BEHEADED!

Which brings me to realize that since the elections, just about everything is absurd…so why shouldn’t my personal life be?

Somewhere, there’s been a big rip in the space-time continuum…because, I saw Michael J. Fox today on TV in New York, and he did not shake once.

I’m actually watching the six STAR WARS again…where is MY force?

**********

By now, you have heard that for the first time in its history, one of Madame Trousseau’s very expensive wax figures was beheaded by some lady in Las Vegas that decided her last name was Cromwell.

And because I intend to show you how far ahead I was of anyone on this, the very wax figure that was destroyed by this lady who no one has seen is shown above.

Yep, that’s me, a nobody, in front of the Presidential podium last September when poor Mr. President was fully intact and looking so very much handsomer than his real self.

At this very moment the REAL President Bush is being symbolically beheaded in Washington D.C. by 42 or more “experts” on the Iraq war. Nancy Pelosi, and probably his mother, the three heads of American’s Auto Companies are taking turns at chopping him up.

Ahmadinejad just gets sloppy seconds.

He is currently walking around with a Bobble head, no doubt made by Madame Trousseau.

**********

Kings have been beheaded before in history. The most famous being Oliver Cromwell, who just got sick and tired of Charles I, and had him beheaded.

I know this fact very well because my college Western Civilization Professor, Dr. Charles P. Korr, wrote his college thesis on this very matter, therefore making his freshman class read no less than twenty books on the subject…which they really didn’t have to do…only if they wanted to pass his class.

Of course, the monarchy came back, as monarchies tend to do. I mean, what good did it do? Now they have a Queen, who doesn’t even have to do anything but wave.

We’ll be lucky if our Queen doesn’t vaccine us all to death.

So, even if the symbolic beheading of President is occurring, rest assured, the Kingship of the office of the Presidency and the great ruling elite Lords of Congress will not give into “rule by the people. For the people...” so it’s of no matter at this moment.

Unless, of course we all die.

**********

Last weekend, I don’t know if anybody else noticed but me, I was LISTENING to C-span because I really couldn’t watch it due to the fact that I was cleaning paint off the lamps and floor…but every single program sounded like every anti-war person who had ever lived was giving terrible reasons why the war in Iraq should be stopped.

And then, this lady said the most incredibly absurd thing. In fact, she is probably in Washington right this very moment repeating this story to Laura Bush.

She told a story, sitting like a queen story teller in her chair---told to her by a soldier.

You see, this soldier had to go out into the street and pick up his captain’s helmet. He had been blow apart and the only thing remaining was his helmet.

Inside his helmet and just around the area, were bits and pieces of his brain. So, the soldier, trying to be thoughtful…he didn’t want the other guys in the outfit to see their officer’s gushy brains, decided to pick them up, put them in the helmet, and quickly take them away.

Now, as he was walking away with his Captains’ brains in the helmet, all the Iraq people around him began to laugh at him, and then they would point at the helmet and laugh.

And this soldier told this Intellectual lady professor, most high elite prissy rich person, that from that moment on, he hated all Iraq’s.

Now…here’s the point you may not believe. Because when I heard it, I just about dropped my dustbin.

She said she didn’t know why the Iraq’s laughed, (as if it was a perfectly innocent thing to do) but she thought it was a terrible thing for that young soldier to hate all Iraq’s because of that one incident.

Maybe she was a descendent f Mare Antoinette.

I guess she never saw the beheadings in Saddam’s favorite videos.

And these are the idiots that have now taken over.

The French Revolution is starting to look reasonable.

**********

Nobody’s Perfect; I have NO idea how other woman do it. I was originally planning on cleaning my whole house (and junk room) a little each day. With all the “junk” in my house, it would have taken me until at least 2012.

Now, I have less than a week. Not to mention I wasn’t planning on raking any leaves this year. (I have eight big trees.) But, you can’t see the lawn, or the roof…and these friends of my husband will not be able to find the sidewalk to the house, or even the house, because it will be buried…under some very pretty orange and yellow foliage.

And if you had seen my house, is an improvement.

I’m seriously thinking about just leaving.

Nobody Knows; I am from a very small family. In fact, I usually put up the tree, the outside lights, the inside decorations, all by myself.

AND THAT is the reason why, I don’t cook. I’m not even Mexican.

Nobody Cares; Anyway, that’s the reason I haven’t blogged in a few days. And if I miss a few here or there…send HELP or all the King’s horses, and all the King’s men.