Author: Chris Barrus

Which Sesame Street Muppet’s Dark Secret Are You?

Snuffy
Snuffy’s Suicide Attempts
Poor baby, life is rough for you, huh? No one seems to see you, no one notices your pain–except for your friend Big Bird, but he’s alway off hanging out with his other friends. You wish you were him, all happy and curious and popular and bright yellow. You feel like his shadow anymore, like the only reason you exist is to amuse him. It’s hard being somebody’s imaginary friend. But stop trying to kill yourself–imaginary people can’t kill themselves. Sorry. And hey, maybe tomorrow you’ll feel better!
Someday people will see you, I promise.

Which Sesame Street Muppet’s Dark Secret Are You?
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Feel Good Now – Part IV

As antidote to yesterday’s FUD, here’s some good vibes to go into the weekend with courtesy of Mark Morford’s column in the SF Gate.

There are, apparently, still plenty of things to give you hope amidst the warmongering and the chaos and the staggering feeling that BushCo and its cronies are simply hell-bent on squeezing this nation into a vicious little spit wad of fear and ennui, all via record budget deficits and staggering unemployment and gutted schools and gutted Medicare and a truly nauseating anti-environment pro-industry agenda and civil rights like an afterthought.

Feel Good Now – Part III

Buy a SUV – get a government subsidy

Among the provisions of the tax package just approved by Congress is an increase in the deduction allowed for small-business equipment purchases, which rises from $25,000 to $100,000. That means real estate agents, lawyers, doctors — anybody who files a Schedule C or corporate tax return — can write off the entire cost of virtually any big sport-utility vehicle. The potential tax savings in the top bracket is $35,000.

Feel Good Now – Part II

Apparently the best way to deal with the budget deficit is to pretend it doesn’t exist.

The Bush administration has shelved a report commissioned by the Treasury that shows the U.S. currently faces a future of chronic federal budget deficits totaling at least $44 trillion in current U.S. dollars.

The study, the most comprehensive assessment of how the U.S. government is at risk of being overwhelmed by the “baby boom” generation’s future healthcare and retirement costs, was commissioned by then-Treasury secretary Paul O’Neill.

But the Bush administration chose to keep the findings out of the annual budget report for fiscal year 2004, published in February, as the White House campaigned for a tax-cut package that critics claim will expand future deficits.

The study asserts that sharp tax increases, massive spending cuts or a painful mix of both are unavoidable if the U.S. is to meet benefit promises to future generations. It estimates that closing the gap would require the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66 percent across-the-board income tax increase.

Feel Good Now – Pt. I

Paul Wolfowitz on “selling the war”:

The decision to highlight weapons of mass destruction as the main justification for going to war in Iraq was taken for “bureaucratic reasons”, according to the US deputy defence secretary.

But in an interview with the American magazine Vanity Fair, Paul Wolfowitz said there were many other important factors as well.

The famously hawkish Mr Wolfowitz has been a long-time proponent of military action against Iraq.

Picking weapons of mass destruction was “the one reason everyone could agree on”, he says in the interview.