ShareThisThoughts at large:-- I'm not sure she meant it this way, but Hillary Rodham Clinton was right when she said Indiana and North Carolina would be game changers.-- Great line I saw: Clinton's hyper-optimistic campaign manager, Terry McAuliffe, has become Baghdad Bob.-- I give her credit for proving herself a fighter, but perhaps folks are worrying that even in the White House, that's all she'd do.-- I'm thinking the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe went a whole lot better than the Bush plan to rebuild Iraq.-- A nickel now costs 7.5 cents to make and a penny 1.26 cents. That's like GM making a car for $30,000 and selling it for $20,000. Only the manufacturing arm of the U.S. government would have such a profit structure.-- Does it mean you're a low-rent household if you set your dinner table with leftover Pizza Hut napkins?-- I passed a store called "Goin' Postal" and am trying to figure out whether it's a mailing service or an anger-management center.-- The nuts at Brown University who threw pies at Tom Friedman of The New York Times -- for not being green enough for them despite authoring a new book on environmental crises -- is a fine example of alleged idealists keeping fascism alive and well on campus.-- When I become emperor, my first act will be to require all device chargers to be uniform so you don't need 30 different ones.-- And why are they never labeled? All those who have a drawer full of unknown chargers raise your hand.-- An expert appearing on TV said the women in that polygamist cult cover themselves in frontier dresses so that they're unattractive to other men. I give them credit for succeeding.-- And why would you want to marry even one of them, let alone three or four?-- For that matter, isn't one wife more than enough for any man?-- I got my own wife's permission to print the above sentence. (What, you think I'd say that without clearance?)-- I would watch more golf if, as in hockey, checking was allowed.-- Remember when the video game "Grand Theft Auto" was condemned for being based on carjacking? "Grand Theft Auto IV" just came out and had $500 million in first-week sales. I'm shocked, disturbed and, mostly, upset no one asked me to invest in the company early on.-- All these months later, I can't accept that Providence's Russian submarine sank -- and is still down there awaiting salvage. Aren't submarines supposed to sink?-- What is it with girls beating each other up on video?-- Don't you love those ads pushing products for "today's on-the-go families"? I guess that mean's yesterday's families didn't go anywhere.-- Barbara Walters' new book reveals she had an affair with former Massachusetts Sen. Edward Brooke, which raises a question: Why do women always tell?-- News item: "Due to shortages, warehouse retail chains Sam's Club and Costco are limiting how much rice people can buy." Where are we, Bangladesh?-- Great Rhode Island story: Reader Edith Ziegler tells of her husband checking into Miriam Hospital soon after they arrived here from out of state. A nurse asked if he had a "hot monitor." The couple at first thought it was some kind of heat sensor, until the nurse pointed to her chest and explained, "A hot monitor is for your hot."-- Technology at its best: There's now a cell-phone program you can buy called "Fake call" that lets you trigger a ring to get out of a meeting.-- I just learned that Tiger Woods' caddy made $1.7 million last year, so if anyone has a golf bag for me to carry, let me know.(Contact Mark Patinkin at mpatinkin(at)projo.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Musings on Hillary, nickels, the polygamist cult and more
Paying taxes unites us. It also divides us. People can pay five and even six times more in state and local taxes than other folks in similar circumstances making similar incomes.
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In one of the fastest-growing forms of identity theft, crooks are stealing tax refunds by swiping personal information and using it to trick the Internal Revenue Service.
