Ninja Monkie Bacchanal

Do you know Section 382 of the US Tax Code? Me neither until today. Here is a quick refresher:

(a) General rule
The amount of the taxable income of any new loss corporation for
any post-change year which may be offset by pre-change losses shall
not exceed the section 382 limitation for such year.

Apparently is deals with how losses are calculated for businesses. Did you also know the US Treasury Department changed it a few weeks back? When Congress and the public was focused on the financial giveaway bailout, Secretary Paulson changed the rule:

The financial world was fixated on Capitol Hill as Congress battled over the Bush administration’s request for a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. In the midst of this late-September drama, the Treasury Department issued a five-sentence notice that attracted almost no public attention.

It gets better. The second paragraph says:

Corporate tax lawyers quickly realized the enormous implications of the document: Administration officials had just given American banks a windfall of as much as $140 billion.

Yuppers! $140 Billion of your money. Nice, huh?

From Wired.com:

There’s nothing unconstitutional about Congress putting an end to lawsuits accusing the nation’s largest telecoms of secretly helping the Bush administration spy on Americans’ communications, government and telecom lawyers told a federal court late Wednesday.

At issue is the recently enacted “telecom immunity” power which the Bush administration is trying to use to wipe out dozens of anti-spying lawsuits targeting AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. The suits accuse the companies of violating federal privacy law when they allegedly secretly helped the government snoop into on Americans’ phone calls, phone records and emails.

The government played the immunity card in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s case against AT&T in September. That suit, along with some three dozen others, are being heard in by Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the Northern District of California’s federal court.

From Nicholas Kristof:

Barack Obama’s election is a milestone in more than his pigmentation. The second most remarkable thing about his election is that American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual.

Maybe, just maybe, the result will be a step away from the anti-intellectualism that has long been a strain in American life. Smart and educated leadership is no panacea, but we’ve seen recently that the converse — a White House that scorns expertise and shrugs at nuance — doesn’t get very far either.

Ok, that was more for me that you. I have been out of town a fair amount lately and not really keeping up here. Sorry. I will rectify it soon. I promise.

As I sit here following the night’s fun at MSNBC.com, CNN.com, Twitter.com, and NPR.org, I am amazed at what an interesting country this is. Yes, I voted for Senator Obama and I fully expect him to win tonight and be the next president of the United States of America (as it stands right now, he has just one PA and OH and sits at 200 electoral votes according to multiple news sites and sources), I can look at my kids and say that yes, anything is possible here in this wonderful nation. Tomorrow life will go back to normal with the same folks arguing past each other over policy issues; I have no illusions about any honeymoon for the senator from Illinois. But tonight, let’s celebrate as a nation.

Today is the culmination of 21 months of campaigning. Go help decide your country’s fate. Go vote!

Senator Obama’s grandmother passed away today at age 86. My condolences to him and his family.

The California GOP has filed an election complaint with the FEC about the Senator visiting his dying grandmother last week. Today. They filed it today.

LMAO!

Just when you thought it was safe to focus on the issues in this historic election season, a chain of sex toy shops has joined retailers, restaurateurs and other businesses across the nation in the time-honored tradition of rewarding Americans who go to the polls.

Babeland, with stores in New York, Los Angeles and Seattle, is offering a pair of self-gratifying incentives for voters who present their registration cards, ballot stubs or “word of honor” that they voted next Tuesday.

I know it has nothing to do with the election on Tuesday, but these stories make me swell with pride about living in this country:

Amanda Jones, 109, the daughter of a man born into slavery, has lived a life long enough to touch three centuries. And after voting consistently as a Democrat for 70 years, she has voted early for the country’s first black presidential nominee.

Yesterday, I was reading this in USA Today’s OP-ED section and had to share it with you. It is a piece by Oliver Thomas, an ordained minister:

My father, who was a Baptist deacon as well as a World War II veteran, was such a patriot. Pop taught me that true patriotism is not a contest to see who can fly the biggest flag. True patriotism exists where citizens love their country enough to hold it accountable. That means working to make certain that the president we have elected and the government we have created live up to the words of our creeds and the dreams of our poets and prophets

I was struck immensely by the simplicity of the words and the thoughts behind it.

The second piece is on Governor Palin and was written by Garrison Keiler:

It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about. The American people have an ear for B.S. They can tell when someone’s mouth is moving and the clutch is not engaged. When she said, “One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let’s commit ourselves just every day, American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars,” people smelled gas.

With writers and thinkers like these, I am not so worried about my beloved country as much today.

From MSNBC.com:

Sen. Ted Stevens was found guilty on all counts at his corruption trial Monday. Stevens was charged with lying on Senate financial forms about $250,000 in home renovations and other gifts he received from an oil contractor.