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Harold Clark

i will be at the lunchen if i'm not

booked

Monica Haban (Brown)

If you plan to join our annual Christmas lunch on December 17th, please consider bringing an item of warm hats, gloves, socks, boots, etc. for children in need.  I'll deliver them to Rachel Muha/Run the Race, or St. James the Less (coordinates with St. Andrew).  🎅❤️🎄🧣🧤☃️❤️🎅

Michael McLeod

In weird news of the day:

has there been a lot of talk about this? That they are going to stop coining pennies? 

This is from a story I just read. I don't watch much tv but I assume this has been on the news....

A penny for your thoughts!!!!

America's pockets and coffers are filled with approximately 300 billion pennies, which the U.S. Mint has finally decided to stop coining, not least because it costs three cents to produce a one-cent coin. Turns out, there’s a moral in this story. “Everyone directly involved in making billions of pennies every year knew that it was pointless to do so,” Weaver wrote, “and also thought that it was legally impossible to stop.”

Michael McLeod

Not to worry Harold. If you're booked we'll take up a collection to bail you out.

Joseph D. McCarthy

Jim and Mike, 

First Larry & I were not at the coin show to think about thee demise of the CENT.  Remember, Great Britain has Pennies, the U.S. had sense (cents).  

And Mike the word is circulating that they were in the process of doing away with ALL coins in the U.S. and staying with the paper money.  That is till they determined that it is close to break even on printing paper currency, but that on the average they last maybe a year or two while coins seem to last forever.  Next time you receive coins in change look at the dates on the coins o get an idea of when they were made.

Personally, I never thought making money on the production of coins by the U.S. Mint was it's purpose.  Instead I believed that helping the economy by providing the coins to handle transactions in the business world was the reason for it's existence.  They make enough money on the super infflated, but very limited supply (output), of so called collector coins. 

Retailers are going through nightmares trying to transact business now that some unknown persons tried to save the government some money.

Michael McLeod

I thank thee for the clarification Joe.

And on an entirely off the wall experience/observation:

ever buy what you thought were cherries from the produce aisle and they looked like cherries and were sold as such and you didn't register the fact that they had ABSOLUTELY NO TASTE AT ALL unltil you had absent mindedly consumed a dozen of them?

 I'd have done better tastewise to graze on my  lawn.

next time I'm sneaking a sample before I buy.

ok that's my personal vent. 

Now after doing a little research I'll put on my Jimmy Olsen ace reporter hat. 

Here's my consumer alert:

James Hamilton, M. D.

Mike McL.,

Sounds like Bobby Kennedy needs to look into the cherries 🍒 situation.

Jim

Nina Osborn (Rossi)

ATTENTION 🎄ATTENTION. 🎄ATTENTION🎄>p>

CHANGE IN DATE FOR CHRISTMAS LUNCH 🎄AT MCL  MCL MIXUP  THEY CALLED ME AT 5 pm  TONIGHTSURE HOPE WE CAN GET EVEN MORE PEOPLE ON THURSDAY DECEMBER 18!!!

Nina Osborn (Rossi)

DATE CHANGED FOR CHRISTMAS LUNCH. NOW THURSDAY,DECEMBER 18!!!

Janie Albright (Blank)

PLEASE NOTE DATE CHANGE:

NOW DECEMBER 18TH!! 

David Mitchell

This whole matter of no longer minting pennies makes so cents to me.

But MAYBE there is a good reason.

Michael McLeod

 there's no "maybe" about that voice,dave. whoah! thanks for a great wakeup call.

Of all the respectable four letter words in the dictionary, I'd pul "soul" right up there among the most powerful.

James Hamilton, M. D.

Lookin' For Love

The annual rut is on.

Note how thickened the necks on the males get this time of the year. The sun cooperated to highlight this feature as he walked around the yard.

This buck is not very well armed nor strong enough to take on some of the more senior ones in the neighborhood this year. But his future looks bright!

Jim

Michael McLeod

senility is opening up your dishwasher and discovering that you ran two oven mits through the cycle right along with the pots and pans etc.

Michael Boulware

Please add Carol Weiner Morse to our breakfast list. 

Michael McLeod

MM#1:

As you obviously understood that's  both childish and unprofessional on the part of whatever student editors made that decision to censor that faculty member's opinion. I taught a few journalism classes in my day and I'd have kicked their asses for doing that. I'd love to talk to whatever faculty member they have at that school who isthe advisor for the student newspaper.

David Mitchell

An interesting article in today's Time Magazine about Abigail Disney, the grand niece of Walt Disney. The article is titled;

"A DISNEY HEIRESS BEGS CONGRESS TO HIKE HER TAXES"

I have read about her before as a member of the group "Patriotic Millionaires" - a group of walthy Americans who advocate higher taxes for themselves.

 * (speaking of that - isn't it odd that the phrase "tax the rich" has become so much of a negative political phrase?)

Ms Disney makes a great case for drastic revisions of our tax laws, with heavy emphasis on how much more fair it would be if the rich also paid their share of taxes. I have argued this point with friends for years, but she has a much greater pulpit from which to speak. 

This gives rise to my question - or shall we say, my speculation - about how much our ultra super-rich could do to mitigate our health care problems, or our homeless problem.

When I read that Elon Musk pledged about $6 billion in Tesla stock to saint Jude's Hospital in Memphis. I was quite surprised at the relatively small percentage of his wealth - somewhere around 2.5% of his total wealth.

Imagine what he and Jeff Bezos, and some more of that crowd could do if they dug a little deeper, or were taxed at a rate based on their earnings - like the rest of us.

Imagine!

Joseph D. McCarthy

Dave, early in my "Career" I learned that I had choosen the wrong career path.  But I was married and needed a "safe" job.  So I never went into finance and became a wall street billionare.  You know the ones who handle the investment funds and "earn" no real salary, just what is called "Carried Interest".  By Federal, and some state, laws  "Carried Interest", no matter how many millions are "earned", get taxed at the Capital Gains rate (max 15% at the federal level).  If Congress just passed one simple law to change this we could almost pay off the National debt.  

Oh well, as Mike will confirm, at least I didn't try to be a writer.

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all.

David Mitchell

Joe,

As you know, there are so many tax loopholes in just real estate alone that could be adjusted (not even completely eliminated) to drastically narrow the deficit. But they are considered sacred by our congress, (and their influencers) who I am certain have magnificent benefits from threir Real Estate investments. Benefits that working people cannot receive because they have no wealth to invest in the first place.

Mortgage Interest deductions, "Asset Depreciation" methods ("straight line", "double declining balance", etc.), and Capital Gains rates are areas I learned a great deal about in my 4-year BSBA in Real Estate Development. I was fascinated by those concepts and the positive math they provided. I "sold" those convepts to buyers and investors for years before it occured to me that they were contributing in a huge way toward aiding the wealthy in ther efforts to avoid taxation.

I suspect these areas of tax codes are so confusing and boring to the average person, that most peple simply don't try to grasp them and choose to leave it tot the "experts". 

I am not against some incentives, but I believe some gradual adjustments could go a long way towards narrowing the budget deficit.

Added later - - I beleive the new trend of "Private Equity" owning single family homes for rent should not be allowed. It is having a horrific effect on stable residential neighborhoods and adding pressure on buyers who already cannot afford housing.

Daniel Brown

Joe,
 

if this format had a "thumbs up" icon, you would have received two of them from me. Consider it done anyway.

John Jackson

Add my thumbs up to the last four posts.  

The U.S. is by far the wealthiest big country in the world  (although there are a few tiny countries that are tax havens that are wealthier per capita than we are).  Trump justifies his tariffs because he claims other countries are getting rich at our expense but, like virtually everything he says, that's a lie. Twenty years ago U.S. GDP per capita was on average 20% above Canada, Europe, and other advanced nations.  Today the gap has widened and our GDP per capita is 40% higher.  Our economy is pulling away from the economies of other advanced nations.

I won't argue that we've gotten rich by exploiting other countries (the opposite of Trump's argument).  But the reason why so many working class and middle income people are struggling is that the incredible wealth our highly productive economy generates is increasingly concentrated in the upper 5%.

Capitalism is by far the most efficient economic system but, left unchecked, it creates huge wealth imbalances (like we see today in the U.S.).  These imbalances undermine our democratic system and lead to the kind of political instability we see today where charlatans like Trump (aided by the emerging class of tech and other oligarchs who support and bribe him by investing in his family's crypto and other schemes)  gain power and wealth by appealing to and exploiting the legitimate grievances of those who are losing out. 

John Maxwell

David Mitchell

It would seem that this is a week when food is on our minds.

This "food story" comes to mind.

14 - JIM LOVES HIS TUNA FISH  

 One of my good buddies, and my eventual platoon leader was a guy named Jim. He was a first Lieutenant on arrival, but by this time he was a Captain, and I often flew his “wing”. We were a good team. He happened to be a very tiny, skinny guy, but with a huge appetite. The lunches we ate in the field (those days on which we were flying and away from our “Mess Hall”) were the legendary “C-rations”, most of which weren’t very good. Some of us went to great lengths to acquire other food sources for our flying days. I personally had acquired two cases of individual cans of VanCamp’s Beenee Weenee’s that I lucked into on my one and only visit to the tiny PX at Soc Trang - a smaller, quieter base where I went to take one of my semi-annual “check rides” (a sort of pilot proficiency exam).

 Jim had acquired a large stash of his favorite - canned tuna - probably in a care package from home. He would take not just one, but two or three cans of tuna in his Loach on days he was flying. And we all had our trusty “P-38” folding can openers on our dog tag chains. We Scout pilots stuffed our “C-rats”, or whatever meal we had, in a space down beyond our anti-torque pedals and at the bottom of the cockpit “bubble” in the front of the ship. You could actually see it through the plexiglass from the outside front of the cockpit better than from the inside.   

It was a day we were working way south, out of Vi Thanh (“vee taun”) - a place where we often ran into trouble. I was flying Jim’s “wing”, and we were slowly weaving our way along a small canal with the typical thin wood line along side of it, so we were up at about 25 feet. We came to another canal and tree line intersecting this canal, and Jim made a hard banking right turn and I followed him along the new canal line. As soon as I made the turn, I had this immediate sense of something or someone beneath us and called out to Jim, “One six, I think we’ve got some people down here.” Not that I could actually see anyone - just a sense of their presence. (A common feeling after we became more experienced). Maybe it was the sight of a few fresh cut "Nipa Palm” leaves (camouflage) - I don’t recall exactly.

I had barely finished speaking when Jim calls out “Receiving Fire, Receiving Fire”! He abruptly banked his ship away to his right and I laid down a quick burst of cover fire underneath him with my mini gun. Then I pulled away hard in the opposite direction. 

Then followed a bit of radio silence, and I could not see Jim’s ship anywhere. I flew a quick, tight circle to get a good look around in all directions and still could not see him. I thought he’d been shot down, but where?  I called out for him, “One-six, One-six - this is One-three. Where are you One-six?”  No response.

Then our AMC, Major Rittenhouse called out, “Oooone-Six,,,, Oooone-Six, this is Six, Where are you One-Six?”  No response, another pause, and then again, “Comanche One-Six, this is Comanche Six - C’mon back buddy.”   Another long silence.

Finally, I caught sight of Jim’s ship. He was several hundred yards out and circling up at about fifty feet of altitude. And he finally responded to the Major’s call.

“Comanche Six, this is One-Six. We took a couple hits in our bubble and have some visibility problems,”  Another pause - “We have tuna fish splattered all over the inside of the cockpit and a clump of it on my visor”.  He had taken a direct hit right through several of his cans of Tuna and they had splattered everywhere in his cockpit.

For about a second, Major Rittenhouse had his microphone open, and you could hear just a moment of his hysterical laughter over the air. And I started to laugh out loud myself. We all headed back to Vi Thanh to switch teams and let Jim assess the damage and clean up his cockpit. There were several large clumps of tuna on the inside of his plexiglass bubble, along with some larger spots of smeared fish oil. With a bit of cleanup, his ship was still flyable. The bubble would later be replaced back home by our maintenance guys.

We teased Jim about it for weeks afterwards. I seem to recall someone even suggesting he might be safer if he switch to canned salmon. 

The dreaded "C-Rations"

And the legendary P-38 (can opener). One of the mankind's greatest inventions!

Michael McLeod

Dave: your combat rations reference made me sentimental, weird as that may sound.

it reminded me of the most ingenious device I remember from all of the various bivouc and combat thingamabobs that you encounter in the army -- not that I was out in the field much after basic training.

Yeah sure the m16 was a thing of beauty and amazing in its light weight and soft recoil -- but i was more impressed by the tiny but mighty p-38 can opener -- that squirrely little ingeniuous thingamajig the size of a dime that you could use to open up c-ration cans.

greatest invention evar. and man were you outta luck if you were in the bush without it.

Michael McLeod

Happy National Bavarian Creme Pie Day, everybody!

I'm not joking. You can look it up.