O/T: Got to love them Southerners

[krw]

The South isn't the only place where family trees have no branches. ...and no need for the opposite sex.

[Phisherman]

It will be FREE to those who are obese who need stapled stomachs, chain smokers who have cancer, food stamp people who buy porter house steaks, those without an exercise program, unmarried women who need abortions, inmates with life sentences, unemployed deadbeats and hypochondriacs. Hello taxes, IRS fines, and inflation.

[J. Clarke]

First, you need to learn to recognize sarcasm when you see it.

Second, everybody dies of something, and the only ones who don't get significant medical intervention before it happens are the ones who are already dead when the ambulance arrives. And if it's not free to everybody else then why is it free to "obese" and "chain smokers" and "unmarried women" and "those without an exercise program" and "hypochondriacs"? They all work and pay taxes same as everybody else.

[Larry Jaques]

On Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:07:26 -0500, the infamous Phisherman scrawled the following:

Wunnerful, isn't it?

This just in:

Phish, -I'm- now considered obese by our gov't. I was 192 in high school, a lean, mean bonkin' machine with a swimmer's physique. (I took 2nd place in my freshman year finals in the breast stroke.) But I'm only 220 now. Beefier, fer sher, but I put on some muscle since then, too. According to the gov't, at 5'10" (they don't do halves), I'm supposed to weigh, get this: 173, max to be considered at the far upper end of normal weight! Dad was 6'2", and I inherited his larger bone structure, but not quite all of his height. Mom and my sister call me "stocky", I think I'm a bit on the fat side, and feel that I do need to lose weight. I'd feel better with 20 fewer pounds on me.

According to the calculator here:

, I have a BMI of 31.6. Anything over 30 is considered obese. I'd have to get down to under my normal ATHLETIC TEEN weight to fit this curve! * Underweight =

[Larry Jaques]

On Thu, 3 Dec 2009 09:42:34 -0500, the infamous "J. Clarke" scrawled the following:

You joke about the gov't taking 13% MORE of your PRE-tax dollars?!?

Life is a 100% fatal, sexually-transmitted disease. ;)

-- Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost. -- Thomas J. Watson

[Doug Winterburn]

I've dropped 28 lbs in the last year to get to 233. I'm 6'2", 6'3" if fresh out of the chiropractor's office. I'm currently on the overweight/obese boundary. The goal is 220 which was my high school football weight - which will still be overweight according to the BMI weenies. They want me at 189. At 220 in HS, I had a 32" waist which has expanded to 40" at max and now down to 38". At 63 years old, losing weight ain't easy - I figure it will take another year to drop the next

13 lbs.

[Elrond Hubbard]

Larry Jaques wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Height 5'9" Weight 155 BMI: 22.9

As Steven Wright sez, I'm planning to live forever. So far, so good.

Scott

[Morris Dovey]

5'11"/180.34cm 145lb/65.77kg -> 20.2

[Kerry Montgomery]

Yep, 6', 182 pounds (a few up from last year, when I was a youngster of 58) = 24.7 Kerry

[Phisherman]

I'm 5'11", 163 lbs, BMI=22.7 In high school, I was a rather thin

145 pounds and ate like a horse. I see a lot of folks struggle to lose weight--no wonder McDonalds is in the DOW.

[Scott Lurndal]

You could probably blame television and game consoles as much as McDonalds.

Did you all know that the marginal tax rate on the top income earners for the 50 years between 1935 and 1985 was over 70% (up to 90% in war years albeit with a higher margin setpoint)[*]?

Today it is only 35%. It's no wonder the country is in deep doo-doo.

That high marginal tax rate paid for wars, the interstate highway system, the moon program and the entitlement programs.

It was criminal of RR, GHWB[!] & congress to lower the rates without any curtailing of spending.

It was double criminal for GWB & congress to lower the rates during wartime (for the first time in history).

scott

[*] Read my lips...

[Doug Winterburn]

You seem to have forgotten the Kennedy/Johnson tax cuts during the Viet Nam War.

[Scott Lurndal]

True, from 91% to (70 - 77%) during that era. Still significantly above the rates starting in 1982.

scott

[Mark & Juanita]

You also miss the fact that after the Reagan tax cuts and the initial shock to the system, tax revenues to the treasury actually increased because common people were no longer penalized for achieving. Those were the people hit by those tax rates; the actual rich -- the Rockefellers, the Kennedy's, the Gores, etc all had teams of lawyers and tax loopholes to permit themselves to be shielded from those 70% and 90% rates. What was criminal was that those increased revenues were then viewed as a mechanism by those controlling congress (where all spending bills originate) to increase social spending.

[HeyBub]

Maximizing, or even increasing, revenue to the Treasury is not the goal and is ignored by those advocating tax increases. The goal is equalization of income.

[J. Clarke]

No, that's the sales pitch. It's really to keep the poor poor and the rich rich. Ever wonder why after nearly a century of progressive income tax the income gap is greater than ever?

Note how the taxes are structured. It's not people who are already rich who get socked with the high taxes, it's the people who are in between, so they never make it from working stiff to independent wealth.

[Dave Balderstone]

There's the fact that the wealthy have the means to buy the politicians...