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Michael Maiello's picture

The Ongoing Lies In Libya

"NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Monday that Qaddafi's 'reign of terror' was coming to an end, underscoring western countries' ultimate goal of removing him from power." -Foreign Policy Magazine morning e-mail for 5/31/2011.

Interesting.

Because when this whole thing started, deposing Qaddafi was not a stated goal of the NATO operations authorized by the United Nations.  The goal, by which I mean the whole, entire goal, was to "protect civilians."

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Michael Maiello's picture

Obama Is Breaking The Law

What I hate about war is that it makes good people do bad things.  Also, that people have their lives cut short for bad reasons, that money is wasted and that generally only the world's worst people are any better for all the sacrifices made.  But also that it makes good people do bad things.

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Michael Maiello's picture

The Untaxed 51%

Lately, we've been hearing from conservatives that 51% of Americans don't pay federal income taxes.  This is meant to put the kibosh on any attempts at raising taxes on wealthy individuals by painting everyone from the middle class on down as freeloaders.  We are already, the argument goes, letting the wealthy pay for the upkeep of the country, so the next sacrifice needs to come from working people.  I took this issue up in The Daily this week.

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Michael Maiello's picture

The Truth About ConocoPhillips and Taxes

ConocoPhillips CEO John Mulva thinks that denying tax breaks to his highly profitable global oil and gas company is "Un-American."  People have been really taken with his rhetoric on this one, but his words sent me to his company's 10K.  The truth about Conoco's taxes is buried in the footnotes and it's very revealing.  It's at the core my my column for The Daily today, but I want to get a bit more granular here.

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Michael Maiello's picture

Rape Apologists, Elite Apologists Or Something Else?

It's very difficult to talk about (okay, I'll say it) outgoing IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, if you want to say anything other than "let's let the justice system turn and accept the ultimate result," without swallowing your own foot.

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Michael Maiello's picture

Noodling About Newt

I don't believe that Newt Gingrich's candidacy for the Presidency is real in the slightest.  Like Ron Paul or Sarah Palin, Newt makes a great deal of money selling books and himself as a speaker and lecturer, to conservative groups.  This candidacy is a way of using donor money to promote himself as a lecturer, author and pundit.  For Palin, it happened by accident.  But Newt's been an industry ever since he left office.

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Michael Maiello's picture

Raise The Capital Gains Tax

Since the 1990s, both the Democrats and Republicans have agreed that capital gains taxes should be kept lower than income taxes in order to encourage investment and to support the economy.  It's really pure trickle down theory and further proof for the cynical that whenever the Democrats and Republicans agree on something, it's bad.  Setting capital gains and dividend taxes at the same level as income taxes is the subject of my column today in The Daily.

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Michael Maiello's picture

"Fight Your Way Out"

I'm extremely impressed that it was the President's decision for the Pentagon to use more than 2 helipcopters for the Bin Laden mission, in case something happened to one of the vehicles.  "I don’t want you to plan for an option that doesn’t allow you to fight your way out,” he said.

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Michael Maiello's picture

Disturbed About Libya

As already noted here at Dag, a NATO air strike killed Gadhafi's son and narrowly missed the dictator and his wife.  The way I see it, this isn't the war we were sold.  Weren't we told quite explicitly that Ghadhafi wasn't being personally targeted?

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Michael Maiello's picture

Comment Systems Down Across The Web!

Talking Points Memo reports that its commenting system has crashed due to a failure at amazon.com.  The failure of Amazon's cloud problem has hobbled Web sites all over the place leaving articles and events uncommented upon.

At the White House, there was much rejoicing.

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