Death Takes a Tax Holiday

April 19, 2011

by Jeff Huber

Today's Republicans would only free
the slaves if it meant they could
raid their pension fund.

I just noticed that my writing regular anti-war columns for the past six years hasn’t ended wars.  So it won’t make a pile of beans or a hill of bullets if take a week off to finish my taxes, I reckon.  The deadline was moved back to April 18 this year; something to do with something called “Emancipation Day” which is the day on which African slaves in the District of Columbia were set free.  Since it’s a holiday in the district, the IRS takes a day off.  I’m not sure how they managed to turn a local holiday into a federal holiday, and a three-day federal holiday at that, but who’s complaining?

I’m guessing the District slaves were freed on the April 18 that came in the last year of the American Civil War (to wit: 1865), which means we have the Civil War to thank for the extension of this year’s filing deadline.

Which proves once again the assertion of the neo-confluence that good things come from war!

In counterpoint: The fact of the Civil War also says other-than-flattering volumes about our country that we had to fight a war among ourselves to end an institution like slavery.  It says even more that when you compare a map of the pre-Civil War slave-versus-free states and territories to a contemporary red state-blue state map, they look darn near identical.

Will Rogers would say that today's
Democrats have their heads
up their mascot. 

As I’ve noted in the past, Jivin’ Joe Lieberman’s statement about how his sense of history says wars either end in victory or defeat goes go show how senseless Joe’s sense of history is.  Wars seldom achieve the intended objectives of their aggressors and seldom really end. 

And living in the south for the last 15 years suggests to me that the American Civil War will never be over. 

Catch you next week.

Jeff

P.S.  I managed to file before the Apr. 18 deadline, and had some time to do a little research on where my tax dollars are going.  You know that $38 billion that supposedly got cut out of the budget?  It doesn't even cover the tab for six-months worth of the Bungle in Bananastan.  

There’s probably nothing Pumpkin Tan and the Tea Baggers can force Congress to do regarding reducing the debt that will come close to the effect of China’s runaway inflation.  There’s nothing like having debt dollars turn into blown-up pennies. 

JLH

P.P.S.  One of the Hampton Roads Hillbillies at the local Bud Lite and well drinks trough remarked that the dad blamed Emancipation Day bull BM was more proof that the euphemistic slurs for Americans of African heritage were taking over the country.  I asked him to consider that no group has more influence over domestic politics than the Tea Baggers, and that there are considerably fewer of them than of the aforementioned euphemisms.  Moreover, I elucidated, the percentage of blacks among the membership of the Tea Party, expressed in a round figure, is zero. 

J

P.P.P.S.  Wasn't I taking a week off from column writing?

J

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) is author of the critically lauded novel Bathtub Admirals, a lampoon on America’s rise to global dominance.