The dems only wanted to raise taxes on the rich

The problem is raise is the wrong word here. The correct word to use is RESTORE taxes on the rich.

I'm a small business owner. By the time I pay my federal taxes (income and payroll, which is really all income) I'm paying 43.6% of every additional dollar I own to the federal government.

How can I lower my tax burden?

Well, I just need to become FILTHY rich. The problem is that I actually work for my income. If I already had enough money that I just needed to "invest" for my income, I could knock my federal tax rate down to 15%. Even less with some nice accounting tricks.

I think it is perfectly fair that people who "invest" to get their income pay the same tax rate as those of us who actually WORK for our income.

Republicans, however, are not interested in this concept. They are a party whose #1 priority is helping the rich get richer. The Republican position isn't "low taxes", the Republican position is "High taxes for the middle class, low taxes for the rich." And they have been successful at advancing that position - the Bush tax cuts heavily favored the wealthy. Now that the Republicans already managed to get the rich to pay lower taxes than the rest of us, they are working very hard to make sure the rich keep that advantage, at the expense of everything else.

That's not to say Democrats don't have their own problems, but until Republicans agree that the rich should pay the same taxes as people who work, it is silly for me to support Republicans.

And if a bunch of generally wealthy people have to spend a lot more time sitting around airports to get rich people to pay their fair share, I'm good with that.

T-Mobile has the most affordable service in the US.

It also has the worst coverage. If you're in urban areas all the time, this won't effect you much, but if you travel outside urban areas, dropped calls and areas of no coverage at all are common.

I drive along interstate 94 through western Wisconsin fairly frequently and while I can place calls along the way, I can't keep a call going more than a couple minutes until I get into the MSP metro area. 94 down to Madison is even worse.

"Can't talk on phone while driving on interstate" is a pretty big negative for me.

So, if I actually only need to be there 30 minutes in advance, why am I told that I need to be there two hours in advance?

The 2 hours is published as a recommendation, not a requirement.

And you're told that because if you don't know when you actually need to arrive at the airport, you're probably an infrequent traveler, and then you may need to be there 2 hours in advance.

That 2 hours includes finding a place to park, getting into the terminal, waiting through the check-in line (which may be short or long, depending), getting through security (which may be short or long, depending), and getting to the gate.

If you know what you're doing and are fit and able, you can clip that down to 45 minutes. I do it all the time. In fact I've checked a bag 31 minutes before departure more times than one might think possible. But if the airline is publishing a number for Jane and Joe Public, 2 hours is a good recommendation.

Since when can you buy lighters in airports?

And I wouldn't count making a bow and arrow as being successful at getting a (useful) weapon on a plane. A bow and arrow is a virtually useless device in the close-quarters of an aircraft.

Antiquated rules on the requirements for how long people need to be there before the flight are maintained to ensure there is a large number of trapped people sitting about who want to buy food/drink and who get bored or are addicted anyway to buying things they don't really need in shops.

There are three sets of rules about when you need to be at the airport:

- Check-in time: Usually 30 minutes. This cutoff is to both give you time to get through security and the airline time to put other people in your seat if you don't show. But, since you can check in online anytime within 24 hours of your flight, this doesn't really put any requirement on you as to when you have to be at the airport.
- Back Check Time: Usually the same as the check-in time, and usually 30 minutes, although at some airports it's more. This is to make sure that the airline has time to get your bag to the plane and loaded on it. 30 minutes is pretty reasonable here (and the airports where it's longer, like Las Vegas, there's a reason.)
- At The Gate time: 15 or 30 minutes prior to departure, depending on whether you're doing domestic or international departure. As a practical matter though, this is really "before they are done boarding the plane". If it's 10 minutes to departure and they've still got a line of people getting on the plane, they won't know you're not there. But if it's 25 minutes before departure on an international flight and you're not on the plane and they are done boarding, they're going to pull your bags from the plane.

Why 30 for international but only 15 for domestic? Because the airlines are not required to fly your bags on the same plane as you domestically, but they are required to do so internationally, so they need the extra 15 minutes to get bags off the plane.

So, yes, there are rules about when you have to be at the airport and at the gate. But they have nothing to do with getting people to shop.

As a matter of fact, if a gun is "meant" for killing people, considering that there are approximately 200 million guns in the US and 11,000 gun deaths per year in the US, then even if you consider every single one of those deaths to have been caused by a different firearm (which isn't true, but that's a "worse case scenario"), then every year 99.9945% of those guns are used for something other than what they're "meant" for since they didn't kill anyone.

Frequency of use for designed purpose does not change the designed purpose.

Guns are made for killing things. The fact that many/most guns are not used for killing things does not change that guns are made for killing things, any more than the fact that most air bags just sit in a steering wheel changes the fact that airbags are designed to prevent injury or death in car accidents.

It's not illegal to manufacture or sell something that is eventually used in a crime.

It *IS* illegal to provide material support for a criminal act. That makes you one of the criminals.

So, if I make guns that are sold at retail and a criminal comes and buys them at a store and then uses them in a crime, not my fault. But if I sell a few crates of guns to a visitting African warlord for cash, well....

If I have a business installing hidden compartments in cars, no problem. If I find out one of my customers is using the compartments to smuggle materials and I continue to serve that customer, I'm no longer just installing hidden compartments, I'm PARTICIPATING IN THE SMUGGLING.

The guy wasn't jailed for making the compartments. He was jailed for being part of the smuggling scheme.

Practicing to kill an animal for food... what's wrong with using paintballs?

Practicing hunting with paintballs is like practicing basketball with baseballs.

Paintballs are an OK approximation of close-quarters firearms use, but are a horrible approximation at any sort of distance.

If you want to practice hunting, using real bullets on targets would be more effective.

I got a kick out of the rule that you can have one golf club, or two clubs, but the golf clubs is right out.

Cause, you know, more than one club per hand is just too dangerous.

Just FYI, as you get older, it gets harder and harder to see things that are close to your eyes, leading you to hold things you want to read further and further away from your face, not closer.

An iPad is a poor PC replacement for most old folks. They don't need to be doing tasks like email on a small screen with a touch "keyboard".

At what point do you realize that if you're going to use it as a PC, you should just buy a PC?

The article might as well be me... except it's 270 miles, and my dad does provide some front-line tech support. But my mom is still on AOL.

This Christmas we had her try various tech devices from smart phones to tablets (Android and iOS); the end verdict was she is still most comfortable in front of a monitor with a keyboard and mouse. Tablets worked OK for some of the things she wanted to do, but the lack of physical keyboard was problematic, esp. when it came to email. And it's also more comfortable for her to be sitting in a chair NOT having to hold the screen. Tablet screens also suffer compared to larger monitors when you're old and want a large font.

So while mom might end up with a tablet as an accessory, they are NOT desktop replacements. And don't solve the AOL problem either.

To the article submitter, what does your mom use AOL for? The AOL experience isn't necessarily much different than the browser experience, for certain activities, so you might want to try setting up Windows 7 and then seeing if the browser is "close enough".

Ultimately I got my mom a new PC (her old one was OLD and took days to boot (ok, 20 minutes)) and put windows XP on it. Fortunately she doesn't feel the need to download the screensaver du jour, so with virus software XP is OK and what she's familiar with. Did end up having to put AOL back on it but dad is working on weaning her over to a browser. If she makes that transition probably on to Windows 7.

Two people can't use the same IP address at the same time either - your packets are interleaved.

It just so happens that your packets are interleaved on the microsecond scale while gun use is interleaved on the order of hours/days/weeks.

If you are shipping items from country to country, in addition to the time it takes the postal systems to move your package, there is also the time it spends in customs. Lots of packages sail right through, but some get "stuck", and when they get through customs is up to customs.

So your package could have spent weeks in customs somewhere.