The B12 (XII) Forum, home of the 'Front Porch, y'all' at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I hate politics

Building on that, I hate lame attempts to bait people into meaningless political arguments

i do actually HATE something... I really hate it... and it's akin to politics and staring me in the face right now... 

taxes.  i despise them.  it's not enough that everything you buy is taxed, and after already being taxed several times in the raw material all the way to production phase, and then the funds you use to purchase are taxed as income, and.... on and on.... it's complicated with layers and layers of complexity, with each deduction buried just deep enough to make you question whether it's worth diving for... and it is... because, if nothing else, EF THEM- that's why. 

then comes the puzzling items... and this i just don't get... if i paid too much in taxes i get a return... one from the state of from the feds... the feds, the following year, tax my state return from the prior year as income, and the state taxes my federal as income... taxes i overpaid they tax. they cut a check and send it to me, and i get to figure out how much taxes to pay on it... it's income, okay, i guess i can make that leap, but.... it's being sent from each respective tax organization, so why can't they account for taxes off the tax overpayment i made and send me that?  

 why do they offer a deduction? being basically suspicious of free money, i questioned that the first time i ever did taxes other than an EZ form, and guess what? I've NEVER came short of at least DOUBLING the 'standard deduction'..... which is to say that thing is implemented, i'm certain, to lure the lazy or the dumb... or the dumb lazy... 

and another: why are there 97k pages to the federal tax code alone? 

if i had million or billions, i too could hire a legion of tax attorney's to find every loop hole in the mess, and come out with a return large enough to pay for that legion of tax attorney's- which is the REAL reason why there are 97k pages- to hide loopholes... 

i'm going to do the same thing i've done for the past ten years starting this weekend- i'm going to get drunk on homemade booze and giggle about revenuers whilst i do my annual civil duty of taxes... but i ain't gonna make it easy on them no i'm not... i can't recall the last time my completed taxes were less than 175 pages.  

i HATE taxes.... 

Hey Erin, tell us the red flags that send wom3n scurrying away from men.
I’ve always wondered why so many women seem to prefer losers who treat them like crap over nice guys with good jobs who treat them with respect.

...It's not necessarily as easy to recognize some of these as it is for a woman who "wears a lot of much makeup" or has too much fat on her body.  

Thank you for that thoughtful, intelligent and insightful answer, Erin.
As to your above-quoted paraphase of my warning signs, you do realize I have to oversimplify things for the masses online here.  Right?   This is like the only place in the world where I talk to 6 year-olds lest I get into a flame war with morons extrapolating strawmen.
Tell me this - do you think ii is a wariness of clever, duplicitous con men that make so many women fall for the guy who’s dumb as a stump?

Hey Erin, tell us the red flags that send wom3n scurrying away from men.
I’ve always wondered why so many women seem to prefer losers who treat them like crap over nice guys with good jobs who treat them with respect.

I'm not the nicest guy, don't have the best job, and may not show as much respect to some women as I should, but I feel I'm well above average in every category.
and yet, good women scurry away from me.
crazy women and women that are drunk seem to like me

I gotta say this page of this thread is golden.  Quite glad Erin showed up to provide some insight.

And Erin-- on average, men are babies.  Children.  At best adolescents, which is probably actually worse than babies or children when I think about it.

Honestly it's a wonder anyone ever hooks up at all.  Just a matter of hormones I suppose.

Which simply reinforces the point I tried to make again and again to my various vegan girlfriends years ago-- it's naive or even worse, incredibly arrogant and egocentric to imagine humans are anything more than the animals we cohabit this planet with.  We're all part of the food chain.  Imagining we're not, is doing a disservice to the natural order.

Which is precisely why eating BBQ is so very, very important to the station of humankind.

i love how everyone else is crazy.... 

my thoughts are we're all crazy.  every single one of us.  some of us are fortunate enough to have found a complimenting or compatible crazy and have surrounded ourselves with friends and family who are similar brands of crazy, and so we don't much notice just how crazy- as the basis for measure is skewed... 

before un-throttled crazy vectored toward my position and in the case of my first wife, i was given slight insight to a mind i knew i would never come to treaty with- and it happened one night in the small hours.  it wasn't for a couple more years the wheels came off the cart (and the axle broke, the drivetrain shattered and the .... ) with her, and i kept thinking back to this little insight the whole time, which was prior to "I do's" and at a point where i could have stopped the madness...

she was crying in the dark, laying on the other side of the bed... quietly but audibly.  I asked her "what's wrong" and she said "nothing", and i pressed further "your ass wouldn't be crying in the dark in the middle of the night if there wasn't something wrong"... she finally shared.. She informed me she just became aware that her step father and mother had set up a college fund account for their grandchild and her nephew.  I thought to myself "wha, tears of happiness?" so i said "that's great! very nice and thoughtful of them" just to have her explode on me.  She said "What about me?  Where is my college fund? Why is the grandchild so much more special than me? I deserve at least half of what they just gave him!!"...... i knew right then and there the bch was crazy in a dangerous way (sociopath possibly?) and straight up ignored it... until it manifest some years later and i said "see ya!'. 

so... my brand of crazy is knowing what i'm dealing with and playing anyway... 

my wife, now, is level headed and thorough- she isn't given to emotional reaction, and it counters my snap to judgement.  i'm better with her than i am not, and it's the same for her in other ways.  and that, i think, is the key- not only being that, but knowing that.