Viva Lost Vegas

Here are a few truisms:  Elvis impersonators are NOT Elvis. Elvis is, indeed, rubbernecking in the great beyond.  Howard Hughes really was as rich as he thought he was despite his dementia.  There are no space aliens and the GOP does not yet have a serious and viable candidate.

It breaks my heart.  What good is a campaign without two spirited and moderately intelligent candidates?  Can’t we all just get along?

I had a gander at the latest of the GOP debates in Las Vegas and it was like children fighting over toys.  No, it was like bulls fighting over who gets to break the china.  We need the Bull Moose Party, we need staunch a “Bully Bully” NOT faux wannabes drinking imaginary cups of patriotic tea and posing for pictures with semi automatics.

But I digress...(see those dots after "digress"--that's me digressing)

Everybody was attacking everybody.  Mitt had his mitts up against Rick “Death for All” Perry. Michelle Bachman was graceful as she played the role of Meeky Mouse—I liked her when she was weird and spunky.  Everybody was a Caine Fu Fighting.  Jon Huntsman was boycotting Nevada because the great gambling state wants to hold their primaries before New Hampshire.  You know, the really relevant issues that make us want to elect a president.

How exciting.

Now, hear me Congress when tell you that when Mitt makes the White House, remember that he does NOT like to be interrupted.  I thought he and Perry were really going to erupt into a WWE slugfest but no it was more like an incredibly boring close-up of sequence of eyes in a spaghetti western.  I think it would have done them a world of good to erupt in a volcanic surge of repressed violence.

Rick, like a true southern gentleman, did apologize for the clown that said that Mitt’s religion was a cult.  I was actually impressed with Rick that he was big enough to admit that Mitt had been wronged.  He scores big points with me on that one.  Way to go, Governor Perry!

Now Herman Caine, the new horse of a different color, is being attacked by all of the candidates and dear readers that means to the GOP Herman Caine is a serious threat to be taken seriously—I mean, seriously.  To be very frank, I finally got to look at his 999 plan and we all should be afraid. 

At odds is his argument to simplify the tax code form the so-called “10 million word mess” and so Caine proposes three elements consisting of a 9 percent tax:  personal income, sales and corporate.

All three segments pay a 9 percent tax.  Sounds easy right?  Well in the grand ol’ land of New Hampshire and other states where there is no sales tax there will be a sales tax of 9 percent that means those parties will pay 9 percent more then the 0 percent they are used to paying. 

In states where there are sales taxes, the feds get their 9 percent and the state gets theirs. In New York, taxpayers could pay a whopping 18 percent PLUS that 9 percent income tax and let’s not even consider state taxes—add that in too.

All in all, one analysis projected that a single or married couple could expect an 84 percent increase in their taxes.  Thank god!  I was sure it would be higher.

Herman Caine’s response was to blame accountants for these kinds of criticisms.  WELLLLLL!  Who will be doing your numbers?  The Koch Brothers?  Oh lord now, Koch Caine is rolling round my brain.  If accountants cant make sense of your program I am sure a common layman like myself will not be able to comprehend this wacky plan of yours.

But you know folks, let’s give Mr. Caine a hand and I am being serious. He is sticking by his plan and that kind of Don Quixotic commitment takes a lot of guts—but please, Herman, if you get this passed you will take my guts and the guts of every American who ever had a dream.  We all want to see the other side of that mountaintop.  999 will keep this generation and other generations from seeing the other side. Have a heart already.

Now let me pose one other tiny little question for you. As a Republican you are going to curb spending and cut taxes and we all are going to pay this itsy bitsy 9 percent simplified tax.

Here is the question:  I am an income strapped state desperate for more money since you are no longer going to give generously to the states. Where do you think those states are going to go to make up lost income?  If the American taxpayer is only paying 9 percent to the Federal Government, the states will swoop in and raise their taxes because they KNOW that more money from the taxpayer has been made readily available by your plan. In a nutshell, it’s the same old thing for the American taxpayer. Give it up, Herman, please. 

The American people can’t take much more hurt.

I’m just sayin’…