This made my weekend sad: "Graduation party ends in death on 19th Ave."

More good news on the dividend tax cut -- now we've abandoned provisions stating that only US-based companies could offer tax-free dividends:

"Treasury reformers also said that only U.S.-based companies would be able to pay tax-free dividends. That, the theory held, would create shareholder pressure to force the Tycos and Ingersoll-Rands of the world to move their headquarters back to the United States from Bermuda, where they'd gone in order to dodge taxes. Guess what: That provision is gone, too."

And here's the kicker: "Congressional tax staffers, who for obvious reasons prefer to remain anonymous, think they've already found a multibillion-dollar loophole created by the Senate legislation."

If it only took a few days for congressional staffers to find a loophole, what will happen when corporate tax lawyers have a couple months with it?

Warren Buffett weighed in on the Bush administration's dividend tax plan with an op-ed in the Washington Post:

• "The annual Forbes 400 lists prove that -- with occasional blips -- the rich do indeed get richer. Nonetheless, the Senate voted last week to supply major aid to the rich in their pursuit of even greater wealth."
  
• "Putting $1,000 in the pockets of 310,000 families with urgent needs is going to provide far more stimulus to the economy than putting the same $310 million in my pockets."
  
• Supporters of making dividends tax-free like to paint critics as promoters of class warfare. The fact is, however, that their proposal promotes class welfare. For my class."
  

I'm having my wisdom teeth extracted tomorrow (5/16). Ought to be a fun time.

31 hours until The Matrix Reloaded opens...25 hours until I'm waiting in line...

"The administration's antebellum accounts of the Iraqi weapons hoard are looking every bit as dubious as Enron's electricity transactions, and they increasingly seem as phony a casus belli as the destruction of the Maine in Havana Harbor."

Harold Meyerson's Op-Ed piece in today's Washington Post talks about Bush, weapons of mass destruction, and manufacturing evidence to start a war.

"Apparently, Bush administration intelligence is to intelligence as Fox news is to news. Facts are fine so long as they bolster the president's case. When they don't, they will be suppressed or forgotten, and other, more congenial facts will be found. As at Enron, there are leading figures in this administration who think that when the real facts don't look so good, it's fine to substitute your own."

"Giving them the benefit of the doubt, of course, they simply may have been very credulous in the face of the INC's material (not a hugely comforting thought). And certainly, unlike the Enron gang, they weren't putting out these detailed accounts of unreality in an attempt to cover up crimes or enrich themselves. They merely wanted to start a war. No big deal."

Hmmmm. Wait a second. Does this make any sense? Bush drives our military into Iraq, we oust Hussein...and then re-appoint senior Baath party members to government positions?

I'll be a good liberal today and talk about the administration giving favors -- or nearly $500 million in profit -- to their friends at Haliburton Co. In this land of capitalism and the free market, I am not surprised to hear that the US Army Corps of Engineers awarded a $7 billion contact to Haliburton without competition.