Late Night Updates

The Tax Update

No major news today (I'm not going to link to the tax cases the Supreme Court is hearing this term), so here are some blog posts from the past week:

Victor Fleischer on Senator Levin's bill to eliminate the book/tax disparity in employer compensation deductions for comp. paid with stock options (as a reminder, for financial reporting purposes, companies generally expense the cost of options upon grant, or sometimes over an exercise period, but can include the deduction for tax purposes only when the employee includes the comp. in its income - generally at exercise when the deduction will be greater than the initial financial reporting expense). I still am missing the "abuse" this is trying to get at there is tax parity on the employee/employer side for comp paid with stock options - not sure why GAAP and tax need to agree in all respects - GAAP is frequently a more realistic measure of economic reality than tax - there is nothing inherently wrong with that.

The Tax Policty Blog notices a bill proposed by Rep. Obey (D-WI) that would impose a "war tax" on the American people - progressively based. Good luck with that Obie.

And from Taxalicious is this clip from the Simpsons of Homer interacting with the IRS.

Check them all out.

The Death Update

Of course, the big name yesterday was Queens' own Al Oerter, who passed away from heart failure at 71. He, like Jim Ryun was frequently referred to as a "schoolboy champ" of his sport, the discus. He famously appeared in, and won golds in, four consecutive Summer Olympiads, a feat that has been matched only by Carl Lewis. The obit is here.

A less-known name belongs to Ralph Sturges. Anyone who has been to Mohegan Sun, however, has him to thank. He helped the Mohegan tribe achieve federal recognition, a precursor, in most cases, to receving a state license to construct and operate a casino on tribal land. I've been to Mohegan once - it was great (even if they stopped serving alcohol too early). Thank you Mr. Sturges. The obit is here.

The Football Update

A roundup of the Buffalo Bills blogs is here:

Bills Locker has the early injury report on Monday night's game against Dallas. Youbuty will be out again. Greer will get the start. He was tremendous against the Jets - we'll see how he fares against the Boys.

Brian Galliford at Buffalo Rumblings has the first quarter report card. Not too much to disagree with here - the Bills are, after all, 1-3 (albeit against 3-1 Pittsburgh, 4-0 NE and 2-2 Denver). I guess I'm not really as impressed with Lynch as Brian is. He's shown flashes, but has lacked consistency which has forced the offense into frequent third and long situations - of course, the QBs for the most part couldn't convert a third and 8 against the Dillon Panthers.

Bills Gab says Losman is worried about his job. He should give Drew Bledsoe a call for some inspiration.

And big props go out to the Goose's Roost for throwing a link to my blog up on their page. Go check them out (they're also over on the left). Right now, the talk is turning more to the Sabres - I need to dive back into hockey already? All I know is that my fellow Terrier Chris Drury is a punk.

and last, but not least:

The Baseball Update

Lots of great stuff from the Sox blogs over the past week celebrating the division. You've already seen my position by position breakdown - I predict Sox in 4 - here are what the other Sox blogs are talking about:

Jere from A Red Sox Fan from Pinstripe Territory had an assload of pictures from Friday night's clincher. Click here and keep scrolling.

El Guapo's Ghost rightly notes that the underreported story so far is the Angels injury issues - Gary Mathews and Bartolo Colon will miss the series and Vlad the impaler is dinged as well - could be limited to DH duty (which would pust Chone "Sean" Figgins to the OF and require Kendrick and Izturis to play in the IF).

Keep Your Sox On (which is an excellent blog) has the breakdown of the series - concluding, obviously, that the Sox are the better team statistically and on paper (although I don't put any stock at all in the season series advantage the Sox have).

Aaaand.. Sawx Blog has the roundup of the rest (conventional media, other blogs, Angels blog - seriously - just one). Go take a look.

That's it for tonight. Quick predictions I guess are in order (for the record, I predicted the Sox, Cubs and Angels as division winners and nailed the Yanks as the wildcard. Unfortunately the rest of my NL picks were a mess - Mets to win the East, Houston to win the WC and LA to win the west).

Cubs over D-Backs in 5
Rockies over Phils in 4
Indians over Yanks in 5
Sox over Angels in 4