Were you like this cat during last night's debate featuring the four remaining 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls?
Is the debate over? Is it safe to come out yet?
I must confess that I just couldn't stick with the debacle from Detroit. Instead, I followed from a safe digital distance on Twitter.
But from what I gleaned there and from various post mortems, the event was messy (school yard name calling), embarrassing (junior high style references to male sexual prowess) and at times scary (one of these guys soon could be running our country!).
Weird political week: To us here in the United States, it's a presidential election, albeit one of the weirdest in almost anyone's memory. To the rest of the world, however, it's an IQ test and folks we are failing.
When this week started, no one could have foreseen the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, with the support of his party's 2008 candidate, dismissing out of hand (totally unintentional pun) the Republican 2016 nomination front-runner, who's been endorsed by the woman who filled the 2008 GOP VP slot.
If a graphic designer can ever come up with a font that clearly indicates sarcasm, I'll use it to match Trump's cap slogan with my own head wear rhetorically asking "Ain't America great?"
Tax weirdness, too: Here at the ol' blog, I thought the wildest thing this week would be the Daily Tax Tip on wacky (and illegal) tax deductions. It was featured mid-week in the five tax tidbits, listed below, that were posted from Feb. 29 through March 4.
- Tax lessons from athletes in tax trouble (Monday, Feb. 29, 2016)
- Capital gains and your home sale (Tuesday, March 1, 2016)
- 8 outrageous tax deductions (Wednesday, March 2, 2016)
- The many ways to e-file your taxes (Thursday, March 3, 2016)
- What's taxable and what's not (Friday, March 4, 2016)
Some of the tax scrapes that professional athletes have found themselves in also are unusual.
And the Internal Revenue Code's sometimes — OK, all the time — confusing determination of what counts as taxable or nontaxable income definitely can be inscrutable.
Basically, it's a zoo out there folks, whether you're talking taxes, politics or just about anything in this crazy world nowadays.
Hang tough. At least on the tax side, the ol' blog is here to help.
In addition to these end-of-week tax tips roundups, you can peruse all of 2016's pieces of tax advice on the January, February and now underway March special blog pages.
The individual tips also will continue to be highlighted each weekday in the blog's upper right corner through the April 18 filing deadline.
As for all the non-tax weirdness everywhere else, just know I share your astonishment and pain. Together we can get through the tax and election seasons!
