As Useful As Marriage Advice From The Pope


ABOVE: Megan “Do I Look Like A Bonobo? McArdle

Megan McArgleBargle, The Once-Respected Atlantic
How to Survive a Layoff

  • Sell all your shit and take a job at Starbucks, you pathetic old losers.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™


[h/t Roy]

 

Comments: 824

 
 
 

Fly my bonobo minions, fly and get Doromegan!!

God, I hate these people.

 
 

Used to think hate was useless and exhausting. Still sorta do. But HOW CAN I NOT?!?! THESE FUCKERS ARE MONSTERS!!!!ONE!

 
 

Megan: “the errors she’s made are incredibly common.”

For example, the failure to select wealthy parents . . .

 
 

caption:

Megan McArgleBargle, who is apparently NOT A BONOBO!, with bonobos, who wholeheartedly agree. Free love is fine and all, but a bonobo’s gotta draw the line somewhere.

 
 

How in the FUCK can she talk about “understandable errors” made by those horrid poor people? This fucking corporate cocksucker has never and will never risk anything or want for anything, between Godfather Don McArgleBargle, and Hubby McSuderwallet!

God, I fucking, fucking, Fucking, INTERCOURSING HATE THESE PEOPLE!

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Even the headline makes me want to throw something. I’m staying in the boat.

 
 

No, she does not strike me as anything like a bonobo and to suggest otherwise is an insult and serious affront to bonobos everywhere.

 
 

How to Survive a Layoff

??

Steal a Hummer and sell it for parts?

Cat Burglary?

Tap daddy’s credit rating, again?

 
 

From McGurgle:

know, I know: job seeking is a full time job. Well, you wouldn’t be the first person to have two jobs. Even a part-time job does two things: it gives you a little bit of cash for current expenses, and it gives you something to focus on besides your unemployment. Depression is an extraordinarily common side effect of unemployment, and it worsens when you sit home and dwell on it all day.

My. That is so helpful.

Shorter: “Let them eat cake!”

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

know, I know: job seeking is a full time job. Well, you wouldn’t be the first person to have two jobs. Even a part-time job does two things: it gives you a little bit of cash for current expenses, and it gives you something to focus on besides your unemployment. Depression is an extraordinarily common side effect of unemployment, and it worsens when you sit home and dwell on it all day.

I may have to break out the c-word, kids.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

“I know, I know”

FUCK YOU BITCH YOU HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE.

 
 

Oh, by the way, I hate these people. What an ass this little girl is.

 
 

God, I fucking, fucking, Fucking, INTERCOURSING HATE THESE PEOPLE!

I’m not quite sure I understand how you feel. Could you emote more?*

*In all seriousness, totally get it…right there with ya.

 
 

I may have to break out the c-word, kids.

I’ll allow it. She’s horrid.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Now I am imagining how hilarious it would be to see her try and subsist on the average amount of unemployment people receive for just a month, and the hilarity of the idea is cheering me up a little.

 
 

I have already run afoul of the ‘over 50 and unemployed’ ‘sorry, we filled the position from an internal promotion’, ‘we’re looking for a more suitable (younger, stupider) person’, ‘with your qualifications/experience, you might not be a good fit here’, ‘the position pays a out half of what you’re worth, so…’ I’ll be Mr. Mom to the new little creature (Creaturette is 30 years younger than me and gainfully employed). This kid will be a real human- unlike Megan McMeathead. That;ll be my legacy.

 
 

People who give “job advice” without even mentioning entrepreneurship should be taken with a grain of salt. She just wants people to be cogs in a machine. Replaceable cogs.

 
 

I notice the behavior of the bonobos behind her. Each has turned his or her back to Megan, except for the one alpha male bonobo, who is eyeing her, saying “Not with a HUMAN’S dick, baby”

 
 

I know: job seeking is a full time job. Well, you wouldn’t be the first person to have two jobs. Even a part-time job does two things: it gives you a little bit of cash for current expenses, and it gives you something to focus on besides your unemployment. Depression is an extraordinarily common side effect of unemployment, and it worsens when you sit home and dwell on it all day.

See, the thing is mcmegan, the unemployment office tends to frown on someone collecting unemployment when, you know, working.
kthxbai

 
 

Even the headline makes me want to throw something. I’m staying in the boat.

She covered the article I posted at my blog yesterday.

Of course, mine was a bit more sympathetic. Nowhere, for example, does she mention how my generation was the first to have a future without a pension plan in place.

 
 

BTW, a teabagger cum “political cartoonist” attempted to engage me re: Bitter Brew.

His comment:

This was very well done! You definitely know your way around the elements of design. As far as the political perspective on this piece, I think the tea party movement is too loose a group to be accurately labeled. Even within that seemingly small element there are many divergent views. For instance: ultra conservatives that are pro-life and other ‘constitutionalists’ that believe such policies should be determined by the state and not the fed. You also have those that would be OK with government relationship with businesses and then those that believe in severing ALL relationships (whether beneficial to corporations or not) and allow an even playing field for private business. In my opinion, I don’t think that these recent vocal tea partiers, including those from the establishment that are riding it’s coat tails, are truly representative of libertarianism and true conservatism. Sorry for the rant lol.

My response:

It’s an interesting theory and one that the media likes to run with; I’ve just seen no evidence to support it.

Thanks for commenting.

Here’s his gallery, iffin you’re morbidly curious.

 
 

Well, you wouldn’t be the first person to have two jobs. Even a part-time job does two things: it gives you a little bit of cash for current expenses, and it gives you something to focus on besides your unemployment. Depression is an extraordinarily common side effect of unemployment, and it worsens when you sit home and dwell on it all day.

Yes, because part time jobs offer such niceties as….um….what? Stability? Oh yes, cash for current expenses. Yes, it does do that. And likely, you’ve taken an 80% paycut, which nearly makes welfare a viable option. AND it takes time out of your search for a full time job. AND it means higher commuting expenses. AND likely your salary might just cover your income taxes INCLUDING SocSec and Medicare.

But hey, there’s that spare nickle at the end of the week!

 
 

I’m going to make this recession work for me. I am going to start selling pitchforks and torches.

 
 

Should be obvious wrote:
“See, the thing is mcmegan, the unemployment office tends to frown on someone collecting unemployment when, you know, working.”

Glib response by glibertarian: that’s why we shouldn’t have unemployment insurance! Makes people lazy!

 
 

I’m going to make this recession work for me. I am going to start selling pitchforks and torches.

Now with 50% more WIN!

 
 

I’m going to make this recession work for me. I am going to start selling pitchforks and torches.

Oh, I’m getting in on the ground floor!

 
 

I have already run afoul of the ‘over 50 and unemployed’ ‘sorry, we filled the position from an internal promotion’, ‘we’re looking for a more suitable (younger, stupider) person’, ‘with your qualifications/experience, you might not be a good fit here’, ‘the position pays a out half of what you’re worth, so…’ I’ll be Mr. Mom to the new little creature (Creaturette is 30 years younger than me and gainfully employed). This kid will be a real human- unlike Megan McMeathead. That;ll be my legacy.

Yep. Right there with you creature. My spawn is my main contribution to the world, and so far, I think it is a good one (he’s almost 12).

I am scrambling around trying to find more work while I also look for a new place to live (I think I found one-YAY!)

Hang in there creature, you is not alone (I try and remind myself of this daily).

Oh. Someone drag out the Cliff-o-tine. There’s business for it.

 
 

Depression is an extraordinarily common side effect of unemployment, and it worsens when you sit home and dwell on it all day.

Yeah, because having NO MONEY TO PAY YOUR BILLS couldn’t possibly be a source of depression, nosiree.

Fuquers. I just spent a week in the hospital over stress from money problems. I don’t need or want Megan’s free-market-fapping sympathy.

 
 

I may start selling guillotines, if I can find a supplier.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

She covered the article I posted at my blog yesterday.

Of course, mine was a bit more sympathetic. Nowhere, for example, does she mention how my generation was the first to have a future without a pension plan in place.

That’s what I figured.

Well, you know, if you guys would just save your money (from your salary that hasn’t even been adjusted for the cost of living in three years–if you’re lucky) in between paying your mortgage, feeding your kids, paying for the outrageous expense of college (if they’re lucky), covering the increasing expense of healthcare, you would be able to live out your golden years in complete comfort!

 
 

Sorry to shout V-s, but christ, she’s inhuman. How do these people sleep?

(Turning on Jonathan Coulton and geeking out ’til blood pressure level re-enters reality.)

 
 

BTW – On the Debraining Machine today: Frank Gaffney finds a new RedGreen Menace for us to fret over and spend money “fighting”, and Lindsey “Dumb as a box of rocks” Graham stamps his lil’ foot and insists on regime change in Iran – by bombing and firing missiles from ships. Hey, it’ll work this time, fersure!

 
 

Sorry to shout V-s, but christ, she’s inhuman. How do these people sleep?

On expensive sheets, I’m guessing.

 
 

Well, you know, if you guys would just save your money (from your salary that hasn’t even been adjusted for the cost of living in three years–if you’re lucky) in between paying your mortgage, feeding your kids, paying for the outrageous expense of college (if they’re lucky), covering the increasing expense of healthcare, you would be able to live out your golden years in complete comfort!
With all that, how do you even have enough cash for heroin?

 
 

With all that, how do you even have enough cash for heroin?

Let them eat meth!

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

With all that, how do you even have enough cash for heroin?

Oh, that’s not counting possibly helping to support your adult children who can’t find gainful employment or who are a paycheck away from homelessness and have had some sort of emergency (THANKS, MOM!), or having to care for elderly parents….

 
 

Fixed:

A Great Depression is an extraordinarily common side effect of unemployment, and it worsens when you sit home and blame the poor all day.”

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

On expensive sheets, I’m guessing.

*sigh* I have to say, I do love nice sheets…

 
 

*sigh* I have to say, I do love nice sheets…

I do too, but not if they come with McArdle as an accessory.

 
 

I’m staying in the boat.

Say Hi to the little for me.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I do too, but not if they come with McArdle as an accessory.

Ew, no. I’d rather sleep on the floor. Covered with glass. And rat poop. And rats.

 
 

“little man,” goddamn it. Reading the shorter has fried my circuits.

 
 

Ew, no. I’d rather sleep on the floor. Covered with glass. And rat poop. And rats.

And rats covered in poop glass.

 
 

Y’know, this will lead to a firestorm, but I think Broken Clock Mcardle actually has not jumped the shark with this one. The problem is that the unemployed person in her story DID make some mistakes. And they ARE common mistakes – not saving enough of your salary, for instance. The LA Times had (I dropped my subscription when they hired the Pantload) a column on high-earning people who were busy reenacting The Grasshopper and The Ants. It was amazing how people fail to plan ahead, ratcheting up their spending to meet their incomes. This woman is not nearly that extreme, but obviously someone who needs to hit their 401K with penalties hasn’t got any emergency funds.

Of course McBlargle picked an example that fits her argument. How about some “help” for someone in bankruptcy from medical bills, for instance? Someone who didn’t take vacations after being laid off? Etc etc.

I shall now retire for the next 8 hours of gainful volunteer employment and pick up the thread at, say, comment 549.

 
 

The latest piece from the New York Times in the growing genre of “Older workers finding it hard to get new jobs after a layoff” has triggered the predictable musings about whether we should raise the Social Security retirement age

The first thing I think about when I think about older people having a hard time making money is how to keep more money from them.

 
 

I may start selling guillotines, if I can find a supplier.

You just made the baby Atrios cry.

 
 

SPP,

The argument I’d toss back at you is that this woman had worked for nearly twenty years at Boeing. The job market has changed drastically in that time. I don’t blame her for not being ready for that. I blame Boeing for laying her off, I blame the government for assisting companies from dismantling pensions (seriously! If she didn’t have a 401(k), she would have gotten a clue much earlier about not spending money), and while she deserves some blame for not getting into emergency mode earlier, she is clearly suffering quite a bit now, but HeartlessMcArdle doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass that the game was tilted against her from day one.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

And rats covered in poop glass.

I don’t know what that is, but it sounds gross.

 
 

Yeah, they already sold all their shit and have been trying to find jobs for 2+ years and there aren’t any, you stupid bint. Perhaps there’s an opening to replace an idiot who can’t write for shit, who’s answer to everything is “be just like me”.

She reminds me of the stoopit, privileged people in Empire of the Sun who refused to eat the bugs in their rice (for the protein). When the shit really hits the fan, people like her will meet their same fate.

 
 

I may start selling guillotines, if I can find a supplier.

You just made the baby Atrios cry.

Why? Did he lose a wholesale contract?

 
 

I agree with Stag Party. McArdle’s advice isn’t bad for the person she was discussing. That woman went on a vacation I will never be able to afford when she got laid off.

If she were discussing a factory worker who was laid off from a $15/hour job, it would be different.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I do, seriously, want to see people like her and Bobo Brooks try and live like normal people (not even necessarily laid off people!) for three months and see what happens. I’d want a tape of it, because it would be AWESOME.

 
 

She reminds me of the stoopit, privileged people in Empire of the Sun who refused to eat the bugs in their rice (for the protein). When the shit really hits the fan, people like her will meet their same fate.
If there is any justice in the universe someday Megan will be reduced to poverty so extreme she will have to resort to eating bugs.
There is no justice in the universe.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Nooo! Not my salt cellar! I can’t sell that!!!!

 
 

Why? Did he lose a wholesale contract?

No. He just gets the vapors from the word “guillotine.”

See, using the word “guillotine” is exactly the same thing as making a threat against a particular public official.

Even if it’s not used in the context of a threat, or any public official is named.

 
 

If there is any justice in the universe someday Megan will be reduced to poverty so extreme she will have to resort to eating bugs.

If there is any justice in the universe, someday Megan will be reduced to poverty so extreme she will be eaten by bugs while still alive.

Fiqqst.

 
 

No. He just gets the vapors from the word “guillotine.”

I guess I should abandon my plans to market a vodka-and-razor-blades mixed drink called the Guillotini.

 
 

Come on, poor folks, what’s the problem? Just put on your power suit, hop into your Lexus, and chat up some of the rich dads of friends you met at Dartmouth! It’s really not that hard.

Fuck you, Megan.

 
 

No. He just gets the vapors from the word “guillotine.”

I can attest to this. Jennifer knows what I’m talkin’ ’bout.

 
 

Mmmmm, razor blades.

 
 

I’d want a tape of it, because it would be AWESOME.

It’d make a great reality show, if you could find any Repug supid enough to actually live the way they reccommend.

 
 

“Home equity is also (usually) shielded in bankruptcy. ”

Megan needs to check what the “homestead exemption” for bankruptcy is. If the property is valuable and the equity substantial, most home equity is not shielded in bankruptcy.

 
 

Oh. My. Sweet. Limping. Christ.

Always trust the shorter, always.

I’m physically sickened by that whore. A lecture about savings and fiscal prudence from MEGAN FUCKING MCDRUNKARD MCARDLE?

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

 
 

Megan needs to check what the “homestead exemption” for bankruptcy is. If the property is valuable and the equity substantial, most home equity is not shielded in bankruptcy.

True. Last time I checked, it could be up to $250,000 in equity. Unless you live in Florida or Texas, which stupidly allow the entire homestead to be exempt.

Not sure what the law is in Washington state.

 
 

Ok, this issue has been pissing me off for a long time. This idea of keeping older people in the workforce is fucking STUPID. It creates a flooded labor market and drives down wages. Get those fuckers out of there by 59-1/2. If there was still such thing as a pension, this wouldn’t be such a problem. If they want to work, that’s fine. They shouldn’t have to. It’s bullshit, it hurts everyone (except for the scumbag businesses that take advantage of them) and it gives politicians an excuse to act like the chickenshit corporatists they have been since the New Deal.

77south: I’ll take 4 of each. If you have a guillotine, I’ll take one of those as well. And bullets. All of the bullets you can get your hands on.

 
 

This idea of keeping older people in the workforce is fucking STUPID. It creates a flooded labor market and drives down wages.

Huh?

Older people make more money. Not sure which way you’re making this case. Are you saying that *younger* people suffer lower wages? That one I might agree with.

 
 

SPP is right; the woman in the example DID make some mistakes – mistakes that I see people of my personal acquaintance make on a regular basis. That doesn’t mean she’s a leech or unworthy of compassion, just that she (and many others) don’t adapt quickly enough to the loss of a job. I lost my job (well, I quit) at the end of 2008 and in addition to immediately going full-time into a job search – for either full- or part- time employment, I stopped all non-essentials. The satellite dish was cut off until I found a job, I didn’t go shopping, I refinanced the house to get the payments lowered (which I had to do quickly before it became impossible to hide the fact that I wasn’t employed), I stayed home unless I had an interview to save on gas, I cut the heat to 68 daytime and 58 nighttime to hold down the bills, I went on a Campbell’s soup for lunch diet…lots of stuff. Most people would be amazed at how much less they can live on, because most people never really think about it and don’t know where to begin. I suppose having experience in living on $800 a month 15 years previously was actually a boon in that regard, as was the experience of having gone almost a year unemployed 5 years previously and having had the joy of cleaning up the $40K in debt that resulted – which is now ONLY $7K away from being completely wiped out.

None of that addresses the issue of long-term unemployment, but it certainly helps if you can stop digging the hole on the day of your last paycheck. I had the very good fortune of finding full time employment within 2 months (that job didn’t last either, but that’s another story) but after the nightmare of 2003, I’m completely sympathetic to anyone who’s not so fortunate.

 
 

OT, but I know there are a few Pratchett fans hereabouts that may find this interesting

 
 

McMegan is like a glibertarian Yoda.

Shorter Point 5, it’s better to be broke than starving or homeless… you can sort of imagine a stoned Randroid hearing that and being blown away by the insight.

 
 

vs – huh? Do tell – what is your Atrios/guillotine experience?

 
 

Once again with feeling!

“In some sense, the meanness is the message. On the right, there’s an almost lethal refusal to consider the problems of suffering of others. And it goes right back through time. Ronald Reagan has this line, in the famous speech in 1964 that launched his political career, in which he said, “They told us that 17 million people in America go to bed hungry every night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.” The problem of malnutrition in America was and is a serious problem. But to Reagan, from the beginning, it was all a big joke. And Bush remarked, “Well, I mean, everybody’s got access to health care in America. You just go to an emergency room.” It’s just this complete lack of empathy for people who aren’t as lucky as yourself.”
– Paul Krugman

And since the eighties, there’s barely anyone out there counteracting or taking to task the people who trumpet their lack of empathy (certainly not the churches, whose job this used to be). One plausible theory as to why is that the New Deal created a middle class nation where the average Joe was prosperous enough to say “I got mine and I don’t really give a fuck about those who don’t.”

 
 

Shorter Mark D:

Dear Megan:

You have no clue about how the real world works due to winning the ovarian lottery. So stop trying to write about it.

Sincerely,

Mark D

P.S. Rot in fucking hell, you stupid, out-of-touch, heartless, clueless, willfully ignorant, cuntfaced, spoiled-brat whore.

Okay … I admit it. That’s actually verbatim me.

 
 

One plausible theory as to why is that the New Deal created a middle class nation where the average Joe was prosperous enough to say “I got mine and I don’t really give a fuck about those who don’t.”

You mean the middle class that hasn’t seen a real raise in thirty years?

Karma’s a bitch, man.

 
 

“vs – huh? Do tell – what is your Atrios/guillotine experience?”

I made a joke about us “having all the guillotines”. He threatened to ban me. Or at least someone posing as Duncan Black here did. *shrug*

 
 

To add to the above: I can attest that skinflint frugalism is extremely helpful in starting a business. We borrowed $30K last January to get started and had to go back for another $25K at the end of August to cover going big time, and that’s not a lot of money to cover salaries, rent, and other expenses – we didn’t draw salaries from April – July to hold on to as much of it as we could for the push in the fall. But we look on target to be able to cover everything and pay back the loan in total by the end of the year. I kind of doubt we would have gotten the loan if we had gone in asking for $100 – $150K (and if my sainted mother hadn’t volunteered to co-sign), which is what others in our business usually have borrowed to finance startup, and the temptation would have been to continue paying ourselves during the slow period – and of course there’s no way we would have been able to pay it back this year. Having less money to work with certainly makes you a lot more careful with how you allocate it.

 
 

And they ARE common mistakes – not saving enough of your salary, for instance. The LA Times had (I dropped my subscription when they hired the Pantload) a column on high-earning people who were busy reenacting The Grasshopper and The Ants. It was amazing how people fail to plan ahead, ratcheting up their spending to meet their incomes. This woman is not nearly that extreme, but obviously someone who needs to hit their 401K with penalties hasn’t got any emergency funds.

I make less than The national average. After I pay inflated fuel prices for my 30mpg Corolla, and then the inflated prices as a result of energy being out of control since we regained our freedom from regulation, I have NOTHING left at the end of a pay period. I’m far from alone. I’m not irresponsible. I live in an apartment. I drive an efficient car that I own. I cook my own food (mostly). I don’t have a boat or an ATV or a snowmobile or 2 cars. I live within my means and I STILL don’t have much to save.

It’s easy to sit and lecture people to save their money when wages, in general, have fallen WAY behind the actual cost of living. I consider myself fortunate that I don’t suffer through financial meltdowns anymore, I’m pretty much stable, and I do contribute to a 401k, but that’s all in mutual funds. I can put money in there for 20 years and lose 1/2 of it in a day.

So no, I don’t want to hear about these so-called mistakes people make. For well over half of America, getting by is a struggle. To hear someone snidely advise them to save money they don’t fucking have gets my pitchfork hand all itchy. I’m sick of hearing it. Tell me how a janitor somewhere (perhaps incapable of doing much else) is supposed to save fucking money. My emergency fund is a $500 limit credit card. Not very helpful, but it carries me for a couple of weeks if I’m careful.

To summarize, they aren’t mistakes of choice for most people. They are a fact of life. I’m sure some people are just bad with money, I get that, but I’m not. I walk this fucking tightrope with no net every DAY.

–I don’t mean this to be slamming you SPP, I’m just tired of hearing “Americans don’t save” in one sentence, “wages have fallen behind” in another sentence, and nobody seeming to be able to make the fucking connection and do something about it.

 
 

Perhaps there’s an opening to replace an idiot who can’t write for shit, who’s answer to everything is “be just like me”.

The thing is, Megan’s the LAST person to be able to say “be like me” on financial issues: she graduated university with no noticeable self-improvement but almost $100k in debt, lost much of her imminent house down payment(i.e. short term savings) in the market downturn, when she eventually found a currently-tenanted rental property she apparently didn’t look into either real estate or landlord-tenant law at all and her mortgage commitment letter expires before the tenant is legally required to vacate, and Jesus, the woman couldn’t even use her damn calculator to get the right number for a column.

 
 

Karma’s a bitch, man.

Yeah. I don’t judge people by their class, but I find it hard to have sympathy for those (usually middle class) folks who live by “those lazy shiftless poor people should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps” and now, having been hit hard by the recession, are begging for sympathy for their particular predicament (while still damning the poor, of course, because they deserve it).

 
 

On the right, there’s an almost lethal refusal to consider the problems of suffering of others.

That’s what cured me of becoming a gLibertarian – watching “Roger And Me” and realizing that no, conservatives DON’T give a crap about anyone but themelves. Woke me up really fast.

 
 

I’m going to make this recession work for me. I am going to start selling pitchforks and torches.

And I’ll bring the rope…..

 
 

vs – oh, that was definitely someone posing as Duncan Black.

I wasn’t banned for using the word “guillotine” but because he was looking for an excuse to ban me for being insufficiently obsequious to him and his cool friends, which is why I never let an opportunity pass to make a joke about Atrios and guillotines. Because it was such a transparently douche move on his part.

 
 

I like the guillotine idea. Model guillotines with effigy dolls. Follow the Gillette model – basically give away the guillotines and sell the dolls at huge margins. I’m working on a business plan…

 
 

For well over half of America, getting by is a struggle.

This.

I’m an off-the-back-end-of-the-Boomer-era. I look around me at people I grew up with and realize that they actually have things worse than their parents did.

And they all went to college and got degrees and are facing another fifteen to twenty years of working just to keep from going hungry at age 70, while their parents were cops and firefighters or maybe worked a grey flannel job and could put away some money.

But we’re all taking care of those parents now…the dream we were promised was, once our kids were out of college, we could move on and live life. Eh. Not so much.

 
 

skinflint frugalism

I kept trying to figure out what “skinflute frugalism” could be. You people broke my brain!

 
 

tsam – I certainly wasn’t referring to people in your situation (hell, I’m one of them! I haven’t put anything into savings since 2002!) so I hope you took no offense from my comments. I actually wasn’t even focused in on what people save, but rather what they continue to spend when they have a downturn in income.

 
 

Now I feel stupid. Obviously wasn’t meta enough to get the joke at the time. Wow. And at the time I was really taken aback and stunned by the admonishment. So…good one, whoever fooled me.

But…to what you were saying…ugh. It’s always unfortunate to learn that some libs are almost as douchey as conservatives.

 
 

I’m going to make this recession work for me. I am going to start selling pitchforks and torches.

And I’ll bring the rope…..

I claim the tar and feathers concessions!

 
 

A different perspective on job creation: I would love to hire. My business has the room to expand if we had cash, which we don’t because (a) clients are paying their bills and (b) we can’t get a line of credit for temporary cash-flow relief because clients aren’t paying their bills. My partner and I have completely bootstrapped – no debt – but that apparently makes banks trust us less, not more.

With some cash in hand, I could probably create two jobs in the next month. As it is, we’re looking at next year.

 
 

I’m sure some people are just bad with money, I get that, but I’m not. I walk this fucking tightrope with no net every DAY.

Makes two of us. I don’t even have emergency funds.

 
 

I kept trying to figure out what “skinflute frugalism” could be.

A description of God’s generosity when parceling out genitals to rightwingers?

 
 

You know who else is going to be unemployed?

Ostrowski has held several positions with the Ohio Republican Party and was executive director of the Virginia Republican Party in the mid-2000s. Before his arrest, he was director of government affairs for the Associated Builders and Contractors of Ohio.
….

Court records show that Ostrowski had 500 images of child pornography.

 
 

I kept trying to figure out what “skinflute frugalism” could be.

A skimpy blowjob.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

tsam–So do I. And I consider myself “comfortable” when I compare myself to other people my age. My savings is currently depleted, but I should be able to build it up after next month or so. Until I have to start paying back my student loans. *That’s* what’s really crippling my generation…in order to get a $40,000 a year job, you have to graduate college $50,000 in debt…a lot of people are being CRUSHED.

My financial situation will be tight soon, and yes, it’s partly due to some decisions that I made. But it doesn’t change the fact that I haven’t gotten a raise in two years while the cost of healthcare keeps rising, and the fact that it will take me two years of starting-wage salary in my field to pay off my student loans. No matter how badly anybody fucks up, this shouldn’t be happening in the richest country in the world.

 
 

Fywp

Now I feel stupid. Obviously wasn’t meta enough to get the joke at the time. Wow. And at the time I was really taken aback and stunned by the admonishment. So…good one, whoever fooled me.

But…to what you were saying…ugh. It’s always unfortunate to learn that some libs are almost as douchey as conservatives.

 
 

Ostrowski has held several positions with the Ohio Republican Party and was executive director of the Virginia Republican Party in the mid-2000s.

And you know damn well he was “pure as the driven snow” in public, probably to the point of fretting about what consenting adults did together in private.

 
Marion in Savannah
 

I kept trying to figure out what “skinflute frugalism” could be. You people broke my brain!

Still stuck in yesterday’s thread???

 
 

Oh, I’m getting in on the ground floor!

I’m heading for the top floor. You know, for the defenestration.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I’m heading for the top floor. You know, for the defenestration.

That seems awfully bloodless for a zombie.

 
 

I wasn’t banned for using the word “guillotine” but because he was looking for an excuse to ban me for being insufficiently obsequious to him and his cool friends, which is why I never let an opportunity pass to make a joke about Atrios and guillotines. Because it was such a transparently douche move on his part.

You’ve been complaining about this here for years already. Get over it. Otherwise people are going to think your obsessive recounting of your banning gives some clue as to the real reason for it.

 
 

Shocking, shocking I say. A homophobic church minister abusing young men? It boggles the mind.

 
 

Excessively pendantic picky note (but maybe defensible as a fun fact) to actor212 from a primatology student’s old man: Actually, the notion of an alpha male bonobo is kind of meaningless, since bonobo groups are matriarchal.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

You’ve been complaining about this here for years already.

Years?

Shocking, shocking I say. A homophobic church minister abusing young men? It boggles the mind.

I KNOW!

 
 

Shocking, shocking I say. A homophobic church minister abusing young men? It boggles the mind.

Wha wha wha what?

Bu bu bu bu but he’s a Baptist? I thought it was only Catholics and other Not Real Christians who do this?

Ohhh… he’s black. Phew! I thought I was going to have to revise my theology for a moment there.

 
 

Years?

Yes.

 
 

Ohhh… he’s black. Phew! I thought I was going to have to revise my theology for a moment there.

And by “revise,” I mean “run to PJM and ask the wise men why I don’t need to, despite the disturbing facts now in evidence.”

 
 

Is it my imagination? Or does Megan look a lot like Mrs. Tweedy from Chicken Run?

 
 

Otherwise people are going to think your obsessive recounting of your banning gives some clue as to the real reason for it.

“People” can think what they like. Since I actually have a lifelong “obsessive” disgust with liars and lying, I probably won’t “get over it”. Whoever runs a blog certainly has the right to ban anyone they want for whatever reason they like…but to be a big pussy about it with a lame excuse about use of a word you’ve never had an issue with before instead of just saying the “real reason” for the ban…man, that’s some weak-ass tea. And I reserve the right to mock it endlessly, which, I believe, is kind of what Sadly, No! is all about – the endless mockery of douchebaggery.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Jennifer–Was it really years? I was under the impression that this happened recently. Not that I really think it matters. I think Baby Atrios is funny.

 
 

And I reserve the right to mock it endlessly

Okay, but it’s very boring.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

How to Survive a Layoff

Get born to a rich, politically connected daddy, parasites!

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Okay, but it’s very boring.

The thought of a little mini-Atrios doesn’t make you giggle? Just a little?

 
 

See Nick Overlook said,

September 22, 2010 at 18:27 (kill)

Excessively pendantic picky note […]

‘Pedantic’ has only one ‘n’.

 
 

The thought of a little mini-Atrios doesn’t make you giggle? Just a little?

Oh, making fun of him is absolutely fine. But the guillotine complaint over and over again is dull dull dull.

 
 

CENSURE! CENSURE!

Blackstone Group CEO Steven Schwarzman seemed to compare the Obama administration to Hitler by saying in a recent private meeting that Washington’s push to increase taxes on private-equity firms is war, “like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939,” according to Newsweek.

Yep, exactly like that.

*snerk*

 
 

Blackstone Group CEO Steven Schwarzman seemed to compare the Obama administration to Hitler by saying in a recent private meeting that Washington’s push to increase taxes on private-equity firms is war, “like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939,” according to Newsweek.

You know who ELSE was like Hitler invading Poland in 1939?

Uhhh…

 
 

Substance – Maybe it’s just one of those things where you just had to be there.

 
 

You know who ELSE was like Hitler invading Poland in 1939?

STALIN!!! argle bargle blurp blurp *rustling of papers*

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

CENSURE! CENSURE!

Motherfuckers should feel lucky that the American populace is too brainwashed and/or distracted to hang them from fucking lampposts.

STFU, whiners.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

‘Pedantic’ has only one ‘n’.

He meant to type “peendantic”.

 
 

Makes two of us. I don’t even have emergency funds.

Make it three. I am feeling a bit fortunate right now. I have just secured a new place to live (my GF and I have split and I can’t afford the existing rental by myself). I have my hands on a part-time job that has real promise as a full-time gig offering a living wage. I think I can still find other PT work to balance things out in the meantime.

But I am 54. I burned up my savings. I struggle at times to make ends meet. I am trying to adopt a mindset that incorporates the idea that we are living through a slow-rolling economic depression that requires me to accept realities I can’t affect but allows me to believe I can find a path to survival and even a modest flourishing. To me, that’s the hardest part, not blaming myself for things beyond my control while maintaining the faith I can improve my lot through hard work, acuity and perseverance.

Personally, I feel a bit of a change toward the positive. But damn, there have been a lot of sleepless nights and high levels of baseline tension.

Out! Out damn stomach knot!

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

He meant to type “peendantic”.

Is that where you’re pedantic about the details of your peen?

 
 

It’d make a great reality show, if you could find any Repug supid enough to actually live the way they reccommend.

As I recall (and I welcome correction or amplification) a young Tory MP in the early 1980s let himself be filmed trying to live for a week on British welfare payments; he failed. He remained a Tory but mutated into a relatively pleasant human being, as I recall. Then he stopped being an MP, turned to journalism and came out as gay, perhaps not in that order. A heart-warming tale of self-discovery. Matthew Parris, I think his name was and probably still is.

 
 

Testing.

Shit! I didn’t study for this…

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Shit! I didn’t study for this…

Just turn your head and cough.

 
 

Gov. ‘Sex Machine” Sanford wants to allow the jamming of cell phone freqencies in prisons.

The comments on the story are wingnut comedy gold, icluding the one that refers to prison these days as “just a barely unpleasant dorm waiting room”.

 
 

WTH? Another post eaten?

 
 

Of course, as far as cell phone jamming goes, they’d be also jamming EMS/police frequencies, but hey! What’s a few incovenienced first responders compared to election year toughness? Particularly in a prison environment!

 
 

OK. Jennifer, I’ve tried about 10 times to answer your question, even switching browsers. But for some reason WP isn’t letting me. It’s weird, because it’s letting me post other stuff. But as soon as I address your post, it gets eated. If I were a paranoid person…

 
 

Washington’s push to increase taxes on private-equity firms is war, “like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939”

Taxing unearned income at regular income tax rates instead of capital gains rates would also be like when Attila the Hun fed the Jews to the lions.

 
 

Anyway, yeah:

Didn’t get the joke.
Ha. Funny.
Libs can be douchebags too.

Lets see if WP eats this too.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

BTW, can I just say that getting a job at Starbucks would probably be a welcome option for a lot of these people? At least they have health insurance.

 
 

Just turn your head and cough.

“Try and relax, this won’t hurt but it might feel uncomfortable for a minute.”

 
 

Just turn your head and cough.

“Try and relax, this won’t hurt but it might feel uncomfortable for a minute.”

I’ll still respect your health-insurance carrier in the morning.

 
 

Yeah, okay, pedantic, not pendantic. Sorry.

 
 

Yep. Right there with you creature. My spawn is my main contribution to the world, and so far, I think it is a good one (he’s almost 12).

Hell yes. Because, dammit, intelligent people have to reproduce too! My daughter is almost 16, straight-A student, competently discusses political philosophy with people three times her age, and Stephen Colbert is her favorite TV star.

We must breed more anti-McMegans!

 
 

“Excessively pendantic” => “well-hung”

 
 

vs – well I’m glad it entertained you and T & U at least. I’m sure it will come up again.

 
Marion in Savannah
 

I’ll still respect your health-insurance carrier in the morning.

You’ll be the only one…

 
 

I may start selling guillotines, if I can find a supplier.

By Jove, that’s it! I’ll starting making guillotines!

Gotta run. Opportunity calls!

 
 

Actually, the notion of an alpha male bonobo is kind of meaningless, since bonobo groups are matriarchal.

De Waal points out that male bonobos still engage in display and combat behaviors to mate with females. I stand by my comment.

 
 

So let me just say this–had O’Donnell really ‘dabbled’ in Witchcraft, she might have learned that the Craft, as we call it, or Wicca as some prefer, is a remnant of the pre-Christian indigenous traditions of Europe and the Middle East. Witches do not worship Satan–we consider the Devil to be a purely Christian construct.

Bingo.

Not that I’m validating belief in witchcraft, but I learned long ago that there isn’t a more foolproof way to be misinformed than to ask a devout believer about another religion.

 
 

Sorry for the bitchy rant, everyone.

I guess the point is that I’m fed the fuck up with the Rick Santelli’s of the world. People like that have destroyed this country. It’s not coming back. We cannot get those jobs back. You know, the ones where people actually MAKE something. Those jobs, those companies are long gone. This new green economy thing is a fucking joke. Now the American worker is relegated to competing with two billion Asian workers for the same jobs. The morbid beauty of capitalism is that the winner of that fight will always be the person who works for less. This whole thing is a massive change in our entire economic model, and all we can get is “howcome you dummies can’t put money in savings or just get a better job like your parents did?” Because our parents had pensions. Our parents got health insurance at rates that didn’t strangle a family budget. Our parents worked jobs (generalizing) that were treated as careers even if they were turning a wrench on cars or fighting fires. That shit is ALL GONE. I’m looking at my three teenage daughters, knowing full well that this can only really get worse for them. I can almost bet they can go to college and still make about what I make with a college education.

There are no thinkers in politics or punditry. Statesmanship is an entirely lost art. All they are doing is pretending this shit isn’t happening and blaming the victims. It really amounts to the same blindness and short sighted greed that got us here, and it is showing no sign of even slowing down. No new ideas. The idea of the government actually intervening and trying to fix any of these problems has become obscene to the average American. I don’t know where we’re going from here, but I sure don’t see how in the fuck anything is going to get better.

 
 

… In order to get a $40,000$25,000 a year job, you have to graduate college $50,000 in debt…a lot of people are being CRUSHED.

**raises hand**

I was blessed beyond all blessings to have a granddad with just enough money to send my sister and I to college (even though she took 12 years to get through it). So I only had $5K in debt for my last year (which I insisted on paying for — it was my 5th, so no reason for the folks to pay).

The Mrs? Not so much.

And since she works in the non-profit sector, she didn’t make all that much for most of the past decade (she thankfully found a job in July paying pretty damn well for a non-prof). So we’ve spent the past six years deferring her loans to the point where what was a $300/month bill is now nearly $500/month.

Fact: We’ll pay off our mortgage (on a $150K house) before her student loans.

And that is just plain fucked up.

But that’s also what the rich and those in power want: A bunch of little proles who are drowning in debt, incapable of doing much more than working in some dreary, dead-end job just to get by, all while thinking they are doing great because they got to watch Dancing With the Stars and read People magazine at their 15-minute lunch break.

Sadly, it’s going to take something big* to change that … and not a good kind, either.

(* Veiled enormous cock reference.)

 
 

I’m heading for the top floor. You know, for the defenestration.

That seems awfully bloodless for a zombie.

It is, however, the easiest way to crack open a skull.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

I never knew the Washington Post hired witches.

Better a feature article from a witch than a guest column by a Newt.

 
 

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/09/21/birther-vs-goproud/#comments
‘Birther King’ Joe Farah Debates Gay Conservative Group; Questions Conservatism Of Coburn, Thune

A self hating fool debates a crazy person.

 
 

Excessively pendantic picky note […]

‘Pedantic’ has only one ‘n’.

Well, in fairness, he was talking about lady bonobos, whose breasts would qualify as pendantic.

 
 

You like how I apologize for the bitchy rant and immediately follow it with another? I should be in politics.

 
 

As I recall (and I welcome correction or amplification) a young Tory MP in the early 1980s let himself be filmed trying to live for a week on British welfare payments; he failed.

Wasn’t there a Congressman who tried to live only on food stamps for thirty days and couldn’t even make it a week?

 
 

That seems awfully bloodless for a zombie.

I likes the splatter when they hit. Plus, if you aim right, you can hit a Republican walking by.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

And since she works in the non-profit sector, she didn’t make all that much for most of the past decade (she thankfully found a job in July paying pretty damn well for a non-prof). So we’ve spent the past six years deferring her loans to the point where what was a $300/month bill is now nearly $500/month.

There is a program for people who work in public service–if they work in public service for a decade and make all their student loan payments on time, the remainder of their loans is waived.

That’s nice, but, you know, not of much help in the present.

 
 

Our parents worked jobs (generalizing) that were treated as careers even if they were turning a wrench on cars or fighting fires.

DKW’s mom still has steady work.

 
 

You know what? It fucking kills me to say this but ME-gan’s right in that that woman should have had saved more. I mean, yes – that addled idjit has no place lecturing others about being fiscally prudent or exercising foresight or common sense. Yes, for the vast majority of folks (which is the context of her article) – “save more” is a pretty useless piece of advice. That said, the woman in question was making $80K a year and had no transferable or marketable skills. At 57. She had a little more than two years income in her retirement savings. At 57. She blew through her entire retirement savings in four years without changing her lifestyle or spending habits after taking an $80K loss on it. At 57. I guess she was expecting to find another job which would have given her a $180K signing bonus or something.

To clarify, I don’t think the woman should be forced to eat catfood or whatnot, it’s just that – wow.

 
 

Better a feature article from a witch than a guest column by a Newt.

If only he’d get better…

 
 

I was cheap as hell and a big saver before I got laid off last year and I’m working part-time from home, which helps, however when my COBRA expires and the deferrment on my credit card bill (uncovered medical and emergency vet expenses, natch) expires, I’d better be working a lot more. Hey, guess what? Starbucks doesn’t want a over-50 IT specialist serving fraps to the public. I might run into the 25-year-old they gave my job to, and that would be awkward.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Plus, if you aim right, you can hit a Republican walking by.

Efficiency!

 
 

Wasn’t there a Congressman who tried to live only on food stamps for thirty days and couldn’t even make it a week?

I recall the TSA confiscated his peanut butter, which made it all the more difficult.

And our parents, in addition to pensions and careers, had unions. Strong unions.

 
 

Sorry for the bitchy rant, everyone.

Dude — no apologies necessary.

And THANK YOU for so clearly stating what I also feel about the current state of our nation.

I still have yet to figure out why millions of our fellow citizens think the solution to our current mess is to give more money and less regulation to the fuckers who created the mess. Hell, they’re even going to put the GOP back in charge of at least one chamber of Congress, despite the fact the GOP is the reason our nation is going into the shitter.

It’s like handing over your insurance check to the guy who set your house on fire.

Part of me thinks we deserve whatever we get for being so collectively and clinically refuckingtarded.

But then I look at my son and wonder, “So what the hell happens to him?”

Sadly, we’re probably the first generation who has no answer to that question …

 
 

That said, the woman in question was making $80K a year and had no transferable or marketable skills. At 57.

Yea. And?

Here’s the thing: she worked at Boeing for nearly twenty years. At Boeing.

She had a good job. At Boeing.

She, like so many others, weathered the worst of Boeing’s downsizing over the past twenty years, like when the airline industry almost collapsed twice. At Boeing.

She expected to work there until retirement. At Boeing.

She expected to work past retirement, I’m sure. At Boeing.

She sure as hell didn’t expect to get laid off four years ago. From Boeing.

Why? Probably because oil prices spiked to $150 a barrel when some asshat speculator figured after Katrina and after China and India started ramping up their economies that oil wasn’t coming back down in price, so airlines got hammered (again).

Did she make mistakes? Yes.

Should she be expected to pay for those mistakes, mistakes all of us have made and will make again with literally her life?

You tell me.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Here’s where I have the advantage over you guys 15-20 years older: I grew up *knowing* that the opportunities available to my parents would not be available to me.

What I didn’t know is that my parents would eventually be just as fucked as I am.

 
 

And our parents, in addition to pensions and careers, had unions. Strong unions.

This.

 
 

What I didn’t know is that my parents would eventually be just as fucked as I am.

And when you get to be my age, you’ll be taking care of them!

 
 

But then I look at my son and wonder, “So what the hell happens to him?”

No offense, but he’ll have a job. In the Army during the occupation of Iran. Which of course will be nothing like Iraq or Vietnam.

*sigh*

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

I still have yet to figure out why millions of our fellow citizens think the solution to our current mess is to give more money and less regulation to the fuckers who created the mess

It’s a heady combination of “get rich quick” optimism and largely-racist contempt of people poorer than them who might get some assistance from liberal social policies. It’s a weird amalgam of “keeping up with the Joneses” and “keeping down the coloreds”. Funny, their ships just never seem to come in.

A toxic combination, to be sure.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

No offense, but he’ll have a job. In the Army during the occupation of Iran. Which of course will be nothing like Iraq or Vietnam.

Sort of like my wingnut cousin who joined the military because his daughter was sick and he couldn’t find a good job, much less one with health insurance?

But it’s all the liberals’ fault. Really. I guess Republicans gave him a job, at least.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

And when you get to be my age, you’ll be taking care of them!

Yay! And my little brother, too!

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

But then I look at my son and wonder, “So what the hell happens to him?”

This is one reason I haven’t had kids. Well, this and global warming.

 
 

Funny, their ships just never seem to come in.

Here’s the analogy to that: No, their big luxury liners never come in, but if they only were willing to settle for that tugboat in the harbor that dutifully arrives every night, that’s not as luxurious but is reliable and safe, they might actually have a better life.

 
 

And when you get to be my age, you’ll be taking care of them!

well, some of us wish we could be that fortunate.

 
 

This is one reason I haven’t had kids. Well, this and global warming.

Get to work, sister! Some of us need stem cells for our skin cancers!

 
 

tsam said,
September 22, 2010 at 19:27

The infuriating thing about that whole rant is that you know it’s completely avoidable. Even now, as bad as things are, all it would take would be a government with the balls for liberal reform and a population that backed it.

This isn’t some invincible, impersonal “tide of history” shit; it’s entirely avoidable, and worse, we know exactly how to avoid it. We’re committing national suicide when we could easily hop back on the road to prosperity.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Holy shit, speaking of Blackwater.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

This is one reason I haven’t had kids. Well, this and global warming.

Thus begins the ever-quickening tread to Idiocracy.

 
 

Patricia Reid and her husband live in a three thousand square foot home overlooking Puget Sound. They have no mortgage – so maybe her meagre savings weren’t totally inadequate. Regardless, they certainly won’t be eating catfood.

Anyways, how many interview-free years did she go before deciding to try upgrading her job skills? How the hell do you get away with being an auditor without being able to use QuickBooks? SRSLY?

I suppose it is a major step up from the usual Grey Lady tripe about how a quarter million a year is barely enough to survive on in New York – but fuck. Out. Of. Touch.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

This isn’t some invincible, impersonal “tide of history” shit; it’s entirely avoidable, and worse, we know exactly how to avoid it. We’re committing national suicide when we could easily hop back on the road to prosperity.

I know. It’s fucking frustrating. People are stupid.

 
 

@ DKW;

I know, some people really are stupid. If I made 80k/year (more than double what I make now), I would have some savings. At 57, I would be looking for my exit from the workforce and do my part for my country by not competing with people who are raising families for jobs. But then the oligarchs set it up so that exiting at 59-1/2 doesn’t work for many people.

This is crux of whineyassed bitch. Choices at the base level are nearly gone for workers. We just do what our masters tell us to do and like it now, or we just go without jobs and food and housing and medical care.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Holy shit, speaking of Blackwater.

Yet another region to forage.

 
 

How the hell do you get away with being an auditor without being able to use QuickBooks? SRSLY?

Two words: Proprietary. Software.

A lot of large corporations set up an AS-400 then have some programmer come in and program a SQL database. Her auditing experience (and her accounting experience) was probably limited to technology audits of the existing program.

In my case, I came from a Peachtree environment and had to install and teach myself QB. It wasn’t as hard as coming off that kind of environment, but there’s a learning curve. Plus, now she can at least list it on her resume.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Thus begins the ever-quickening tread to Idiocracy.

Dude, I don’t see you breeding. You can take my allotment.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Yet another region to forage.

*thinking about buying a .22*

 
 

If I made 80k/year (more than double what I make now), I would have some savings.

She did. It’s called a “house,” something Megan apparently can’t afford.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Seriously, y’all. A handful of corporations have complete control over a large portion of the world’s food.

 
 

Cripes.

Black wrote that Wilson ‘understands that we can span collection from internet, to reach out, to boots on the ground on legit basis protecting the Monsanto [brand] name…. Ahead of the curve info and insight/heads up is what he is looking for.’

“Black added that Total Intelligence ‘would develop into acting as intel arm of Monsanto.’ Black also noted that Monsanto was concerned about animal rights activists and that they discussed how Blackwater ‘could have our person(s) actually join [activist] group(s) legally’….

Keep an eye on this. We’ll be seeing more of it.

 
 

But then I look at my son and wonder, “So what the hell happens to him?”

Yep. I am starting to talk to him about things like the economy and so on. He is getting a political/social voice based on some of these conversations.

He is surrounded in school with kids in families that seem very over-extended by means of their consumer-centric lifestyles. We talk about it. And he seems happy in our less-than-pristine home as long as there are hangout sessions and games of catch.

The best I can give him is emotional intelligence and an acute ability to see things as they are.

I’m trying, and we’ll see, won’t we?

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Dude, I don’t see you breeding.

Rats, I thought my sex tape went viral!

*thinking about buying a .22*

The squirrels in the Heartland are a lot plumper that the scrawny little d00ds we have here in the Northeast.

 
 

How the hell do you get away with being an auditor without being able to use QuickBooks? SRSLY?

She was at Boeing, right? I’d be very surprised if they used QB.

 
 

A lot of large corporations set up an AS-400 then have some programmer come in and program a SQL database. Her auditing experience (and her accounting experience) was probably limited to technology audits of the existing program.
if you substitute “medium sized company” for “large company” you have described my workplace with an uncanny level of accuracy. Luckily I am one of the programmers and my SQL experience wont be obsolete anytime soon even if my AS400 experience will be.

 
 

Rats, I thought my sex tape went viral!

Well, there was a virus involved…

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Keep an eye on this. We’ll be seeing more of it.

It’s horrible. There have already been several American farmers who have been sued because Monsanto crops accidentally crossbred with their crops. This includes farmers who deliberately avoided using Monsanto. But if you’re surrounded by it, it’s difficult to maintain the integrity of your crops. Obviously, the point is to force people to use Monsanto’s seeds. Oh, and their pesticides, of course, since the seeds are genetically engineered to be “Roundup ready.”

I have to say that I didn’t envision a small mercenary army to “protect” the brand, but it’s not a surprise.

 
 

The squirrels in the Heartland are a lot plumper that the scrawny little d00ds we have here in the Northeast.

Don’t say that too loudly, or Ringwood, NJ will become a ghost town

 
 

Grrrrrr…I hate when a website decides a three year old story can be taken down….

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Well, there was a virus involved…

Damnit, I told you to wear a condom!

 
 

Poe’s law violation!
http://www.triggerthevote.org/landing/

Chucky says about the ad:
http://townhall.com/columnists/ChuckNorris/2010/09/21/trigger_the_vote!/page/full/
Now, a few people have scratched their heads at the humor in the spot. I’m noticing that those people are generally older and already registered to vote, which underscores the fact that this ad is not targeted at them. The ad is targeted at the members of the younger generation who aren’t registered to vote. I call this generation the millennials, and the humor in the spot is right up their alley. If you want them to hear your message, you have to speak their language.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

The squirrels in the Heartland are a lot plumper that the scrawny little d00ds we have here in the Northeast.

I didn’t realize that. I saw a squirrel on campus not too long ago that was the size of a small cat.

Campus is a good place for squirrels.

 
 

I may have to break out the c-word, kids.

No. She lacks the depth, the charm, and the warmth.

 
 

Obviously, the point is to force people to use Monsanto’s seeds.

You neglected to mention that Monsanto seeds commit suicide.

Seriously. When the crops grow, they’re neutered.

 
 

Damnit, I told you to wear a condom!

As Megan McAradle would say, you have no one to blame but yourself.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

You neglected to mention that Monsanto seeds commit suicide.

Seriously. When the crops grow, they’re neutered.

Yes, I did. There ain’t gonna be no heirloom Monsanto corn.

The fact that they like to target poor farmers in non-industrialized areas makes it even sicker.

 
 

The thing is, I don’t really give a flying fuck what Megan McArdle thinks about anything, because the base line of every argument she makes is that the meritocrats and rich deserve it all, while the rest of us are lazy, stupid, and unworthy parasites.

The great lie of modern libertarians and right-wing republicans is that there is no class war…ummm, except that they are fighting one with every fiber of their being at the behest of their wealthy patrons. McArdle may not hail from the hoity-toity world, but she certainly loves championing its cause.

Please tell how this haughty and laughably irrational shit for brains and two-bit hack got this sweet gig atThe Atlantic? HOW? HOW? HOW?

 
 

Oh, ClownHall.com.

No need to look to know it’s pshitt.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

The ad is targeted at the members of the younger generation who aren’t registered to vote. I call this generation the millennials, and the humor in the spot is right up their alley. If you want them to hear your message, you have to speak their language.

You also have to have a spokesman who isn’t a fucking joke.

When was the last time Chuck Norris had a popular TV show or movie? Would the millennials (so called) even recognize him as anything other than an internet meme?

 
 

I didn’t see that the article said she had no savings, just that she cashed out her 401k. She’s been out of work for 4 yrs, and most experts only advise 6-12 months worth of expenses in emergency saving. At this point she might have had 2 years worth of expenses in savings and STILL had to cash out.

 
 

The great lie of modern libertarians and right-wing republicans is that there is no class war…ummm, except that they are fighting one with every fiber of their being at the behest of their wealthy patrons.

They’ll argue for the primacy of privledge, but that’s not a class war ’cause shut up that’s why.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

“I call this generation the millennials”

Oh, wow, how ever did he come up with that name?!

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Please tell how this haughty and laughably irrational shit for brains and two-bit hack got this sweet gig atThe Atlantic? HOW? HOW? HOW

The haughtiness and irrationality are a feature, not a bug.

 
 

You tell me.

Okay, I will. Lady had it easy and was riding the gravy train – now she gets to learn to live like a regular Joe. That they owned their home outright means they weren’t necessarily living beyond their means – but now they need to get used to what their new “means” are.

She’s cut the shopping sprees at Nordstrom’s and isn’t vacationing to Turkey and Thailand any more. Well d’uh.

I understand about getting comfortable in your position and expecting your job to be there for you forever. It’s a great and comforting delusion. But really? Twenty years doing a job that by the end of it she was manifestly unqualified for? An auditor with no familiarity with basic accounting software?

I’m not saying she should be thrown to the wolves or anything – I suppose my harsh perspective comes from the fact that we actually have a safety net up here in Sojalism-a-Canuckistan. The “boy is she lucky” severance package she got is pretty close to the legal minimum guaranteed in Ontario – and her health care package would be even cheaper than what she’s paying down there. It’s just kinda hard to feel sorry for her – especially reading through the other stories in this very thread.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

When was the last time Chuck Norris had a popular TV show or movie? Would the millennials (so called) even recognize him as anything other than an internet meme?

They *might* recognize him from the clips Conan used to show when he was at NBC.

Which was HILARIOUS!

But that might be too old for the younger ones, too.

 
 

Please tell how this haughty and laughably irrational shit for brains and two-bit hack got this sweet gig atThe Atlantic?

Step 1) Find a banana and peel it

Step 2) Find an editor at The Atlantic (a formerly reputable magazine)

Step 3) Peel the banana during the interview while making very vague innuendo about what you’ll bring to the job

Step 4) Grab the back of your head and ram your throat down on the banana

Step 5) PROFIT!

 
 

I’d be very surprised if they used QB.

I would too. But come on – I can use QuickBooks even though my accounting background is zero.

I mean, what the hell was she doing for twenty years?

 
 

Are you snobs actually discounting the fine work Chuck did for Total Gym?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I mean, what the hell was she doing for twenty years?

Especially the 15 before Farmville!

 
 

She’s already been taking classes, the article doesn’t say for how long, and she’s already holed up in a garret in her house in permanent job hunt mode. Is there ANYTHING McArdle suggested that she knows this woman hadn’t already done? Besides cutting expenses immediately, but c’mon, it’s 1)4 years too late for that “helpful” advice, 2) nobody thinks they’re going to be out of work for 4 years, and 3) the person advising frugality here is MEGAN FUCKING MCARDLE, who can’t even look at domestic salt and who’s never met a useless hunk of kitchen plastic she didn’t want.

 
 

I understand about getting comfortable in your position and expecting your job to be there for you forever. It’s a great and comforting delusion. But really? Twenty years doing a job that by the end of it she was manifestly unqualified for? An auditor with no familiarity with basic accounting software?

Oh, so you’re suggesting that because BOEING failed to provide adequate training, she should starve? You’re suggesting that my generation, which saw our parents work the same jobs for forty years, should somehow have sensed the changes in the air and made adjustments, despite the fact that every generation in history lives the life they grew up with?

You’re basically asking her to be omniscient, DKW.

And yes, she stopped taking vacations in Turkey. She took those vacations, and I’m sure she regrets them now, thinking that the job market today was the same as the one she left twenty years ago.

You’re basically asking her to be omniscient.

I’m sure you’ll make the case she should have known. You say that after better minds than yours and mine got us in a land war in Asia for nine years.

If we see that the best and brightest fuck up, why are you holding her up to an impossible standard?

 
 

At this point she might have had 2 years worth of expenses in savings and STILL had to cash out.

Yeah – you’re right on that. Plus they own their home. I was wrong to say that she should have saved more because she clearly did have a healthy cushion to burn through.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Are you snobs actually discounting the fine work Chuck did for Total Gym?

No, but I’m sure the “millennials” are.

never met a useless hunk of kitchen plastic she didn’t want.

Yeah, “kitchen” heh heh…

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

You say that after better minds than yours and mine got us in a land war in Asia for nine years.

Uh, those were not better minds than mine.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

This is depressing me.

 
 

Keep in mind that her husband had what appears to be a fairly profitable business, so the pressure on her to find a job was much lower. Until the bank run forced his revenue down. Too, the article says she’s taking QB now. It doesn’t say that she didn’t know how to use it, she could just as easily been looking for something to formally put on her resume. Plus, it’s accounting, not auditing, software and she was an auditor.

What you suggest, DKW, would be akin to asking a bookeeper to run the audit module on QB. Why would anyone claim they could do that if they hadn’t been exposed?

 
 

Uh, those were not better minds than mine.

Yea, but you’re not DKW

 
 

I was wrong to say that she should have saved more because she clearly did have a healthy cushion to burn through.

The rule of thumb is to put away six months in expenses.

Um, she’s been out of work for four years.

 
 

Why would anyone claim they could do that if they hadn’t been exposed?

hehehehehehe, he said “exposed”

 
 

But come on – I can use QuickBooks even though my accounting background is zero.

QuickBooks sucks and often does things in counterintuitive or just plain fucked up ways, and I’m not sure someone who’s been an internal auditor for a huge multinational corp for 20 yrs can just pick up what pretty much a small business/consumer program and brute force the level of competence required to get a job relying on using QB in short order. At any rate, according to the article she’s been teaching herself QB since she left as well as taking classes online and locally at the HR Block, so again she’s already doing what Megan so helpfully advised.

 
 

If we see that the best and brightest fuck up, why are you holding her up to an impossible standard?

Impossible standard? That she stop -oh maybe once a decade – and think a bit about her career? Maybe give a bit of thought as to what she might do if she wasn’t working at Boeing?

You know, if I was working for an airplane manufacturer – those years immediately after 9-11 – good time to think about my personal skill set.

Sure your generation has a lot less job security than your parents did – but don’t pretend to think that you have a convincing argument at all. You may be getting twenty years less than the forty your Dad got, but those following you are getting twenty less than that.

 
 

The rule of thumb is to put away six months in expenses.

Which sure as hell ain’t happening if you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck.

Six months of living expenses? Ha! Ho! Ha! It is to laugh.

 
 

This is depressing me.

Keep in mind that we’re talking about ten percent of the workforce. For what it’s worth, for the level of employment out there in terms of salary and satisfaction, there’s still some ninety percent of us working.

That’s how I keep myself from going ballistic.

 
 

Impossible standard? That she stop -oh maybe once a decade – and think a bit about her career? Maybe give a bit of thought as to what she might do if she wasn’t working at Boeing?

So when was the last time you did that?

Lemme think about the last time I did that….hm, I seem to do it every day. And yet, you know, bills to pay, a subway to catch, Sadly, No! to torment…or will you now criticize all of us who post here?…a guy’s gotta have priorities and among the last of those at any one time is assuming the worst is going to happen.

 
 

You may be getting twenty years less than the forty your Dad got, but those following you are getting twenty less than that.

So if you’re suggesting that Reid’s story will be rewritten again in twenty years, only about someone who is 37…what should WE do about it?

 
 

never met a useless hunk of kitchen plastic she didn’t want.

Quit talking about me when I’m not here. Seriously, who dis? ‘Cuz, ya know what? Me too. Guilty as charged. If there’s a kitchen or electronic gadget I don’t wanna get my grubby little mitts on, it’s probably a used dildo.

 
 

a guy’s gotta have priorities and among the last of those at any one time is assuming the worst is going to happen.

You go crazy trying to think that way.

This I know.

 
 

Which sure as hell ain’t happening if you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck.

Yea, but here’s the thing: she had put that away!

It was in her house. And her 401(k). And yes, she burned thru it and probably shouldn’t have. She made a mistake but it sounds to me like she’s paid for that 1300 times (days) over.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Keep in mind that we’re talking about ten percent of the workforce. For what it’s worth, for the level of employment out there in terms of salary and satisfaction, there’s still some ninety percent of us working.

For now.

 
 

Cripes again.

Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson may have known years ago about the deadly risks of its birth control patch Ortho Evra, according to internal documents obtained by NBC News.

Patient reports between 2002 and 2004 show that Ortho Evra was 12 times more likely to cause strokes and 18 times more likely to cause blood clots than the conventional birth control pill, NBC News’ TODAY show revealed Wednesday.

[SNIP]

NBC’s investigation also found a lawsuit by another Johnson & Johnson vice president, Dr. Joel Lippman, who is suing the company for unlawful termination after he says he blew the whistle on the patch’s dangerously high levels of estrogen, even before it came to market.

The company, he says, “disregarded his concerns and launched the product anyway.”

“The company knew about much of it, if not all of it,” said Dr. Wolfe. “They thought correctly that it wouldn’t sell as well if you told people how dangerous it was.”

Wheeee! And CEOs wonder why we hate them.

 
 

Even now, as bad as things are, all it would take would be a government with the balls for liberal reform and a population that backed it.

That’s what is so monumentally fucked up, Chris: THE POPULATION DOES BACK LIBERAL POLICIES!!!!!! In overwhelming numbers in some cases.

Just look at almost any poll on almost any issue — from economic policy, to social safety nets, to infrastructure, on and on — and a majority of the American public supports the liberal position.

Yet we’re told over and over and over again by our media that we’rea “center-right nation.”

Which is why I’m truly starting to think this is exactly what those with the money (and, thus, the power) actually want: 50 million Americans living in poverty, 20% unemployment, and continual and drastic cuts in education in order to keep the population stupid and uninformed.

Unless someone can come up with another explanation, I have a hard time seeing how this isn’t all by design. And I’m not anywhere close to a conspiracy nut—I believe LHO shot JFK, men landed on the moon, Bush Co. was too incompetent to pull off 9/11.

So … it’s just … I dunno.

Oh, and thanks, Pere, for cheering me up. I appreciate that. 😉

Though The Boy ain’t gonna be no Army puke — he’ll be a Marine.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

It was in her house. And her 401(k). And yes, she burned thru it and probably shouldn’t have. She made a mistake but it sounds to me like she’s paid for that 1300 times (days) over.

Well, and here’s the thing. Again.

It doesn’t matter to me that she fucked up. Every person, no matter how much they fuck up, deserves to have some basic standard of living in the RICHEST FUCKING COUNTRY IN THE WORLD. It’s fucking indecent.

 
 

Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson may have known years ago about the deadly risks of its birth control patch Ortho Evra, according to internal documents obtained by NBC News.

Remember when J&J was one of the good guys?

 
 

Though The Boy ain’t gonna be no Army puke — he’ll be a Marine.

So he’ll be taking his helmet off to pee.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Which is why I’m truly starting to think this is exactly what those with the money (and, thus, the power) actually want: 50 million Americans living in poverty, 20% unemployment, and continual and drastic cuts in education in order to keep the population stupid and uninformed.

Unless someone can come up with another explanation, I have a hard time seeing how this isn’t all by design.

I agree. I will be more than happy to discuss alternate explanations, however.

 
 

Just look at almost any poll on almost any issue — from economic policy, to social safety nets, to infrastructure, on and on — and a majority of the American public supports the liberal position.

Yet we’re told over and over and over again by our media that we’rea “center-right nation.”

Whenever I hear the “center-right” argument, I go to the nearest wall and bash my head against it.

 
 

So when was the last time you did that?

Yesterday actually. A co-worker is leaving to go to a better paying job. But that’s an anomaly. Time before that would have been this spring when part of my annual review involved seriously changing my duties and responsibilities. Before that would have been at the beginning of the year, after finally getting my professional designation.

I’m not trying to criticize people here – who really are trying to get by on what they can. It’s just that this woman – a. doesn’t have it so bad and b. apparently did shit fuck all to deal with it for years.

 
 

Cuz, ya know what? Me too. Guilty as charged.

Yeah, but you don’t post breathlessly about your acquisitive desires and then harshly judge some unemployed lady for not being frugal enough 4 years ago when she was first first laid off.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Remember not to use the $15 an ounce salt for your pasta water!

 
 

It’s just that this woman – a. doesn’t have it so bad and b. apparently did shit fuck all to deal with it for years.

Let me say this as plainly as I can: no one expects to be out of work for four years.

Hell, the longest I was out of work was two years, and I even did what McArdle suggested. I prepared taxes. I worked retail. I sold men’s gloves in Macy’s at Christmas time. I worked odd jobs and labored during the summer cleaning yards.

Every day I woke up, made four phone calls to my contacts, looked thru every want ad I could find. I ran thru my unemployment, worked temp jobs.

And still racked up $20,000 in debt. I didn’t take any vacations. I paid my bills. Did my laundry. I had to eat and I had to take care of my family as best as I could.

To this day, despite having a good paying job and a fairly ascetic lifestyle, I’m still paying those bills off…well, not those bills but the bills I accumulated while I was paying those off…

If I lost my job tomorrow, the thing that would anger me most is that there would be a significant percentage of people like you and McCardle who would blame me for not being better prepared.

Here, the Times found someone who was at once diligent, sympathetic, and human, and the McArdles of the world believe her to be some welfare queen.

 
 

If I made 80k/year (more than double what I make now), I would have some savings.
She did. It’s called a “house,” something Megan apparently can’t afford.

That’s the equivalent of putting your “savings” into the stock market and hoping you can liquidate if the shit hits the fan. Most of the time, the shit hits the fan for just about everyone, so liquidating a house isn’t exactly an easy thing to do. We used to call this being “house poor”

I’m not saying she’s entirely stupid. This was the “American way” since Reagan. I’m just approaching violent in my disgust with being told that my inability to get ahead a little bit is my own fault. I’m also fed up with people trying to compare our current situation with a pre-1983 economic model. Those days are GONE. Until we do something about it, they’ll just keep slipping further and further away.

 
 

Yeah, but you don’t post breathlessly about your acquisitive desires and then harshly judge some unemployed lady for not being frugal enough 4 years ago when she was first first laid off.

Y’know, McArdle accepts comments… 🙂

 
 

It doesn’t matter to me that she fucked up. Every person, no matter how much they fuck up, deserves to have some basic standard of living in the RICHEST FUCKING COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.

I totally agree – and I suspect that being a spoilt brat in the cradle of socialism my idea of “basic standard of living” is higher than yours. But worrying about how to cover a seven thousand dollar property tax bill isn’t part of it. I understand that her husband built the thing with his own hands, but that’s something I’d categorize as a luxury item that is beyond “basic standard of living” safety net standards.

 
 

If I lost my job tomorrow, the thing that would anger me most is that there would be a significant percentage of people like you and McCardle who would blame me for not being better prepared

A FUCKING MEN dude. Amen.

 
 

A FUCKING TAG FAIL dude. A tag fail.

 
 

I’m just approaching violent in my disgust with being told that my inability to get ahead a little bit is my own fault.

The dirty secret about income is you never get more than a little ahead (as opposed to the dirty secret about DKW’s mom, where you never get more than a little head).

Your income doubles, and suddenly so do your expenses. You live up to your income and you’re right: the pre-1983 model of putting away a little each paycheck went by the boards. Now we’re encouraged to Spend! Spend! Spend! for the good of the nation.

You’re practically a commie if you don’t own more than one computer in this day and age, and god help you if you don’t have cable or a satellite dish! Which is another facet of this story that really boils me dander up. This woman did precisely what the smiling faces on her TeeVee told her too, and now it’s like, “You fucked up! You trusted us!”

 
 

Yeah, but you don’t post breathlessly about your acquisitive desires and then harshly judge some unemployed lady for not being frugal enough 4 years ago when she was first first laid off.

Oh, I agree. I took the quote out of context…’twas trying to be funny. This thread is depressing me.

 
 

One more thing to consider–$87k/year in the Seattle metro area is not that much money. Far from what can afford one an opulent lifestyle.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Here’s the thing about vacations, too…um, since when is vacation a luxury, at least for the middle class? I would argue that, for a lot of people, it’s a fucking necessity. But we treat it like it’s extravagant bullshit.

 
 

But worrying about how to cover a seven thousand dollar property tax bill isn’t part of it. I understand that her husband built the thing with his own hands, but that’s something I’d categorize as a luxury item that is beyond “basic standard of living” safety net standards.

Washington State property taxes are unusually high because a) they are assessed on the full market value of the property, and b) there’s no state income tax.

 
 

Just look at almost any poll on almost any issue — from economic policy, to social safety nets, to infrastructure, on and on — and a majority of the American public supports the liberal position.

Which is why people spend pshittloads of money finding the perfect way to lie to the public about it.

 
 

as opposed to the dirty secret about DKW’s mom, where you never get more than a little head
if you only get a little head from DKW’s mom
ur doing it wrong.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

if you only get a little head from DKW’s mom
ur doing it wrong.

Or you need to man up and pay the extra quarter.

 
 

The dirty secret about income is you never get more than a little ahead (as opposed to the dirty secret about DKW’s mom, where you never get more than a little head).
Your income doubles, and suddenly so do your expenses. You live up to your income and you’re right: the pre-1983 model of putting away a little each paycheck went by the boards. Now we’re encouraged to Spend! Spend! Spend! for the good of the nation.
You’re practically a commie if you don’t own more than one computer in this day and age, and god help you if you don’t have cable or a satellite dish! Which is another facet of this story that really boils me dander up. This woman did precisely what the smiling faces on her TeeVee told her too, and now it’s like, “You fucked up! You trusted us!”

Totally agreed. Now they’re saying “You fucked up by trusting us, but trust us now and everything will be fine.” I have this mental picture of millions of heads with empty, unfocused eyes, nodding in unision, saying “Yes, master.”

On a side note, that “Spend!” command is missing the “..or we’re dead fucking meat” part that should have been there. It started with tax cuts for rich assholes. Then came the bafflingly easy revolving credit. Then came the “Well fuck, let’s just put that debt on our mortgages”. To mitigate that damage (millions of people upside down on their mortgages), they decided to give a mortgage to anyone who wants one. Throughout all of this, jobs are disappearing by the thousands every day. If, when Enron fell out of orbit, people didn’t figure out that we are dead meat, they’re just complete fools.

 
 

Here’s the thing about vacations, too…um, since when is vacation a luxury, at least for the middle class?

Well, yea, but Turkey? Actually, as European vacations go, that’s pretty cheap.

 
 

as opposed to the dirty secret about DKW’s mom, where you never get more than a little head
if you only get a little head from DKW’s mom
ur doing it wrong.

She said something about making her gag. And muttering something about not expecting a footlong.

 
 

If I lost my job tomorrow, the thing that would anger me most is that there would be a significant percentage of people like you and McCardle who would blame me for not being better prepared.

Um, no. If you instead went a couple years without changing your spending habits – pretending that you still had the same income as before. If you waited years before accepting the possibility that you may need some training. Well, it would be a shame if you had to sell your house – what’s the property tax rate for Puget Sound? Something like a percent? Your seven hundred thousand dollar house that you can’t keep up the maintenance on anyways.

You know, there are loads of people who can’t even comprehend Patricia Reid’s lifestyle – because it’s too opulent. And they live in the RICHEST FUCKING COUNTRY IN THE WORLD. And, yeah there have been many many years where the American Middle Class has been taking it up teh poopchute with no lube. But I just can’t seem to work up alot of sympathy for folks who are “reasonably well-off” being forced to go all the way down to “slightly higher than the median”.

 
 

Just look at almost any poll on almost any issue — from economic policy, to social safety nets, to infrastructure, on and on — and a majority of the American public supports the liberal position.

Depends how you phrase it – poll numbers are extraordinarily sensitive to that kind of thing. (Hell, on DADT, the numbers change by over ten percent if you switch the word “gay” for “homosexual.”)

Which is why I’m truly starting to think this is exactly what those with the money (and, thus, the power) actually want: 50 million Americans living in poverty, 20% unemployment, and continual and drastic cuts in education in order to keep the population stupid and uninformed.

There’s a theory – I think Marx came up with it – about capitalists keeping employment high so that they’d have a ready supply of cannon fodder should they ever need it. If their own workers get too uppity, they can fire them and be secure in the knowledge that there are people out there who’ll work for peanuts. And of course, with illegal immigration, there’s a whole ‘nother dimension to it.

Just one of the many inherent imbalances in the employer/employee relations. And yet the right prefers to imagine that there’s no such imbalance.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

And muttering something about not expecting a footlong.

Yesterday it was 11 inches!

 
 

And, yeah there have been many many years where the American Middle Class has been taking it up teh poopchute with no lube. But I just can’t seem to work up alot of sympathy for folks who are “reasonably well-off” being forced to go all the way down to “slightly higher than the median”.

She went from a family income of over $100,000 to about $20,000. I think you’re being a bit harsh here.

 
 

Yesterday it was 11 inches!

Can I help it if she can’t measure?

 
 

Washington State property taxes are unusually high because a) they are assessed on the full market value of the property, and b) there’s no state income tax

Correct, although there is one mitigating factor. This state had a rash of incompetent assessors, nearly statewide, that did not assess at market value or even any reality based value. When budgets started to tighten up (after we passed a $30 car tab ballot initiative, slamming state revenues), they figured out that the only way to reduce the budget crisis was to actually tax property like it was supposed to be taxed. This left people with high end homes skating on the taxes for their BMW’s, but getting crushed on their property taxes. Of course this coincided with the sudden popularity of the McMansion, and guess what happened to all of those house poor people? WHAM.

 
 

She said something about making her gag.
If you’d shower once in a while…

 
 

If I made 80k/year (more than double what I make now), I would have some savings.
She did. It’s called a “house,” something Megan apparently can’t afford.

Again, the article DOESN’T SAY she had no savings, or that her house and 401k were all her savings, or anything like that.

Y’know, McArdle accepts comments… 🙂

Why would I want to talk to her? I don’t like or respect her, and I don’t think anything would ever change her mind or even cause her to question herself. I figure my time is better served making masturbation jokes here. Or just masturbating.

 
 

There’s a theory – I think Marx came up with it – about capitalists keeping employment high so that they’d have a ready supply of cannon fodder should they ever need it. If their own workers get too uppity, they can fire them and be secure in the knowledge that there are people out there who’ll work for peanuts. And of course, with illegal immigration, there’s a whole ‘nother dimension to it.

This is the real reason for all of the hand wringing and outright lies about Social Security. Like I said before, keep the elderly working, flood the labor market. Keep unemployment high enough that people will nearly murder each other for a job, find idiots like myself who will do the job of 3 people, and always remind people that there’s another faceless robot waiting to take their jobs from them.

 
 

She said something about making her gag.
If you’d shower once in a while…

I’m shocked that line dangled for that long before someone hit it.

 
 

Or just masturbating.

I! W? N?

 
 

I would argue that, for a lot of people, it’s a fucking necessity. But we treat it like it’s extravagant bullshit.

Even after you’ve been laid off? I mean yeah – there’s all this stress you’re dealing with, but is intercontinental travel a fucking necessity at that point?

I think it would be great if everyone was well prepared in case they lost their jobs – but I recognize that for a lot of people, that’s just not possible. That there are lots of people who are working poor. That there are folks saddled with enormous fixed monthly expenditures. That everybody’s particular circumstances are different.

For Patricia Reid, being prepared was definitely a possibility, and now that it’s been pointed out to me – she was in fact well prepared financially. She just refused to accept that she wasn’t going to find a job doing what she was doing before. Well, society doesn’t owe her a job. It does owe her enough security to maintain human dignity and even some level of comfort, but what are we supposed to do here? Give her $80K a year despite the fact that no one’s willing to hire her after four years of looking?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Even after you’ve been laid off? I mean yeah – there’s all this stress you’re dealing with, but is intercontinental travel a fucking necessity at that point?

I was talking more generally.

 
 

There’s a theory – I think Marx came up with it – about capitalists keeping employment high so that they’d have a ready supply of cannon fodder should they ever need it.

Reserve Army of Labor. High unemployment, not employment, keeps wages at the socially-defined minimum level of subsistence. Think the theory is technically Engels, not Marx. Might even have been Ricardo.

Now, I will give advice as one of the very few Marxist accountants out there: 1) who the hell still uses Peachtree? and 2) discussions about the merits of QuickBooks make even my eyes glaze over.

 
 

Re the American people and whether they support liberal policies,

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/28267.html

I link to this because the liberal elitist and Brad’s rebuttal both make valid points IMO.

One year ago, 59 percent of the American public liked the stimulus plan, according to Gallup. A few months later, with the economy still deeply mired in recession, a majority of the same size said Obama was spending too much money on it. There’s nothing wrong with changing your mind, of course, but opinion polls over the last year reflect something altogether more troubling: a country that simultaneously demands and rejects action on unemployment, deficits, health care, climate change, and a whole host of other major problems. Sixty percent of Americans want stricter regulations of financial institutions. But nearly the same proportion says we’re suffering from too much regulation on business. That kind of illogic—or, if you prefer, susceptibility to rhetorical manipulation—is what locks the status quo in place.

And on the other side,

So, OK, the typical American voter won’t ever win awards for deep understanding of policy issues. But I also don’t think Americans are particularly ideological in the sense that most of them either read the Nation or the National Review. Rather, they vote based on a key metric that I like to call the “Is This Guy’s Shit Working for Me?” quotient. […] The American people may not be policy wonks, but they know when they’re getting the shaft.

Americans aren’t liberal or conservative – they vote for what works (see Al Gore, 2000, popular vote). But I’m not convinced they have any idea what or who brings about policies that work. Look how much of the popular vote conservatives can count on even in the worst of times.

 
 

Well, society doesn’t owe her a job. It does owe her enough security to maintain human dignity and even some level of comfort, but what are we supposed to do here?

Well, at least you’re accepting that there wasn’t a whole lot she could have done to prevent a bad situation from getting worse. That’s a good thing.

What are we supposed to do? Nothing, probably, but would you agree that Reid and the tens of millions like her point out a deep flaw in our society?

 
 

Tsam’s right about the organized descent into anarchy – thanks also to malaclypse for identifying the theory and the source.

 
 

The article doesn’t say she didn’t change her spending habits for “a couple years” or that she waited years before she started getting training.

 
 

1) who the hell still uses Peachtree?

In fairness, I was fired from the job while Bush was President.

The father, I mean.

 
 

Well, society doesn’t owe her a job.

As a good leftist I gotta disagree there. I don’t care how stupid you are, a right to work should exist.

 
 

In fairness, I was fired from the job while Bush was President.

Somehow I read it as though you still used it. As Christine O’Donnell has wisely said, we all did crazy things back in the Eighties.

 
 

As an unemployed American, I would like to say something to Megan McBlargle:

“Fuck you.”

In all seriousness, who the fuck does this moron think she is? McBlargle has the easiest job on the planet, besides maybe a drug dealer.

Some excerpts that I found humorous:

Losing your job is an enormous psychological blow.

Kind of like reading your posts.

Another mistake that people make quite frequently is to go travel or do some volunteer work they’ve always dreamed of before they settle down to serious job hunting. This is a big mistake…

Sure, the worst thing you could do when you lose your job is to volunteer to help others… Wait, what?

Get a job doing something–heck, anything

Or ask Daddy for one. If he is hesitant, because your past work is pretty shitty, just stamp your feet with your fingers in your ears while yelling “LALALALALA!” It’ll work just like it always has.

 
 

And it doesn’t go into any detail about the travel. It might have been already partially paid for and nonrefundable. Of course it may not, the point is we don’t know enough to be condemnatory.

 
 

Think the theory is technically Engels, not Marx.

Marx. In Das Kapital.

 
 

What are we supposed to do? Nothing, probably, but would you agree that Reid and the tens of millions like her point out a deep flaw in our society?

Reid doesn’t. She’s getting by. Yes her retirement dreams have come crashing down, but it’s not like she was one of those Enron employees who had their retirements bound up in company stock.

Anyways, IMO, the deep flaw in society has a lot less to do with fifty-somethings who can’t keep well-paying careers and more to do with how many twenty-somethings can’t even get McJobs let alone start on careers.

 
 

As Christine O’Donnell has wisely said
the next wise thing that nutjob says will be the first.

 
 

the point is we don’t know enough to be condemnatory.

Oh but MEGAN does! *rolling eyes*

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

What are we supposed to do? Nothing, probably, but would you agree that Reid and the tens of millions like her point out a deep flaw in our society?

And that’s ultimately the thing, DKW. Yeah, maybe she didn’t spend her money wisely. Yeah, she had more money than the average person. Yeah, her circumstances aren’t terrible. But she’s someone who is middle class, who was taught that she should be able to expect stability and comfort, especially in her later years.

The fact that someone who had as much money as she did is almost more distressing. If middle class people who have lived in a fair degree of comfort are experiencing these troubles, what about the rest of us farther down the ladder?

 
 

Reid doesn’t. She’s getting by.

You did read the article, right?

 
 

Yes she made some mistakes but you know what the real problem with Patricia Reid is? She’s fat and ugly and the NYT chose to write a story about her because they wanted to make everyone hate the unemployed because of course everybody hates fat and ugly people:

Yesterday, the NYTimes posted an article on the unemployed who are 55 or older. They feature a picture of the subject of the article. Patricia Reid, to put it kindly, is overweight, with a double chin and is no longer a young blooming rose. Not only that but it looks like she’s taking a nap at her computer terminal. Then, there are the details of her demise: when she was first unemployed, she didn’t curb her spending, she took extravagant vacations to Turkey, she employed the use of a chiropractor, she tapped into her 401K and spent most of it, she’s got significant credit card debt and a 3000 sq ft house.

The portrait of this person is highly unflattering. She’s unattractive, foolish and lazy or so we are lead to believe. You come away from this article thinking that Ms. Reid deserved it.

No, asshole, you came away with that impression.

 
 

Marx. In Das Kapital.

Knew I should have googled and not gone by memory.

McBlargle has the easiest job on the planet, besides maybe a drug dealer.

Speaking of mistakes made in the Eighties – trust me, McMegan does a lot less work than a drug dealer, even one who worked back in Reagan’s America where drugs were cheap and plentiful.

 
 

I don’t care how stupid you are, a right to work should exist.

Man, I thought I was an optimist.

How would a right to work – well work? The closest thing I can think of is having a guaranteed “similar position” waiting for you when you get back from parental leave.

 
 

But she’s someone who is middle class, who was taught that she should be able to expect stability and comfort, especially in her later years.

And that her house would be the best investment she could ever make. That was true since after World War II and likely was true before in her neck of the woods.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Another mistake that people make quite frequently is to go travel or do some volunteer work they’ve always dreamed of before they settle down to serious job hunting. This is a big mistake…

Sure, the worst thing you could do when you lose your job is to volunteer to help others… Wait, what?

Okay, I didn’t get out of the boat, so I didn’t see this.

This (pardon me, Trig) is FUCKING RETARDED. Volunteering, especially in a field you might be able to work in, is an awesome thing to do to find a job. You can network. You can gain new skills. You have something to put on your resume during an unemployment gap.

And it’s not like you can’t volunteer and look for a job at the same time. There are only so many jobs out there to find.

 
 

McMegan does a lot less work than a drug dealer

And no one’s going to shoot her.

Guillotine her, perhaps.

 
 

Volunteering, especially in a field you might be able to work in, is an awesome thing to do to find a job.

It gets worse, T&U.

She volunteered to take care of a dying man.

Her priest.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

And that her house would be the best investment she could ever make. That was true since after World War II and likely was true before in her neck of the woods.

Oh, exactly. AND that anyone who wants to achieve the “American Dream” needs to own a home.

Seriously, y’all were sold a bill of goods. At least Gen Xers were warned that we would be fucked over.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

It gets worse, T&U.

She volunteered to take care of a dying man.

Her priest.

I missed that part somehow.

WHAT AN IDIOT! What kind of networking opportunities would you get from a dead priest? Dumbass.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Yes she made some mistakes but you know what the real problem with Patricia Reid is? She’s fat and ugly and the NYT chose to write a story about her because they wanted to make everyone hate the unemployed because of course everybody hates fat and ugly people:

Holy fuck.

 
 

Seriously, y’all were sold a bill of goods. At least Gen Xers were warned that we would be fucked over.

Did you know that American home ownership was somewhere close to 70% in 2006? That only Turkey (there’s that country again!) had a higher rate of home ownership?

Our percentage is still north of 65%, IIRC

 
 

You did read the article, right?

Yeah, I did. She even says that at the end of the thing herself. Her and her husband have at least half a million in real estate – a property that they can’t manage the upkeep on anyways. She’s adjusting to the new labour market, if way late.

You know, I would be esctatic if Social Security meant being guaranteed a three thousand square foot house with a killer view.

Even after four years of 100% spending and 12.5% income, her net worth is still higher than the US median – although maybe not true even if you control for age, but probably not off by all that much.

 
 

Yes she made some mistakes but you know what the real problem with Patricia Reid is? She’s fat and ugly and the NYT chose to write a story about her because they wanted to make everyone hate the unemployed because of course everybody hates fat and ugly people:

Yes, I’m aware of the old meme about how poor people are fat and therefore rich and evil. Course, they’re fat because the only food available for their prices is McDonald’s type shit, which isn’t the best thing in the world for your digestive system.

 
 

You come away from this article thinking that Ms. Reid deserved it.

Funny, I came away sympathizing with her.

But I’m just a DFH….

 
 

The most important thing to do if you loose your job because of reprisal is to target the people highest up the ladder for an empathy lesson.
Like this.

But make sure to remember all the little people. Record. dates and events,too Document everything in a calender, microcassette recorders can be handy.

 
 

Looks like you libs are gonna have an even tougher election than anyone may have imagined. Well, more like a bloody massacre. It looks like Barney Frank’s district has just become competitive. He currently only has a 9% lead over his Republican opponent Sean Bielat, 48% to 39%. Now, this is one of the most Democratic districts in the Nation. If Barney Frank can become unseated (which he may rather enjoy) then any seat currently held by a Democrat is up for grabs.

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/09/22/poll-surprise-of-the-day-barney-frank-in-trouble/ (which Barney Frank would also enjoy).

Face the facts libs, your days in power are numbered.

 
 

Her and her husband have at least half a million in real estate – a property that they can’t manage the upkeep on anyways.

No, she has a house worth a half million dollar less now than it’s been assessed at.

Her unemployment has also just run out. It was $500 a week. Maybe you missed that on both run-throughs.

 
 

How would a right to work – well work?

Well, with luck, better than in countries in which it has previously existed. But hey, I’m just a wild-eyed loon.

 
 

The portrait of this person is highly unflattering. She’s unattractive, foolish and lazy or so we are lead to believe. You come away from this article thinking that Ms. Reid deserved it.

Actually, she’s not who I come away thinking deserves a horrible fate.

 
 

He currently only has a 9% lead over his Republican opponent Sean Bielat, 48% to 39%.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

This is too funny Steve! *Only* a nine percent lead?

*ONLY*? Seriously? Only nine percent is the best you can come up with, five weeks ahead of the election?

 
 

Oy, Stoive!

Bookmark it as many times as you want: either Pelosi will cancel the vote, or it will go down in flames, live on C-SPAN.

And then ObambiCare will be finally, mercifully dead. Much like Rasputin it has taken a long time and a lot of effort to finally kill, but we’re 99% there. Just takes nine votes to block it, liberals: nine votes.

Ringt dass ein bell, mein alter Junge?

 
 

Considering he normally has at least a 30% lead in this solidly Democratic district I would say this is quite an improvement. You liberals are just in a period of denial knowing that you are about to lose control of at the very least the House of Representitives.

Just sit back and take a deep breath. You’ll feel alot better.

 
 

Course, they’re fat because the only food available for their prices is McDonald’s type shit, which isn’t the best thing in the world for your digestive system.

Limbaugh says that poor people are fat because of food stamps, which is the kind of thing only someone who has never been on or known someone on assitance could possibly claim.

 
 

Face the facts libs, your days in power are numbered.

To what end? So you right-wing morons can fuck up the country even more?

Have at it, douchebag.

 
 

Her and her husband have at least half a million in real estate – a property that they can’t manage the upkeep on anyways.

They probably couldn’t sell it for that, and they might not be able to sell it at all, so what difference does it make what it’s worth on paper?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Who the fuck is On Message?

 
 

Considering he normally has at least a 30% lead in this solidly Democratic district I would say this is quite an improvement.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! So because he’s only kicking a Teabaggers ass one third as hard, you count that as some kind of win!

Got it.

 
 

Limbaugh says that poor people are fat because of food stamps

Or maybe all the viagra and Oxycontin makes them fat.

 
 

Current premises must sadly be vacated by me. Go on feeding the troll, folks; if you can keep them out until dawn, they turn into stone.

 
 

If Barney Frank can become unseated (which he may rather enjoy)

yuck yuck yuck, ’cause homos, right? Even though it makes no sense.

Just plain yuck there, Stevorrino.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Oh, it’s a fucking Republican firm.

Bring me a real fucking poll, homeboy, and then we can talk.

 
 

But hey, I’m just a wild-eyed loon.

Commie. Okay – society owes her a job.

No, she has a house worth a half million dollar less now than it’s been assessed at.

Anyway, I looked it up. Let’s say her 3,000 sq ft house with the killer view has devalued to a third of it’s assessed amount – call it a quarter million. Let’s say that her and her husband now have no other assets. They have no mortgage, and she is only just starting to get late notices on her credit cards. So their household net worth is something on the order of that quarter million dollar house.

I’m sorry, still very little sympathy.

 
 

Who the fuck is On Message?

Internal polling.

Apparently, they only call Republicans.

 
 

That only Turkey (there’s that country again!) had a higher rate of home ownership?

They got the biggest an smallest, too!

 
 

I’m running out of bookmarks.

 
 

I’m sorry, still very little sympathy.

Nobody’s claiming that her plight is the worst. Evah.

But DKW, these are the people we weren’t supposed to have to worry about in drawing up national policy: hard-working Americans with good jobs and good homes and a retirement fund. We were supposed to be focusing on, yes, the black women with a net worth of $5.

But look, now we have to. That black woman with $5 to her name ought to be worried.

 
 

Oh, and Steve? If you’re going to crow about internal numbers, check this out (same article):

“What this is – read between the lines – this is a fundraising memo. This is the NRCC telling its people that with some money, he could do OK,” said Frank spokesman Harry Gural. “According to our numbers we are up by more than 20 points no matter what we do.

 
 

I’m running out of bookmarks.

I started using paperclips.

 
 

You liberals are just in a period of denial knowing that you are about to lose control of at the very least the House of Representitives. [sic]

Projection and the like. Seriously, Steve, do you realize what Republicans did for 8 years? Where you under a rock until *GASP* the uppity Negro came to power. Your conservative friends put us where we are.

Sure, take the House of Representatives back, and while you wait glance at a dictionary.

 
 

I started using paperclips.

You can get paperclips on Wrodpress?

Every time I try that my computer shorts out when I put them in the A: drive.

 
 

SoCal Sad-asses may wish to make their reservations now.

I have, but it’s a joke.

Also note Sunday’s action in B.H.

BE THERE OR BE SQUARE!

 
 

The House has always been the realm of true wingnuts, anyway.Back when The Progressive did their annual 10 Stupidest People In Congress, the House of Reps usually had the lion’s share of candidates.

 
 

But DKW, these are the people we weren’t supposed to have to worry about in drawing up national policy: hard-working Americans with good jobs and good homes and a retirement fund. We were supposed to be focusing on, yes, the black women with a net worth of $5.

So, our protagonist is 57. Let’s assume they have two children. Those kids are in their 20s, probably with a boatload of student loan debt and marginal jobs. Those kids are starting to realize that the parents may move in with them, rather than the other way around.

Now throw in a medical problem. I’d guess that one uninsured heart attack can eat up that housing equity. I’m sure a cancer scare would do it.

We have a society where even those at the bottom of the 90th percentile are not safely middle class. If this woman, and her husband, and their kids, are not safe, the none of us are either.

 
 

Face the facts libs, America is a traditional conservative country and we don’t tolerate socialism. We are a deeply traditional God-fearing people and will fight tooth and nail to prevent radical social change.

You have been warned.

 
 

You liberals are just in a period of denial knowing that you are about to lose control of at the very least the House of Representitives.

Liberals? Who me? WTF ?

 
 

How to Survive a Layoff

Why would a journal commission a poor person to write an article about saving money, competing for work, and the minutiae of an austere life-style? What the feck would they know?

 
 

Face the facts libs, America is a traditional conservative country and we don’t tolerate socialism.

Except when it comes to posting on blogs from work, eh, Steve-o?

 
 

Also: ACTOR212 your blog has an infected widget.

Details.

 
 

You can get paperclips on Wrodpress?

Not easily. And, um, be prepared to invest in a few monitors.

 
 

But look, now we have to.

Why? I dunno if you read the whole article I linked, but “hard-working Americans” is the descriptor that best fits those $5 women.

I’m sorry, the lack of availability of $80K jobs and their impact on business administration graduates does not move me much. It’s not that I can’t empathize – I picked up my mortgage a year and a half ago and hope to be mortgage free sometime in my fifties – just like Ms. Reid. I’m on a career track in roughly the same range as hers – I’m just twenty years younger. So it’s not like I’m cursing her for being some privileged aristocrat or whatnot – I just don’t think that her situation represents some sort of societal failing.

 
 

Also: ACTOR212 your blog has an infected widget.

It’s not an infected widget. That’s actually a feature. The widget itself is shite. It will load the link, alright, but it posts an ad at the top that you have to click to get rid of.

 
 

But DKW, these are the people we weren’t supposed to have to worry about in drawing up national policy: hard-working Americans with good jobs and good homes and a retirement fund. We were supposed to be focusing on, yes, the black women with a net worth of $5.

LIES! They are very much focusing on the poor and blacks and women … they are building more prisons and creating more security systems so those people don’t harm the guys with homes and jobs and retirements.

Look, they’ve lost the war on poverty. It was not nearly as much fun as making scads of money to play with. The people with scads of money own the political system; the others barely even vote. Their goals now are: A) spend the absolute minimum required to keep the poor from rioting; B) figure out how to get as much of that money back from the poor after they get it; C) make sure they have enough security in place to shoot as many of the poor as possible when they get uppity.
C) has a nice relationship with A), as the more dangerous it is to start a revolution the less you have to spend on keeping the poor from rioting. Spending on C) creates the new middle class, made up of law enforcement and private security.

Most of them really don’t consider anything beyond A); but the enlightened, forward thinking types also consider B) and C)

That was all somewhat facetious. Somewhat.

 
 

America is a traditional conservative country and we don’t tolerate socialism.

Unless it’s corporate welfare,then it’s all hunky dory. Take for your needs Monsanto, ADM, GM, Chrysler…JP Morgan Chase..Goldman Sachs. No social progams for tem, no sir-eee.

They lobbied for those ‘earnings’ fair and square.

 
 

I dunno if you read the whole article I linked, but “hard-working Americans” is the descriptor that best fits those $5 women

Ms. Reid sometimes rose just after 3 a.m. to make the hourlong commute to Boeing’s data center in Bellevue and attended night school to earn a master’s in management information systems.

I’m sure there are many of those $5 women who could match that. But not most and certainly not all.

 
 

We certainly don’t tolerate open tags, dammit!

 
 

We have a society where even those at the bottom of the 90th percentile are not safely middle class. If this woman, and her husband, and their kids, are not safe, the none of us are either.

I dunno if she has kids, but she does have health insurance. Then again, considering what passes for health insurance in teh States, maybe she is just one minor and easily treatable medical condition away bankruptcy. That’s not a failing of “the availability of good jobs for fifty year olds” – that’s a failing of the health care system. No, this woman is still comfortably middle class and will remain so until Teh Revolution comes and her bourgeoius self is up against the wall. Well, barring any substance abuse issues that is – we are all one heroin addiction away from being ruint.

 
 

First I was all like “?!?!?” … but then I facepalmed.

Yeah, I always go to Trustifarians for advice on how to deal with unemployment.

Best unintentional black humor since “I’m Bristol Palin, & I’m here at your school today to talk with you about abstinence.”

 
 

ooooh, Stevie’s warning us now!

oh noes I am skert

 
 

But not most and certainly not all.

I don’t gots teh exact numerosas but I’d certainly challenge you on that point:

In Pittsburgh and across the country, the financial burdens of single parenthood fall mostly on women, but black women are more likely to endure the work and responsibility of raising children on their own. They are more likely to be the backbone of their families and communities, with greater responsibilities to support struggling friends and families.

In a 2008 study of black women and their money, the ING Foundation found that black women — who frequently manage the assets of their households — financially support friends, family and their houses of worship to a much greater degree than the general population.

 
 

I’m sorry, still very little sympathy.

You don’t have to have sympathy for a dumbass, but trying to have an environment in which a dumbass can make a living is a good thing.

 
 

I don’t gots teh exact numerosas but I’d certainly challenge you on that point:

The median age of those women with a $5 net worth was 31-49.

This woman is 57.

Look, comparing an entire population of a survey with one woman and then drawing conclusions is about as silly as Megan McArdle attempting to judge this woman’s lifestyle from a thousand word article that has by definition to be edited down to the bare minimum.

 
 

I’m sorry, still very little sympathy.

Sheesh, so if her husband dies, hey, she could’ve lost her husband and her kids? That’s nuts. And hell’s bells, don’t sympathize if you don’t want to, just cut the judgmental stuff. It’s not a charity fund drive drive, it’s an article showing how an older woman with no mortgage debt but with an employed spouse, severance, and retirement savings can STILL run into financial trouble in this historically uber-shitty job market – she’s approaching the end of her rope, and her rope was longer than a lot of people’s. So I do sympathize, but frankly the emotion that dominates is worry.

 
 

Steve; Go fuck yourself you stupid asshole. You are too stupid to have an idea of your own or think through any of your political positions, so why don’t you just go jerk off the RedState meatheads and leave us the fuck alone? That would actually earn you a minute amount of respect among us.

Have a nice day.

 
 

an environment in which a dumbass can make a living is a good thing

Naw, it only encourages dumb-assedness, & dumb-assed children, & dumb-assed consumption choices & votes, & then all the tee vee shows are aimed at dumb-asses, & it never stops, yada.

Yours for elitism, M.B.

 
 

why don’t you just go jerk off the RedState meatheads and leave us the fuck alone?

Ugh. Thanks.

 
 

Yours for elitism, M.B.

And remember, you can’t spell dubmass without MB!

 
 

That’s not a failing of “the availability of good jobs for fifty year olds” – that’s a failing of the health care system.

It is a failure of our economic system. It is a failure in how we distribute goods and services. It is a failure in how we allocate skills and resources.

No, this woman is still comfortably middle class and will remain so until Teh Revolution comes and her bourgeoius self is up against the wall

Or until her luck goes a bit worse.

She is middle class, now. She’s not comfortable in that position, as she realizes just exactly how easily it could all go tits-up. And if she is not comfortable, none of us should be either, at least not those of us in the States.

The sooner the so-called middle class realize that their interests are the same as the interests of the poor, and are opposed to the interests of the truly rich, the sooner we will have an actual liberal party in this country. Pissing about how she is just too bourgeois for sympathy is not exactly productive.

 
 

A system that doesn’t allow for the occasional brainfart is a system that denies we’re human beings.

People shouldn’t be punished for fecking up.

 
 

Whazza “dubmass?” I mean, I like the dub, even massively, but …

And, for all the fucks screeching “There is no “I” in team!” there’s an “M” & an “E” in team!!

 
 

The sooner the so-called middle class realize that their interests are the same as the interests of the poor, and are opposed to the interests of the truly rich, the sooner we will have an actual liberal party in this country.

You read between the lines of the article, and also why McArdle is so pissed off about it.

 
 

Hey, thanks for pointing all this stuff out. I’m glad that I no longer agree with ME-gan about Reid not saving enough. That made me feel horrible.

And I would love to live in a world where the social security net is good enough that Patricia Reid’s horrible tragic disaster is something that needs to be addressed immediately.

And that study sure did twist the values a lot – if you look at black women up to 64, the median jumps to $100. There you go, Patricia’s plight really is bad!

But to me – this is just another aspect of the NYTimes’ series of the not-quite-rich-enough, only this time they did manage to find someone middle class. So while I don’t have contempt for her, like I did for the bankers with the maxed out credit cards despite the seven figure salary – I still don’t really feel bad for her.

 
 

Whazza “dubmass?”

It starts here

You have to dig a little, but somewhere, a commenter calls Duckass a “dubmass”, perhaps in response to his “Sasquatch Isreal” mistake. Duckass makes fun of the commenter. Hilarity ensues.

 
 

And, for all the fucks screeching “There is no “I” in team!” there’s an “M” & an “E” in team!!

“Team” spelled sideways is “meat”.

 
 

There you go, Patricia’s plight really is bad!

THAT DOES IT!

Re-education camp for YOU!

 
 

They probably couldn’t sell it for that, and they might not be able to sell it at all, so what difference does it make what it’s worth on paper?

If she’s paying over 7K a year in property taxes in Warshington State, the property would have to be worth at least $750K. Even sold at a huge loss, she could buy a small house in another state for less than $100K and invest the rest, and live just off the interest.

In one of a handful of interviews she has secured, for an auditing position at the Port of Seattle, she learned that the job required skills in PeopleSoft, financial software she had never used. She assumes that deficiency cost her the job.

Cry me a fucking river. I’m sorry, she didn’t learn any new job skills for 20 years, and she can’t even be fucking arsed to go to the library and check out a book on the subject, or read one of thousands of free online tutorials on PeopleSoft. After 4 years of unemployment, she finally decided to take some classes in QuickBooks. Well, great, but why didn’t she do that years ago?

Why did she think she was entitled to a job for life despite millions of people younger, willing to work for less money, and with better skills? That’s not a new thing. That is how the economy has always worked. Until nobody has kids anymore and everybody lives forever, that’s how it will always work. But oh no, the boomers have to be special — sorry, every other generation.

Seriously, does anybody here think the progressive agenda should involve making sure that old people keep their jobs as long as they want them, even if they suck at them, even if it costs opportunities for young people and immigrants? Because it sounds to me like that’s what you’re saying.

What are we really supposed to do about people with obsolete job skills who refuse to learn new ones or take an unskilled position? Seriously. I’m as bleedy-heart as they come but I don’t know what to say to that sort of feeling of entitlement and unwillingness to change — that boomer entitlement complex.

 
 

Face the facts libs, Afghanistan is a traditional conservative country and we don’t tolerate socialism. We are a deeply traditional God-fearing people and will fight tooth and nail to prevent radical social change.

You have been wanked.

 
 

If she’s paying over 7K a year in property taxes in Warshington State, the property would have to be worth at least $750K.

Assessed value may not be market value. She says she can’t sell for more than $200K.

Seriously, does anybody here think the progressive agenda should involve making sure that old people keep their jobs as long as they want them, even if they suck at them, even if it costs opportunities for young people and immigrants? Because it sounds to me like that’s what you’re saying.

No, but…well, let me quote someone else:

The sooner the so-called middle class realize that their interests are the same as the interests of the poor, and are opposed to the interests of the truly rich, the sooner we will have an actual liberal party in this country.

 
 

Why did she think she was entitled to a job for life despite millions of people younger, willing to work for less money, and with better skills? That’s not a new thing. That is how the economy has always worked.

How old are you, AG? That’s not a smear, that’s an honest question.

The generation before mine, you took a job at 20 with (insert employer name here) and retired at 65 with (insert same name here). You got a pension. If you were union, you got healthcare benefits. If you were lucky, you got a gold watch.

 
 

Whazza “dubmass?”

Hey. legit answers to silly questions!

 
 

Whazza “dubmass?”

Hey. legit answers to silly questions!

OH! Sorry…

SASQ: Same thing as dumbass, dumbass.

 
 

I thought it was a silly question, turned out to be more than a typo.

Dumb-ass.

 
 

Just think about the mirror-image of this story. “Because this moribund old lady who refused to learn new things lost her job, it opened up a job for a hard working inner-city youth who used money saved from working at McDonald’s to take computer classes at the local Community College, and thus break the cycle of poverty that his family has been caught in for generations.

Who do you think is getting these jobs that she’s not qualified for? Somebody less deserving than her? Just think about it — not too fucking likely.

Are you people on the side of the old white lady, or the urban youth? It’s pretty fucking sad to see where a lot of peoples’ sympathies here lie. There but for the grace of god goes my Audi lease! Sheesh.

 
 

Angry Geometer said,

September 22, 2010 at 22:37 (kill)

That was a very long comment and you covered a lot of ground but what I’d like to point out, and please don’t take offense, is that you sound like kind of a dick.

 
 

Who do you think is getting these jobs that she’s not qualified for? Somebody less deserving than her? Just think about it — not too fucking likely.

The bias is towards hiring someone younger and cheaper.

Operative word there is “bias”. She might be more qualified, overqualified, even. But the younger person will get the job.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Who do you think is getting these jobs that she’s not qualified for? Somebody less deserving than her? Just think about it — not too fucking likely.

Are you people on the side of the old white lady, or the urban youth? It’s pretty fucking sad to see where a lot of peoples’ sympathies here lie. There but for the grace of god goes my Audi lease! Sheesh.

Ummm, I think the urban youth deserve jobs, too.

Your problem is that you putting is as the poor versus the middle class.

It’s the rich versus the rest of us. And if the most privileged of us are fucked, then we’re all fucked.

I have been known to go on anti-Baby Boomer rants from time to time, but I don’t think this is the time for one of them.

 
 

It’s pretty fucking sad to see where a lot of peoples’ sympathies here lie. There but for the grace of god goes my Audi lease! Sheesh.

I don’t know about anyone else, but regardless if it has anything to do with Megan’s bullpshitte article, we shouldn’t be punishing anyone for messing up. Why can’t we allow BOTH the old white lady AND the urban youth to prosper?

 
 

The generation before mine, you took a job at 20 with (insert employer name here) and retired at 65 with (insert same name here). You got a pension. If you were union, you got healthcare benefits.

My mom was union, and she did exactly that. Had my mom not been in a union, I would be bankrupt within the year, despite having a good job. I have no union, and despite being entirely too bourgeois for DKW to not want me up against the wall, I realize that my daughter will face ugly choices I hopefully won’t.

When I was in my 20s, I never imagined what parental health failures would be like. I never began to prepare for those contingencies. Have you, AG and DKW? What will you do when, in your 30s, your parents tell you they need to move in with you, since the only job they can get is as a Walmart greeter, and that pays less than the property taxes that go to fund your kids’ school?

Again, why are we trying to make Reid less comfortable, rather than focus on the social structures that make all of our “security” highly contingent?

The bottom 95% of the US needs to realize they are all in this together. We won’t, which is why we are all fucked.

 
 

And hell’s bells, don’t sympathize if you don’t want to, just cut the judgmental stuff.

You’re right. Who fucking cares if I feel sorry for Patricia Reid? From the tone of her responses to the NYTimes – it ain’t Patricia Reid.

 
 

Another mistake that people make quite frequently is to go travel or do some volunteer work they’ve always dreamed of

It takes a sociopath to describe volunteer work as a personal indulgence because she can see no other possible motivation for it.

If she were discussing a factory worker who was laid off from a $15/hour job, it would be different.
And acknowledge the existence of such people, let alone their relevance? I think not.

 
 

Are you people on the side of the old white lady, or the urban youth?

Boeing is firing white people so their auditing department can have more street cred, more flava if you will.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Again, why are we trying to make Reid less comfortable, rather than focus on the social structures that make all of our “security” highly contingent?

DING DING DING DING DING!

 
 

You’re right. Who fucking cares if I feel sorry for Patricia Reid? From the tone of her responses to the NYTimes – it ain’t Patricia Reid.

The fact that you’re reminding us that Reid has it relatively well off is important, DKW. No one is arguing we should drop everything for Reid and leave everyone else dangling.

What we’d really like to do is to get the Reids of this world together with the $5 net worth folks and the folks who live in trailer parks and vote Teabagger and get them to see they share the same damn problems and it’s not the fault of the liberals or Democrats, or even the middle class or poor.

We need them to get together and see class warfare has been declared on them and if they don’t put aside the nonsense about gay marriage or illegal immigration (who are also on their side) and start working together for their fair share of an American dream that doesn’t leave them sitting by the side of the road broke, they’re going to end up a lot worse off than they are right now.

 
 

Point is, Megan is a wanker and nothing she says is good for anyone.

 
 

Are you people on the side of the old white lady, or the urban youth?

That’s a false dichotomy, I can be against discrimination whether it’s based on age, race, whatever, besides which if urban youth are getting the types of jobs she’s applying for I’ll eat my hat.

Who fucking cares if I feel sorry for Patricia Reid? From the tone of her responses to the NYTimes – it ain’t Patricia Reid.

Which responses, that she’s afraid, or her nightmares about becoming a bag lady? Her sympathy for others in the same boat, or those close to the edge who don’t even realize it? The part where she admits she didn’t handle it ideally, or is optimistic about the future?

 
 

“You have been wanked.”

Really? I don’t feel sleepy.

 
 

And rats covered in poop glass.
I don’t know what that is, but it sounds gross.

A side effect of eating lightbulbs. Or so I am told.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

A side effect of eating lightbulbs. Or so I am told.

Sounds…crunchy…

 
 

That would actually earn you a minute amount of respect among us.

Speak for yourself, tsam.

 
 

The bottom 95% of the US needs to realize they are all in this together. We won’t, which is why we are all fucked.

I’m still somewhat amazed to read the history of the Great Depression; and how it had the entire country – North and South, city and country, WASPs and minorities – united behind Roosevelt in saying “Fuck off and give us our country back” to Wall Street. I don’t think there’s ever been such a broad consensus ever before or since in American history.

(And it’s worth mentioning that that consensus was followed by the greatest sustained economic boom in American history, bar none).

Fucking consensus. How do they work? Can they work again for the good of the country?

 
 

I’m sorry, she didn’t learn any new job skills for 20 years, and she can’t even be fucking arsed to go to the library and check out a book on the subject, or read one of thousands of free online tutorials on PeopleSoft. After 4 years of unemployment, she finally decided to take some classes in QuickBooks. Well, great, but why didn’t she do that years ago?

It says she went back to school during those 20 years to get a Master’s in MIS. At any rate, having run through online tutorials or checked out library books will prove next to useless when you’re applying for a position against people with even cursory on-the-job experience.

 
 

Speak for yourself, tsam.

It was a trick. I don’t expect that it will work, but I thought I’d try.

 
 

It takes a sociopath to describe volunteer work as a personal indulgence because she can see no other possible motivation for it.

If it feels like an indulgence, your doin it rong.

 
 

Really? I don’t feel sleepy.

You’re pink and sweaty though.

 
 

We need them to get together and see class warfare has been declared on them and if they don’t put aside the nonsense about gay marriage or illegal immigration (who are also on their side) and start working together for their fair share of an American dream that doesn’t leave them sitting by the side of the road broke, they’re going to end up a lot worse off than they are right now.

Foregone conclusion, I’m afraid.

 
 

the nonsense about gay marriage or illegal immigration

How about the nonsense about gay immigration or illegal marriage?

Bookmark it, libs!

 
 

I just found out that my infant has most likely been ingesting beetles

 
 

How about the nonsense about gay immigration or illegal marriage?

Abrige to far

 
 

OMFG.

I just went for the mangoes at the previous post.

Migod, what a loon. Every bit as bad as it sounded.

At least we won’t have to worry about crazy wingnut articles at Renew America after God punishes us for our sins with fire & brimstone tomorrow.

 
 

“You’re pink and sweaty though.”

Ya know, there are about a billion different retorts for this but they’re all nauseatingly dirty and flirty and I don’t want to make the poor folks here vom.

 
 

I don’t want to make the poor folks here vom.

Spare the rich folks NOTHING.

 
 

Ya know, there are about a billion different retorts for this but they’re all nauseatingly dirty and flirty and I don’t want to make the poor folks here vom.

You’re so cute when you think we have scruples and shame. HAHA!

 
 

I take witchcraft seriously too. I have like 2 of the Harry Potter movies on DVD. HifuckinDef even.

 
 

Abbott said on Wednesday that the recall, which could result in $100 million of lost revenue,

Let’s in mind what the important issue is.

 
 

Dammit, tsam, you beat me. No mention of how the kids will be affected.

 
 

Dammit, tsam, you beat me. No mention of how the kids will be affected.

Ha! Sorry!

That was the first, most conspicuous line in the article. I found it to be rather nauseating, as if I had just ingested beetles.

 
 

If all your retorts are nauseatingly dirty then it’s time to hire new lab staff.

 
 

“I take witchcraft seriously too. I have like 2 of the Harry Potter movies on DVD. HifuckinDef even.”

BURN HIM!!!!

 
 

Won’t someone [besides Megan] think of the profits? If government would stop interfering with the free market, then the poor could afford cheap, albeit tainted, formula, we could get mad at Patricia Reid for splurging on the non-tainted stuff, and the genuinely wealthy could get bigger bonuses!

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Cankle update!

Okay, so it looks the same, but I was wearing a sock with cats embroidered on each side (my mother gives cat socks as gifts–don’t as me) and there are two cat outlines embedded in my ankle on top of my stitches.

Well, it amused *me*, anyway.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I just found out that my infant has most likely been ingesting beetles

So? It’s a great, low-fat protein source!

 
 

Okay, so it looks the same, but I was wearing a sock with cats embroidered on each side (my mother gives cat socks as gifts–don’t as me) and there are two cat outlines embedded in my ankle on top of my stitches.

It looks the same even though you got cats? Unpossible.

 
 

In one of a handful of interviews she has secured, for an auditing position at the Port of Seattle, she learned that the job required skills in PeopleSoft, financial software she had never used. She assumes that deficiency cost her the job.

here’s the thing about job-hunting in a time of economic crisis – it’s an employer’s market. I’m sure that this woman would have been fine in the auditing position, she could probably have trained quickly on PeopleSoft and done fine. But because there are more people competing for the jobs, employers have the luxury of ruling out everyone but the best candidates. Hell, there were probably applicants who had great PeopleSoft skills, but the short list was whittled down to those who had the BEST PeopleSoft skills.

So it’s not so much that she is out in the market without skills – she’s just competing with more people, giving employers the ability to choose someone tailor-made for the jobs.

three years ago, we were recruiting for a full-time position in my industry with benefits and only got a handful of crappy applicants – people who were trying to apply their experience in different industries to ours.

This summer, I was working with three part-time new hires, all of whom had stellar experience in our industry, and even had a high level of expertise in specialty areas of the industry. We were only able to have them work for us because they’d been laid off from other companies and needed something, anything, to tide them over.

Sure enough, we just lost two of them to a better offer for a permanent position elswhere.

 
 

It’s a great, low-fat protein source!

Dung beetles especially.

 
 

here’s the thing about job-hunting in a time of economic crisis – it’s even more of an employer’s market than usual.

Fixed. It hasn’t been an employee’s market since the sixties.

 
 

It hasn’t been an employee’s market since the sixties.

It was in the 90s. I still remember the interview in 1999 where my soon-to-be boss led off the interview with “If it was not for this crazy job market, a resume like yours would go straight to Pile B.”

 
 

here’s the thing about job-hunting in a time of economic crisis – it’s an employer’s market. I’m sure that this woman would have been fine in the auditing position, she could probably have trained quickly on PeopleSoft and done fine. But because there are more people competing for the jobs, employers have the luxury of ruling out everyone but the best candidates. Hell, there were probably applicants who had great PeopleSoft skills, but the short list was whittled down to those who had the BEST PeopleSoft skills.

All of which sort of renders the question “howcome the bitch didn’t save no monies?” irrelevant. But then again, this recession should prompt those who are able to start saving to do so. Of course that doesn’t help people like me with mouths to feed and bills to pay and a paycheck that always seems to disappear a few days before the next one shows up. Not because I’m irresponsible, but because that’s just the fucking way it is. I’m glad to know that the CEO of my electric company is making several million dollars per year while a wide section of his fucking “clients” are struggling to pay the bill. The cable company too. And my cell provider. Internet provider. Car insurance company. Health insurance company. Whoever the assholes are who are investing and taking fees from my 401k.

 
 

It was in the 90s. I still remember the interview in 1999 where my soon-to-be boss led off the interview with “If it was not for this crazy job market, a resume like yours would go straight to Pile B.”

Oh my!

I stand corrected. And you have no idea how much I wish the economy was still that way.

Fucking Clinton years. How did they work?

 
 

Oh my!
I stand corrected. And you have no idea how much I wish the economy was still that way.
Fucking Clinton years. How did they work?

On deregulation, phony profits, outsourcing, stock price manipulation, free credit for everyone, interest only mortgages, and a general attitude that bigger and less affordable is better and necessary, lest your family and friends think you are squalid philistines living in a house that’s like 20 years old, or only has enough bedrooms for the number of occupants. Or holy shit, dare I say it? A couple of young kids have to SHARE a bedroom? NO. Not on my watch, motherfuckers.

I’m sure there was some genuine economic growth (in technology and a few key areas), but generally that was all monopoly money that 22 year kids were throwing around as if they had a tree growing it in the back yard.

 
 

I just found out that my infant has most likely been ingesting beetles

Could be worse. La Leche League could find out you’ve been giving the kid formula and start coming around telling you how you’ve doomed your child to be unhealthy and stupid.

(More on topic, the article does mention the potential effect of the beetles on a child ingesting them– which seems, mercifully, to be “might taste nasty and give them upset tummy”.)

 
 

There’s truth in that, tsam, but 1) everyone I knew who was in their 20s then shared apartments with others, 2) I-O mortgages were really a thing of the 00s, 3) while there was a bubble, that bubble produced a lot of useful infrastructure, and most importantly 4) this was the only period of time when real wages for the bottom 80% rose.

 
 

Gah, that should read only period of time since 1973 when real wages rose.

 
 

I’m glad to know that the CEO of my electric company is making several million dollars per year while a wide section of his fucking “clients” are struggling to pay the bill. The cable company too. And my cell provider. Internet provider. Car insurance company. Health insurance company. Whoever the assholes are who are investing and taking fees from my 401k.

Get the guillotines. I’ll take up knitting so I can be Madame LaFarge.

clickclickclickclickclick

 
 

bla bla bla. fraud, and fraudulent omissions… bla bla bla.. corrupt union hack….bla bla extortion….bla bla bla undue inflence…bribery, extortion...bla bla bla….taxation without representation….collusion…

 
 

bla bla bla. fraud, and fraudulent omissions… bla bla bla.. corrupt union hack….bla bla extortion….bla bla bla undue inflence…bribery, extortion…bla bla bla….taxation without representation….collusion…

Well! That just goes to show how awful unions are, why we shouldn’t have them, why poor CEOs are crying in the Lafitte Rothschilde and why Obama is a big meanie socialist!

 
 

I’ll take up knitting so I can be Madame LaFarge.

Got you covered, Pere.

 
 

Abbott said on Wednesday that the recall, which could result in $100 million of lost revenue,

Let’s in mind what the important issue is.

Shall we take up a collection of canned goods?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

It looks the same even though you got cats? Unpossible.

Well, you know, sans the cat outlines. Which are now gone.

 
 

Well, you know, sans the cat outlines. Which are now gone.

Medical advice: Feed the kitty.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Medical advice: Feed the kitty.

I already did!

Wait. Which one?

 
 

The one that makes you feel better.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Okay! BRB.

 
 

Shall we take up a collection of canned goods?

Let’s start with Similac.

 
 

I’m glad to know that the CEO of my electric company is making several million dollars per year while a wide section of his fucking “clients” are struggling to pay the bill.

Hey, at least they’re not doing what my gas company is: dunning people for contributions to keep poor people connected. In other words, “cough up more than you owe or we’ll shut off Granny’s gas.”

 
 

Shall we take up a collection of canned goods?

Pumpkin pie filling and evaporated milk.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Are you people on the side of the old white lady, or the urban youth?

Yes!

 
 

Way, way late to the party but…

But then again, this recession should prompt those who are able to start saving to do so.

It certainly put the fear of bog into my family. I was laid off January last year; was lucky to find something more-or-less right away and we’ve been socking away whatever we can ever since. Being in the over-50 crowd and in a terribly ageist business (software) you bet I’m painfully aware of how tenuous my living is. Even so, I’d never be able to sustain four years of being unable to work.

Fucking Clinton years. How did they work?

On deregulation, phony profits, outsourcing, stock price manipulation, free credit for everyone, interest only mortgages, and a general attitude that bigger and less affordable is better and necessary…

Don’t forget venture capitalists who had the funds and the need to throw money at every hare-brained scheme that started with ‘e’ or ‘i’ because INTERNET! I went to an interview (at a Web dev shop) in ’96, spoke to three people and had an offer before I left the office. We won’t speak of what the job actually turned into, however. *shudder*

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

That was the first, most conspicuous line in the article. I found it to be rather nauseating, as if I had just ingested beetles.

You just might have.

 
 

Whale Chowder: For some hilarious descriptions of ludicrous/insulting/absurd Internet-based job offers, look up fuckthatjob.com on the Internet archives.

 
 

Hey, at least they’re not doing what my gas company is: dunning people for contributions to keep poor people connected. In other words, “cough up more than you owe or we’ll shut off Granny’s gas.”

Oh they are. It’s called Project Share.

Something like, you just got assfucked, son. Want to give me a little of your food money to ease the assfucking for someone else? Remember that electricity has to support an approximately 9 million/year salary for ONE FUCKING GUY. Not to mention the other executive salaries…

I’m growing a beard and grabbing a bitchfork.

 
 

We used to love to peruse fuckedcompany.com, looking for the outfit we worked for. Can’t actually remember if it turned up or not.

 
 

spoke to three people and had an offer before I left the office. We won’t speak of what the job actually turned into, however. *shudder*

Veiled Porn Casting Couch Reference.

 
 

Clinton legacy;

Greenspan monetary policy. Big hero, that one.

 
 

I’m going to take up knitting so I can stab people w/ those big ol’ needles.

 
 

Veiled Porn Casting Couch Reference.

If by “porn” you mean “ass raping” and not in the good way, then yes.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

There’s a good kind of ass raping?

 
 

If by “porn” you mean “ass raping” and not in the good way, then yes.

3 people, though, you’re a trooper!

 
 

Wow, lots to digest here since noon-ish today. First up:

Get the guillotines. I’ll take up knitting so I can be Madame LaFarge.

Oh, hells no. After the deep emotional pain I’ve suffered for the cause of guillotines, I get to be Madame LaFarge.

Next…a lot of things. Someone upthread said something about people not expecting things to go this way, and I’m remembering me and one of my brother’s friends sitting in our kitchen at home way back in 1980, 81, telling my mom that we both expected that we wouldn’t live as well as our parents had. I mean, Reagan was in full swing with his “service economy” bullshit even then, and though I’m not a supergenius, it HAD occured to me at that tender age of 17 that just trading services around amongst ourselves didn’t really MAKE anything in the way of a tangible, durable goods – so how was that going to work out when we needed to BUY stuff? My brother’s friend, on the other hand, WAS/IS a supergenius; he saw the future and went to medical school, so I think he’s done pretty well.

I graduated college with a degree in architecture at the same time that the S&Ls went into meltdown because of overbuilding commercial property – the types of buildings that architects design. There were no jobs; the starting ones here if you could have found one paid a salary of $12K – again, that’s salary – for a workweek of 50 – 60 hours. This was in 1988. I saw the writing on the wall and determined that the only way I would survive this lifetime would be to learn how to do EVERYTHING, so I got into historic preservation with the degree, then moved on to direct a historic preservation non-profit, then moved into doing political work. Even that wasn’t steady enough – whenever you won or lost, you were out of a job. So I went and got a master’s in education, and from there, got hired to work for textbook publishers as an independent sales rep. So by 2000 I had a lot of skills in the toolkit – outside sales, a teaching degree, an architecture degree, non-profit management, PR, lobbying…and even with all of THAT spent the better part of a year looking for work in 2003 and since then, have never done as well as I did in the 90s. That was why I started the business – I just recognized that virtually no one was going to pay me a reasonable salary, or commission, or wage; my last 2 employers were actively deceitful in cheating employees out of earnings. Plus, I’m in my later 40s now and that’s a scary age to be still floating around from career to career – at some point, everyone is going to be looking for someone younger (and cheaper).

Our economy used to reward specialization, and it still does in some professions, but not in most. But the education model is still geared towards specialization, and for most people going forward that’s not going to cut it. I don’t know that there’s a good answer for this – I recognize myself as being very fortunate in that I’m a left brain/right brain freak who not only doesn’t mind making huge career focus shifts, but actually enjoyed doing it. I suspect most people don’t, and many people may not even have that capability. Not only that, but the price of piling up all that varied experience was earning well south of $20K per year until after I turned 30 – and then not knowing that my 30s would be my only chance to pile up any retirement savings, which I sure as hell haven’t been able to add to in the past 7 years.

I don’t know the answers for other people, but this much seems clear to me now: unless you’re a doctor or something, hardly anyone is willing to pay a middle class wage to you and there’s so much job competition that they don’t have to. So if you can, you’re better off doing your own thing as a freelancer or small businessperson. Beyond that, the more variety of things you can learn how to do, the better off you’ll be, though even that isn’t going to guarantee anyone will pay you much.

Last, about the only thing I can do to change it is to pay people as well as I can if they’re working for my business, and to try to do business with others who have the same philosophy. For our business, we’ve set a goal of having everyone who works for us up to a wage of $15/hour within the next year, which is not a horrible wage for warehouse/packing work or secretarial work where we are. And if we can, to raise good loyal employees higher. It’s not going to break us to do it; we just won’t make quite as much as the owners as we would otherwise, but I don’t want people who work for me worrying about where the money for groceries is going to come from.

 
 

Jennifer;

I work for people like you. Be assured that it’s appreciated more than you can know. People don’t always show it, but just knowing that you care is worth $5.00/hour all by itself.

And yeah, I was too young to get what Reaganomics really meant, but I knew throughout the 90’s that easy credit, nothing down mortgages, ever dropping interest rates despite a booming economy–fueling a gigantic housing bubble, and the attitude of entitlement that people all around me proudly displayed was unsustainable and would end in disaster. We have 30 years of this borrowed time and money and filling our garages with fucking junk to live down. This recession isn’t going anywhere.

 
 

Oh, and, about that caption:

Megan “Do I Look Like A Bonobo? McArdle

No, Megan does not look like a Bonobo. For one thing, the photo shows a group of Bonobos who clearly have concern for their fellows.

For another, one of them has obvious breasts.

 
 

I’m going to take up knitting so I can stab people w/ those big ol’ needles.

Artist’s reconstruction of MB.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

For another, one of them has obvious breasts.

OH SNAP.

 
 

obvious breasts

I’m a subtle breast man, myself. But not a subtle butt man.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

I don’t know the answers for other people, but this much seems clear to me now: unless you’re a doctor or something, hardly anyone is willing to pay a middle class wage to you and there’s so much job competition that they don’t have to.

Even doctors are being squeezed by HMO’s and they start their careers saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. In today’s economy, the only people thriving are the cream-skimmers.

 
 

For our business, we’ve set a goal of having everyone who works for us up to a wage of $15/hour within the next year

That’s a great goal. Hope you make it.

 
 

T & U – occasionally I think of a comment so funny and so mean at the same time that it cracks my shit up – this was one of those.

 
 

That’s a great goal.

It sure as hell beats my goal of loudly regaling my employees with B^4’s comments during lunch every day.

 
 

Stop whining liberals and work harder! I can’t wait until the Ownership Socieuty Plan of Freedom is asserted Nov 2nd and we kill socilaimsm dead forever!

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

T & U – occasionally I think of a comment so funny and so mean at the same time that it cracks my shit up – this was one of those.

We should go drinking sometime!

It sure as hell beats my goal of loudly regaling my employees with B^4?s comments during lunch every day.

Ha! I would quite enjoy that, actually. Better than hearing my co-worker talking about her fucking mini-schnauzer.

 
 

Steve, I told you to go fuck yourself. Now go FUCKING DO IT, scumbag.

 
Erick Son Of Erick
 

Repubs sux:

http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/09/22/the-republicans-pledge-is-perhaps-the-most-ridiculous-thing-to-come-out-of-washington-since-george-mcclellan/

“Brevity is the soul of wit” is obviously out the window when I entitle something.

Which is not to say I’ve ever entitled…entitling an essay is different than Medicare…hoo boy.

Might have really put my foot in it here…

 
 

my co-worker talking about her fucking mini-schnauzer.

Maybe she’d be more pleasant if she had the satisfaction of fucking a full-size schnauzer.

 
 

I can’t wait until the Ownership Socieuty Plan of Freedom is asserted Nov 2nd and we kill socilaimsm dead forever!

Will this plan require proper spelling, or have marginal tax rates caused you to Go Galt on Grammar?

 
 

The real problem with the ownership society is that no one wants to be the slaves.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Maybe she’d be more pleasant if she had the satisfaction of fucking a full-size schnauzer.

It couldn’t hurt anything.

Except my mind’s eye. Ow.

 
 

It sure as hell beats my goal of loudly regaling my employees with B^4?s comments during lunch every day.

Well, there is that…in return for $15 an hour, my employees will have to listen to a lot of cursing, rude humor and generally coarse language. On the other hand, shrinking violets need not apply, which to the best of my knowledge is not contra equal employment opporunity – there’s nothing that requires an employer to hire a tightass.

 
 

Well, there is that…in return for $15 an hour, my employees will have to listen to a lot of cursing, rude humor and generally coarse language. On the other hand, shrinking violets need not apply, which to the best of my knowledge is not contra equal employment opporunity – there’s nothing that requires an employer to hire a tightass.

I carefully instruct new hires that the word “motherfucker” is not to be used while one is still on the phone call, only afterward.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Well, there is that…in return for $15 an hour, my employees will have to listen to a lot of cursing, rude humor and generally coarse language.

Dude. Can I work for you? Would I be able to listen to music?

 
 

in return for $15 an hour, my employees will have to listen to a lot of cursing, rude humor and generally coarse language.

Do they have to be in the same room, or can they listen over the phone? Just saying, outsourcing.

 
Erick Son Of Erick
 

My employees have nothing to listen to but the sound of their own screams.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

It sure as hell beats my goal of loudly regaling my employees with B^4?s comments during lunch every day.

Aw, shucks…

I carefully instruct new hires that the word “motherfucker” is not to be used while one is still on the phone call, only afterward.

What if the client actually fucks mothers, or has the surname Muthafuqua?

 
 

My employees have nothing to listen to but the sound of their own screams

Still laughing. (OK, just chortling now.)

 
 

Also, autumn has arrived. I’m outside dancing nekkid by the light of the full moon.

 
 

Still laughing. (OK, just chortling now.)

Moi aussi.

 
 

Dude. Can I work for you? Would I be able to listen to music?

Only if it includes a lot of cursing, rude humor, and generally coarse language.

 
 

Oh goodie! They’ve got a new contract with America out

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100922/ap_on_el_ho/us_republicans_agenda

“The Contract was done at a time when it was acceptable for a relatively small number of elected officials and trusted aides to go behind closed doors, come up with some ideas, test them in polls and then announce them on the steps of the Capitol,” said Michael Franc of the conservative Heritage Foundation, who was a House aide during those days.

“If you did that now, you’d see yourself being hung in effigy most places.

How do you think today’s “contracts with America” get passed? PJTV and whoever else is running the blogosphere puts out “polls” with a certain number of suggestions and “asks” its constituents which ones they like best; they then “discover” what the base really “cares about,” which just happens to be the same thing the Koch brothers, Scaife and Rupert Murdoch care about. The base discovers what it “really thinks,” though it’s news to them, accepts it, and Bob’s your uncle.

In other words, the old boy network behind closed doors is doing exactly the same thing as in 1994 with hardly any new tricks.

 
 

Dude. Can I work for you? Would I be able to listen to music?

Only if it includes a lot of cursing, rude humor, and generally coarse language.

A pre-Millennial who likes rap?

 
 

Chris, can you say tea bag?

 
 

Tea bag.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Only if it includes a lot of cursing, rude humor, and generally coarse language.

Ummmm…Elliott Smith uses the word “fuck” sometimes. Does that count?

 
 

“Also, autumn has arrived. I’m outside dancing nekkid by the light of the full moon.”

Do you know Christine O’Donnell?

 
 

“My employees have nothing to listen to but the sound of their own screams”

You have picked the right party to pimp for. Kudos.

 
 

Do you know Christine O’Donnell?

I’m not saying whom I may have altared when they were innocent college sluts.

 
 

A pre-Millennial who likes rap?

Not all that familiar with most of it, but I still break out the classic PE every so often. They say fuck and motherfucker quite a bit.

 
 

gocart mozart said,
Chris, can you say tea bag?

Chris said,
Tea bag.

No Chris, I was trying to make the point that . . . Fuck it. nevermind.

 
 

Just practicing playing dumb. After the November Revolution (say, that has a nice ring to it!) I’m told it’ll be a useful skill.

 
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
 

A pre-Millennial who likes rap?

Heh, it happens – in 1987 or so I was a kneejerk sneerer at rap until I listened to some with a fan who could walk me through it a bit, and, more importantly, saw some performed live. I’ve not been a huge fan but have enjoyed it ever since.

You often see people my age (early 40s) and older disdaining rap as though they have to to be taken seriously in their musical taste. It brings to mind Scott Joplin’s writing in 1908 that “to shy bricks at ‘hateful ragtime’ no longer passes for musical culture.”

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

In other words, the old boy network behind closed doors is doing exactly the same thing as in 1994 with hardly any new tricks.

Yeah, they keep falling back on the old tricks.

How has the goddamn GOP not been hit with RICO charges?

 
The Tea Bag Contingent
 

You will be in charge of tea bag production Chris. Your five year plan will be in the mail shortly. Sorry no email. We are old. Please follow instructions carefully or else!

 
 

Actually, I don’t like rap either – and, ultimate sin for a liberal, I actually do like country. But that’s just me.

How has the goddamn GOP not been hit with RICO charges?

Same reason the Bush administration hasn’t been brought up for war crimes, and same reason segregation wasn’t declared illegal until a hundred years after it started. If enough people are on your side, the law no longer matters.

 
 

You will be in charge of tea bag production Chris.

Wrong. For. America.

 
 

“If enough people are on your side, the law no longer matters.”

This is a very wise observation. Put another way, if enough people are on your side, you are the law.

 
 

Oh goodie! They’ve got a new contract with America out

And Erick son of Erick is absolutely livid. He hates the fucking thing, and grudgingly says that he’ll vote Republican anyway. This turd has the potential to seriously depress GOP voter turnout.

 
 

“Wrong. For. America.”

Spoken like a true tea bagger.

 
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
 

Actually, I don’t like rap either – and, ultimate sin for a liberal, I actually do like country

I wouldn’t say anyone has to like rap, just that there’s a difference between having heard it and not liked it and feeling like you have to dislike it, if you could but dig it.

 
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
 

…I also think that if anyone says you have to dislike country, they can bite me. Personal preference is what it is.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Actually, I don’t like rap either – and, ultimate sin for a liberal, I actually do like country

Steve Earle, Patsy Kline, Hank Williams Sr. could do no wrong. I prefer alt country, though.

 
 

Patsy Kline was a RINO, just saying.

 
 

(Charlton Heston mode on)

DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!

DAMN YOU, SADLYNAUTS!

(Charlton Heston mode off)

I had a slightly busy weekend. I fell a few posts behind. I called in sick to work this morning. I STILL can’t catch up on all of these goddamned comments.

Don’t you people have jobs?! Do you work at your jobs?

Okay, maybe I have “dial up.” Maybe I don’t have a “smart phone.” Maybe I “work at my job.” (Okay, that’s hard lately, since they make me meet a quota, unlike the good old days.) Maybe I “look at too many other links you people post.” Maybe I “try to read the Krugman blog, too.” Maybe I “don’t brush my teeth.” Maybe I “scare small children.”

But… fuck, people! This is some high quality shit, and I can’t stop mainlining that sadlynaut juice! I’ve got a cybermonkey on my back!

Speaking of monkeys, next post…

 
 

Hey! Whut about me?

 
 

Oka, now I’m ready to get all monkeyed up and take a space flight…

(Heston mode back on)

CURSE YOU! CURSE YOU EL CID!!!

(Heston mode off)

That thin you wrote, El Cid, a few posts back, about monkeys flying space craft and banana pellets and shocks, uh, that’s pretty much real. Although they weren’t really flying the space capsule, just flying in it, let’s say.

Linky:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4201/ch10-3.htm

Now, as for the monkey pulling the right levers and pushing the right buttons even though there was a bug in the wiring and right answers = shocks, which is a story I remember, I didn’t see it in the above NASA report. I don’t know where I read it, and won’t bother to track it down on the tubes. (Tried, failed, found above kewl link, though.) My fuzzy memory says I must have read it in Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff.” (I don’t think Mr. Wolfe said what kind of designer shoes Ham was wearing for his flight.)

Fun footnote from the above NASA paper:

“Robert F. Wallace, an STG information officer on the scene, reported that Ham was excited when returned to Hangar S after his flight. Being unable to debrief his handlers, Ham alone knew at this time how grueling his flight had been. Flashbulbs and crowding newsmen made him highly agitated, and he snapped at several people. Back in his trailer, his suit was not removed until he became calm, and at that time a famous “grin” photograph was made. Later, when his handler led him back toward a capsule for pictures requested by the TV crews, Ham again became highly perturbed. It took three men to calm the “astrochimp” for the next round of pictures. On April 2, 1963, Ham was given to the National Zoological Park, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., where for the past several years he has been in good health and has thrilled many children.”

Also, this is pretty fucking grim, the early years of V-2 rockets with lesser primates as passengers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkeys_in_space#United_States

Oh, and while I’m at it,
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Pigs_in_Space

And now, to end my last gasp of this evening,
(Krusty the Klown mode on)
YOU PEOPLE MAKE ME SICK!!

 
 

“She reminds me of the stoopit, privileged people in Empire of the Sun who refused to eat the bugs in their rice (for the protein). When the shit really hits the fan, people like her will meet their same fate.”

Ooh! And one more post! And a fanatical devotion to the pope!

Christian Bale was in “Empire of the Sun.” He later ate bugs other prisoners wouldn’t eat in “Rescue Dawn.” Connect the dots, sheeple! Wheels within wheels!

Recent book about the life & POW period & escape & life of Dieter Dengler:

http://www.amazon.com/Hero-Found-Greatest-Escape-Vietnam/dp/0061571369

 
 

“The squirrels in the Heartland are a lot plumper that the scrawny little d00ds we have here in the Northeast.”

Heh. When my West Virginia-native grandfather came to live with us in New Jersey, he regretfully noted that fact…

 
 

Okay, I couldn’t get to sleep, but I finally finished the whole damned thing (BURP.)

The lessons being taught since Reagan, for those of you who weren’t paying attention:
Hey! Don’t be a librarian! Don’t work in the public sector!

(I fucked up the 2nd one.)

Yes, the world needs librarians. And librarians have never made much.

That being said, T&U, you have a Masters? Apply for a job at the VA. Not VHA, but the VBA divsion They keep hiring. Agent Orange & PTSD are about to crush them. Very much hep with the hiring. An ability to wade through picayune bullshit in the libr. science world? Same thing. And the pay is better than what you speak of, eventually. (And there are bigger cankles than yours in the workplace.)

Also, they might let you leave early to go vote.

Pere Ubu dun wrote:
“And our parents, in addition to pensions and careers, had unions. Strong unions.”

Yeah, how come we never hear about that? All the fapping to The Greatest Generation That Won the War, and the loverly 50’s? Hmm, aren’t those the same folks that won the Flint sit-down strike against GM in the 30’s? And had US labor participation in unions at a high water mark in the 50’s and 60’s?

I think this is also related to both parties being completely asleep at the wheel about illegal immigration. There’s been no lobby for working class people on this issue, just two parties, one ruthlessly pro-business and home to racists, and one fairly pro-business, and also pro-anti-racism/pro-diversity (and home to Latino voters.) But neither all that pro-blue-collar

 
 

T&U wrote re. Monsanto
“The fact that they like to target poor farmers in non-industrialized areas makes it even sicker.”

Er, are you talking 3rd world? Because most farmers are in non-industrialized areas, and many aren’t so rich, even in the first world.

Some other post:
Who knows Chuck Norris? Take it from your mole in Red State bible thumpy land:

Youngsters of the white rural variety know Chuck Norris right now — as patriotic right wing pundit who’s standing strong against commanism and they-gonna-teek-ur-gurns.

T&U wrote:
“Here’s the thing about vacations, too…um, since when is vacation a luxury, at least for the middle class? I would argue that, for a lot of people, it’s a fucking necessity. But we treat it like it’s extravagant bullshit.”

To our chattering classes, vacation time — not expensive trips, just the right to not be at your job a few wks/yr — is not for the little people. These people point at France & other Continental countries and snicker at them for taking 4-6 wks of vacations with their families in the summer. (Supposedly, Amurricans care about their families, but time together isn’t as important as slaving away for designer clothing or the newest video game.)

What I find unsurprising and very corn pone opinionish about it all is that the chattering classes and the Villagers, all upper middle class or higher, are themselves entitled to those kinds of vacations rights.

Assholes.

A right to work? Hoo boy, that’s idealistic. I work in a federal environment, and let’s just say, at the lower pay scales, in some cases, we’re a sheltered workshop. It all sounds well and good that these folks have a job, but it is absolutely maddening when they fuck up the rest of the workflow for you. And nothing can be done about it. Can’t make them less stupid, can’t fire them. We used to have factories and textile mills for these folks, but in my workplace, sorry, we don’t have much room for you, and you’re fucking up the process from the git-go.

 
 

Chris preached:

“I’m still somewhat amazed to read the history of the Great Depression; and how it had the entire country – North and South, city and country, WASPs and minorities – united behind Roosevelt in saying “Fuck off and give us our country back” to Wall Street. I don’t think there’s ever been such a broad consensus ever before or since in American history.”

As I saw the crisis come crashing down on us, then the attempts to stem the tide of the waters rushing in, and I saw how many dumb motherfuckers wanted to stand around and bleat that berms and dikes and sandbags and shovels are stoopit, I realized — this crisis wasn’t big enough or bad enough for blue collar and middle-middle class useful idiots of the GOP/Fox/Koch-Tea world to realize they can’t afford this shit anymore.

I guess it takes 25% unemployment. Or, for the selfish and psychopathic and empathy-hating, they themselves losing their own fucking job.

 
 

g said:
“Hell, there were probably applicants who had great PeopleSoft skills, but the short list was whittled down to those who had the BEST PeopleSoft skills.”

Or, the list was whittled down to those who told the most fantastical lies about their PeopleSoft skills.

 
 

tsam dun wrote:
“I’m glad to know that the CEO of my electric company is making several million dollars per year while a wide section of his fucking “clients” are struggling to pay the bill. The cable company too. And my cell provider. Internet provider. Car insurance company. Health insurance company. Whoever the assholes are who are investing and taking fees from my 401k.”

A fucking men!

There’s just nobody around in American politics anymore who is willing to stand up and yell PARASITE! Supposedly, capitalism is what this all is, and nothing else is possible, and you can’t fight city hall or the Magic Hand, now there there, we’re all better off in the long run. Now shaddup, yer Mistah Consumah.

What irks the shit out of me is that more and more consumers get BONED by the weaselroonies of the “finance” sector of our economy (pawn shops, rent to own, bullshit mortgages/Mr. Cash, credit cards) and more and more % points of consumer spending winds up being dollars they couldn’t spend at normal, real bricks’n’mortar/mom’n’pop business living in the non-bullshit world. Just because some folks are getting rich off the bullshit and live in McMansions, doesn’t mean we wouldn’t be better off having an economy with less bullshit in it.

Wait! I’ve got it! We’ll build more aquariums and casinos! And have a state lottery to support education, kinda!

We are moving further and further away from Hank Hill, the proud peddler of Sweet Lady Propane, and closer and close to Henry Hill, Wiseguy.

 
 

Or, the list was whittled down to those who told the most fantastical lies about their PeopleSoft skills bribed the job interviewer or were willing to trade sexual favors for the right to work. Which is what the phrase “right to work” means coming from the mouth of a Republican.

 
 

Now, to paraphrase Daniel Plainview, Oilman:

I DRINK YOUR BLOG COMMENTS! I DRINK THEM UP!

and…

I’M FINISHED!

 
 

“I’M FINISHED!”

A happy ending I take it?

 
 

Don’t work in the public sector!

(I fucked up the 2nd one.)

But wasn’t it teh , ousted czars that were who buggered up the public sector? I think the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ here describes many elected officials and political appoinees. Then, as in this case they spend a quarter million (1980’s dollars) in Legal fees revewing appeals of every ‘czarist’ bum they might have to unseat.

The question is how do these people keep comming to the top of the list for being the right person for a job in the public sector, even if the conflict of interest laws forbid it?

Public sector Business Agents are different sort of wonderment, more like a political apointee through the revolving door darkly secnario…

 
 

Bilo said,

September 23, 2010 at 9:29

Now, to paraphrase Daniel Plainview, Oilman:

I DRINK YOUR BLOG COMMENTS! I DRINK THEM UP!

and…

I’M FINISHED!

You are posting too awesomely, please speed up!

WordPress

 
 

How has the goddamn GOP not been hit with RICO charges?

Mother of mercy, can this be the teabag or RICO?

 
 

Slow down
You post too fast
You’ve got to make
This dumb thread last

Yada yadada yada
Feelin’ Sadly!

 
 

How has the goddamn GOP not been hit with RICO charges?
Mother of mercy, can this be the teabag or RICO?

A private citizen can claim damages under RICO, if they convince a Judge they were damaged by something like this.

 
 

Some reason this didn’t link.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_political_corruption_probe

 
 

Surprising and typical simultaneously:

Cadillac is doing its best to secure its spot in the ever-growing Chinese auto market, and according to sources culled by Automobile, the luxury marque may have even gone so far as to sponsor a documentary on the rise of the communist party in the People’s Republic.

Depending on which translation you believe, the name of the film is either “The Birth of a Party” or “The Great Achievement of Founding the Party” (both are pretty catchy) and the sponsorship is part of a drive to get the word out about its long-wheel base SLS.

Workers and peasants unite! You have nothing to lose but less luxurious cars more fuel efficient vehicles without 150 mpg capability and our edgy angle-cut style!

 
 

Jennifer said

For our business, we’ve set a goal of having everyone who works for us up to a wage of $15/hour within the next year, which is not a horrible wage for warehouse/packing work or secretarial work where we are. And if we can, to raise good loyal employees higher. It’s not going to break us to do it; we just won’t make quite as much as the owners as we would otherwise, but I don’t want people who work for me worrying about where the money for groceries is going to come from.

Wasn’t your company somehow related to food services? I remember something about school lunches being one things you told you marketed (or am I mistaken? If so, ignore the rest)

Have you considered some sort of system for employees to be allowed to purchase food (ready made or ingredients) from the company for chaper? I think you get them cheaper since you buy larger amounts, and you could still sell them at the same cost to the workers, allowing them to get cheaper food. That might be easier (take less money) to do then straight wage raises, and a special help to people who need the money to groceries. Sort of give them more, but cheaper. (you can still improve the wages of course) It also savesthem time, because they can get food for the home at work, so maybe they won’t need to stop at supermarket. And if it is ready done, save time there too.

I’ve seen some setups where people making food (for schools for example) could then take home portions the same food to eat themselves for nominal cost.

 
 

Whoops! I meant mph, definitely not mpg, else I’d be saving up for a Cadillac. Actually, no I wouldn’t, because it takes so much energy and pollutant and AGW gases to build a new car (in addition to cash I don’t got none of), it’s worse than keeping an older, less fuel efficient vehicle.

 
 

This morning’s music while working alone from 6:30 AM until other people show up around 8:45: the Kinks.

Hatred, hatred, it’s the only thing that keeps us together.
Hatred, hatred, it’s the only thing that lasts forever.

 
 

This morning’s music while working alone from 6:30 AM until other people show up around 8:45: the Kinks.

This morning’s news- Kinks.

Eddie Long, high profile preacher outspoken against homo-ness faces allegations against three men who were groomed as teens to be his playthings.

 
 

Eddie Long, high profile preacher outspoken against homo-ness faces allegations against three men who were groomed as teens to be his playthings.

Groomed…BONOBO STYLE!

I hope he ate all the lice her removed.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

That being said, T&U, you have a Masters? Apply for a job at the VA. Not VHA, but the VBA divsion They keep hiring. Agent Orange & PTSD are about to crush them. Very much hep with the hiring. An ability to wade through picayune bullshit in the libr. science world? Same thing. And the pay is better than what you speak of, eventually.”

I have an ability to do it, yes. Do I want to do it? Not really.

But yeah, I’ve considered that. I’m currently in a health care environment (academic, but still) and it’s a chance to make a teeny bit of difference. Maybe.

“The fact that they like to target poor farmers in non-industrialized areas makes it even sicker.”

Er, are you talking 3rd world? Because most farmers are in non-industrialized areas, and many aren’t so rich, even in the first world.

Well, I was talking specifically about the third world, but yeah, non-conglomerate farmers here in the US don’t have it that great, either.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

ITAAAAALIIIIIIIIIIIIIICS!

 
 

ITAAAAALIIIIIIIIIIIIIICS!

This IS TYPOGRAPHY! [kicks italics into the bottomless pit]

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

“I saw someone with the boot you have walking! Are you sure you can’t walk?”

“No, I can’t.”

“Wellllll, why was he walking on his?”

“Because he has a different injury.”

“But it looked exactly the same.”

“Yes, sometimes people can walk on them. I cannot. My orthopaedic surgeon told me I can’t. It hurts badly if I put my foot down at all.”

“Wellll, I just thought maybe you could.”

Yeah, because not being able to walk is AWESOME and I’m TOTALLY FAKING IT.

 
 

“Why are you only wearing one boot?”

“Because I’ve only hurt one leg.”

“But boots come in pairs.”

“Actually it’s a tribute to Michael Jackson and his painkillers.”

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I giggled.

I finally just looked at her and said, “I broke all three bones in my ankle. They move around if I put weight on them. If I walk in this boot, I will be permanently disabled.”

Then Front Desk Marine was kind enough to intercede before I strangled her and told her that the same boot is used for various injuries.

 
 

As I saw the crisis come crashing down on us, then the attempts to stem the tide of the waters rushing in, and I saw how many dumb motherfuckers wanted to stand around and bleat that berms and dikes and sandbags and shovels are stoopit, I realized — this crisis wasn’t big enough or bad enough for blue collar and middle-middle class useful idiots of the GOP/Fox/Koch-Tea world to realize they can’t afford this shit anymore.

I guess it takes 25% unemployment. Or, for the selfish and psychopathic and empathy-hating, they themselves losing their own fucking job.

Yeah, but even then, my impression is that no matter how things get, the party line will continue to be that it was government, poor people and minorities that fucked us over and the answer is more business. Not sure how to reverse that trend, and not too happy that it exists in the first place.

 
 

I guess it takes 25% unemployment. Or, for the selfish and psychopathic and empathy-hating, they themselves losing their own fucking job.

Two things:

1) The media back then was not complicit in the “Don’t look at the crash! Look at the clown car!” meme

2) People didn’t have the internet to wander off onto.

3) The country was not as united as you think. Nor did it have unemployment and welfare as insurance policies.

OK, three things…

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Yeah, but even then, my impression is that no matter how things get, the party line will continue to be that it was government, poor people and minorities that fucked us over and the answer is more business. Not sure how to reverse that trend, and not too happy that it exists in the first place.

Um, until the blaming reaches fever-pitch and shit is really fucked and people are all like “WHO COULD’VE KNOWN???” and then maybe it’ll settle down a little while until the next time.

That’s my theory, anyway.

 
 

Mother of mercy, can this be the teabag or RICO?

RICO?

Suave!

 
 

The bread is much tastier and the circuses are much more entertaining than they were back in the ’30s too.

 
 

Shit, now that I’ve had a little bit of sleep, I remember I should have said this:

(Charlton Heston mode on)

MONSANTO GMO SOYBEANS ARE MADE OF PEEEEE-OPLE!!!

(Charlton Heston mode off)

El Cid Said Fred:
“Yeah, but even then, my impression is that no matter how things get, the party line will continue to be that it was government, poor people and minorities that fucked us over and the answer is more business. Not sure how to reverse that trend, and not too happy that it exists in the first place.”

Sadly, yep.

 
 

I must say, 77South, these bread & circuses are fucking awesome! In my day, we didn’t get to peek up starlets’ skirts! We had three TV channels and we liked it! Weeee loved it!

I had a thought last week, now that vagina flashing paparazzi pics are passee, good gawd, what’s next? Have we had any celebrity’s butthole forced upon us?* (Other than what spews out of Mel Gibson’s mouth?)

* VRJ ref

 
 

We had three TV channels and we liked it! Weeee loved it!

Three?

LOOXURY!

We only had PBS.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Meh. Whatever. I don’t even have a TV.

 
 

T&U, you can make a teeny bit of a difference in the VBA half of the VA, too. For starters, we need more smart people. Also, if you have a socialistic bone (or little man in a boat) in your body, why, you get to be part of a machine that flings $$$ at poor, blue collar, and middle class people!

I know one socialistic fellow who liked that part of the job; he’s now retired. Me, I’m not that far gone. I still am a bit of a stickler about the rules and paying those who are entitled under the laws & regs, and not those who don’t happen to be.

Ooh! What a giveway! Yeah, I work in the belly of said particular beast.

 
 

Meh. Whatever. I don’t even have a TV.

Why do you hate America so?

 
 

I still am a bit of a stickler about the rules and paying those who are entitled under the laws & regs, and not those who don’t happen to be.

In Russia, rules stickler you.

 
 

How bad is the Republican “Pledge To America” (aka “Wax On, Whack Off”)?

Irky Irksome thinks it’s teh suck

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Why do you hate America so?

More time for my socialist sewing circle!

 
 

More time for my socialist sewing circle!

So, no more Mister Nice Guy, Alice?

 
 

Shorter Republican Pledge to America:

Step one: steal underpants
Step two: ?????
Step three: PROFIT!!!

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

So, no more Mister Nice Guy, Alice?

I don’t get it, aside from the Alice Cooper reference.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

“Pledge To America”

Sounds familiar.

 
 

Gah! This thread is still going?

Nice to see people have been addressing the new GOP “Pledge” (sines your tables and destroys the middle class, all in one!). Just further grist for my “it’s 1994 all over again” mill.

 
 

or even shines your tables.

Mars needs coffee.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Mars needs coffee.

Could you please get some for me? I can’t really manage coffee and my scooter at the same time.

 
 

Could you please get some for me? I can’t really manage coffee and my scooter at the same time.

Anyone who figures out how to deliver coffee over TCP/IP will make billions.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Anyone who figures out how to deliver coffee over TCP/IP will make billions.

That and/or beer.

 
 

I don’t get it, aside from the Alice Cooper reference.

My dog bit me on the leg today
My cat clawed my eye
My mom’s been thrown out of the social circle
My dad’s had to hide

In context

 
 

or even shines your tables.

I liked “sines” better.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Oh, okay.

 
 

Oh, okay.

The lyric reads “social circle” but Cooper clearly sings “socialist circle”.

 
 

Remember when Alice Cooper was the most evil man in America and bound to corrupt an entire generation of children?

Wonder how that worked out.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Remember when Alice Cooper was the most evil man in America and bound to corrupt an entire generation of children?

No, but I remember when Marylin Manson was.

Wonder how that worked out, too.

 
 

Mars needs coffee.

On Mars, there are no women.

Truly one of the best albums ever.

 
 

Hey…my forum is finally seeing some action now that’s it not just boring old me and a sausage fest. All it took was the addition of a handful of horny wimmin. Who knew? Actually I think everyone does: the Internet counts on that dynamic. That and Ladies Night.

 
 

All it took was the addition of a handful of horny wimmin.

*closing Sadly, No! window*

 
 

Remember when Alice Cooper was the most evil man in America and bound to corrupt an entire generation of children?

Wonder how that worked out.

The Overton Window moved so far he’s now considered a religious conservative.

No. I’m serious!

 
 

a sausage fest.

Is that what kids are calling it these days?

 
 

When asked by the British Sunday Times newspaper in 2001 how a shock-rocker could be a Christian, Cooper is credited with providing this response “Drinking beer is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy. But being a Christian, that’s a tough call. That’s real rebellion!”

Yeah, ’cause Christianity is just so damn oppressed worldwide. *sigh*

 
 

Yeah, ’cause Christianity is just so damn oppressed worldwide.

I think he was referring to being a Christian shock rocker, not a mundane Christian.

I wonder…when he bites the head off a chicken these days if he has to drop and give the Lord twenty?

 
 

Cooper described Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin as “a breath of fresh air”

Once a clown show, always a clown show.

 
 

Cooper described Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin as “a breath of fresh air”

Once a clown show, always a clown show.

I took that to mean the consummate show man was appaluding her showmanship.

 
 

Once I learned he both golfed and voted republican, I gave up on Alice Cooper. Actually either one of those would have been enough.

 
 

Golfing doesn’t bother me. Being a rethuglican, that I can’t get past.

 
 

Golfing is a pretty serious flaw. Thundra, you will pay!

 
 

Once I learned he both golfed and voted republican, I gave up on Alice Cooper

For me, it was the golf.

I know a lot of people who golf. I’ve told every single one of them I respected them a lot less for golfing. Four guys practicing with their putts is hardly my idea of a sport.

 
 

More fun from Texas:

It appeared that Texas had finished battling over textbooks — with social conservatives winning a clear victory in May — but the Texas State Board of Education is taking up another explosive curriculum question: Are Texan youth being fed a sugar-coated version of Islam while Christianity is unfairly taken to task for its sins?

At a three-day meeting that started Wednesday, the board is scheduled to consider a resolution that would require it to reject textbooks that it determines are tainted with teaching “pro-Islamic, anti-Christian half-truths and selective disinformation,” a bias that it argues is reflected in current schoolbooks.

[snip]

One of his supporters was board member Don McLeroy, a key player in pushing through changes to economics and history curriculum standards for public school students in May. Among those changes were provisions calling for curriculum to emphasize the importance of capitalism, raise doubts that the doctrine of separation of church and state is embedded in the Constitution and cover “the unintended consequences” of progressive “Great Society” legislation, affirmative action and Title IX, a 1972 act that mandated equal access to federally funded programs for girls, most notably for sports programs.

They’re complaining that Islam gets more coverage in texts than Christianity. I wonder if that could possibly be because your average American kids knows about Juses, while not so much about Islam (especially with people trying to outright lie about it)?

 
 

Wonder how that worked out.

All those kids became Republicans.

So yeah, corrupted.

 
 

They’re complaining that Islam gets more coverage in texts than Christianity.

Especially in maths. Ever read a book in math? It’s all about al-Gebra, while counting the angels on the head of a pin gets nothing, NOTHING!

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I know a lot of people who golf. I’ve told every single one of them I respected them a lot less for golfing. Four guys practicing with their putts is hardly my idea of a sport.

It is when you’re my 89-year-old grandfather.

 
 

It is when you’re my 89-year-old grandfather.

Even at that age, I plan to have better holes to smack my putts into.

 
 

Pere beat me to it…but I found this superlative bit of st00pit in the CBS article:

“Diverse reviewers have repeatedly documented gross pro-Islamic, anti-Christian distortions in social studies texts,” reads a draft of the resolution, which would not be binding on future boards that will choose the state’s next generation of social studies texts.

 
 

Actually either one of those would have been enough.

I play golf.

 
 

Oh, and evidently there’s dirty furriners pushing pro-Islamic brainwashing in textbooks:

It also predicts that “more discriminatory treatment of religion” may occur as more “Middle Easterners buy into the U.S. public school textbook oligopoly” — a reference to an investment by the Dubai royal family that gave it a minority stake in major K-12 textbook publishers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Harcourt Education.

The New York Times on Thursday quoted a spokesman for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt as saying the family’s investment arm, Istithmar World Capital, lost its stake in the publishing house after the publishing company restructured its debt earlier this year.

butbut but the international Mooslimite conspiracy!

 
 

All it took was the addition of a handful of horny wimmin.

Interwebz 101.

 
 

I play golf.

I sleep. I get better exercise.

 
 

I play golf.

Shameless admissions of foul crimes are expected from golfers.

 
 

It also predicts that “more discriminatory treatment of religion” may occur as more “Middle Easterners buy into the U.S. public school textbook oligopoly” — a reference to an investment by the Dubai royal family that gave it a minority stake in major K-12 textbook publishers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Harcourt Education.

And yet, these same jackasses have no problem with Muslims being the second largest bloc of shareholders in Fox…

 
 

Are Texan youth being fed a sugar-coated version of Islam while Christianity is unfairly taken to task for its sins?

Even asking the question in that way, let alone setting up a commission to investigate it, gives away the answer before it’s even given. The commission knows what to look for, they’ll find it whether it’s actually there or not.

(Not to mention that “pro-Islamic and anti-Christian” in GOP-speak usually means that the two religions are being given an equal treatment).

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I play golf.

*pat* It’s okay, Tsam. I still respect you. The only problem I have with golf is that it gives old white dudes an excuse to entertain themselves for hours and pretend like it’s important.

 
 

And yet, these same jackasses have no problem with Muslims being the second largest bloc of shareholders in Fox…

Say hello to Objectivism in practice, actor.

 
 

I golf.

Something about gripping your shaft with both hands and then giving it a powerful stroke, shooting your white blob off in a graceful arc towards the hole – that speaks to me.

j/k. Golf? Fuck that noise.

 
 

Something about gripping your shaft with both hands and then giving it a powerful stroke, shooting your white blob off in a graceful arc towards the hole – that speaks to me.

It doesn’t help that your mom is referred to as “The 19th Hole”

 
 

There’s a whole buffet of stoopit in that article, including the “fact” that the liberal interfaith group in Texas who objected to the Islamophobic whining of the school board is acting under SEEKRIT ORDERS from CAIR. (oooh skeery!)

 
 

My dog bit me on the leg today
My cat clawed my eye

Dog Bite
on my leg
Not right!
supposed to beg …

(DK gulf oil spill video)

 
 

A pre-Millennial who likes rap?

Rapper’s Delight went gold in 1979, so there are at least a couple oldsters who like the hippity hop.

Yeah, but even then, my impression is that no matter how things get, the party line will continue to be that it was government, poor people and minorities that fucked us over and the answer is more business. Not sure how to reverse that trend, and not too happy that it exists in the first place.

I think the stupid stereotypes the right are selling only work when the numbers of people affected stay relatively low; as soon as a majority know a person or are themselves affected, they become a lot less likely to buy the whole “it’s only because lazy poor minorities.” Or maybe I should say “I hope” that’s the case.

 
 

There’s a whole buffet of stoopit in that article, including the “fact” that the liberal interfaith group in Texas who objected to the Islamophobic whining of the school board is acting under SEEKRIT ORDERS from CAIR. (oooh skeery!)

If you don’t agree that Christianity is the best religion ever and deserves a special status under American law, then you’re anti-Christian.

If you want all religions to be treated equally, that makes you anti-Christian and undly pro-everything else.

If you want Islam to be treated with anything other than open loathing, you’re an agent of CAIR.

Conservatism in a nutshell; it’s unfair to me that you don’t recognize that I’m better than everyone else. Same thing applies with the “American exceptionalism” crap, where if you don’t believe America is the only true free and good country in the world, then you hate America – of if you blame America at all, you’re “blaming America first.”

 
 

*pat* It’s okay, Tsam. I still respect you. The only problem I have with golf is that it gives old white dudes an excuse to entertain themselves for hours and pretend like it’s important.

It’s fun to drink beer, drunk drive a cart with your friends and totally suck at the bullshit game. It’s a social thing for me.

The old white dude thing is a stupid trope. It’s far from true anymore. Caddyshack destroyed that in the late ’70s.

 
 

Dog Bite
on my leg
Not right!
supposed to beg …

Daily to the filling station
Underwater navigation

Love that album.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

The old white dude thing is a stupid trope. It’s far from true anymore. Caddyshack destroyed that in the late ’70s.

No, I know. I just don’t like those particular guys. Everybody else is cool.

 
 

The old white dude thing is a stupid trope.

Take a look in the mirror, boy.

 
 

I play golf.
When I think of how much further along my career would be if I wasted my time with that …waste of time. I get a little upset. At every place have worked at since college (except Antarctica) golf was the ticket into the old boys club. I have seen putzes that I would not trust to pour piss out of a boot get promoted to positions of responsibility because of the schmoozing they do on the links.

 
 

I listened to Alice Cooper’s night time FM radio slot when driving home from work/gym and like it, a few years ago. Wikip. sayeth:

“He has avoided so called “celebrity Christianity” because, as Cooper states himself: “It’s really easy to focus on Alice Cooper and not on Christ. I’m a rock singer. I’m nothing more than that. I’m not a philosopher. I consider myself low on the totem pole of knowledgeable Christians. So, don’t look for answers from me.”

I’d say he’s fairly humble. He’s NOT Ted Fucking Nugent. Or Toby Keith issuing faty’alls about who is allowed to have a music career.

 
 

Take a look in the mirror, boy.

I golf. Have done so, off and on, since I was a teenager. It’s a game. It might even be a sport. As with tsam, for me it’s an excuse to go walk around a park with my buddies and drink beer. What’s not to like?

There’s a whole country-club thing that applies to the (real) elites who golf but that’s ‘way more about the dealmaking in the locker room and the 19th hole (not DKW’s mom) than it is about chasing a ball around a field.

Alice Cooper is an asshole because he’s a god-bothering republican, not because he golfs.

 
 

Golf is like bridge, being something you can do with people with whom you have little in common. eg. inlaws.

 
 

As with tsam, for me it’s an excuse to go walk around a park with my buddies and drink beer. What’s not to like?

The golf.

You need an excuse to walk around a park and drink beer?

 
 

I have seen putzes that I would not trust to pour piss out of a boot get promoted to positions of responsibility because of the schmoozing they do on the links.

Precisely why golf sucks. That and the fact 80 year old women can score a hole-in-one.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

What about miniature golf? I like that.

 
 

What about miniature golf? I like that.

Seconded!

 
 

That and the fact 80 year old women can score a hole-in-one.

Pfft, like you don’t help them do that all the time.

 
 

No, wait, you help them score one in the hole. Never mind.

 
 

Oh, i was wrong. It’s not seekrit orders from CAIR, it’s liberal Austin pastors who’re trying to destroy Christianity in favor of bloodthirsty Islam:

Conservatives at the Liberty Institute, a nonprofit that champions a conservative Christian agenda, quickly responded, attacking what they called “the usual band of Austin liberals.”

More U.S. news Texas debates ‘pro-Islamic’ bias in textbooks
The Texas State Board of Education, which ordered a series of controversial textbook changes in May, is taking up another explosive curriculum issue: the teaching of Islam in public schools. Full story
Updated 0 minutes ago Obama: Killing Israelis ‘is not resistance’ What to watch for at U.N.: Leaders who dislike U.S. Squatters move into upscale neighborhoods U.S. names nine troops killed in chopper crash “And I thought these liberal groups wanted separation of church and state, so why are they encouraging pastors to get involved in government decisions and using teaching of faith and morals to support their position?” said Liberty Institute attorney Jonathan Saenz in comments posted on the organization’s blog. “Once again, the double standard plagues the liberal left, particularly this same group of a handful of ‘Keep Austin Weird’ pastors.”

 
 

I like golf but to be good at it i would have to play a few rounds a week. At 5 hrs a round that’s some pretty hefty hours to put in for a hobby-sport. Conclusion: I don’t like golf enough to make it my part-time job. I’d rather spend it with my wife and kids (who are, separately and as a whole, more fun and frustrating than golf anyway.)

 
 

That and the fact 80 year old women can score a hole-in-one.

Athletes golf all their lives and never get an ace.

The Boys Clubs are the same, whether they frequent strip joints, play poker, hang out at cigar bars or whatever. Golf is something that businessmen do because it’s an excuse to not work. It’s far from the only excuse that “management” uses to get out of actually doing something.

 
 

No, wait, you help them score one in the hole. Never mind.

And one in the hole is worth two in the bush.

 
 

What about miniature golf? I like that.

I boycott miniature golf because the rules do not require the players to ride on miniature golf carts.

 
 

I’d rather spend it with my wife and kids (who are, separately and as a whole, more fun and frustrating than golf anyway.)

Yea, if I’m going to drive myself crazy over how to get it in the hole, I want the hole to at least be able to cook.

 
 

I boycott miniature golf because the rules do not require the players to ride on miniature golf carts.

Ooooh, T&U! I see a secondary market for your scooter!

 
 

I boycott miniature golf because the rules do not require the players to ride on miniature golf carts.

You do realize you’ve just written a magnificent business plan, don’t you, Mr. Engineer/Designer?

 
 

Yea, if I’m going to drive myself crazy over how to get it in the hole, I want the hole to at least be able to cook.

A hole-in-one every time. Never gets boring.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Yea, if I’m going to drive myself crazy over how to get it in the hole, I want the hole to at least be able to cook.

My vadge has never cooked for me!

Bitch.

 
 

I like golf but to be good at it i would have to play a few rounds a week. At 5 hrs a round that’s some pretty hefty hours to put in for a hobby-sport.

Yep, totally agree. These days, I play golf 1 – 3 times a year. The key is learning to enjoy the good shots while shrugging shoulders and moving on when ya duff one.

Actually, that’s a pretty good description of Actor’s sex life.

 
 

It’s far from the only excuse that “management” uses to get out of actually doing something.
It’s not dangerous enough. Nowhere near enough of the the petit bourgeois die from doing it. There simply aren’t enough lightning strikes to do the job. We as a society need to promote yachting, polo, and civilian aviation. Especially during storms.

 
 

My vadge has never cooked for me!

Have you tried buying it flowers?

 
 

I boycott miniature golf because the rules do not require the players to ride on miniature golf carts.

You do realize you’ve just written a magnificent business plan, don’t you, Mr. Engineer/Designer?

Feel free to take it. If it fails, not my problem. If it succeeds, I’ll hunt you down and kill mug you.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Have you tried buying it flowers?

Yeah, hasn’t worked.

May have to step it up to jewelry…

 
 

Actually, that’s a pretty good description of Actor’s sex life.

1 to 3 times a year?

Look, the doctor swore the antibiotics would work! This time.

STOP JUDGING ME!

 
 

May have to step it up to jewelry…

There’s always roofies.

 
 

I boycott miniature golf because the rules do not require the players to ride on miniature golf carts.
Golf would also be cooler if they had the same sort of obstacles as miniature golf only like 5 or 10 times bigger. Tee off and shoot 150 to the clock tower, and dogleg right 50 yards through the full size windmill. Ooh, looks like your shot landed in the hippopotamus pool. Tough luck. Play it where it lies, you big sissy, they hardly ever bite.

 
 

Just remember – “golf” spelled backwards is “flog”.

 
 

Feel free to take it. If it fails, not my problem. If it succeeds, I’ll hunt you down and kill mug you.

Ahhh capitalism. I’m feeling a strong urge to attach a flag lapel pin. I’m wearing a t-shirt though. I guess I’m an American’t.

 
 

There’s always roofies.

I don’t recommend cooking under the influence of rohypnol.

 
 

Golf would also be cooler if they had the same sort of obstacles as miniature golf only like 5 or 10 times bigger.

With full contact.

 
 

Golf would also be cooler if they had the same sort of obstacles as miniature golf only like 5 or 10 times bigger. Tee off and shoot 150 to the clock tower, and dogleg right 50 yards through the full size windmill. Ooh, looks like your shot landed in the hippopotamus pool. Tough luck. Play it where it lies, you big sissy, they hardly ever bite.

Mix it with laser tag! Holy shit–I think we’re on to something here. I’ll send out the LLC paperwork today.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

There’s always roofies.

See, I was setting you up for a much less creepy joke. Should have known better.

 
 

I’d rather spend it with my wife and kids (who are, separately and as a whole, more fun and frustrating than golf anyway.)

You also don’t feel guilty about spending time with the family.

I generally only golf with the inlaws – Repubs, literally all of them – so kind of everyone wins, because I do my duty and spend time with the inlaws and you get to say friendly shit like “nice putt” and “have a mulligan”, instead of getting into a political foodfight.

That we have later, always kicked off by some assrag making a disparaging remark to my Dem wife and I get all protective and give it my best Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and then we have to leave.

Next day, a new round of golf, and no-one talks about the previous evening’s meltdown. So the game does have a purpose of sorts.

 
 

I don’t recommend cooking under the influence of rohypnol.

You sound experienced.

 
 

Just remember – “golf” spelled backwards is “flog”.

Oh–well now I’ve just developed an unreasonable hatred for the game. Thanks.

 
 

I’m feeling a weak moment… Meggers actually looks kinda cute in that picture. Then again, she is right next to some damned, dirty apes. So that helps.

 
 

My vadge has never cooked for me!

It’s lunchtime, so I’ll refrain from making the joke I was going to make.

May have to step it up to jewelry…

I thought you’d already vajazzled?

There’s always roofies.

There’s only one dish you’ll get that way.

 
 

Meggers actually looks kinda cute in that picture. Then again, she is right next to some damned, dirty apes. So that helps

The apes are smarter, though.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Oh–well now I’ve just developed an unreasonable hatred for the game. Thanks.

You mean endless mocking *does* work to help change people’s minds??? YAY!

 
 

You sound experienced.

Well it really wasn’t much of an experience. She just laid there, even after I got the pork chops out of the fridge for her.

 
 

I’ve just developed an unreasonable hatred for the game.

And it got more interesting to me…

 
 

She just laid there, even after I got the pork chops out of the fridge for her.

You’re supposed to stick them in her oven.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

You’re supposed to stick them in her oven.

You’re gross today.

I mean, even more than usual.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Katy Perry gets kicked off Sesame Street for daring to have boobies

It’s not like the Sesame Street set wasn’t face-to-face with boobies that long ago.

 
 

Katy Perry gets kicked off Sesame Street for daring to have boobies

The Today Show had a clip of the video.

I thought the whole thing was silly. I mean, my god, cleavage! AHHHHHHHHHH! The terrorists won!

 
 

Carl Spackler: So I jump ship in Hong Kong and I make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas.

Angie D’Annunzio: A looper?

Carl Spackler: A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I’m a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald… striking. So, I’m on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one – big hitter, the Lama – long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga… gunga, gunga-lagunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he’s gonna stiff me. And I say, “Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.” And he says, “Oh, uh, there won’t be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.” So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice.

 
 

I have seen putzes that I would not trust to pour piss out of a boot

What I want to know is who put the pis into the boot? Nobody ever addresses that.

 
 

or piss, too.

Also.

 
 

The apes are smarter, though.

And as previously noted, one of them has obvious breasts.

 
 

What I want to know is who put the pis into the boot? Nobody ever addresses that.

Le Manneken Pis, of course.

 
 

Tant pis.

 
 

But some felt it was too revealing for the kid set.

What, are they afraid the little tykes might try to suckle the TV? Sheesh. Boobs: most children have seen them.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I need a nap and/or a new thread.

 
 

Oh, also, too, so that T&U doesn’t feel all ignored and all:

My vadge has never cooked for me!

Honey, I bet yours is cookin’ all the time.

 
 

What, are they afraid the little tykes might try to suckle the TV? Sheesh. Boobs: most children have seen them.

But it’s cleeeeeeeeeavge! It’ll turn our children into perverted Muslims if they see it!

 
Thundra's Closest to the Pin Trophy
 

Golfing is a pretty serious flaw. Thundra, you will pay!

Be a hater if you must but have a heart and rate for the player, if not the game.

 
 

Here’s my story of the day:

I got a visit from city code enforcement yesterday, apparently because there are some echinacea plants in my front flowerbed that are done for the year and dried out with their seedheads; I leave them there because the birds come and eat the seeds. Well, apparently, one of my neighbors doesn’t like that, so instead of coming to talk to me about it, they called the city. The code officer said they thought it was a pretty sutpid compalint but according to the code, I have to go out and chop down these plants; I have 7 days to do it. I’m pretty sure I know who made the call; there’s this old fat bitch who moved in catty-corner across the street about 5 years ago and sits around the house all day thinking of ways to be a bitch (one time she came out and screamed at some kids for riding their bikes on the sidewalk in front of her house). I’m pretty sure she made the call.

So anyway, I read over this “warning” that the city gave me. It says, no “uncultivated plants, grass, or weeds over 10″ tall.”

So guess where I’m going to put in a vegetable garden next year? Right on the fucking FRONT LAWN. I’m gonna grow corn, I’m gonna grow okra, I’m gonna grow tomatoes, I’m gonna grow pole beans…in the front yard. As long as it’s “cultivated”, it’s allowed by the code.

And in front of this garden, I’m going to put up a sign that says, “Mrs. Kravitz, the next time you have an “issue”, perhaps you should come TALK TO ME ABOUT IT. Enjoy the view.”

And if it WASN’T the old fat bitch, the Mrs. Kravitz sign will still apply. Fuck you, motherfucker. I can be an asshole, too.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Honey, I bet yours is cookin’ all the time.

Thanks!

Um, I think?

 
 

Who pisses into a boot? Secondhand camping story: fussy Englishman who used a container to pee into in his tent at night. He reached out the tent flap and poured out the pee. Unbeknownst to him at the time, into his waterproof boot. The next morning, he jammed his foot into…

Speaking of the lovely Katy Perry, I just learned this new malaprop/Archie Bunkerism on the NP&R: cleaverage.

 
 

I’m gonna grow corn, I’m gonna grow okra, I’m gonna grow tomatoes, I’m gonna grow pole beans…in the front yard. As long as it’s “cultivated”, it’s allowed by the code.

So why does the echinacea not count as “cultivated”?

 
 

Pere – apparently because it’s done for the season & dried out.

 
 

My beef with golf isn’t that it’s the pastime of choice for upper-management dickheads – although I’d prefer they indulge in some lovely Russian Roulette instead – it’s that whole “needlessly destroying millions of acres of prime agricultural land” thing. Eating seems preferable to beating the shit out of a little ball with sticks to me – I’m just wacky that way.

Boobs: most children have seen them.

A lot of the nincompoops who baaaaawed about Perry’s outfit would probably pitch a fit if she’d been wearing a fucking burqa, if her ankles were exposed. The same crowd that once put covers on piano-legs is still with us today.

Remember when Whitney Houston’s titty was going to destroy America? Good thing she didn’t whip BOTH OF THEM out.

 
 

Since nothing seems to be happening here, I’ll remind you that today is the anniversary of the siege of Tripolitsa.

Also, PENIS?

 
 

My vadge has never cooked for me!

Honey, I bet yours is cookin’ all the time.

http://thebloggess.com/?p=8429

Check out the fish tacos towards the end…

 
 

jim – /pedant mode on/ It was Janet Jackson’s titty, not Whitney Houston’s. Whitney’s probably would have scarred little children for life./pedant mode off/

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Check out the fish tacos towards the end…

WRONGFUL.

 
 

It’s come to this! Titty pedantry!

If there’s one reason I like living in the heartland with the Real Murricans, it’s not having to put up with city titty pedantry!

 
 

no “uncultivated plants, grass, or weeds over 10? tall.”

So chop ’em down and leave ’em in the yard for the birdies. They wouldn’t be over 10″ tall if they’re laying on the ground, right?

 
 

If there’s one reason I like living in the heartland with the Real Murricans, it’s not having to put up with city titty pedantry!

Well it isn’t much…

You could call it itty bitty city titty pedantry.

 
 

So chop ‘em down and leave ‘em in the yard for the birdies. They wouldn’t be over 10? tall if they’re laying on the ground, right?

They ARE biodegradable.

 
 

Pedant with a side of snide

It’s Janet. Miss Jackson if ya nasty.

 
 

Meggers actually looks kinda cute in that picture.

You think? I keep meaning to ask Tintin if he photoshopped the black, soulless eyes, or if that was McMegan’s real look.

 
 

It says, no “uncultivated plants, grass, or weeds over 10? tall.”

Flowers in a flower garden aren’t uncultivated, even when they’re spent, so I think they’re full of shit. If you don’t want the hassle of calling them on it, cut them down, tie them in bunches, and hang them decoratively someplace where your kind neighbor is sure to see them. Hell, you could probably leave the bunches in your garden, bunched like little hay teepees.

 
 

Oh, I’m goning to leave them for the birdies.

And next spring, I’m going to plow up the front yard and plant vegetables.

 
 

What also sucks is that if you are over 50 or have been laid off for a long period of time, some companies will not even bother to look at your resume.

 
 

What also sucks is that if you are over 50 or have been laid off for a long period of time, some companies will not even bother to look at your resume.

I fail to see what this has to do with golf, boobies or fish tacos.

 
 

So, I checked out the Siege of Tripolitsa, Because, hey, it’s its anniversary right? Turns out its not an event I want to celebrate. Up to 30000 Turks and Jews were tortured and slaughtered when the city fell.

 
 

Important!

Today on Frank Gaffney’s Secure Freedom Radio, Congressman Trent Franks of AZ and the House Armed Services Committee joins Frank to discuss the threat to the United States of an electro-magnetic pulse attack. Could the U.S. electrical grid withstand a geo-magnetic electrical storm or a rogue electro-magnetic pulse attack?

Note that Magneto is still at large.

 
 

Up to 30000 Turks and Jews were tortured and slaughtered when the city fell.

So then we can expect Glenn Blech to talk it up on his radio show today?

 
 

Note that Magneto is still at large.

He’s a Juses last time I looked. Why would he work for the Big Green Menace?

 
 

MTV puts on a clinic in headline writing:

‘Sesame Street’ Jerks Katy Perry Off The Air Because Of Her Boobs

 
 

Substance McGravitas said,
September 23, 2010 at 19:39

At least once a day, I read something here that makes me laugh out loud. Every once in a while, like just now, I’m at work when that happens. No regrets.

 
 

He’s a Juses last time I looked.

You need a lesson in race-traitoringness – OR ARE YOU REALLY RAHM EMMANUEL?!?!?

 
 

Note that Magneto is still at large.

Also: GAY.

Hey, maybe he can tell us how fucking magnets work(s)!

 
 

Note that Magneto is still at large.

Do not play golf with Magneto. Especially if you rely on your irons for approach shots.

 
Marion in Savannah
 

I’m bored at work. Can haz new thred, plz?

 
 

You need a lesson in race-traitoringness – OR ARE YOU REALLY RAHM EMMANUEL?!?!?

I saw him called “Imam Rahm” somewhere last night. Sad.

 
 

I’m bored at work. Can haz new thred, plz?
How about we just have another pointless argument?
I’ll start.
I do not like to eat seafood (except for calamari) and anyone who says or believes otherwise is not only wrong but morally compromised.

 
 

I do not like to eat seafood (except for calamari) and anyone who says or believes otherwise

I say you DO like to eat seafood.

 
 

I say you DO like to eat seafood.

Like we needed more proof that SMcG was morally compromised.

 
 

how when a conservative admits to “dabbling” in something like witchcraft as a teenager it’s a big scandal

My God, it’s not just that but at PJTV… they actually believe that liberals are scandalized at O’Donnell because she dabbled in witchcraft. (As opposed to terrified by the notion of people in government who believe witches are real, and laughing out loud because she’s so clearly LYING).

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert to Everyday Americans: Drop Dead!

A tad hyperbolic, don’t you think?

 
 

Seafood, eat food.

 
 

I say you DO like to eat seafood.
LIES!
Well, no not really, but you can keep your fish and shellfish and crustaceans. Lobsters? Eech. If they lived on land, people wouldn’t be able to kill them fast or violently enough. Lobster exterminators would be princes among men and when they brandished their flamethrowers or machine guns, attractive members of the opposite sex would offer them fine cheeses and sexual favors.

 
 

Boobs: most children have seen them.

Y’know, that’s exactly, word for word, what Meredith Viera said this morning on The Today Show!

MEREDITH! YOU’RE A SADLY, NOER!

(Noer? No, but I’d like to!)

 
 

I miniature golf as an excuse to hit balls into a clown’s mouth. When I do that normally it’s frowned upon.

 
 

You see, Colbert and Stewart and their ilk (the big cahunas in the entertainment industry) have risen above such petty concerns as which bills will have to go unpaid this month or what to do when you’ve been informed that your job will shortly be eliminated. Paid much, much more than the average schlub and surrounded by yes men and other adoring admirers, they live in a bubble world where unicorns and sugar-coated raindrops really do exist.

Projection, the wingnut hath it.

 
 

hit balls into a clown’s mouth

Sounds painful.

 
 

Well, no not really, but you can keep your fish and shellfish and crustaceans. Lobsters? Eech. If they lived on land, people wouldn’t be able to kill them fast or violently enough. Lobster exterminators would be princes among men and when they brandished their flamethrowers or machine guns, attractive members of the opposite sex would offer them fine cheeses and sexual favors.

True story. When I was around 14 or 15 my Dad read a Dave Barry column to me in which referred to them as “sea bugs.” I haven’t eaten once since.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

obsters? Eech. If they lived on land, people wouldn’t be able to kill them fast or violently enough.

Agreed. They’re giant, alien bugs. *shudder*

I’ll eat lobster *in* stuff if I don’t have to see it.

 
Marion in Savannah
 

I do not like to eat seafood (except for calamari) and anyone who says or believes otherwise is not only wrong but morally compromised.

I’m MUCH more morally pure than you, since I refuse to even consider putting anything with tentacles in my mouth. Thanks for arguing — now I’m not bored any more!

 
 

‘Sesame Street’ Jerks Katy Perry Off The Air Because Of Her Boobs

Punctuation is such a vital issue when playing with fire.

 
 

I miniature golf as an excuse to hit balls into a clown’s mouth. When I do that normally it’s frowned upon.

Well, when you glue them to your strap on…

 
 

In O’Donnell’s defense, I really do like her stance on human/mice hybrids.

 
 

Lobsters? Eech. If they lived on land, people wouldn’t be able to kill them fast or violently enough.

So’s they can eats ’em.

No SRSLY, you ever seen a cow or pig up close? Lobsters maybe be weird and creepy, but certainly no more disgusting than the usual mundane critters we grill.

 
 

When I was around 14 or 15 my Dad read a Dave Barry column to me in which referred to them as “sea bugs.”

Dave Barry is a diver, like me. We call lobsters “bugs”.

You do not want to know what we call sea slugs.

 
 

In O’Donnell’s defense, I really do like her stance on human/mice hybrids.
Is her stance that it is only ok when you have four human/turtle hybrids who need to be instructed in the ways of ninjitsu? Because that is totally fine by me too.

 
Marion in Savannah
 

Cows have such beautiful brown eyes, and such LOOOOONG lovely eyelashes…

 
 

Top Five Creatures I Like to Eat:

5. Cow
4. Scallop
3. Pig
2. Freshwater eel
1. Your mom

 
 

In O’Donnell’s defense, I really do like her stance on human/mice hybrids.

I predated Christine O’Donnel by YEARS

 
 

When I do that normally it’s frowned upon.

Is it smiled upon when you do it abnormally?

 
 

5. Cow
4. Scallop
3. Pig
2. Freshwater eel
1. Your mom

You listed your mom twice, DKW. Three times, if you count “cow”.

 
 

No SRSLY, you ever seen a cow or pig up close? Lobsters maybe be weird and creepy, but certainly no more disgusting than the usual mundane critters we grill.
My grandfather and my uncle were and are both farmers. I spent (in total) a year or two of my life on that farm. And cows and pigs are delicious.

 
 

Like we needed more proof that SMcG was morally compromised.

Unfortunately, photos of people being morally compromised are to hard to come by.

 
 

Do not play golf with Magneto. Especially if you rely on your irons for approach shots.

You also don’t want to pull out your wood around him.

 
 

Cows have such beautiful brown eyes

A valuable contribution to biology classes everywhere.

 
 

What also sucks is that if you are over 50 or have been laid off for a long period of time, some companies will not even bother to look at your resume.

I fail to see what this has to do with golf, boobies or fish tacos.

No one wants to look at those, either, if you’re over 50….

 
 

No one wants to look at those, either, if you’re over 50

Not so fast, there, dude.

 
 

Not so fast, there, dude.

You ever seen her boobs?

There’s a reason she doesn’t show them.

 
 

Unfortunately, photos of people being morally compromised are to hard to come by.

Perhaps you have heard of the internet? I’d start there.

 
 

You ever seen her boobs?
There’s a reason she doesn’t show them.

You trying to tell me you wouldn’t look at them if she showed them to you?

 
 

You trying to tell me you wouldn’t look at them if she showed them to you?

Of course I would! You look at car crashes, right?

 
 

GIant isopods are more “sea bugs” than lobsters. I wouldn’t eat one of those.

 
 

#

“Malaclypse said,

September 23, 2010 at 19:24

Meggers actually looks kinda cute in that picture.

You think? I keep meaning to ask Tintin if he photoshopped the black, soulless eyes, or if that was McMegan’s real look.”

And, you know, the thing about McMegan… she’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When she comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be living… until she bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Foot-long pill bugs. eeech.

I didn’t even look at the photo, but I’m still going to bring to your attention that I AM EATING LUNCH.

 
 

I didn’t even look at the photo, but I’m still going to bring to your attention that I AM EATING LUNCH.

They taste just like chicken! You’d never know the diff.

Wait…what’s that you’re eating?

 
 

I’m all NOM NOM NOM about seafood

Ever played beer-per-hole golf?

 
 

From the Big Failywood article:

But now, Colbert and Stewart (real last name Leibowitz)

See? SEE? Jon Stewart wants to destroy America because he’s a Jewy Jew Jew Christian baby blood drinking JEW!

 
 

Of course I would! You look at car crashes, right?

Meets the definition of want. Yay! Let’s have a semantics debate.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Wait…what’s that you’re eating?

Not chicken, thank God.

Ever played beer-per-hole golf?

NO BUT I WANT TO.

 
 

Jon Stewart wants to destroy America because he’s a Jewy Jew Jew Christian baby blood drinking JEW!

Bitefart’s associate writers do not love the Juses.

 
 

It’s sweet. You really loosen up on the third and fourth holes.

 
 

Bitefart’s associate writers do not love the Juses.

They’d still blame the libs.

 
 

You really loosen up on the third and fourth holes.

Sorta like DKWs mom.

 
 

Ever played beer-per-hole golf?

Yes. The one time my shitty game paid off for me. The worst part about beer-for-fail games is that you have no chance of catching up when you fall behind.

 
 

Heh. And then for the last couple of strokes you’re really just going through the motions and you just want to rest for a bit.

 
 

Is her stance that it is only ok when you have four human/turtle hybrids who need to be instructed in the ways of ninjitsu? Because that is totally fine by me too.

I think Mitch McConnell is too old to learn the ways of ninjitsu.

 
 

Idea number #4367 in my make golf better file: Get rid of clubs and propel the ball to the hole via small howitzers or rockets. Benefits: adds math and or explosives to a deadly dull sport. liabilities: reduces the exercise value of a “sport” that’s only a half step more intense than a coma already.

 
 

‘Just grip and rip’ was the call.

 
 

The worst part about beer-for-fail games is that you have no chance of catching up when you fall behind.
I play to lose.

 
 

‘Just grip and rip’ was the call.

So THAT’S where my urologist came up with that!

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

I mean, my god, cleavage! AHHHHHHHHHH! The terrorists won!

I’d say that everybody won!

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Stewart (real last name Leibowitz)

The man’s a saint!

 
 

The man’s a saint!

HE has quite the set of canticles.

 
 

‘Just grip and rip’ was the call.

So THAT’S where my urologist came up with that!

He heard it from your mom.

 
 

He heard it from your mom.

I told her to stop talking to yours.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

You know who else didn’t love the Juses?

Oh…wait…

 
 

You know who else didn’t love the Juses?
Mel Gibson?

 
 

You know who else didn’t love the Juses?

Mel Gibson?

Sasquatch, that’s who!

 
 

You know actor, your mom’s probably the only person who’s ever seen more bizarre PENISes than your urologist.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Projection, the wingnut hath it.

Colbert and Stewart are isolated in their bubble, but Rush and Beck are different because SHUT UP!!!!

WOLVERINES!!!

 
 

Oooh. Andy Breitfart is going to be on “Real Time.” That I will have to see.

 
 

You know actor, your mom’s probably the only person who’s ever seen more bizarre PENISes than your urologist.

Oh, that reminds me, she said you need a shave. Something about Sasquatch fur…

 
 

You know who else didn’t love the Juses?

The Jews for Juses?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

DKW’s an anti-Semite??!

 
 

It was Janet Jackson’s titty, not Whitney Houston’s.

Which is central to my point! [ /dipshit ]

Colbert and Stewart (real last name Leibowitz)

… are Bolshevik operatives who secretly control the world banking industry.

 
 

God! I went to Big Hollywood. It’s Bizzaro Earth. Those assholes think they’re all intelligent for some reason, when they’re terminally constipated and outraged.

What a bunch of smug, self-delusional whiners.

 
 

I thought your mom was a urologist.

 
 

The Jews for Juses?

Juses for Juses

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

when they’re terminally constipated

Leave those of us with digestive issues out of it, please.

 
 

I thought your mom was a urologist.

DKWs mom got an honorary degree.

Instead of tips.

 
 

… are Bolshevik operatives who secretly control the world banking industry.

Because if there’s one place where you can always find Bolsheviks, it’s in the heart of capitalism.

Hey, I can see Russia from my house!

 
 

Agreed. They’re giant, alien bugs. *shudder*

And delicious. Logically, all giant alien bugs are therefore delicious and Dougie Houser’s desire to kill the giant alien bugs in Starship Troopers was as misguided as that movie’s product placement of Sketchers.

 
 

I thought your mom was a urologist.

Do you usually get full release from a urologist?

 
 

Do you usually get full release from a urologist?

Only when I get the cystoscope.

 
 

Do you usually get full release from a urologist?

No, and there’s never a happy ending, either.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Logically, all giant alien bugs are therefore delicious and Dougie Houser’s desire to kill the giant alien bugs in Starship Troopers was as misguided as that movie’s product placement of Sketchers.

Well, *killing* them wasn’t misguided. Just killing them in such a violent way.

Only when I get the cystoscope.

Sometimes I worry about you.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

The more often I see that McArdle photo, the creepier it gets.

 
 

DKW’s an anti-Semite??!

Well, I certainly am anti-some semites.

 
 

I do not like to eat seafood (except for calamari)

LIAR! Don’t think we’ve forgotten about those fish tacos.

 
 

I do not like to eat seafood (except for calamari)

Everyone likes a good set of tentacles

 
 

You can learn things at Big Ho.

And Tina Fey milked her impression of Sarah Palin until the cow ran dry.

All along I thought Trig was responsible.

 
 

Everyone likes a good set of tentacles

Hentai!

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Oooh. Andy Breitfart is going to be on “Real Time.” That I will have to see.

Damn, I hope Bill Maher has Shirley Sherrod on as a guest.

And Tina Fey milked her impression of Sarah Palin until the cow ran dry.

Oh, yeah, Tina Fey is totally a has-been at this point. What the hell planet do these pudknockers live on?

 
 

Hentai!

Gesundheit!

 
 

new GOP “Pledge” (sines your tables
That takes me back to using the old 5-figure log tables for more accuracy than the sliderule could provide.
You kids and your HP-25 calculators don’t know HOW LUCKY YOU ARE.

 
 

Damn, I hope Bill Maher has Shirley Sherrod on as a guest.

No, but Pat Tillman’s brother will be a guest on the panel. That ought to provoke a confrontation.

 
 

More from Pam Meister’s rambling lunacy:
agree with 68% of Pennsylvanians that cutting taxes, not increasing spending, will lead to more jobs

As native Pennsylvanian and resident there for much of my life, I assure you that 68% of Pennsylvanians are ignorant rubes who can’t spell ‘economics’.

This is not a rally to restore “sanity;” it’s a rally to show the Democrats that they still haven’t lost Hollywood – and to show middle America the finger.

Hollywood? How many Ho-wood films have either of them beein in? They both work out of NY, no?

Question: Am I the only one who thinks Stephen Colbert is a dead ringer for the nerdy, upper crust Cecil Vyse (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) in one of my favorite films, 1985’s A Room With a View?

WTF? I mean, WTFFFF? Izzat her version of “liberals are vegetarians AS WAS HITLER!” Am I missing something?

 
 

Damn, I hope Bill Maher has Shirley Sherrod on as a guest.

That would be delicious.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

WTF? I mean, WTFFFF? Izzat her version of “liberals are vegetarians AS WAS HITLER!” Am I missing something?

Is she calling him nerdy and upper crust?

Fuck if I know.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

You know what else is delicious?

Juse.

 
 

You know what else is delicious?

Giant sea bugs?

 
 

No, but Pat Tillman’s brother will be a guest on the panel. That ought to provoke a confrontation.

Should be interesting – which brother?

 
 

Seriously, I’m tenting my fingers and putting on my most evil expression RIGHT NOW. Making it hard to type.

SHIRLEY SHERROD VS. ANDY BREITFART–GO!

 
 

This is not a rally to restore “sanity;” it’s a rally to show the Democrats that they still haven’t lost Hollywood

Oh, good. Phew!

After watching Red Dawn, Top Gun, Iron Eagle, Rocky IV, Rambo III, Die Hards I and III, Tears of the Sun and The Kingdom – just off the top of my head – I was getting worried there, man!

 
 

You know what else is delicious?

Juse.
Orange Juse
Grape Juse
Cranberry Juse
Tomato Juse
In addition to being excellent mixers, these are all good straight up.

 
 

BTW, in Jon’s run up to the announcement about the rally, he did that false equivalency thing that makes me want randomly punch people in the neck, showing some teatard, then the Code Pink ladies. ‘Cuz, you know, the Code Pink ladies are such a large, influential group.

 
 

How many Ho-wood films have either of them beein in? They both work out of NY, no?

Quite a few, actually.

 
 

As native Pennsylvanian and resident there for much of my life, I assure you that 68% of Pennsylvanians are ignorant rubes who can’t spell ‘economics’.

As someone who fled the state as soon as he could, they don’t call it Pennsyltucky for nothing.

Every time I went back to visit the folks, I would be shocked at the number of houses that either flew confederate flags, had lawn jockeys, or both.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Death to Smoochy was a highly underrated film, IMHO.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Although I can see why people may have been turned off to it, given that Robin Williams is in it.

 
 

Should be interesting – which brother?

Richard. I think he’s starring in his brother’s biopic.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I reeeeeeeeeeeeally hope he acts like a total doucheface to Pat Tillman’s brother. Not that I want Pat Tillman’s brother to be treated badly, but because I want him to be exposed as the utter piece of shit that he is.

 
 

I reeeeeeeeeeeeally hope he acts like a total doucheface to Pat Tillman’s brother.

I hope Tillman reminds Breitbart of every creepy thing he’s said about liberals and then asks him, “So when are you and your fatass Cheeto-loving buttboys going to pick up a gun and stand a post?”

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Am I the only one who thinks Stephen Colbert is a dead ringer for the nerdy, upper crust Cecil Vyse (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) in one of my favorite films, 1985’s A Room With a View?

She’s letting her elitist “slip” show. Big Ho management will have to sit her down Clockwork Orange style in front of a continuous loop of Red Dawn and 300.

THESE ARE SPARTAN WOLVERINES!!!!!!!!!!

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I hope Tillman reminds Breitbart of every creepy thing he’s said about liberals and then asks him, “So when are you and your fatass Cheeto-loving buttboys going to pick up a gun and stand a post?”

Even better!

If I ask nicely, will we get a new thread?

 
 

Every time I went back to visit the folks, I would be shocked at the number of houses that either flew confederate flags, had lawn jockeys, or both.

Northerners with Confederate flags are about as puke-worthy as it gets.

Seriously. If you really swing that way, then fly the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag all you want and whine about how it stands for every man for himself which is totally what Jesus and Thomas Jefferson would have wanted… But for God’s sake, have a minimum of self-respect. If not for your country, at least for your ancestors who bled and died to bring that flag down.

 
 

Only when I get the cystoscope.

Izzat the thing where they ram a fiber-optic tube up your … your … yuh — you know?

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Northerners with Confederate flags are about as puke-worthy as it gets.

The ones who especially need a beating are the West Virginians- flying the rebel flag goes against the whole raison d’etre for their statehood.

 
 

Is her stance that it is only ok when you have four human/turtle hybrids who need to be instructed in the ways of ninjitsu? Because that is totally fine by me too.

First of all, Splinter was a rat. The whole story would have been completely unbelieveable and ridiculous if he’d been a mouse.

Second of all, the best part of that article at Breitbart’s place was that the damaging quote, carefully selected to show the contempt Hollywood feels for middle America was from…no, it’s more fun if you guess. Jane Fonda? Martin Sheen? Aaron Sorkin? Janeane Garofalo?

No. The true voice of liberal Hollywoodism is Megan Fox. Megan Fox who is best known as the eye candy from the robot movie is who we’re taking marching orders from, now.

 
 

Izzat the thing where they ram a fiber-optic tube up your … your … yuh — you know?

Yah huh. And usually when your prostate is the size of a basketball.

 
 

the threat to the United States of an electro-magnetic pulse attack.

No-one talks about the cybernetic lentils!!
Not to mention the Big-Eyed Beans from Venus
(don’t let anything get between us).

 
 

BTW, in Jon’s run up to the announcement about the rally, he did that false equivalency thing that makes me want randomly punch people in the neck, showing some teatard, then the Code Pink ladies. ‘Cuz, you know, the Code Pink ladies are such a large, influential group.

Yep. The Code Pinkies also usually protest shit that’s really happening(and didn’t stop when the guy they preferred got elected), not random stuff the black guy’s not even doing but wasn’t worth complaining about when the white guy was doing it and worse.

 
 

I would be shocked at the number of houses that either flew confederate flags, had lawn jockeys, or both.

When I bought my house (in Southwestern Ontario, mind), one of the many pieces of trash the previous owners didn’t cart away and left us to deal with was a fucking-I-kid-you-not-lawn-jockey. I felt embarrassed dragging it to the dumpster and made sure other, less offensive, trash fully covered it before calling for pick-up. Maybe they owned it “ironically”.

 
 

they ram a fiber-optic tube up your … your … yuh — you know?

And by the way, why is it every urologist who’s ever done that to me feels the need to preface the procedure by engaging me in some conversation about boxing or some other manly art?

I get it! Copping a feel of my dick is a) your job and b) uncomfortable! I’m not going to ask to be bought dinner before you do it!

After, maybe, but only if I get full release…

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Maybe they owned it “ironically”.

Were they black?

 
 

Were they black?

Nope. I’m not sure who bought it, or how long it was there amid the rest of the trash, but everybody who has ever owned my house has been a semi-rural middle class white person.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Nope. I’m not sure who bought it, or how long it was there amid the rest of the trash, but everybody who has ever owned my house has been a semi-rural middle class white person.

Yeah, then they’re racist assholes. White people don’t get to do “ironic” racist shit. Unless they want to be called racists.

Weird.

A lot of people in my town had white lawn jockeys. I don’t get it.

 
 

Richard. I think he’s starring in his brother’s biopic.

If you mean the documentary, no. Richard chose not to be interviewed. THe younger brother, the one who said Pat was an atheist at his memorial, was on camera, but not the one who was still a Ranger. There is footage of him testifying to congress and speaking at the memorial, but he chose not to participate in “The Tillman Story.”

 
 

THe younger brother, the one who said Pat was an atheist at his memorial, was on camera

That’s Richard.

 
 

Looks like Dems aren’t going to vote on tax cuts at all. I can’t wait for the next fundraising call I get. “Money? What would you need that for? You’ve already figured out how to lose without my money. Besides, I’ll need that cash when the Republicans take over again and run the economy even further into the ground.”

 
 

they ram a fiber-optic tube up your … your … yuh — you know?

Ladies: No further complaints about specula! Your orifices are designed to expand, our little openings, not so much!!

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Ladies: No further complaints about specula! Your orifices are designed to expand, our little openings, not so much!!

We have urethrae too, you know. Sometimes they’re cathetered for no apparent reason. TWICE.

 
 

Ladies: No further complaints about specula! Your orifices are designed to expand, our little openings, not so much!!

Fakirs watch my videotapes and ask “Damn! How does he levitate so high?”

 
pseudonymous in nc
 

The absence of the word “Antoinette” from this thread is troubling.

So I’ve added it.

 
 

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