New thread!

Are Obama’s assaults on wealthy business leaders just deserts or political cheap shots?

Did you see Obama fucking punch the shit outta Bill Gates in that alley? NO MERCY. And he WEARS THE TEETH ON A CHAIN AROUND HIS NECK.

Inclined to agree w/ this:

His more modest legacy will fade with time. A century from now, historians and ordinary Americans will still remember Edison and Ford. Jobs will be a footnote, if that.

Hey Canadians: Be thankful we haven’t invaded you since 1812ish!

It’s hard to imagine the competence to get that done anyway.

I, too, want to write a column made almost entirely of questions.

?

Few resent the wealth of Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey.

are you fucking kidding me? i am pissed off at oprah’s wealth all the time! the fact that she is so fucking filthy rich by flapping her yap and foisting dr. phil off on us really, really burns my britches…

also, too…i think most of the fucking rich are undeserving…pro-athletes, entertainers, your various banker/wall street types…i don’t think anyone ‘deserves’ to make multi millions…except maybe the ones who come up with cures for cancer, aids, alzheimers, parkinsons…etc…i think you see where i’m going with that…if you’re occupation of station in life does not greatly benefit mankind, fuck ya…you don’t deserve it…

Are Obama’s assaults on wealthy business leaders just deserts

These are not just any deserts, sir; they are the finest artisanal deserts made according to Tacitus’ recipe.

Hey Canadians: Be thankful we haven’t invaded you since 1812ish!

It’s hard to imagine the competence to get that done anyway.

It wasn’t exactly done competently the first time around, the evidence of which is, the border stops at the Great Lakes.

As for Samuelson, we get the tired old wheeze, “Obama’s jobs plan [would be] taxing the people who are supposed to create jobs. Does that make sense?”

It does when you take into account the fact that these “people” ARE NOT CREATING ANY FUCKING JOBS.

Are Obama’s assaults on wealthy business leaders just deserts or political cheap shots?

It’s like he’s flicking peas at them with a spoon. Disrespectful, I say.

While I do think some are deserving and others aren’t, in the end it’s moot for me. If you’re rich, you’re obviously benefitting from the commons; therefore you have an obligation to pay more.

I think I’m pretty deserving. Now pay up, or suffer the wrath of something something.

It’s like he’s flicking peas at them with a spoon

Exactly. They make a desert and call it peas.
SRSly, if the WaPo proofreaders can’t distinguish between ‘deserts’ and ‘desserts’ then there is a problem.
——————————————
Richardson:

In Sweden and Denmark, the richest 10 percent have incomes about five times greater than those of the poorest 10 percent. In the United States, the ratio is 14-1. The OECD average is 9-1. Mexico has the highest, 27-1

It’s almost as if there an inverse relationship between inequality and national standard of living!

If the unthinking masses are willing to blow their leisure income to watch athletes & entertainers, it’s OK by me if they get the money, rather than team & studio owners. (‘Though it doesn’t always end up where it should, of course.) Not so much financial parasites.

People who develop cures for stuff, while deserving, would get it from over-charging for the cures. “Dr. Science needs a new yacht, that’s why you can’t afford to be cured.” Not that most of those people get into research for greed, most just want to stop suffering, but don’t give them any ideas.

It’s almost as if there an inverse relationship between inequality and national standard of living!

LIEberals, LOL

It’s almost as if there an inverse relationship between inequality and national standard of living!

A couple of weeks ago on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart located the U.S. on a list of countries ranked by income inequality. We were at some absurdly low number, just ahead of Rwanda or some other horribly dysfunctional place that should never be mentioned in the same breath.

wealthy business leaders just deserts

No! They are more the main course.

y contrast, the “undeserving” rich succeed through self-dealing or activities lacking broad social value.

Yes, activities like being born to wealthy parents.

What’s happening now is that more rich are being disparaged as “undeserving.” Blamed for the financial crisis, Wall Street types top the list. During the 1990s stock market boom, about half of Americans agreed that “people on Wall Street are as honest and moral as other people,” reports the Harris Poll. This year, only 26 percent think so. Two-thirds believe Wall Street’s most successful people are overpaid.

Just because people found out that those wall streeters were conniving, thieving fucks selling snake oil is no reason they should change their opinion!

In 2007, the richest 10 percent paid 55 percent of all federal taxes, estimates the Congressional Budget Office. The richest 1 percent paid the lion’s share of that: 28.1 percent of federal taxes.

Yeah, so? In 2007 the richest 10% brought in about 55% of all taxable income.

Reid would pay for Obama’s jobs plan by taxing the people who are supposed to create jobs. Does that make sense?

Well they haven’t created those jobs, have they? Samuelson would have us believe that by continuing to not tax them they will create jobs. Does that make sense?

Aah, what’s the use?

obama created steve jobs?

#shutupkaplan

the people who are supposed to create jobs

So in countries such as Scandiwegia where by Richardson’s own figures there are no job-creating insanely-high-income people, clearly there will be no jobs.

How’s that working out for them?

s/Richardson/Samuelson.

Robert J. Samuelson: the Post economics blatherer who discovered the national debt in January, 2009, and suddenly realized that we need to cut spending on the middle class and the poor.
~

Take it from a guy who just abandoned his typewriter: Steve Jobs was nothing special.

Imagine what it must be like for the WaPo’s tech support guys.

What’s happening now is that more rich are being disparaged as “undeserving.” Blamed for the financial crisis, Wall Street types top the list. During the 1990s stock market boom, about half of Americans agreed that “people on Wall Street are as honest and moral as other people,” reports the Harris Poll. This year, only 26 percent think so. Two-thirds believe Wall Street’s most successful people are overpaid.

It would be interesting to take a poll asking the same thing of conservative voters, only substituting “liberal,” or “Democratic voting,” or just “the people you vote to hurt” for “people on Wall Street.” I suspect the number would be well beyond two thirds… Then, we too could engage in spectacular displays of butthurt.

Speaking of polls, y’all wont believe this: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/10/07/do-occupy-wall-street-protests-represent-your-views-economy/

“Inequality has increased everywhere over the past two decades, even in countries where it isn’t a specific policy goal. There’s no single explanation to explain why, in an era of galloping globalism, we see the same thing happening all over the world, even in widely disparate societies.”

The shit just writes itself.

In 2007, the richest 10 percent paid 55 percent of all federal taxes, estimates the Congressional Budget Office. The richest 1 percent paid the lion’s share of that: 28.1 percent of federal taxes.

I’m sure those darlings would rather stand in unemployment lines for months so that they too can be one of those lucky duckies who pay no income tax. Sounds like a good trade to me.

There’s no single explanation to explain why, in an era of galloping globalism, we see the same thing happening all over the world, even in widely disparate societies

Contra Jennifer, this shit doesn’t just write itself. It takes intense concentration and a real expert to write a sentence that undermines itself so effectively with internal contradictions.

I SWEAR there has been a massive uptick of moderate to liberal people commenting like crazy on the internet. I keep seeing discussions dominated by people who are behind the movement.

It’s totally surprising that the people with all the income pay almost all the taxes, isn’t it?

Of course, the real question is “what is the effective tax rate on their income?”

So Samuelson won’t get into that. He’s well-paid not to.
~

Contra Jennifer, this shit doesn’t just write itself. It takes intense concentration and a real expert to write a sentence that undermines itself so effectively with internal contradictions.

Meh. The Plutocrat’s Handbook lays all this out for them.

“It’s happening worldwide! There’s NO explanation! It’s got to be those goddamn hippies leaching phat stacks off the guv!”

It’s totally surprising that the people with all the income pay almost all the taxes, isn’t it?

It’s also surprising that when they’re at their lowest in modern history and the federal budget is a giant pool of red ink, that the billionaires would recruit an army of stooges to spread lies in order to keep it all. I’m SHOCKED, I TELL YOU.

Also, bitchin porn stache, bro.

Speaking of polls, y’all wont believe this

Better get a screenshot.
.

an army of stooges to spread lies in order to keep it all.

And I just spent 20 minutes (or so) of my life arguing in The War Criminal Post comments with “mcatbird”, who I guess is an intern at some right-wing think tank.

Darn you, Sadly, No!
~

Speaking of polls, y’all wont believe this

Better get a screenshot.

Many commie agitators on the Twitter were suggesting that people should vote in that.

Hell, I did.
.

Many commie agitators on the Twitter were suggesting that people should vote in that.

Hell, I did.

Me, too. Also.

That’s why it’ll be gone soon. Can’t have that conflicting-with-worldview data corrupting the horseshit stream.
.

Contra Jennifer, this shit doesn’t just write itself. It takes intense concentration and a real expert to write a sentence that undermines itself so effectively with internal contradictions.

Eh…I should have been clearer. I wrote that sentence, as a shorter Robert Samuelson, supplying the missing clues that would explain this thing he found utterly inexplicable.

The two of shit is really only good alongside the two of clubs, and three jacks.
.

Fixxored: Before they began starving to death and started putting Aristos to the guillotine, French peasants thought of the rich in the same way they thought of the poor: some are derserving and some are undeserving.

Now, does that make Bobby more comfortable as he gazes out from his back porch?

Jennifer has committed Shortercrime! Shun her!

Robert Samuelson?

The guy who wrote in 2007 “recession? What recession?” And in 2008, “Mortgage crisis? What mortgage crisis?”

And in 2009, “ZOMG we’ll go down the shitter if we don’t get the deficit under control!”

That Robert Samuelson?

The very model of a modern conservative Economamist.

Compare & contrast.

Oh my lord. Douches vs. Normal Folks. Normal Folks FTW.

Compare & contrast.

Compare side: I got a job, the rest y’all go fuck yourselves. I don’t give a shit if you starve. It’s your own fault you’re out of work. I really despise people like this. Any one of them could be on the other blog tomorrow.

Contrast: FUCK GIVE A BROTHER A BREAK

The 53%ers are still getting the reach-around just like the rest of the 99%ers. They may enjoy the pleasure, but in the end it’s still gang-rape. And that’s really the point.

You got a job and made something of your life? Good for you. God forbid you get a debilitating injury that keeps you from working.

God forbid you get a debilitating injury that keeps you from working.

Or that your company ships your job overseas. Or that your child gets sick and needs you at home. Or any one of a thousand other problems that could occur.

… or that you refuse to steal from a multi-million dollar company on behalf your multi-billion dollar company. That is what got me blacklisted back in 2003, and I’m still feeling the effects.
.

…Or you get sick. How is someone supposed to pay their insurance premium the year they’re stuck in a hospital with some debilitating health crisis?

That part of the whole capitalist-health-scheme I never understood.

Or the part about how I’m supposed to be able to choose the diagnostic tests I need instead of my doctor doing so. Like, didn’t the doctor go to many years of medical school to learn this stuff? How is the man on the street supposed to make these decisions?

Same goes for buying mortgages as buying health care – you have to depend upon your agent to tell you their expertise.

And do they have a single example of a business hiring more people because their taxes got reduced? Why would the business do that? Hiring people is unprofitable. It’s not like they’re going to take less profit just because they’re paying less taxes.

Jeffraham, How did that work? were you a consultant getting pressured to do something unethical?

Jeffraham, How did that work? were you a consultant getting pressured to do something unethical?

I was a full-timer at a Fortune 100. I was asked to help circumvent the copyright of another big company and not pay that company for redistributing their work.
.

I read recently that wealth inequality (note: wealth, not income) in the US is worse than Bourbon France. It is only by the Grace of God that people aren’t hanging from lampposts yet.

A century from now, historians and ordinary Americans will still remember Edison and Ford. Jobs will be a footnote, if that.

And what will Robert Samuelson be?

A buttnote.

This guy gives enticingly high foreheads everywhere a bad name

“tsam said,
October 11, 2011 at 2:42

A buttnote.”

If I were not 8, I would not find this hilarious. Luckily, I AM 8.

This guy gives enticingly high foreheads everywhere a bad name

All melon, no brane.

And, as I was an IT guy, and this company hired from ALL of the temp agencies in town…

I did get on for a while with Vanderbilt, but they decided they needed a print guy, and couldn’t afford both that person and a web guy (me).
.

I read all zrm comments with a Mekons bent, thus

“All Mekon, no brane”

Don’t eat the brown Mekons!

If I were not 8, I would not find this hilarious. Luckily, I AM 8.

I know, huh? I was so proud of that masterpiece of a joke. See it works on two levels. Body part or musical note!

L to the O to the L

Robert Samuelson?
The guy who wrote … in 2008, “Mortgage crisis? What mortgage crisis?”

Let’s go down memory lane!

WAPO – July 23, 2008, less than two months before everything starts to slide over the abyss. Take it away, Robert J…

on the whole, the banking system seems fairly strong

The paradoxical thing about today’s economy is its strength. No kidding

downswings tend to generate self-correcting forces

– – – – –

(And it’s good to see you again, Seb.)

Jesusween, people?

Enjoy the testimonials (now with more infotainment, courtesy of the Wonketteers).
~

Why are they prepping for jesusween when the rapture is going to happen 10 days prior?

You can’t risk putting all your candy in one basket?
~

STOP SHOVING JESUS WEEN DOWN OUR THROATS!

Not that I’m against such things on principle, he’s just not my type.

Speaking of polls, y’all wont believe this:

can we go over there and vote? or do we have to wait until actor tells us we can? i don’t want dennis to get mad…oh…too late! i already voted!

Jesusween, OMG. Tea baggers take 2! So to speak.

Samuelson should be served a cliffotini.

/Dennis bait

Trucknutz for Jesusween!
~

UBERDOUCHE

douchebag sited at OWS protest.
http://gawker.com/5848408/

UBERUBERDOUCHE

Oops…that’s a double

BRODY: Are you ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions that are coming from the media and others on foreign policy? Like, who’s the president of Uzbekistan?…

CAIN: I’m ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions and they’re already starting to come. And when they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know?

“All Mekon, no brane”

ouch.

Russell Simmons is a douche?

Kanye. Look at him all standing there like there’s a giant thumb up his butt.

i bet this is what jesus would say to the weeners

jk, of course kanye is a doosh. I’d much rather he not be from my city. Twista, on the other hand is a fine Chicagoan.

In defense of thumbs up butts, hey, to each his own.
(thumb)

tsam, we think alike. Sadly, we were both thinking of James O’Keefe.

Awesome

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/10/so_you_walked_on_the_moon_and.php

DOUCHEGASMIC is the new blart!

Gocart, that’s the best thing I’ve read all day. Thanks for sharing.

“So you walked on the moon, and then…?”

…and then you (America, humanity) decided it wasn’t worth the trouble to ever go back. Or to set your sights on the next great goal: Mars. Or colonize space , or dream of someday reaching the stars. You just…gave up. You decided it was more important to concentrate on building private wealth here on Earth. You decided to gear up for a series of vicious little wars over the dwindling resources here at home.

I was 5 years old when Armstrong reached the moon. I don’t remember anything else about being 5, but by God I remember that. I grew up watching Star Trek, the Jetsons, Lost in Space, anything remotely space-travel related. I devoured Heinlein, Silverberg, Bradbury, Pohl. I expected to live in a world where travel to space was going to be routine, commonplace. I fully expected to be able to visit other worlds. I got gypped.

Steerpike said,
October 11, 2011 at 4:34

well, steerpike, if you would have perhaps tried a little harder and not expected others to your space researching for you, maybe you would be in that 53%* of people who have traveled to other worlds…

*this is an asstatistic…meaning, it’s pulled out of someone’s ass…

Grateful for Jesus Ween. Keep it up!

OK, Ingrid.

I like the way they police their “testimonials.”

And they didn’t know enough to try “Jesuse’en,” even?

I’m ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions and they’re already starting to come. And when they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know?

Islam Karimov. Next question.

I’m ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions and they’re already starting to come. And when they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know?

WHAT? DO I LOOK LIKE A FUCKING GOOGLE TO YOU?

I can see YouBetchaStan from my house.
~

Jesusween, people?

There’s a sneaking suspicion over at Fred “Slacktivist” Clark’s blog at patheos that the video is a Poe’s-Law spoof in the vein of Landover Baptist and objective.jesussaves.us. For what, if anything, that’s worth.

Some people feel excluded by the Catholic/Pagan festival of Hallowe’en. They are clearly suffering from some kind of we’en envy.

Yeah, too many stock photos & half the links don’t work, let alone the vulgar commentary. The YouTube page is, oddly enough, worse. SATAN RULES!!!

LurkingCanadian: Source on that?

Not that I doubt it. Just wondering.

For what, if anything, that’s worth.

I just wanna testify!
~

Steerpike, I was 7, and I remember being sent home from school to watch the event on telly. I also remember being vaguely disappointed – I mean, hadn’t they already travelled all over the universe? What were all those TV shows and books about, anyway? They couldn’t have been un-truthing, could they?

A’course now I look back and get all teary that I actually saw that historic moment – we look at the skies far too little, and spend too much time shuffling through life as though to get it over and done with.

And those bastards who frittered the wealth of a very wealthy nation just to snatch resources from the poor, they deserve an eternity in hell having a red hot poker up the jaxy. And that’s just for starters.

Just Alison for President!
~

HOORAH!

This video made me feel good!

Even then there was a guy in my 7th grade class that knew it was a hoax filmed in some secret facility out west. Didn’t take a week for that to percolate through out the Birchers and other crazies even without any system of toobz.

So you walked on the moon, and then…?”

…and then you (America, humanity) decided it wasn’t worth the trouble to ever go back.

Two words – no oil.

Good mango from the comments on the second article:

Idiot. We 1%ers aren’t hiring because Obummer is freaking us out. He is a full on socialist who is taking us down the path to Greece. So we are waiting him out and hoping the Bummer doesn’t totally destroy the country. You know nothing poser.

Something tells me that a “1%” wouldn’t be spending his time posting comments on a WaPo article. I also don’t believe that a “1%” would deign to type out “Obummer”.

Sounds like someone’s living his Walter “Moneybags” Mitty fantasy.

I was 5 years old when Armstrong reached the moon. I don’t remember anything else about being 5, but by God I remember that. I grew up watching
Shoot. Posted this on the wrong thread and then unfairly cursed WP because of it.

Star Trek, the Jetsons, Lost in Space, anything remotely space-travel related. I devoured Heinlein, Silverberg, Bradbury, Pohl. I expected to live in a world where travel to space was going to be routine, commonplace. I fully expected to be able to visit other worlds. I got gypped.

I was nine during the moon-walk and wanted to be an astronaut. In the sixth grade I learned that America was the breadbasket of the world and that one day there would be no hunger, no war, and a cure for cancer.

I was in my late twenties before I realized that much of my disappointment in the world lay in how wholeheartedly I believed this in the sixth grade.

I know there is a lot of tittering back and forth about the effectiveness of Occupy Wall Street, but the desperation going on in our bought and paid media to either hide it from sight or attack it like a scared child really says that it’s doing a lot of things right.

I went to a wedding this last weekend and during the dead time we watched some network news for the first time in a while and the fluff pieces were fluffier and more bottom-of-the-barrel as they tried to fill the 24 hours with never mentioning the Occupy Wall Street thing once. Over the whole thing was a desperate obvious tinge that seems to be coming through more with the less politically connected.

There is a real sense that the smokescreen is disintegrating and that’s freaking the powerful off to no end.

Whether this will end in lasting change or even a temporary improvement for the better is uncertain, but this method definitely has the 1% freaked out, about as much as the election of Obama had them scrambling to loot all they could in the racist backlash.

There definitely seems to be a Civil Rights Act style turning point in all of this if we keep pushing (complete with inevitable attempts to make all the improvements meaningless).

In the sixth grade I learned that America was the breadbasket of the world and that one day there would be no hunger, no war, and a cure for cancer.

But then St. Ronald of Alzheimer’s taught us that lower taxes on the 1% was better, because SOSHILIZM TAX FREEDOM SHUT UP THAT’S WHY.

Anybody know what’s going on with Occupy Boston? Rumors of police beatings are hitting Twitter.

http://twitter.com/#!/Occupy_Boston
http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23occupyboston

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/mass-arrest-begins-occupy-boston-site

2,551 people like Jesus Ween.

Our boy gets around.

Our boy gets around.

Second Coming!

Hey Canadians: Be thankful we haven’t invaded you since 1812ish!

We are. In fact, Monday is an official Canuckistani holiday just to demonstrate how thankful we are.

er, I mean Monday was. I gots turkey hangover.

The free press

Members of the Boston Police Department moved in to dismantle and destroy tents after protesters ignored multiple warnings to move from the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a strip of parks and public spaces where they have been camped out for more than a week, the Boston Globe reports. Members of the media were told to leave and not to film. Patrol wagons were lined up on one side.

~

Edo: It’s either The Wrecking Crew by Thomas Franks, or it’s The Big Con, by Jonathan Chait. It was very near the end of the book, and the author gave a primary source for it.

I’m sorry I can’t be clearer. I listened to those books in audio form, one right after the other. I can tell you where I was parking just as I heard it, but I can’t remember which book it was.

He is a full on socialist who is taking us down the path to Greece.

uhhhhh…a big part of greece’s problem is that EVERYbody is fudging on every single tax they are supposed to pay…the treasury got bankrupted because NObody, from the gazillionaires to joe schmopolis were not paying in enough to keep the services they still demanded from the government…the government played along until ‘uh-oh, the usa is in the shitter!’

so yeah, in a sense we already WERE like greece…the big boys weren’t paying in but joe schmo was…

uhhhhh…a big part of greece’s problem is that EVERYbody is fudging on every single tax they are supposed to pay…the treasury got bankrupted because NObody, from the gazillionaires to joe schmopolis were not paying in enough to keep the services they still demanded from the government…the government played along until ‘uh-oh, the usa is in the shitter!’

Kind of like when they’re complaining that “Obama’s turning America into a third world country!” You mean a country with no social safety nets and a few wealthy families at the top running everything while the rest starve? Yeah, that sounds like where America’s headed, alright, but it’s been headed there since 1980 at least.

Kind of like when they’re complaining that “Obama’s turning America into a third world country!” You mean a country with no social safety nets and a few wealthy families at the top running everything while the rest starve? Yeah, that sounds like where America’s headed, alright, but it’s been headed there since 1980 at least.

their dissonance has gotten so blatant that i really wonder how they can function…

Members of the media were told to leave and not to film.

The revolution will not make the 6 o’clock news. Or something.

There can only be one Unfrozen Caveman Columnist.

If he had worked for a bank, do you think his sentence would have been less?

Wow. Norbiz, long time no see!
~

OT: Mormons.org has made a big buy of bus advertising in my town using the tagline “I’m a Mormon” and showing very white, very unthreatening faces, meaning, I suppose, “See? We’re not scary at all!”

Don’t suppose that would be in support of Mittens, do you?

Don’t suppose that would be in support of Mittens, do you?

Naaahhhhh. The Mormons never involve the church in politics. Just ask California’s Prop 8.

OT: i am on hold with an indian dude named ‘alfred’…this is a change from the usual ‘albert anderson’ that i usually get…

it would be awesome if all credit card phone people just called themselves ‘peggy’ like on the commercial…

alfred keeps telling me that he ‘respects my decision’…wtf…i just wanted to chane the amount of my automatic payment…guess what? can’t do it over the phone…alfred is going to send me a letter which i have to fill out and then mail back…then it will be 4 weeks before my payment amount will change…jesus h. christ! i do not respect that decision at all!

it would be awesome if all credit card phone people just called themselves ‘peggy’ like on the commercial…

USA Prime Credeet! OO! ESS! AY!

We 1%ers aren’t hiring because Obummer is freaking us out.

Are these the same “1%ers” whose taxes are currently the lowest since the Hoover administration…you know, when there was that hiring boom?

The same ones who have enjoyed ten years of those low, low taxes, yet managed to create only one million new jobs in the first eight years under Bush? The same Bush who essentially abandoned any regulatory oversight?

The same ones who, kicking and screaming, have created two million new private sector (note the distrinction) jobs under Obama?

That 1%?

That 1%?

Nah, that was a different 1%.

These guys are just waiting for the regulatory climate to get better and the Socialist Usurper in the “White” House to get run out of town, then the jobs will just explode!

It’s funny how many of us were five when we watched the moon landing. NEVER FORGET! or something

The 1% are the 51% who say they don’t want obama re-elected, apparently.

I hereby decree that Robert Samuelson henceforth be known as Robert “my sole credential for writing about economics is having the same last name as a famous economist — we’re not even related — and that credential is somehow good enough to have provided me with a very lucrative career” Samuelson.

That 1%?

I know the “19% thinks it’s in the top 1%” has been debunked, but there are SOME people who believe they’re 1%ers who aren’t and never will be, and that’s the group I think this dude is speaking for. Frankly, if he’s ever hired anyone besides a neighbor kid to mow his lawn or shovel his walk I’d be shocked.

It’s funny how many of us were five when we watched the moon landing. NEVER FORGET! or something

i was only four, so i really don’t remember it…

It’s funny how many of us were five when we watched the moon landing. NEVER FORGET! or something

Get off my lawn, retroactively!

the group I think this dude is speaking for.

Y’know what’s weird, Tig?

83% of Americans (something like that) think they’re “middle class”

19% think they’re the upper one percent.

SOMEone’s wrong.

Members of the media were told to leave and not to film

Y’know, they have these wonderful inventions called “helicopters”….

I know, Logan airspace but this is over the city proper and Logan doesn’t have any take off or landing approaches over the Rose that I remember.

I was T- 166 days.

“T” for Tig?

I know this is off-topic, and I know Ezra does not have a lot of fans around here, but this analysis of the financial crisis beats the shit outta Samuelson.

I love the reason the cops gave: expensive new landscaping! Jesus H, the Massachusetts constitution guarantees the right of assembly of citizens just like the US one does, and in neither is the health of local shrubbery listed as a limiting condition the full exercise of the right.

tig minus is my goateed evil twin.

I think it was MB who said “coals to Newcastle” when I posted the turnout for OWS Portland. Well, yesterday a former mayor of Salem joined the protesters there and made a speech supporting them.

Trig =Tig minus

All the problems of non-rich people can be fixed by metaphors and pithy phrases about the success and helpfulness of the very rich.

Any suggestions that it’s not necessarily beneficial nor wise to turn a nation’s policies to favor the Point-Oh-Ones (the richest 0.01% of income getters whose starting income is about $5.5 million) means that people are angrily rejecting the deep, profound, complex wisdom of phrases like “I ain’t never done worked for no poor man!”

I’ve certainly worked for people who made less than $50,000. I guess I ain’t never worked for anyone whose income was, say, $3,200, but obviously I fail to grasp that I’m supposed to hear that pithy wisdom and shut up and hate socialism.

Trig =Tig minus

That’s retarded!

All the problems of non-rich people can be fixed by metaphors and pithy phrases about the success and helpfulness of the very rich.

Hey. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then you should be able to dine on letters…

I was one month shy of 11. I had already read tons of Heinlein and Asimov and Kornbluth and Sturgeon et al. Watching on teevee it seemed like a perfectly normal thing happening just as it should.

I’ve certainly worked for people who made less than $50,000.

99% of jobs in America are created by small businesses.

90% of small business owners net less than $80,000 a year from their businesses, usually their only source of income.

Do the math. Most Americans have worked for a small business owner at some point in their lives. Most Americans have worked for someone who barely made more than they did at that job.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then you should be able to dine on letters…

I suppose you think someone’s responsible for handing you photons for free.

I was -2 months old.

It’s funny how many of us were five when we watched the moon landing.

9, here. I rode the ferry by myself over to Port Townsend to meet my brother for a weekend of fishing and the landing was on the TeeVee machine when we rolled in to his place.

One of my earliest memories was Kennedy’s funeral on teh Telemabision.

99% of jobs in America are created by small businesses.

Do the math. Most Americans have worked for a small business owner at some point in their lives. Most Americans have worked for someone who barely made more than they did at that job.

I’m a small business owner. I do NOT make more than $50,000.00 per year. If I did make $300,000.00 per year, I don’t think I would give half a shit if my tax rate went up 4%. But then I also don’t eat poop or go around sniffing bike seats.

Revisionist history: doing the math, I must’ve been 10.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then you should be able to dine on letters…

Imagine whirled Ps.

But then I also don’t eat poop or go around sniffing bike seats.

Your prospects as a conservative pundit are limited, then.

Jesus H, the Massachusetts constitution guarantees the right of assembly of citizens just like the US one does, and in neither is the health of local shrubbery listed as a limiting condition the full exercise of the right.

Article 1: Offa mah lawn.

If I did make $300,000.00 per year, I don’t think I would give half a shit if my tax rate went up 4%.

My fundiegelical wingnut sister whined at me after I posted Elizabeth Warren’s quote about paying your share on Facebook. She is the wife of a dentist with a very successful practice (they’re putting two kids through dental school simultaneously) and she griped about paying “40% more…do we use 40% more of the roads?” etc.

My response was along the lines of “Leaving your innumeracy aside,” there are a bunch of systemic issues between the rich and poor that need to be addressed. I finished with “…but seeing how the proposed 4% hike in your income over $250,000 will put you in the poorhouse, I’ll be more respectful and quiet in the future.”

I’m not really expecting a Christmas card this year.

I suppose you think someone’s responsible for handing you photons for free.

I’d pay a pfarthing for a photon.

If I did make $300,000.00 per year, I don’t think I would give half a shit if my tax rate went up 4%.

You also wouldn’t necessarily hire anyone because businesses don’t hire based on how much the owners get paid, they hire based on whether the business needs the work done badly enough and whether the BUSINESS can afford it.

She is the wife of a dentist with a very successful practice (they’re putting two kids through dental school simultaneously) and she griped about paying “40% more…do we use 40% more of the roads?” etc.

Wow, his business DEPENDS on there being roads, decent water, and a fairly high level of civilization and stability(because teeth are not your first priority when the shit hits the fan), so yeah, 4% more seems pretty fucking minimal for the benefits they receive.

Sometimes I wish the arguments of politicians and pundits were, as a matter of course, subjected to the same level of scrutiny as those of a high school debate team. And also that those arguments would not be aired on television or printed in newspapers or on line without their grade. So we could listen to a presidential speech and and know that it was a B- for accuracy, but that the rebuttal from some wingnut congressman was an D- for accuracy, needless partisan venom and willful misunderstanding of the issues.

Pinellas County Florida has voted to end the fluoridation of water because local Tea Party politicians and activists are finally tired of these one-world-government Soviet plans to make Americans stupid.

In case you missed it, the Pinellas County Commission voted last week to stop putting fluoride into the public drinking water supply — you know, the stuff that helps prevent tooth decay.

The vote was 4-3, with one commissioner voting to cease fluoridation because, according to the St. Petersburg Times, it was “a social sort of program.”

Tea party activists stirred the pot, with the Times quoting one as saying, “Fluoride is a toxic substance. This is all part of an agenda that’s being pushed forth by the so-called globalists in our government … to keep the people stupid so they don’t realize what’s going on.”

He and the four commissioners must have been drinking a lot of fluoridated water.

One of three commissioners who voted to keep putting fluoride into the water supply is going to try to have the decision overturned in a meeting today, the Times reported. Stay tuned.

You also wouldn’t necessarily hire anyone because businesses don’t hire based on how much the owners get paid, they hire based on whether the business needs the work done badly enough and whether the BUSINESS can afford it.

Which, of course, means if the owner has a bigger tax bill, he’s going to be more aggressive getting jobs to help pay it, which means more work which means…

Sometimes I wish the arguments of politicians and pundits were, as a matter of course, subjected to the same level of scrutiny as those of a high school debate team.

Goodness, Helmut! Why, it’s like you advocate some kind of media “Fairness Doctrine” or some such!

“Fluoride is a toxic substance. This is all part of an agenda that’s being pushed forth by the so-called globalists in our government … to keep the people stupid so they don’t realize what’s going on.”

The county toof haz a sad.

Too bad that the snotty libruls have stereotypes of right wing white Southern teatards as being fat slobs on hoverounds with decaying teeth, when they’re actually all such nice people.

If I did make $300,000.00 per year, I don’t think I would give half a shit if my tax rate went up 4%.

Remember, that’s a marginal tax increase — i.e., the 4% increase would only be on that portion of your earnings above, say, $250K.

Of course, the latest Obama proposal is higher marginal tax rates on portions of income over a million dollars.

If I made $1,000,001, then my taxes would go up by four cents.

I don’t know how I would keep from laying off hundreds of workers with that level of oppression.

I only drink distilled water or rainwater.

Sometimes I wish the arguments of politicians and pundits were, as a matter of course, subjected to the same level of scrutiny as mature and well thought out as those of a high school aged person debate team.

Fluoride is a toxic substance. This is all part of an agenda that’s being pushed forth by the so-called globalists in our government

This is exactly the same argument the Birchers were making in the ’50s and ’60s. That and “US out of the UN!”

Fuck. We have made exactly no progress. At least 27% of us anyway.

If I made $1,000,001, then my taxes would go up by four cents.

You poor lad! Why, you’d likely have to dip into principal to make your yacht payments! The horrors! The HUMANITY!

Which, of course, means if the owner has a bigger tax bill, he’s going to be more aggressive getting jobs to help pay it, which means more work which means…

There’s a reasonable argument that increasing income taxes should lead to more hiring, rather than less. If you own a small business, and I’m taxing your last dollar at 30% or so, you might as well call the business’s last dollar of revenue “yours”. On the other hand, if you own a small business and I’m taxing your last dollar at 90%, there’s not much point pocketing that last dime.

On the other hand, if you hire somebody with it, it turns into an expense, and all it costs you is a dime, whereas in the first case, the new guy cost you 70 cents. The difference in incentive can be significant.

as mature and well thought out as those of a high school aged person

…as free of fecal matter as a potty-trained 3 year old…

LC,

And the evidence for a middle class tax cut is overwhelming (i.e. Clinton’s tax hike on the rich and cut on the middle class, which helped generate 23 million jobs)

Stanley Kubrick’s ghost is giggling hysterically:

General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?

General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Commie works.

Next time you hear right wingers whining about how ‘only half’ (it’s a lie, but not relevant for the moment) of workers pay taxes…

…remind them that this is because of Ronald Reagan and his 1986 expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Wildly cheered, by the way, by the Heritage Foundation.

And, yes, I meant federal income taxes…

Next time you hear right wingers whining about how ‘only half’ (it’s a lie, but not relevant for the moment) of workers pay taxes…

and they always say ‘taxes’ when they specifically mean ‘income taxes’ they still pay sales tax and other ‘taxes’ or ‘fees’ that are ‘taxes’ but just not called ‘taxes’…

i know you did…

AHA! The REAL reason we didn’t continue the space program.

Back to the top: Are you really telling me that a specialist in economics who regularly comments on business missed the major technological change in the industry he covers (that would be, the management of large enterprises) for about three decades?

Sadly, yes.

Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh? (I know, that was about Gibbon, to whom RS Jr is as some Mesozoic proto-primate)

Pup – you owe me new eyeballs.

Pup – you owe me new eyeballs.

new eyeballs for everyone!

There’s a reasonable argument that increasing income taxes should lead to more hiring, rather than less.

Then there’s the plain facts as well, that there is absolutely fuck all evidence of any correlation between top marginal rate and the rate of GDP growth or unemployment. Neither in this country nor any other.

The wingnuts have been mining this seam for years, and have never failed come up with the most easily falsifiable quasi-academic clap-trap in the history of humankind. Including the Laffer Curve. Which probably splains why it is one of the most repeated wingnut talking points.

The 1% are the 51% who say they don’t want obama re-elected, apparently.

Well, they are the 51% of accumulated wealth, and, y’know, one dollar = one vote.

but that the rebuttal from some wingnut congressman

Someone remind me. When, exactly, did it become standard procedure for some assbucket to “rebut” every speech made by our duly elected President? Maybe I’m just getting foggier as time goes on, but I really don’t remember Reagan having Tip O’Neill come on after each address and say “Bullshit!” Seriously, when did it start? Was it a Fox thing?

Oh, I was four for the moon landing.

‘My response was along the lines of “Leaving your innumeracy aside,” there are a bunch of systemic issues between the rich and poor that need to be addressed. I finished with “…but seeing how the proposed 4% hike in your income over $250,000 will put you in the poorhouse, I’ll be more respectful and quiet in the future.”’

If I am not mistaken, the 4% actually applies to $500,000 on a joint tax return. It applies to $250,000 for a single taxpayer.

Freeedumb!
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/10/11/a-victory-for-cavities/
“Water fluoridation is not much different than sending a fluoride Gestapo around every day to force everyone to take fluoride pills, it is unethical and doctors who advocate this are in violation of peoples rights and ethics,” David Jackson wrote.

Fluoride Gestapo: band name or not? Discuss, provide examples.

Fluoride Gestapo: band name or not? Discuss, provide examples.

Must be one of Klaus’ solo projects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Flouride

Fluoride Gestapo

Progressive punk band.

No “Dentistry is theft!” yet?

“No “Dentistry is theft!” yet?”

Nor “shoving fluoride down throats?”

El Cid:

Any suggestions that it’s not necessarily beneficial nor wise to turn a nation’s policies to favor the Point-Oh-Ones (the richest 0.01% of income getters whose starting income is about $5.5 million) means that people are angrily rejecting the deep, profound, complex wisdom of phrases like “I ain’t never done worked for no poor man!”

I’ve certainly worked for people who made less than $50,000. I guess I ain’t never worked for anyone whose income was, say, $3,200, but obviously I fail to grasp that I’m supposed to hear that pithy wisdom and shut up and hate socialism.

Well…yeah.

I mean, we live in a capitalist system. Of course, we aren’t working for poor men, because those poor men not being as poor as us when we work for is the demonstration of the hours of labor they have stolen and underpaid for in order to make themselves rich men. Yes, I imagine there wasn’t a slave in the Antebellum South that worked for a poor man either and I don’t think that would have been used as an argument for how hard the Plantation owner worked.

And this only becomes more blatant when what “makes the 1% richer” these days isn’t even a 1:1 relationship of theft, but is rather the actions of them trying to find new more oblique methods of theft of short-cutting the economy to get richer. The stock market, the various shell games with people’s pensions and health care, various scams on the government, and so on.

And it is feudalism at its purest, because, well, the serfs worked for great big rich men and could compare among their number who worked for the richest man. If they were lucky to break into the servant class, they could keep track of the minutiae of whose owner was richer than whose for their bubble-headed “earned by birthright” owners.

And I love the complete abandonment of any argument that it’s possible for these people to have “earned’ these large salaries through hard work.

Oh, it’s still insinuated, but now only because it is treated like a hostage situation. Either we let them control our democracy and do whatever they want or they will never hire someone again. Which severely counts on people not realizing that “have the government seize all their shit” is totally a valid option if they’re refusing to do the “job” they argue is the only thing keeping the economy going.

No wonder they’ve been doubling down on getting the 27%ers and moderates lizard-brain-reacting to “government bad, government can do nothing” for 30 years. Because that’s the only thing that would make this claimed hostage situation anything other than an instant invitation for retribution (I mean, I’ve been unemployed for a year and a half, these people are claiming they are personally responsible for this, how would most people do the math?)

Speaking about teh top marginal tax rate – remember that the argument is based on teh Going Galt maxim. That once a certain level of taxation above a threshold amount is exceeded proposed by a Democratic president, then teh überproducers will withhold their precious bodily fluids*. Which means that productivity only drops if no one else is willing or able to pick up the “slack”. So even allowing for teh existence of petulant and petty Randian super-men that reduce their productivity in teh face of an increased marginal tax rate – society is only out that amount of productivity if it’s already at full employment.

*Something we already know to be false. Workaholics work because they are addicted to it. That’s why it’s an “-holism”. IOW, they are addicted to being ‘holes.

except maybe the ones who come up with cures for cancer, aids, alzheimers, parkinsons…

The people who do that rarely make money from it. Jonas Salk considered patenting the polio vaccine the same as patenting the sun.

(Of course, there’s probably some patent troll working on that right now.)

Ted the Slacker:

Including the Laffer Curve.

Amazing because this argument was so transparently bullshit and so transparently inapplicable to American systems. I mean, we’ve all noticed that the “curve” is pure speculation and not based in anything real, but that it is wholly inapplicable.

I mean, let’s look at what it argues at the “end” the 100% taxes would destroy everything.

Well, yeah, if you taxed 100% of all income, then that would indeed have the effect of receiving no income because there would be nothing to pay.

So solution 1 already in place: Progressive taxation.

Boom, done, now “100%” taxes would now just be a mark of maximum income per year. You couldn’t earn more than say “1,000,000 a year” or whatever. So now, all the money you would earn over that must go into ensuring you have that income in future years which means long term planning that emphasizes stability of companies and their ability to keep up with times with aggressive r&d, all good things for the general economy. Apply that also to our “corporate persons” (isn’t it interesting that laws to individuals never seem to apply to these corporate “persons”, such as treating profit as income to this person and so on) and now the incentive to create megacorporations and rule by monopoly also decreases. It’s better to grow to maximum, split off legitimately or dissolve for new up and coming businesses and huge incentive to invest in start-ups because they have the greatest chance for growth and remaining “shelf life” and bigger corporations will no longer see the need to maximize profits because there’s a hard limit, again leading into focusing on long-term stability at the maximum rate and investing in workers in order to form the best products to stay on top. Again, all good things.

But oh wait, there’s more. Solution number two, also already in place: Marginal Tax Rates

So now, the mythical “100%” would only apply to income over a certain level, everything under would be less touched. Okay, now the rich person in question from our previous example doesn’t even need to worry about how much they give themselves in income or earned wealth. No worries about a single penny dooming all their legal income. Now they can go a little over and still make the maximum. The same incentives are in place more for long-term investment. Again, naught but good things. Tighten up the punishments for fleeing to a tax shelter in another country and boom, you’ve got a system for training the ultra-rich into being good citizens who work for their common man.

Ah, that’s the real rub isn’t it. And why we have to disregard everything we know about how the tax system works to argue for the Laffer Curve. Because these people really don’t want to be forced to be good citizens in the loosest possible way just to enjoy great wealth. They instead want the return of the right to own people and governments and the great personal power that brings not to mention the way it makes their aging and tiny penises slightly flex up like an old man trying to do one more push-up.

Speaking as someone who would never have to worry about a theoretical maximum income, ever, but does have to worry about issues like “will we be able to eat next month” and “how long can we hold on before we can’t pay rent”, I find it hard to muster up the sympathies these whiny little titty babies demand.

And now I do want a 100% marginal tax rate. Even better, make where that kicks in be a simple multiplication of the minimum or medium wage per year in this country. Watch us develop a sudden interest in taking care of the poor on that day.

AHA! The REAL reason we didn’t continue the space program.

Citing the Bhagavad as reason for a space travel ban is like quoting Hammurabi when sentencing a thief to dismemberment.

Fluoride Gestapo: band name or not? Discuss, provide examples.

They’d have to be better than the Spin Doctors.

Surely I can’t be the only person here born after the Apollo 11 landing, can I?

“Inequality has increased everywhere over the past two decades, even in countries where it isn’t a specific policy goal. There’s no single explanation to explain why, in an era of galloping globalism, we see the same thing happening all over the world, even in widely disparate societies.”

Wrong.

Well, yeah, if you taxed 100% of all income, then that would indeed have the effect of receiving no income because there would be nothing to pay.

The fallacy, of course, is what happens at the other end. It is illogical to assume that because 100% of your earnings are taxed, therefore you wouldn’t create more tax revenue, that zero percent tax rates would maximize tax revenue.

Because, you know, it can’t.

So assuming the Laffer curve is a bell curve, which I believe it was described as being, the sweet spot is somewhere near 35-55% and definitely between 20% and 80%.

You know, like under Clinton….

Surely I can’t be the only person here born after the Apollo 11 landing, can I?

Depends, stranger. You vacuumslayer? Truculent and Unreliable?

DKW:

Going Galt maxim. That once a certain level of taxation above a threshold amount is exceeded proposed by a Democratic president, then teh überproducers will withhold their precious bodily fluids*. Which means that productivity only drops if no one else is willing or able to pick up the “slack”.

Exactly. Hands up those who would work as hard as one of the “John Galt’s” for that income.

Yeah, pretty close to 100% with a few snickerings here and there about how “hard” they work compared to the lower classes…or fuck, the goddamned unemployed. I know I’ve spent my days working longer hours sending out apps, researching new job skills, trying to gain microemployment and so on than any of these lazy ass 10-3 CEOs.

Ironically, enough, they might be the most replaceable of all the rungs in a corporate ladder. All the rest have skill sets that might not be worth the potential income learning to join and in a decent economy might have more demand than surplus for those talents.

Whereas in any economy, there is a long line of people who would jump at the chance to learn a few bits of bullshit to earn that kind of dosh or run companies. And I imagine their replacements would accept “indignities” like higher marginal tax rates on incomes they never imagined seeing in their lives.

These people are like a non-suicidal attention seeker on top of a large building really hoping the answer back from the street isn’t “jump!”

“Inequality has increased everywhere over the past two decades, even in countries where it isn’t a specific policy goal. There’s no single explanation to explain why, in an era of galloping globalism, we see the same thing happening all over the world, even in widely disparate societies.”

What mac said

This growing inequality is not confined to the global South but is rampant in economically powerful nations. Most striking is the growing level of inequality in the USA, a country with the highest GNP and primary exponents of the ‘Washington Consensus’. Economic inequality has continued to increase in the USA since the late 1970s. This inequality can be seen in numerous aspects of socio-economic life, such as growing income disparities, loss of opportunities – especially for women and minorities, inequality of health, education and crucially, political participation. One in eight people in the USA live in poverty and for a ‘developed’ country it has an unusually low life expectancy level. These factors highlight the extremely skewed benefits of the free market model, even within national borders.

Given the overwhelming evidence of the inability of the political economy to reduce inequality and deal with non economic aspects of prosperity, why are free market policies so ardently perpetuated by economically powerful nations? The answer is, unsurprisingly, profitability.

According to the International Forum on Globalization, 52 of the top 100 wealthiest economic entities are corporations as opposed to countries.

It’s funny how many of us were five when we watched the moon landing. NEVER FORGET! or something

I had JUST turned six, actually.
.

Hands up those who would work as hard as one of the “John Galt’s” for that income.

*raising hand hesitantly*

Wait. Do you mean the rand character or one of the Galtists that sits around writing angry polemics about how he’s going to take his car dealership and go home?

I believe Chris is a young buck. Still, I try not to hate him.

Whoa.

This is getting serious now…

actor212:

True, but again, that assumes a flat tax rate. If everyone was being taxed equally at income. But because we have a progressive tax rate and a marginal tax rate, there wouldn’t even be a “bell curve” in the theoretical space, but something akin to a more or less straight line possibly ending at 100% with a plateau. So at worst a logarithmic curve and that’s before we add all that nasty little reality into the equation.

So yeah, if we assume that taxes don’t work like they do, but rather how they would like them to, a completely closed system free from the real world, and that their “I just farted this up as a thought experiment” horseshit was actually applicable to anything, then…

You’d be right, they’d still be wrong because of the way they ignore the other end or even the whole “bell curve” aspect of it in their “fear” of an entirely theoretical “100% tax on everything” sort of situation.

With that level of inaccuracy at every level, no wonder it’s become a right-wing shibboleth.

Cerb,

See, I always assumed it meant average tax rates across America incomes, so in effect, it was de facto flattened. After all, Reagan talked about tax cuts for everyone initially (I wonder how he’d feel about this current wave of elitism?), not just the rich, and justified it with the curve

So assuming the Laffer curve,,,

Assuming facts not in evidence. Sure it sounds great – “no one will work if that work is taxed at 100%” – it’s also never been demonstrated.

Hands up those who would work as hard as one of the “John Galt’s” for that income.

Just as an aside on teh myth of teh lazy poor – guess which European nation had the highest average hours worked per worker? Hint, starts with a “G”.

it’s also never been demonstrated

Because no one, not even Ike, is politically suicidal.

actor212:

Probably the latter.

Though, hell, maybe the former. I’m sure there’d be a slightly shorter line for the chance to become hero and God of an extremely hierarchal society by essentially quitting your job, whining to a bunch of other primadonnas they should quit their jobs, and having other people turn you into a meme while you sit on your ass.

Also, ignored in the book, the fact that “Galt’s Gulch” is collectivism. Ooh, the evils of collectivism, we’ll solve that by forming a commune of like minds who all work for each other’s benefits, taking shared roles in the basic upkeep needed for human lives and giving each other our inventions instead of the “greedy outside collectivist world”.

Yes, forming a commune to protest communism. Ingenious I tell you!

Ah, objectivism, a philosophy that it’s own polemic can’t even correctly imagine working even when it creates the “perfect conditions”.

Any suggestions that it’s not necessarily beneficial nor wise to turn a nation’s policies to favor the Point-Oh-Ones (the richest 0.01% of income getters whose starting income is about $5.5 million) means that people are angrily rejecting the deep, profound, complex wisdom of phrases like “I ain’t never done worked for no poor man!”

And I ain’t never done worked for no millionaire; everyone I’ve ever worked for has been solidly middle class. My understanding, reinforced above, is that most people work for small businesses and most small business owners are middle class, so apparently most people also don’t work for no millionaires.

Surely I can’t be the only person here born after the Apollo 11 landing, can I?

I did say t minus, not t plus, right? I forget stuff now that I’m so old.

I can’t believe I’ll be the first to post this, but…

RELEASE THE KRAKEN!

“Internet-tradition aware since 1992”

From Actor’s link: U.S. Capitol Police said six protesters were arrested and charged with demonstrating in a Capitol building.

How the FUCK is that charge constitutional?

actor:

See, I always assumed it meant average tax rates across America incomes, so in effect, it was de facto flattened. After all, Reagan talked about tax cuts for everyone initially (I wonder how he’d feel about this current wave of elitism?), not just the rich, and justified it with the curve

Again, not how taxes work. And by that logic how exactly are we to reach “100%” average taxes. We’d basically be arguing a system where not only were we collecting income tax on all taxable incomes, but instituting 100% taxes on those we consider to be making less than a living wage because…?

Not to mention that this cannot be in a system of marginal and progressive taxation. The system simply doesn’t work that way and in fact, cannot even be parsed in any system which operates on an assumption of flat taxes or even “averaged taxes to flatten them”, because the point of progressive taxation is the levels of taxation at different levels of income. The growth to 100% simply couldn’t work in any way similar as to how it would work under a flat tax.

Which is probably why the real wealthy have been trying to pimp a flat regressive tax for a very long time. Because at that point it will be even easier to argue for lowering their taxes because we’re “lowering everyone’s taxes” and even harder to raise them than it is now and it’s currently close to impossible.

Uh oh.

Does, um, anyone on the West Coast have a spare cottage for, oooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh, a few decades? I have a cat, too.

I can’t believe I’ll be the first to post this, but…

Somebody posted a link to PZ Myer’s dismissive scoffing yestiddy.

How the FUCK is that charge constitutional?

They were demonstrating the Slap Chop.

Somebody posted a link to PZ Myer’s dismissive scoffing yestiddy.

D’Oh!

Consider me “Ahemed”

Even if you bought the Laffer curve (which, as many have pointed out, you shouldn’t) all it says is that there is an optimum tax rate.

The Republicans talk about it as though it shows that cutting taxes always raises revenue, so you maximize your tax revenue at infinity dollars when the tax rate is 0%, but even Laffer fundamentalists who only have Dick Cheney’s used cocktail napkin should understand that there are times when increasing the tax rate should lead to increased government revenue.

Of course, they are more honest these days. They just think taxing the rich is wrong. Full stop. They’ve gone from Laffer to Rand. I’m not sure if that’s a step forward or backward. Is the transition from “stupid” to “evil” good or bad, though I’m inclined to say “good”. It’s much easier to get public support for “this tax cut will create jobs and make our economy prosper as the rising tide lifts all boats” than for “this poor, struggling millionaire can barely afford to put gas in his plane. Won’t you help a brother out?”

DKW:

Well, yeah, it’s impossible at every level. It’s just one of those things where even if you granted them the perfect setup, doesn’t work, kinda like objectivism.

Also, yeah, it’s a dark joke that one would “work as hard” as the whiny fucks who complain about marginal tax rates, considering that I imagine that nearly everyone in any bracket that could be described as “poor” have worked harder in a day than those lazy morons have in a week, maybe even in a month.

Yeah, “would you work less hours, in comfier conditions, and with less stress than most low-income jobs, in exchange for several million dollars a year, or even a month, even if you faced a hard cap on income over 5,000,000 dollars a year?” is not one that would be having many people shying away from because “taxes are too punative”.

And frankly, we all know that if we taxed 100% of all income over 100K a year, they would still choose those jobs over working retail or “living off the government in unemployment checks” and all of the other myths they spew.

Because no one, not even Ike, is politically suicidal.

Not just in teh US, but anywhere. Ever. Teh Laffer Curve is a thing of faith and faith alone. The post WWII boom coincided with that crazy 90% top marginal rate. Everyone accepts the “100% tax rate would yield no revenue” statement as fact. This is begging teh question. Also this refers to a 100% effective tax rate. Again, teh idea that even if there did exist a “Laffer Curve” for high revenue earners only – and there doesn’t despite decades of searching – the point is irrelevant unless the economy also has full employment.

LC:

As is aptly demonstrated from the paid shills whining about how positive views of the ultra-rich have plummeted by 25% or more to the Crazification Factor (27%) and little more.

Gosh, who would have guessed that tanking the economy and then hijacking any attempt to fix it with constant whines about maybe potentially having to pay slightly more in taxes or have to earn the money more honestly next time, while blocking any relief to anyone other than banks and corporations and directly sabotaging attempts to get meaningful healthcare reform at least would cause even slow people to put two and two together and go “wait, you’re not my friend anymore, are you?”

I wonder if the French aristocracy in the time before the Revolution were even half as begging for it as our modern aristocracy is?

And frankly, we all know that if we taxed 100% of all income over 100K a year, they would still choose those jobs over working retail or “living off the government in unemployment checks” and all of the other myths they spew.

Thank you. Here’s the point – producers gotta produce. They’re like haters in that way. Frankly, if the top marginal tax rate above say, a million dollars were 200% to a ceiling of your gross income – jerkwad hedge fund managers would still be maximizing their percentage even if they keep none of it. Because they don’t know anything else.

The stench of desperation is strong…

Because they don’t know anything else.

But their tax attorneys do.

DKW:

And not to repeat myself, but it is also assumed that this 100% tax rate wouldn’t be like it would be in life if it happened, a marginal rate basically denoting a maximum income per year.

And as the post-war boom demonstrated, that type of 100% tax rate is actually an economy booming device, rather than an economy killing device.

And I’m thinking the best thing for this country would be a mandatory class on the marginal tax system and how it works followed by a short test with well known talking points on it. Anyone who fails the test will receive one year of having their taxes calculated under a flat rate rather than the marginal rate along with a detailed note labeling the difference followed by a mandatory repeat of the class the following year.

Any politician who nonetheless pretended this system wasn’t in place to make a political point would be stripped of office and forced into an intensive form of the class that would likely involve people with real problems screaming at them the difference until they got it.

Hedge fund managers would simply be shot on sight.

But their tax attorneys do.

Indeed. And that is why they would be producing like motherfuckers. Itemized deductions are a fantastic way of reducing your taxable income.

But that wasn’t my point. We’re talking about people who insist on carrying on their 90 hour work weeks, never taking vacation and have bleeding ulcers from stress – and when the ER staff tell them to cut back or they might not survive the second heart attack, they check their Blackberries for High Importance messages.

These people would work even if all their efforts yielded only widespread hatred and contempt for their very existence. As is currently being demonstrated across the country.

Exactly. Why is “going Galt” bad? So Dr. Don’t Tax Me, the struggling neurosurgeon, is going to refuse to work 80 hours a week, and only work 40 from now on, if we raise the tax rate on his last $100,000? Doesn’t that mean that Dr. Currently Unemployed Neurosurgeon can be hired to work the other 40?

It only makes sense if you assume (as Rand did, and wingnuts do) that there is a finite amount of competence, and once we use it up, it’s Thunderdome. I believe that not to be the case.

It only makes sense if you assume (as Rand did, and wingnuts do) that there is a finite amount of competence, and once we use it up, it’s Thunderdome.

You forget the egos of the folks involved. Yes, they believe they are irreplaceable.

As you point out, it wouldn’t be hard to fill any position that went Galt.

The stench of desperation is strong…

Does he consider himself a producer? Church deacon, Macon government idiot, blogger, spokes-shill on CNN… what useful service does he provide? And even though I deny the useful of their bullshit metric, pretending for a second it’s a useful indicator of something what evidence does he have that the 53% are more likely to agree with his useless lying ass than they are with the protestors?

DKW:

Well, yeah, workaholics (who let’s be frank, are almost never in the 1%, though they sometimes might make it to the 10% with luck) will work no matter what. It’s the only thing that keeps one distracted from one’s own self and the horror of one’s own thoughts or plugged into the casino-like routine of finishing-project-euphorias and the like.

And more to the point, the workers have been keeping a bad system running long after it should have fallen apart, simply because people want to try and navigate the system as best they can to do right by end-users the best they can and do a good job with their jobs.

By incentives, the system should have collapsed the instant they started the “screw the workers” initiatives and abandoned products as the means to make money. But because people will keep trying to do the best they can, despite working underpaid and understaffed, the system keeps barely ticking over as there are still products that might be worth a damn out there against the direct orders of their corporate overlords and corporate policies.

And it’s what makes their “we are the economy” or their “we are the only citizens who matter” horseshit so hard to swallow.

Because we still have something in spite of them not because of them and now they want the right to take it all hostage until we give them an even deeper blowjob.

There is a point when the slave has been degraded to the point that stabbing the master in the belly looks like a really really good idea.

Cerb,

I’m well aware of teh difference between marginal and effective tax rates. And effective marginal tax rates. In fact, this third concept – the marginal increase in effective tax rates for increases in income – is illuminating on teh Laffer Curve nonsense.

For a wide range of low to medium income levels, the effective marginal rate increase is massive. Due to the structures of tax credits and social safety net programs. And yet, people in that group still try and work their way up teh ladder. Because that’s what you do. It’s not only teh average middle-class worker that stops and thinks – OMG this overtime is going to increase teh phase-out of some tax credit – it’s EVERYONE. Because no one thinks like that. Because the fundamental premise behind the Laffer Curve might sound reasonable and rational, but it’s also one of those things that goes against all available evidence and our existing understanding of human nature.

LC:

It only makes sense if you assume (as Rand did, and wingnuts do) that there is a finite amount of competence, and once we use it up, it’s Thunderdome.

Which is probably why they spend so much time rationalizing every single unemployed person and poor person as an unmotivated, incompetent moron who could work if they wanted to and wasn’t so goddamned lazy.

Because to do otherwise would be to admit that there is a surplus of supply and thus they are quite easily replaced by any number of hungry unemployed people who would jump at the chance to do their job.

And they spin these stories to make the middle class paranoid about the poor, not the upper class.

When I say “our understanding of human nature”, bear in mind that I exclude dipshit dickwads that only acknowledge value if it has a dollar sign in front of it.

We 1%ers aren’t hiring because Obummer is freaking us out.

German economic policies practically enshrine the Mittelstand sector, the small / medium or family-owned businesses. Big corporations are seen as nice to have but they’re not what keeps people employed or keeps the economy ticking over.

So how are the German-speaking countries doing, compared to US?

The “I work harder than you” meme has become a reflexive defense against knowledge that an upbringing, inheritance, superior early education, nutrition, values and even dumb luck favor a small group of people. The assholes who are favored by these things KNOW it, but feel compelled to look down their noses at the less fortunate.

bear in mind that I exclude dipshit dickwads that only acknowledge value if it has a dollar sign in front of it.

Falls under the category of subhuman nature.

Big corporations are seen as nice to have but they’re not what keeps people employed or keeps the economy ticking over.

Yup. Another interesting fact about that G country:

The German co-determination law (Mitbestimmungsgesetz) forms part of the bedrock of German industrial and company policy. it requires that just under half of companies’ supervisory boards’ members are representatives of workers. German company law is curious to an English speaker’s eye, because it has not one but two boards of directors. Shareholders and trade unions elect members of a supervisory board (Aufsichtsrat). The chairman of the supervisory board, with a casting vote, is always a shareholder representative under German law. The supervisory board is meant to set the company’s general agenda. The supervisory board then elects a management board (Vorstand), which is actually charged with the day to day running of the company. The management board is required to have one worker representative (Arbeitsdirektor).

“Water fluoridation is not much different than sending a fluoride Gestapo around every day to force everyone to take fluoride pills, it is unethical and doctors who advocate this are in violation of peoples rights and ethics,”

I was looking up Cynthia Janak from RenewMerka (as an example of Crank Magnetism Bingo). She simultaneously manages to hate the ACLU (because fighting for civil liberties is SOSHALISM) and worry about the sochalists putting fluoride in the water because it VIOLATES HER CIVIL LIBERTIES.*
I don’t think she’s alone in her tolerance of cognitive dissonance.

* Also, Education = S0c1alism. Not making this up.

DKW:

Yeah, we’re in complete agreement.

And yeah, the thing is about income is that outside a hard limit, your end-of-the-day income is nearly always* higher the more income you make.

It might be a little more or it might be a lot more, depending on tax rates or loss of deductions, but the end message is nearly always the same. More money in the bank. And most people will choose that heartily and may even take a relative hit for the opportunity to make more in the future or move up a “social class”.

The only people who whine about marginal tax rates “robbing their income” are idiots who forgot to factor it in when they heard how much they’d be making and so assumed all of it would be theirs or rich assholes who have nothing better to do with their time than sit and stew about the few pennies that got away.

And yeah, it’s hard to sympathize with either of those groups of people when I spend my days fantasizing about making 20,000 a year, or hell, even 10,000.

*There are a few exceptions where the loss of benefits is more than would be gained in income but these are a) rare, and b) rarer the richer you get, poor people have to wonder if that job that barely pays minimum wage is worth it because of the loss of food stamps, rich people rarely have to worry about whether the loss of a deduction erases the extra digit in their yearly income.

Church deacon, Macon government idiot, blogger, spokes-shill on CNN… what useful service does he provide?

Well, you know, he’s off the streets…

Smut Clyde:

worry about the sochalists putting fluoride in the water because it VIOLATES HER CIVIL LIBERTIES.*

What I wouldn’t give to see these people struggle with real violation of civil liberties or genuine oppression just for one day.

Yeah. It doesn’t even make sense from their own warped view of reality. The effective marginal tax rate is way higher on low/middle income earners than it is on the rich. That’s how it’s currently set-up.

But in crazy right-wing land, teh poor are lazy and teh rich are super-producers. And being lazy is a moral failing. And paying moar money to teh gubmint discourages work. So, by not reducing teh tax buredn on teh poor only – we are promoting laziness. That teh virtuous thing to do, from a utilitarian perspective, is to massively shift teh tax burden off teh poor and middle class and put it on teh rich – because that incentivizes moral behaviour.

See how may Laffer Curve proponents accept that idea.

And I know I’ve used this anecdote before, but the farmer I stayed in Denmark with for a bit told me that they didn’t really have rich or poor in Denmark while he owned his own farm and fairly good sized estate with a fairly large place for renting, a summer home in Germany, and a horse ranch in Switzerland for their daughter to train to become an equestrian athlete.

So yeah, that high marginal tax rate seems to allow one hell of a nice lifestyle for all of that “oppression”.

Macon government idiot…

Was I the only one who saw “bacon” at first?

Hmmm….”Bacon Government…”

Someone alert Josh St. Lawrence immediately!

Bacon government will stop sharia law!

Also, going over the article, I like how he points out some carefully underestimated facts that still show the glaring inequality problem and then just instantly segways into concern trolling critiques.

Okay, yes, the rich own all our stuff, but…um, they pay their taxes and aren’t all evil? And besides, can’t we just make income inequality into a “opinions differ left/right thing” so we can just whine about “partisanship” rather than engaging the topic, like we do about abortion?

The shills don’t even really have the energy for a genuine pushback anymore, rather just a flailing, “eek, don’t look at the man behind the curtain” reaction to having the protestors gather underneath them.

“I don’t think she’s alone in her tolerance of cognitive dissonance.
* Also, Education = S0c1alism. Not making this up”

Doesn’t surprise me. I was talking to a republican U.S house campaign staffer at a bar and she was arguing that public schools are bad because shoshalamism!! and that was ten years ago.

Also smut, your linky no worky.

Macon government idiot…

Was I the only one who saw “bacon” at first?

a) There is actually a food called macon. And yes, it’s bacon-like

b) While it would have been a great sports team name for the town, the Whoopies won out instead.

Is it wrong to sort of want Mitt to win so that all these people will KINDLY SHUT THEIR FUCKING NOISEHOLES FOR FOUR YEARS?

It’s not like Mitt would be anything other than another Obama regime.

“I know they exist – I see them every day,” a conference participant, Robin Lynn, said by telephone from Kemerovo. She says she has a family of 10 yeti-like creatures living on her land in the US state of Michigan.

Oh, well then, search is over. Poor yeti-like creatures, homeless squatters on the land of others…curse you Bank of America!

they didn’t really have rich or poor in Denmark while he owned his own farm and fairly good sized estate with a fairly large place for renting, a summer home in Germany, and a horse ranch in Switzerland for their daughter to train to become an equestrian athlete.

It’s almost as if providing the entire population with opportunities to contribute to the economy works better for a country than drawing all one’s executives and decision-makers from an inbred, inherited-wealth-based elite!

Oh, well then, search is over. Poor yeti-like creatures, homeless squatters on the land of others…curse you Bank of America!

OCCUPY ISREAL!

Also smut, your linky no worky.

Story of my life. WP stuck some stuff in front of it. Try this:
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/janak/050220

Also too, using Samuelson’s own numbers:

the richest 10 percent of Americans accounted for about 33 percent to 35 percent of total income, including capital gains (mostly stock profits), estimate economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty. By 2007, their share was 50 percent

and

In 2007, the richest 10 percent paid 55 percent of all federal taxes

See, teh system is totally progressive!

IOW, Teh effective tax rate on teh top 10% is 10% higher than everyone else’s. i.e. teh average effective tax rate is about 40%. For teh überwealthy it’s an onerous 44%.

How do they know the snowman is abominable? Maybe he’s nice.

Smut Clyde:

It’s almost as if providing the entire population with opportunities to contribute to the economy works better for a country than drawing all one’s executives and decision-makers from an inbred, inherited-wealth-based elite!

Who could have known?

It’s almost like feudalism is even more a proven failure than communism or something.

DKW says,
“Everyone accepts the “100% tax rate would yield no revenue” statement as fact.”

The coralary to the laffer curve is that a tax rate of 0% should raise infinity revenue.

Boy, does Samuelson ever fuck that up…

Surely I can’t be the only person here born after the Apollo 11 landing, can I?

Nope. I still had a few more years before showing up. It sure would’ve been cool to see live, though.

Oh, and the 53% fuckwads (being led by Eric Sonofericson and Josh Trevinohmygawdwhattadoucheheis) are pretty much just the Tea Party in non-racist-image-or-sign-holding form.

Ya know: middle class people that rich people have convinced to blame poor people for … well, everything.

Ben Franklin was a commie who rammed big government libraries and fire departments down America’s throat.

This requires an extraordinarily large “GO FUCK YOURSELF!”

Not that the Obama administration is covering itself in glory or anything…

Ben Franklin was a commie who rammed big government libraries and fire departments down America’s throat.

And elephants. Don’t forget the elephants!

Wait. That was PT Barnum…

I fucking HATE those 53%er FUCKING ASSHOLES. Those are the kind of people who suggest you should feel lucky to have your shit job with no benefits and shitty pay and an sawed-off little runt with a Napolean complex for a boss, cuz HEY AT LEAST YOU’RE WORKING.

Those people are WORSE than the 1%ers because these fucks suffer to enable them.

The first PG movie I ever saw in a theater was Capricorn 1 about a fake Moon landing starring O.J. Simpson.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077294/

The coralary to the laffer curve is that a tax rate of 0% should raise infinity revenue.

I’m ashamed to know this, but actually no. That’s why it’s a “curve”. It starts at 0 revenue for a 0 tax rate, increases to some magic optimum point (around 70% if you’re a consenus economist, about 7% if you’re a glibertarian) and drops to 0 revenue for a 100% tax rate.

But there’s no evidence for it. And with teh complicating factors of oscillating business cycles &c. it’s hard to analyze. BUT still – this is how the Laffer Curve came into being – it’s obvious that a 0% tax rate raises 0 dollars and it is also “obvious” that a 100% tax rate raises 0 dollars. Therefore there’s a point somewhere in between that yields maximum government revenue. IOW, pure thought exercise based on 0 empirical evidence and actually in contradiction to obseved reality. Welcome to teh world of Economics.

“And elephants. Don’t forget the elephants!”

Beware of the Big Elephant industry.

Ben Franklin was a commie who rammed big government libraries and fire departments down America’s throat.
Don’t forget the Post Office! And the regular census!

It’s almost as if providing the entire population with opportunities to contribute to the economy works better for a country than drawing all one’s executives and decision-makers from an inbred, inherited-wealth-based elite and telling people who lucky they are to live in a meritocracy.

I forgots the crucial part.

I was not born by until more than a year after the last moon mission splashed down. However, Skylab had not yet smacked into the Australian outback by the time of my birth.

LOL–my first PG movie: Smokey and the Bandit. Which had a fairly attractive, young Sally Field in it. Post Gidget, pre award-show-weirdness, I think.

The first PG movie I ever saw in a theater was Capricorn 1 about a fake Moon landing starring O.J. Simpson

If you notice in the dark corner of the studio where they faked it lies a bloody glove.

Everytime I think about OJ, and it’s not often, I’m reminded that one of his last commercial endorsements was for Hertz Rent-A-Cars which included a commercial with a Cali surfer dude a la Kato Kalein saying “Brutal, Juice”

DKW debunks my snark with economic analysis.

Beware of the Big Elephant industry.

That Breitbart. Is he going after Weight Watchers now?

meritocracy.

LOL.

I’m ashamed to know this, but actually no. That’s why it’s a “curve”.

It could be an asymptotic hyperbolic curve, which would satisfy the “infinite revenue near zero” condition.

It’s not, but not all curves are parabolas.

I had a bikini clad Cheryl Ladd poster in my room and my mom ripped it down so I replaced it with a more wholesome O.J. football poster. True story.

Substance:

Oh my god, yes.

Also, hey, what about those countries that do treat terror as a criminal problem rather than a problem that can be solved by indiscriminately bombing everything in the loosely-reasoned “area”?

Well, let’s see here, there is Denmark, which is pretty much number one on the terrorist hit list because a right-wing douchebag there made derogatory drawings of Mohammed once. They treat their terror threats as police issues similar to other criminal threats. As of yet they have foiled every attempt to committ a terrorist act on Danish soil and that number dwarfs the number of “attempts” that America has had even if we include our “never would have had a chance” and “feds actually were the ones to plan it the whole time” events.

Not only that but they successfully managed to prevent a planned attack on the Danish national team in South Africa for the World Cup.

So yeah, Danish police working with local law enforcement as a police action managed to prevent an attack against their citizens at a chaotic event in another fucking country simply because they treated it like a law enforcement problem.

Meanwhile, we got tangled up in two meaningless wars, made ourselves one of the most hated nations on Earth, managed to fail to prevent any number of domestic terrorist attack because “it wasn’t external muslims doing it” and we were only able to capture Osama when we stopped trying to bomb the problem into submission and actually did some rudimentary police work to find him in his not all that hidden pleasure palace.

But do go on, war criminal John Yoo, explain to us why terrorism is different from crime and should only be approached from a military perspective.

Oh wait, you don’t have any argument other than “terrorism isn’t crime” and a few appeals to the lizard brains of conservatives.

I guess it’s our own damn fault. Every war criminal who spends the next few decades being a douchebag is a stark reminder why we should resist the urge to “let bygones be bygones” and actually fucking arrest and try these fuckers for their crimes against humanity.

bikini clad Cheryl Ladd poster

Taking five…no, ten…

The “I work harder than you” meme has become a reflexive defense against knowledge that an upbringing, inheritance, superior early education, nutrition, values and even dumb luck favor a small group of people.

They also define “work” into something they do that other people don’t; you know they don’t work harder than, say, migrant farm workers, and yet they know they do because they know they do. It also ties in to the zero-sum competence idea, in that they know they are the competent ones and any black man or woman hired over them is not, and therefore evidence of affirmative action, reverse racism, the downtroddenness of the white man, etc. You or I might call this begging the question, but we’d be wrong because we’re wrong.

Courtesy LGM:

We’re one step closer to the idiocracy

You or I might call this begging the question, but we’d be wrong because we’re wrong.

Yes. I once sat most of the way through a football game with a fucking douchebag who commented that the ball being shaped like a watermelon had a dramatic effect on the NFL. He and I didn’t get along well after I had about 4 beers.

I should start smoking again. I’m becoming quite hostile and combative.

Courtesy LGM:

We’re one step closer to the idiocracy

At least THOSE thugs aren’t union thugs.

At least THOSE thugs aren’t union thugs.

Empty houses, crooks, what could possibly go wrong?

tigris:

It’s because “hard-working” is a tribal identity, or more like a tribal reward. Just like you become “good”, “moral”, “upstanding” and “upholding family values” by belonging to the right tribe regardless of your actions (it’s okay to rape your six-year-old daughter as long as you go to the right church and argue against homosexuality and abortion in public).

So, by going to the right church and being the right color, you are obviously an inheritor of the “protestant work ethic” and “work hard” actual effort notwithstanding and because others aren’t part of this tribe they are inherently “not hard working” and “lazy”.

It has no bearing to any actual actions. They will call a migrant worker lazy to their face while they are lounging on their porches picking their navels.

It’s because the migrant isn’t part of the “hard-working” tribe.

Or to put it more simply. All words have become dog-whistles to describe other people’s belonging to an out-group. Thus every atheist, black, latino, woman, etc… are lazy, greedy, moral-less, criminal, degenerate parasites. Because they aren’t white male christian protestants of “good standing”.

Next they will want to privatize congress or have we already done that?

We’re one step closer to the idiocracy

But it worked so well in The Dirty Dozen!

Empty houses, crooks, what could possibly go wrong?

Chaos, confusion, an entire crew of unqualified, untrained and poorly equipped (axes are likely to be considered weapons, even in red states), criminals running into burning homes. The only sad part is that we didn’t think of it before.

Capricorn 1 was about a fake Mars landing, not a fake moon landing. Do I need to teach you people everything?

These people are like a non-suicidal attention seeker on top of a large building really hoping the answer back from the street isn’t “jump!”

”Jump,”
you say?

goddammit!!!!! Tag fail!

Do I need to teach you people everything?

Teach me, tiger!

Help. Oh it’s all fine, that was my first theater experience. I can recall seeing Dr. Who at the drive-in but my first theater movie was Help.

“Those people are WORSE than the 1%ers because these fucks suffer to enable them”

I honestly think many of them would happily starve…so long as they knew someone out there were starving just a little more.

Starvation is a limited good.

Oh wait…

Well, you know, he’s off the streets…

That’s a service the employers provide, not him.

Those are the kind of people who suggest you should feel lucky to have your shit job with no benefits and shitty pay and an sawed-off little runt with a Napolean complex for a boss, cuz HEY AT LEAST YOU’RE WORKING.

Makes me think of Stevie Wonder’s “Village Ghetto Land.”

Also too the whole convo makes me think of “Misstra Know It All” and frankly the luckier and less productive of anything actually useful or meaningful people are, the bigger their head about their awesome independent and unprecedented bootstrappiness. Venture capitalists == soul goatses.

It’s funny how many of us were five when we watched the moon landing

###
I was 5 and remember the moon landing well.

Nutrition is theft!

Nutrition is theft!

You gonna eat that baby? I’m starving.

Every can of food donated, every food stamp printed, every welfare payment offered, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger for caviar and cannot get enough, those whose walk-in closets are full of last year’s clothes.

⊙⊙
 ⊚

Any closet is a walk-in if you want to badly enough.

Any closet is a walk-in if you want to badly enough.

I dunno…those Republicans pack themselves pretty tight into theirs.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the social-responsible complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We’re one step closer to the idiocracy

They don’t read many comics, do they? It’s like putting Lex Luthor or Norman Osborn in charge of Homeland Security.

They don’t read many comics, do they?

Fixxed!

Wasn’t Lex Luthor president in one version of DC continuity?

Wasn’t Lex Luthor president in one version of DC continuity?

Indeed he was

Wasn’t Lex Luthor president in one version of DC continuity?

Comic Book Guy: That was in a parallel universe. It never really happened.
Bart Simpson: None of this stuff ever really happened.
CBG (smolders a long moment): Get out of my store.

[/paraphrase from memory]

Worst Paraphrase Ever

Worst Paraphrase Ever

As a loyal commenter, I feel he owes me better.

You gonna eat that baby? I’m starving.

Ah putcha putcha putcha. Ah putcha putcha way!

It’s like putting Lex Luthor or Norman Osborn in charge of Homeland Security.

Pikers.

Dick Cheney schooled those comic cunts.

mmy said,

October 11, 2011 at 17:39

I know this is off-topic, and I know Ezra does not have a lot of fans around here, but this analysis of the financial crisis beats the shit outta Samuelson.

Saying somebody is better than Ezra would be punny Samuelson is faint praise indeed. Unsurprisingly, I had a non favorable view of Ezra’s post.

Lex Luthor at least is competent.

Lex Luthor at least is competent.

Global, endless war, no bid contracts for TOTALLY NOT his company, no more career for those who opposed him…

I’m not seeing any incompetence here.

Luthor competent? Is superman dead yet?

How do they know the snowman is abominable? Maybe he’s nice.

Maybe he’s a Reformed Bumble.

Luthor competent? Is superman dead yet?

Come on! There’s a global kryptonite shortage and the Saudis have us by the throat. You can’t blame President Luthor for things he has no control over.

Come on! There’s a global kryptonite shortage and the Saudis have us by the throat. You can’t blame President Luthor for things he has no control over.

ALL THIS BECAUSE LIBTARDS KEEP MAKING SOCAILISM.

Ever since the Civil War our national leaders and the Supreme Court have agreed that a citizen who joins the enemy must suffer the consequences of his belligerency, with the same status as that of an alien enemy.

ahhh, yes! the civil war…such enlightened times they were!

and really? yoo is going with killing terrorist=bad, torturing terrorist=good?

okay…lady on the radio is bitching because she works in the medical field, has to pay a *super* high premium w/a *super* high deductible all the while watching single welfare moms and their multiple kids coming in 24/7 for mri-s and other expensive tests for FREE…or maybe a $3 copay…she finished by saying that ‘oh my gawd, these people need to get off their lazy asses and get a job!’

i was like, wow, shouldn’t you be a little more pissed off at your insurance provider and wanting to fix the ‘system’ and not bitching about the slobs clogging up the waiting area? who are also keeping you employed?

okay…lady on the radio is bitching because she works in the medical field, has to pay a *super* high premium w/a *super* high deductible all the while watching single welfare moms and their multiple kids coming in 24/7 for mri-s and other expensive tests for FREE…or maybe a $3 copay…she finished by saying that ‘oh my gawd, these people need to get off their lazy asses and get a job!’

I’m convinced that every situation is exactly how she perceives it. They’re all single welfare moms, all of them have tons of kids because they get more welfare that way.

Yoo:

According to the reports, the Obama administration believed that force could only be used against Awlaki because arrest was impractical and he posed an imminent threat to the United States. This is plainly wrong.

It may make for good policy, especially toward US citizens who make the mistake of joining the enemy, but there is no legal reason why a nation at war must try to apprehend an enemy instead of shooting at him first.

In other words, even providing lip service to rule of law is too dangerous in time of war against a strategy and we must just kill ’em all and let the Big Judge In Teh Sky sort ’em out.

Fuck Yoo.

A select group of inmates may be exchanging their prison jumpsuits for firefighting gear in Camden County.

this sounds like the beginning of an excellent lifetime movie…

goddammit!!!!! Tag fail! this

also, too…get offa mah tag-fail!

Brooks tees off on OWS

Fucking POS. FYNYFT.

Closing loaf:

Don’t be fooled by the clichés of protest movements past. The most radical people today are the ones that look the most boring. It’s not about declaring war on some nefarious elite. It’s about changing behavior from top to bottom. Let’s occupy ourselves.

The U.S. economy is probably going to stink for a few more years.

i’m still a little hurt that nobody had a comment for my anecdote about the funeral where the minister started off with, ‘death stinks!’…

i give him kudos on his summation of the gop:

Unfortunately, the country has been wasting this winter of recuperation. Nothing of consequence has been achieved over the past two years. Instead, there have been a series of trivial sideshows. It’s as if people can’t keep their minds focused on the big things. They get diverted by scuffles that are small, contentious and symbolic.

i’m still a little hurt that nobody had a comment for my anecdote about the funeral where the minister started off with, ‘death stinks!’

Oh, DEATH.

I thought you were commenting on my dental hygene.

soul goatses

That is an excellent band name!

For ZRM: 16 zombies injured on ‘Resident Evil’ movie set

Let’s occupy ourselves.*

not so veiled bobo fap reference…

a citizen who joins the enemy must suffer the consequences of his belligerency, with the same status as that of an alien enemy.

This is especially useful when you’re the person who decides what a citizen must do to “join the enemy”, and which citizens have qualified.

Oh, DEATH.

I thought you were commenting on my dental hygene.

oh, ha ha! this was also the same minister who referred to the bride’s ‘special time’ about 18 times during a wedding ceremony…he even used words like ‘plumbing’…

Oh, and I was actually born the day of the first moon landing, so there. My middle name was almost “Neil” because of that, also too.

My first TV memory was of watching the fall of Saigon in black-n-white in the smoke-filled haze of my living room.

Meanwhile, the Wasilla Wonder goes overseas to South Korea and criticizes the Chinese military and calls for regime change in North Korea. The South Korean goverment had to walk it back.

Dimwit is going to cause an international diplomatic crisis.

My first TV memory was the opening to The Six Million Dollar Man, (Aside from the cartoons and Sesame Street). My brother and I LOVED that opening sequence.

My middle name was almost “Neil” because of that, also too.

oregon neil beer snob has a nice ring to it…

Meanwhile, the Wasilla Wonder goes overseas to South Korea and criticizes the Chinese military and calls for regime change in North Korea. The South Korean goverment had to walk it back.

Dimwit is going to cause an international diplomatic crisis.

WTF? Since when is talking stupid SHIT considered statesmanship? Of course, motherfuckers are STILL hating on Jane Fonda, but this will draw a massive chorus of “WHAT”s from the wingnuts. She is such a fucking jerk.

My first TV memory was the opening to The Six Million Dollar Man, (Aside from the cartoons and Sesame Street). My brother and I LOVED that opening sequence.

mine was sneaking downstairs to mom and dad’s room to hop in bed with them to watch ‘dragnet’…they always wheeled the tv into their room and had snacks…this also is besides captain kangaroo and romper room…

My first TV memory was the opening to The Six Million Dollar Man, (Aside from the cartoons and Sesame Street). My brother and I LOVED that opening sequence.

[Oscar]We can rebuild him![/Oscar]

I loved that show as a kid too. I’m sure I watched TV before Saigon, but I don’t remember any of it. I have a clear memory of that though, even at that age I could tell there was something going on that my folks thought was a big deal.

My brother and I LOVED that opening sequence.

You only liked it because it was excellent.

captain kangaroo

I loved captain kangaroo!

Another memory of mine — being sure I turned off the TV before I left to walk to school, so I could turn it back on and watch it from the same spot when I got home. I was pissed when that didn’t work. My dad thought that was hilarious, but I was really just inventing the DVR before its time.

Where I was on Moon Day. Yep. Got a photo.
.

A year or two before The Six Million Dollar Man premiered, in an effort to help me with my scifi obsession, my father got me Cyborg by Martin Caiden, which was the first book I read with explicit sex. The tv show was a disappointment.

Kiddie show nostalgia.

In a number of nations in South America, their leftish and leftist governments have actually reversed their own trends and began reducing inequality.

Brazil, since electing that crazy ultra-leftist Lula da Silva, has massively cut poverty, and with the “Bolsa Familia” directly gave money to women in dire poverty and allowed the ending of starvation among the greedy poor who kept wanting to ‘eat’ and ‘live’ and stuff.

Nearly 40 million Brazilians left poverty level incomes for middle class incomes, though attempts to contact George W. Bush Jr. to explain how many’s in a million Brazilian is unclear.

This was also after decades of US-created military tyranny (launched under JFK) which imprisoned future President and labor leader da Silva himself, and after decades of US economic ‘advice’ telling them to cut off anything related to national and popular development to sell of forests & shit. Instead,

Long famous for its unequal distribution of wealth, Brazil has shrunk its income gap by more than any other country in South America this decade, with the bottom earners showing major income gains and more modest gains among top earners. But Brazil is also outspending most of its neighbors on social programs, and overall public spending continues to be nearly four times as high as what Mexico spends as a percentage of its gross national product.

Oh, but, you know, inequality is just some sort of unavoidable natural process, sometimes it goes up, sometimes it goes down, kids say the darndest things.

I should start smoking again. I’m becoming quite hostile and combative.

Nononono. I am three weeks in. tsam is a role model. No backsliding.

As you were.

Another memory of mine

ha, ha…that is pretty funny…i remember tuning in to general hospital and being all, ‘wtf? this is the same thing they showed yesterday! and the day before!’ yes, my romance with soaps was short-lived…but what wasn’t at age 5?

Nononono. I am three weeks in. tsam is a role model. No backsliding.

well done, you! and yeah, tsam…NO BACKSLIDING!!!

My dad snapped a picture of the tv screen (a 1965 Admiral b&w) just as Neil’s boot was about to touch down. The next year, we got a color tv.

Where I was on Moon Day. Yep. Got a photo

now that you are older, i certainly hope you and your friends no longer drive without EVEN LOOKING AT THE FUCKING ROAD!!!

now that you are older, i certainly hope you and your friends no longer drive without EVEN LOOKING AT THE FUCKING ROAD!!!

What’s funny is that at age 43, I gave up having a car, and have had only a scooter for transportation, ever since. Next month marks five full years.
.

She said, “‘Please explain how the government is going to teach cost-saving and efficiency to corporations.”

does sarah not realize who she works for?

What’s funny is that at age 43, I gave up having a car, and have had only a scooter for transportation, ever since. Next month marks five full years.

i would totes go the way of the scooter if it was feasible…anyhoo…how’s the job hunt going?

The US most certainly has not given up the space program.

We just presented designs for the biggest, most powerful rocket booster ever built.

Yes. Bigger and more powerful than the Saturn 5 which boosted the Apollo crafts out of the lower atmosphere. I did not anticipate us ever embiggening upon the Saturn 5.

The Space Launch System, or SLS, will be designed to carry the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, as well as important cargo, equipment and science experiments to Earth’s orbit and destinations beyond. Additionally, the SLS will serve as a back up for commercial and international partner transportation services to the International Space Station…

…The SLS rocket will incorporate technological investments from the Space Shuttle Program and the Constellation Program in order to take advantage of proven hardware and cutting-edge tooling and manufacturing technology that will significantly reduce development and operations costs.

It will use a liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propulsion system, which will include the RS-25D/E from the Space Shuttle Program for the core stage and the J-2X engine for the upper stage. SLS will also use solid rocket boosters for the initial development flights, while follow-on boosters will be competed based on performance requirements and affordability considerations.

The SLS will have an initial lift capacity of 70 metric tons. That’s more than 154,000 pounds, or 77 tons, roughly the weight of 40 sport utility vehicles. The lift capacity will be evolvable to 130 metric tons — more than 286,000 pounds, or 143 tons — enough to lift 75 SUVs. The first developmental flight, or mission, is targeted for the end of 2017.

If the ‘They’s Wuz Some Things, Hell, I Mean A Buncha Shit Man Wuz Jus’ Not Meant To Know And Such’ Republican Senate doesn’t kill it, this is pretty bad ass.

However, if NASA would indeed commit to shooting 75 SUV’s into space, or perhaps a mix of SUV’s, full-sized pickups, and NASCAR stock cars, it could gain more support from the Grand Old Crumbling Holy Roman Empire Party.

excuse me: for whom she works?

the first book I read with explicit sex

It takes concentration to keep reading during explicit sex. It might be easier done during implied sex.

…anyhoo…how’s the job hunt going?

I don’t have one, yet. I interviewed for the get-shot-at shift at a local convenience store last week, though.
.

The last five years, I have saved more than $10,000 on gasoline and insurance. I get 60MPG, average (bigger scooter than most — 250cc engine, which can do interstate travel). For someone who has been cyberbegging, this makes a huge difference in quality of life. Still have a mostly-ramen diet, though.
.

Prediction for tonight’s debate:

Cain and Perry will call for an immediate bombing of Iran. Romney will call them soft and demand we start two wars against Iran yesterday.

Moon Day is my birthday!! Also too!!! AND, I like to drink beer! Coincidence??

Summer birthdaze are the BEST because you’re evenly spaced between your bday & Xmas. I had a friend whose bday was Dec. 27. Always felt kinda bad for him.

P.S. Captain Kangaroo is the MAN!!!

In a good way, I mean. Not like, Rise up against Captain Kangaroo!!

Electric Company.

My brother and I also laughed our idiot heads off every time they yelled

“HEEEYYYYYY YOOUUUUUUU GUUYYYYYYYYYYYSSSSSS!!!!!”

Wow. So much has changed since then.

In a number of nations in South America, their leftish and leftist governments have actually reversed their own trends and began reducing inequality.

Also Turkey, sez the Great Gazoogle.

Nononono. I am three weeks in. tsam is a role model. No backsliding.

well done, you! and yeah, tsam…NO BACKSLIDING!!!

FINE WHATEVER. You’re ALL PLOTTING AGAINST ME

Moon Day is my birthday!! Also too!!! AND, I like to drink beer! Coincidence??

It’s got to be a conspiracy!

Summer birthdaze are the BEST because you’re evenly spaced between your bday & Xmas. I had a friend whose bday was Dec. 27. Always felt kinda bad for him.

Yeah, they were great especially with the weather around here. I was always the tiniest bit jealous of my friends that got to have their parties at school (at least in grade school), but good weather and the whole “present spacing” thing balanced it out.

What about reading implied messages during explicit sex?

I don’t have one, yet. I interviewed for the get-shot-at shift at a local convenience store last week, though.

Uh, good luck, I guess…

Can you afford a bullet-proof vest if you get hired?

I recommend against reading explicit text messages during any kind of sex. It can make your partner angry, especially if the texts come from somebody else.

What about reading implied messages during explicit sex?

Sure, count me in……………………….

Hey tsam: Better than Bobo

And hey, JP, good luck. It’s gruesome out there, make sure you assign the proper amount of responsibility to the world and the economy and not yourself. Having been out of work for awhile I remember beating myself up a fair bit about this.

DO NOT BE LIKE ME.

Seriously, hang in there.

I was six when I watched Apollo 11 touch down – it was on our old black-and-white Zenith with commentary from Walter. I was so into anything space and I still remember a book from grade school called You Will Go To The Moon. I got to tour the Kennedy Space Center when I was 11 – nerd heaven.

And hey, JP, good luck.

Thanks. And keep up with the not smoking. If I could do it (90 days clean!) puffing on an e-cig (still, also, too), anyone can.
.

You’re ALL PLOTTING AGAINST ME

We all hate you and want you to live forever.

Wait. I’ll come in again.

Wait. I’ll come in again.

Good, my explicit sex wasn’t ready yet.

Good, my explicit sex wasn’t ready yet.

Dammit, now I’ve blown* my implied text.

*sure.

Not that anyone gives a flying whatever, but I was 15, living in Yurp & had no tee vee when the moon landing was faked, plus it was on at like 0200 anyway.

On the other hand, Froggies were very solicitous & (sincerely, I guess) hoped the Apollo 13 crew made it back safely while that was playing out.

Sex is based upon implied messages, though there are the explicit parts too.

We all hate you and want you to live forever

I KNEW IT

Hey tsam: Better than Bobo

That Krugman. He’s a good egg.

Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.”

omfg! is he srs?!? lol!

if anyone cares, i am making a lasagna for supper…it smells rilly, rilly good…

Hey, I made lasagna tonight, too. Arrabiata with the last of the tomatoes (sad face) cooked for much of the day, then home-made almond ricotta and pine nut parmesan. Going a little veganish for the spoose’s cholesterol. The almond ricotta was excellent, the parm only so so, but with a little work might be presentable.

my first TV brain damage was in 1968, when The Birds was broadcast.

My parents sent me up to bed, but I crept back down and watched it between the balusters.

That fucker Hitchcock. to this day I get twitchy around large flocks of birds.

I was so into anything space and I still remember a book from grade school called You Will Go To The Moon.

I remember that book! Hey, why am I not on the moon RIGHT NOW?

THOSE FUCKERS LIED TO US.

That fucker Hitchcock. to this day I get twitchy around large flocks of birds.

These guys pass by my work at sunset. Yes it is like that.

My parents sent me up to bed, but I crept back down and watched it between the balusters.
That fucker Hitchcock. to this day I get twitchy around large flocks of birds.

But you’re OK about balusters?

My s.o. was born the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. We’re nine years apart, I know what I was doing the day he was born. If I had had a clue, at the time, I wouldn’t have known what do with it. Probably would have wondered if he was as cute as that boy on the Rifleman, or Robin, or the Green Hornet, or Michael Nesmith, or John Lennon, or Danny, or Kevin… and wondered if he liked to wrestle.

But you’re OK about balusters?

They weren’t eating Tippi Hedren.

These guys pass by my work at sunset. Yes it is like that.

OK, I am never going to Vancouver.

Hey, I made lasagna tonight, too. Arrabiata with the last of the tomatoes (sad face) cooked for much of the day, then home-made almond ricotta and pine nut parmesan. Going a little veganish for the spoose’s cholesterol. The almond ricotta was excellent, the parm only so so, but with a little work might be presentable.

i did not put that much effort into mine…but it was pretty good…the garlic ciabatta bread was the bomb! no dessert 🙁 tho…

These guys pass by my work at sunset. Yes it is like that.

we get a huge flock of blackbirds in the trees next to our house for about a week every fall….annoying as hell when they won’t shut up…terrifying as hell when they all take flight…

El Cid said,

[LOGORRHEA ADVISORY] October 12, 2011 at 1:09 (kill)

I took about a bazillion pictures of the Saturn V they had laid out horizontally at the KSC. The Ho was all “WTF? Why are you wasting film (which helps to date the experience) on this thing?. I was all but creaming my jeans over the experience.

“That fucker Hitchcock. to this day I get twitchy around large flocks of birds”

Tell me about it. There was this flock of seagulls once…I still shudder thinking of the haircuts.

Tell me about it. There was this flock of seagulls once…I still shudder thinking of the haircuts.

You should have ran, so far away.

L
O
L

Snowdrift Snooki in South Korea

From Executive Planet on business etiquette: “Professional women typically wear conservative business suits or dresses. Since many people sit on the floor in some restaurants, tight skirts are best avoided.”

Jeebus.She looks like she’s the keynote speaker for a porn convention.

Heh. Wide ranging.

I like the notion of Palin condemning too close a collaboration between government and big business in South Korea, home of the chaebols, in which none of their megacompanies succeeded without massive government intervention and exploitative trade agreements where — whether or not there would have been any shit they wanted to buy from us — they were free to sell here, but US imports were disallowed or massively tariff taxed. And until recently, capital repatriation got the death penalty.

I’m sure there were some polite giggles at how well she knew South Korean politics and economics.

my two younger brothers were born a year apart one on dec. 23 and the other on dec. 26

Are y’all Irish? ‘Cause some kinda event was going on in late March……………………..

I still shudder thinking of the haircuts.

I saw FoS open up for Squeeze…………………the singer had this big, weird bird-of-prey haircut and looked totally scary……………………then, between songs, he was all, “‘ey! ‘ow ya doin’ then? ‘sgreat ta be ‘ere…………….”

Didn’t add up somehow.

I’m sure there were some polite giggles at how well she knew South Korean politics and economics.

“Ta-a-a-a-ahd! What is this stinky cabbage they’re givin’ me?”

Brakfast: Two slices buttered toast.

Next meal: Hillshire Farms Cheese Wurst, wrapped in a Mission flour tortilla. Just finished it, & may have another.

What is it w/ Palin? What could she possibly have to impart to any one, any where, esp. business people?

Oh: “Now we are living in a bottom-up world, from entertainment and information to education.” So, the morons are taking over, & she’s going to be the head cretin.

Or something worse could be construed from “bottom-up,” speaking of the keynote speaker at a smut convention.

Are y’all Irish? ‘Cause some kinda event was going on in late March……………………..

german/irish mostly…my dad always said my brothers were souvenirs of grocery store conventions…

‘We must meet this crazy American! She is a crazy person! You will laugh much. Have you seen her reality TV show? And she pretends to be a moral leader in their country but her family is such a crazy group of weird people! I’m sure I can get her expenses paid.’

Good guess, El Cid. They’re laughing at us barbarians again.

As far as that small business/job creation crap goes:

The stereotype of the small-businessperson as a start-up innovator is pervasive. But it’s not true, according to a new study. Scupper the image of Mark Zuckerberg handcrafting a new service to revolutionize how we socialize and adding thousands of jobs to the economy. Replace it with the image of a gas-station owner, servicing a crowded market, happy to be able to make his kid’s soccer games without a boss breathing down his neck, and more wary of innovation than eager for it.

Small-town Rotary Club-asshole type, in other words.

As I read in the Business Section of the L.A. Times, many yrs. ago: Most small businesses are cash cows for the owner & owner’s family, & most of them don’t survive the death of the owner.

That fucker Hitchcock. to this day I get twitchy around large flocks of birds.

A few years ago, my wife rocked the most awesome Tippi Hedren costume, complete with vintage suit, matching bag and hat, bloody streaks down the face and an actual fucking bird wired to her hat.

Nobody got it. All night, it was, “What are you supposed to be?” Fucking philistines, the lot of them.

Um…the bird was made of wicker. We didn’t, like, kill somebody’s budgerigar to celebrate Hallowe’en.

The kids can get in on the fun!

Um…the bird was made of wicker. We didn’t, like, kill somebody’s budgerigar to celebrate Hallowe’en.

good call…killing a budgie isn’t in keeping w/hallowe’en…maybe like biting the head off a bat or sumpin’…also, too…i am stealing this idea for next year…

LOL

80s do.

Next meal: Hillshire Farms Cheese Wurst, wrapped in a Mission flour tortilla. Just finished it, & may have another.

Leftover chicken with salsa and shredded cheese wrapped in a Mission flour tortilla.

Washed down with a glass of cheap-ass chardonnay.

Um…the bird was made of wicker. We didn’t, like, kill somebody’s budgerigar to celebrate Hallowe’en.

Well, of course not.

Lever the bird alive and do it.

Next meal: Hillshire Farms Cheese Wurst, wrapped in a Mission flour tortilla. Just finished it, & may have another.

Hmpf. You want SAUSAGE, you need to come to German-country.

Usinger’s.

Washed down with a glass of cheap-ass chardonnay.

Cheap wine is the BEST.

Lever the bird alive and do it.

Or you could just LEAVE the bird alive. Dunno why you’d need a lever.

Although using a Mythbusters-style Chicken Cannon might be full of yuks.

To simulate people getting bird-pooped on in The Birds, an air gun which shot globs of mayo at the talent was used.

ZRM, I was in Milwaukee for a conference a few years ago and came home with an entire cooler full of Usinger’s brats and assorted other sausages. Awesome stuff.

To simulate people getting bird-pooped on in The Birds, an air gun which shot globs of mayo at the talent was used.

Now that I know that, what do I do?

Get an air gun w/ mayo rounds?

To simulate people getting bird-pooped on in The Birds, an air gun which shot globs of mayo at the talent was used.

Now that I know that, what do I do?

TAKE THAT GUN TO OCCUPY WALL STREET TO SHOOT FAKE BIRD POOP AT BANKSTERS.

ZRM, I was in Milwaukee for a conference a few years ago and came home with an entire cooler full of Usinger’s brats and assorted other sausages. Awesome stuff.

Yep. Germans know from sassages.

Also, drinking.

Usinger’s.

They do blood tongue– I’m impressed!

Also, drinking.

And crazy sexy time (which must be one word in the original German).
.

They do blood tongue- I’m impressed!

Yep. Wife Sublime grew up on a farm, and tongue was a common meal. Nobody around here that has a couple generations in blanches at sweetbreads.

we don’t waste shit. Germans ate brains before Romero made his stupid movie.

Of course, Wisconsonians aren’t unreasonable, I mean they wouldn’t eat your eyes.

And crazy sexy time (which must be one word in the original German).

Yes, but fourteen syllables and like 29 consonants.

They do blood tongue- I’m impressed!

Also, the website has tips on sausage handling, which I think would be useful for all of us.

Of course, Wisconsonians aren’t unreasonable, I mean they wouldn’t eat your eyes.

How wasteful!

I bought up all the packages of chicken hearts in the supermarket this morning.

Best part of the chicken!

How wasteful!

I agree.

Many people throw away the brains too.

OK, this is one step away from turning into an Ed Gein thread.

I bought up all the packages of chicken hearts in the supermarket this morning.

Best part of the chicken!

Sorry, I was always more partial to the chicken livers.

Gosh, though, BBBB, you would fit right the fuck into this carnivorous culture we have in WI.

I’ve been to your exotic homeland- the cheese curds are pretty damn good.

via kos
6:22 PM PT: Haha: “@pourmecoffee China is probably Googling Santorum to see who this guy is that wants war with them is. Confusing night for them.”

I bet the leaders in China do Google Santoroum and this makes me smile.

Ya know: middle class people that rich people have convinced to blame poor people for … well, everything.

Hey! Asshats! If it’s the poors that are taking so much of your money, how come they’re fucking poor?

*sigh*

The poor spent it all on crack and hookers and then like fools, they wasted the rest.

I’ve been to your exotic homeland-

Yeah. But you haven’t DONE Wisconsin, until you buy a zombizzle a beer.

Although, like I said at your joint, your threshold for “barking loony” seems to be lower than my day-to-day operational method, so yanno, I understand…

***GRAMMAR DICK ALERT***

Actually, ‘just deserts’ is correct. Though it is both intuitive and entertaining to imagine that the just desert-ee is being forced to eat some kind of metaphorical souffle of retribution or ice cream sundae of fail, the phrase in fact uses the archaic word ‘deserts’, meaning ‘things that one deserves’.

To simulate people getting bird-pooped on in The Birds, an air gun which shot globs of mayo at the talent was used.

I don’t remember guano in The Birds (not that that would’ve been beyond Hitch’s rather scatological sense of humor).

Sure you’re not thinking of High Anxiety? Or even Birdemic?

SHUT UP, that’s why!

Sure you’re not thinking of High Anxiety?

Oooops!! You are so right, it was High Anxiety.

Digging through the piles of trivial shit blocking access to much of my memory, I now remember it was Mel Brooks who told Johnny Carson about it on the Tonight Show. A little incomplete knowledge is a dangerous thing

*SPELLING DUCK ALERT*

Actually, ‘just desserts’ is correct.

FTFY

Did someone say chicken hearts?

I bought up all the packages of chicken hearts in the supermarket this morning.

Best part of the chicken!

And possibly Mel Gibson’s best movie.

And possibly Mel Gibson’s best movie.

The sequel, Live Free or Fry! was almost as good.

*SPELLING DUCK ALERT*

FTFY

Um… no?

Because of, y’know, that thing I said.

Oooooooo! It’s Dessert Storm pt.II!!11IIii!!!!1iiiII11!!

Because of, y’know, that thing I said.

Yeah, sure…act like words have meaning. [/Humpty to Alice]

Yeah, sure…act like words have meaning. [/Humpty to Alice]

Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.

Oooooooo! It’s Dessert Storm pt.II!!11IIii!!!!1iiiII11!!

Nah, it’s a mere trifle.

Don’t get your feathers truffled.

Don’t be a fool, or a spotted dick, for that matter!

Because of, y’know, that thing I said.

ahem, “Not to be confused with desert.”

You must have sandy meals…

Don’t get your feathers truffled.

I shed a tear, a mi sou.

I should start smoking again. I’m becoming quite hostile and combative

Don’t do it! Just remember – winners never quit and quitters never…. err..

I’m not helping, am I ?

Hmm. When I hear the phrase ‘chicken heart’ I think of those little read dealy bobs on the tip of dynastar skis from the mid ’80s. Oh, and I think it would be a good nickname for G. W. Bush

When I hear the phrase ‘chicken heart’ I think of those little read dealy bobs on the tip of dynastar skis from the mid ’80s.

For those of us who don’t speak schuss

(I ride Rossies or Sollies)

Altho I do have Lange boots…

I’ve been on K2s for more than a decade, the head of the ski school I taught at was a factory rep. American skis! made in China like everything else.

“And crazy sexy time (which must be one word in the original German).”

Verructknackigzeitshtupplefarzing.

Glennzilla makes a funneh:

“Iranian Muslims in the Quds Force sending marauding bands of Mexican drug cartel assassins onto sacred American soil to commit Terrorism — against Saudi Arabia and possibly Israel — is what Bill Kristol and John Bolton would feverishly dream up while dropping acid and madly cackling at the possibility that they could get someone to believe it.”

Glennzilla makes a funneh

There is something pretty fishy about the story, to be sure. I wrote about it at my place this morning.

I’ve never tried K2’s, unless I rented them at some point and just can’t remember.

I rode straight-stick Hart 195s into the ground over twenty years. Those puppies were waxed and sharpened so often, I could have used them for Ginzu knives by the time I painted them and tacked them over my garage.

Waxing the ski. Heh.

Hey, tsam: epic haircut. Don’t think I have a pic of my ponytail-length mullet from the early ’90s but it would be at least equally LOL-worthy.

I picked up a new set of Dynastars last season. Like ’em a lot but anything would be an improvement over the ten year old boards I was skiing.

Not sure what to make of the Iranian thing. Sounds like they have pretty solid evidence and it’s hilarious the Quds guys were talking to a DEA informant. Well, to me at least.

I know, right? tsam is Le Hotnezz with any haircut.

I have it on good authority (well, his authority) that tsam could get women to flash him just by promising to play Freebird. I don’t think he had any problems in the chick department, whatever his hairstyle.

I agree with you Actor, that the whole “Iranian military hiring Mexican thugs to assassinate Saudi Diplomats” thing smells a little hinky. I mean the Iranian military is one of the largest and best-funded in the Middle East; why would they subcontract to a bunch of narco-bandidos? The advantage of keeping their hands clean by having third-party stooges pull the trigger is more than offset by the potential blowback if the Zetas botched the job and ended up implicating Quds. Even if the plan had gone off without a hitch (and what could possibly go wrong?) the Iranians would have to know that the FBI and CIA would start digging around and would have a very good chance of uncovering the plot eventually. And for what? To eliminate a royal flunkie, who will just be replaced the very next day with another one who will say and do exactly the same things?

Obviously, they set it up that way so they’d have something cool to relate while stroking their white, fluffy cat at the next SPECTRE meeting.

,,,the whole “Iranian military hiring Mexican thugs to assassinate Saudi Diplomats” thing smells a little hinky,,,

To be fair – it’s a plan that was dreamed up by teh FBI, and on teh metric of unbelievably stupid shit teh FBI has dreamed up, this barely registers.

HEH…

C’mon, fess up: which one of you guys made this?

Really, teh only surprising thing about it is that they haven’t yet announced d00d’s connections to PETA or Greenpeace.

C’mon, fess up: which one of you guys made this?

How hard is it to figure out if you paid federal income taxes? Doesn’t the 1040EZ have a box that says “Total Owing” or something like that? Why do they need to write these long letters. They could just highlight the “Total Owing” box and hold that up, to show their membership in the 53%.

I agree with you Actor, that the whole “Iranian military hiring Mexican thugs to assassinate Saudi Diplomats” thing smells a little hinky. I mean the Iranian military is one of the largest and best-funded in the Middle East; why would they subcontract to a bunch of narco-bandidos? The advantage of keeping their hands clean by having third-party stooges pull the trigger is more than offset by the potential blowback if the Zetas botched the job and ended up implicating Quds.

My initial reaction was skeptical too. What I find weird isn’t that the Iranians would hire criminals to do their work for them (using local surrogates is an old tradition in international relations, whether it’s a good idea or not – we asked the Mafia to help us whack Castro, didn’t we?) It’s the other side of the equation: what’s in it for the cartel? They’re a business, they don’t have ideological biases. Since America’s much more powerful than Iran and closer to Mexico, if they were going to pick a side in the Iran-U.S. struggle, why pick Iran? The benefits of helping Iran are lower and the risks of offending America higher, than if you did it the other way around.

Then again, maybe that’s exactly what happened: I’ve heard some speculation on the Net that this “DEA informant inside cartel” thing’s just a cover story and that the Mexicans sold out the Iranians.

Even if the plan had gone off without a hitch (and what could possibly go wrong?) the Iranians would have to know that the FBI and CIA would start digging around and would have a very good chance of uncovering the plot eventually. And for what? To eliminate a royal flunkie, who will just be replaced the very next day with another one who will say and do exactly the same things?

And that part I really don’t get either. What’s in it for Iran?

I don’t have any definitive opinion, just following the story with a very open mind. One thing: did you notice that in the FBI press release, it said that Arbabsiar was “recruited, funded, and directed by men he understood to be senior officials in Iran’s Qods Force.” Men he understood to be from the Qods Force? That’s a carefully chosen word. Definitely not by accident.

vacuumslayer probably smells of spoiled milk

Maybe if you breast-fed us…

C’mon, fess up: which one of you guys made this?

I wish I did. Teh 53% thing is so fucking sad. Most of teh stories there are from people who are obviously not part of teh 53%. OMG I PAY TAXES SO FUCK YOU LAZY UNEMPLOYED JERKWADDERS! – Only that by their very own stupid-ass way of assessing it, they don’t pay taxes.

Here’s a quickie assessment for potential 53% ers. If it’s true that 47% of people pay no taxes (where “taxes” means federal income tax only) then teh cut-off income for “paying taxes” should be very close to teh US median household income – with variations for your specific situation and deductions. In 2006, that value was $50,233. If you make less than that, odds are pretty good that you’re not the 53.

As for teh rest of teh jerkwad scumbag asswipe shitfuckers – Fuck You. All scrambling around with smug self-righteous assholery because you’re in that lucky group of folks sharing your thin slice of teh pie. Yeah, teh rich haven’t gotten around to fully looting your sad and sorry asses yet, but NEWSFLASH – the homeless are running out of blood for them to drink and if it means moar foreclosures to provide fresh homeless, then how safe are you?

Can’t doit. I’m Failure-Mom.

Then again, maybe that’s exactly what happened: I’ve heard some speculation on the Net that this “DEA informant inside cartel” thing’s just a cover story and that the Mexicans sold out the Iranians.

That thought crossed my mind as well. It’s hinted that the informant was the go-to guy for the drug cartel. If the Yanks are supplying weapons to the cartels (for god knows why) then it stands to reason he’d have some motivation to inform the US.

I’m Failure-Mom.

You haven’t even let us try.

What’s in it for Iran?

Well….survival?

Loose translation of paragraph one: On June 5, 2010, the Saudi king Abdullah said to the French Foreign Minister Herve Morin, “There are two nations which do not need to exist: Iran and Israel.”

On the whole Gavrilo Princip-lets-do-it-again-plot Saudisraeliranian taco bomber conspiracy, what I don’t find too hard to believe is that somewhere on the planet there happened to be some mental case who could have hatched this idea. (That somewhere turned out to be Texas, which presumably now deserves some collective punishment, amirite?)

The connection to someone high-up in Tehran? Srsly? Just seems like the Mohammed Atta in Prague, Nigerien uranium and Iraqi anthrax all over again.

Can’t doit. I’m Failure-Mom.

i thought we already had this conversation and determined that you are NOT A FAILURE!!! if you are still beating yrslf up over this, i will drive to dc and find you wherever you and give you a beatdown…capiche?*

*i only added that part to make myself sound tuff…really, i’d only give you a good tonguelashing and then probably help you haul boxes or something…

If it’s true that 47% of people pay no taxes (where “taxes” means federal income tax only) then teh cut-off income for “paying taxes” should be very close to teh US median household income

Errrr, well…um….it is, actually

If you have two kids. And a house.

But that’s an analysis done by the Heritage Foundation. So it’s a bit overstated. Still, it’s a significantly high income level.

The connection to someone high-up in Tehran?

Arbabsiab’s cousin is a director in the Quds. So yeah, there’s a connection.

Too, this cousin is already wanted in a separate Iranian plot.

i’d only give you a good tonguelashing

Bowchickawowow…

Not surprisingly, Republicans are demanding war with Iran

Hold on to your butts.

Not surprisingly, Republicans are demanding war with Iran

Who said the Republicans don’t have any ideas? It’s a stimulus package and a jobs plan all in one.

Bowchickawowow…

Dammit. I was working out an awesome webcam/Can We Watch? joke.

help you haul boxes

Is this like that rentboy who was helping the conservatard carry his sac?

Hold on to your butts.

I quit smoking three months ago!
.

Is this like that rentboy who was helping the conservatard carry his sac?
yes, exactly…

help you haul boxes

Is this like that rentboy who was helping the conservatard carry his sac?

I can’t believe I didn’t get that the first go-round.

Not surprisingly, Republicans are demanding war with Iran.

Luckily, we have an effective opposition party in this country that opposes stupid things like that…
~

Still, it’s a significantly high income level.

There are 1%-ers that pay no federal income tax and a quarter of those making less than $25K do. It depends on your specifics. BUT, using a $50K threshold is a pretty quick and easy way to assess without digging out your tax return.

ahem, “Not to be confused with desert.”

You must have sandy meals…

But easily confused with ‘desert’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_(philosophy)

…kind of like the thing I said when I said the thing I said. But whatevs.

Back in 1991 a classmate of mine wrote ‘Dessert Storm’ on the bug shield on the front of his pickup truck. Hilarity ensued.

More fodder to file in the schaden freudes itself folder.
~

The Deseret glyph for “gay” seems to feature new-wave pants.

��

The Deseret glyph for “gay” seems to feature new-wave pants.

Related?

new-wave pants

Those pants are straight out of the “Can’t Touch This” video.

Gotta go rub my duck. bbl
.

Gotta go rub my duck. bbl

Don’t forget to turn on your webcam. Uh,,, totes heterosexually of course.

I bought up all the packages of chicken hearts in the supermarket this morning.

Best part of the chicken!

I go for the fingers.

First I like extracting the gold from their little chicken teeth.

Yes, teeth.

The Deseret glyph for “gay” seems to feature new-wave pants.

If it had eyes it could be Hello Hitler.

It strikes me as humorous the Ow looks like a cock and ball profile.

And Ew looks a little goatse-ish.

And Ew looks a little goatse-ish.

Appropriately, one might say.
.

And Ew looks a little goatse-ish.

Needs moar grasping fingers.

First I like extracting the gold from their little chicken teeth.

I am actually relieved that it wasn’t something else.

The Deseret glyph for “gay” seems to feature new-wave pants.

the glyph for ‘wu’ seems to feature what happens to us ladies as we age…

Best part of the chicken.
.

this is my godson

apologies for the crap sound…but watch it anyways…capiche?

Needs moar grasping fingers.

That’s the more calligraphic font: speluncial.

More fodder to file in the schaden freudes itself folder

Curry….Curry Todd? *rolling eyes*

The Deseret glyph for “gay” seems to feature new-wave pants.

And if you spell “boobs” you get three pairs.

the glyph for ‘wu’ seems to feature what happens to us ladies as we age…

Wu tan?

More fodder to file in the schaden freudes itself folder.

bringing guns into a bar?!?!? you’ll shoot your eye out!

Wu tan?

yes, we have to tan…to keep the attention off the sagging boobs…

More info on the Iranian plot. Still not sure what to think but I can believe the authorities may have had reason to get involved.

And much as I love Glenzilla, I think he’s stretching to call it a made-up plot.

And much as I love Glenzilla, I think he’s stretching to call it a made-up plot.

Still, the possibility exists and I suspect if we hadn’t been lied to as freely by first the Bush administration and now the Obama administration (about closing Gitmo, for example) it would be easier to ignore the laughability of the whole thing.

I miss my naivete.

Classifying the failure to close Gitmo as Obama lying isn’t at all appropriate. He did try but Congref prevented it.

I read Glenn Greenwald’s take on the incident and I agree with him. This seems like simply another example of the FBI finding an outspoken grumpy middle eastern guy and then doing everything in their power to radicalize him to the point where he can be called a danger to the US. there were any number of things this guy did wrong, and while it is not wrong to say he didn’t wish the US happiness and kittens, I think it is safe to say that without the FBI egging him on, he either wouldn’t have considered this plot, or would have failed messily at any one of dozens of the intermediate steps between revenge fantasy and horrible tragedy.

Maybe you’re right, or at least maybe it was someone in the IRG who was trying to make his bones unsanctioned:

There are also reasons to be skeptical of the seriousness of the threat, however. “I am putting this scary Iranian-Mexican plot into the ‘delusional moron’ category unless I see any evidence to the contrary,” Foreign Policy’s Blake Hounshell tweeted Tuesday. As in many other cases involving FBI informants, it was the informant, not the suspect, who was to provide the means to carry out this attack. “Many lives could have been lost in the plot to kill the ambassador with bombs in the US,” Mueller said during Tuesday’s press conference. But, as in many other cases involving the FBI’s use of informants, there was never an actual bomb.

Reza Aslan, an Iran expert who I worked for last year, doesn’t buy the idea that the Iranian government was involved with the plot at a high level. “The Iranian regime may support terror groups who pose a risk to US national security, but it has never attempted a terror plot inside US soil and there is really no reason to believe that it would do so,” he argues. Could Iran be trying to instigate a new conflict with the United States? Aslan says no: “Iran has no interest in initiating an open conflict with the US. Could there be rogue elements within the Revolutionary Guard working independently of the government on what is clearly an assassination for hire? Perhaps.” Overall, Aslan says, the idea of a far-reaching conspiracy “simply does not pass the smell test at this point.”

Source
So Plot? Maybe. State sponsored? Maybe not. I could buy that.

More info on the Iranian plot. Still not sure what to think but I can believe the authorities may have had reason to get involved.

I love the line “and all without waterboarding.” MY GEHD… it’s almost like professional interrogators don’t –

Hell, why do I even bother.

Pup, Obama signed an order Jan 22, 2009.

The prisoners are still there, are they not?

The Deseret glyph for “gay” seems to feature new-wave pants.

Looks like HITLER

Looks like HITLER

Sie können nicht berühren dieser

Firstly, that teh US has any problems with another country plotting targetted assassinations is pretty fucking rich.

Moar importantly, a list of things not being challenged:

– A DEA informer offered to blow the shit up of some Saudi d00d.
– Plot was accepted by some guy with as many connections to teh US as to Iran. A guy best characterized as “a bit of a loser.”
– Evidence connecting d00d to teh Iranian Quds force consists of “he called his cousin who’s totes an Iranian super-spy, or at least may have been at one time, or something.”
– Teh feds have a sterling record of principled behaviour now that anti-terror laws have rendered the notion of “entrapment” quaint and outdated. Especially when dealing with folks best characterized as “a bit of a loser.”

It is a made-up plot. Shenanigans of teh highest degree.

Although to be fair – I suppose this plot is moar credible than teh idea that one guy was going to take down teh Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch.

I love the line “and all without waterboarding.”

This morning I got the lovely daughter off to school, and all without waterboarding.

I love the line “and all without waterboarding.”

Today I got an ETA on the bugs I was managing, and all without waterboarding.

Today I got an ETA on the bugs I was managing, and all without waterboarding.

I stored more precious bodily fluids in a jar, all without waterboarding.

I dreamed I conquered Spain in my Maidenform bra… and all without waterboarding!

Pup, Obama signed an order Jan 22, 2009.
The prisoners are still there, are they not?

Exactly my point. He promised to close Gitmo. He ordered it closed. Congref prevented the order from being executed. There was no lie.

Also too, teh main “facts” we have about teh case come from teh unsealed criminal complaint. IOW, written by teh people prosecuting teh case.

Look, I’m not saying it is impossible for teh Iranians to have a totally and inept and ridiculously gullible intelligence force. Evidence thus far indicates that people who excel at that business and get promoted to senior levels are stupid idiots with zero self-awareness and less empathy than serial killers. But teh evidence that this is what it was is pretty fucking weak ass shit.

Pup, he had majorities in both houses.

Are you suggesting the president is too afraid of Congress to keep a campaign promise? Really?

Luckily, we have an effective opposition party in this country that opposes stupid things like that…

AWWWW… Aren’t they cute when they’re young and naive?

Speaking of intelligence forces behaving badly, remember our diplomat – Raymond Davis, teh former CIA station chief in Lahore?

He got bail on that felony assault charge. Where he broke a man’s spine over a parking spot. He’s still allowed to carry his gun though.

Just a reminder – d00d’s primary job in Pakistan appears to have been scouting out potential spots for unmanned drone strikes.

Look, I’m not saying it is impossible for teh Iranians to have a totally and inept and ridiculously gullible intelligence force.

DKW….oh dear how do I put this?….this was the same force that battled Saddam’s “elite” Republican Guard to a standstill. Remember them? The guys who basically laid down for US troops twice?

Those Iraqis were supposed to be the masterminds behind any number of assassination plots in the West.

I’m thinking it’s damn sight a fact the Iranians were that inept.

Looks liek this is teh topic of nu threed.

Are you suggesting the president is too afraid of Congress to keep a campaign promise? Really?

He kept his campaign promise. Pushing back hard on congress would have been politically disastrous not to mention futile. He tried to keep his campaign promise – hence it was not a lie.

I turned in one library book and checked out another, all without… OK, there was maybe a little bit of waterboarding.

He kept his campaign promise.

He promised to close Gitmo. Gitmo remains open.

He did not promise to “try” to close it. He promised to close it. Period. If he couldn’t keep the promise, he had no business making it.

That word “lie” – I do not tink it means what you think it means.

The word “lie”:

lie1 ? ?/la?/ Show Spelled [lahy] Show IPA noun, verb, lied, ly·ing.
noun
1. a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
2. something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture: His flashy car was a lie that deceived no one.
3. an inaccurate or false statement.
4. the charge or accusation of lying: He flung the lie back at his accusers.

English. It is your first language, right?

Hi!
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