just saw this on FB

Ha ha ha ha ha. Ha.


Asshole.

sunday funny

saturday matinee - halloween edition

quote for the day

Chris Hayes on how Romney broke the rules of the debate, and why it matters:

"I thought the moment of the oil drilling, that debate to me was a key moment. The reason was this. Mitt Romney asked the president a direct question numerous times, kept interrupting him, “Isn’t it true? Isn’t it true? Didn’t it go down?” Now the rules for the debate, that we all got leaked, number five, subsection E: “The candidates may not ask each other direct questions during any of the four debates.”

Now, at a certain level, who cares, right? Who cares? Here’s why I care. The theme of the last ten years of this country is the people at the top have felt the rules don’t apply to them. And you send your people to sit down and negotiate a set of rules, and 20 minutes into it you throw it out the window. And everything we’ve seen, from the financial crisis to everything else that’s happened in this country, has been about the oligarchs and the ruling class and the people at the top feeling that they are not a party to the social contract. So some stupid little contract that was negotiated by your people, you don’t worry about."


stolen from

quote for the day

quote for the day

"You know what's become "shrunken"? You know what's been degraded? The meaning of liberalism. At this point, "liberal" apparently is just used to describe anyone who has a vaguely different opinion than the most radical conservatives. There is no longer space for moderates to be called "moderates." In other words, if you think that war shouldn't be eternal and that rich people should pay a little more in taxes and that the government should, well, govern, you are a liberal. That's why David Frum and Jill Stein can both be called "liberal" when, in reality, they have virtually nothing in common. It's as if the writing of the dictionary had been handed over to the fattest flag-hatted teabagger on a scooter."

The Rude Pundit

quote for the day

Look, Mitt Romney is rich. He was born rich, and he's going to die rich. He's going to always have access to the best of everything. So he has no idea. He has no idea what it's like to be at the mercy of an insurance company, or to be uninsured and know you're just one major illness away from bankruptcy, debt, and maybe even tragedy. He just doesn't understand, and he never will. He doesn't know what it's like to choose between getting medication and eating for the week. He'll never want for care because he can afford it.

And it just pisses me off. Not that he's rich and I'm not, because I honestly don't care. All I want is to one day have the security of knowing that health care won't bankrupt me. What pisses me off is that he has no idea what it's like to be in my position, and he has the unmitigated gall to tell me that his for-profit thinking is somehow better for me. That he knows what he's talking about when it comes to struggling families because his idea of being poor is having to sell some of his stock. That's what gets me right in the bile duct. That he thinks he can tell me what's good for me as a poor person who's barely employed and completely uninsured.

Samurai Frog

quote for the last debate

“I’m very curious to see which one of these two clinically sociopathic individuals will present the most convincing and authentic approximation of an actual human conscience tonight,” said Cincinnati-area voter Miranda Harrick, 40, adding that both candidates, like all successful politicians, were undeniably skilled at such calculated artifice. “I think whoever is able to best manipulate me into thinking they experience normative emotional states such as empathy and regret will probably have my vote come November, so I’m excited to see what happens.”

The debate figures to be especially important for undecided voters, 91 percent of whom said in a pre-debate poll that they were still waiting for one sociopath to win them over with the perfect combination of superficial charm, deluded grandeur, and pathological lying.

from The Onion, which contains far more truth than a lot of news sources.

a reminder

saturday matinee

via

"Let's face it, the genepool needs a little chlorine"

Jimmy Carr, on QI, discussing the Darwin Awards.

By the way, if you've never watched the show QI, I highly recommend you do

quote for the day

I am used to people telling partial truths, massaging statistics, spinning, taking anecdotal evidence out of context, and all of the other tricks necessary to make things like trickle-down economics and Intelligent Design sound plausible. It comes with the territory for those of us who choose to follow politics. But there is nothing lazier, more damaging, or less intellectually honest than a constantly variable weight that gives different values to the same information at different points in time. In the case of the poll data and unemployment statistics this phenomenon is stretched to the limit – when the data do not confirm your preconceived idea of the world around you, they must be fabricated. Yep. Anything that contradicts your belief system is made up.

. . .

Such people are, in an intellectual if not literal sense, brain dead. They're not processing any new information except to sift it through the filter of their beliefs and reject anything that doesn't fit. Yet at the same time, and at a more basic level, they seem incapable of believing anything. Do the polls matter, or are they made up? Does the unemployment rate measure the health of the economy, or is it politically manipulated? Are the troops being removed from the Middle East too soon, or not soon enough? If the answer to any of these questions is "It depends on who's winning / who's in power", congratulations. You're what's wrong with America. This is why we can't have nice things, like a half decent debate about our problems and how we might go about solving them.

Ed, at Gin And Tacos

Happy Birthday

To my lovely first-born, who turns "sweet" sixteen today. I feel excessively proud of her, which is perhaps a bit selfish, but what are you going to do.

it's bosses day

I know everyone says this, but it's true: Isnt every day Bosses Day? They do not need an extra-special one.

not quite

An idiot friend posted this on Facebook with the comment "On Target in 1949. Jeeesh!", and I just wasnt interested in doing the drama there, so I'll comment here instead. Obviously, he didnt read the text closely:

"...He simply soaks the filthy rich
And helps the common man."

But, father, wont there come a time
When they run out of cash
And we have left them not a dime
When things will go to smash?"

Yeah, things went smash, but the rich havent exactly run out of cash. Unless you count have more than at any time since the 1920s as running out.

So who's not thinking.

saturday matinee

A coherent argument against the opponents of same-sex marriage.

image on friday

via

image on tuesday

image on monday

sunday funny

click on picture for original

saturday matinee

Man, I love Jon Stewart during election season. You can tell he's pissed off, and barely maintaining his level of civility. And, as I've said before, there's a reason that Jon Stewart is the most trusted name in the news business, and it aint cause he deals in better facts.


Addendum:

sigh. Never mind. Just go to the damn Daily Show site.

for the election

a video for the election

'Cause pretty much everyone involved deserves at least one of these.

quote for the day

"Information isn't the new oil; opacity is the new oil. The ability to be opaque -- the opposite of transparent -- is increasingly rare, valuable, and in many cases worth fighting for. It's also potentially quite dangerous, often dirty, and can be a catalyst for trouble. In short, it's just like oil."

Jamais Cascio, in Opaque Projections on Open the Future.

quote for the day

"Needless to say, my view on smoking is pretty much zero tolerance. It smells horrible. It’s a waste of money. It’s not good for you in any way, and most people only start because they’re not strong enough to say no to their friends in high school. With so much awesome stuff in the world, I am truly baffled at how it still exists."

Caanan, saying what needs to be said to my kids. There's a comic that goes with it, by the way.