XARM

XARM

Welp, that's it for humanity. Last person out the door needs to flip the switch cause we're done. Don't believe me? Well here's proof.



XARM - or extreme Arm wrestling. Yes, that's right. There's an extreme version of that now. I really don't know what to say - what could be said. Other than humanity has seen it's last glimmer of hope and it has been snuffed out completely.

It was a fun run, folks. We deserved to get completely wiped off existence now.

It's Always Sunny....

It's Always Sunny....

So It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia returned last night. Man, does it feel like a long time since the last season ended. Plenty of things happened since. 




The shocking, or at least to me, thing to happen is that Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman have decided to split. Let me tell you, if there was one celebrity couple - hell, if there was one couple anywhere in the world that gave me hope in thinking that two people were better suited to be with each other, it was those two.

One is a freakishly small troll and the other is... well, a freakishly small troll.

They were made for each other.... but I guess after 31 years of marriage later, they apparently aren't. Who would have thought that union would be one to break.

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. It's pretty common knowledge that Danny is a fucking horn dog. I recall the time on set that he pretty much hit on everything that moved. It's sort of tough not to be so hung up on pussy when you're that small. He's practically at eye level with it all day. So it's no shock that he'd want to grab at it all the time.

I guess we should just accept it. Marriage is dead.

Thanks, always sunny. If you weren't so popular, Danny wouldn't have the slightest idea that he could do better.

Whiskey On Your Plate - Why So Blue?

Whiskey On Your Plate - Why So Blue?

In case you're wondering, I guess I haven't touched on the most sacred of sacred whiskey. The famed Johnny Walker Blue Label. I bet you're wondering if it's just marketing hype or what?

In short, yes. it's a lot of hype and, at best, a luxurious image thing. It's to whiskey what Armand de Brignac is to champagne. It's alright, but you can do so much better for far much less. In fact, I would prefer a shit lot different whiskeys than the blue label.

Try some Gold and Double Black. It's far easier to drink and far less on your wallet. Hell, for that much you may as well go for the real good stuff. The Highland Park 18. Oh yes, that is great stuff. I love me some 12 year old and the 18 is far more nuanced and interesting as far as single malts go.


So now that we talked about the aged stuff.. let's talk about the white lightning.. I feel like spending any real amount of money on unaged whiskey is just.. I mean.. let's be honest here, a sucker's bet. I mean, it's unaged. It's white lightning, yo. There's none that are really particularly palatable. I mean, Makers Mark white whiskey wasn't gross, but I can't see why you would want to drink the stuff outside of a whiskey tasting, let alone pay $30 or more for a bottle.

In fact, the whole trend of using the term "Moonshine" as a marketing term is pretty retarded, but I'll be lying if I told you I haven't tried 100 proof clear corn whiskey billed as moonshine and sold with cherries soaked in it and I must say, it was not bad at all. The brand is Midnight Moon and they do have an Apple Pie version, which once Justified comes back, I know I'll be buying some of it - in spite of it being 100 proof, I could drink it neat quite easily. The actual taste of the apple pie was great.
 
 It's also only $22 a handle, so that in itself makes it a little easier on the mind. There's also Howling Moon at around $25 a handle. But once you get into the turf where you're paying $30+ for a handle of Troy and Sons.. fuck that. Heaven Hills makes a Georgia Moon which is only $12. Again, it's better if unaged whiskey is just dirt cheap. Otherwise it's a bit of a rip off.
 
The only comfort you should have in buying white whiskey is knowing that you're supporting a new distillery and maybe one day they'll crank out a good barrel aged version with their profits.  

Bondage By Target

Bondage By Target

It couldn't be October without Halloween. And it couldn't be Halloween without me mentioning slutty costumes. Ooooh yeah.Take a look at this Halloween Costume found at Target

Okay, to be fair, it seems that Target decided to pull the product because this story spread like a wild fire. But even if  Target took it off the market, you could still the top picture of it and wonder what the hell Target was thinking!?


Yeah, I'm not sure what else can be said about that. I'm a little surprised that they're even bothering. Where's the religious groups uprising against this tainting of their cherished target stores? I'm just as surprised as anyone else that someone at the company would okay this to be sold... and I'm not a prude. It's just not common sense.    

The Obama Campaign Brought to you by the letter F and U

The Obama Campaign Brought to you by the letter F and U

You can tell that the Obama campaign, only a couple weeks out from the election, is a bit worried. How can you tell? Well, take a look at this ad that came out poking fun of Mitt and the whole Big Bird rants..



From FDL

This is an amusing ad by the Obama campaign, poking fun at Mitt Romney’s comment in the first debate about eliminating funding for PBS and Big Bird. President Obama has been getting good traction on the stump with the line about Romney looking out for Wall Street while fighting Sesame Street, and so they turned it into ad form. This was perhaps the most memorable line of the debate, and it came from Romney. Obama may have had a bad debate performance, but he gave the Romney campaign few quotable lines to work with. So it’s the Romney lines that get highlighted in ads.

There’s only one thing that sticks out to me about this ad, though the casual viewer probably won’t notice it. Let’s look at that litany of Wall Street “criminals” and “gluttons of greed,” which later get juxtaposed with Big Bird. You have Bernie Madoff, Ken Lay and Dennis Kozlowski. So two CEOs prosecuted and convicted by George W. Bush’s Justice Department, and Madoff, whose son turned him in before Obama took office, in December 2008, and who pleaded guilty.

So the Obama campaign could not fill a list of three Wall Street criminals that the Obama Justice Department actually sent to jail. Heck, they couldn’t fill a list of one! 

 And it's true. I mean, Obama hasn't gone after those who brought down our economy. But hey, he brought down those responsible for 9/11. Which, I guess isn't something to forget, but the bigger issue is that even though no high rises came down, those wallstreet criminals did damages to our economy far greater than any terrorist from distant lands.

But hey, it looks like even the person getting picked on doesn't want this sort of help. Apparently the Sesame Workshop has asked Obama's campaign to take down the ad that uses Big Bird.

Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and, as is our general practice, have requested that both campaigns remove Sesame Street characters and trademarks from their campaign materials.

Whoops. I guess that was a boner. Not even the organization that is potentially getting fucked over in all this wants Obama's help in the matter. Ha! Maybe PBS and Sesame Workshop doesn't want the help because unlike Romney saying he would cut PBS, Obama actually did do that. Yet no one is talking about that. It really is pretty sad when you think about it. Even if you word it as Obama just trimming the budget where Romney would flat out eliminate it. Incremental changes, I suppose.

Now then, can we go back to talking about how 15% of America needs to starve to death so we can solve the debt crisis?

The Bums Lost, Lebowski! Stopping Unemployment

The Bums Lost, Lebowski! Stopping Unemployment

This news piece is a little dated, but I finally got around to finishing up all the loose ends to this, so here you go. In case you didn't hear, we extended the Bush tax cuts and decided that cutting unemployment benefits was somehow a good thing...

Washington (CNN) -- Senate Republicans promised Wednesday to block legislative action on every issue being considered by the lame-duck Congress until the dispute over extending the Bush-era tax cuts is resolved and an extension of current government funding is approved.

All 42 Senate Republicans signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, vowing to prevent a vote on "any legislative item until the Senate has acted to fund the government and we have prevented the tax increase that is currently awaiting all American taxpayers."

"With little time left in this congressional session, legislative scheduling should be focused on these critical priorities. While there are other items that might ultimately be worthy of the Senate's attention, we cannot agree to prioritize any matters above the critical issues of funding the government and preventing a job-killing tax hike," the letter said.

The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts enacted by former President George W. Bush will expire after December 31 if Congress fails to reach an agreement on their extension. Top Democrats and Republicans disagree sharply over whether the current tax rates should be extended just for families earning $250,000 or under per year or for everyone regardless of income.

Republicans contend that a failure to extend all of the tax cuts would hamper an already-sluggish economy. President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders argue that the roughly $700 billion price tag attached to an extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans would be fiscally irresponsible.

White House and congressional tax negotiators began deliberations Wednesday morning. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner characterized the initial talks as "very civil" and said that while everything was discussed, there were no surprises.

House Democrats, meanwhile, announced their intention to move forward with a vote Thursday to permanently extend the breaks only for families earning $250,000 or less.

On the spending side, a continuing resolution responsible for funding the government is scheduled to expire Friday.

Democrats are trying to pass several pieces of legislation before a more Republican Congress is sworn in in January, including the START nuclear arms treaty with Russia, a repeal of the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military, and the so-called DREAM Act, which would create a path to citizenship for young illegal immigrants.

Reid blasted the GOP letter on the Senate floor Wednesday morning, calling it part of a "cynical" and transparent" Republican strategy to "obstruct" and "delay" legislative progress while blaming the Democrats for failing to effectively govern.

"Last month, the American people issued their verdict on the Democrat's priorities," replied Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky. "We need to show the American people that we care more about them and their ability to pay their bills than we do about the special interests' legislative Christmas-list."

Wow. Just fucking wow. But hey, I love the framing in this article:

Top Democrats and Republicans disagree sharply over whether the current tax rates should be extended just for families earning $250,000 or under per year or for everyone regardless of income.

Makes you wonder if we should give tax cuts to just the selfish few earning below 250k? Or should we be fair here, people? How about we just should have let all the tax cuts expire as they were meant to under the original legislation? If they were meant to be permanent then Bush would have made them so.

Then again, they were probably designed to be permanent but engineered to bite the ass of the democratic president that followed Bush. So good job, I guess.

It's pretty impressive stuff here. That the republicans could potentially cut off 2 million people off unemployment, then the temporary retail hires from the Christmas consumerist season all get shitcanned, then there's going to be a massive economic catastrophe happening almost simultaneously with the republican congress taking control. That's like, what, at least 2% of the individual income of the country being destroyed over a month?

My goodness. I can't even get excited about this anymore. Life is no fun when the worst things always happen, we need some variety to keep it up, know what I'm saying? You know the situation is pretty desperate when you have a guy that thinks the soviet union would have ever launched a first strike is railing about CEOs.

Then again, I think we're past desperate at this point. But hey, just look at what Michigan is up to.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- Michigan says it will stop taking new extended unemployment benefit applications after Saturday because Congress has failed to renew the program.

The state Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth says about 162,000 Michiganians exhausted their jobless benefits from January through November and about 181,500 will exhaust their unemployment benefits from this December through April 2011, barring an extension by Congress.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm wrote congressional leaders last week, asking for extension of the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program.

Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency Director Stephen Geskey says the state's own unemployment benefit program will continue to provide up to 26 weeks of benefits for the newly jobless.

My goodness, the tax breaks let people keep more of what they've earned, unemployment benefits lets people collect money that they haven't earned.
-Conservative

I, however, do not care about tax cuts because they ain't spending. 250k isn't even that much, I seriously mean that, why should that be the threshold? I mean, 500 sounds more reasonable. It's not like 250k income is 5 times higher than the median household income in the country or anything.

I know people who just got rejected for an entry-level job after two rounds of interviews, three rounds of testing/assessment, and two six-hour sessions of unpaid training; for failing the credit check....

The twist in all that? They were interviewing for their old job back - and at a 22% pay cut. Even more so, they asked if he could pass out some flyers to his friends, as they were hiring a lot of people this season...

Yeah, I have to say that it's been pretty entertaining watching all the news outlets finally lose every last bit of hope from 2008. The sooner we lose all hope, the sooner we can try to rebuild. It makes you really wish you would have taken that job with the CIA. You know, so you could just get paid for flying heroin all over south east Asia.

It's pretty simple folks, Tax cuts generate government revenue, tax increases decrease it. That's basic college education, right?

The thing you should really come to realize is that unemployment payments are keeping, like, 800,000 people employed. If we end a lot of those then you can kiss that off, I guess. Just go back to the tax cuts and hope that rich people hire poor people despite not needing any extra capacity because demand is plummeting as no one has any money.

In the end, it's pretty simple - This recession was basically caused by some rich people and the government, so to not extend unemployment benefits is really hideous..... um.. geez, am I turning into a libertarian? What is happening to my brain?!

Am I A Muppet?

Am I A Muppet? 

Quick question. Which Muppet lives in a trash can and has no money or no home? In a couple of months, all of them!






After last week's first presidential debate, one thing is certain. Mitt Romney simple does not care about felt people. Forget the fact that Jim Leher got shitted on in the worst way possible. As one of my good friends put it so nicely;

Romney: I like you, Jim. So I'm going to smile to your face as I tell you I'd gut PBS, and purge everything you've worked to build at NewsHour over your 40 years with the network, extinguishing all legacy you possibly lay claim to in the field of broadcast journalism. I'd kill Big Bird, too.
Leher: ..
Romney: I do not respect you as a man.
Romney: Now give me the final word.
Leher: Ok.

I mean, let's be honest, Leher was a shitty moderator and couldn't reign in these two assclowns to actually answer a single question. Not to mention, just let them walk all over him. But still, the real victim here is that the muppets that live on Sesame Street may not be on Wall Street, nor on Main Street. But if Romney wins, they'll be put out to the side of the curb.

Oh how I wish Mister Rogers was still around.


It's appalling that they even consider gutting PBS of any funding. It's very important to the future of America as well as any hope for getting children started off right in education. Romney may boast about how the private sector can take care of their own, but considering how little the amount Public Broadcast actually cost and the long lasting effect it has on the viewers who grow up with it, this issue alone could be a nail in Romney's coffin.

 

 How exactly did PBS become public enemy #1 of austerity? I mean, how is this even possible? Well, it looks like that terrorist cell decided to release a public response to being put on blast at the debate.

 ARLINGTON, VA – October 4, 2012 – We are very disappointed that PBS became a political target in the Presidential debate last night. Governor Romney does not understand the value the American people place on public broadcasting and the outstanding return on investment the system delivers to our nation. We think it is important to set the record straight and let the facts speak for themselves.

The federal investment in public broadcasting equals about one one-hundredth of one percent of the federal budget. Elimination of funding would have virtually no impact on the nation’s debt. Yet the loss to the American public would be devastating.

A national survey by the bipartisan research firms of Hart Research and American Viewpoint in 2011 found that over two-thirds of American voters (69%) oppose proposals to eliminate government funding of public broadcasting, with Americans across the political spectrum against such a cut.

As a stated supporter of education, Governor Romney should be a champion of public broadcasting, yet he is willing to wipe out services that reach the vast majority of Americans, including underserved audiences, such as children who cannot attend preschool and citizens living in rural areas.

For more than 40 years, Big Bird has embodied the public broadcasting mission – harnessing the power of media for the good of every citizen, regardless of where they live or their ability to pay. Our system serves as a universally accessible resource for education, history, science, arts and civil discourse.

Over the course of a year, 91% of all U.S. television households tune in to their local PBS station. In fact, our service is watched by 81% of all children between the ages of 2-8.

Each day, the American public receives an enduring and daily return on investment that is heard, seen, read and experienced in public media broadcasts, apps, podcasts and online – all for the cost of about $1.35 per person per year.

Earlier in 2012, a Harris Interactive poll confirmed that Americans consider PBS the most trusted public institution and the second most valuable use of public funds, behind only national defense, for the 9th consecutive year.

A key thing to remember is that public television and radio stations are locally owned and community focused and they are experts in working efficiently to make limited resources produce results. In fact, for every $1.00 of federal funding invested, they raise an additional $6.00 on their own – a highly effective public-private partnership.

Numerous studies -- including one requested by Congress earlier this year -- have stated categorically that while the federal investment in public broadcasting is relatively modest, the absence of this critical seed money would cripple the system and bring its services to an end.

I mean, I know Romney is so addicted to downsizing and dismantling corporations he buys out. But killing Big Bird? Now that's too much!

When you think about it, cutting PBS funding is one of those propositions that's so cartoonishly evil that I still have trouble comprehending that a real person is even suggesting such a thing. But then I have to remember that a big chunk of the republican base literally think that PBS is a tool for communist propaganda. So I guess it's never really about the money that is used for it. I really wish it was a communist propaganda tool.

1, ah ah ah ah! 2, ah ah ah ah! 3! 3 Bankers against the wall! Ah ah ah ah!