Since I got nuttin' else

Here's a video of a silly cat.

New World Order

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

More on Obama and Prop 8

Crazy-good post by Terrance over at Pam's, about black homophobia.

A wingnut blogger outs himself when Prop 8 was declared passed. The comments were classy and full of empathy, as you can imagine. I'm sorry, I don't know what I was thinking there. The comments were hateful as you would expect. Seriously, read some.

Pam braves the Freeper comment board and returns to report the usual hysteria.

A post-election cross-burning. In New Jersey.

Now what?

This is funny. Inaccurate, but funny. Now is the time to get wonkish about health care, bitchez!

Oh noes!

Windows 3.x is finally discontinued.

Damn.

I learned how to network on 3.11. That thing rocked.

Post-mortem items

"NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin's shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent "tens of thousands" more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books."

--------------------------

Assrocket at Powerline:
And the next time a hurricane strikes, it will be the Democrats' fault.

What a douchebag.

Anyway, this really doesn't need to be said, but, for the record:
No one said Katrina the storm was the GOP's "fault." It's was the preparation and response, namely the complete lack thereof, that was the GOP's fault. And you know that, so... seriously, slink back under your rock and STFU already.

Also: I will goddamned guarantee you that when another big one hits, you fuckwads on the right will understand what the word "competent" means.

----------------------

Paul the Spud has a good one.

Maybe giving McCain a teensy too much credit for self-awareness, but a really good analysis overall.

---------------------

Toast is deliriously blogging the day away.

------------------------

On Prop 8:
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Kevin Drum
Sebastian at ObsidianWings
Sullivan

Nice going there, jackasses

So, California black and latino/a voters... what the fuck is your problem?

Here're the Prop 8 exit poll results:


Good to know that this whole Obama thing means nothing to you.

Unless there's some other way to interpret a vote for Obama combined with a vote to remove rights for fellow humans beings. I don't see one. I just see that two minorities combined forces to deprive another minority.

UPDATE: A powerful post about similar doings in Texas.

YYYYYYYEEEEEEEAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

(stolen from Furious, who stole it from...)

Early thoughts

I voted this morning, and have been useless ever since.

Posts like these didn't help.
Fuck you Joe.
Fuck you racists.
Fuck you news channel rating/drama whores.
Get ready for 8 years of this. Assuming Obama wins, of course.


Sob.
Sob.
Quadruple sob.
Guhhhhhh.
Yes.
Prop 8.
Prop 8.
Georgia? I don't know, but...
OK, just fucking shoot me now. Sob.


The ants in my pants are exceptionally active tonight. If I don't have a heart attack, we're good.

Gaaaahhhh!

(h/t Sullivan)

What a beautiful day

I voted this morning before work, and it went quite well. I live in a suburb of a small city, so I didn't expect the kind of nightmare crowds people have been reporting all over the country, and I was right. The gym was more crowded than I've ever seen it, mind you, but from parking to driving away a mere 18 minutes elapsed. It would have been under 10 minutes, but the couple in front of me had three small children to wrangle while they each took their turns.

My town is broken up into 15 voting sections, so I headed over to table 15 and signed the log book as the guy checked off that I was the 84th person to vote that morning at that table. He then gave me a large poster of the ballot layout. This is a souvenir!


I took my place in line and looked around. I saw a lot of smiling faces, a lot of volunteers, and the multigenerational black family (8 people of voting age plus some kids) at table 14. As each one came out of the booth (I think about 5 made it in and out while I waited), the others laughed and applauded and there were tears and group-hugs all around. That was it. I had my election memory. I almost choked up myself.

After the couple in front of me was done, I stepped forward, but back in time:

Levers, baby, levers.

That exact model, too. I flipped my choices, pulled the lever back to the left, and was out of there in no time.

My duty is done. Now I have to sit through work all day, and I can't stand it! I want to time-warp ahead to 9pm tonight.

Andrew Sullivan is collecting stories at his place, and he's had some great reader contributions so far. Check him out. And don't miss his endorsement. It's a great piece.

Ooh ooh ooh!

Holy crap!

Robert Downey Jr. set his crotch on fire!

Robert Downey Jr. is playing Sherlock Holmes in a Guy Richie movie? Can I just buy a ticket now?

And you wonder why American car-makers suck

Where'd they get this guy? HVCC remedial reading?

Fixed!

Enough with these fucking morons already.

Awesome. And a little depressing. And a lot funny.

This Fucking Election.

The enablers of the mortgage meltdown

This is it, right here.

“If a loan came from a top loan officer, they didn’t care what the situation was, you had to make that loan work,” she says. “You were like a bad person if you declined a loan.”

One loan file was filled with so many discrepancies that she felt certain it involved mortgage fraud. She turned the loan down, she says, only to be scolded by her supervisor.

“She told me, ‘This broker has closed over $1 million with us and there is no reason you cannot make this loan work,’ ” Ms. Cooper says. “I explained to her the loan was not good at all, but she said I had to sign it.”

The argument did not end there, however. Ms. Cooper says her immediate boss complained to the team manager about the loan rejection and asked that Ms. Cooper be “written up,” with a formal letter of complaint placed in her personnel file.

Ms. Cooper said the team manager told her to “restructure” the loan to make it work. “I said, how can you restructure fraud? This is a fraudulent loan,” she recalls.

Ms. Cooper says that her bosses placed her on probation for 30 days for refusing to approve the loan and that her team manager signed off on the loan.

Four months later, the loan was in default, she says. The borrower had not made a single payment. “They tried to hang it on me,” Ms. Cooper said, “but I said, ‘No, I put in the system that I am not approving this loan.’ ”

As I said in my original post on the topic, a loan officer's job used to be vetting loans so the bank wouldn't lose money to defaults. Once the banks started selling off loans, that didn't matter.

I do not understand your crazy moon language

[Scene]

Boss: Hey, please get this sign translated into Welsh for me.
Bob: Sure thing, boss.

Bob e-mails Welsh translator, "Hey, Maelgwn, can you send me a quick translation of the following text, so we can get a sign made up?"

Shortly thereafter, Bob receives an e-mail from Maelgwn. "Hey, great response time," he thinks. "I can get out early today." Bob forwards the text to the sign-maker.

[End scene]

Sign goes up some time later.

Someone notices the translation reads: I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the translator wasn't in, and had his e-mail set to auto-reply. Bob just ran with it.

Needless to say, I've sent this story to everyone in my company. It may not be as funny as the hedgehog, but it'll do.

The Feres Twins beg to differ

They'll see your javelin, and raise you a synchronized swim.

These people are nuts

And I mean that in the best possible way.

Speaking of the growing economic disaster

Hope you're not a contractor. Hope you don't own any Lowe's or Home Depot stock.

HALF?!?!?! Holy shit.

Speaking of Portuguese javelin throwers

Leryn Franco. She finished next-to-last or something at the Olympics, but that's OK.

Speaking of Change

Huh.

Maybe there's hope for the Knicks yet!

Now, I gave up on then a while ago, and for a long time (the Shaq era), the NBA too. I fucking hate Shaq the basketball player. He ruined the game for a decade.

But the '06-07 season was very good, and last year was a revelation. The new blood in the league is phenomenal, there are multiple running teams as opposed to just the Suns, and there were actually some trades last year for the first time in a long time. No, Kidd wasn't going to bring the Mavericks over the top, and Shaq wasn't going to help Phoenix much, but at least some teams went for it.

I don't expect D'Antoni to lead this team to a title any time soon, but .500 usually gets you into the playoffs in the East. That's more than I've hoped for in years.

Fuck you all, I'm out of here

Guess which lame duck president has big plans for his exit?

Those and other regulations would help clear obstacles to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking-water standards and lift a key restriction on mountaintop coal mining.

At this point, you need to question whether Republicans are even human. They certainly lack any sense of morals, empathy, or compassion.

You don't look right

Fucking classic!

“I saw a couple that had been escorted out and they were confused as well, and the girl was crying, so I said ‘Why are you crying? and she said ‘I already voted for McCain, I’m a Republican, and they said we had to leave because we didn’t look right,’” Elborno said. “They were handpicking these people and they had nothing to go off of, besides the way the people looked.”

Even McCain voters are potential troublemakers.

The Wilde Special

Vika
Klaudia
Lia
Ariel
Gigi
Luba and Marketa
The Pix-Mix collection. Not only is there hotness here, there is some good photography too.
Iveta
3 brunettes

The usual caveats here: these are pretty solid sites, but if you browse unprotected, that's a you problem.

More links

Farts will kill us all.

Spending money on the poor-to-middle class pays off more than spending money on the rich? WATFO??? I got your trickle-down right here.

The Rude Pundit on McCain. Brutal.

Notes from an obituary writer.

Whozeagoodpuppy?

(h/t a 1/2-dozen bloggers, but I think I saw it at Sullivan first)

More bailout failure

Chrysler shuttering hybrid-building plants.

So, what are they doing with the money?

O. M. FSM.

Own it, Republicans, own it. See you in 2024. Maybe.



Maybe the FBI should be paying a few people a visit?

We're everywhere

I don't Kos very often, but this is spot on.

Ah yes, us loony bloggers, fighting for universal health care, to protect social security, to keep our government from unconstitutionally spying on us, and to promote a sane foreign policy that doesn't unnecessarily cost us blood and treasure. You know, loony things supported by a majority of the (apparently also loony) American people.

Yup. 50 states, bitchez. Which is why I've always liked Howard Dean.

What he started in 2004 was the reason for 2006. And he would be our president right now, if the media hadn't played up the "scream" like the fucknecks they are.

I think this qualifies as a fail

Hang ten, dude.

Game. Set. Match.

So, Mrs. Palin, what do you have to say about this?

W**t t** fuck?

Automated censorship goes horribly, and hilariously, wrong.

McCain has lost the fucking plot

Blah blah blah?

On that topic?

Can we just inaugurate Obama on the 5th of November, and get all these GOP psychopaths out of the way as soon as possible?

Football Beer Blogging Part 1

My warehouse store had a variety case of Magic Hat beers that was different from the usual Magic Pack, so that was an obvious pick-up because it had two beers I haven't had before.

Let's go with "new-to-me" brew #1.


Magic Hat Jinx. "An Ale inspired by the doctrines of the medieval chemists."

The Pour: Standard beer pour, standard head, settled pretty quickly.

The Color: Dark copper.

The Nose: Hops, straw, barnyard, orange. Erica said strawberries, but I have no idea what she's talking about.

The Taste: Hops again, with a little burnt orange flavor and a nice lingering tartness down the throat. This reminds me of a beer I brewed about a year ago. I'll have to look that recipe up.

The Verdict: B+. A different ale, and that make it stand out.

And on to #2.

Magic Hat Lucky Kat. "An IPA"

The Pour: Standard beer pour, standard head, settled pretty quickly.

The Color: Orange-copper.

The Nose: Hops, orange. Erica says "bananas" this time. She's fired.

The Taste: Hoppy of course, by definition, but well-balanced. Long finish with a slightly bitter aftertaste, like orange-rind.

The Verdict: B-. Good IPA, but not memorable.

On the other hand...

She sure is. She rocks!

(Her response is: "Only for the 3rd grade?!?!")

Kill me now

Jesus fucking Christ this is depressing:

Snerk...

The return of the Mayberry Machiavellis.

Toast is going to be pissed

From the NPR school of pronunciation...

This. Is. Amazing.

Where are your tax dollars going?

Wine Blogging

Yesterday, on the way out for dinner, we stopped at Putnam, one of our two wine stores (Putnam and Saratoga Wine Exchange) to get a taste of whatever they had open and browse for a bit.

They only had one bottle open, but it was good, so we bought it. I'll write that up later, after we have it for dinner. As we browsed, I noticed they had two new brands in alternative packaging.

I am always on the lookout for good box wine, because it shouldn't be that difficult to make a decent one, and sometimes we want to take wine places that don't allow glass (like the Saratoga Racetrack for my annual Alabama Party), for example.

I asked the guys for an honest assessment, and they both said the wines were good at their respective price points. C'mon, you gotta give me more than that! Last year I bought two different boxes for the track party, and no one wanted to drink them. The white I wound up loading with fruit to make a sangria, and the red, well, I drank it because it was there.

These guys didn't work there last year, so they didn't know which boxes I meant, but they were confident that wouldn't happen with either of these. I picked up the 1-liter malbec at $12.89, or $9.66 per 750ml. $10 should guarantee a "good" wine, as discussed in the comment thread here. And it was good. Only the second time I've been happy with a box/carton wine, and I'll have no problem buying more and bringing to the track next year. Now, I've had better malbecs, and cheaper too as Argentina is a great region for bargains, but this wine was solid. Add the fact that it's organic to the alt-packaging, and you have a great "green" wine, which makes the price premium palatable.

Check Y&B out here. Here's another good link about box wine. The difference in environmental impact between a shipping container or truckload of box wine vs. bottles is enormous, and developments like this should be encouraged with our shopping dollar. There may be nothing like bringing a dusty bottle of good wine out of the cellar to pop and pour with a good dinner, but for regular consumption, we should all be drinking out of these in 10 years.

Saturday linkage

McCain - never mavericky, never honorable. Ever.

This Rolling Stone expose of McCain's lifetime of nepotism-enabled douchebaggery was astounding. I read it a few weeks ago and forgot to post about it. If you haven't read it, you must.

Republicans and the religious - absolute fucking thugs

Of course the McCain campaign was pimping the fake mugging/maiming. I wouldn't be surprised if John McCain himself etched the B into her face.

Graphical representation of newspaper endorsements. Great little app.

Credit Crisis - "mostly worse." Is that like "mostly dead?" One can only hope. Hey everyone: send some "true love" vibes the market's way, will ya?

Driving continues to decline. This is a good thing, that people haven't used the 33%+ decline in gas prices to start filling up the SUVs again. Someone actually told my wife last week that "gas was cheap again." CHEAP?!?! I bet that same woman was outraged when gas hit $3.09 on the way up. But now that it's $3.09 on the way down, it's cheap. It's really no surprise this country is as fucked as it is. People are fucking stupid.

McCain - so mavericky he screwed himself. As Toast says, it's scary (and ridiculous) that McCain would have been in this race had he chosen someone reasonably competent for VP. It should NEVER have been a contest; hell it shouldn't even be 13 points close like it is now.

McCain - outright liar, again.

Since when is a "small business" pulling in 67 or 200 million in revenue? Since McCain decided that $5 million is middle class, I guess.

Why the bailout will fail. Banks don't intend to use the cash to open up credit lines. They intend to spend it elsewhere.

Palin just lost the St. Louis vote

Too funny:

Blues goalie Manny Legace left after one period Friday night with a hip injury that occurred when he slipped on the carpet placed on the ice for Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
...
Just before the ceremony, Legace was the first player onto the ice for St. Louis. A team official pointed to the carpet. But Legace said the official moved his own foot from the carpet just as Legace stepped down, causing the carpet to slide.

Legace fell, then gingerly made his way to the crease.

Republicans: a trail of death and destruction.

Ignorant and useless - the Republican special

Sarah Palin, on science.

Tristero has a post on the same subject.

Two excellent takes.

Change

We can only hope.

Sad? Or laughable?

Or just plain insane...

Jon Swift breaks down the achievements of the right wingnutosphere.

Cute scarf

She really is a full-time idiot, isn't she?

AIG and the bailout

Is AIG a black hole? Holy fuck.

My friends...

John McCain is really no competition for this.

Short music reviews

AC/DC - Black Ice
Angus Young is a great guitar player, a riff-writer extraordinaire, and a great showman. Why this band bothers releasing albums (even if every 9 years), is beyond me. This thing sucks. Just tour until Brian Johnson's wheeze gives out for good, and be done with it. These songs took 9 years to "perfect?" Godawful.

Rise Against - Appeal to Reason
This, on the other hand, is very good and rapidly growing on me. I've only been through it three times so far, but there will be more. Vital, political punk-rock that engages from start to finish except for one poor attempt at a ballad at track 10. Fortunately, 11-13 pick it right up again. It's funny that as I get older, my rock actually needs to rock harder. Anything less (see above) is just a waste of time. I want my ass hammered and some lyrics at least two steps above pure drivel. This delivers. Big time.

Kaiser Chiefs - Off With Their Heads
These guys are critical darlings, and each of their albums has at least two fucking outstanding, addictive, catchy, hooky masterpieces. The rest, though not bad, just doesn't grab me for some reason. I don't know why. Solid tunes, solid melodies and hooks, nothing generic/boring, and yet it doesn't stick. I'm looking at my iTunes now, and here is the "Play Count" for this album, in 4 days: 2, 12, 2, 3, 4, 9, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2. Yup, pretty much like the other albums: two songs that'll be in my road trip playlists forever, one of them in my "Kick Ass" playlist, and some other songs that are just fine but that I'll forget about soon enough.

Rachel Yamagata - Elephant... Teeth Sinking Into Heart
She was featured in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, and it sounded like something I'd like. Not even close. If I remember correctly, the article even used the word "rock." ¿Que? There is no rock here. I put the thing aside for a couple days to regroup. Obviously, I had been mislead, and my expectations were not met in the slightest. Not her fault, I'll try again later. {Tries again} Fucking terrible. Boring and self-indulgent.

Kings of Leon - Only By The Night
An astounding collection of songs, but my enthusiasm has been tempered by the compression. Not as bad as Metallica, but still, muddy. I'll be buying the remasters in a few years. I'm not sure where they land yet, but this band is in my top 5, without a doubt. I've been too tongue-tied and too busy to put the time into a full-on review, but I will soon.

Metallica - Death Magnetic
Arguably the second-worst sounding album of the compression era. It's neck-and-neck with Rush's Vapor Trails, but I give the nod to Rush because they're better musicians, and make better music. They should be producing perfect, bell-clear albums. Metallica, on the other hand, is mostly noise. Good noise, but noise. If you bought the CD or iTunesed this, I'm sorry. Of course the band doesn't give two shits, they're rich already. Maybe if they deem you worthy, they'll sell you the remastered version in a few years. Meantime, go torrent the GH3 version. Orders of magnitude better. Sad, but true.

OK, on to the songs themselves. I've never heard Load, Reload, or St. Anger, but from what I gathered, I didn't miss much. This new one is decent, though only a couple songs have truly impressed me so far. I really like All Nightmare Long and End of the Line; powerful, razor-sharp riffs that take you back to the old days. Those are keeprs. On the other hand, did we really need Unforgiven III? Signs point to no. I'll pop it in every now and then, see if anything else sticks.

------------------

I've also been getting into everything Josh Homme does. You're probably familiar with Queens of the Stone Age's Little Sister:


Or maybe In My Head:


Heavy, filthy, sexy, booty-shaking grooves are Homme's stock in trade, and few do it better. In fact, the stated goal "is to create a heavy sound based on a solid jam, and just pound it into your head." Mission accomplished, sir. On all five albums.

I delved into another of his projects over the weekend, The Eagles of Death Metal. That stuff is quite good too, but horribly produced. Those need to be not just remastered, but re-recorded. They have a third album coming out soon that's been well-reviewed, and I wonder if they hired a real producer or not.

Here are a couple TEoDMs:

I Want You So Hard (Boy's Bad News)


(yes, Homme is on the drums in this band)

Cherry Cola


Is that the most fantastically awful video or what? It makes Warrant's Cherry Pie seem like a feminist tract. Maybe it's something about the word "cherry."

Anyway, good times. No pretense, just rawk.

So much stuff

I've been so friggin' busy, so here are some links for this fine Wednesday evening:

Giuliani gets in on the sleazy robocall action.

Robotexts, too.

Torture comes home.

This is fucking beautiful.

When the old woman left the voting booth she made it about halfway to the door before collapsing in a nearby chair, where she began weeping uncontrollably. When we rushed over to help we realized that she wasn't in trouble at all but she had not truly believed, until she left the booth, that she would ever live long enough to cast a vote for an African-American for president.

Firefighters are so un-American when they want health insurance.


We're #36!!!

Ezra Klein has been writing a lot about food, and the environmental/health impact of what we eat. Very good stuff. Here's one, and another, and another...

Al Qaeda supports John McCain.

GOP to women: go fuck yourself.

McCain has no fucking idea what he's talking about. And he's a liar.

The FDIC is looking to set up shop in Irvine, CA. Three-to-five-year lease. Ho. Lee. Shit. They must expect a lot of foreclosures and bank failures. Or should I say a lot more?

We're #29!!!

The Dark Wraith blasts the bailout.

Homebrew update

Bill and I bottled our winter brews tonight, and other than the one-a-week testers, we plan on letting them sit until the holidays.

I brewed this, and Bill's recipe is here.

Mine fermented down to 1.024, so my ABV is about 9.5%. I was hoping for 1.020, but I'll live. Bill's started light at 1.061 and landed at 1.022, about 5.3% ABV.

They both tasted great, sans-carbonation of course, and with sugar remaining that the yeast will finish off in the bottle. The coffee in Bill's beer was right up front in today's tasting, so who knows where it will wind up after a couple months worth of bottle conditioning, but we sure as hell liked it today. Mine wound up a little more stouty than I planned, but then again, I didn't go in with a specific recipe in mind. Just a lot of sugar for a big, strong, malty brew. Tasted good, and will only improve with age.

Also, yesterday I put together a hard cider, which I hadn't done in a couple years. Five gallons of local cider, a couple pounds of sugar, and champagne yeast. After the first fermentation, I may add more sugar and yeast to boost the final ABV, but I also want to make it sweeter than last time. That one was dry as hell, because it fermented down to 1.004 or something; there was very little remaining sugar. The wife didn't like it at all, and a couple other people also thought it was too dry. I liked it just fine, but then again it was 11%, so a couple of those and WooHoo!!!! Thish ish GREAT! Anyway, I don't want a sugar bomb like a Woodchuck or anything, but a little residual sugar would be fine with me.

We are all Rays fans now

What a glorious evening.



The bandwagon keeps chugging along, baby!

Suck it, Sox.

And man is David Price a keeper.

All hail the General

Courtesy Jesus' General.

Goodbye to Wall Street

This is a thing of beauty.

And yes to hemp.

I love this

Jezebel deconstructs the latest Cosmo cover.

Stupid? Or mendacious?

Why not both?

Examine this picture:


Now... are you thinking:
a) ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG! Obama has created his own "O" flag! He is a danger to the nation! That uppity negro! How unamerican is that?!?! What's wrong with the good ol' Stars 'n Stripes?!?!?!
or
b) Obama must have been speaking in Ohio.

I'll give you two guesses what the wingnuts are doing.

Dubai and slave labor

Excellent links to the architectural wonders of Dubai, and the slave labor behind them.

Que es mas monocoque?

Find out here.

Fun with cats!

Too funny.

How to have a good day at the office

So I'm sitting in my semi-private office, and a slow ripple of giggles starts on the production floor, growing into a crescendo of laughter. Hearty, hearty laughter.

One of our people was working with a linguist to define a term, so she did an internet search. This is the e-mail she sent around after that effort:

Hello. I looked in the dictionary and has many meanings but I still no finding the right one for “Hedgehog Copy”

Here are the different meanings the dictionary says:

hedgehog
Although rarely used, it is also known as the tank barriers used by the Germans in World War II. These large, heavy, spikey barriers are mostly known for their use in Normandy, France on D-Day

hedgehog
A guy who can give himself oral sex

Hedgehog
when u crap and it lands on the side of the toilet seat.

hedgehog
When you cum in your partner's hair and then spike it up, like a hedgehog.

hedgehog
Someone who is extremely selfish with his/her weed. This individual will almost never smoke anyone else up (even close friends) and will not sell to anyone either. Also does not appreciate people knowing/asking about how much weed he/she may have.

hedgehog
collective noun for a walking group of pricks

We're dying over here.

Gack

No Photoshop involved.

Holy emmer effing ess - economy edition

Roubini, who's been right on everything so far, predicts what "worse" is.

I read, and re-read, and re-read this. I don't know how many times. I still can't believe I'm about to type: 2/3 of houses/condos sold in Detroit are foreclosures, and the median price is $9,250.

There is no word in the dictionary for that. Or maybe there is, you tell me. Is there a word for:

(10 x stunned) + (7.78 x incredulous) + (8.4 x scared shitless) + "dash of WTF" - "glad I don't live in Detroit"

I think not.

Debate roundups

Sullivan has a comprehensive set.

Ezra: reaction, and live-blog.

Steve Benen: live-blog

Quick hits

This is great, as JoePoz yarns usually are. And I do want to know more about NASCAR-centric Harlequin Novels.

Real estate? Bad. Credit? Bad. Retail? Bad.

Gizmodo reports that retail trouble is good for the consumer that has money to spend, though. The sales will be ridiculous, just to get people in the doors. Black Friday will be a bonanza for gadget shoppers with money.

So even if you want a POS GM vehicle, you need really good credit. That'll help car sales.

How to destroy your typical ignorant Republican pundit.

Remember, when Republicans yelp about voter fraud, it's projection. It always is. Voter fraud is their stock in trade.

I love how Bush signs laws, then declares he doesn't have to follow them.

Of course one of Bush's final acts will be to protect big business from product liability issues.

Jesus Assfucking Christ I hate religious Americans. And religion in general. Put me down for that one too.

"[Obama]'s neither-nor," said Ricky Thompson, a pipe fitter who works at a factory north of Mobile, while standing in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart store just north of here. "He's other. It's in the Bible. Come as one. Don't create other breeds."

Republicans. Still not funny.

"Why ship goods if we won't get paid?" Ouch. Yeah, that won't cause any problems.

Schadenfreudy!

Good. Fucking good.

How you doin'?

This cracks my shit right up.

O. M. G.

Cover your eyes...

Well played

Politics aside, the Obama campaign knows what the fuck they're doing, that's for sure.

Talk about embracing the world-shrinking power of technology.

First it was the iPhone app.





Now, the XBox.


Does anyone in McCain's campaign have even 1/10th of this clue?

Signs point to "No."

Go P-Krug!

Damn!

Much-deserved, I say.

Screw you, Pope!

This is beautiful.

Linkdump

Ode to Sean Hannity. Purportedly by John Cleese. Anyway, it's funny. (h/t Americablog)

A collection of great political cartoons.

Here's a good idea. Take two large shitty companies, each with too many overlapping product lines, and merge them into one HUGE shitty company. Lay off about 80,000 people in the name of efficiency, of course, then continue the slide to irrelevance.

Yes, Sarah Palin is guilty. Yes, they're spinning this like a win.

How fucking crazy are the rabid wingnuts? McCain was trying to be polite about Obama, so they boo him.

And this almost sent my breakfast through my nose:

Nobody could have predicted...

...the current mess. In 2004.

The stock market, illustrated

Funny stuff.

Not just Gitmo

...or Abu Ghraib

We tortured 'em here in the US too.

XKCD FTW!

Remember this?




Well, Google went and did it.

Now that's proper use of "20% time."

South Park: still the best show on television

I don't know where this fits into the top-10 episodes list, but it definitely jumps in there somewhere.

Indiana Jones/Lucas/Spielberg, our Chinese overlords, racism & xenophobia (and the ignorance associated with such), dick dick dick dick dick dick, rape in movies, the destruction of childhood innocence, and who knows what else.

Hello, please.

Happy anniversary

One year ago today, the DJIA closed at its all-time high.

Must. Win. Lottery.

In this age of soulless digital downloads and MP3 mumbo-jumbo, we gleefully turn to that treasured icon of our American pop culture childhood: the 45 RPM vinyl single. And since we're in the once-in-a-lifetime business, we giddily present our exclusive, definitive collection. To be clear, it contains each and every 45 RPM vinyl record that was listed on the Billboard Top 100® Rock and Pop charts from Jan. 1, 1955, through Dec. 31, 1990. Absolutely every disc for 35 years, every No. 100 up to every No. 1. There are some 18,400 records total. Some are even autographed. How about the Beatles' 1964 hit "Ain't She Sweet" with picture sleeve, worth a cool $500; or the Beach Boys' 1961 hit "Surfin' Luau" worth $200. There are literally hundreds of extremely collectible 45s — Elvis, Joplin, Hendrix, you name it — and the collection in its entirety is priceless.

Sports fun

With Leather is cracking my shit up today.

First, this:
(Video removed. Fucking autoplay...)


Then these two golf headlines:
Freshman Talley makes best of her 2 soggy holes
Creamer in the pink after 1-stroke victory

That second story began like this:
To understand the depth of Paula Creamer’s satisfaction Sunday…


Now, I wonder if that's the tournament with this trophy:


Yes, I'm 12. Why do you ask?

White privilege

My wife sent me an e-mail forward a few weeks ago and I meant to post about it, but before I did, I wanted to track down the original. You know how all those e-mails fly around claiming to be written by Carlin, or Ebert, or some other semi-plausible author. Well, yeah, I didn't want to just blindly cut and paste. Of course, work went nuts again, so I left it there in the inbox until time presented itself.

Anyway, here's the source.

A couple representative snippets:

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll “kick their fuckin' ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s--while if you're black and believe in reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), you're a dangerous and mushy liberal who isn't fit to safeguard American institutions.


White privilege is being able to go to a prestigious prep school, then to Yale and Harvard Business School (George W. Bush), and still be seen as an "average guy," while being black, going to a prestigious prep school, then Occidental College, then Columbia, and then Harvard Law, makes you "uppity" and a snob who probably looks down on regular folks.

Tons more at the link. Read it.

Attention Cowboy Fans

"So we at KSK would like to take a little bit of time out each week to remind you, dear reader, THAT MICHAEL IRVIN ONCE STABBED A GUY IN THE FUCKING NECK WITH A FUCKING PAIR OF SCISSORS."

Never forget.

Fuck yeah!

Full of hate and ignorance

And damned proud of it.

The McCain/Palin campaign in Ohio.



Read the background to this video here.

(h/t Shakesville)

They're watching you

Google's satellite started taking pictures yesterday. Stalkerrific!

Can't wait to see the resolution on those pics.

Meanwhile, here's some other cool stuff.

The Bird's Nest



And Republicans will tell you that luck has nothing to do with life...



Before and after:

The importance of sex education

Saw this a few days ago, but forgot to post it.

Dick

Apparently you can say "dick" on Comedy Central now.

At least they're not trying to hide it

There ain't much corruption like New York corruption.

Bloomberg wants a third term. That's against the law. So he's hired someone to help him force some temporary legislation through.

Ron Lauder:

"This afternoon I met with Mayor Bloomberg at Gracie Mansion. We had an in-depth and positive discussion about term limits and the pending legislation before the City Council. As many people know, I have been a fervent supporter of term limits for many years. My personal belief in ordinary times is that two terms is the appropriate number.

"However, these are extraordinary times and we are in the midst of a financial emergency. For those reasons, I will reluctantly support the Mayor's legislation to extend term limits to three terms, with the understanding that I will serve on a Charter Revision Commission which will place the question of the number of terms before the voters in 2010. At that point, I will vigorously support a return to a two-term limit. The people have spoken before and will speak again; until then, this is the best solution to make sure we have a steady hand at the wheel during this financial emergency."

Translation:
We really need term limits. Except for my buddy Michael. After that, though, we'll make sure everyone has to respect term limits.


Bush is going to be pulling this in three-four weeks.

Watch this

I can't find an embed link (fuckers), but this needs to be seen.

Sing it!

My fellow Americans

I'm horrified by the fact that I can actually say that about you.

"Product"

As if "cheese food" and "meat product" weren't enough, now we have peanut butter product.

I wonder if "Steve Don't Eat That" is still active...

New South Park tonight

Yay!

Must-reads

Sarah and Liss at Shakesville.

How's your portfolio?

Got this joyful e-mail from TJ today.

---
The S&P has fallen for five sessions in a row, and is down 14.6 percent over that stretch. Those were the first five days of October.

People are now being shocked by brokerage account and 401-k statements through the end of September, as they arrive in the mail. But prices have plunged since those statements were compiled.

The DJ Wilshire 5,000 folks helpfully provide the details. That index, which covers nearly all publicly traded stocks in this country, lost $700 billion in value today. So far this month, the total is $2.2 trillion, or roughly three times the bailout total. Since the peak — whose first anniversary is Thursday — the decline is $7.2 trillion. The current value is $12.1 trillion.

Here are the S&P sector breakdowns for the first five days of October:

Consumer Staples, down 7.2 percent
Telecommunications, down 9.7 percent
Health Care, down 10 percent
Utilities, down 11.6 percent
Energy, down 15.8 percent
Consumer Discretionary, down 16 percent
Industrials, down 16 percent
Information Technology, down 16.3 percent
Materials, down 18.2 percent
Financials, down 20.4 percent

Of the 500 stocks in the index, 12 are up so far in October, and nearly all of them are beaten down financials that bounced a bit from very low prices.
---

Not so wheeeeee.

Oh, and Iceland, a whole country, is on the verge of bankruptcy.

Well said

(h/t Clusterstock)

UPDATE: While we're at it, and apropos of TJ's comment, here is the greatest magazine cover of all time. I have this issue saved somewhere. I wanted to frame it, but never got around to it. Someday.

Hippies!

This has got to be the funniest fucking thing ever.



Conservative people are so stupid.

This is a little good

Lupe Fiascon, Kanye West, and Pharrell Williams.

(h/t Ezra)

SNL recap Week 4

Tina Fey was great as usual.



There were actually a few decent skits, including the bailout press conference.



Andy Samberg is a demented genius.



Anne Hathaway was a gamer.


Finally, what the fuck happened to the Killers? That was awful.

Pretty much

(h/t oddjob, who found it at Sully's)

Wingnuts in a nutshell

USA! USA! USA!