Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

We still have time to mess this up!

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

This fight is for everything.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

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100Comments

  5. 5.

    Oscar Leroy

    The deal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for two years includes a bevy of additional credits and deductions that will reduce the burden on nearly all households.

    But the tax benefits will flow most heavily to the highest earners, just as the original cuts did when they were passed in 2001 and 2003. At least a quarter of the tax savings will go to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population.

    In fact, the only groups likely to face a tax increase are those near the bottom of the income scale — individuals who make less than $20,000 and families with earnings below $40,000.

    Although the $120 billion payroll tax reduction offers nearly twice the tax savings of the credit it replaces, it will nonetheless lead to higher tax bills for individuals with incomes below $20,000 and families that make less than $40,000. That is because their payroll tax savings are less than the $400 or $800 they will lose from the Making Work Pay credit.

    etc. etc. etc.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/us/politics/08impact.html?ref=david_kocieniewski

  7. 7.

    Fuck U II: The Duckening

    OMFG, STFU! Pop culture is popular? GTFO!

    Next you’ll tell me that in a couple of years they’ll be wearing something completely different. As if.

  10. 10.

    WyldPirate

    @Oscar Leroy:

    Although the $120 billion payroll tax reduction offers nearly twice the tax savings of the credit it replaces, it will nonetheless lead to higher tax bills for individuals with incomes below $20,000 and families that make less than $40,000. That is because their payroll tax savings are less than the $400 or $800 they will lose from the Making Work Pay credit.

    So that’s just fucking awesome.

    Obama is such a good deal maker he cut a deal that raised taxes on the poorest people in the country.

    Excuse me, I’m going to go get Occaam’s razor and cut my wrist, because Obama is just fucking stupid for letting that shit happen.

    Welcome to the land of Neo-feudalism, boys and girls.

    ETA: And on top of that he cut payrool collections which will give the jackals on the right the impetus to fight against raising them. So he undoes past “fixes” to Social security.

    Excuse me,m Obama isn’t stupid–he’s just a dumb motherfucker doing the work of the Republicans. And this is the best we can do ?

  15. 15.

    WarMunchkin

    So, since this is a recession and all, someone here must have some good ideas on how to live in a place without heating or insulation. Anyone?

  16. 16.

    KCinDC

    @WyldPirate, while I am worried about how Republicans will use the payroll tax holiday, I would point out that Republicans and the Very Serious People have already effectively undone the previous “fixes” to Social Security. Workers have been paying extra payroll taxes for many years now, supposedly building up a surplus for the lean times for Social Security, but now when SS starts needing to draw on that surplus we’re told that it’s just a meaningless IOU from the government to itself and there’s no legal or moral obligation to repay it. If that’s the new view of things, then workers have been defrauded since 1983 to keep income taxe rates low, and they deserve to get a little back.

  19. 19.

    JWL

    Three Questions: What else defines a hipster (other than HHG’s)? Do they share any intrinsic qualities with professional liberals? What so differentiates them from the herd that some people can immediately recognize them, while others remain clueless?

    Enquiring minds want to know.

  20. 20.

    WyldPirate

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I might consider that if I don’t see any of the normal suspects with their lips glued to Obama’s anal sphincter show up and try to defend this fucking abomination of a “deal”.

  22. 22.

    gil mann

    I’m sorry, what?

    I mean, Aimee Mann’s (no relation) got eyes of otherworldy beauty, so okay, maybe she’s in that 99th percentile of people whose faces don’t benefit from accessorization, but since when are nerd-specs not recognized as a legit fetish?

    Sorry, this is just a weird post, like saying “ewww, thigh-highs.”

  24. 24.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @JWL: I could tell you about the characteristics, but they are so obscure that you’ve probably never heard of them anyway.

  26. 26.

    Danny

    My girlfriend wears glasses like that. Every time she takes them off it’s like a scene from “She’s All That”.

  31. 31.

    David Fud

    Ummm, maybe they don’t want to be judged by their extraordinary good looks, and thus don the hipster glasses. Drunk guys yelling from the audience would encourage me to try things to tone down the hormones if I were as talented as she is. Hipster glasses might be good for that.

  33. 33.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @David Fud: I have to go through life being judged by my extraordinary good looks; why shouldn’t she be subjected to the the same standard? Fair is fair.

  34. 34.

    KCinDC

    Hey, look, it’s a Unity08-like group saying that if only people could set aside their political beliefs and agree with the “sensible” centrists, the country would be great! No doubt they have a serious sad that Bloomberg isn’t going to run for president.

    Checking out their “About Us” pages, I see the Talking Points say:

    No Labels is not a centrist, conservative, or liberal movement.

    But in the Declaration it says:

    We believe in the vital civil center — a place where ideas are judged on their merits.

    So they’re not centrists, but the believe in governing from the center. Thanks for clearing that up.

  35. 35.

    Rosalita

    @zmulls:

    I appreciate guys like you and my boyfriend. Contact lenses get old after a number of years and I can’t.see.shit.

  36. 36.

    Ash Can

    @burnspbesq: I’ve long suspected that Obama’s disappointing stance on wiretapping and eavesdropping has to do in no small measure with concern for his own family’s safety. If mine were the first black family to occupy the White House, young children and all, and I inherited a system that made it significantly easier to keep tabs on all the KKK-type wackos popping up like fetid mushrooms, I’d be profoundly tempted to keep it in place.

  37. 37.

    Violet

    @WarMunchkin:

    So, since this is a recession and all, someone here must have some good ideas on how to live in a place without heating or insulation. Anyone?

    Move to a warmer geographical location.
    Get a space heater (a safe one, not some really old one that will set your place on fire), block off all other rooms, and live in only one room. A space heater should be able to heat up one room if it’s smallish.
    Visit your local Salvation Army or Goodwill store and buy up any cheap blankets they have, if they have any left. Cover floors and windows to keep heat in.
    Stay with friends or family who do have heat.
    Always wear a warm hat and socks.

  39. 39.

    Svensker

    So my stupid engineer wingnut cousin is trumpeting a Townhall piece saying that Wikileaks “vindicates” the Iraq War because of some memo that mentions that moldy old chemical weapons were found. Is it possible to crawl through cyberspace and strangle someone?

    Yeah, the hipster glasses thing. Question for everyone: are the models used in glasses ads meant to look stupid and vapid in their glasses? Or is it just me?

  43. 43.

    Svensker

    @Marmot:

    Those hipster glasses aren’t even particularly big. Now this is the kind of thing that makes me wince in incomprehension.

    Are big glasses making a comeback? Pretty please? The little skinny ones that have been all the rage the last 10 years make me look like a dyspeptic llama and since my skinny little glasses are trifocals (I’m old, OK?), I have about 1/8″ for each vision band. Bigger would be so much more attractive, not to mention practical.

  45. 45.

    burnspbesq

    @Ash Can:

    Maybe, but if I thought we were making policy on important issues based on a story arc from “The West Wing,” I might be slightly unhappy.

  49. 49.

    tomvox1

    Chunky glasses on ladies are sexy as hell. Chunky glasses on me help me see. Whaddya want us to wear–Ben Franklin wire rims? These glasses were good enough for our fathers and mothers and grandmothers and grandfathers in the 50s and that wuz the Greatestest Generation Evuh! Also, too, they were good enough for Goldwater so obviously you hate America. Pinkos.

  50. 50.

    J.W. Hamner

    The only reason to wear glasses is to make a fashion statement… wearing mundane glasses is more incomprehensible to me than thick frames: just get contacts if you want to be boring.

  51. 51.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @Oscar Leroy: And if Reid had done his job we wouldn’t be having this discussion. He hasn’t been able to muster anything useful, and that leaves the president, who does not want to see middle and lower class taxes go up, having to talk to McConnell with only tool he has: compromise. The longer this goes on, the more I’m just going to get pissed at the Senate.

  53. 53.

    burnspbesq

    @Marmot:

    Everything about Taylor Swift makes me wince in incomprehension.

    That’s a very 80s look. Straight hair and big glasses = woman trying to look more professional than the men in a workplace that’s hostile to women. Ask any woman you know who practiced law in the 80s what they had to do to keep from being mistaken for support staff.

  55. 55.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @tomvox1: There’s a picture of my dad, when he was stationed in Vietnam, wearing his BCGs (birth control glasses). He was so skinny that it looks like the glasses might tip him over.

  58. 58.

    Rosalita

    @stuckinred:

    they are using a funeral to make a point, and they do it to our military guys. to me that’s a little more off the charts the the wankery around here. just my opinion.

  59. 59.

    WyldPirate

    @KCinDC:

    If that’s the new view of things, then workers have been defrauded since 1983 to keep income taxe rates low, and they deserve to get a little back

    so instead, it’s a good idea to rip another big hole in the fund to increase the rate of the fraud?

    ok. nice to see Obama working for the people.

    You don’t need any more evidence what a fuck up this deal than watching the Rethug pundits praising Obama.

  62. 62.

    The Moar You Know

    @WarMunchkin: Depends on where you live.

    I learned a little trick in Tijuana back in the day (believe it or not, it gets savagely cold – 20s to 30s – in the winter there at night).

    Lock yourself in a small room.

    Take cotton ball.

    Place in bottlecap full of alcohol.

    Ignite. It will burn the alcohol very, very slowly, and will raise the temperature of the room to above freezing, which is really all you need.

    Disclaimer: you can probably die from CO poisoning if you have anything more than a LITTLE flame, or if the room’s airtight. This is how the Mexicans do it. It’s not how I’d do it, but then again I have insulation.

    Another poverty trick – you can insulate with carpet. Now, carpet is filthy and my least favorite thing, but you can nail a bunch to the walls and it will insulate. Putting it over the window is especially effective, that’s where most of the cold air seems to come in.

    Boy, writing all this down takes me back to the days when I was poor and homeless. Forgot how much that sucked. Good luck, WarMunchkin.

  67. 67.

    The Moar You Know

    Yay! Vista is swept away! Win 7 is this house! And the Nook no longer causes BSD on this laptop. Yay!

    @jeffreyw: I may be the only person who had a successful Vista experience, but I gotta say that Windows 7 is pretty damned awesome. Switching my people here over as quickly as I can.

  68. 68.

    Amir_Khalid

    Be glad it’s not the kind of glasses that come with a big nose-and-mustache combo attached.

    On second thought, I would love to see hipsters start wearing those.

  71. 71.

    mr. whipple

    @WarMunchkin:

    My advice: move in with a rich person, or start collecting cats. A herd of several hundred cats wrapped around one at night will keep you snug as a bug in a rug.

  73. 73.

    WyldPirate

    @amk: @amk:

    Don’t you think that the Pew poll might have picked up a few Republicans that might be pleased with the Republican President in the White House.

    He gives them their tax cuts….

    He continues their wars…

    He spies on his own people..

    He puts out hits on them…

    He protects the bankers…

    He negotiates a HCR, but tacks on in a backroom deal an doubling of patent protection for certain classes of new drugs for Big Pharma…

    Meanwhile,, health care premiums go up by 10% again this year and will the next and the next…

    And then, while doing all these things that the Rethugs like, he sets himself up for him and his party to be bludgeoned by them in ’12, while being unable to exact any sort of political price for the profligacy of the Rethugs that caused much of this economic crisis in the first place.

    This isn’t “hope and change” and “Yes we can!” attitude that I voted for. It is more like “same old shit but even worse” and “No we can’t!”.

  74. 74.

    stuckinred

    @Rosalita: It was a bitch, I was with a bunch of Rolling Thunder/Gathering of Eagles vets but they were disciplined and made sure from the get go that we didn’t go kick the living dog shit out of the weasles.

  76. 76.

    jeffreyw

    @The Moar You Know: Vista was working for me, too, with some exceptions: The Nook, the odd memory card reader or two. Most frustration came from getting the “you don’t have permission to do that” and I’m all what the fuck you mean?–It’s all of it my shit!

  77. 77.

    Chyron HR

    @WyldPirate:

    Don’t you think that the Pew poll might have picked up a few Republicans that might be pleased with the Republican President in the White House.

    The figures that were quoted are from the “Democrat” column of the poll responses.

  81. 81.

    Marmot

    @Svensker:

    Are big glasses making a comeback? Pretty please?

    Oh yes indeed. The uber-hipster set has been experimenting with them since at least 2008, and like leopard print in the ’90s and the “ironic” moustache, they’ve paved the way for a horrible society-wide roll-out.

    PS There is no such thing as an ironic moustache.

  82. 82.

    mr. whipple

    @amk:

    Also: “Republicans and Democrats had differing levels of enthusiasm for each part of the deal. Eighty-five percent of Republicans favored extending the tax cuts but only 43 percent supported extension of unemployment benefits. Eighty-four percent of Democrats backed extension of unemployment benefits, while only 52 percent backed extending the tax cuts.

    By contrast, independents were strongly in favor of both elements. Sixty-seven percent backed extension of the tax cuts and 71 percent supported extending unemployment benefits.”

    So, Obama gains huge among indies at the expense of the .001% internet left who already hated him. Man, that’s a tough call.

  83. 83.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    This just makes my day. (WARNING: Links to Politico)

    After agreeing to kill earmarks, some of the most conservative GOP lawmakers are already starting to ask themselves: What have we done?

    Now why is that?

    Indeed, many Republicans are now worried that the bridges in their districts won’t be fixed, the tariff relief to the local chemical company isn’t coming and the water systems might not be built without a little direction from Congress.

    So some Republicans are discussing exemptions to the earmark ban, allowing transportation, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and water projects. While transportation earmarks are probably the most notorious — think “Bridge to Nowhere” — there is talk about tweaking the very definition of “earmark.”

    I guess it depends on what the definition of “is” is.

  84. 84.

    stuckinred

    I don’t suppose it’s dawned on anyone that Mrs Moose is all down with big ass glasses too.

  85. 85.

    WereBear

    @WarMunchkin: Layers. Layers of layers. Microfleece is awesome for that; light, easy to wash and dry in a sink, comfy, and doesn’t make me want to tear my own skin off because it’s not wool.

    But if you don’t have a wool problem it is the way to go. Two thin sweaters equal more than one thick one. And you gotta have some kind of thin layer next to your skin. And a hat. A good hat and you won’t believe the difference.

    Then, get an electric blanket and some grippy clips and wear it. There’s some concern with electromagnetic fields right next to your skin, so I’d cycle it off and on as needed; it’s no more than what the thermostat does. It will also get you to the point that you can sleep and maintain body heat; don’t sleep with it on.

    And yes, I’ve survived poverty; why do you ask?

  86. 86.

    Sentient Puddle

    @Marmot: I have problems with keeping up with hipster culture (both because I don’t want to, and because they make it so blasted difficult to make any sense of), but is this why I see pictures of people drawing mustaches on their fingers and holding them up to their lip, making them look like total douchebags?

  89. 89.

    Culture of Truth

    Trying to think of an appropriate pun referencing “Bridge Over The River Kwai,” since in that movie Alec Guiness memorably says at the end “What have I done??”

  90. 90.

    Joe Max

    My very pretty teenage daughter left for school today wearing a pair of big, chunky, 3-D glasses frames with the lenses removed.

    “It’s the Poindexter look, dad!”

  91. 91.

    Culture of Truth

    While it may seen odd to wear socks and layers and a hat to bed, it works – that’s why the guy in twas the night before xmas is wearing a cap and his wife a kercheif

  93. 93.

    trollhattan

    Aimee could wear Groucho glasses and still be unapproachably hawt. Also, too, Elvis Costello, the early years, offered blessed relief from stadium-rock hair bands, disco stars and be-pierced punkers. His hornrim look, of course–lifted from Buddy Holly.

    Also, also, too, Fox News has language police? Hoocoodanode?

    http://www.tnr.com/blogs/jonathan-chait

  94. 94.

    WyldPirate

    @amk:

    No, not too lazy. I simply overlooked the link at the bottom.

    While those numbers are from the self-professed Dems in the survey, I think it is a bit of a stretch to say the “Dems are unmoved” from these particular data.

    First of 23% of the Dems in the survey said he is cooperating too much. that’s a pretty significant percentage of Dems.

    Secondly, this survey was conducted before Obama doing his dirty work for the Rethugs:

    In a survey conducted before Obama and GOP leaders agreed to temporarily extend all Bush-era tax cuts, most Americans (80%) favor preserving at least some of the tax cuts. However, just a third (33%) of Americans say they favor keeping all of the expiring tax cuts; 47% favor keeping just the tax cuts for income below $250,000, while just 11% want to end all of the tax cuts.

    It doesn’t seem to be a worthwhile gauge of what Dems think of the Tax deal at all now does it?

  95. 95.

    JohnR

    @Danny:

    Yeah, I think MrMX missed the point – it’s all about (a) defensive ugliness, and (b) the “wow!” effect when they come off. Or maybe I’m just rationalizing here.

  97. 97.

    dj spellchecka

    perhaps i shouldn’t admit to knowing this but there are entire websites dedicated to naked women wearing glasses….

  98. 98.

    luminous muse

    Aimee Mann writes some of the most intelligent pop songs today and makes great sounding records. I couldn’t care less what glasses she wears, but judging from clips I’ve seen she lacks a certain juice live. But maybe that’s part of the hipster thing.

  99. 99.

    Rincon Blue

    When they issued this kind of glasses in Basic Training, we called them BCGs for Birth Control Glasses. Because, you know, no-one will ask you out if you’re wearing them.

  100. 100.

    sneezy

    @J.W. Hamner:

    “The only reason to wear glasses is to make a fashion statement…”

    Unless you’re the kind of person who needs glasses but doesn’t make fashion statements (that latter group is awfully big).

    “just get contacts if you want to be boring.”

    My vision can’t be corrected with contacts. I have to wear glasses, much as I hate them, and I don’t make fashion statements.

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