Life With the Blunt Amendment

 

I'm sorry, sir but your boss is a Jehovah's Witness, so I can't give you that blood transfusion.

 

You need Thorazine. Unfortunately, your boss is a Scientologist.

 

We really should do a bypass, but your boss is a Christian Scientist.

 

Sorry, your boss is a hardcore Muslim, I'm not allowed to poke around down there at all.

 

This is Who They Are.

Ohio governor puts libertarian ideology into practice:

Kasich turns down federal disaster aid

Ohio Gov. John Kasich said thanks but no thanks to immediate federal disaster relief Saturday, even as governors in Indiana and Kentucky welcomed the help.

John Kasich, a man said to have presidential aspirations, would rather do a little political grandstanding than allow the federal government to help the people of his state in a time of tragedy. Never mind that the good people of Ohio pay in to the federal disaster relief program with their income taxes and are absolutely entitled to receive funds from it. No, Kasich would rather burnish his anti-government bona fides than do the sensible, practical, moral thing. Your house got knocked down? You have nothing left? Too bad, I'd rather thumb my nose at Washington than allow you to get help rebuilding.

Apparently, he's been listening to Ron Paul:

Ron Paul: No federal tornado aid

• 03/05/12 at 12:30pm 

Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul said he doesn’t think the federal government should help. “The people who live in tornado alley, just as I live in hurricane alley, they should have insurance,” Paul said
“There is no such thing as federal money,” Paul said, on the show, according to the National Journal. “Federal money is just what they steal from the states and steal from you and me.”
He also said FEMA has led to nothing but “frustration and anger.”

Okay, if the Federal Government has "stolen" this money from the states and the people, why would you object to getting some of it back?  How does it help anything to refuse needed money that, according to you, belongs to the people anyway? Do you not see the flaw in your logic here? Also, does it really need to be pointed out that the "frustration and anger" at FEMA is based on the perception that they haven't done ENOUGH to help in recent disasters?
And I'm quite sure that most people in tornado alley do have insurance, but the deductibles on these policies generally run in to several tens of thousands of dollars before the insurance companies begin to pay a dime. If, like most people, you don't have 25 or 50 thousand dollars in the bank, your insurance policy isn't going to do you a lot of good.

This is who these people are. When they talk about "small government," this is what they mean. They don't mind a government large enough to force trans-vaginal ultrasounds on unwilling women. they have no problem with a government big enough to tell people who they can marry. They don't mind a government big enough to invade every country in the world where a Muslim looks at us funny. They only want government to be small in areas where it it might help people.

Because the whole point of tea-party libertarian, small-government conservatism is the fear that somehow, somewhere someone might be getting over on them. Their world-view is based on the resentment they feel when they think that someone might be getting something paid for by their tax dollars. They have no problem with their tax dollars being used to hurt someone, like, say an Iraqi civilian or an Occupy protestor, they just can't stand the thought that someone might be getting helped at their expense.
For some reason, the fact that the government funnels billions of their tax dollars to companies like Haliburton or Blackwater, but if some farmer in Illinois gets help rebuilding his house at their expense, it's time to put on the pointy hat and throw tea in the fucking harbor!

2011 Must have been a pretty weak year for movies

Because I just saw two of the Best Picture nominees last night, and gotta say, not impressed!

We rented Hugo and Midnight in Paris from Redbox last night.



Maybe Hugo loses something in the non-3D version, I don't know, but I thought it was just OK.

I definitely could have done without the Sasha Baron Cohen character.

 He felt really cartoony, and in a movie where all the plot points feel pretty contrived already, he was just not helping. I wouldn't say Hugo is a bad movie, I enjoyed it, but it definitely didn't feel like anything to write home about.



 

Midnight in Paris, on the other hand was just awful. And I love Woody Allen. He's made some of my all-time favorites - Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, Manhattan, etc. And I looooove Paris. Seems like a sure bet, even with the potentially annoying presence of Owen Wilson. But I really hated this movie. It seems like we've already seen this a million times: Back to the Future, Peggy Sue Got Married, Groundhog Day, Hot Tub Time Machine. . .
Just the Rachel McAdams character alone is enough to make this movie painful. Nothing against McAdams, but the character is so ridiculously unpleasant, belittling and condescending to Owens at every turn that it's just not at all believable that anyone would want to marry her, much less a successful, reasonably handsome guy who must have other options.

Yes, I will wear this snotty expression throughout the whole movie!

 

 When Wilson confronts her, accusing her of having an affair with the equally ridiculously unpleasant "Paul" she says, and I'm paraphrasing here, something like "yes, I spent a few nights with Paul. . . Get over it!" which no actual human being would ever say.

And the whole point of the movie seems to be a combination of "hey, it's Hemingway! Hey, it's Dali'! Oh, look, Gertrude Stein!" and some moral about how people romanticize the past, which is a long way to go for that stunning insight.

 

 Look, we got Adrien Brody for two minutes!

 Oh, the 2012 guy romanticizes the 1920's, but the woman from the 20's romanticizes the Belle Epoque, and the people in the Belle Epoque romanticize the Rennaissance! You don't fucking say! People really feel an unrealistic nostalgia for what they think of as the "Good Old Days?" Holy shit! I never thought of that!

  

Also, who casts a skinny guy as Hemingway?

The only other Best Picture nominee I've seen this year is The Artist, which was really good, but I was surprised that it was Best Picture material. Now that I've seen some of the competition, it makes a lot more sense.

 

And the Oscar for Best Dog goes to. . .

Things Are Tough All Over

(Via Bloomberg)

Wall Street Bonus Withdrawal Means Trading Aspen for Coupons

 

Wall Street’s cash bonus pool fell by 14 percent last year to $19.7 billion, the lowest since 2008, according to projections by New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
“It’s a disaster,” said Ilana Weinstein, chief executive officer of New York-based search firm IDW Group LLC. “The entire construct of compensation has changed.” 

Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.

“People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress,” said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. “Could you imagine what it’s like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?”

Scheiner said he spends about $500 a month to park one of his two Audis in a garage and at least $7,500 a year each for memberships at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester and a gun club in upstate New York. A labradoodle named Zelda and a rescued bichon frise, Duke, cost $17,000 a year, including food, health care, boarding and a daily dog-walker who charges $17 each per outing, he said.

Still, he sold two motorcycles he didn’t use and called his Porsche 911 Carrera 4S Cabriolet “the Volkswagen of supercars.”

Scheiner pays $30,000 a year to be part of a New York-based peer-learning group for investors called Tiger 21. Founder Michael Sonnenfeldt said members, most with a net worth of at least $10 million, have been forced to “re-examine lots of assumptions about how grand their life would be.”
While they aren’t asking for sympathy, “at their level, in a different way but in the same way, the rug got pulled out,” said Sonnenfeldt, 56. “For many people of wealth, they’ve had a crushing setback as well.” 

 But Wall Street millionaires aren't the only ones suffering, although their suffering is more poignant than most. Just listen to these sad stories:

 

I used to be even handsomer when I was younger.

 

Do you know how long it's been since I WON a Superbowl?

  

The second trilogy wasn't as well received as the first!

 

My second TV series got cancelled. Now all I have is the Ice Age movies.

 And residuals from Raymond.

Getting the Headline Totally Wrong.

(via ABC News)
Obama Birth Certificate Maybe Forged, Sheriff Joe Arpaio Says

Way to write a headline, ABC. Do you have any idea what you're doing? You wrote the headline as if Arpaio's claim had some merit. When you lead with the claim, it implies that the claim is true or has a good chance of being true. Let me give you an example.


Rain Likely, Says Meteorologist. 
See, that headline implies that "rain is likely" is a prediction that has a good chance of coming true, and that the reason it is likely to be correct is that it was made by an expert, a meteorologist. And your headline implies that bullshit birtherism has some validity because it is being alleged by Arpaio.

Your headline should have read:
Arpaio Asserts Demonstrably False Claim.
or
Racist Sheriff Makes Outrageous Allegation.
or
Stupid Person Believes Stupid Thing.