holy **** Friends is on nickelodeon? i remember it being more of an adult show. i know it featured a shirtless tom selleck on at least one occasion.

that will turn a kid gay ON A DIME

It was 10 at nite - midnite eastern time.

POLITARD part 3

Five months ago I said that I'd show some charts and graphs here that demonstrate how much the uber rich are pulling out of the economy. Since then there's been no great groundswell of inquiry from all of you for them, **** it. I assume you all can google "income inequality" if you want to. Most of you are pretty smart. Those that aren't, well who cares. You don't know which group you're in anyway. Thomas Pikety wrote a tl;dr book that explains a lot of it. Most of you have heard of it.

Teddy Roosevelt (he hated the nickname "Teddy" but I like it) gave a speech 114 years ago. If you filter out the Civil War stuff it would be a great speech today. Only the first twelve pages are the actual speech. Edit out the war stuff and it's perhaps 6-8 pages of very large font. I highly recommend reading it. One passage really stands out:
LOL tell your teachers/professors/parents that Lincoln was a commie! Watch the **** fly.

Yeah, like I said before somewhere above, if you earned all that money all by yourself then godbless. But I feel that we who labor should be sharing in the prosperity, not just the owners and management. Tax policy should be made to discourage overweighting executive pay. Our current batch of politicians with a very few exceptions wouldn't have the balls to make that happen.

I used Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase) as an example before. His total pay package is $20 million. Only $2 million is in salary. The rest is in "pay for performance" bonuses. $2 million is 50 times $40K which could be the average pay of the 255,000 employees of JPM, so I have no beef there. The remaining $18 million is in stock and stock options. I'm sure JPM employees would like to get 9 times their salary in stock, but that would dilute shareholder equity too much to be tolerated. Why can't there be some arrangement to even it out? They can pay $18 billion (BILLION!) in fines for their *******ry and easily shrug it off, why can't they pay employees fairly?
/politard

Now to something that really matters to a lot of people, the UFC. I have been a fight fan for a really long time. I watched Cassius Clay kick Russian and Cuban ass in Rome in 1960. I appreciate boxing. I also appreciate other forms of fighting like savate. What I don't get is why it's allowed to jump on a guy you knocked down and pummel his brain box. WTF that's just dirty fighting. Get your ass up by the count of three or five maybe, or you're out. Or maybe only allow wrestling moves and submission holds while he's down, but jumping on a guy who's down and pounding the **** out of him is just bull**** and cowardly.

Ever see the Lotrimin commercial with the couple getting married?



Are you as glad as I am that he didn't have jock itch?

I have a job interview tomorrow. I'm taking my ZBoard. This thing is just too much fun. Maybe I'm old, but I think I forgot.

Testify, brother.

Amen Schlitz! I used to drink Schlitz until they ****ed with the recipe back in the 70s.

Welp I had that interview on Tuesday (the 2nd with that company) and then another on Thursday with an exec (the 3rd). I got an email yesterday, "After careful consideration, we regret to inform you that you have not been selected for this position," with the usual bull**** about bring considered in the future. Ah well, I've been talking with another company who's interested in me, so we'll see what comes from that.

In Turkey women are discouraged from LOLing by a deputy prime minister. ""Chastity is so important. It's not just a word, it's an ornament [for women]," Bülent Arinç told a crowd celebrating the end of Ramadan in the city of Bursa in an address that decried "moral corruption" in Turkey. "A woman should be chaste. She should know the difference between public and private. She should not laugh in public." Apparently in Turkey LOLing is the same as ****ing. Maybe 2+2 should filter LOL with the profanity filter too.

I love to pick on the French. I mean, it's outrageously funny to me that they can be so snotty to everyone else who bailed their asses out of two world wars. This guy invented a way to fart in their general direction on a grand scale. Next time I think we'll let the Germans have them. They (the Germans) seem to be cooler people now anyway. BTW I'm 1/4 French Canadian on my dad's side. Luckily for me great-grandad anglicized his last name when he immigrated to the US.

A Mexican billionaire NOT involved in the drug trade says there should be a three day work week with 11 hour days. Can we get a siesta in the middle of that day? That would be cool. Go to work on Monday, work 4 hours, lunch, siesta, go back to work 4 hours, fiesta, siesta, take Tuesday off, start over on Wednesday. I like it. Can I have a raise too, Carlos?

Man all this bull**** in the middle east and Libya is unbelievable. It should be renamed the middle ages east. The only difference between those times and now is that the jihadists have Facebook and better weapons. They're trying to get even for the Crusades (dudes, let it go already) and they want to kill everyone who prays differently than them. Kind of like a modern Albigensian Crusade on a global scale. It'll probably be another 800 years before somebody there gets a clue.

Welp they finally found something that's worse in Denver since pot became legal. They tried to say that crime would go up, but it's actually gone down. Even Chris Christie said that his state is a better place to live because of Colorado's legal weed. #LOLggNJ Now they are saying that because of legal weed there are more homeless here. Well la-di-da. If they can't find a place to stay or work let them dig for gold in the mountains like they did 150 years ago. pffff

If companies are people and can skip taxes by marrying foreign companies, why can't people marry foreign people and skip taxes? Hell, if company-people can merge multiple times without splitting up why can't people-people? Oh crap I'm politarding again. ****!

Ever get so sidetracked you lost sight of what you were supposed to be doing? It's like the guy whose wife says that a light bulb burned out. He goes to the utility cabinet to get a new light bulb and the drawer the bulbs are in squeaks. So he gets a can of WD40, but it's empty. So he gets in the car to buy more WD40 when he sees that the low engine oil pressure light comes on. He looks at the odometer and sees that it's time to change the oil anyway. So he begins to drain the oil when his wife asks him, "Why haven't you changed the light bulb yet?' He says, "What do you think I'm doing?"

Yeah that's what it's been like lately.

Oh yeah, the Albigensian Crusade was also largely political because the Cathars believed civil rule was of the physical world which belonged to Satan, so civil authority didn't apply to them. In the early 13th century life pretty much sucked anyway, so killing them was a favor I guess. That and the Duke of Aragon had a bunch of holdings thereabouts and the French king was tired of that.

There's got to be some money to be made from this.

India has 1.2 billion people. Other than the ones who live in the cities, they all take a dump outside. Even in the cities they would rather **** in the street. Flush toilets are unknown to them.

I know a few Indian people. I haven't had any reason to dislike any of them. Hell I've gone out for beers with some. So don't think I'm hating on the Indian people. But there's a problem over there. It has to do with culture ("I always did it like that.") and water. They don't have enough water development to have toilets that flush and waste water treatment plants. So the government builds outhouses and hires people to carry the **** off.

Yeah I can relate to that. Who would want to hang around with a ****head? It doesn't say what the ****heads do with the baskets of ****. I have tried to imagine, but I really don't want to.

So the biggest problem is the lack of infrastructure of running water and treatment plants. I can't believe that ****head Dick Cheney hasn't set Halliburton up with a $bazillion deal to do this.

I quit watching CNBC a couple of years ago. The way they fawn over the plutocrats and cheer over every small supposed gain in economic numbers, no matter how inconsequential, makes me think that Rupert Murdoch secretly owns NBC Universal too. But there are a couple of reporters there that make me smile. Steve Liesman is one voice of sanity. Unfortunately he doesn't have a blog that I know of. Here he pwns one usually particularly crazed reporter:



Jane Wells also did a great job off kicking a whole panel of CNBC cheerleaders in the nuts. She writes a blog that's both funny and informative. Business Insider did a story on one day in her life. I really love her. Not as much as Jennifer Lawrence tho.

Cindy Perman also has a blog there. I like the name of it. "The blog’s name, “There Must Be a Pony In Here Somewhere,” comes from an old joke, a favorite of Ronald Reagan’s, that essentially means, with a pile of **** this big, there MUST be a pony — a bright side — in here somewhere! To be clear, there were no ponies harmed in the making of this blog."' Yeah I c&p'd that, so I put it in quotes to be journalistically honest. Like I actually give a **** about that. But I did substitute "****" for "you know what." There - more honesty.

I once saw Jim Cramer in Vegas at Caesars. He was in the line next to me at the poker room cashing out. I gave him a "booyah." He smiled. That's all I have to say about that.

In Argentina, they are going to seek criminal charges of terrorism against R.R. Donnelley.

Hey that **** goes on in Murica every day. Maybe we should send all corporate CEOs to Gitmo.

---------------------------
Meanwhile in Texas, Gov. Rick Perry has been indicted for coercion.

Good job, Texas. But couldn't he get an indictment on the prosecutors for the same reason?

There was a poll posted on reddit about whether certain activities were sports.


Poker came in dead last. I don't have a problem with that. Anything you can do sitting down and drinking beer should not be considered sport. You can argue that poker is on ESPN, but so is the spelling bee. I was a bit disappointed in hunting and fishing though. Yeah it's possible to do both while sitting and drinking, but so is archery. Bowling made the cut at ~62%, bocce ball only got ~43% but curling got 79%. They probably didn't know what bocce is. Nor how much beer is consumed at a typical curling match. It's like bowling on ice. I think people measure how much movement is required and whether you will spill your beer to determine if it's a sport or not.

This will probably be boring. Not that most of my previous stuff wasn't boring, but this may be even more tedious. So be it. It's my blog. If you want to read other stuff about me and what I think, comment below. I'll see if I can oblige. Maybe I'll write more about Phil Simms being an idiot, I don't know. We'll see.

I have a lot of free time on my hands, so I pay attention to financial stuff since that is the field I have worked in all my life. It seems like at least every other day there is discussion about when or if interest rates are going to rise. Yeah interest rates; I'm being boring already. Anyway, there's talk about the economy heating up and maybe inflation starting to show. Most of this is anecdotal, but these guys have to have something to talk about. The Fed meetings draw interest from this crowd to see what is going to be happening. What does the Fed tell them? They say, "Maybe in six months or a year or maybe eighteen months, depending on expanding mufflegunk brizzledrizzle." What they mean is, they want to see if actual consumer spending is up appreciably from previous periods and how much of that is due to increased borrowing. In previous expansions consumers just bought **** on their credit cards. When they maxed the cards out they refinanced their appreciated houses and rolled the credit card debt into the new mortgage. Viola!* Instant buying power with a fresh credit card zero balance. Buy more ****. That thinking was slowed way down by the 'financial crisis.'**

So every time somebody says something about the economy supposedly heating up and more jobs being created, somebody else says interest rates will rise and inflation-Fed-talking head gabbagabba bull**** starts but they are missing several important points. Every day more people become adults than adults that die. Adults need jobs to earn money to support themselves. And the jobs they find are paying less than the same job ten years ago, adjusted for inflation. And inflation has been statistically negligible. That means the "new" jobs are just recycled old jobs with a lower starting pay. I'm not making this up. That comes from the BLS.

So tepid econo stats get hyped as "improvement" by talking head cheerleader reporters on CNBC and cheerleader liars Wall Street analysts. It's all bull**** to make you feel good and forget about the real issue, you aren't any better off than you were ten years ago. You're supposed to be better off but you're not. See my previous politard rants for why.

So anyway, don't expect interest rates to go up any time soon. But don't expect the interest rate in your credit card to go down either. Refi it into your new mortgage and then you can pay for those shots at the bar for the next 30 years instead of forever.

By the way, somebody else agrees with me that Phil Simms is an idiot.

*Viola! Sometimes spelled Wallah by people who can't spell words they use. That always tilts the **** out of me. If you can't spell it, don't write it. I should do a post on **** like this, but it's already been done countless times on 2+2. By the way wallah is an actual word, which is why there's no wavy red line under it. Google it yourself.

**"financial crisis" - Talking head speak for the pile of **** that the *******s who still make tens of millions per year and their sycophant senators and reps dropped on us that we wound up paying for.

Disclaimer: The following is an opinion and should not be used as investment advice. I am not a financial advisor, licensed or otherwise. I am an anonymous poster on a blog in a website read by people who gamble. If you use the words that follow as advice and lose money investing, you are a dumbass.

--

Retirees who have a retirement nest egg want income from the egg to supplement social security to cover their expenses. Traditionally they relied on bonds as an investment. Every six months an interest check would show up in their mailbox from the bond in their investment portfolio. That's all changed.

Nowadays the interest is sent to their bank account electronically. That's a good thing. It saves them a trip to the bank and waiting for the check to clear. But the interest rate paid on the bonds is a lot lower than it was. A whole lot lower. While interest rates paid by businesses is lower, which is supposed to be a good thing for the economy (but it hasn't worked out that way), the people who loaned the money to the business - the ones who bought the bonds from the business - are getting a lower interest rate than their parents got back when the parents retired. So, in order to retire at the same level of security as their parents did, current retirees need 2.5-3 times the principal than their parents did just to get the same dollar amount. Here's some examples. Twenty years ago (1994) 30 year US Treasury bonds paid around 7-8% Now it's 3% Compare the return on $100,000:
1994 8% $8,000
2014 3% $3,000
That's a real problem for income investors.

There are other places to put their money to get better returns, stocks for example, but those entail bigger risk of loss, which might not be appropriate for many retirees.* With greater reward you have to accept greater risk.

So I guess my message to younger readers is put more money into your 401k, IRA, 403b or whatever you have. Give beyond what hurts. It's not really giving, it's paying yourself. You can't make it up later. To older guys like me, well there's always the poor house. Oh wait ...

I have to quit now. Writing this **** is so taxing. Some idiot will inevitably think I am saying to invest in some stupid scheme. I'M NOT SAYING THAT. Read the disclaimer above.** People don't read the stickies in the forums either.

--

*I have to be careful. I don't know the financial circumstances of anybody reading this, so I have to use weasel words. You have to pay "experts" for qualified advice. "Experts" means someone who have learned how to pass some tests, according to some other "experts" who have passed some other tests. (I'm not bitter. It's just that I have passed some of those tests myself. I didn't keep up with the licensing requirements so I don't have those licenses any more. But I know what it takes to pass those tests.) Man, writing about investing is a bitch.

** Go ahead and read it. I doubt you will though.

Card tricks don't usually impress me, but Willie cracked me up with this one. It starts one minute in.



Remind me to never smoke weed or play poker with Willie.

Read the comments to see how he does it.

Why don't they all just leave? I was reading in Forbes that Warren Buffet is financing Burger King's takeover of Tim Horton. Good. Take all those burgers north to Canada, Warren, and you can go with them. Yeah you, Buffet, get the **** out. Those companies don't want to pay taxes to help finance this country. They can just shut down their shops and leave.

I'll tell you what; why don't you incorporate in Somalia. Nobody pays taxes there. Set up your burger shops in Mogadishu and sell Whoppers to the pirates. Oh wait, they would need police protection. Well, don't worry, Warren. Everybody else will pay for it. You need a fire to broil those burgers. Sometimes that fire spreads to the rest of the kitchen. The firefighters that everyone else will pay for will come on the road that everyone else will pay for and put your fire out. Life will be rosy in Somalia.

It's the hedge funds that are driving this inversion business under the guise of "creating shareholder value." Read the article linked to above. And this one too. A few of the hedge funds are named in the article, as well as who runs them. They can all get the **** out too. Before long there won't be any large companies incorporated in the US. They'll all do business here, but the taxes to support the infrastructure that supports them won't be paid by them.

I guess we'll have to levy tariffs on their franchises. Yeah, a tax on their capital. If you foreigners want to do business here, you can pay for the privilege. Either that or turn your back on the biggest free market in the world.

When I was a kid, they (whoever "they" are) said there would be flying cars in the year 2000. Just one more reason why I'm such a cynical old bastard. They lied to us kids!

But wait, you curmudgeonly old coot. There is a flying car.
http://www.terrafugia.com/
It's supposed to be ready for delivery of the first models in 2015.

About 35 years ago there were ultralights that weren't street legal. I considered getting one but my wife (the voice of reason - VOR) brought me back to earth. She said:

• we can't afford it
• you don't know how to fly those things
• you'll kill yourself

My points were:

• It 'll cut my commute time by two thirds (my commute was 1 1/2 hours)
• ???
• it's so coooool

VOR'S reply

• bastard!

That was the end of that. I'm not even going to tell her about the Terrafugia. It'll just be our little secret.

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

I had a bit of a fright this morning when I took my just-woke-up morning piss. I'm not a morning person. I barely have the instinct to avoid stepping on an upturned rake, which is one good reason to keep garden implements in the shed/garage. So after I took my morning constitutional, I noticed it was green. GREEN! I pissed green! Wholly* ****! VOR had put one of those things-that-make-toilet-water-blue in the tank. Jebus! How about a heads up, huh?

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

This is useful, I think?



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

I have no idea how this suddenly started playing in my browser.

http://www.blastro.com/player/ammuni...00#mediaplayer

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*I used the word "wholly" correctly here. I actually meant it in the context of entirely, or in its entirety or whatever. My **** is not holy.

For a change, not tl;dr

Terriffic. Apple, which can't keep your naked pictures secure loaded into their cloud, could start an iWallet service soon. Just load your credit card info into their Passbook app and use your phone to pay for stuff at the store. Your financial info is "safe" in their cloud. Yeah right*.

*cwidt? Two positives made a negative.

Link-free post follows:

Robocalls. I hate them. A machine calls your number at random and when you answer either a prerecorded message plays or a telemarketer stumbles through a pitch. The prerecorded ones make me even more bughouse. If you hang up it calls you right back. Hang up again and it calls you back again. A few days later it calls you again. I would pay for technology to reverse harass them.

The telemarketers are annoying, but I think being rude to them is fair play. I don't pay for a phone line to be annoyed or disrupted. Most of the time I just hang up but sometimes I go into a sales pitch of my own for canine jock itch cream.

Then there are the charities that want your "gently used" items. I don't have anything that's "gently used"; I have stuff that's used up. But I just tell them that I don't have anything for them. There's something like five organizations that will have a truck i my area. IDK how much "gently used" stuff there is that can support all those trucks.

Oh and let's not forget all the Indians who are with "windows support." How come they're always Indians? Why haven't the Chinese jumped on this scam? I'll bet Walmart is behind this.

Who is John Galt?

Until today I didn't know. I found out today that he was the hero of "Atlas Shrugged" which I haven't read. I know it was written by Ayn Rand, originator of Objectism and role model of Libertarians and the Tea Party.

From Wikipedia:
Objectivism's central tenets are that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic, that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness (rational self-interest), that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform humans' metaphysical ideas by selective reproduction of reality into a physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and to which one can respond emotionally.

What utter bull****. The axiomatic statements "proper," "moral," "only" and "the role of art" are opinions, thus not axioms. Thus no better than mugwumpery.

As far as the political right wing goes, thhey are just trying to be the polar opposite of Russian Communism, which is not a bad thing until one sees the tyranny in it.

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

Speaking of the Russians

Did you hear that Pabst, Schlitz and Colt 45 is being bought by a Russian brewer and a private equity firm? They give that **** away at free beer nights at the bars around here lol.

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

Bob Marley - philosopher

"Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for."

There have been sickouts by teachers and walkouts by students in the high schools in my county. Teachers and some students are questioning how some subjects are designed to be taught. For example, the Board Committee for Curriculum Review has established the criteria of the Advanced Placement US History curriculum.

Wait a minute. "Materials should promote ..."? That's not teaching. That is propagandizing. "... citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free enterprise system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights." I thought Animal Farm was a novel. According to the district website, the AP program "prepares students for adulthood by enhancing skills in creativity, critical thinking, technology, and international understanding." This apparently is done by promoting thought, rather than discussing. I'm not done yet. Let's continue.

"Materials should not encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law." Yeah, let's not examine the motive behind why Rosa Parks sat where she did on the bus. She was causing a disturbance. Or why protests in Selma, Alabama were met with attack dogs and truncheons. "Instructional materials should present positive aspects of the United States and its heritage." Slavery? That's cool. Manifest Destiny? Eliminate the Native American. Internment camps during WWII? Can't trust those Japs. "Content pertaining to political and social movements in history should present balanced and factual treatment of the positions." How does one present a balanced treatment of those topics?

Many folks will see what the kids are doing as just creative ditching. Maybe so for quite a few kids. But I think the parents should question the School Board about how they view these topics as being censored.

"What we really want is a promise from them that they won't restrict the content that is taught in our classes," said student Eric Temple. "Because we believe that if they restrict that content then we're not going to get the education that we think we should."

keep it coming! btw how is you're wife's skin condition (I might have missed that post, sorry if I did)

wilkinte, thanks for asking. She has eczema. It hasn't cleared up. She insists in digging and scratching at it, so it continues. Oh well. If you don't do anything for it, quit bitching about it I say.

The local high school walkout above is attracting national news. HuffPost, Christian Science Monitor, Yahoo News, Fox (Faux), US News and World Report, as well as local dailies in NYC, Seattle, Columbia SC, Twin Cities. I am loling @ the comments in google+ fox news. Faux edits out what the protest is actually about and the sheeple scream about the kids smoking dope. "this is what happens when the dirty liberal pot heads have children".

C'mon media. That Verizon ad where the guy is going to the Verizon store to trade in his old Iphone for a new one is showing up everywhere. Every video I look at has that commercial up first. I'm sick of it already. There's no skip ad button in the right corner, so there it plays.
over
and over
and over
Goddammit! Show something else.
I like the song tho.

****!

So, Eric Holder is quitting as Attorney General. Good. **** that guy. He's been no friend to online poker, legalized pot and pretty much clueless as to how the world works, and I'm sure there's a lot of people rotting in jail for spitting on the sidewalk thanks to him. If a law book could walk and talk, it'd be Eric Holder. And it would have more personality too.

But the odds on favorite to succeed him , according to Businessweek, is Preet Bharara. This guy is the one who brought about Black Friday. He's known as a fraud-buster, meaning he got big (notice I didn't say huge) fines on Wall Street firms for their roles in financial crisis. Yeal $17 billion might be huge to you, but JP Morgan took that out of petty cash. Did anyone go to prison for the frauds? No, only the companies paid. The companies, which are people according to SCOTUS (but that's a different rant for a different time), did not go to prison either. But he got some cash out of them, so he's a big hero in some eyes. Plus he's an Indian American so that makes him a minority. It would seem that in itself is enough for POTUS to attempt another first.

Personally I don't care if he's a cocker spaniel American if he can do the job. I would like to see some actual pounds of flesh in the slammer for the **** foisted on us. Sure he got some insider trading scumbags like Raj Rajaratnam some tank time. Why not get some fraud racketeers too? He didn't, probably because it would have cost some senators and congressmen a pile of campaign donations. So **** that guy.

If he actually does get the job, which would require confirmation from congress, it would only be for the remainder of Obama's term, unless the next POTUS keeps him on. So maybe it won't be the end of the world. I just don't want to see any more kudos heaped on that half-assed prosecutor.

Stop the presses!

Headlines seen today:
California woman clawed, bitten in bear attack
I guess I was hoping she'd be licked, snuggled.

I'm a neurotic. IBM told me so.
The machine is right again. I still prefer talking to the snugly, licking bear though.

Boffins spot WATER on tiny Neptune-like ALIEN WORLD
A Neptune-sized planet is tiny. You know, I like the Brits. They are kind of odd with their lavish financial support for a family that doesn't actually rule. Despite that they do have the same contempt for the French as I do, so that's a lot in their favor. They do have some strange words that apparently mean the opposite of what we yanks think. And wtf is a Boffin? Sounds like something you wrap string around.

A Belgian brewery is building a 2 mile pipeline. I wonder how security along the line will be. Imagine tapping into that!

Japan now has plane-shaped scooters. Just when I was getting excited about flying cars. Oh wait. These things don't actually fly. IDK what useful purpose they have but it looks like fun.

Speaking of fun, did anyone in the Tennessee-Mississippi area see the fireball? NASA says it was a 2 inch piece of an asteroid. They also say that a piece of a comet over 2 feet across fell over northern Michigan. IDK how they can tell one comet from another meteor, but like I said before "they" are smarter than I am. If you look at the Close Approaches site you'll see there's been a bunch of fairly close small ones recently discovered. (if you look at the CA site a few days from now you won't see them listed anymore) That's pretty cool I guess. Anyway those little rocks/snowballs hit us all the time. They're too small to be tracked.