NEON GODS

You are a loser by the Wall Street Journal standards

Yes, this graphic is frickin‘ REAL. It is from the January 4^th Wall Street Journal.

Look at the faces of these poor suffering Americans.  I did and felt some empathy (especially for the poor single mom with two sad-looking kids) until I saw their income.  Do YOU know any young single-moms with two kids making $230,000 (with $25,000 in investment income)?  What about a family of four scraping by on just $650,000 ($180,000 from investment income)?  How come none of them are smiling?  Would you smile with their incomes?  Would you even be willing to pay higher taxes for that privilege?   I would!!

The median household in America is a bit less than $53,000.  This is just how out of touch Wall Street is with America.  Sad!

--Trakker

 

Liberals are "too highly emotional" about shooting deaths

I had to share...

A gun nut lectured me about how liberals get too highly emotional about shooting deaths.  I said I want to take away his guns.  He got highly emotional.

--Trakker

My morning take on the debate last night

Kudos to the GOP for finding the perfect stand-in for their candidate, he looked remarkably like Mitt! What gave it away is that Romney would never do coke. Also, props for shaking the Etch-a-Sketch again – that really sealed the win last night, GOP.

And where was the moderator during the debate? Was he one of the NFL’s substitute refs? They should let moderators taze candidates who won’t shut up or are rude.

I know how Obama must have felt last night. He thought he was attending a business meeting and arrived to find it was really a bar fight.

--Trakker

The rich are different from you and me

You're 65 and happily married, you're worth roughly a quarter of a Billion dollars(!), you own 4 or 5 large homes in desirable places, your children have trust funds worth millions and are set for life. WHY would you desperately want a job that pays just $400K, working with (ugh!) politicians, having your every misstatement picked apart by the media, and be forced to live as a virtual prisoner for four years (maybe eight!) in an old house in the middle of Washington, DC? Wouldn't any sane person just buy Hawaii, kick everyone out and enjoy retirement? What am I missing?

--Trakker

If P.T. Barnum was alive today he'd be a Republican politician!

Hello there America, I'm from Mittmotors and we have a revolutionary new automobile we want to sell you.  It is as big and plush inside as a luxury automobile, but it's also light and very fuel efficient.  Don't be put off by the high sticker price, it is a very special car and the price reflects it.  How can you ever afford such a nice automobile you ask?  Well we've run the numbers and we are confident that your loan payment plus the cost of gas and periodic maintenance will cost you SIGNIFICANTLY less than what you are now paying, because once you buy our car, we here at Mittmotors will send you a generous rebate check EVERY MONTH for the life of the car!  I told you this was revolutionary!

How can we do this? I'm glad you asked.  First, with the permanently high unemployment rate God has blessed this great county with, we can now hire workers for very little, work them long hours, and replace them with new desperate workers when the old ones wear out.  We've found that the less you pay workers, the harder they work, probably because if they don't they'll starve, ha ha ha.  In addition, the money from the initial sales of our cars will then be used to offer extremely high salaries for our executives so we can hire the VERY BEST talent around (which just coincidentally happens to be the five sons of the company's founder!).  High executive wages always results in higher productivity rates, so put this all together and it will leave us here at Mittmotors with a pile of money at the end of each month that we will send to you, they buyer, in the form of rebate checks! 

So you see, this is a great car and a deal that could lift every American who buys one OUT OF DEBT once you begin receiving your monthly rebate checks.  We can't tell you yet just how big those rebate checks will be, we're still crunching the numbers, but I can assure you those checks will be like an additional paycheck, trust me.

You wouldn't fall for a deal like this, and you won't fall for a Romney/Ryan budget plan that only includes what they want you to see, but not the cuts they will have to make to get it to work!  No, you just have to "Trust Them" just like the car buyers must trust Mittmotors that the rebate check will be "significant" or even that there will be one at all.  

--Trakker

What you need to know before volunteering to serve your homeowner's association.

I've served on our homeowner's association's board of directors for almost two years now, and I've finally figured out the core dynamic of homeowners associations, and I'm about to pass it on to you.

Whenever you think you have a great idea and proudly suggest it to the Board, or a committee (or post it on the community’s blog), 30% will LOVE your idea and wonder why we haven't done it already!  But don’t get too saucy because another 30% will positively HATE the idea…and at least one of them will subtly question your sanity for even suggesting it (aka “Are you Nuts?”).  And the remaining 40% secretly wonder why we're even discussing it, will impatiently glance at their watch, and insist we move on so we can end the damn meeting and get home.

--Trakker

An editorial cartoon is worth a thousand words

Matt Wuerker, at Politico, won this year's Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning.  I'm a big fan of political cartoons, have been since I was a kid, but since I rarely visit Politico I wasn't familiar with his cartoons. 

Turns out they are great and certainly worthy of a Pulitzer.  Get thee over to this link and check out 20 of his best.

--Trakker

Rick Santorum's ideological statements make him appear "disconnected from the present tense."

Reading the pundits in the WaPost is like eating toast without butter, pretty dry stuff.  That's why I was delighted to read Kathleen Parker today

Politicians say the darnedest things, especially when their lips are moving.

Perhaps it is on account of such a long primary season, but the more they talk, the tastier their feet. While Mitt Romney is merely guilty of saying things that make him seem disconnected from the lives of most Americans, Rick Santorum makes ideological statements that make him appear to be disconnected from the present tense.

Parker is a conservative whose writing is sometimes superb even when I don't agree with her (Richard Cohen is another whose writing I enjoy).  Parker gets annoyed at the extremism in the current Republican party and sometimes calls them out on it.  Her columns about Democrats are about what you would expect from a fairly sane rightwinger, and, let's admit it, we need more of them.  I spend a lot of time on lefty blogs and they make great points and are quite good at pointing out wingnuttery, but the spin can get annoying.  The truth is, the left is not always right and the sane righties are sometimes right.  It's hard to know when you're wrong if you only read the stuff you agree with.

--Trakker

Mitt Romney wants seniors on Social Security tested for drugs!

OMG! Sounds like if Mitt Romney is elected President he will push to have everyone who gets government benefits, which would include Social Security and Medicare benefits from the government, tested for drugs.  Presumably anyone who tests positive will be fined or maybe even thrown out of the program.

Here's the quote from Mitt himself:

Georgia’s controversial plan to mandate drug testing for all welfare recipients and other beneficiaries of government assistance got a big endorsement on Friday from Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney.

On a local NBC affiliate in Georgia, Romney said that he supported the measure:

Jeff Hullinger: [Lawmakers] have bantered about the proposition that welfare recipients should be drug tested. How do you feel about that?

Mitt Romney: Well my own view is, it’s a great idea. People who are receiving welfare benefits, government benefits, we should make sure they’re not using those benefits to pay for drugs. I think it’s an excellent idea. [emphasis added]

Mitt might try to argue that he was only referring to those on welfare, but I'm going all Fox News on this.  If a Democrat had made the same statement, Fox News would spend the next week screaming on the air that 'Obama wants to test seniors on Social Security for drugs and throw them out of the program if they test positive'.  That's how Fox News keeps their viewers outraged and hating the black Kenyan who stole their country's Presidency.  That's how Republicans win elections.

--Trakker

Best. Primary. Ever!

If you despise Newt Gingrich like I do, you should be thoroughly enjoying this primary season.  Newt has always expected that someday he would be President.  That's because he believes that with his huge brain, his gift for big ideas, and his ability to see the future clearly as no other politician can, he has always been destined for that office. 

Sadly for him, the small minded rubes that inhabit America were incapable of seeing past his human frailties, like being unfaithful to his wives, breaking ethics rules, lying, pandering, hypocrisy, etc. 

But suddenly in 2012, the Republican party found themselves in the embarrassing position of fielding a bunch of clowns running frantically hard to earn the right to beat the most hated man in Republicanstan, Barack H. Obama, and become President of the United States of America, Inc.! 

Suddenly Newt saw his opportunity.  Newt knew he was superior to these clowns, and as clown after clown fell off the stage, Newt found himself standing at the top of the heap when he won South Carolina!  He knew that with his intellect he was now unstoppable.  The nomination he had wanted so badly all his life was about to be his!!  At 68 he had almost given up ever getting the job he knew he richly deserved, and suddenly the Presidency was within his grasp!

Hahahahahaha!  As we all know, Newt has been trounced ever since South Carolina.  He doesn't have a prayer of winning the nomination and everyone but Newt knows that.  He has been captured by the hope-monkey and he can't let go.  He won't give up and never will until they finally have to kick him off the stage when he shows up for the first Romney-Obama Presidential debate.  They will have to use a stun gun to subdue him, then wrap him in restraints before a national audience, while Callista beats on the poor Secret Service men as they wrestle him onto the dolly and trundle him away.

This Republican primary has not only made Obama's chances stronger in November, it has damaged a lot of once promanent Republican politicians.  Palin is no longer a leader in the party because she wouldn't even run.  Bachmann, who was once a major force in the Tea Party, has been badly damaged and might not even win her seat, Santorum will never be heard from again, Perry not only embarrassed himself, Texas feels he embarrassed the too, Cain has been exposed as a womanizer and a liar, Newt's many warts and flaws have been exposed once again, Ron Paul's racist past has been laid bare, and Mitt Romney's wealth and extremely low tax rate has been used to show how the Republicans have coddled the very wealthy, and it could easily cost him (and the Republican party) the election.  Wow!

--Trakker