What’s the stupidest thing you’ve seen this weekend?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/pleaseturnonthecarandsitinthegaragewithitrun
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From the name of the link, I thought someone had found a response to Sarah Palin saying how much she loves the smell of exhaust fumes.
Yep, presidential fixation syndrome is running pretty high at the Lake.
A skinny white guy goading David Ortiz into a fight.
I live in Philadelphia. The question should be “What’s the stupidest thing you’ve seen in the past 5 minutes?”
That stupidest thing is the drivers. Morons.
pardon me, I want to add that the ad I’m currently reading here at BMT, the one that says the dollar has cancer and is going to collapse in 12 months so I should click to see how I can protect myself at economiccollapse.com or whatever, is probably one of the stupidest things I’ve seen this weekend.
Nothing, not even Philly drivers, can top the stupidity that is the Sunday morning bobblehead shows
Yeah, I’m glad the site is getting some ads, but man — the scams and stupid are amazing. What’s even worse is that they’re supposedly customized to my personal tastes and habits. In which case it’s time to recall that suicide is painless.
I dunno. I’m headed out to a Bronx Target store. I’ll get back to ya, for sure.
AG
OK, here it is…da Bronx in all its glory. Dominican version thereof, mostly, ‘cuz that’s the neighborhood that this Target Store targets:
But first, the good news.
The children are thriving!
Happy, curious, everywhere all at once and full of joy.
Up to about 5 or 6 years old.
After that? It’s mostly downhill.
Why?
I dunno. Maybe they hit the viciously inept NYC school system and just give up.
By the time they are 13 or 14 it’s almost all hostile boys giving everybody the street eye/jail eye that they copped from rapper vids or girls trying to out-sex one another.
Now for the stupidest thing that I have seen today.
A line of two deep checkout counters, almost all with someone working. Maybe 20 of them…40 in all.
They start near the main part of the store…where you first encounter them as you leave with your S.E. Asian and Central American slave wages-made plastic and cotton throwaway goods.
The first 5 or 6? Long lines. 8, 20, 15 people waiting. 20 steps further, the lines begin to get shorter. Walk all the way to the end…to the area that you must pass to leave the store!!!??? No lines whatsoever. 90% of the people in that store…complaining loudly about the service, often enough…do not have the brains or initiative to walk 30 steps in a direction that they will have to travel anyway in order to get quicker service.
Da STOOPID!!!
AG
yo dude, i am about to email your earthlink account, keep an eye out for it
An acceleration of images and narrative towards Michelle Bachmann as a leading contender amongst the G.O.P. Presidential hopefuls. This would be comparable to the Republican Party in 1964 substituting MAD Magazine’s lovable Alfred E. Newman for Barry Goldwater as their party’s nominee against LBJ.
And to think he could win be that kind of landslide in such a crappy economy. Boggles the mind.
I had forgotten that. Alfred E. Neuman ran as a third-party candidate in 1960. Got substantial eighth-grade support in Anderson, SC. Lots of great hand-made political buttons, signs, and sticker for AEN.
Tragically ahead of his time. He had to wait til 2000 (minus the lovable, of course). “Six munce ago i could’nt spel MBA and now i are one!”
Anderson, SC. Wow–have you been there?
Grew up there.
Do you know a guy named Justin F.?
One of my business associates who also grew up there…good guy.
Nope. If they weren’t in my school classes, I probably don’t remember them. I left there in 1961 when I was 15.
But if he is from that far back, ask him if he remembers William Jennings Bryan Dorn, the New Deal Democrat who was the Congressman. Or George Bell Timmerman, the local boy who became governor. Or the moonshine bust in a house on Whitner street in which the moonshiners used the gas light piping as a distribution system. Turn the key on the lamp to fill the Mason jar.
Anderson is full of good people. Too bad the radio and TV aren’t locally produced any more. They pick up their ideas now from Palm Beach FL, Long Island NY, and New Canaan CT. Wilton E. Hall used to reflect the local opinion.
.
In extra time – 122th minute – USA – Brazil 2-2. Magnificent fight back by USA women soccer squad with just 10 players in last 60 minutes. Going into penalty kicks …
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."in the same vein, I saw that an / the octopus predicted the Japan women defeating Germany – actually not stupid, pretty cool that the octopus could predict that.
The octopus was right.
No! The octopus corrupted the referee!
regards from Germany 😉
.
Wambach, Solo key dramatic US win over Brazil
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."That’s so great!
I thought you guys and gals rooted against America…after all, we are the evil empire.
Who would have thought!
It’s women’s soccer. Is that latte and arugula enough for you?
I don’t drink lattes, and don’t tnink I know what Argula is (some kind of cheese?)
But your post made me laugh my ass off..thank you!
Women’s soccer…in reality, Women have all the power…they control the reproduction of the species!
Arugula is a kind of salad green that sells for $12 or so a pound. You should cultivate a garden of it and take it to yuppie farmers markets (it’s not exclusive to Democrats). Might make some extra money in these hard times.
Tarheels learned about women’s soccer from Mia Hamm. There are still little girls who have posters of Mia Hamm in their rooms. I know that my girls did in the 1990s.
This
There is some system designer slamming his head against a wall right now.
Sounds like you’ve been following the chrome/chromium os saga. I generally pull for google, but chromebooks seem to qualify as a stupid idea — paying the same price to have more limited choices. What’s your take? (This being a sorta open thread and all)
I haven’t been following Chromebook.
But I think it will fail because it is too blatant an attempt to lock, particularly business, customers into their implementation of cloud computing services. Businesses that can afford their own IT shops are reluctant to move to cloud computing because of reliability, support, and security concerns. Smaller businesses are already using cloud services like Salesforce.com and Google Apps. Locking into Chromebook doesn’t give them any value added.
More than likely it will spawn a fad bubble for people who always try the new thing (and can afford it) and for people wanting to break free of Apple and Microsoft.
Meet The Press.
Not sure who’s stupider though… Tim Pawlenty or David Gregory. The two sitting at the table at the same time was almost too much to bear (that Stupid Burns feeling all over.) But I got through it. Thankfully they had Chuck Todd and Eugene Robinson on later to bring the conversation back to earth.
Chuck Todd is just as stupid as Fluffyhead.
Chuck Todd is an absolutely brilliant, insightful, knowledgeable analyst of polls and election results, as anyone who watched MSNBC’s election night broadcasts during the 2008 election cycle can tell you.
…who got promoted for his brilliance, and is now among the most banal spewers of DC conventional wisdom talking points from his new perch as talk show host.
Seriously, you should have seen him as a guest on Rachel’s show, or as a “color guy” as the results were coming in from primaries and election day. He was first rate.
Totally agree. It’s funny, because during the election I was like, “Wow, this guy is awesome.”
I didn’t think he offered anything new (from my pov), but he didn’t have a Village Mentality where every drop/rise in the polls meant someone’s campaign was going down. It was more realism. Simply put, he was a great addition to the MSM on that category.
Ever since the election’s been over I can’t stand him.
Rep. Paul Broun (R-Pecans) has a plan:
And since 2000, how much has it increased by, Paul? And why $13 trillion? Why not go big and get it down to $3 trillion? Or $1 trillion?
Oh, the debt ceiling is so magical. Just lowering it lowers the debt; Congress doesn’t have to do anything more. Just like a balanced budget amendment.
I was wondering if he planned to pass the hat for the difference.
Balanced Budget Amendment, combined with Federal Spending as a Percentage of GDP Cap equals Congress actually having to work instead of buying votes by railing against Millionaire and Billionaires and Corporate Jet Fat Cats!
Doesn’t seem to work that way in the states. All it seems to do is shut down schools, leave roads unpaved, and allow bridges to collapse.
If the don’t want to work, two hundred and thirty-five years of experience shows that no mere law can force them. If they want to balance the budget, they can.
Closed schools…unpaved roads…collapsed bridges…?
Do you really believe that?
Boo didn’t answer the following question whey I posed it to him…maybe you will.
From a Moral perspective, what is the highest percentage someone should pay in taxes, all forms considered (i.e. income, payroll, capital gains, property, sales, etc.)?
50? 70? 100?
When someone has the fruit of their labor expropriated by a third party against their will…isn’t that slavery? How is it different?
Just curious…
Government derives its just power from the consent of the governed.
Hence, taxation is neither “by a third party” nor “against their will” in a democracy.
Well as someone who has had the fruit of my labor expropriated against my will by managers and their superiors, I’m probably the wrong guy to ask.
It’s a straw man question. One could raise similar moral questions about wages, or prices.
What I do know is that the highly progressive tax rates of the period 1950-1970 coincided with prosperity. And the more that tax rates have become less progressive, the more that prosperity has disappeared. And the poorer investment decisions business executives have made. That makes me think that a highly graduated, strongly progressive tax structures focuses the investment brains of business very acutely and that the flatter the rates, the less sound the decisions. And the less the gap from the top of the income level to the bottom, the greater the aggregate demand for goods and services. Which results in a greater absolute income and prosperity for those at the top than occurs in an environment of strong income inequality.
They can always do what Reagan prescribed for the lower classes: vote with their feet.
And if you really think con artist like Blankfein got their loot by the “fruit of their labor” you’re as crazy as any teabagger.
He is a Teabagger. You haven’t seen this stupid ass before? He tried to compare progressive taxation with body building.
A paid koch troll, but must be underpaid b/c he’s recycling old comments. btw, new discussion of Paul Ryan’s dinner partners and $700 worth of wine (to accompany a $40 dinner). trolls must be off this evening b/c comment thread pretty troll-free.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/mystery_solved_ryans_dinner_dates_ided.php?ref=fpa
Some small business owners troll for free. And then there’re my friends on Facebook; they also troll for free.
A paid troll would be given new, fresh talking points and instructed how to use them.
you know better than I about this. I take exception to the obvious baiting (about the soccer game) – LFA has made that comment before and it’s a tired one, but could be just awkwardness. personally I lose patience, but your route is the better one. thanks for your comments.
Big holiday pig roast down the road. Very slim two-lane country road lined with massive trucks & SUVs so that it turns into 1.15 lanes. Buncha overweight white guys dressed like pre-teens standing around in the road checking out each other’s wheels & shouting incoherently at lone female-like drivers.
I had too many chores to do to pay attention to news, so that was about it. I was out under the sun mostly, communing with bugs & plants, which are decidedly not-stupid.
The royals coming to LA to play polo and everyone literally falling all over thmselves to get a glimpse.
Our country is going to hell in a handbasket and all we are worried about is getting a look at the “couple” from a country we fought a war against to get out from underneath their rule. wow.
oh and the GRAND BARGAIN.
that’s pretty damn ridiculous too.
Here is why it really is OK to hate the French:
Didn’t they internationalize this fight in the first place? Amazing.
It’s the Defense Minister. That’s not terribly official. As significant as Panetta saying that with only 10 or 20 assassinations of the correct people, al Quaeda is done. Neither is a policy statement. A balloon maybe, but not a policy statement.
It still something that should make Panetta’s face bright f’n red.
Went to a KC Royals Game.
This skinhead was pretty stupid not recognizing the guy’s shirt and I actually enjoyed the end result, especially since the right guy got arrested.
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/07/08/notice-to-neo-nazi-thugs-best-to-read-before-attacking/
My entry for the weekend:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/10/992708/-President-Obama-and-the-New-Deal?via=blog_1
Have a look at the comments, if you want to raise your blood pressure. Also, this sentence:
” Paul Krugman, who has been accurate about almost everything for the past several years, “
Oy. Bow to the godlike powers of Krugthulu, who wanted to nationalize the big banks. That wouldn’t have caused a panic, not at all. Tarp bad, bomb-throwing good.
It’s really hard to read the comments over there without a heavy dose of antihypertensive medication…
I still think nationalizing the banks was a better idea, even with hindsight.
But there was no way to do it without a giant legal mess, and I haven’t seen anyone propose a way to do it and getting around those legal hurdles. Thomas Hoenig, Simon Johnson’s favorite banker, tried once, and epically failed:
http://www.ryanavent.com/blog/?p=2005
It’s kinda funny that nowadays I sound like your average leftist on this blog, but I’m very much not when it comes to finance and stuff. But then again, I don’t lie or hyperventilate like Gretchen Mortgensen and Yves Smith or Bill Black (which is sad because Yves is extremely brilliant).
Nationalizing would have at least given the opportunity to break them up so they were not longer too big to fail. Of course, serious banking regulation could force breakups too.
Krugman’s positions are in the same school as the head of the Fed during the 1960s, William McChesney Martin. Which worked until the combination of a growing global economy and US military expenditures caused a run on gold and Nixon’s delinking US currency from gold. Even then there was not real contribution by the monetarists until Paul Volcker’s shock therapy to end oil-shock stagflation. But Krugman these days is considered radical and extreme.
But right about everything is a real stretch. No human being is that good.
The way that the banksters handled the documents from loan origination to the credit default swaps to foreclosure actions guaranteed on huge legal mess. If there were not title insurance already, the real estate industry would have to invent it in order to straighten out ownership. It’s a classic case of the misuse of IT resources and contempt for government. Yves at least has been keeping up with the events in this part of the economy.
But Krugman has been “almost” right about everything, so that statement is still true.
Matter of fact, during the primaries, I had a saying:
“Krugman is right about everything…except that he supports Hillary Clinton in the primary race.”
Well I guess the captain of the Titanic was almost right abut everything too. Being wrong about bank nationalization is a pretty big error in my book. Wrong on policy and on politics. The American people would have eaten the debt owed by these banks; instead most of the money we sunk into them via the TARP was paid back. Not to mention that the whole system could have gone off a friggin cliff taking us all with it. And half the country, instead of just the right wing fringe, would have branded Obama as a Stalinist (instead of merely a Kenyan Marxist). So I read Krugman, he is a smart guy, but he has ben wrong on important issues (in my opinion).
there are thickets of firebagging and trollish comments over there – I assume it’s to try to depress Obama’s support. How would they remedy that?
So…nu???
AG
If I could go back to July 4th weekend, I saw an Elvis impersonator singing “Dixie”. Nothing better to celebrate the founding of the nation than to sing a song celebrating an attempt to destroy it.