“Mueller is totally discredited,” Donald mumbled under the sheet. “Conflicted and confused, convoluted collusion collision; cucked, cocked, cockled and contused.”
The hat typed as quickly as he could on Donald’s phone, desperate to keep up. The vent torn in the floor of the Oval Office under Donald’s desk belched another cloud of gas.
“Is this going to hurt him?” the hair asked worriedly.
“He’ll be fine,” the hat said distantly. “Fucking autocorrect. ‘Ducked?’ That’s not what I typed, you bitch phone.”
“Fake,” Donald said, sitting up suddenly, his hoarse breathing puffing the sheet out before his face. “Fake and dirty. Fake dirty dossier. Crooked Hillary DNC FISA court witch hunt!” He fell back into his office chair heavily and groaned.
“Good, Donald,” the hat crooned. “This is good stuff.”
“No, it isn’t,” the hair said. “It’s just rambling crazy nonsense.”
“I’m not saying I don’t have to edit it,” the hat replied. “Tweak it a bit. You know, polish it here and there. Hold on.” He typed quickly and then the hair heard the whooshing noise of a message being sent.
“See?” the hat said, holding the phone so the hair could read the screen. “This session made for a perfect tweet.”
“THE WALL!” Donald screamed. “THE WALL!”
“Quick, put on some Pink Floyd!” the hair said.
“Catch Lottery! Chained Release!” Donald yelped. “ICE! ICE! ICE!”
“No, you idiot,” the hat said. “He’s talking about the border wall.”
“This is so…” the hair began, “Confusing,” he finally said with distaste.
“But. You know what isn’t confusing?” the hat said, looking over the phone at an index card on the table in front of him.
“No, what?” the hair asked, devoid of any enthusiasm.
“The deals down at Uncle Papa’s Hat and Wig store, Washington D.C.’s classiest Hat and Wig shop for these past 50 years.”
“Uncle Papa’s?” the hair said with flat affect. “It does sound classy.”
“I buy all my hats and wigs there, you know,” the hat said.
“Really?” the hair said.
“Yes,” the hat said, annoyed. “Conveniently located in beautiful Historic Anacostia, Uncle Papa’s Hat and Wig Store will have everything you need.”
“I want a wig,” Donald said under the sheet.
“Men don’t wear wigs, Donald,” the hat told him. “Men wear toupées.” He typed some more on the phone and then sent another tweet.
“Toupée? Sounds French,” Donald said dubiously.
“It is French,” the hair.
“French? I don’t like the French,” Donald said. He adjusted the sheet. “When can I take this off?”
“Just a few more tweets, Donald,” the hat said.
“It’s hot under here. And it smells funny.”
“They have found toupées in ancient Egyptians tombs,” the hair said proudly.
“Yes, dudes have been bald for, like, ever,” the hat said. Moving like an inchworm, he slowly pulled himself closer to Donald.
“The French,” Donald sneered.
“Oh, hush, Donald,” the hair said. “You really like the French President and his wife. Remember? You had them over for dinner.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Donald said.
“His wife was real skinny? You told her she had nice legs? You planted a tree together out in the yard?” the hair prompted.
“Mademoiselle Macaroni!” Donald said. He pulled the sheet off and let it slither to the floor. “Oh, yeah, I liked her.”
“Mah-chron,” the hat said absently.
“I really liked the Macaronis. Nice people. Real Classy. And it was so nice that he traveled around with his mother.”
“That was his wife, Donald,” the hair said gently.
“Impossible,” Donald muttered. He pulled the sheet off the floor, flapped it twice to get the crumbs off of it and let it settle back down over his head.
“Macaroni and cheese,” he crooned softly.
What wall?
The one around Kathy Griffins house?
That would have to be some wall to contain that much crazy.
Now I want macaroni and cheese or a macaroni salad. Must be lunchtime.
Mac and choreeso was my leftover lunch.
Maybe I should eat a salad.
I missed these. Good stuff. The best stories.
GOOD JOB!
Never fails to make me embarrass myself LOLing at work.
“Work”
Who do I look like, Rufus?
Do you have hole in your backside big enough for a hand to move your lips?
“I really liked the Macaronis. Nice people. Real Classy. And it was so nice that he traveled around with his mother.”
Bullseye.
Non-fiction.
On topic, since this seems eminently SugarFree worthy.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/08/01/teen-relatives-eyes-bare-hands/877266002/
Also, I haz disappoint that this didn’t happen in Florida.
I’m not clicking that.
WTF
Family reunions may be a bit awkward now. Even more so than normal.
Amish strike again.
Tribal dispute carried over from
SomaliaSwitzerland?Weird. I thought Minnesota was the happiest place in the country.
So happy, you’ll go blind?
This is going to go really well. I wonder what Macaroni thinks about it? Has the hat tweeted about it yet?
Zimbabwe of the South?
I saw this coming in the early 1990’s.
Who was saying the other day that now is the time for Africa to live up to its potential? It is about to do just that.
There was a photo of a guy in the article wearing a t-shirt with ‘Land or Death’ printed on it. I think his thinking is a little off. The death part comes after you take the land and there’s no longer anyone who knows how to farm.
Wow.
A couple of years ago, there was a report that basically said a majority of black Zimbabweans would, given the choice, prefer a return to Ian Smith and Rhodesia. Sad to see South Africa go down that same path.
It’s like the left and socialism. The utter failure and horrors of socialism are not being hidden. It’s right there for anyone to see, they just refuse to see it.
“Calls to ‘kill the Boer’ make all farmers targets, not just whites – South African official”
I guess if it were just whites, that would be hunky dory.
“I buy all my hats and wigs there, you know,” the hat said.
Is that like:
Got a wig for his wig got a brain for his heart
He’ll kick you apart
He’ll kick you apart
Ooh!
Yo! We heard you like hats and hair so we put some hats and hair on your hat and hair
(/PimpMyHead)
Get them at a WOD FIR.
America is now seriously debating socialism
If by America, you mean a bunch of Manhattan journalists living in an impenetrable bubble.
‘America’ is not. A small group of our less intelligent and unproductive citizens is.
Dunno. Bernie’s poll numbers were shockingly good.
45% of the 20% that cared enough to vote in the democratic primaries is small but very significant.
When you factor in that no other Dem sought the nomination, I mean coronation because it was HER turn and that she had the highest disapproval ratings of any candidate in modern times, they don’t look so good.
Honestly, the problem is that taxes are too progressive. A significant portion of the people who are okay with socialism are okay with it because they delude themselves that “the rich” will pay for it. The truth is, if you want, even the semi-socialism practiced in Scandinavia, you don’t get it paid for by “the rich”. When you look at the level of progressivity in their tax structures, you find their tax systems are generally significantly flatter than ours. That has to be the case because you need to tax the broad public to pay for these sorts of programs.
“We wanted everyone to have health insurance but we didn’t know we were going to have to pay for it!”
-quote from actual Obamacare supporters when interviewed a year or so after it went into effect.
Like I said below, it takes a special kind of stupid
Too lazy to look it up but I swear I’ve read from an unbiased source that the overall tax burden in the US and the average western European country is about the same. I mean, I keep hearing this stuff about how “lightly” the US is taxed, look at my finances (I am comfortable but far from rich), and wonder WTF they’re talking about.
*”Rich” relative to other Americans, of course.
We had a commenter once upon a time that was an immigrant from Scandinavia. He told about how much more of his income here is his to spend. I think the tax burden in most of europe is pretty heavy, up to 90% in some places. The US is not lightly taxed. We are taxed too heavily but not as heavily as some other places.
Let me tell you how it will be
There’s one for you, nineteen for me
No, the Europeans do pay more in taxes. The big difference is that the Europeans’ wealthy don’t pay as much the lion’s share of the tax burden as in the U.S. To start gobbling up bigger portions of GDP, you have to start taxing the middle and working classes. There simply isn’t that much money at the top.
Also, the ‘hyper-wealthy’ tend to move their wealth and/or citizenship away from Europe…
Nice. Too bad I’m paying about 50%.
I don’t see how 25% is possible. Anyone earning a paycheck pays 20% in payroll taxes right from the beginning, before income, sales, or property is added.
” To start gobbling up bigger portions of GDP, you have to start taxing the middle and working classes. There simply isn’t that much money at the top.”
Bah!, She Guevara, and she has a degree in economics you know, has just assured us that the rich will pay for all the free stuff she’s dreaming up.
It gets muddled because our hodge podge of state and local rates makes it more difficult to tease out vs. small Euro nations that have essentially one national rate.
“Too lazy to look it up but I swear I’ve read from an unbiased source that the overall tax burden in the US and the average western European country is about the same.”
Who was the unbiased source, CNN? The average American middle class tax payer pays about 18% income tax. In Europe that’s 40-60%. They also have a VAT tax. They pay 2-3x the taxes we pay, but I mean, they do have free shitty healthcare when the government approves that they can actually use it. They also sit around bitching all day about how bad America is and how it must be America’s fault that everything is so damned expensive there.
I seem to remember something that purported this, but the gamesmenship was that the average european was paying the same as the average American, but the average percentage was completely different.
Basically, they were comparing numerators and ignoring the denominator.
Spoiler: the average American denominator was a lot higher.
When Kerry was running for Pres there was a “tax the rich” component to his campaign. A co-worker vigorously agreed with that until Kerry said he thought anyone making more than $150k qualified as rich. He and his wife were engineers each making low six figures. He didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
It is well known that “rich” people make at least 100% more per year than you do. However much that is.
If I had more time, I’d try to hunt it down, but there was a story I read several years ago that polled people and took away three key pieces of information:
1) What “class” they considered themselves (lower, middle, upper)
2) What their household income was
3) What was needed to be Rich/Upper class
Over 70% of the people responded that they were middle class, with household incomes ranging from $30k/year to $750K/year. A large percentage put Rich/Upper class as about 125% of what they were currently making. This is why you keep hearing about raising taxes on “the rich”, not on those making $xx/year. Any time I hear someone argue about “the rich”, I ask for numbers.
My brother always had a snide remark about “90% of Americans think they’re in the upper class” as an explanation for why Americans are so reluctant to tax the rich. No idea where he got it, and strangely, I stopped hearing it as soon as he was making decent money.
The girlfriend is from a wealthy family. Her grandmother (still kicking at 90+) is in a private retirement apartment complex with live in nursing assistance, her family had annual trips to Europe and Hawaii, she’s never needed to work a 40 hour a week job in her life (and never has), she’s paying for a Masters in History out of her own pocket. Up until recently, she was still claiming to have been brought up in a middle class home. That changed after a very entertaining (to me) conversation she had with my sister over breakfast one morning.
My sister got pregnant at 15, kept the kid (ditched the sperm donor), and worked her way up into being a nurse. She got married to a decent guy who’s a fire fighter, and added two more kids to her family. They’re doing quite well now, but she knows it’s because she had to bust her ass.
“My brother always had a snide remark about “90% of Americans think they’re in the upper class” as an explanation for why Americans are so reluctant to tax the rich. No idea where he got it”
Out of his ass?
an explanation for why Americans are so reluctant to tax the rich
Well, there’s his problem. We’re not the least bit reluctant to tax the rich, considering they pay a vastly disproportionate share of our “progressive” taxes.
Another interesting question is to ask them what percentage they think is a fair share for the rich to pay. The percentage is usually in the 40-50% range which shows how little the prog knows about taxes.
That, or you get to the whole ‘I think they have too much money.’ Jealousy disguised as virtue.
I can answer that question honestly. I think it in part depends on where you live. But here in MD, you wouldn’t even start to be rich unless you were making 300K or more a year. And not even then if you have kids. Anyone making 100 – 250K, which are most people I know, are middle class, not even close to rich until you get to the very upper end of that. Which is why it’s infuriating that our esteemed reps in Annapolis voted in the middle of the night to pass a tax increase on the rich making over 100K a year. Fucking scumbag thieves.
The mistake people are making is that “middle class” isn’t solely, or maybe even mostly, about your income or even assets. Its about your beliefs and behaviors.
Same with being “rich”. I know some people who have quite a lot of money. Their beliefs and behaviors are indistinguishable from “middle class” people. They are middle class, IMO.
Now, there are people who have a lot of money, but don’t act like regular folks. They spend it on showy, expensive stuff, and generally act like they are better than other people because they have money. Those folks are “rich”, and I’ve known a few who didn’t even have all that much money.
Median Household is like $50-60k. If you make twice that, guess what, you are rich. You may have a 10 year old car, no servants, and be renting a modest house in the suburbs, but you are rich by national standards.
Depends where you are. NYC? You’re barely scratching middle class.
Pew has a calculator, and they decided that middle income is:
But, the Pew calculator isn’t terribly informative. Basing calculations on the national average simply doesn’t make sense. The cost of living in any one place and what you can afford in any one place has nothing whatsoever to do with national averages. It’s wildly more a function of the local economy.
My wife and I have a combined income above the 90th percentile. I’m pretty sure most of my peer engineers are in the same situation. We are not rich. Upper-middle class certainly; well off even. But, the rich are those people whose income from investments exceed my income from a pay check. The rich are those people four or five sigma from the median.
The problem is you can take all the money held by the rich and not make a dent in the annual budget of the government. Socialize requires government to take more of the income of the middle class than they get to keep themselves — by a longshot.
Three sigma is 99.7% of all people, so you’re saying that well under 0.1 percent of people are rich.
Given the definition “rich are those people whose income from investments exceed my income from a pay check.” Or making it generic, “being able to live very well on the income from investments alone.” Then yes, rich is very rare.
This definition has a many flaws of course. For example, is a retiree scraping by on a pension and a 401K rich? Is the star athlete with the multi-million dollar salary that spends ever penny and is one injury away from being destitute actually rich?
In general, I reject the notion that a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or other professional with a six-figure salary that is still paying on a mortgage and a late model Mercedes is rich.
Rich is having fuck-you money and being able to walk away from it all and still live a very comfortable life.
In MD 50-60K a year for a married couple and you are not even close to middle class. You may want to imagine that you are, but you can’t even buy a house here on that, not even rent a house in a good area.
“Kerry said he thought anyone making more than $150k qualified as rich”
Kerry was being unrealistic. Wait until we finally get that socialism everyone is raving about. Then $30,000 will qualify you as filthy rich, but no worries, they’re going to fix that by taxing you within an inch of your life.
“a new study of the costs of Medicare for All”
I can save you some money on your study-
We can’t afford it.
Dude, it was only like 30 trillion over the next two decades, why you so greedy?
“We know the numbers dont work but what we are trying to do is too important for us to be held back by math”
/actual berniebro
How did that work out last time? And the time before that? And the time before that? And the hundred times before that?
It really takes a special kind of stupid to be a socialist.
What do you say when someone is so abysmally educated that they think reality is optional?
“Medium Americano with room, please.”
Winner!
That is the underlying premise for critical theory/post modernism. Reality is what you want it to be.
Reality is what you want it to be.
An idiocy so abject that only a Western intellectual could believe it. I mean, seriously, ask a guy who works for a living. Hell, ask an engineer or a doctor. Ask someone in the third world who has to worry every day about putting food on the table.
Personally, I’d like to create a reservation for anyone so imbecilic as to utter words like “my truth”. Let them try to live out the rest of their (thankfully short) lives relying on their existence among other people who think that 1+1=74, that gravity falls up and you can perform open heart surgery using Play-dough,
It started with “perception is reality”.
No, it fucking isn’t. Reality exists whether anyone perceives it or not, and is unaffected by perception. Reality is objective, perception is subjective. If your perceptions are mistaken, reality doesn’t change to conform to them.
If your perceptions are mistaken, reality doesn’t change to conform to them.
It’s the old statist delusion. If they can force others to incur the negative consequences of their mistakes, those perceptions are just as good as reality.
It makes my skin crawl every time I hear someone say “This is my truth or My truth is…”
“Do you have a spellchecker in your mouth? Because I think you just autocorrected “truth” for “opinion”.”
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts”
D.P. Moynihan
To think, the Democratic party used to have people like Monihan in it.
To the left, reality is this pesky racist thing invented by the patriarchy. It’s holding us back, man!