I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes. — Barack Obama, Sept. 12, 2008 There must be some mistake then because I just got an email from our accounting department stating that effective January 1, 2011, over-the-counter drugs will require a doctor’s prescription when an FSA claim for reimbursement is submitted. That doesn’t even make sense. Of course I don’t have a prescription for OTC drugs. Why would I pay a doctor to write me a prescription for something that I can just walk into Walgreen’s and buy it? Hi Doc, I’ve got a terrible cold so I just stopped by to drop a $30 co-pay and get a prescription for some Nyquil. And if I… Read more →
September 2010
Twitter: 2010-09-29
RT @thesulk: I have a new lease on life. Month to month. No utilities. # Read more →
Crime and Showbiz
I do think that crime and show business have never been more closely aligned. I don’t know if there has ever been a time where criminal arrests are worth as much in terms of $$ as going on a publicity tour or being in a movie. — Merrill Markoe Read more →
History Lesson
A little explanation is in order here: In the olden days, when computers were less powerful than they are now, people used to read newspaper websites in the form of massive printouts. On Sundays, the newspaper website printouts (which were sometimes called “newspapers” for short) would come wrapped in a “comics section,” which contained still-life color cartoons that told a “story” in a series of panels or “drawings.” — James Taranto Read more →
All of Them?
Bill Clinton: “Do you know how many political and economic decisions are made in this world by people who dont know what in the living daylights they are talking about?” Read more →
Twitter: 2010-09-28
Police negotiators have a rule: Never tell a paranoid to "calm down." # Read more →
God in America
Americans are by all measures a deeply religious people, but they are also deeply ignorant about religion. — Atheists Outdo Some Believers in Survey on Religion – NYTimes.com The article describes a study in which researchers phoned up 3,400 Americans and asked them 32 questions about religion. On average, respondents got half the questions wrong. Breaking down the results by faith (or lack thereof), the highest scores were registered by atheists and agnostics, closely followed by Jews and Mormons. Some of the knowledge gaps are amazing: Fifty-three percent of Protestants could not identify Martin Luther as the man who started the Protestant Reformation. Forty-five percent of Catholics did not know that their church teaches that the consecrated bread and wine in holy communion are not merely symbols, but actually become the body and blood of Christ. As Nietzsche used to say: If you want happiness and peace of mind, believe.… Read more →
Thomas Jefferson on Christine O’Donnell
For all of you pussies out there making fun of her, just know that I would bang her, and if I would bang her, then she’s hot. Read more →
EppsNet at the Movies: Wait Until Dark
“Did you know they wanted to kill me? I did. I knew even before they did. They were awful amateurs, and that’s why you saw through them.” “I saw through you too. ” “No, not all the way, Suzy. Even now, not all the way. The lovely thing was the way I let them set it all up. All that silliness of meeting in the parking lot, the whole thing, they had comic book minds. So, I let them do it their way, right up to the very end. And then, topsy-turvy. Me topsy and them turvy.” Haha . . . what a fun movie! Read more →
High School Senior
My son, dismissing the need for parental advice in his senior year of high school: “You only know what people tell you. I know what’s going on.” Read more →
Twitter: 2010-09-25
RT @eddiepepitone: My gaydar was disabled by a hockey player making a pass at me last night. # Read more →
Here Ya Go, You Fat Bastards
MLB is rolling out an app that will allow fans at games to order concessions on their iPhone and have it delivered to their seats. I thought that option already existed, and it was called a wife. via Deadspin Read more →
I’m Worried About My Boy
He’s killing himself with schoolwork and college applications. He doesn’t sleep anymore, just keeps himself going with 5-hour energy drinks. All of the college apps are due by Nov. 1 so if he makes it that far maybe he’ll be okay . . . Read more →
Twitter: 2010-09-24
Time flies whether you're having fun or not. # Read more →
3 Rules of Politics
When you control Congress but not the White House, blame the White House. When you control the White House but not Congress, blame Congress. When you control the White House and Congress, blame your predecessor. Read more →
Enlightened Perseverance
Your own passion and dedication have to be bigger than other people’s attachment to the way things have been, their fear of change and losing control. — Gay Hendricks and Kate Ludeman, The Corporate Mystic Read more →
Twitter: 2010-09-23
RT @daveihl: “Hey, you shot me!” “Very sorry, kind sir. Let me get you some tea.” (The Very Civil War) # Read more →
Well-Meaning but Without Understanding
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. — Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 479 (1928) Read more →
More People I’m Sick Unto Death Of
Guys at the gym who blow-dry their ass . . . Read more →
Burn it Down
Chris Matthews: I have waited all my adult life for an election in which voters have the fire to reach up and burn those who have been running the show for decades. But I didn’t know it would come from the right and center. If the plan of those in power is to raise a ton of cash and run nasty TV ads saying you can’t vote for this new person, that he or she is flawed — I expect the voter will say, “Are you telling me I have no choice but to vote for you? Are you saying that I, this little voter out there, dare not take a chance on someone who has not yet let me down as you have? If that is what you’re telling me, that I have no choice, well, Mr. Big Stuff, you just have to wait — stay up late election… Read more →