Mental Floss: 25 holiday film facts.
Mark Fiore: The Real War on Christmas.
What does Santa want for Christmas.
Young Turks: Santa Claus field trip causes controversy
The uncensored 12 Days of Christmas:
David Pakman: Some alternative Christmas carols.
A holiday message from Hillary Clinton.
What do Syrian refugees want for Christmas?
Unaired SNL Christmas with fighting siblings.
Thom: Mystery meat for the holidays?
Uncensored office Santa.
Black Santa is very in demand.
The pagan origins of Christmas:
Key of Awesome Christmas Parody Spectacular.
Young Turks: Cheesy politician Christmas cards.
Best Christmas gift ever.
Happy Holidays from Boston Dynamics.
All I want for Xmas is reapportionment.
Election Data Services, a political consulting firm in Manassas, Va., tallied the rates of state population change from 2010 to 2015 and projected them forward to 2020. If those trends hold up, 15 states would gain or lose districts after the 2020 census.
The biggest gains would come to Texas, which is projected to clinch three more House seats, and Florida, a gainer of two seats. Arizona, North Carolina, Colorado and Oregon are all poised to grab one seat after 2020.
Nine states are projected to lose districts: Alabama, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia.
“What we do find is that it does make things more Republican,” said Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/.....s-in-2020/
Shifts in population demographics can alter more than election outcomes. Here’s an example of higher-earners fleeing a too-high tax state for someplace…..else.
The Yankee Institute, a policy think tank in Hartford, just published “$60 a Second,” a study documenting a $3.8 billion erosion in the individual income tax base from 2011 to 2013 as emigrants took more out of the state than immigrants brought in.
Connecticut is about 50% more reliant on high earners than the nation as a whole. Residents with annual adjusted gross income in excess of $2 million contribute 25% of the state’s total individual income-tax revenue, in contrast to only 17% of total federal individual income-tax revenue.
The higher earners are departing. Connecticut is the only state where the adjusted gross income of emigrants exceeds the AGI of remaining residents.
Between 2011 and 2013, about 95,000 taxpayers left the state. Their average AGI was $112,000, versus $101,000 for the remaining 1.4 million taxpayers. Only 78,000 taxpayers moved into the state, bringing an average AGI of only $86,000.
Things are likely to worsen in CT, and apparently worsen fairly quickly. Look how rapidly pension obligations are predicted to snowball:
Even wider gaps lie beyond, as official estimates of annual employee pension fund contributions escalate from $1.5 billion today to twice that amount by 2025 and quadruple by 2032. That doesn’t include retiree health care benefits.
Read More At Investor’s Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-.....z3vG18vVXW
@2 Connecticut is a bedroom suburb of Wall Street. You’re telling us Wall Street types don’t want to pay taxes. Who wudda thunk? Can you tell us something we don’t already know? Where are these tax dodgers moving to? The tax havens of Massachusetts and New York?
@2 (continued) Fortunately, Washington’s public pension system is one of the nation’s best. We’re fully funded. We’re not facing a pension crisis. Our pension system won’t burden future taxpayers because the public doesn’t pay for it; our public employees fund their pensions through payroll deductions, and the state has invested their money very successfully. The downside for public employees is Washington’s public pensions aren’t nearly as generous as some other states. They probably average $20k-$30k a year. Fortunately, I’m a capitalist and don’t have to live on my pension, but I know state retirees who are working in their old age to make ends meet.
Cheap labor conservatives hate pensions almost as much as they hate Social Security, Medicare, and the $7.25 minimum wage. To them, the idea of the working class getting paid without working is almost as repugnant as the idea of having to pay for their work. They never miss an opportunity to attack and slander public pensions, even though it’s the workers’ money — saved from their paychecks — we’re talking about here. They believe they should get all the money and everyone else should live like farmyard chickens who get to eat when the farmer’s wife scatters a few grain kernels on the ground, and then you’re expected to lay eggs and they take the eggs. Fuck that, I’m a capitalist, and I don’t have to work for these assholes. Besides, rabbits don’t lay eggs, so they’ll have to get their eggs from somebody else.
“HA sullies your Christmas”
Much as the batshit crazy loon sullies your threads.
I imagine if a guest in your home shits on your living floor you call it freedom.
@5 Yes, that’s the essence of the right’s libertarian belief system. We all probably have one or two neighbors like that, whom we wish an asteroid would land on. In my case, I put up with an illegal trailer park for drug addicts on the parking strip in front of my burrow. They shit into plastic bags and then leave the bags in my driveway as if I’m supposed to flush their shit down my sewer. Meanwhile, city code enforcement is nowhere to be seen.
Right-wing Christian lady shares some Christmas love…
“Two Brazilian men said they were filming a video for their YouTube comedy channel when an irate white woman pulled over because she mistook them for terrorists.”
“I said you were a scum bag, you’re child pedophilers [SIC], faggot bitches that turn into terrorists,” she rants, adding several other anti-gay slurs. “You’re turning terrorists now because you hate yourself so much. Now you’re taking pictures in front a plane to remind you of 9/11.”
“You’re American terrorists!” the woman insists after exiting her SUV. “And God told me so. God is your brain and your brain.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/1.....errorists/
Fox News, in the spirit of Christmas…
“Fox puts New York Times on Santa’s ‘Naughty List’ for pushing assault rifle ban after mass shooting”
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/1.....-shooting/
In the spirit of Christmas, right-wing Christian lady shares her love…
“Enraged woman caught on video going bonkers inside KFC: ‘You little black b*tch, I’ll kill you!’”
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/1.....-kill-you/
Because Fox News understands the meaning of Christmas and you don’t…
“Fox’s Message For Santa: Bring Guns”
http://crooksandliars.com/2015.....bring-guns
Wingnut mayor shares his Christmas spirit…
“Wisconsin Mayor Calls Obama A Muslim, Blames Him For Everything”
http://crooksandliars.com/2015.....lim-blames
In the spirit of Christmas, Gov. Bobby Jindal decides that the unemployed should experience needless hardship…
“Lame Duck Gov. Bobby Jindal Is Using His Last Days To Screw Over 31,000 Unemployed Louisianians”
http://thinkprogress.org/econo.....rk-waiver/
George Will calls Trump “unpleasant” and “disagreeable”. Pot, meet kettle.
@7 I don’t think he should try to pick her up. She has too many issues.
@12 Jindal denies food stamps to unemployed people at Christmas. What a class act! He reminds me of Washington’s last Republican governor, John Spellman, who held back state employees’ paychecks because he enjoys being a prick. But what goes around comes around; it’s now been 35 years since our state elected a Republican governor, and the 2016 election likely will extend that losing streak to 40 years. You don’t get people to vote for you by treating them like livestock. (Unless, of course, they’re stupid Teabaggers who don’t know better.)
Merry Christmas!
“Florida Woman Dies After Being Forcibly Removed From Hospital”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/n.....e-hospital
“The early facts of this case should cause a great concern for everyone.”
Except the loon.
@16 The hospital’s insurance company will pay her family a couple million bucks and pass it on to you in the form of higher premiums. Nobody will go to jail and no doctor, nurse, or hospital administrator will lose his/her professional license.
The bipartisan budget bill will bring some Christmas cheer to the survivors and families of the 1979 Tehran hostage crisis. Of the 53 Americans held captive by Iran for 444 days, 38 are still alive, including eligible spouses and children, approximately 150 people will receive benefits under the bill. Former hostages will receive $10,000 per day of captivity, which for most will be about $4.4 million, and family members will receive one-time payments of $600,000 each. The benefits will be funded by penalties collected from banks that were fined for violating U.S. sanctions against Iran, not by American taxpayers.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/24/.....index.html
@ 15 RR
I really believe that the TeaFascists aren’t concerned with being pack mules for the super-rich. I’ve long since noticed, that there is a deliberate anti-fact, anti-reality element to everything they claim to believe in. That is, when a Scientist or some other respectable scholar on a subject says something, they always assume that he is just being a smarty-pants egghead Liberal, and therefore not only should be ignored, but vehemently opposed to by automatically taking the most radical absolute opposite idea as being the “truth”.
One cannot argue with that. It is impossible. They’re so full of “believing” that they cannot for one goddamn moment ever be persuaded to even look at the evidence. Shove it in their face and they’ll not only put their fingers in their ears, shut their eyes and babble incoherently to cover up the sound of what is being said, they’ll actively accuse one of oppressing them and trying to make them into egghead panty-waist atheist Liberals.
I mean, whats the point of having nuclear weapons of we don’t use them? Maybe because only sissies and tree-huggering Liberals are afraid of a little atmospheric radioactive contamination.
Or, perhaps when someone mentions that there is a very good legal and moral purpose to the separation of Church and State, because the people who wrote the Constitution knew, and openly stated that without such a separation, the system becomes entirely corrupt. So the TeaNutters say: “How can it possibly become corrupt with evilangelical CHRISTIANS in charge of everything?”
There really is no countering it. They are insane, and the rather substantial percentage of people that self-identify as TeaBaggzies is somewhat alarming in that, that it would follow that this same percentage of the population is in fact insane and incapable of being taught anything that might run counter to their belief system.
They don’t have a knowledge system at all, what they believe, be it poisonous chemtrails from passenger aircraft, or praying over a baby to cure its illness instead of taking them to a doctor or worse yet, blaming the Doctors for the illness and openly calling for destruction of the healthcare system is absolute, and founded in that belief that anyone who actually studies something for a period of time is somehow abnormal, and possibly dangerous. Especially if what that individual is studying is somehow perceived to be in conflict with their belief system.
Hell, it was specifically illegal to try to predict the goddamn weather for decades in many States.
Their “belief” system is set in stone, is absolute, and can never be moved even when their ignorance kills them.
@19 Frankly, I’m not motivated to bust my ass to help these people by fighting for things like a higher minimum wage or regulating the payday lenders they flock to like flies to shit. God helps those who help themselves, and there’s nothing you can do for people who insist on knifing themselves in the back.
Fwiw, Jeb Bush has abandoned his trademark claim for “Jeb!” while Donald Trump has filed to expand his trademark claim for “Trump” from books on how to succeed in business to also include books on how to succeed in politics, according to Mother Jones.
@ 16
“The early facts of this case should cause a great concern for everyone.”
The early facts in Seattle on MLK day were that a cop ran up to Jesse Hagopian and pepper-sprayed him in the face. Goldy insinuated that he was specifically targeted.
That would, indeed, have caused great concern.
If only it had been true.
Wish we had a better world.
Speaking @ 20 of motivation:
Don’t feel badly, Roger Rabbit. It’s not just your pill that doesn’t work.
After months of hype, it looks like one of this year’s biggest flops is Addyi, the little pink pill that claims to address lack of sexual desire in women. The libido drug — which must be taken daily and has such severe potential side effects that women are told not to drink while on it — has been prescribed just a few hundred times since it hit the market in October.
http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/1.....pill.html#
“The early facts in Seattle on MLK day were that a cop ran up to Jesse Hagopian and pepper-sprayed him in the face.”
Keep stretching on that and soon it will snap back and break your fucking face.
A cop went bezerk and peppered-sprayed a man who was merely walking by her, not towards her, but walking parallel to a police line and he was talking on his damned phone. And you have no issue with that. Of course, it was a black man, so why the fuck should you? If it were a white radiologist, you, then you’d have been crying a fucking river every day on blog threads for the rest of your pathetic fucking life. The only regret you seem to have over the matter is that the man wasn’t shot dead.
Huh! Turns out that the woman who died after being removed from the hospital in handcuffs was black. So it’s no big deal after all, right, Bob?
“You miserable people, you’ve forgotten what it is to be Jews. You disgrace your skullcap, your prayer shawl and the name of God. Whoever dances at a wedding and celebrates the murder of a sleeping baby is not Jewish and not Israeli. He should be put behind bars as quickly as possible.”
Heh. The miserable babbling jackass troll might say this Jew is “taking the Palestinian side”.. Might even say this Zionist is “self-hating”.
Oh but wait! From the same link:
Oh wow! Bibi is “taking the Palestinian side” too! Bibi can do no wrong according to the babbling jackass troll.
Damn! It sure sux for the babbling jackass troll when even right wing Israelis are “taking the Palestinian side”.
But I should say, it was an elderly white woman, a friend of mine who lives on Whidbey, who is going to sue the bejeesus out of her radiology clinic for fucking up, nearly causing her to lose her life. So maybe Bob doesn’t give a fuck who dies anymore, just as long as they’re fucking dead.
Jesus fuck, how on earth could a radiologist have missed a tumor the size of a softball? Any idea, Bob? The only thing I can think of is they must have been posting racist comments about blacks on political blogs while paying overworked, below-minimum-wage radiologists in India to do their work for them.
If that was you, Bob, you messed with the wrong woman. She and her husband have over four hundred guns and a ton of ammo in their home and her son is a little bit crazy and very, very angry right now. You’d know him if you saw him. He always has a Glock on his right hip.
@2 maybe that’s a good argument to divide this Country into two Countries, where all the dumb fucks can live in the South and all the better people can live in the North. I don’t care if I were to be the last person living in CT (or the Northeast) with all the dumb fucks south of me.
If you Texans think that they can succeed from the Union, although you have to wonder why they would want to if what you say or what is said in @2 is true because they’ll become the ultimate King Makers, then why can’t CT succeed from the Union?
@3 actually a lot of people from CT are moving out to southern states at a high rate, I know of five coworkers that moved out to Florida (2), Texas, South Carolina, and North Carolina. And if you count me, I moved to NYC. And those are just a few that I know. All 5 within the last year and a half. Part of the reason why they are moving is because of the weather. But a lot of it does have to do with taxes because they are of the stingy types that think everyone but themselves are free loaders.
Now I moved to NYC and pay more in taxes than I did in CT and I love it! My life has changed dramatically. Maybe not for everyone but it works for me and I could care less if I have to pay more taxes, I am blessed with what is left after taxes and can live comfortably and I’m not greedy. Do I think people can be more responsible and accountable for thier own actions? Yes. But I don’t think it’s just the poor, the fricken rich should live by the same standards. And I don’t think everyone takes advantage and cheats, so I’m not going to characterize them all as lazy fucks.
@7. Oh if she wants to play I’m all in for that game, I got a nice fucking baseball bat I’d like to crack over her head.
The vomit producer produced this … I’ve long since noticed, that there is a deliberate anti-fact, anti-reality element to everything they claim to believe in.
Reminds Puddy of the jack boot goose step relationship DUMMOCRETINS have with Heilary over her continual lying, women hating ASS.
Did you know NPR schlonged Geralding Ferraro when she died in 2011? Yet the Heilary super pac libtards are all upset about Trump describing how Obummer schlonged Heilary over her losing stance! Trump wins with word choice!
Oh crazed clueless databaze cretin,
Those Jews are just like you crazed clueless databaze cretin! Remember you told all of us how you rejected your religion earlier in life. So they act a little secular.
Seems it’s you who can’t go 24 hours without some EPIC FAYLE Puddy rant! Puddy lives deep in the single cell called the crazed clueless databaze cretin brain!
Damn, Bob was the Kiss of Death again. First it was Koch fan-boy Walker, then Carly the Vagina, and now it’s good riddance to Marco “I wanna use your credit card” Rubio. Way to go, Bob. Who gets the Kiss of Death next? Cruz?
I’m surprised the plummeting Carson hasn’t dropped out yet. He must figure the loon still has some money left in the bank that he can still fleece from him. The loon – what a chump.
http://www.realclearpolitics.c.....-3823.html
@32.
Member those heady days just a few short weeks ago when Dr. Ben was the man gonna win the election if only the media would give him a fair shake. Never mind that the man is a loon without a single grasp of foreign policy…
Now we’ve moved on to defending trump. Schlong, Schtupp, Schlepp these are common terms among New York Gentiles. Schlepp is pretty innocuous. Schtupp, well the Donald is on record saying he’d Schtupp his daughter if he were a younger man…
Schlongged, well not only is it a bastardization but it really means one thing. It’s a penis envy reference. It’s a way to keep women in their place. Always has been. Anyone who tells you otherwise has never lived in New York or had NYC Jewish friends. There is not context for the word outside of a put-down of women who are “uppity” about being as good as men.
An intentional choice of word for sure.
Fine with me. The GOP keeps letting this imbecile on the stage to set the agenda. And an overwhelming majority laugh and say, “Well, I’m not voting for that guy.”
Anyone remember Hymietown? Same thing. Even if you supported Jessie Jackson there’s no getting around that Hymietown is a slur. Schlonged. Keep pretending that means something totally O.K.
@35 all those words are perfectly fine with me, I don’t know why we all have to politically correct knowadays. It’s good to be this way now. I personally can’t wait till the nigger word comes back in style.
I’m sure the evangelicals are disappointed that this guy isn’t a fag. Since he only a Neanderthal there is nothing to look at here or care about, move along now, after all the girls were 12. let’s go buy a gun be before Obama takes them all away.
Brit pedophile used Facebook to groom victims as young as 12 http://www.nydailynews.com/new.....-1.2476656
@23 Eh? What does that have to do with me? Have you lost your senses? Did you have any to start with?
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas, trolls! All the civilized people, too.
@1 And it’s time to look at increasing the number of house members as required by the constitution. The current law that freezes the number has never been truly challenged. and it’s high time a substantial increase in the number of representatives. It’s time that Congress responds to the petition from Puerto Rico for statehood. The freeze on the number of representatives is one reason congress isn’t acting as Puerto Rico would get at least 6 representatives.
The current law is just a way for Congress to bypass doing it’s constitutional obligation of struggling with the issue of the number of representatives every 10 years. With some representatives representing over a million voters it’s hard to argue they are able to do the job of representing their constituents. After all the founders thought that number to be roughly 40,000.
The conservatives should be all over this issue and insisting the constitution be followed. Odd they are not. So power does corrupt.
@6 An asteroid would be overkill. That would take out the block, the city, the state and perhaps destroy all life on the planet. Just an ordinary little space rock no bigger than a small British mini. That might still be large enough to do a lot of damage, unfortunately most of the current meteor shower are just bits of dust streaking through the atmosphere. Not big enough to do much, but put on a show.