…the mighty Antonio Banuelos, who among other things got to travel to Cabo for the holidays with his bud Chuck Liddell, where both enjoyed (ahem) partying (ahem) with the luscious Jayden James.
Yes, that Jayden James (link NSFW). She of the, um, er, big guns….
Not-Safe-For-Work pics below the fold:
(Push the button … )
In heavy rotation on our local dance station is the below track, which I can’t get out of my head. Imagine my delight to discover the video is as compelling as the song itself. You can never get too much gyrating eye candy, that’s what I say.
At a couple of points in the evening they played this song at the 2008 Energy 92.7 Anniversary Blast which was quite the party. Sadly, I screwed around to the point that we arrived about an hour later than I wanted to, so we missed the sub-headliners I wanted to see live, Ercola and Bellatrax.
The venue was, once again, very kewl:
Phil with two .308s (his custom tackdriving rifle he named Barak and my Encore specialty pistol) at Boomershoot 2007.
That’s Barak without a c, for those not in the know. 
Truer words were never spoken
Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read.
Groucho Marx
The Wife worked a whole bunch of overtime during the holidays to #1. Pad her end of year paychecks, and #2. Work the overtime she wanted to now so that she couldn’t be brought in for mandatory overtime she didn’t want want to work later.
Working that OT put her into the next shift and with “The Catty Girls”, as I like to call them. They essentially spend the entire shift blathering on about what sods their husbands are (and if even just half the stories are true, they really are sods).
She came home one day during this and said, essentially, that I’m just not enough of an asshole. I asked for clarification and she said that I don’t make enough trouble betwixt us for her to keep up with her co-workers list of complaints about their spouses.
I asked her what she was able to complain about and she mentioned that I spend a rather decent amount of cash on my firearms, ammunition and vehicles and that I eat my chili with a fork.
I offered to spend more of firearms and vehicles and to that when I’m out of clean socks and underwear I would be happy to bitch at her about it instead of just doing the laundry, if that would help her out any.
Her eyes glazed over for a second, during which I think she decided that the lack of complaints was a good thing.
Life is good.
About the idea of cutting taxes that pisses them off so badly?
I’ve been watching the shitstorm froth up in the leftosphere over the possibility that 40% of Obama’s proposed “Stimulus Plan” is dedicated to cutting taxes for businesses and citizens.
It started with Aravosis last Tuesday
The first handout didn’t do much because it was too much money in one fell swoop, leading people to use it to pay off debts, rather than buying goods and services, which is what we want them to do in order to help the economy (reportedly, only a third of the earlier $300/person handout was actually spent). This time, the money will be spread out throughout the year in the form of a reduction in your withholding taxes (actually this would be a permanent tax cut). So I did the math. Say you get a paycheck every two weeks, so over a twelve month period that makes 26 paychecks. If you spread the $500 per person tax cut over 26 paychecks, that puts $19 more in your pocket per paycheck.
Aravosis argues that under $20 per paycheck won’t do anything as most folks wouldn’t even notice it. He is only partially worng there.
Sure, a lot of upper income earners might not notice $20, but if you ask people if they want a tax cut as opposed to more government spending, I think you can guess what their answer would be.
And since his first angry post on the subject, Obama has more than doubled the amount of the stimulus that will go to cutting taxes from $140 billion to $300 billion, or about $82 a month of my earned wages staying inside my bank account and out of the hands of the dotfed.
I don’t care who gives it to me, I’m liking that idea. It also makes me happy that Aravosis is nearly made to weep at the thought of it.
Even the more level headed than most leftist bloggers, Josh Marshall, is just about to froth at the idea (which is also giving me warm fuzzies)
But Obama seems to be telegraphing that to a significant degree the fundamental structure of the legislation is being built around accommodating the concerns of Republicans — members of a political party that are about as unpopular and weak as you can get at the moment. And that sounds a lot like he’s negotiating with himself, something that will embolden opposition and invite Republicans to up the ante even further.
It is as though he is purposely forgetting that the reason the Stupid Party is “unpopular” is because of their spending habits. I don’t mind that he wants to make the Democrats the new Big Spender party, but he could at least be honest about it.
Yeah, right. I know.
And just so you don’t feel left out, courtesy of FDL’s own wannabe econ-master, Ian Welsh, here is what the leftosphere wants an Obama stimulus bill to look like: New Deal Part Douche!
Stimulus at this time should not be tax cuts, it should be spending. Rewire the country’s energy infrastructure, make every building energy efficient, rebuild roads, build high speed train corridors on the west and east costs, then connect them to each other. Give cities money to build the trams or subways they’ve been wanting to build. Push high speed internet out to everyone, and at the same time increase its speed to international standards (i.e. 10x as fast as the crappy “high” speed internet North Americans get). Move to single-payer healthcare and buyout the health insurance companies. Extend UI to 12 months, and create a bunch of programs that folks can work in as was done in the Great Depression.
But the stupidity doesn’t stop there!
The past 30 years have been tax cut after tax cut. And they have led us here. The solution is not more tax cuts, no matter who they’re meant for. It’s to stop thinking that tax cuts are the solution, or that “high” tax rates are the problem. They aren’t, low tax rates are the problem. The US has cut its tax rates into the verge of a depression. And the solution the geniuses, like Larry Summers, who brought us this disaster, are proposing is more tax cuts? More of the same?
Yeah, Ian. Never mind that government spending has multiplied faster than the intake of tax dollars. Never mind that most folks just want to keep more of their own money. And never mind that the plan he proposes was tried by FDR and was proven to have not only not help America out of the Great Depression, but to have actually lengthened it.
Oh, and never mind that the past 30 years have been some of the most prosperous in our nation’s history.
Whereas tax cuts bring in $3 for every $1 returned to the taxpayer cut, so if they cut taxes $82 per month, there will be approximately $246 per month per taxpayer injected into the economy.
You can almost see the guy’s little “Reality Based” world come crashing down around him.
I’m laughing heartily and so should you.
Your favorite (Barely) Governor and mine, Christine Gregoire, spent yesterday in the District of Columbia.
Speculation was that she may be the next in line for the Commerce post Richardson withdrew from. This speculation wasn’t quieted when the Governor’s spokes-mannequin refused to confirm the reasoning behind the trip or deny if the trip might have meant that she’s be leaving the Governor’s Mansion for federal position.
While I do not like most of her positions, this wouldn’t have been the worst move I could think of, for two reasons:
#1 - She knows that cutting taxes works for business and jobs. In fact, her proposed budget is almost exactly what her Republican challenger, Dino Rossi, proposed during his campaign (and this is pissing off her supporters who were sure she was going to raise taxes).
#2 - This would have put my home state in the hands of our Lt. Governor, Brad Owen (D-Common Sense), who was not only elected by a wide margin (and would very likely win any special election) but who also has prior business experience, and is good for the civil rights of gun owners.
Once I heard about it, I was of the mind to believe that she was just in DC to kiss the ring of The One and ask for a few billion dollars of your money to build us a viaduct/bridge/tunnel for Seattle’s waterfront tourist trap.
But I was wrong, though not as wrong as most. It seems she was on a Secret Squirrel trip to Iraq to visit Washington’s National Guard troops, so good on her for fulfilling at least one of her campaign promises.
I do believe that she did use the time amongst the inside of Obama’s circle to lobby for the moolah though. Always networking and all that.
However, if someone who can put a bug in his ear, let He Who Shall Not Be Middle Named know that, per us sensible citizens of Washington State, he should feel free to take her away! She is all yours.
Remember when IndyMac bank went down? Then you probably also remember that it was given a kick in the seat by Chuckles Schumer (Socialist - NY).
Well then, guess who’s friend of Schumer’s is currently attempting to purchase IndyMac?
If you guessed the man who attempted to crush the UK’s Pound through mass currency manipulation, then give yourself a lollipop
A consortium of private equity and hedge fund firms, including J.C. Flowers and Dune Capital Management, has agreed to buy the assets of failed mortgage lender IndyMac, the Federal Deposit Insurance said Friday.
The FDIC said it is selling the assets of IndyMac, which has been run by the agency since the lender failed in July, to IMB HoldCo in a deal valued at about $13.9 billion.
The group buying IndyMac includes buyout artist Christopher Flowers, hedge fund operator John Paulson, who gained billions of dollars betting against the U.S. housing market, and Steve Mnuchin, the chairman of Dune Capital and a former Goldman Sachs executive.
Affiliates of billionaire investor George Soros and Michael Dell, the chief executive of computer maker Dell, are also involved with the consortium buying IndyMac.
Forget the US Government being the largest holder of mortgage contracts, think Obama’s puppet master, George Soros (and then think twice about saying something against The Lightworker).
I figure the bad news will slide over easier.
The short story: Without divine intervention (winning the lottery, hint, hint) I will not be able to attend Boomershoot 2009.
The long story: My employer keeps me employed via contracts with municipalities. We can and do a job that few want to do, and we do it better than government employees and at a cost savings to the taxpayers living said municipalities.
This summer/fall, my employer secured three new, long term contracts with one large and two small municipalities. All of these contracts, coincidentally, begin in either March or April of 2009. Also, large munis like to put huge requirements for their contractors.
In our instance, the large muni wants us to use their computer system, which they won’t give us to train on until March. They also want us to upgrade our hardware. In this particular instance, the “sanitation engineers” I work with will be dropping the paper route sheets they’ve used for decades in favor of a electronic tablet like the ones the UPS guy uses.
Again, no system or training or hardware until March.
All of this means that my employer has “blacked out” 03/01/09 through 05/15/09 for vacations. We will be fully staffed, with no one, and this goes all the way up to senior on-site management, no one will be allowed a scheduled day off (or in my case, two weeks of them).
I have applied for the days off, been rejected and then appealed the rejection, and have finally received my final rejection in writing. This isn’t going to happen.
I am currently attempting to work out a temporary shift to a daytime schedule in the hopes that if I will drive like a bat out of hell to orofino, ID I can attend at least the Sat/Sun portion of the event (I’ve already been told, however, that this is highly unlikely as the crew I will be working with at night will more than double as of 04/01/09 because of the territorial gains under the new contract).
David will still be attending, of course, along with nearly a dozen other bloggers. So he will be our reporter on site. RNS Staff Photographer, Dave from Michigan, will also be there providing still pics and video. I hope that my being stuck here will able me to provide any help they may need to blog this in as close to real time as possible. If so then that will be a decent second upside to the situation. The first being that unless I get caught with a dead girl or a live boy, I’ll be employed for the next 14 years (the concurrent length of the contracts).
I also hope that David’s daily Boomershoot pics don’t drive me insane.
Two side notes of mention:
Firstly, I can only complain a little bit about this at work. One of the ladies in the office is either going to have to move her wedding date or have to wait five weeks for her honeymoon (most of which is already booked). While I do highly prize attending Boomershoot, my complaint seems a bit like small beans in comparison.
Secondly, I forgot to mention is when it was in the headlines. Remember the pic of the 22lb, 14 inch tall UAW contract that went across the rightosphere a few weeks back? Well, the contract notebook for the big muni I mentioned above is only three inches thick. That includes every contingency you could think of and quite a few that you couldn’t. Also, the labor contract that the Teamsters who work for my employer work under is a 4×6in booklet that is 1/4in thick.
Screw the UAW.
I guess there are no History prereqs for a degree in Economics
If Abraham Lincoln were still among the living as he prepared to turn 200 six weeks from now, he might detect in the congressional war over the automaker bailouts a strong echo of the war that defined his presidency. Now as then, the conflict centered on the rival labor systems of North and South. Now as then, the Southerners championed a low-wage, low-benefits system while the North favored a more generous one. And now as then, what sparked the conflict was the North’s fear of the Southern system becoming the national norm.
#1: What exactly was the wage under slavery? Room and board?
#2: $24.75 an hour isn’t exactly a “low wage”, except maybe in SoCal or NYC.
And in case you’re wondering, yes, Meyerson did declare Toyota, Honda, and every other foreign owned car maker that has non-union light skilled labor was equal to being a slave labor plantation circa 1850.
