Category: News

Westboro Hate Cult Announces (via iPhone) that they will protest Steve Jobs funeral

I’m still hoping the Phelps family (the hate cult that hates everything and calls themselves a church – best known for the “God hates fags” and “thank God for dead soldiers” wings of their multi-tier platform) will all die in some kind of natural disaster, the type of which is traditionally reported as “an act of God”.

Earlier today Margie Phelps announced on Twitter that her minions will be picketing Steve Jobs’ funeral because he didn’t give God glory (he was Buddhist) and “taught sin”. The tweet was made via her iPhone…

A friend fantasized about how fun the exposition would be if it were revealed that the leader of the cult was gay and had been hooking up with male prostitutes, Ted Haggard style. That’d be fun, but highly doubtful. I dont buy the theory that most or even a lot of these gay bashers are actually gay boinkers. It’s a popular response and explanation but I don’t think it’s valid beyond simple mockery. People hate what is different than them more than internal struggles they might be ashamed of. Haggard wasnt hateful toward gays so his problems were only funny cuz people like to snicker when religious leaders slip up.

I think it’s more likely that the Westboro cult is actually a hardcore committed anti-religious satire by an improv group who has dedicated their life to mocking religious families.

In a classic case of “the good die young”:

Fred Phelps, the founder of the Westboro cult, is 81.
Steve Jobs, the found of Apple Computers, died at 56.

Steve Jobs: Hipster but Capitalist

Mr. Jobs, the adopted son of a family in Palo Alto, Calif., was born on Feb. 24, 1955. A college dropout, he established his reputation early on as a tech innovator when at 21 years old, he and friend Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer Inc. in the Jobs family garage in 1976. Mr. Jobs chose the name, in part, because he was a Beatles fan and admired the group’s Apple records label.

I am glad he at least lived long enough to see The Beatles on iTunes. I thought it was silly that they made such a big deal out of it until I learned that it was a long struggling goal of Steve’s for many years and why.

Steve Jobs was Apple. He left Apple and Apple floundered. He came back in 1997 and made Apple boom. The company now produces $65.2 billion a year in revenue compared with $7.1 billion in its business year ending September 1997.

The prediction was just made on my Facebook that the Occupy Wall Street protest for socialism currently under way will probably include Steve Jobs memorializing since many of the protestors use and love his products. This would be wildly hypocritical.

I will be hugely insulted if those Occupy Wall Street protesters turn their anti-capitalism of rich people protest into a “oh, but not the one we deemed as being okay” addendum. fuck them. Steve Jobs spent his money better than any “Progressive” government has – and that includes his many donations to Progressive causes and candidates.

He made the products that hippies and hipster socialists use and love by the means that they protest: being non-union, utilizing corporate tax breaks and moving large operations overseas because it’s cheaper to manufacture and operate there.
His employees loved the hell out of him and he wasn’t evil and he wasn’t “greedy” just like the majority of the other CEOs and corporation founders who are responsible for the products and services we use and love.

Its because of people like them and non-“progressive” business practice like that that middle class income earners have the option of buying a hand held computer and telephone that can capture, store and send through the air high definition pictures and video all on a higher resolution screen than any television their parents ever owned growing up for $200 + a phone service contract.

It will be wildly hypocritical and insulting if anyone participating in the Occupy Wall Street protests publicly memorializes Steve Jobs. It would be nothing but flaunting their elitist douchebaggery. “we miss and love THIS billionaire whom we all benefitted from – but not the rest of you pigs! now join me, brothers and sisters in our fight to stop the next Steve Jobs from growing his business!”

Occupy Wall Street is a protest to prevent the Steve Jobs’ of the world from benefiting by serving humanity – which is what capitalism is. It’s the only philosophy that says (to quote myself):

Do what you want. do nothing if you want and the government won’t force you into action. but if you want nice things… you can’t just steal them from other people. if you want services from other people you can’t just force or enslave them – you must give them something they want to GET something you want. SO… if you want these wonderful advantages in life and if you want to be able to have the stuff and experiences your heart and mind desire: you can only do it by serving your fellow human being. Only by creating or providing something that someone wants can you amass wealth. Only by taking risks with your capital to make more of it can you become wealthy.

You have a choice. There are no guarantee’s except in your freedom to try.
Except when you DO try, you’ll find how true the wisdom of Yoda was:
Do. or do not. There is no “try”.

UPDATE: Judge Napolitano on Steve Jobs, Free Market Hero

Steve Jobs dead at 56

Steve Jobs is dead. I’ve been archiving jokes and puns for months, but I dont feel like posting any of them now. in time. but for now: R.I.P and thanks for the amazing products and software I use every day to pursue my own dreams.

I’m unusually sad about this. Like, approaching tears welling up, legit-Sad. Not just “aw, that sucks. he was cool” thoughts of someone I didn’t know. I didn’t even think he was particularly “cool” even. I think i’m sad because of the unfairness of his death. Only 56 and was still chugging along so hard, creating new and wonderful things that help people like me create our own new and wonderful things. He wasn’t some retired CEO lounging in his billions. He was actively creating and innovating.

The Image above is the current splash page at Apple.com. The file for the picture is “t_hero.png”.

He’ll never get to see the next Pixar movie (he was a founding member of Pixar, if you don’t understand why I say that). He’ll never get to walk around in that one-of-a-kind space ship style new Apple campus being constructed in Cupertino. He won’t get to host any more Apple events (I might as well unsubscribe from the video podcast right now). He won’t get to hold the iPad 3 or 4 or 15 – but worse: His mind won’t have designed them.

Human beings can’t absorb the pain and sorrow of loss of people they don’t know or they would self destruct. We HAVE to have some kind of barrier when we hear about a shooting or an earthquake or the passing of some celebrity.

I’m terribly upset over the loss of Steve Jobs because he did life right and still got robbed.

He was responsible for a record of new and “magical” things that hundreds of millions of people got to enjoy and showed no sign of slowing down until literally weeks ago when his health forced such a slowing.

The first Apple logoThe third and current Apple logo

From the WSJ:

“Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives,” Apple’s board said in a statement. “The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.”

His family, in a separate statement, said Mr. Jobs “died peacefully today surrounded by his family…We know many of you will mourn with us, and we ask that you respect our privacy during our time of grief.”

..

In addition to laying the groundwork for the modern high-tech industry alongside other pioneers like Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison, Mr. Jobs proved the appeal of well-designed intuitive products over the sheer power of technology itself and shifted the way consumers interact with technology in an increasingly digital world.

Unlike those men, however, the most productive chapter in Mr. Jobs’ career occurred near the end of his life, when a nearly unbroken string of innovative and wildly successful products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad fundamentally changed the PC, electronics and digital media industries. The way he marketed and sold those products through savvy advertising campaigns and its retail stores, in the meanwhile, helped turn the company into a pop culture icon.

He turned fruit orchards into innovative technology that blew all our minds on a consistant basis. He was hard working, charitable, made countless lives better and he still got robbed by cancer. I’ve been teasing him and Apple hipsters just as much as anyone over the years, but damn. this is sad as fuck 🙁

Part of the reason, as many of you familiar with my world view and life aspirations may have guessed, that I’m so distraught over his death – even though it was known to be imminent – is that it’s a unique reminder of mortality. Everyone know’s they’ll die. I think I’m more conscious than most that my time is limited and that I could get incinerated in a plane crash or hit by a bus any day but that cant get in the way of attempting a full 90+ year plan on this earth. But Steve Jobs was hard at work doing big things and making billions at it and he still got robbed – not by a freak accident, but by a slow killing bottom feeder (which is why cancer is called that, btw: because it’s like a crab).

His commencement address at Stanford in 2005 contained the following:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960?s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Sarah Palin not running for President

Oh, you mean likve i’ve been saying for 3 years? really now? you dont say… It’s alsmost as if… all the signs I kept constantly pointing out that she had no interest in running and would not run were… 100% accurate? really? could it be?

So wait… you’re saying the reason Sarah Palin didnt finish her 1st term as Governor of Alaska and chose instead to become a book author and media personality on a reality show and as a commentator on cable news was NOT so she could run for president??

You’re saying that her bus tour across the nation was just a cross country media tour by a media personality and her schedule of doing no campaiging or political activism at these stops WASN’T in preperation so she could run for president??

Gosh, it’s almost as if when she never expressed any interest in running for president for the past 3 years, she was… being honest. weird.
/endofsarcasm4dummies

Here’s the audio of her on the Mark Levin radio show making the announcement.
Here’s the statement:

October 5, 2011
Wasilla, Alaska
After much prayer and serious consideration, I have decided that I will not be seeking the 2012 GOP nomination for President of the United States. As always, my family comes first and obviously Todd and I put great consideration into family life before making this decision. When we serve, we devote ourselves to God, family and country. My decision maintains this order.

My decision is based upon a review of what common sense Conservatives and Independents have accomplished, especially over the last year. I believe that at this time I can be more effective in a decisive role to help elect other true public servants to office – from the nation’s governors to Congressional seats and the Presidency. We need to continue to actively and aggressively help those who will stop the “fundamental transformation” of our nation and instead seek the restoration of our greatness, our goodness and our constitutional republic based on the rule of law.

From the bottom of my heart I thank those who have supported me and defended my record throughout the years, and encouraged me to run for President. Know that by working together we can bring this country back – and as I’ve always said, one doesn’t need a title to help do it.

I will continue driving the discussion for freedom and free markets, including in the race for President where our candidates must embrace immediate action toward energy independence through domestic resource developments of conventional energy sources, along with renewables. We must reduce tax burdens and onerous regulations that kill American industry, and our candidates must always push to minimize government to strengthen the economy and allow the private sector to create jobs.

Those will be our priorities so Americans can be confident that a smaller, smarter government that is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people can better serve this most exceptional nation.

In the coming weeks I will help coordinate strategies to assist in replacing the President, re-taking the Senate, and maintaining the House.

Thank you again for all your support. Let’s unite to restore this country!

God bless America.

– Sarah Palin

Occupy Wall Street… and then what?

Across the nation currently, there are “occupy” protests that I have no idea what the point of which is. What dont they like about wall street? what is it they’re protesting? people with jobs making money? I assume it’s something more sinister but I have no way of easily knowing. There’s a general sloganeering among the crowds of Corporate Greed and White Collar Crime but no clear point.

If those two things ARE the entire point though, then why isnt it called the “prosecute economic criminals” protest or something? whats the point of “occupying wall street” as a way to rally against individuals within wall street that are breaking laws? this makes even less sense to me now. Maybe it’s all a prank to make hippies look silly? Idk…

As you may be able to tell, im not terribly interested in it (after all, I *am* aware of Google’s existence and could spend more time reading if I really wanted) and the more i see the less respect i have for it. for the amount of video coverage, news items, blogs, facebook statuses and pictures about this event i’ve seen there is no reason for someone like me to still know so little about wtf it is.

The Tea Partiers, I get. You see a tea party protest and its obvious: bunch of people dressed up like george washington, pro capitalism, desire for smaller government and more freedom. fine. I can agree or disagree with that mission statement and can search for more from there if i want. but this… wtf IS this?

The “about” page on occupywallst.org illustrated exactly the awkward mysteriousness that i’m talking about. It’s 3 paragraphs that rephrases the sentence “this is a protest where people protest wall street”. I got that part. now what?

Wtf is going on here?

I found this on their website: A specific demand of action list – and thats great, but it’s not officially endorsed by the occupy-protest organizers. It’s just a related topic chain letter posted by a random member named  in the forum section. Other forum posts include one asking “should we boycott Apple products?“, a call for a 60% tax rate and finally a list of videos explaining why this protest happened even though I watched half of them and still don’t know why this protest happened.

If this is what the protests are all about then this should be front page stuff and encapsulated on signs and banners the protestors are carrying. C’mon people…

Then theres this other list of demands which is wtf-y enough to merit reposting here:

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.

Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

Demand four: Free college education.

Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.

Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.

Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America’s nuclear power plants.

Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.

Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.

Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy.

I had things to say about each one, but unfortunately I stumbled across this post that already said some of them, so i’ll just link that instead of repeating:

Basically they want to pass Smoot-HawleyII because that worked well last time, create trillions and trillions of new debt get paid for a job whether or not they do any work (I actually joked about this before I saw the list. Parody is dead). In general…repeal reality and destroy the economy.

I especially love the demand for an amendment demanding racial equality. Why didn’t someone think of that sooner?

Demand list via Adam Baldwin.

BTW- These people are demanding jobs? If you’re unemployed, how extensive is your job search if you have time to spend days at a time camping out in lower Manhattan?

I would love for someone from a Wall St firm or two come out and start passing out job applications just to see the reactions of the “protesters”.

Amanda Carpenter notes that the “protesters” are looking for help in doing their laundry. An interest in hygiene is certainly a step forward in the world of hippies.

This whole thing is slowly coming together in my mind… I’m assuming the idea for this went something like “lets form a protest with no clear objective other than ‘corporate greed’. not greed. we’re down with greed. we’re greedy as fuck for instance when it comes to other peoples money. but greed by people and businesses selling products and services that we all use and love? fuck that! TAKE TO THE STREETS MY FELLOW PATRIOTS!!”

Cool Stairs

Reminder for when I have a few million to build things: I wanna put this type of staircase in a building and have LED’s under each strip presenting a color coded waterfall effect. It’d have to be subtle to prevent motion sickness and constant people tumbling down the stairs, but just a nice trickle down mix up that can be set from a computer or just go on autopilot. COMING SOON…

Dispelling Millionaire Myths

The Top 10% of Taxpayers Pay 70% of All Taxes. The latest research on U.S. income taxes data (conducted by several nonpartisan and independent organizations) shows that, on average, the top 10% of taxpayers pay approximately 70% of all federal taxes in America. Does “fair” mean they should be paying 80%, 90%, or 100% of all taxes instead? Is that the definition of “fair share” that both Obama and Buffett would be more comfortable and happy with? I think Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels would definitely have approved.

John Steele Gordon, business and economic historian, on the American tax code and the Buffett Tax. He also echoes everything I said in my 15 minute video on the Buffet Tax. Millionaires aren’t necessarily rich and they dont necessarily think of themselves as rich, for good reason.

Being rich has gotten more expensive. A $1 million fortune was unusual in the early 19th century. The word “millionaire” wasn’t even coined until 1827 by novelist (and future British prime minister) Benjamin Disraeli. In 1845, Moses Y. Beach, editor of the New York Sun, published a small pamphlet called “Wealth and Biography of the Wealthy Citizens of New York City.” The price of admission to Beach’s list, which was wildly popular, was a mere $100,000.

By the time the first Forbes 400 list of the richest people in America was published in 1982, the smallest fortune featured was $75 million. There has been so much wealth creation in the past 30 years — much of it thanks to the microprocessor behind modern-day fortunes such as Dell, Microsoft and Bloomberg — that only billionaires are on the list. Today, $1 million in the bank generates only about $50,000 per year in interest. That isn’t chump change, but it’s roughly equal to the 2010 median household income.

Further examples of “why lefties hate any Fox News related broadcast” are found in this Buffet Tax fact vs fiction segment:

And another on this “fair share” bullshit: Forbes Media Chairman Steve Forbes talks in this segment about the government’s punishment of the rich (and also who will win in 2012).

Note to hippies: the sooner you stop with the communist bullshit and go back to the government control that I agree with (sorry Tea Partiers, but yes, you are too stupid to make some of your own choices and no freedom isnt the answer to everything – just like government power isnt the answer to EVERYTHING), the sooner I can go back to teasing Rep Boner about being orange and crying all the time. Until then though.. I’m with Rep. John Boehner, (R-Ohio), on his view of the President’s proposed tax hikes on the wealthy, his efforts to reduce government spending and the need to reduce regulations.

Enough already. The government isn’t entitled to the money people earn any more when they make a lot than what they’re entitled to when they make a little. The American Dream is about encouraging people to become millionaires, not punishing them for it with higher tax rates that are pertinently unfair.

Facebook Timeline

The new facebook timeline change that is slowly rolling out to select profiles (coming to everyone soon) is already adding fuel for bitches on the crazytrain: one just messaged me cuz in the timeline she saw a status i posted about my car battery dying in 2009, using that as proof i was lying when i couldnt drive out to her a few months ago cuz of a dead battery… cuz you know. NO ONE has a bad battery go out twice in 2 years. totally busted. or something.



Hacks coming soon: