Is that all there is?

January 11, 2013

If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing.
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball…

I like the sound of that.

Have you seen this?

AIG Won’t Join Lawsuit Against the US.
(Click on it to read the source story.)

So, what lawsuit is AIG no joining, you might ask?  I know.  Most people had forgotten about this but, AIG’s former CEO has organized a $25 billion (billion with a “b”) lawsuit on behalf of AIG shareholders, claiming that the U.S. government’s bailout deal was to expensive and that the government took too much equity in the company in return for their $182B – calling the bailout “forced”.

Huh?  I guess we should have let them fail. Oh wait, I’ve been saying this that whole time.  And, I bet if we did let them fail, they’d be suing us over that.  I say “us” because this is just more taxpayer money – your money and my money, and the Washington money machine just lets it go on and on.

Whatevs!

I’m so tired.  I’d been taking it easy for a while but this is 2013.  I’ve been working on a spaceship for a lot of years and this year, we’re launching it into orbit. So take your protein pills and put your helmets on.  Launching a spacecraft isn’t easy and I haven’t seen my rocket scientist friends in years – they are out sailing, where I should be.

Funny, I’ve been working until 2am every night.  That’s my “hard stop” time.  When it gets to be 1:45am, I’m like, “oh damn… time to go to bed”.  Doesn’t matter.  I’m a machine.

Rock me…  Rock me.
Roll me through the night!

Doctor, Doctor, Give me the news…
I went to see a doctor the other day.  There’s nothing wrong with me…  Outside of deciding to go see a doctor, that is.  It turns out that when your age starts rounding up to 100, they want to start poking, prodding, and sending cameras up into places that haven’t seen light since Richard Gere wanted his gerbil back.

So, I make an appointment for a “consult” and the lady on the phone says to me, “OK.  Make sure you bring your insurance card, a picture ID, and all of your medications”.  No worries.

Appointment day gets here,
and while staring at my bottle of Don Julio, she’s like, “what’s that?”

“That’s tequila.  It was your idea that I bring all my medications!”

“In fact”, checking my watch.  “Do you guys have any shot glasses?”

Then she hands me this clipboard and wants me to fill out all this stuff.
Do you have this?  Do you have that?  I thought they were going to tell me!

Here were my favorite questions with my answers:

Q: Do you use alcohol?
A: Duh!

Q: Do you use cigarettes?
A: Not since I broke up with the girl that liked me to burn her neck.

Q: Do you suffer from memory loss?
A: What was the question?

Q: Do you suffer from memory loss!!!?
A: I don’t remember. Why are you people in my house?

Q: Have you ever been diagnosed with Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome?
A: Is that a law firm in Fort Lauderdale?

Q: Have you ever been diagnosed with Takayasu Arteritis?
A: Do I look Japanese?

Q: Do you suffer from panic attacks?
A: Not until I had to read this list of shit I might suffer from.

Then I threw the clipboard at her and jumped out the window.

But Why Are We Really Here Today?
Is it to look at the new tax tables for 2013?

2013_tax_rates

Seriously?  So if you make less than $8700 per year, your marginal tax rate is increasing from 10% to 15%.  That’s 5%!  But all the other tax increases are smaller. Does that sound like tax increases are only affecting the ultra-successful or shall we hold hands and chant “Liar. Liar. Pants on fire!” ..at Señor Presidente?

No. That’s not why we’re here today.  We can do that anytime.

We’re here because I promised a non-redhead that was more my age.
Well, here she is…

This week’s Non-Redhead of The Week is Hope Davis.

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I’m going to say that 48 doesn’t get any sexier than this.

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If you’re not familiar with this Jersey girl, look her up and rent some movies.  You might like “About Schmidt”, for which the NY Film Critics Circle nominated her for Best Supporting Actress.

I would recommend The Nines, a crazy-assed film starring Hope with Ryan Reynolds that, at the end of the movie will leave you wondering, what the f@3k was that movie about?  Yes, a little nutty and confusing, but interesting and Hope tips the scales just enough to make it worth watching.

Hmmm…  I haven’t seen it in a while.  Maybe I’d understand it better the second time?

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Is that tequila?  Call me.

Well, is that all there is for today?

It would be, if it wasn’t for this video from the movie, The Nines,
with Hope Davis singing the Peggy Lee classic Is That All There Is? 

Oh, great…
Now I’m picturing her shivering in her pajamas.  It’s definitely time to go.

So…???  Don’t you love it when it all comes together at the end.
You see.  If you trust me… I will deliver you from evil.

And that my friends is…  All There Is.
So, let’s break out the booze and have a ball!

Peace

 – Arch

Time to Pick-up The Tab…
Well, America.  You re-elected him.  Now it’s time to pick-up the tab.
Obama said: We’re just going to tax the ultra-successful.  (I don’t like calling them “rich”.)
Archie said: But listen here, O-man, there aren’t enough ultra-successful people.  Even if you taxed all of them out-the-wazoo, that won’t work.

Of course, he already knew that but that didn’t matter.  He was just trying to win an election. So now it was time to deal with the fiscal cliff.  A cliff that we should have driven over.  Instead, it was time to wheel & deal.  And, although the ultra-successful will absolutely be paying more – so that they have less money with which to create jobs, everyone will be paying higher taxes in 2013.  If you make between $50K and $75K, you’ll be paying about an extra $1000 this year.  If you make more, guess what?  Yup – you’ll pay more.  That should cover just about everyone who reads this blog.  You pay more, you pay more. Oh and you – you pay more.

By the way, for all of you who voted for Obama because he supports same-sex marriages (every now and then), even though the President has absolutely no influence whatsoever on whether or not your state allows same-sex marriage…  For you, I call this The Gay Marriage Tax Increase.  Now when your gay friends get married, you’ll have $1000 less with which to buy them a nice gift.

So who will be paying higher taxes,you ask?  Answer: 77% of Americans!
Isn’t anyone besides me thinking, “Liar, liar.. Pants on fire?”

What do you suppose Prez O is going to do with all the cash?
I know whenever I have big debts and I get a bunch of cash in, I try to pay everything to zero.  Even if I can’t get to zero, I still try to pay down my debts.  After all, it shows that I am responsible with my money and it cuts down my interest charges.  Surely, our fearless leader will be doing the same…  Yes/No?

Actually… Uh…  No.
Actually, actually…  Obama’s plan is to keep spending.  In order to avoid a fiscal catastrophe, we’ve now agreed to spending an extra 4 trillion dollars, which will require another raising of the debt ceiling – just as soon as Obama gets back from vacationing in Hawaii.  In reality, we’re already over the debt ceiling – we hit it on New Year’s Eve.  So right now, we’re basically over our credit limit but we’re still borrowing & spending using US Treasury Department trickery.

So what was this cliff we avoided?
My guess is that most people didn’t even understand what the Fiscal Cliff was about.  First of all, there was no cliff.  It basically consisted of two things.  1) The Bush Tax cuts were to expire and 2) $109 Billion in Federal Tax cuts went into effect.  Uh…  These both sound like good things.

Obama wanted to tax the ultra-successful more and, as any democrat would tell you, the Bush Tax Cuts were mainly tax breaks for the ultra-successful.  So why not let them expire, then go back and reinstate some tax breaks for the middle class?  Answer: Because Ben Bernake nicknamed the coincidence of these two events a potential Fiscal Cliff.  That gave our government the fuel they needed to make it sound catastrophic and requiring immediate action.  After all, our government doesn’t want to spend $109B less this year.  That would be overly smart and responsible.  Instead they want to spend more. Awesome.

That gets us back to…
Four (4) trillion dollars…without any agreement to reduce any government spending!

$4,000,000,000,000

Holy crap that’s a lot of cash.  Doesn’t anyone worry about this?
I guess we could just ignore it.  Like the Greeks did.  What could go wrong?

greece-financial-crisis

Well, at least Obama isn’t just giving money away to big corporations…
Oh, wait a minute.  What’s this?  I thought those ultra-successful Wall Street bankers were bad guys, Mr. President.  So why did we extend the “special financing” tax cuts to these guys?  That costs $9 Billion dollars every year.  $9 Billion!!!

Then there’s the “Liberty Zone” tax-exempt financing, which, on the surface, sounds like tax free financing to fund reconstruction around the former World Trade Center in NYC.  But, upon close inspection, where is this money actually going?  Oh…  It’s a $1.6 Billion tax break for Goldman Sach.  That makes sense.  After all, people from Goldman Sachs were at the White House all last week and eventually announced that a small tax increase for all Americans was probably good idea.  I guess I’d say that too if I could then get $1.6 Billion in tax breaks for my new cool offices in Manhattan

Socialist Hate Crime?
OK, so, I don’t normally promote morons by naming them here on my show (blog) but did you hear about Thom Hartmann‘s rant last week?  Well, this socialist yo-yo, who apparently has his own radio talk show, suggested that being a billionaire should be illegal and that all wealth beyond $1 billion should be confiscated “to help those of us who have less”. In fact, he went on to say, “You can call it redistribution of wealth, that’s fine, I am perfectly comfortable with that language. I think we should outlaw billionaires.”

Seriously?  I don’t even know what to say.

But I’ll take a crack at it…  Dear Mr. Hartmann,  Have you stopped to consider that there are only 425 billionaires in the United States and that they average about $4 billion dollars each?  This means that if you took all the money from every billionaire in America, you might be able to keep the US afloat for about 12 months.  That is, of course, just the debt borrowing needs of the country – we haven’t even helped anyone yet. If you distributed this money among all other Americans, everyone would get about $6K.

Note:  I’d spend my $6K on expensive booze and cheap women.
Although, not necessarily in that order.

Then we’d have no billionaires and all the same problems we have today.  Granted this is still a better plan than giving it to the government.  If we did that, they’d blow about half of it first.  Then we’d each get about $3K.  Then we’d have no billionaires and all the same problems.

Too bad no one can think of a plan whereby billionaires could create jobs, put people to work, and generate countless dollars in payroll taxes.  I guess socialist just don’t think that way. That’s right.  i don’t usually do it.  But I had to call this guy a socialist….

I am perfectly comfortable with that language.

But my big question is…  Why isn’t getting on the air and professing that you hate billionaires a hate crime?  I understand that billionaires are not a “protected group” but maybe they should be.  If someone got on the air and suggested that they hated the poor, there would probably be a public outcry. Hmmm…  Well, maybe Oprah will buy this guy a new car and he’ll shut the hell up. But then, I guess if all I did was have a little crazy “far left” radio talk show so that I could promote my socialistic ideas, I’d probably hate billionaires too.

And then there’s gun control…
And then there’s gun control…  Did I say that twice?  So please don’t think that I am accusing the democrats of planting nutty people around the country who “go off” and start randomly shooting but somehow, I wasn’t that surprised at that recent school shooting.  I was somewhat expecting it and I think we can expect more of them.  I think there are some looney people out there who are just crazy enough to pull the trigger on others and then on themselves so that Obama and his gang can point at them and say, “see…we need better gun controls”… and that worries me.

Here’s another thing that worries me.  Gun control advocates are idiots and, in the name of safety, they’ve turned our schools into the perfect place for a looney shooter.  Everyone knows that there are no weapons at a school.  In other words, there’s no one there who will shoot back at you.  How stupid is this?

We protect our money with armed guards, we protect our borders with armed guards, we have armed air marshals on flights.  Whenever something really needs protecting, we have armed guards there – but we protect our children with unarmed guards.  Does that make any sense?

Even our President, Mr Gun Control himself…  He is protected by armed guards.  I say when Obama disarms his guards, I’ll disarm mine.  In the meantime, let’s get some armed “school marshals” trained and placed at every school in America.  There – I just created some jobs.

Then there’s these mega yo-yos at Journal News in Clarkstown, NY.  They published an online interactive map showing all handgun permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties.  How awesome is that?  Now criminals can see exactly which house don’t have guns.  This is brilliant.

But here’s the best part… After the newspaper then received some non-threatening yet somewhat concerning emails, they hired armed guards!!!  I can’t make this stuff up.  I’ll repeat…  The big anti-gun newspaper hired guys with gun when they felt that they needed protection.

Isn’t it ironic…  Don’t you think?

So every last one of the biggest anti-gun voices in the country now have people with guns protecting them.  What is that, if not hypocritical?

OMG!  I think my head is going to explode.
I need something to calm me down.  Let’s switch to something fun.  How about….

Blonde of The Week.  What?
Unrolling a giant scroll, he began to read…

“And now, by the power vested in me by the states of Florida, California, and Tennessee, and the fine people of the British Virgin Islands, technically including Foxy, the guy who owns Foxy’s Bar and Her Majesty, The Queen, I hereby pronounce 2013 the year of the non-redhead.”

[Rejoicing is overheard from the crowd gathered outside the palace, predominantly consisting of hot chick blondes and brunettes.]

“But be forewarned my follow citizens”, he continued. “2014 will once again be a year of the redhead.  Years that end in 4 always are.”

Remembering the ancient “Rule of 4’s”, the crowd acknowledged that their time to shine was limited but collectively resolved to make the most of the next 12 months.

So, who will have the honor of being the first non-redhead of the week?  Much thought was given to this.  As if an entirely new world had been opened up to them, the research department spent countless sleepless nights away from their usual rigorous schedule of porn downloading, so they could familiarize themselves with blondes, brunettes, and others…

…but at the end of the day, the choice was mine.  My first thought was to avoid some of the usual criticisms by selecting someone “more my age” – but that’s just silly.  Instead, I decided to go with a young punk in her mid-20’s.  You know, before she hits then big Three-Oh and becomes to old for me.  I’ll feature someone more-my-age next time.

And so, our first Non-Redhead (Blonde) of The Week is… Jemina Pearl

jemina-pearl-01

[Spoken like Butthead (from Beavis & Butthead)]
“Hey, baby…”

So…  “Where do we know Jemina from”, you might ask?
Well, you may have heard that I love time-traveler bands.  You  know, bands from now, who could have fit in, in the 80’s, who like like a girlfriend, that I has in February of last year…?

Well, one such band was Be Your Own Pet and JP was their lead singer. Be Your Own Pet was like a late 80’s early 90’s Garage Punk Band.  They were awesome fun and with Jemina as their front person, they were also easy to watch.  Unfortunately, BYOP is no longer together. 😦

jemina-pearl-02

So what is this lovely creature doing now-a-days?

Well, when she’s not hanging out with Archie (which is pretty much all the time), she’s working on a project called Ultras S/C.  After some minimal listening, however, I don’t think I like Ultras S/C.  So far, what I’ve heard, sounded like a Dead Kennedys experiment gone bad.  But hey, I’m diggin’ the longer hair…

jemina-pearl-03

Ah, but we’re not done with her yet.
That’s right…  This week’s Musical Guest…  Be Your Own Pet.

So many good one to pick from, which shall it be?

OK, here’s BYOP performing Adventure.

Don’t you love her?
Well, I do…  and that’s what matters around here.

I usually have to pause that video right around 1:30 just to check out her cute face

And what was that guy, a giant bunny…  Who hunts giant bunnies?
I guess if you hunt giant bunnies, you have to make sure you get his girlfriend too.

Hmmm…  Now that I’m thinking about it, I probably shouldn’t have featured her in a blog post where I totally bash the democrats.  It’s hard to imagine that a 25-year old female punk rocker wouldn’t be a democrat.  I won’t even bother with a “call me, maybe”.  🙂

Just in cased you’re reading, JP.  I’m NPA, baby…  No Party Affiliation!  I actually don’t like either side. They both suck for their respective reasons.  I think they keep our country divided and prevent us from moving forward.  Maybe, we should write a song about that?

Well…no matter.  I gotta run.
So, that’s it for this week.

See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya!

And, oh yeah…  Happy Freakin’ New Year!
We’re off to a great freakin’ start, aren’t we?
<smootches>

– Arch