TPM caught this wonderful quote from wonderful "human being" Dennis Hastert last week:

Well, folks, if you earn $40,000 a year and have a family of two, you don't pay any taxes. So you probably, if you don't pay any taxes, you are not going to get a big tax cut.

There's some notes and updates at the link above explaining exactly why this is bullshit, but come on...I'm a family of one making less than a year of my college education cost, and I pay a good deal of taxes; maybe no federal income tax, but payroll, property, sales...am I missing any? And I actually don't think I need or deserve a cut - just like I don't think those making hundreds of thousands more than me deserve one. Anyway, our roly-poly Speaker of the House suggesting that those in and around the same pay grade as me make no contribution is truly offensive.

Turns out it's the frogs.

The French have been voted the world's most unfriendly nation by a landslide in a new British poll published. They were also voted the most boring and most ungenerous.

A decisive 46 percent of the 6,000 people surveyed by travellers' website Where Are You Now (WAYN) said the French were the most unfriendly nation people on the planet, British newspapers reported.

The Germans have no to reason to celebrate the damning verdict. They came second on all three counts.

I can't really comment on the specifics of this, as being your standard ignorant American I could count the number of foreigners - nevermind Frenchmen - I've encountered on one hand. And the ones I have met I was far too busy disliking for their personal idiosyncrasies than for anything that could be attributed to their origin. In college I did have an Australian TA who said that German tourists were the most unpleasant people imaginable. But again, I can't provide any independent verification of that.

I had more to write on this, a bit about how wouldn't it be cool if wars could be fought via this sort of poll instead of actual fighting. Upon further reflection, though, I decided it was pretty stupid. But I refuse to discard what I've already written. So there you go.

(via Huffington Post)

See how much every major video game console cost then, and what it would cost in today's dollars. Truly fascinating. Funny how arguably the best - the Atari 7800 - was also the cheapest in both senses.

Well, ok, the 7800 probably wasn't the best. SNES beats it. But it was definitely underrated, and an extremely worthy 8-bit console.

(via Waxy.org)

Listening to MPR today I heard Perry Finelli read a quote from John McCain that I found so insipid, I had to see if he actually said it. And he did:

Said McCain, addressing Vitter, "Call it a banana if you want to...to call the process that we require under this legislation amnesty frankly distorts the debate and it’s an unfair interpretation of it."

I stopped admiring Old John a while ago, but for some reason this line really seals my dislike of him. It has nothing to do with the policy they're debating. It's just...is that the best he could do? A banana?

Abramoff ally David Vitter (R-LA; in my mind I can't help but pronounce his name "vittle") wins some English-major points with his reply:

Vitter sought the last word. “Methinks thou dost protest too much.”

Of course, he only gets partial credit for that: first of all, he misquoted the line from Hamlet. It actually goes, "The lady protests too much, methinks." It's a common mistake, though pulling "thou" out of thin air seems uniquely pompous. Anyway, my other qualm with Vittle's response is that by mangling the quote, he missed a perfectly good opportunity to refer to McCain as "the lady."

No gay Republican Party Chair of mine is gonna be not gay! Well he better get gay, or I'm gonna make him gay!

(bit stolen from Mr. Show)

Here's video of Chuck Norris reading some of those Norrisisms on Best Damn Sports Show. I think it's interesting because neither Norris or anyone on the show really had anything to do with writing those facts. It's also fun to watch how poorly Norris reads them - like it's the first time he's seen any of them.

If there's one lesson the new NSA bombshell has hammered home, it's this:

  

We can't trust anyone who looks this much like Kurtwood Smith! I mean, come on! Hayden's a dead ringer! How could we not expect him to mastermind a spy program targeting American citizens? Didn't anyone see Robocop?

But seriously, did we really not see this coming? I mean, I already assumed they'd been recording calls made by the few non-terrorist Americans left...if they've just been gathering the phone numbers involved, well, then that actually takes them up a couple notches in my book. Prepare the medals of freedom! Oh wait...I started this paragraph off with "but seriously," didn't I? Sorry for the sarcastic digression.

Do we really have to go through 2 1/2 more years of this? Can we give these guys, and the 1/3 of us who still like them, an island or something and tell them that's America now? Or maybe convince them there was another terrorist attack and get them to go underground with the whole shadow government thing? And then we can just start over without them?