As chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Republican U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz has been slammed by constituents at fiery town hall meetings, upset with his refusal to challenge President Donald Trump’s hard-line agenda and potential ethics violations. Up until now, the Utah representative has assumed he was safe from enraged voters while far away in Washington, but that has all changed after a chilling moment in his DC home: Jason Chaffetz just opened up his dishwasher, and a horde of angry constituents spilled out, yelling at him to do his job.
It’s a sign of how low Trump’s approval ratings have fallen when even Republicans in typically safe red states have to worry about angry Americans crawling out of their appliances.
I just don't get why THIS is the thing that so many people say "This. THIS is what I'm going to be proud to be a dick to complete strangers about. THIS IS WHERE MY PENISNESS STANDS."
happy international women’s day! this is a reminder for u to include women of colour, disabled women, LGBT+ women, women of all religions and nationalities, poor women, fat women - ALL WOMEN in your activism. you only fight for women if you fight for all of them.
The Sound of Silence is probably one of my favorite songs ever. When speaking of the “true” Simon and Garfunkel version (as opposed to the version where they added background music to in post to make it more “pop radio”), it’s a song that gives me chills.
Disturbed is not a band that I really enjoy. I remember in college, my (now) wife gave me a copy of a Disturbed CD, because she had two for some reason. I tried to listen to it, I really did. Didn’t do anything for me.
But this? Holy fuck, this is stunning. This is amazing.
the best part of that story in context is that before they pull out their dicks, hemingway spends the better part of a chapter physically describing fitzgerald in great detail, claiming to be grossed out by him but obviously, obviously uncomfortably attracted
oh my god, it got better. I just went to find an excerpt and
Scott was a man then who looked like a boy with a face between handsome and pretty. He had very fair wavy hair, a high forehead, excited and friendly eyes and a delicate long-lipped Irish mouth that, on a girl, would have been the mouth of a beauty. His chin was well built and he had good ears and a handsome, almost beautiful, unmarked nose. This should not have added up to a pretty face, but that came from the coloring, the very fair hair and the mouth. The mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more.
ernest hemingway calm down and control your thirst a little
“The mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more“ is a hell of a line
If your repugnance towards anti-Semitism is only for the wrongs done to fictional Jewish characters and not living Jewish people, you need to reevaluate your priorities.
Turns out that healthcare is more expensive than one (1) iPhone
My recent 4-day hospital stay was $3000 after insurance. That is several iPhones.
When I was in college I had a budgeting strategy where $1 = 1 egg roll. And if something was like $3 I would ask myself if I would prefer to have the thing? Or three egg rolls? And if egg rolls won, then, well, I did not spend the $3.
And believe you me, I would much rather have THREE THOUSAND EGGROLLS but I didn’t really have a choice in that one.
I tried to explain to a friend of mine who has never ever been poor in his life why it is that poverty is a cycle, and why it’s so difficult to escape poverty.
His response was, “just save money”. I kept trying to explain that when you are living paycheck to paycheck, there really is no saving money because most of your income is being spent on basic needs: food, shelter, clothing, transportation.
So, then he responded, “well, why can’t you just save $5 every week”. Well, a lot of poor people do try to save. I would manage to get a few hundred in my savings account, but then you get a flat tire, or you end up getting sick and missing a week of work, or you have an unexpected bill. And, that few hundred dollars suddenly disappears. I tried to explain to him that when you’re poor, unanticipated expenses can very quickly and easily blow through what little you have in your savings account and put you back at square one.
I also tried to explain that when you are that poor, you need to make purchases while you have the money. Like, if I needed a new pair of jeans and I had an extra $30 that week, I would buy myself a new pair of jeans that week because I didn’t know when I would have an extra $20 or $30 to spend. So, he countered that with, “You don’t need to buy clothes. You could have put that $30 in your savings.”
To which I responded, “Well, if it were socially acceptable to walk around without pants on, then maybe poor people could climb out of poverty, but until then, when your jeans have holes in them, or don’t fit you anymore, you need to get some new ones.”
Then it kind of clicked for him.. a little.
So, I went on to talk about the sociological aspects of poverty, like how growing up poor, or growing up as part of a marginalized demographic pushes your starting block 100 feet behind your peers.. how our educational systems are set up to fail impoverished children. The light bulb flickered, but never fully turned on.
And, then he said, “I still can’t believe you were ever on food stamps.”
Yes, my friend, poverty and I get a nice little reunion every few years. I know it intimately, which is why you should sit back, relax, and just listen.
I never understood how it was so difficult to see the realities of poverty. To me, it is sort of common sense. And, what is irksome is that poverty doesn’t always present itself as an old beat up car, and falling apart sneakers. People who grow up middle class and financially secure seem to think that poverty looks a lot like dirty children with dirty clothes, and no shoes. But, it doesn’t. It can be that, but it’s often not.
I grew up in a nice house in the suburbs, but we were poor. We were very poor for a long time, in part due to my medical issues. People assume that because we went to Catholic school, and had a nice house that we were well-off. We weren’t. My mother worked 2-3 jobs, and my parents took out loans to pay for our school tuition. My mother’s parents helped pay for some of our education, even though they were also incredibly poor. My parents sometimes struggled to put food on the table.
I never had clothes that were dirty or falling apart, but most of my clothes and shoes were hand-me-downs from my older cousins. In fact, a lot of my toys were, too.
Both of my parents grew up in poverty. My father, especially, grew up in complete and abject poverty. Their parents grew up in poverty, and so did their parents. My parents made immense sacrifices to set us up for financial success, but life always finds a way to intervene.
Personally, my health issues have been the driving factor behind my own financial issues. I have amassed thousands of dollars in medical debt. I work a job that doesn’t use my degree at all because I can work part time and still get benefits, and because I know I won’t get fired if I need to take extended absences due to my health.
So, when you say, “I still can’t believe you were ever on food stamps,” you are really saying, “I have this picture in my head of what poverty looks like, and you don’t fit that image.”
That idea we have about what poverty is supposed to look like is a big reason why people in the middle class are so content with cutting safety net programs, even though they are one medical problem, one car accident, or one lay-off away from complete financial ruin. What does poverty look like, then. How do you “just save money”, then.
poverty in the developed world doesn’t look like a refugee child with flies on their face.
it looks like a normal person in normal clothes, in a normal apartment, with their bills spread out on the kitchen table, crying.
There’s still no trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi but Disney Shareholders got to see the first public footage anywhere on Wednesday and, in it, Luke Skywalker finally spoke.
No, no, mine sorts through old and new photographs, meticulously documenting what appears to be nearly his entire life. You know when your partner has an interest that you genuinely don't get, but you still admire their dedication to it?
Ladies, take note: This is what men do when you aren’t around. They chop wood cinematically with varying degrees of frustration directed at the wood.
“If they didn’t like his, they’re going to be furious with mine,” Miranda says. “I intend to represent a corner of London with my accent that has not yet been invented. I’m going to have the worst accent in the history of English accents—I’m going to sound like I’m from another planet.”
Welcome to “Alternative Black History Month” courtesy of HUD Secretary Ben Carson:
“That’s what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less,“ he said. “But they, too, had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”
My bros I have been doing a lot of
reading about Wacky WWII Hijinks lately and I want to tell you a
story because I love it okay
once upon a time there was a dude in
Spain named Juan Pujol Garcia. Pujol was a chicken farmer. Pujol
hated him some goddamn fascists.
See Spain had recently ended its civil
war, with the fascists taking power. So when WWII broke out in
Europe, Spain technically remained neutral but in practice was buddy
buddy with the Nazis. Juan Pujol Garcia thought this was pretty
bullshit
so soon after war breaks out Pujol
travels to his local British embassy and goes “hey I wanna spy on
the Nazis for you”
“who the fuck are you?” say the
British, and kick him out
but Pujol is not deterred! He still
wants to dunk on some fascists, so now he goes to his local German
embassy instead. “hey” he
says, “I wanna spy on the British for you, I sure do hate them”
“yeah
okay” say the Germans “that seems pretty legit”
and
just like that Pujol now officially works for the Abwehr, the German
intelligence agency. They hand him some spy gear (invisible ink and
such) and instruct him to travel to Lisbon, and from there make his
way into the UK. So Pujol heads to Lisbon, and a little while later
writes to his German handlers telling them he’s made it to England
Pujol
had not made it to England. He had, in fact, made it to the Lisbon
public library, where he checked out a number of English guide books
and set about just wholesale making shit up
this
is slightly complicated by the fact that, for example, he completely
did not understand British currency and all his expense reports were
basically gibberish. He also reported things like bribing Scotsmen,
because the people of Glasgow would “do anything for a litre of
wine” (an actual quote) because, hey, people in Spain like wine so
that’s probably the same right?
Here
is where it starts to get really crazy, because the Abwehr loves
this. “wow this dude is a
great spy” they say, because apparently none of them had ever been
the England either. In fact, they are so pumped about this new
awesome spy that the British start to get worried
you
see, by this time the British had cracked German’s supposedly
unbreakable Enigma code and were totally dunking on the Nazis by
reading basically all of their ~super top secret~ radio
transmissions. And, crucially, they’d become so good at breaking and
reading traffic that there were literally no German spies in England.
The Germans would set up a spy drop (usually dropping dudes in by
parachute in the middle of the night), the British would intercept
the message and then just scoop the dudes up as soon as they landed
in a move that must have been SUPER embarrassing to the spies
so
there are no German spies in the UK because they’re all sitting in a
prison run by MI5 (although some are being run under supervision as
double agents, feeding Germany bullshit). But suddenly MI5 is picking
up all this traffic from the Germans talking about their super great
spy- a spy the British do not have in their jail
“oh
shit” says MI5, and starts rereading all the transmissions they
have to and from this mysterious super spy.
“hey
wait” says MI5, upon actually reading the shit the spy was sending.
“someone is playing silly buggers, pip pip cheerio”
At
this point, Pujol, still in Lisbon, had actually been approaching the
British embassy again, repeatedly, but apparently “I am literally
an Abwehr agent and would like to offer you my services” wasn’t
interesting enough, because he was repeatedly turned away, again.
It wasn’t until MI5 started
asking around that one of the embassy staff was like “oh yeah we
know that guy”
so in
1942 the British finally make contact with Pujol and he officially
becomes a spy for MI5. They move him to London and assign him a case
officer so he can start making up even better bullshit
and he
does. Once actually in London, Pujol reports to the Abwehr that he’d
recruited a whole slew of informants- from a bunch of Welsh Aryans to
disaffected army officers. He ends up with a network of 20+
sub-spies, all feeding him information from around the UK
none of these people actually exist
Pujol
just straight up invented like 20 people, keeping careful track of
their fake personalities, names, and activities. With the help of
MI5, the information he sends becomes even better- a mix of true but
ultimately useless facts and actually important intel timed to arrive
in Germany just slightly too late to be of any use. He and his “spy
network” become the Abwehr’s most trusted agents
Pujol,
now codenamed Agent Garbo (for his acting skills), ends up playing a
huge role in the run-up to D-Day, where the Allies mounted a huge
intelligence campaign to convince Hitler that the planned site of
attack was going to be Calais and not Normandy (this was Operation
Fortitude and you should absolutely look it up for more Wacky WWII
Adventures). Obviously you know how this ended
crazily
enough, the Abwehr never figured out that Pujol was a double agent.
After the war he received both the Iron Cross Second Class (which
require personal authorization from Hitler), and a
Member of the Order of the British Empire (from King George VI)
unable
to resist being totally fucking ridiculous,
Pujol turned down MI5’s post-war offer to continue spying, but this
time against the USSR. “no,” he said “just help me fake my own
death and then I’m moving to Venezuela”
and
that’s exactly what he did. Juan Garcia Pujol died in 1988, at the
age of 76
whoops looks like the writers at marvel need a reminder of their own characters’ origins before they do something else grossly offensive
hey, nick spencer! i know you’re probably not reading this, but shut up and listen for a second, maybe you’ll learn something about respect. do you know how many jewish people died during the holocaust? somewhere between 5,000,000 to 6,000,000.
yes, you read that right. five to six million people dead, all less than eighty years ago.
marvel comics have never skirted around this. they made it a vital part of magneto’s history, one that shapes his attitudes and opinions more than anything else. he’s been subjugated, and he’s not going to let it happen to his people - in this case, mutants - again.
so what, mr. spencer, are you accomplishing by having him join up with hydra beyond spitting in the faces of all those millions of dead? you’ve taken a jewish character - created by JEWISH WRITERS AND ARTISTS - and signed him up with what’s clearly the marvel universe’s equivalent of the nazis. what are we supposed to take away from this besides the knowledge that you are a cold, insensitive human being?
magneto deserves better. the jewish community deserves better. and you own the latter a hell of an apology.
by Megan Reynolds on The Slot, shared by Megan Reynolds to Jezebel
On Monday, Donald Trump signed a newer, shinier version of the travel ban that prevents people from six Muslim-majority countries from getting visas for 90 days and suspends the refugee program in the United States for 120 days: On Tuesday, Hawaii filed a suit against the new travel ban, in the hopes of it being…
Republicans' effort to reform health care is already pissing off one of their core constituencies: old people. The AARP, which lobbies on behalf older Americans, put out a brutal (and amusing!) web video Monday afternoon fighting back against Republicans' plans to replace Obamacare. In the video, a wood-chopping older man in the forest explains that his squirrel friend told him about the GOP's plans to change what are know as "age-bands." The age-band policy, implemented by Obamacare, said that health insurers could not charger their older clients more than three times as much as the youngest consumers. The GOP's plan would bump that ratio up to 5-to-1. (Older people are generally riskier to insure and spend more on health care.)
The AARP isn't a fan of that change, calling it an "age tax" and describing it as a hand out to big insurance companies. "No, I don't think that's fair either, Charlie," the man tells his squirrel friend. The ad closes with him encouraging people to call Congress and tell their representatives to vote against the bill.
RETWEET: The “age tax” would force Americans age 50-64 to pay thousands of $$$ more for health care. Tell Congress #NoAgeTax! pic.twitter.com/eFUcRZtm22
True story, one time we came to pick up the girls from the vet, and the boyfriend's cat straight up and disappeared. She's small, she can fit ANYWHERE, and she can do that ninja thing were she's really still so even if she's right in front of you, there's a really good chance you won't see her. The vet's assistant was visibly distraught, and obviously really worried about how we would react, but we were both like, "yeah, we know. We'll be in the waiting room with the other one."
I really want to do this, and I'm pretty sure my boss would OK it, but I'd lose a day's pay and I'd just have three times as much work to do on Thursday.
On Wednesday, March 8, dozens of schools will shut down in response to a nationwide general strike, “A Day Without a Woman.”
Meet Ted, the rescue doggie who escaped a shelter and tracked down a staff member who had given him some food, deciding his own fate by showing up at her house. In January, Abbey Boyd was doing a shift at the local SPCA, where Ted had been surrendered the day before. She was the only person whom Ted allowed close after she fed him some cheese-flavored bacon. Before that, he would refuse to go for a walk, interact with others and was very timid and quiet in his own corner.
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Boyd also tried to get a bigger kennel for him. However, other than that, she explains, “I had next to no contact with Ted during my shift at the SPCA. I left and went home.” The next morning the woman woke up around 3 A.M. and started to get ready for her job at the airport. When she came back home, there was a dog right next to her house.
“I realized that it had to be Ted,” she said. Boyd took it as a sign not to be ignored and started sorting out the adoption papers immediately. “He showed up at my house, out of how many people [that] live here? All the dogs. All the smells. He chose my house. Where I am.”
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. And then the murders began.
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. And then the murders began.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And then the murders began.
The phantom of the opera did exist. And then the murders begun.
Maman died today. And then the murders began.
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. And then the murders began.
In 1815 Monsieur Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of Digne. And then the murders began.
Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram; multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem, inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum, Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae. Deinde homicidia coeperunt.
When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton. And then the murders began.
“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. And then the murders began.
It was a dark and stormy night. And then the murders began.
“Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive.
