A birthday wish

The original filename for this image was “smug dog,” which is now the brand name of my line of yoga accessories.

Today is my thirty-fifth birthday. Now that I have ascended to the top of my demographic, I have only one more year of enjoying the exact same things as an 18 year-old. After that I like Family Circus, Harley-Davidsons and voting Republican. These sorts of changes don’t happen very often, as this poll analysis from the Times indicates. It starts out with some boring stuff about Paul Ryan and the base and a car salesman in Des Moines who is not related to me, but then you hit this:

A series of recent polls in six swing states showed that only 5 percent of voters were undecided and only about 1 in 10 likely voters who had chosen a candidate said they were open to switching. At this point four years ago, more than 1 in 4 voters nationwide said they might change their minds.

Anticipated total spending this election cycle: one billion dollars. Find out who’s going to win after the jump.

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The gloves come off re: class warfare

Rep. Paul Ryan (R–WI,) still perched on the line between good-looking and evil-looking

For the last several months it’s been showing up in Facebook comments and Boehner aides, but you almost never heard it from an actual congressman’s actual mouth until this weekend: class warfare. That’s what the Republican Party is calling Obama’s new jobs/deficit plan, with terrifying synchronization. “Class warfare may make for really good politics, but it makes for rotten economics,” Paul Ryan said on Fox News this weekend. “We don’t need a system that seeks to prey on people’s fear, envy and anxiety.” You can tell the GOP is scared about this, because Paul Ryan is talking. He’s the guy they get to tell the American people stuff we won’t want to hear, and they picked him the same way a carload of drunk frat boys decides who’s going to go knock on the door after they run over a dog. He’s handsome, at least by GOP standards. That’s good, because in this analogy, about 65% of America is the dog.

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