The world's most expensive hot dog is now MADE IN AMERICA (NO KETCHUP!)

Earlier this year, some Canadian thought he could beat Americans at our plutocracy/encased meats nexus game - an idea so wrong, the original article has been scrubbed from the internets.

America is BACK, baby!

Hot Dog Mike Juiliano creates The World’s Most Expensive Hot Dog (comma) for charity

I guess if your parents name you Hot Dog Mike, it kind of limits your career choices.

Previously, Canada held the record for the most expensive hot dog, but he thought it was time to bring the title back to America, intending no offense to Canada. (America: PHOKK YEAH!! SUCK IT, Canada ... Ed.)

The dog – made with a quarter-pound of premium beef – was also topped with lobster tail and saffron aioli. (NO KETCHUP! Ed.) ... Bystanders questioned whether the condiment covering her face was mustard or gold. At the same time, Juiliano assured everyone that the gold was "American gold" (PHOKK YEAH! Ed.).
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May the Goat Curse continue to work...

The Ricketts family is against “wasteful government spending” unless it helps make them rich

It's funny that Joe Ricketts is so passionate against “wasteful government spending” when his family, led by son, Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts, has just asked the people of Illinois to borrow $300 million in a bond offering so that it can rehab Wrigley Field. This request follows a vote in Mesa, AZ which guaranteed the Cubs $84 million in public funds to build a new spring training stadium and facility.

Fun things to remember about the Bush tax cuts

1. The Bush tax cuts, written by Congresses led by Denny Hastert and Trent Lott and Bill Frist and signed by George Bush, were set to expire at the end of 2010. Got a prollem wif dat? Talk to them.

2. Part of the rationale for passing "temporary" tax cuts is that we were running record phokking budget surpluses at the time. We are, if the misspelled rally signs of Tea Party activists are to be believed, no longer doing this.

3. The Class War is on, and the plutocrats are kicking your ass.

4. George W. Bush destroyed my country.

5. Sorry if this isn't really much fun after all.

6. George W. Bush is still a yooooge phokking asshole.

Last Minute Gift Ideas

Found this lovely one in Skymall...

Annudder riduculous poll

Dere's a poll on the Facebooks asking if welfare recipients should take a drug test first. Has anyone taken it? If so, please report the results. I can't bring myself to take the poll. It's tooooo stooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooopid.

Got $28 Meeeelion?

Den do I have a fantastic real estate opportunity for ya:

http://www.villataj.com/

Finally, we've found our Spades house. And Smiff is so not invited to stay over.

TV - Far too forgiving

For here's someone that shouldn't be allowed to talk anymore, first, because he's always wrong, second because he's annoying, and third, because he was such a wuss on The Daily Show.



Jim Cramer: Buy A House Now, Calls Housing Bottom

They warned us!

AIG employee quits at 'betrayal'

The mass exodus of those who would "save" "AIG" has begun. They won't get their bonuses, so they're outta dere. Taking with them their expertise in er, um, ah, I'll get back to you on that one.

Boo di freaking Hoo

You Try to Live on 500K in This Town

I'm sure the 15,000 people you laid off also feel sympathetic to your 500k plight.

I can't tell if he thinks this is SHOCKING or not

"Michael Lewis, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of 'Liar’s Poker,' is writing a book about the collapse of Wall Street." He wrote in today's NYT:

Created to protect investors from financial predators, the [SEC] has somehow evolved into a mechanism for protecting financial predators with political clout from investors.

...

Whitey keeping darky down (cont)

GM drops Tiger Woods

Paring costs my ass!

Cuban responds, "Phokk the refs!"

SEC charges Mark Cuban with insider trading

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team, was charged with insider trading in shares of Mamma.com Inc, an Internet search engine firm, the Securities and Exchange Commission said on Monday.
Cuban, one of the five finalists to buy the Chicago Cubs pro baseball team, faces civil charges by acting on nonpublic information and selling shares of Mamma.com to avoid more than $750,000 in losses, the SEC alleged.
According to the SEC, Mamma.com invited Cuban to participate in a stock offering that would be conducted at a discount to the market price after he agreed to keep the information confidential.
However, within hours of receiving information, Cuban called his broker and told him to sell his entire position in the company, the SEC alleged.
When the offering was publicly announced, Mamma.com's stock price dropped 9.3 percent from the prior day's closing price.
Calls to Cuban's lawyers were not immediately returned.
Mamma.com has since changed its name to Copernic Inc.
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Silver cracks the plutocrosphere

Not sure whether y'all can get at this for free, but...

Crain’s 40 Under 40 for 2008 features a diverse lineup of up-and-comers, from chefs to statisticians to CEOs, in industries ranging from coffee to casinos, corrections to commercial real estate.

No. 30: Nate Silver: Managing partner, Baseball Prospectus; creator, FiveThirtyEight.com

Last winter, a young baseball prognosticator trumped the preseason magazines with a dead-on forecast: The perennial doormat Tampa Bay Rays would contend for a division title.

On May 6, a little-known political blogger bested national polls in predicting the victory margins in the Democratic primaries in North Carolina and Indiana, which all but sealed Barack Obama's victory over Hillary Clinton.

Both improbable calls belonged to Nate Silver, a 2000 University of Chicago economics grad who looks right at home in his hipster-thick Wicker Park neighborhood. His blending of algorithm-based predictive models and keen subjective insights has made him a trusted soothsayer for baseball geeks and political junkies alike...

tough times for plutocrats (cont'd)

Summer: The living wasn't so easy
Crain's, Sept. 1, 2008

He and his wife are empty-nesters wanting to sell their newly remodeled, $1.2-million River Forest home and move into a downtown condo. They first listed their house in June 2007, then took it off the market two months later to make some improvements. In May, they listed the house again and prepared for a sale. They're still waiting.

"When we relisted the house in the spring, I figured that by Labor Day we'd be downtown when the fall season of social events takes place... It would be great to go home and change for an event without having to drive back and forth."

The constant showings, too, made for a wearying summer. "The frustration level of dealing with buyers who've been back six times just wears you down," he says. "My wife says if they come back a seventh time, we're not making the bed."

North Shore real estate agent and avid sailor ....., 46, also has had to scale back. Her son ...., 17, a junior at New Trier High School in Winnetka, and daughter ...., 19, a sophomore at Connecticut College, both sail competitively. It's a pricey sport: Competing internationally can cost from $30,000 to $100,000 a year, including entry fees, travel, accommodations, boat charters, coaching and equipment, she says.

Though Ms. .... and her husband, ...., also a broker, are working harder than ever for every sale, they were unwilling to cut back on the number of trials their children compete in. So they're still traveling, but not in the style they're accustomed to.

"You know those dingy motels off the interstate with the hurricane fence around the pool?" Ms. .... says, referring to her family's frequent trips to Florida for competitions. "I used to think, who would stay there? Well, that's me now, sitting there on the concrete patio with my laptop and cell phone."

More accustomed to the Four Seasons, Ms. .... now takes along a suitcase filled with pressed table linens to wrap the mattresses in. "You can't be too careful," she says.
. . .

There was another perk in being the rare American in a European city for ...., 31, a special events coordinator at Loyola University Chicago. A flea market vendor in Florence, Italy, sold her a leather purse at half his asking price because he felt sorry for her. "I just pleaded and pleaded with this guy," she says. "Finally he said, 'OK. You Americans don't have it easy, I know.'"

it's not a loophole, it's a stimulus

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tax and accounting loopholes that largely benefit rich taxpayers and companies cost the government $20 beelllion a year (holy phokking s#i+, 20 beeelllion, that's like, several weeks in Iraq - Ed.) even as the pay gap between chief executives and employees has widened, two groups said on Monday...

The report said large U.S. companies paid CEOs an average $10.5 meelllion in compensation last year, 344 times what the average worker earned.

That gap is expected to grow as the industries adding workers are those with the biggest pay gaps, the groups said. (Yay! Ed.)

McCain campaign theme?

Buying up homes is good for the economy - he's just being patriotic.

Home buyers hold fate of U.S. economy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The willingness and ability of Americans to come back into the housing market over the next few months will determine whether the U.S. economy experiences a mild downturn or the deepest recession in 30 years.

Many economists say that home prices have another 10 percent to fall to bring them into balance with rents and incomes. A fall of that magnitude would elicit a huge sigh of relief from Wall Street and Washington.

But it wouldn't take much -- a further clampdown by private lenders or a meltdown at mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- to push home prices down much more severely, perhaps more than 20 percent.

"That's how you could quickly get into this darker scenario," said Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody's Economy.com.

News item: McCain unsure how many houses he owns

Not an elitist like Hussein over there though.

I heard dat K-Mad bought two...

It's SOLD OUT in August...and it's $600:

The 7-Foot Upside-Down Pre-Lit Christmas Tree

Maybe because he gave them the money?

DRIVING THE CONVERSATION 3 – WashPost, front page, “Bundler Collects From Unlikely Donors,” by Matthew Mosk: “The bundle of $2,300 and $4,600 checks that poured into Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign on March 12 came from an unlikely group of California donors: a mechanic from D&D Auto Repair in Whittier, the manager of Rite Aid Pharmacy No. 5727, the 30-something owners of the Twilight Hookah Lounge in Fullerton. But the man who gathered checks from them is no stranger to McCain -- he shuttled the Republican on his private plane and held a fundraising event for the candidate at his house in Delray Beach, Fla.

“Harry Sargeant III, a former naval officer and the owner of an oil-trading company that recently inked defense contracts potentially worth more than $1 billion, is the archetype of a modern presidential money man. The law forbids high-level supporters from writing huge checks, but with help from friends in the Middle East and the former chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit -- who now serves as a consultant to his company -- Sargeant has raised more than $100,000 for three presidential candidates from a collection of ordinary people, several of whom professed little interest in the outcome of the election. …

“Some of the most prolific givers in Sargeant's network live in modest homes in Southern California's Inland Empire. Most had never given a political contribution before being contacted by Sargeant or his associates. Most said they have never voiced much interest in politics. And in several instances, they had never registered to vote. And yet, records show, some families have ponied up as much as $18,400 for various candidates between December and March. Both Sargeant and the donors were vague when asked to explain how Sargeant persuaded them to give away so much money.”

A man of the people

In 1998, the National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”) began the process of securing a new facility for documents in Alaska. In 1998 and 1999, Sen. Stevens earmarked more than $1.7 million for a site selection study to determine where in Anchorage NARA’s new archives building would be located. A particular piece of property owned by a group of retired school teachers was selected for the site, but the teachers were never told. Sen. Stevens earmarked more money to purchase the land. At that point, Mr. Rubini and Mr. Hyde bought the land from the teachers and then turned around and sold the land to NARA at a significant profit. Despite the government’s purchase of the land, the new NARA building was never built.