I just want to punch this guy in the face

The doofus in this commercial takes a call from mom and tells her that while he's cut back on his spending, he's still having a hard time paying his bills.  He says this in a defeated, deflated voice which suggests to me that he's kind of hoping Mommy comes to the rescue with her checkbook.  Again.

Instead, Mommy tells Not Ready To Be Out of The House Yet loser son "I know someone you should talk to."  It's a bankruptcy attorney. 

So we've gone from "I'm having a hard time paying all these bills" to "you should declare bankruptcy" in 2.5 seconds flat.  I hope Beverly or whatever this attorney's name is suggests that Doofus just admits that he can't afford his own place and should move back in with Mommy until he gets his finances in order rather than royally screw up his credit rating for the next decade with a "oh heck budgeting is too much of a pain" bankruptcy, but I kind of doubt that's going to happen because Mommy and Beverly both seem to think that filing for bankruptcy is a Magic Bullet which solves every problem.

Personally, Doofus, I think that sweater is the root of all your problems.  I don't care if Mommy did make it for you special.  Stop wearing that thing.  It's dragging you down.  And stop whining to Mommy about your money problems.  You're really depressing me.

Holy Crap, Jaguar!!

"Why are there so many miles on it?"

Are you F---NG SERIOUS, WOMAN???

It's an F---NG JAGUAR!!  It's a 2018 F--NG JAGUAR!!  And when your husband hands you the keys and you start it up with a push of an F--ng BUTTON, your only response is "why are there so many miles on it???" 

And take a look at that odometer.  There are LESS THAN A THOUSAND MILES ON THIS CAR.  That's "So Many" miles to you?  Could you be just a little more spoiled rotten?

And what's YOUR deal, buddy?  You've handed your trophy wife and the mother of your children the keys to a F---NG JAGUAR and when she responds not with "Oh My Gosh thank you sooooo much I'm so glad I sold myself to YOU" but with "why are there so many miles on it?" your immediate reaction is not to take the keys and return it to the dealership for a refund but to hem and haw with a sheepish look on your face?  What did you ask TrophyWife to give you for Christmas?  Let me guess- it's something you were born with, but surrendered to her quite some time ago, perhaps?

Are you F---NG KIDDING ME???

There's really no room for anyone else in this Cadillac Commerical anyway

And to think, for all those years I thought that the song "One is the Loneliest Number" by the Three Dog Night was about the desperate sadness that goes along with being alone.  I remember listening a bit further and learning that "two can be as sad as one" when the relationship is sterile and devoid of love...or, at least, that's what I thought it meant.

Thanks to the magic of tv commercials, I now know that I've been wrong for forty years, and it turns out that the song was about how awesome it was to be Number One in your own heart, and that the best way to achieve this feeling is to be a status-absorbed douchenozzle with a stereotypical engineering job in a cliche'd all-glass office who drives a Cadillac. 

Boy, is my face red.  Oh wait, that's not embarressment.  More like rage.

Eventually, all of the songs we grew up with will be whored out to big corporations to be used in advertisements.  "But that's not something that I'm looking forward to"-- Ringo Starr, Photograph

You don't have DirecTV? So you LIKE being eaten by fire ants?

Remember when cable was the greatest thing ever, and if you didn't have it that meant you had a big piece of metal on your roof and snow on your screen and your life wasn't worth living?

Well, I woke up today and found out that cable was the equivalent of wet grocery bags, banging my head into a turnstile and pouring hot coffee all over myself.  In other words, what used to be the greatest thing ever is now absolute torture and if you don't have DirecTV you must enjoy torture.  I'm guessing you're probably also a Commie who Wants the Terrorists to Win and doesn't Support the Troops.

So I guess I have to be like the guy with the extremely punchable face at the beginning of this ad- you know, the guy who looks like he's about to settle down for 26 hours or so of binge viewing with his awesome new best friend, his DirecTV setup- or the people who like things that pretty much everyone finds annoying, slightly painful, or potentially deadly.  Let me think about it, DirecTV.

(Oh and BTW, please don't read the YouTube comments.  Even sadder than usual.)

Not surprised that comments are disabled for these Apple Commercials...

I mean, when you combine the horrible non-soundtrack with that little brat laying on the grass with a $2000 piece of technology responding to his mom with "what's a computer?" in a zombie monotone, I can totally understand why Apple doesn't want to hear what anyone has to say about this hideous nugget of dreck.

"What's a computer?"  It's that thing you're casually risking destroying because Hey It's Not Your Money and the stores have plenty of them.  "Where do you want to go?"  Well, I can tell you where I want all of the people involved in this commercial to go.  I won't say where that is, because it really doesn't fit into the holiday spirit.



The most aggravating thing about this pretentious pile of time-wasting dumb is that you just know the people who created it broke into tears and gave eachother high-fives when they saw the finished product.  Never mind that the product being sold is pretty much the ultimate in self-indulgent conspicious consumption.  This thing is made by Asian children who whose only relationship with the product will involve putting it together so that it can be sold to spoiled rotten First Worlders like the horrible people in this ad.  Who will then proceed to prance around as if it provided some level of significant meaning to their lives and isn't going to be replaced by a Much Better Update in six months.

F-- you, Apple.

Everything Wrong With Prager U's "The Progressive Income Tax: A Tale of Three Brothers," Epilogue

First, let me start this conclusion by admitting that yes, the title of this series is meant to be total clickbait.  I might have included "Spoilers (Duh)" but maybe that's copyrighted.  Anyway, I justify this by pointing out that this blog is not monetized so it really doesn't matter how many people read it as far as ad revenue is concerned, since there's no ad revenue.

Ok, so here's what's missing in Mr Prager's Tale of Why Requiring People to Pay Their Fair Share is Bad, Wrong, Communistic and Helps the Terrorists Win.  Harry and his wife sock away large amounts of money in two ways- by purchasing a house far below what they could actually afford, and by totally neglecting their children.

I'm absolutely serious about that second point.  To make the brothers completely equal in every way except what Prager considers their "work ethic," he has them all married and with two children.  But while Harry worked sixty hours a week and his wife also worked full-time, Tom worked "only" forty hours per week while his wife worked ten hours, and Dick worked only 20 hours per week and his wife worked at home (she didn't "not work," you jagoff Prager.  Stay-at-Home Moms work.  They just don't get paid.)  Sorry, Harry and Wife- all the money in the world won't add another minute to the day.  Every extra hour you spent working was time you didn't spend with your kids.

So Tom and his wife decided live a normal, 21st century middle-class American life which involved a double-income household but also time to raise their children, who grew up to appreciate a life which balances work with leisure and does not put a massive premium on constant work and hoarding money.  Dick's kids were raised by both parents and learned that doing without all the material possessions their relatives and friends had was well worth it because Mom and Dad are kind of priceless commodities.  Harry's kids were raised by daycares or, more likely, Dick's wife down the street, whom they learned to address as their "other mom" and Dick and his wife as their "real parents" - the ones who got them to soccer practice, gave them good advice on love and relationships, and essentially served as their role models while their biological parents spent all their time in the mad pursuit of wealth.  On the rare times they ate dinner with those biological parents, they defended Dad's "deadbeat" brothers against the Libertarian ravings of the money-grubbers they happend to share a house with (sometimes.)  They often envied Dick's and Tom's children- sure, they didn't have a lot of "stuff," but they weren't latchkey kids.

(And Dick and Tom seemed to be in much happier relationships, too- Harry and his wife don't spend a lot of time together, what with Harry's sixty-hours-per-week schedule and Mom's full-time job, sometimes it's just a hurried few words at breakfast and a short argument before passing out in front of Netflix at night.  But check out that stock portfolio!)

So congratulations, Harry and Wife- you lived the dream.  You died with the money, despite our Terribly Unfair Tax System Which is Designed to Rob You and Reward Deadbeats.  I bet your gravestones are more ornate than those of Dick and Tom.  But I wonder if your kids remember to come to the funeral.

Everything Wrong With Prager U's "The Progressive Income Tax: A Tale of Three Brothers," Part III

Ok, so despite a wide income disparity between the brothers, they've all decided to buy equally-priced homes on the same private street.  Whatever.  Let's move on.

One day, the three brothers decide that for the sake of security, etc. they are going to pool their resources to build a fricking palace gate seperating their suburban estates from the rest of the world (the video puts it differently, but that's about it.)  They figure the landscaping, gate, moatwork WTF EVER I ALREADY HATE THIS FAMILY will cost $30,000.  Harry says the cost should be divided evenly, but the other brothers object- Harry has more money, well, shouldn't he pay more?

The first thing that bugs me is that the work has already been done before they figured out how it would be paid for.  I'd expect this from lazy slacktards like Tom and Dick, but not Looking to the Future Hard-Working Harry!  Why wasn't this planned out beforehand?  Who put down the deposit for the landscaping, paving and other work?  I hate plotholes!

You see, if the question of payment had come up during the PLANNING phase, Tom and Dick could have said something like "it may not be 'fair' for us to ask you to pay more than us, Harry, but here's how we see it- for Tom, $10,000 represents about 35% of his total annual income.  For me, it represents about 12% of our total annual income.  For you, it represents about 7% of your family's annual income.  So it's a much larger investment for us than it is for you, yet your benefit will be the same as ours.  So from our point of view, you should pay more because you can.  But if you and Dennis Prager don't agree, there's an even simpler answer- Tom and I and can't afford to invest in these improvements.  So if you want them done, you'll either have to take more of the burden on yourself, or wait until we can contribute more.  Sorry."

This isn't rocket science, is it, Mr. Prager? Do you offer science at Prager U?

Instead, Harry takes the opportunity to lecture his brothers and suggest that being asked to pay more because he can afford to would be "penalizing" his and his wife's hard work.  And now the straw men are really unleashed as the brothers have it out in the middle of the street.

Tom says "Harry, you and your wife can work as hard as you want, but my wife and I want to enjoy ourselves now, not 25 years from now."  Obviously Tom is supposed to be a bad guy here- a "live for today, let society pay our bills" immoral lazy twat with his hand out all the time.  When Harry replies "fine, but why should I have to pay for that?" Tom plays the "because we're brothers" card, clearly not understanding that while blood is thicker than water, it's the thickness of the wallet that matters most in the real world.

Dick steps in and basically endorses the Progressive Income Tax formula as a solution to their problem.  For a moment, Dick is the Voice of Reason here.  But only for a moment, because Dennis Prager is by no means a fan of the Progressive Income Tax.  So he has Tom jump in with an enormous Straw Man "let's do it like the Feds who like to give freebees to deadbeats like me I don't pay taxes at all so I should get these improvements for free" speech worthy of the Republican National Convention when there are no microphones around.  Dick KNOWS this isn't fair but he likes it anyway because it reduces his share while putting a much larger burden on his Evil Capitalist Swine brother Harry.  And so the Class Struggle is explained- the middle class is conned into joining with the poor to fight a war against the thrifty, hardworking rich.  There's another freaking minute and a half to this ad but I'm not even going to finish it- instead I'll sum up this monstrosity in Part IV.