[High Praise! to Les of Brick Moon]

Raise your hand if you’ve never thought about doing this to an EPA official:

[YouTube direct link]

Although Les makes his own videos, you can take a hippie-punch at fame by creating your own IMAO-worthy video at Xtranormal (“If you can type, you can make movies”). Send a link to harvolson-at-gmail.com and I’ll give it a look. If it isn’t obscene (IMAO is a PG-13 site) and it doesn’t suck too terribly bad, I’ll post it and let the readers throw roses and/or tomatoes at you.

Yes, it’s odd that a White House that’s up to 300,000,000 people’s eyeballs in debt feels qualified to hand out sound financial advice to young folks, but it’s not half as odd as the advice itself. I couldn’t believe what I was reading!

Unfortunately, I forgot to get a screenshot as proof in case these get taken down later (the White House is sneaksy & tricksy like that), but I guarantee(*) all these were on the site this morning.

(* not a guarantee):
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If you’re a composite person named Julia, the government will spend money for you, so ignore all this advice.

1) You need money to buy things. Or someone else’s money. Permission optional. Which is called a “tax.”

2) You earn money by working. Or you can become “entitled” to it by not working. Either way is fine.

3) You may have to wait before you can buy something you want. If you can’t wait, beat up a nerd and take his lunch money.

4) There’s a difference between things you want and things you need. This difference is unimportant if you’re using nerd lunch money.

5) You need to make choices about how to spend your money. When making choices, consider things like “how much does this cost after sales tax?”, “will this fit under my coat?”, and “is anybody watching me?”. Remember to check the ceiling for cameras and the corners for convex mirrors.

6) It’s good to shop around and compare prices before you buy. If you find a lower price, peel off that sticker and place it on the item you want.

7) It can be costly and dangerous to share information online. To protect yourself, give your money to President Obama’s campaign. Say your name is “Doodad Pro”. List your employer as “Loving” and your occupation as “You.” They won’t check. Total security!

8) Putting your money in a savings account will protect it and pay you interest. Lower than the rate of inflation, and hopefully Occupy protesters won’t set fire to the bank’s records.

9) You should save at least a dime for every dollar you receive. And remember to put away 15 cents on every dollar for taxes, or we’ll put a lien on your skateboard.

10) Entering personal information, like a bank or credit card number, online is risky because someone could steal it. Let the government hold onto your personal information where it’ll be nice & safe until Wikileaks hacks the servers.

11) The sooner you save, the faster your money can grow from compound interest. Don’t worry about how that works if you’re just a dumb ol’ girl. Math is hard.

12) A credit card is like a loan; if you don’t pay your bill in full every month, you’ll be charged interest and owe more than you originally spent. Kinda like when Vito & Knuckles broke your daddy’s kneecaps for not making the vig.

13) When comparing colleges, be sure to consider what each school would cost you. Do NOT give any thought as to the odds of your chosen major being a ticket to gainful employment. That Anthropology degree will net you an easy $7.25 an hour at ANY McDonalds, where you can drop Margaret Mead quotes to your heart’s content.

14) You should avoid using credit cards to buy things you can’t afford to pay for with cash. Just use the numbers on the front of the card, instead. Preferably the front of someone else’s card.

15) Your first paycheck may seem smaller than expected since money is taken out for taxes. To avoid future disappointment, try Googling “under the table.”

16) A great place to save and invest money you earn is in a Roth IRA. That’s where you pay the taxes up front, your earnings grow tax-free, and the money you withdraw after retirement is also tax-free. Unless a future Democrat-controlled Congress decides otherwise. Which they would never do. Trust us. Really.

17) You should use a credit card only if you can pay off the money owed in full each month. Or if Old Navy’s having a really big sale, because that way you can pay off your credit card with all the money you’ll save! [This tip sponsored by Old Navy. Old Navy - The creepiest commercials since Fruity Oaty Bars]

18) You need health insurance. HA! Just kidding! You’re young and healthy and your biggest medical expenses will be condoms and aspirin until you’re at least 30.

19) It’s important to save at least three months’ worth of living expenses in case of an emergency. Plus a shotgun for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. And for God’s sake – CARDIO and DOUBLE TAP, people!

20) Always consider two factors before investing: the risks and the annual expenses. Don’t worry about Projected ROI Solution Matrices, girlie. Math is still hard.
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I guess the REAL question here is – if the government thinks this information is vital to teaching children how to handle money, why isn’t it being taught in the government-run, attendance-mandatory school system?

In my new PJ Media column, I suggest we look at the presidential election as being able to pick our opponent — we want the candidate who will kill the least number of jobs. It’s as if Batman got a choice between dealing with a crime spree by Catwoman or the Joker.

From Bryan Donaldson:

“Hey Carlos, I’ll bet you $10 I can trick those dumb gringos at table 6 into making their own tacos!” – how fajitas were invented

A professor at Brooklyn College compared global warming deniers to Holocaust deniers, and in one of his articles, said that if we don’t fight greenhouse gasses, “billions of people” will die.

Isn’t this pretty much the Liberal argument for every single government program?

“Drive an electric car, or billions of people will die.”

“We must have universal government health care, or billions of people will die.”

“Support gay marriage, or billions of people will… be moderately inconvenienced.”

Ok, maybe not that last one.

But still, let’s be honest. Although liberals think this sounds like a rational argument, it really sounds more like something a James Bond villain would threaten if he wasn’t given $100,000,000 in cash.

And if it sounds like Ernst Blofeld is writing your party platform, maybe it’s time for some soul-searching.

* Romney is making a bunch of “day one” promises. Me, I’d make day two promises. Day one is going to be spent making sure my office computer is set up right and has all the programs I need. Then I’ll spend time getting the lay of the building and knowing where the coffee pot is and what are the good places for lunch nearby. But day two, I’ll get to business… but not right in the morning as I kind of like to ease into the day. But day two somewhere around the afternoon America is going to see a lot of change.

* The White House website is now offering financial advice to kids. Who wouldn’t want to learn from those financial geniuses who are somehow able to spend trillions of dollars to noticeable effect?

The advice includes:
– Just spend money on whatever you feel you deserve and not worry about the costs. Money isn’t a real thing anyway.
– Budgets are racist.
– If someone questions you on your huge debt, just blame the prior administration your parents for it.

The White House has already met with numerous schools to teach its financial advice. There were no survivors.

* A judge is recommending that the U.S. ban the XBox over a patent dispute. Obama needs to tread carefully here if he wants to hold on to his precious youth vote. Michelle will probably want this (“Video games make kids fat and I hate fat kids so much I could vomit!”), but all the youth will hate him for it. If anything, he needs to make it so you can vote from within Liberty City or something as it’s about the only way to get those lazy idiots to the polls. Lazy idiots are the backbone of the Democrat Party, it’s just they don’t vote in large numbers. Because they’re lazy.

* The Great Gatsby is being made into a 3D movie for some reason. I remember reading it in high school and being very bored by it. Of course, these “classic” books they have us read were never aimed at teens, though they’re the ones who always are forced to suffer it. I still have intentions of being a novelist, so should that be my goal: That one day, far in the future, my book will be used to torture kids? Or maybe in the future they’ll have kids study classic video games. I can just seem them getting bored to tears with the original Super Mario Brothers. It doesn’t even have an online component!

Romney spends his money on cool things. Obama spends my money on sucky things.

I don’t get the strong negative reactions to Romney. That’s like having a visceral hatred of vanilla ice cream.

“Sit around and do nothing all day with small chance of becoming most powerful man in the world. $230k salary.” -Craigslist ad for VPOTUS

The caveman who first invented the pun must have been considered a genius and then murdered.

Buttercup is learning a lot about letters and numbers from Sesame Street, but I wish they spent more time covering WWII.

One day I’ll be rich and famous and not need any of you. So enjoy this time.

I remember reading The Great Gatsby in high school and thinking it would be great in 3D.

“F. Scott Fitzgerald, is this book aimed at high schoolers?”
“Not really.”
“Well, 60 years from now, that’s who will be reading it.”

I hope to write a novel so good that tons of people eagerly read it now and then unhappy teenagers are forced to read it 50 years from now.

Classic literature has taught me that the past was a hellishly boring time to live in.

If you’re really tired of Birthers, getting Obama out of public office will probably shut them up significantly.

It’s not the name that’s actually used in this anti-Obama ad, but if the oh-so-composite Julia were real, THIS would be her life’s story under Obama:

[YouTube direct link] (Viewer #75,440)

[Via Hot Air]

Now THIS is a great-great-great grandmother worth bragging about.

Bernie Quigley excused Elizabeth Warren’s pathetic lie about her Native American heritage, saying “It is not so much a lie as it is the acculturation of personal and regional American myth; the fabric of old-soul American consciousness.”

Ridiculous.

Americans are winners. The Indians lost.

Nothing to be ashamed of, though. Americans can at least respect tough fighters. That’s why – even after 40 years of the Cold War – liquor stores still sold “vodka” instead of “All-American Tater Whiskey.” With Native Americans, we honor their relentless spirit with our sports team names, like “Indians” and “Redskins” and “Chiefs.” There’s a reason you’ll never see a team called “Hippies”, or “Biebers”, or “National Organization for Women.”

Warren might as well brag about being 1/32 Chicago Cub.

But if she wanted to just make something up based on “old-soul American consciousness,” why not embrace her inner cowboy? They successfully tamed a land while providing its citizens with tasty steaks. Plus they invented the silver bullet, which has kept our great nation werewolf-free for over 150 years.

Or why not 1/32 Chinese? They built railroads, kept our laundry sparkling white (using their powerful ancient Chinese secrets) and discovered the fold-top cardboard take-out food container.

Yeah, yeah, I know – a woman without brown eyes or straight, black hair claiming to be Chinese… who’d believe THAT?

Harvard, I suppose.

Bunch of losers. Haven’t been to a Rose Bowl since 1920. Might as well be the Cubs.

[YouTube direct link] (Viewer #1,586,973)

She takes a normal bike, modifies it with special tail-guards around the chain & wheels, adds training wheels, and “invests” who knows how many hours training an otherwise perfectly-functional dog to ride it. For 20 feet. Which is as good as it’ll ever get because of the inescapable physical limitations involved.

Ladies and gentlemen: the Chevy Volt.

Today’s Hope n’ Change Cartoon:

Ad to the Confusion

Also this, from the author’s commentary:

“The Obama campaign is attacking Romney’s virtues because they are “virtues”…with the expectation that these laudable qualities and traditional American values are abhorrent to those on the Left.”

Congratulations, Mr. President, you’re now officially an Ayn Rand villain:

Envy is regarded by most people as a petty, superficial emotion and, therefore, it serves as a semihuman cover for so inhuman an emotion that those who feel it seldom dare admit it even to themselves… That emotion is: hatred of the good for being the good.

[Think you have a link that's IMAO-worthy? Send it to harvolson@gmail.com. If I use your link, you will receive High Praise! (assuming you remember to put your name in the email)]

[High Praise! to Son of Bob]
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1) Government union workers construct the lemonade stand. Construction takes three years, and comes in at just over 2 million dollars… more than twice the projected amount.

2) Obama is not part of the union, so he can’t work in his own stand. AFL-CIO goons picket the stand before it opens and threaten people in the neighborhood.

3) DC police start including the stand in their daily patrols – not to protect anyone from the union goons but to close the stand down because they insist he gets food permits.

4) Environmentalists picket the unopened stand because it’s made of wood, and some cry for the trees that were cut down to supply the wood for the stand.

5) College students sit around the stand, while others attempt to set it on fire, as the stand represents “capitalism” and they plan to “Occupy” it.

6) Two years later, after Obama finally does the government-required studies and buys the required permits, and hires a union worker to serve the lemonade, the lemonade must sell for $100 per glass to make a profit.

7) Stand closes next day.

8) Obama learns nothing.
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UPDATE: Linked by YouViewed

LONDON (AP) – A Channel Islands auction house said that it has sold a vial allegedly containing a blood sample from Ronald Reagan to a right wing blogger in Idaho who claims he intends to use it to create “an unstoppable army of Reagan clones.”

Just some of the millions of Reagans who will soon battle tirelessly to defeat communism and punch hippies.

The blogger, known on the internet by the obviously fake name “Frank J”, said it was all part of his plan to “Keep America Awesome.”

“I’ve done a lot to serve my country in the past,” said Frank. “Mostly by having a brother who’s a Marine. But also by launching various intricate schemes to defeat those who would put limits on the awesomeness of this great nation. Not just degenerate foreigners, but other smelly things, like monkeys & hippies.”

“Unfortunately, my plans don’t always quite work as well as I hope,” Frank said. “Like my S.M.I.T.E. space laser platform that hit the Navy SEAL stealth helicopter instead of bin Laden’s dialysis machine. Or that incident with my “Dinosaurs With Rocket Launchers” plan, the debacle of which was chronicled in the documentary, ‘Jurassic Park.’”

Despite his previous “minor setbacks” the “crazy, but not dangerous” right-wing humor blogger insisted that his “Reagan Clone Army” idea was “foolproof.”

“I’ve spent a lot of time study the flaws of previous historical attempts to create clone armies,” said Frank, a look of grim determination crossing his face. “I’ve eliminated all possible obstacles to success. There will be no CGI hairless rabbits with Jamaican accents, no shadowy Senators who enjoy cross-dressing in hooded bathrobes, and most importantly, the thermal exhaust ports on my planet-destroying space stations will all be smaller than womp rats.”
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Ace IMAO Reporter silaS marreD [High Praise!] contributed to this story.

From Andy Levy:

If you don’t know the difference between “there,” “their” and “they’re” your a moron.

* Obama won the Arkansas primary! 58% to 42%, which would be a really good margin if he weren’t an incumbent running unopposed. But what does Obama care as he is unlikely to win the Arkansas electoral votes anyway and has a strategy of complete abandonment of anyone who doesn’t help his election prospects. They can just go cling to their guns and religion as he has white college kids to act all evolved in front of.

* More Democrats are coming out in favor of Bain. I think the problem with Obama’s Bain attacks is he hasn’t really distinguished them from attacks on capitalism in general, and this country doesn’t want some capitalism-attacking Commie. Capitalism is why we have all our cool awesome stuff. If we have to choose between an iPad and oBama, it’s pretty easy to say which one is cooler and more useful.

I think Obama is just all confused and scared about capitalism because he’s never had an actual job and had to participate in the economy before. Maybe he should try running a lemonade stand on the sidewalk in front of the White House. He could learn a few good lessons.

* Union thugs put up an effigy of Nikki Haley and pummeled it. Normally, if white people were violent towards an effigy of a minority, that would be big national news, but you have to get the political parties in the right order for that.

But I’m sure the union thugs had smart reasons for what they were doing. They did release the statement, “Me no like! Smashee smashee!” Ah, unions, they’re totally going to have a big comeback.

* Arizona has accepted Obama’s birth records, so now Obama can visit Arizona without being deported to Kenya. If he has his ID.

* A record low number of people now identify with the Orwellian “pro-choice” label. That’s probably from Buttercup making babies so popular again.

* A vial of Ronald Reagan’s blood is up for auction. It’s expected to go for a high value since rumor has it that if it were sprayed on Obama, he would melt like the Wicked Witch of the West.

There was almost also going to be an auction for a vial of Jimmy Carter’s blood, but auction houses don’t accept merchandise from rabbits.

* I want these:

I certainly know with which unicorn Ronald Reagan’s blood would side with.