Jihadi Bieber Terrorizes America

We regret to inform you that, near as we can tell, Asshole of the Year Pam Geller’s fingerprints aren’t on this one:

Mosque foes recently started a boycott of Bieber after he made comments in support of the mosque project in an interview with Tiger Beat, a teen fan magazine, [Park51 opponent Andy] Sullivan told WYNC earlier this month. Now, his 8-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son have been banned from attending Bieber performances.

“I informed them, ‘Hey guys, guess what? Justin Bieber spoke out for the ground zero mosque,” Sullivan explained to Salon in an interview. “My little girl took down his poster and said she didn’t want to have nothing to do with him anymore. These are my kids. They’re living this thing.”

Just one problem: Justin Bieber didn’t talk to Tiger Beat about the Park51 project, for or against. The source for Sullivan’s outrage is a satirical website.

Stinque apologizes for failing to mount an effective hoax during 2010. We’ll try better next year.

Mosque foes launch Bieber boycott [Salon, via TPM]
74 Comments

The real question is, what will our hoax be about? Palin being reduced to the status of mall-opening guest-speaker in Podunk, OH? Obama’s secret all-white slave corps? Celibabe’s sex tapes? The mind truly boggles. Perhaps it will be Boehner’s sex tapes with Celibabe.

If this Bieber hoax is in any way effective, I vote we start a rumor that Taylor Swift sent out a “Happy Holidays” card to all her ghey posse.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: Oh, poor kiddo. Bishops are very good at covering this shit up.

/Silver Lining TJ/

Just in case you’ve forgotten, here’s a quick reminder: Mr. O is hot. Mrs. O is hot. And the First Kids are friggin cute.

Home Office People: Am pondering whether to go on a small office supply shopping spree tomorrow. Is the home office deduction worth it?

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: Back when I had a spare room I could devote to it, the home-office deduction was sweet. Now that my office is limited to a utility table, I don’t deal with it.

Basically, it’s a major IRS red flag, so if you go for it, be sure to document it extensively — photos, measurements, what have you. Imagine yourself in a room with an IRS goon auditor, and think through what you would want to have on hand.

Also sweet: the car mileage deduction. I don’t do that any more either, since my clients are mostly a thousand miles north. Trips to the coffeehouse Remote Office don’t count.

But regardless of the home-office deduction as such, the equipment/supplies deduction is the saving grace of freelance. It almost makes up for paying the full self-employment tax.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: I’m with noje on this. I do have a dedicated office but you need to be careful that you can prove that where you work is only used for that and not hot sexy times too. You work it out as percentage of living space. I buy all supplies through business accounts and that can be a big help. Also phones, car, trips (my research trip to Iceland) Etc. But you know about all that. But computers, iPads (ahem), online expenses, downloads from iTunes (business for me) all of that stuff can really add up.

@Benedick: @nojo: Do you need to register a DBA and all that jazz?

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: I’m all for shopping sprees. I had to report quarterly taxes to the state, but graphic design was just a part-time job for me while I was in school. I never did the full-on IRS deduction business. I was just trying to buy my supplies state tax-free. Anyone remember Quark?

@nojo: So now that you don’t have a spare room, does that mean I get to bunk with you when I visit?

@JNOV:

1. No DBA here, since I work under the name of a Wingnut Senator.

2. I hated Quark, never used it, and was happy to see InDesign kill it. I still hate Dreamweaver, and have managed to avoid it so far.

3. Guests of Stinque World Domination Headquarters crash on the Stinque Extra-Long Couch.

@JNOV: Do you need to register a DBA and all that jazz?

JNOV, no you don’t have to register a home business. You just complete Schedule C when you file your federal tax return. Of course if you incorporate or form a partnership things get much more complicated, so keep it simple. Being able to purchase the supplies and office equipment you need with pre-tax money instead of with after-tax money is a much bigger benefit than most people would believe.

Home offices are THE red flags for the IRS, which is enough reason for me to ignore it. The record keeping of the depreciation on a fraction of your home will be an absolute nightmare when you eventually sell it.

@nojo:

1. Right!

2.. Yeah. Quark was quite the crap. I was only doing funeral programs (until the funeral home got closed down when the popo found bodies of indigent people in the backyard), calendars, freelance shit for a print shop — stuff like that in ’95. I didn’t know there were alternatives as I was on dial up at the time, and I’m not sure Netscape had hit the scene.

3. I sleepwalk.

@Dave H: Ah! I did some knitting on Etsy earlier this year, so I’ll have to file a 1040, but I don’t deduct anything, really. I report earnings, inventory on hand, minor expenses that aren’t covered, and that’s about it. I guess I should start knitting again…

@JNOV: Taxes get very complicated very quickly once you go beyond 1040’s and W-2’s. My first year of freelance, I tried filing by hand. After that, it’s been TurboTax all the way.

@nojo: @Benedick: @Dave H: Muchos gracias. I’m not terribly worried about an audit just because I’ve obsessively kept every single receipt this year, so even my personal snack breaks at JitB are documented. I will bury a motherfucker in paper. Also, pictures are no problemo since I do that on the regular in case I ever need to get into it with my insurance carrier. Mostly, it’s a question of laziness on my part. Do I want to measure my office and do all that (ugh) math to get a $100 deduction? And I suppose I will have to figure out what part of my mortgage payment is principal and interest b/c I doubt I can deduct the interest twice.

OK. I think I talked myself out of it, but if the business supply deduction is different, I can still hop on over to my friendly neighborhood Swedish village for that desperately needed file cabinet and desk chair demain.

@Benedick: You are writing off that trip to Iceland as a business expense? That’s the kind of chutzpa that made America great.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: Oh gawd, mortgage. The home-office deduction is a lot easier when you rent.

For business supplies, yes, very straightforward — and completely unrelated to home-office stuff.

Although, if you go beyond conventional supplies and into (say) computers or furniture, it gets complicated again — those are capital expenditures, which most often can be fully deducted instead of amortized over time, but still require special forms. Thus, TurboTax.

Where’s my sticker that says I Gave Blood Migrated a Complex Music-Festival Website to WordPress Today? All this deduction talk is making me hungry.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: You should try to do it – the office deduction isn’t that hard and given you have to pay the self-employment tax you might as well knock things down. If you don’t have a separate office, just measure the space around your desk with about a two foot radius. Calculate that square footage (multiple the two numbers). And you should have somewhere the square footage of your entire home. If you use Turbo Tax, it will calculate the percentage that is used for the home office, as well as the off-setting amount of the mortgage deduction. Oh, and don’t forget that the purchase of Turbo Tax is a business expense.

And if Benedick is claiming a trip to Iceland as a business expense, then don’t worry about your trip to the Tempe Ikea. Or to the Apple Store. Apparently it’s much easier to read cases on an iPad than in a stack of Westlaw printouts – or so a few of my friends have said to justify the purchase of an iPad.

My iPad Christmas tale. My stepson and his partner asked me at Thanksgiving if I’d go in with them to buy my wife an iPad for Christmas. Sounded like a great idea, so I gave them a check for $275 and thought she’d love it. Christmas Eve she opened it and did love it. The day after Christmas the guys pointed out that her Mac laptop was so old that she wouldn’t be able to download anything she was getting with her new iPad. They’re off to the Apple store and $1,725 later she has a new MacBook Pro plus a new HP scanner/copier/printer plus three years of warranty plus a year of One to One training. So my half of her iPad Christmas gift cost about $2,000. Ho Ho Ho to you, fucking Steve Jobs.

@Dodgerblue: I had an accountant encourage me to take cost of a dog sitter as a business expense. I declined that, but I did take my cable as an expense. I was working part-time as a wedding photographer and it fell under “education.” Hahahahaha.

@Dodgerblue: That and billable hours. ;-)

@Benedick: You’re the love of my life (well, Catt, too). You know that, right?

Sport TJ: Tree 34: UConn 30 at the half of the ladiez b-ball game in Shallow Alto. Tree has been ahead the entire first half.

Stanford was the last time to beat UConn before their 91 game streak. Hmm.

@JNOV: They were just up by 9, now up by 7. UConn’s star Maya Moore has only scored 6 points. The Tree is doing an insane full court press on the Huskies.
The game is on ESPN2 here – if not in Philly, or if you don’t have that cable package, check to see if the game is streaming on http://www.gostanford.com – that’s where they stream the soccer games.

@JNOV: 11 point lead, nasty foul by Maya against Stanford player. It is deafening in Maples Pavilion.

@JNOV: Ugh, they just showed Condi Rice in the crowd. Another foul against UConn, 10 point lead as the Tree player goes to the line. Crowd is going nuts.

@JNOV: 8 point lead with 59 seconds to go. Condi is jumping up and down showing emotion.

HOOOLEEE FUCK. The Tree is going to do it, barring a miracle by Gino. He’s going to cry.

BURN DOWN THE CLOCK, STANFORD!!

9 point lead. My ears hurt and I’m 40 miles away.

Gino haz a sad!

@chicago bureau: Palo Alto will be burning tonight, baby! This is a fucking amazing game. Women’s b-ball is so much better than the NBA and NCAAM. I love the full court press.

And Tara rocks.

The Tree never was behind the entire game.

And the Huskies won their 90 games by an average of 33 points.

@SFL: the only way it would be better is if Pat Summitt did the deed. But Geno is too chickenshit to schedule the Vols.

HOLEEEEEE FUCKING SHIT!!

The Tree is in the House!!

UConn’s streak is snapped!

@SanFranLefty: HOOFUCKINGRAY! Imma celebrate with some Bollywood!

@chicago bureau: @JNOV: Stanford and Tara are more kick ass than the Vols. I thought that Summit was chickenshit, not Gino.

Fashion Police ADD: Was that woman sitting next to Condi, with the dreadful hair and the red sweatshirt with the Xmas tree on it, Condi’s special “friend”? One would hope if she is that Condi’s fashion sense would rub off on her.

@SanFranLefty: Is Condi back on campus? I think they own a home there…

@JNOV: Yes she’s back, and yes they do live on Lesbian Lane, down the road from you know who and you know who else. But one would think that Condi would hook her wife up with some hair product and a cashmere sweater.

I was beginning to think Condi was the only fan allowed into the game. For whatever reason ESPN kept switching from the action on the floor to Condi, over and over and over. They even featured footage of Condi on the Sportscenter coverage. I’m happy for Stanford but that woman deserves to be sharing a cell with the rest of the Bush regime.

@SanFranLefty: @SanFranLefty: @SanFranLefty: Wait a minute. Are you at the game? Or are you saying that they put coed girls basketball on TV?

@JNOV: Marry me?

I couldn’t possibly steal you away from Benedick. I don’t need an enraged English/Scot/Welsh/Irishman or whatever combination he is out for revenge. They take that shit seriously in the old country.

The way Julie Andrews say ho.mo. sesss.you.ul is adorable.

Anyone else see that Joan Rivers movie “A Piece of Work?” Pretty cool.

@redmanlaw: Smashing. Very funny and original woman. I’m told she’s personally very warm and generous. Very popular in London. Her 1st gig at the Palladium is as funny as it is frightening. I’m surprised she doesn’t do movies.

@Dave H: Scot, thank you. Heart warming tale of the Christmas iPad. The holiday spirit is not dead.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: I’m a little company – very little – and I always use an accountant, always have. It’s easier to keep track of expenses, which is pretty much everything, phones, mowing, Netflix, TV, etc. I don’t claim the dogs as dependents. Yet. Though I have claimed pet sitters.

@Dodgerblue: Well of course Iceland was a business trip. I had to see the landscape and practice walking. Duh.

@JNOV: I don’t know what a DBA is. SO I’m hoping I don’t need one.

Georgia pols decide to remind the rest of the country that they’re still there and they’re still STOOPID:

Georgia state rep introduces bill to only pay/accept gold and silver for taxes, other state debts

TR00 wingnuts know that little things like the Federal Reserve Act are for sissies.

@redmanlaw: I’ve heard good things about it and I like Joan Rivers. Is it on DVD yet?

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: It’s streaming on Netflix. Her face scares me, and I can’t stand Melissa. But she wuz robbed when it came to the Tonight Show, so I might watch it, too.

@Benedick: Ohhhhh! Do you sound like Sean Connery? There can only be one! And, of course, if it’s not Scottish, it’s crap.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: Picked it up yesterday on DVD at the indy video store run by a firm client. I wanna hear what Ms. Baked has to say about it.

/off to buy party supplies for tonight. Hope I don’t have to drive all the way out to the nearby reservation for fireworks.

@libertarian tool: Yes, basketball played by wimminz was on national teevee, aka ESPN. Top story on Sports Center last night, too. the game as played by NCAAW is so much more fun to watch.

@JNOV: More like Groundskeeper Willie.

@JNOV: Like a butch version. But I don’t have The Accent.

@redmanlaw: She’s very interesting about being a woman working in a man’s world. Also about other comics. And she works fantastically hard. I also found myself wondering why she still bothers.

@nojo: Haha! Groundskeeper Willie is kickass! Especially when he rips off his shirt.

@Benedick: Get it back, dammit! How hard can it be?

@JNOV: I think his funniest inappropriate accent was in Wind and the Lion in which he was a bedouin chief talking broad scots.

In which musical (American) did he make his West End debut singing in the chorus?

@Benedick: South Pacific (yes, I cheated), but I found excellent footage of Mandy Patankin singing “Carefully Taught.” Who knew?

@Benedick: I so love Sleepy Maggie in Gàidhlig.

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