Obamanomics: One tall latte every week With your tax refund
JohnInTexas
· 11 months ago
I started my New Year's resolutions early, like November. No CNN in the morning (afternoon or evening for that matter), or any other cable news unless the other half put the teevee there. I've done a good job of it too, and don't miss it a bit. I think my blood pressure has even come down without listening to Wolf Blitzer's 500 word questions. Now I get up in the morning and don't turn the teevee on at all, it's nice.
Bostonian_Queer_in_Dallas
· 11 months ago
We've finally gotten rid of DISH network completely. Our lives have improved totally. We did splurge on a cheap flat screen 32"...the best part is a spare laptop, a ROKU netflix box, and DVD player are all we need. With YouTube and various website videos like PBS, there is no need for cable or satellite now. $100 a month for christian stations, spanish, QVC, AND all the ads??? Buh bye. Netflix's ROKU idea is growing daily...yes right now the movies are all kinda so-so...but they are building every day and adding new stuff all the time. And frankly I'd rather sit through some terrible action flick with Claude Van Damm than watch Tweety on MSNBC anyway. Frankly I'd rather watch straight porn than watch Wolf Blitzer. At least with porn you actually LEARN something new.
Indigo
· 11 months ago
I think Time Cop was van Damm's best effort. ☺
Bostonian_Queer_in_Dallas
· 11 months ago
I generally hate that genre but he makes me get all tingly when he's half naked
Indigo
· 11 months ago
It's that Belgian glamour. ☺
Bostonian_Queer_in_Dallas
· 11 months ago
I wish Blago would just hurry up and vanish...I cannot stand looking at that hair.
KarenMrsLloydRichards
· 11 months ago
Haiku for the Obama Administration (#28):
OMG, you guys?! First Girls n Miley Cyrus! Just keep your shirts on -
druidbros
· 11 months ago
I just keep thinking that Blago is really a Rethuglican in disguise. He acts like it. I wish the legislature would hurry up and impeach the bastard.
Older_Wiser
· 11 months ago
What, no Gaza again? That makes 3 wars since Israel receives US funding, planes and weapons.
Gbennett
· 11 months ago
This is a post from a friend currently on the West Bank. (from a couple of days ago)
Today, forty miles from where I'm staying, Israel continued its third day of aerial strikes on the Gaza Strip with the death toll on the Palestinian side surpassing 300. Two Israelis have been killed by homemade rockets fired from the small Palestinian coastal territory and became the impetus for the Israeli retaliation. But the airstrikes are just the tail end of a siege that has deprived 1.5 million Palestinians of food from the UN, fuel from Egypt and Israel, and medicine from the Red Cross for several years now. Israel's policy of depriving civilians of basic human necessities - a war crime according to the Fourth Geneva Convention and International Court of Justice - has strengthened Hamas, a militant political organization that runs Gaza, and given the people there no alternative but to turn to this group to do something about their circumstances. Most countries and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have been quick to condemn both sides for their reckless campaigns of violence against civilians, but the U.S. stands alone in its one-sided criticism of Hamas as the culprit of this endless conflict. Yesterday, Bethlehem, as well as the rest of the West Bank, was closed for business as people either attended rallies condemning the attacks, or stayed at home, glued to Al-Jazeera news. One man was killed in Ramallah, the West Bank capital of Palestine seven miles from my location, by an Israeli soldier who said the man was about to throw a molotov cocktail at him. A Palestinian policeman friend of mine who lives in Bethlehem one week and works in Jericho the next, returned from work the first day of the strikes, but was called back to work 24-hours later. The Palestinian government is run by the politcal party Fatah. In 2005, Hamas became the dominant party in a democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. Immediately, the U.S. cut off all aid to the Palestinian people. Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah president of the Palestinian government ousted Hamas, who consolidated its main power base in the Gaza Strip. The U.S. resumed its funding and Fatah established an illigitimate government. Fatah is a more moderate government who is willing to make concessions with Israel in exchange for peace. The most recent peace process effort began in Annapolis last year, but talks broke down when neither side could reach an agreement over the summer. Most of the people I have spoken to in the West Bank think Hamas is fanatical, but believe that Fatah is corrupt and not doing anything to help Palestinians. Abbas is in a difficult position because he must use his police forces to contain his people so that Israel won't strike the West Bank like it is doing to Gaza right now. But this breeds contempt among people in the West Bank because it looks like he is a pawn of Israel, using force to suppress his own people to minimize terrorist attacks against civilians in Israel, while getting nothing in return from Israel and the U.S. for his efforts. I've generally felt safe during my travels, but a family who I know intimately, has told me not to walk the streets of Bethlehem alone at night because I may be mistaken for an Israeli informant. I've been worried that spending time with that same family may implicate them as collaborators in the eyes of their neighbors. They try to reasure me that this is not the case, but my trip is only half way through and every day I feel increasingly suspicious gazes following me through the streets. I was detained on Christmas Eve while Mahmoud Abbas was in town for the celebration because unlike most tourists who come here, I was spending time with the locals, walking through parts of Bethlehem that the tourists don't see on their 15 minute bus tour of the place. Tension is palpable now as Israel's escalation has increased their own casualties and the possiblity for a wider regional conflict. I am about 15 miles out of range of the rockets, but Israeli troops are just a stone throw away - literally. Gaza is closed off to everyone and everything and a ground invasion seems inevitable. Eyes are also on the northern border of Israel as Hezbollah has been preparing troops since the last Israeli incursion in 2006 and the Lebanese expect another. A truce will only work when you reward the moderates and isolate the extremists. Gazans need an alternative to Hamas, but who is going to give it to them when the world refuses to acknowledge their humanitarian crisis and extinguish their self-determination?
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MaudGonne
· 11 months ago
No URL????
Gbennett
· 11 months ago
There is no URL. This was an email sent directly to me from the writer.
aquarius2
· 11 months ago
How one blog can be so silent on the inhumane treatment of the people of Gaza is puzzling. Not one word, not one hint of empathy for 1.5 million people being starved and being denied fuel, medicine and help from the outside. This is why Israel can continue their aggressive behavior, they have powerful friends in the USA.
rivamer
· 11 months ago
Happy New Year John (and your adorable new doggie friend), Chris & Joe! Glad you made it home safely through all the inclement weather. (I heard way too many tragic stories of people dying in crashes on the way to holiday events.) Thanks for a year of entertainment and informative discourse. May 2009 put us on a path to a better world. We sure could use some collective good fortune and a fresh start. What a hellish experience the last 8 years have been!
JoeSudbay
· 11 months ago
It's good to be back. I did a lot of traveling over the past week -- coast to coast, but my partner and I covered all the family bases. And, Petey, the new dog, got completely spoiled by my parents. And, I do think the lack of the TODAY Show and much less CNN can only be good.
jurassicpork
· 11 months ago
Welcome back, Joe. Glad to see you and John are back in time before the sleaze in Chicago would've completely overwhelmed you.
Who is Roland Burris and who are the people who are endorsing his questionable appointment to the Senate?
triple7s
· 11 months ago
History tells me, the new year will be again like the old year. The world, politics, and the economy it's, "THEM THAT"S GOT, GET"S, and THEM THAT DON"T WON"T".
KarenMrsLloydRichards
· 11 months ago
The interregnum has been excruciating and frickin' ENDLESS! Bush and Olmert and Blago and Rick and California voters have had what seem like years to corrode the sheen off Obama. And there's still 3 more weeks to go. . .
naschkatzehussein
· 11 months ago
When FDR took over from Hoover in 1933, Inauguration Day was at the beginning of March, I think. One of the first pieces of legislation the new Congress passed was to make January 20 the date of future inaugurations. Ordinarily it hasn't been a problem, but we're in such a crisis, in so many crises in fact, that it has seemed terribly long. Bush is still the president but MIA, and I don't blame Obama for not stepping up to the plate when he has no legal control over it. Obama has made some big mistakes in the interregnum, most notably choosing Rick Warren for the invocation but also I think he stuck around in Chicago too long and let Fitzgerald and the Republicans imply that he and his team had relations with Blagojevich when they didn't. I think Obama does not want to rock the boat until he is actually sworn in, but my hope is that, as he told the Black Caucus about Clinton after the primary, he is just biting his tongue and will come out strong once he has the presidency "signed, sealed and delivered".
dula
· 11 months ago
Did anybody mention that Bush signed the Worker Retirement Act two days before Christmas? Employers are now required to roll over retirement benefits to same-sex partners. Reported on RawStory.com
Bostonian_Queer_in_Dallas
· 11 months ago
I've never really believed that Dubbya hates gays. It was all about getting votes out of white trash fundies so they could go on their rape and pillage journey. Phyllis Schlafly has been bitching for years how the GOP really does not believe in banning abortion or gay rights. She hates Dubbya. Fine with me. In a way, gay bashing to gain political power so as to just make money is somehow worse than outright homophobia.
nicho
· 11 months ago
The Bushes don't care one way or the other about anyone but the Bushes. Anyone outside the family is just someone to be used to further the objectives of the Bushes. They may pretend to like or hate someone, but it really doesn't mean the Bushes think about them beyond that.
Bush would party with the gays, if he thought he would get something out of it. On the other hand, he's have them all rounded up and shot, if that would advance his own selfish interests.
Don't look for any ideology from the Bush family beyond the end of their own noses.
naschkatzehussein
· 11 months ago
That's the Bushes in a nutshell.
Older_Wiser
· 11 months ago
I can think of lots in the BushCo regime that are worse than Blago...Cheney immediately comes to mind.
I intend to eat more macrobiotically, get my blood pressure down from all the MSM bullshit, clean out my arteries...
Milli
· 11 months ago
I awake to CNN. Because I get so angry at them, I get out of bed fairly quickly.
shell
· 11 months ago
You're back .... and no new pictures of your puppy? John said you went to the west coast and left the pup with its grandma. How did he do?
Tony D
· 11 months ago
The Today Show is a joke. Its like watching the conversations at 7th grade sleep over party. They had this homage to themselves today and it was probably the dumbest thing Ive seen.
pat mallory
· 11 months ago
Tony: Television exists to sell products. The uncurious and gullible buy those products; hence TV never appeals to our intellect.
grandma
· 11 months ago
Good morning and a Happy New Year ....
from Schrum:
It’s hard to be a worse President than James Buchanan, who almost lost the Civil War before it started. But it’s perhaps harder still to make a case that history will rank George W. Bush anywhere except in the bottom tier. Bush would be better off, and so would we, if he was Benjamin Button, growing younger, undoing the damage of his tenure in the White House. Or better yet, perhaps we could just go back and correctly count the ballots in Florida—then we wouldn’t have had to live through this movie.
Blagojavitch? He's just a cutie with tight buns. Don't worry about him and don't let the hair distract you, he's tough. There's much to be learned from watching him strategize.
And yes, there is a bigger dick . . . Cheney!
Okay, so you're not going to have the TV on automatic wakeup with the Today Show. What, then? Angel on TBS? The Shopping Network? You're not going over to Disney-owned ABC, I hope. You already know you're going to get out of bed irritable, that's your bread and butter. Why blame Matt? He's just a balding air-head.
Indigo
· 11 months ago
After thought: you could set the clock radio to a nice county & western station. They're cheerful in the morning.
JohnInTexas
· 11 months ago
oh hell no. I grew up hearing the damn farm report on the radio when I was a kid, then a bunch of twanging hillbillies (i.e., country and western in the sixties). I wake up to a very loud BEEP BEEP BEEP and an 80 pound puppy bounding off the foot of the bed, but I'd be in a good mood if it was Angel on TBS if I woke up to any teevee at all. :)
Indigo
· 11 months ago
Without "twanging hillbillies" life in these United States wouldn't feel complete.
JohnInTexas
· 11 months ago
Yes, Angel on TBS is pretty cool to wake up to :)
Litterbox
· 11 months ago
Dont say that Blagojavitch cant cause more trouble... can you imagine the fallout if he started lying about Obama and supposed criminal acts or whatever he wanted to make up? Folks it can always be worse.
How is Bush any different than the the government of North Korea?
Bush Bites
· 11 months ago
Blago's starting to remind me of Bush.
Screw the law, screw what everybody else thinks, just keep going on like nothing's wrong and screw anybody who can't deal with it.
Not sure how you can call him an Obama ally, tho. They belonged to the same party in the same state and had a pro forma relationship, but that's about it.
Your anger with Obama wouldn't be coloring your judgement there, would it?
No Hope In Politics
· 11 months ago
Screw the law
As if Obama will hold Bush/Cheney accountable to law?
Satan's bride, Phyllis, has a gay son( un-fuckin'believeable) who is a lawyer. Lives with his mommie.
Dianne_in_DC
· 11 months ago
Welcome back Joe. I never watch TV in the morning. Glad to hear Petey made such a splash. Here's an interesting sign of the times -- the Ritz Carlton has lowered its price for monthly parking. It is now $190 a month for newcomers only. It was over $200 before.
Observer
· 11 months ago
is there a bigger dick in politics than Rod Blagojevich?
Obama.
Gives high honors to unrepentant misogynist bigoted hypocrites.
Will throw cannabis growers/users in jail while he puffs on cancer sticks.
Will let Bush/Cheney get away with war crimes just like Clinton did with the Iran/Contra gang...
who then came back and gave us the Bipartisan Holocaust in Iraq.
So, yes, there are bigger jerks in politics than Blagojevich.
nicho
· 11 months ago
What took you so long, Joe? I gave up on the Toady Show 10 years ago.
lost_nacf_gop
· 11 months ago
sheeyit, say it ain't so, Joe? Think of all them grieving-but-TV-crazed-regular-folk you'll miss seeing Chatty Matty shove a microphone into their faces, with such insightful and incisive questions as "How did it feel to lose your brother/sister/husband/wife/girlfriend/grandparent/neighbor-down-the-street-you-never-spoke-to/401k/job/home?" On second thought, you're right. No more of that stupid show in '09.
james k. sayre
· 11 months ago
Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats are just blustering right-wing windbags. They couldn't stop the criminal Bush occupation of Irak. They couldn't even cut off the funding for this occupation. But, hey, they managed to vote to outlaw our beloved 100-watt light bulb. And now, they are doing the dirty work for the GOP and white racists everywhere by trying to keep the US Senate lily-white.
The Governor of Illinois is still governing legally; he has not been removed; he has not been impeached. He has not been convicted of a crime. Ever hear of the presumption of innocence? Senate Dems were whining about the rule of law re: Bush, but now they want to have the rule of media gossip.... Heck of a job, Harry...
bbock
· 11 months ago
Personally, i'm tired of hearing about how Barack Obama's replacement is affected by Blagojevich's taint. I'd rather not think about Blagojevich's taint. It puts pictures in my head that, like the man himself, probably won't go away anytime soon.
HelenaMontana
· 11 months ago
Blago would have been right at home in the Bush administration.
pat mallory
· 11 months ago
Really? Who has ever investigated the Bush administration?
eclecticbrotha
· 11 months ago
It's like Blago is plotting each move to do the most damage he can to Obama and the Democratic party.
This is exactly why Obama, Durbin, Reid and the Democrats need to end this farce by allowing Burris to serve as caretaker of Obama's vacated senate seat until the midterm elections. Take this arrow out of Blago's quiver immediately or he will continue to use it to grab national headlines. Once the seat is taken this reverts back to a local story and Barack can get down to business without the daily distraction.
MaudGonne
· 11 months ago
If Israel indefinitely continues its billion dollar blitz on Gaza – and we all know who is paying for that – there will, at some stage, be an individual massacre; a school will be hit, a hospital or a pre-natal clinic or just an apartment packed with civilians. In other words, another Qana. At which point, a familiar story will be told; that Hamas destroyed the school/hospital/pre-natal clinic, that the journalists who report on the slaughter are anti-Semitic, that Israel is under threat, etc. We may even get the same disingenuous parallel with a disastrous RAF raid in the Second World War which both Menachem Begin and Benjamin Netanayahu have used over the past quarter century to justify the killing of civilians. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentato...
pat mallory
· 11 months ago
Our president seems to believe that the good Lord has mandated Israel to slay the Phillistines in some biblical justification. How could you hope for objectivity when you refer to one of the parties in this fight as "the chosen people".?
All Comments
Obamanomics:
One tall latte every week
With your tax refund
naked
OMG, you guys?!
First Girls n Miley Cyrus!
Just keep your shirts on -
Today, forty miles from where I'm staying, Israel continued its third day of aerial strikes on the Gaza Strip with the death toll on the Palestinian side surpassing 300. Two Israelis have been killed by homemade rockets fired from the small Palestinian coastal territory and became the impetus for the Israeli retaliation. But the airstrikes are just the tail end of a siege that has deprived 1.5 million Palestinians of food from the UN, fuel from Egypt and Israel, and medicine from the Red Cross for several years now. Israel's policy of depriving civilians of basic human necessities - a war crime according to the Fourth Geneva Convention and International Court of Justice - has strengthened Hamas, a militant political organization that runs Gaza, and given the people there no alternative but to turn to this group to do something about their circumstances.
Most countries and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have been quick to condemn both sides for their reckless campaigns of violence against civilians, but the U.S. stands alone in its one-sided criticism of Hamas as the culprit of this endless conflict.
Yesterday, Bethlehem, as well as the rest of the West Bank, was closed for business as people either attended rallies condemning the attacks, or stayed at home, glued to Al-Jazeera news. One man was killed in Ramallah, the West Bank capital of Palestine seven miles from my location, by an Israeli soldier who said the man was about to throw a molotov cocktail at him. A Palestinian policeman friend of mine who lives in Bethlehem one week and works in Jericho the next, returned from work the first day of the strikes, but was called back to work 24-hours later.
The Palestinian government is run by the politcal party Fatah. In 2005, Hamas became the dominant party in a democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. Immediately, the U.S. cut off all aid to the Palestinian people. Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah president of the Palestinian government ousted Hamas, who consolidated its main power base in the Gaza Strip. The U.S. resumed its funding and Fatah established an illigitimate government. Fatah is a more moderate government who is willing to make concessions with Israel in exchange for peace. The most recent peace process effort began in Annapolis last year, but talks broke down when neither side could reach an agreement over the summer.
Most of the people I have spoken to in the West Bank think Hamas is fanatical, but believe that Fatah is corrupt and not doing anything to help Palestinians. Abbas is in a difficult position because he must use his police forces to contain his people so that Israel won't strike the West Bank like it is doing to Gaza right now. But this breeds contempt among people in the West Bank because it looks like he is a pawn of Israel, using force to suppress his own people to minimize terrorist attacks against civilians in Israel, while getting nothing in return from Israel and the U.S. for his efforts.
I've generally felt safe during my travels, but a family who I know intimately, has told me not to walk the streets of Bethlehem alone at night because I may be mistaken for an Israeli informant. I've been worried that spending time with that same family may implicate them as collaborators in the eyes of their neighbors. They try to reasure me that this is not the case, but my trip is only half way through and every day I feel increasingly suspicious gazes following me through the streets. I was detained on Christmas Eve while Mahmoud Abbas was in town for the celebration because unlike most tourists who come here, I was spending time with the locals, walking through parts of Bethlehem that the tourists don't see on their 15 minute bus tour of the place.
Tension is palpable now as Israel's escalation has increased their own casualties and the possiblity for a wider regional conflict. I am about 15 miles out of range of the rockets, but Israeli troops are just a stone throw away - literally. Gaza is closed off to everyone and everything and a ground invasion seems inevitable. Eyes are also on the northern border of Israel as Hezbollah has been preparing troops since the last Israeli incursion in 2006 and the Lebanese expect another. A truce will only work when you reward the moderates and isolate the extremists. Gazans need an alternative to Hamas, but who is going to give it to them when the world refuses to acknowledge their humanitarian crisis and extinguish their self-determination?
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Who is Roland Burris and who are the people who are endorsing his questionable appointment to the Senate?
Bush would party with the gays, if he thought he would get something out of it. On the other hand, he's have them all rounded up and shot, if that would advance his own selfish interests.
Don't look for any ideology from the Bush family beyond the end of their own noses.
I intend to eat more macrobiotically, get my blood pressure down from all the MSM bullshit, clean out my arteries...
from Schrum:
It’s hard to be a worse President than James Buchanan, who almost lost the Civil War before it started. But it’s perhaps harder still to make a case that history will rank George W. Bush anywhere except in the bottom tier. Bush would be better off, and so would we, if he was Benjamin Button, growing younger, undoing the damage of his tenure in the White House. Or better yet, perhaps we could just go back and correctly count the ballots in Florida—then we wouldn’t have had to live through this movie.
http://www.theweek.com/article/index/91910/3/Bu...
And yes, there is a bigger dick . . . Cheney!
Okay, so you're not going to have the TV on automatic wakeup with the Today Show. What, then? Angel on TBS? The Shopping Network? You're not going over to Disney-owned ABC, I hope. You already know you're going to get out of bed irritable, that's your bread and butter. Why blame Matt? He's just a balding air-head.
How is Bush any different than the the government of North Korea?
Screw the law, screw what everybody else thinks, just keep going on like nothing's wrong and screw anybody who can't deal with it.
Not sure how you can call him an Obama ally, tho. They belonged to the same party in the same state and had a pro forma relationship, but that's about it.
Your anger with Obama wouldn't be coloring your judgement there, would it?
As if Obama will hold Bush/Cheney accountable to law?
lolololololololololololololol!
Whew.... wait...
lolololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololol!
Obama.
Gives high honors to unrepentant misogynist bigoted hypocrites.
Will throw cannabis growers/users in jail while he puffs on cancer sticks.
Will let Bush/Cheney get away with war crimes just like Clinton did with the Iran/Contra gang...
who then came back and gave us the Bipartisan Holocaust in Iraq.
So, yes, there are bigger jerks in politics than Blagojevich.
On second thought, you're right. No more of that stupid show in '09.
The Governor of Illinois is still governing legally; he has not been removed; he has not been impeached. He has not been convicted of a crime. Ever hear of the presumption of innocence? Senate Dems were whining about the rule of law re: Bush, but now they want to have the rule of media gossip....
Heck of a job, Harry...
This is exactly why Obama, Durbin, Reid and the Democrats need to end this farce by allowing Burris to serve as caretaker of Obama's vacated senate seat until the midterm elections. Take this arrow out of Blago's quiver immediately or he will continue to use it to grab national headlines. Once the seat is taken this reverts back to a local story and Barack can get down to business without the daily distraction.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentato...