Wonkette
- You know who was president the last time stocks dropped so much in one year? Herbert Hoover. [Associated Press]
- Obama is just like us! The power went out, in Hawaii, at this $9 million beachfront compound he’s renting for the holidays. [MSNBC]
- Israel is bombing the hell out of Gaza, including the university in Gaza, because why not? [BBC World News]
- On the bright side, civilian deaths from bombings are down quite a bit in Iraq. [TIME]
- America’s new houses will be small and sad, or possibly carved out of abandoned McMansions, which is even sadder. [Washington Post]
- If you needed a State Law to tell you not to type text messages on your cell phone while driving, then California has a special retard gift for you on January 1. [SF Gate]
We are just going to rent rooms to tourists in our home during the entire Obama administration because no one who comes to the Inauguration will see anything or get anywhere close to him.
Yeah, ‘only’ about 9,000 civilian casualties in Iraq, according to a very conservative method of estimating them.
Bush Administration: “Sure Israel killed 300 people, so far, but the Palestinians have been shooting bottle rockets for months. Nothing says ally of the Unite States like the screams of innocent women and children. This serves as a reminder. We need to send Israel another couple billion dollars right away.”
Smaller houses? But where will I fit my 6-piece Jennifer Convertibles sofa set and 68″ plasma TV that put me $10,000 into debt? I’ll die with my gaudy, grandiose taste, thank you. Probably while softly crying to myself and clutching my unpaid credit card bills.
2druk2phluq: Yes, Israel should wait until Hamas manages to score a big hit first.
2druk2phluq: Why not? It comes right back as campaign contributions, defense contracts, etc. I just wish they’d leave the Palestinians out of it.
I wasn’t aware Iraq had a civilian population left? SnowBilly told me they were all terrorists, not civilians, when she could see Iraq from her army base window in Kuwait.
That Time story makes me wish that poor journalist, (Bush:”I don’t know what his beef is with me”), had thrown a hundred goddamn shoes, with exploding rocks in them…
Jewels and binoculars hang from the head of a mule. Nice.
Hoover got a dam, and Reagan got an airport. Bush did just as much as those two presidents to ensure economic collapse during his presidency. He deserves more than a garbage dump.
JGB: Are we talking about Sarah again?
finallyhappy: lolz. That’s the Palin line in that one for sure, good call.
1000 whore diamonds for the Dylan lyric post headline.
And I know this brands me an anti-Semite forever, but how stupid is Israel? I mean, Hamas is being stupid here, too, but WTF? Gaza’s choices are: 1) be ghettoized by Israel (irony alert) with no food, med supplies, or way to make a living or 2) have blocks removed so you can get food, med supplies, and earn a living, but have the living shit bombed out of you. This does not seem like a plan designed to foster peace.
Can someone over there just say, “yo, we are not escalting this anymore, we are all ignoring the terrorists and working together to defeat them, whether Muslim or Jewish”. No? OK, then resume bombing the living shit out of each other.
Oh, and Tzipi Livni is a silly name.
Hoover got a dam, and Reagan got an airport. Jr. did just as much as those two to ensure that the economy tanked on his watch. He desreves more than a garbage dump.
Doglessliberal: Well, if you have a really good peace plan- you tell Israel. Your current suggestion doesn’t work.
shanemcgowan: sorry. computer problems.
Doglessliberal: “Oh, and Tzipi Livni is a silly name.” Still, I’d hit it.
I don’t know what the fuss is about smaller houses. I always wanted one. I think more people want them than we’ve come to believe. I remember talking with a woman when I still lived in New York. She lived in Westchester County, just north of the City, and she said she and her husband were looking for a small house, but no one was building them, and most of the preëxisting small houses had been knocked down to build these behemoth manor houses.
The day I look forward to is when malls start shutting down and turned into living space. I already know of a couple of old churches that have been turned into condos here in Boston, and a friend of mine recently moved in to a converted high school. I’d hope for churches to be converted into living space if it weren’t happening already.
Doglessliberal: “Oh, and Tzipi Livni is a silly name.” So’s Twyla Tharp, but that didn’t stop her from seeking elective office. Something else did, though, because she never sought it.
As hot as Ms. Livni is, Israel is still going overly crazy with the bombing. I’m hardly a Hamas sympathizer, myself, but as horrid as they are, Israel hasn’t done a whole lot to bring peace to the region, either.
Ya gotta love our reactive society. It took a global bankruptcy for Americans to re-think chasing trends and discern wants and needs. My only consolation to the McMansion debacle is that their shoddy construction will hasten their disappearance.
finallyhappy: JGB: Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it….
Servo: What disappoints me the most about the imminent collapse of the McMansion in America is that those furshlugginer pilons that people have been putting out front to house their mailboxes have been getting bigger and bigger, and I was eager for the day when they’d get big enough to class as a small apartment. I figure that if the economy hadn’t finally tanked, this would have happened to those pilons by 2015.
2015 is going to be a cool year, anyway, so I guess I shouldn’t complain. I saw Back to the Future II, so I know.
Larry McAwful: I’ve seen schools converted to condos, a church turned into a food co-op - wonder if they could do something with big box stores. I worked at a shelter last week that could certainly use more room. People should have somewhere to live that is somewhat private- even if it is like a cubicle instead of a big room with many bunk beds and one bathroom and one shower room. Prisoners have more privacy than the people I saw.
There is still McMansion building going on here in the DC suburbs- tearing the normal size house down to build on every inch of your lot.
My friend used to be able to text relatively safely while driving, because he could do it without ever looking at his phone using the T9 predictive text thing. Now he has a phone with a full keyboard so he can’t do it anymore, but you could tell he really wasn’t looking before because occasionally it would predict the wrong word, like “good” instead of “home”. Unless the law is meant to imply that having something else in one hand while driving is unsafe, even if you’re keeping your eyes on the road?
Hamas is releasing 60 years of bottled “Never Forget” hatred.
Doglessliberal:
I agree. Israel gets suckered into these fights every single time, and come out looking like the assholes. It’s kinda like a 30 year old man pummeling a mouthy pre-teen punk.
Smart builders and consumers in U.S. of A. will put money on this technology, with or without gummint help.
http://www.passiv.de/
Israel is a REPUBLICAN nation. The proof: Bombing Gaza University. Republicans HATE Universities and all other institutions of learning, exceptin’ good ol’ bible-thumpin schools.
Learnin reading, writin’, ‘rithmatic, and geo-political theory by reading the Bible only is a good thing!
finallyhappy: Let’s begin by stopping the 3 billion dollars we send Israel every year. It won’t happen, cuz Hopey relies on Zionista money for campaigning just like every other successful pol. Just sayin’.
finallyhappy: I bet they could do something with big box stores. When I lived in Jersey City, there was an old pencil factory that was turned into apartments—just an old, open-air Ticonderoga pencil plant. They built apartments there, two floors’ worth, and they’re pretty nice, from what I understand. I didn’t live there, but it was a very popular complex, close to mass transit and everything.
Since WalMarts tend to be built outside of towns whose downtowns are ruined, they probably couldn’t command the same rents as the Ticonderoga pencil factory. But, unlike in Jersey City, there’d be plenty of parking. And maybe the parking lots of the old WalMarts could be converted into new downtowns, new Main Streets, to replace the decaying, boarded-up, and otherwise perfectly useful storefronts that we used to patronize before WalMart took over the United States and sold it to China wholesale.
Doglessliberal: *nods* Suffering in the past does not justify cruelty in the future.
IS this Israel thing just a more militarized front of the War on Christmas? They started bombing a little to close to Jesusday for my conspiracy antennae to not go up. I bet the Palestinians said Happy Holidays or tried to acknowledge Kwanzaa one too many times for Israels liking.
http://thesebastards.blogspot.com/
Miller: It’s because Hamas canceled the cease-fire around Christmas, killing tourism.
Those planes and bombs weren’t sent by IDF; they are actually from the Ministry of Tourism’s elite fighting force.
I (finally) get it: Visions of Gehenna. They also keep me up past the dawn.
Ummm hello, Ken? I live in California and REALLY wanted to know what my retard gift will be if I pinky swear not to txt msg in my car. But the SF Gate link goes to WashPo instead. I beg you: please don’t make me be not lazy and have to look it up. Please.
Miller: Hamas et al. probably picked it on purpose, because Christmas is a slow news day and turkey-stuffed Westerners would be more likely to actually hear about it. And this time they really, really want publicity, because the really awkward thing here is that Hamas is kind of in the right this time. (Insomuch as Hamas is capable of being in the right.) It’s pretty ballsy of Israel to accuse Hamas of starting it when they’ve been causing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza with the blockade, y’know?
Hoover, Hawai’i, Hamas, houses, half-wits…I’m sensing a theme.
Even Mona Lisa must of had the highway blues. You can tell by the way she smiles.
bitchincamaro: The $3B we send to Israel is actually a gift to….us. We give Israel money to buy military hardware from our vendors.
Min: Hussein . . .
JGB: But these visions of Johanna make it all seem so cruel.
Yeah, where does Israel get off? No other country in the world would (or should) consider military action just because someones launching missiles at them.
V572625694: Agreed. Somehow the food stamps scheme is more palatable, however.
bitchincamaro: Didn’t our troops liberate these places at the end of WW2?
Warren Terror: Wouldn’t it be nice if the Hamas left the Israelis out of it? Ha ha.
Hamas celebrated the end of a ceasefile as it always does: getting a huge Jihad-boner over the chance to reign down rockets on any target (so long as it’s not a military target).
New Year’s Resolution suggestion: Let’s all try and make educated and thoughtful judgmetns about when Israel is being overagressive and foolish (see: Lebanon Invasion last summer) and when it is acting in reasonable self-defense (nota bene: author acknowledges the chance that what is currently reasonable will soon cross the line, but so far not the case).
And here is a nice rebuke of the “Israel is overreacting” bullshit:
http://www.jewcy.com/post/hamas_israel_and_perverse_inversion_reality
If owners find them unsustainable, some large suburban houses might get turned into multi-family homes, just as many of the large homes of the late 1880s and early 1900s were converted into duplexes once lifestyles grew more spare.
The old (1905) 5000 sf, 20 room craftsman brick pile that I grew up in was a duplex when my grandparents bought it in 1930, just like the WaPo article mentioned. After a couple years, gramps started being successful in his business ventures, and they kicked out the renters and converted it back to a large single family home.
Zoom forward to 2008: the old place has been on the market for a couple years at $600k, with no serious offers, according to the current owners, a sixtyish couple with their kids grown up and gone.
I’ll have to dig out the old photos grandma gave me and show them where to put up the walls to make it back into a duplex. Five bathrooms, no sweat!
Doglessliberal: Agreed, that song has amazing lyrics. And, honestly, I like this particular line the best, because it appears Dylan was channeling Ray Bradbury for a moment.
azw88:
Yes, you know what an excellent classical liberal education one gets at Gaza University, as with all other Hamas institutions, great place for women, people with alternative lifestyles and divergent opinions, really, Israel bombed the place where peace loving leaders were being trained.
Larry McAwful: I always wanted to live in a cathedral. They have the best architecture.
GDTRFB: Wow, I can hear James Taylor singing “Fire and Reign” now …
Godot: Seriously, there is a church that was turned into condos in DC- I think on 15th street- this was maybe 26 years ago. The bedroom in the condo they showed us was part of the former sanctuary- still a big stained glass window but no giant cross.
Larry McAwful: I actually was in grade school with a girl named Melissa Thistlethwaite. Of course as cruel twisted shits we called her the human tonguetwister (hey that was the height of humor to a third grader!) And there was no Israel or Hamas in those days either–ah the innocence!
Finally Happy: A friend of mine used to date a guy who lived in an apartment building that was once a convent. Not much was done to change the place, other than throw up some walls and add bathrooms. His apartment was a part of the original chapel, and had an elaborate altar, unchanged, complete with altar railing. You can probably imagine the uses to which that altar was put, but may prefer not to.
people are already recycling closed box stores:
http://bigboxreuse.com/
finallyhappy: True, it is called Bishop’s Gate, 1715 15th ST, and you can have that Chapel Unit for a mere $1.25M Bargain!
I used to live there (not in that Chapel unit) and ironically most of the owners are gay, jewish, and even a few gay jews!
GDTRFB: we were a young engaged couple then- Jewish but not gay. I am pretty sure our realtor told us it was not a good neighborhood to raise children. I was more concerned about trying to do the deed in a former Christian chapel.
I wish all those folks lookin’ for Obama’s Hawaiian Birth Certificate would spend some time lookin’ for the deed, signed by some sky god guy, that gives all that land to the Jewish religion.
I am sure the legal deeds the Palestinians held, back in the 1930’s, to the land were signed by just men. They just need a bigger co-signer?
I love the Dylan reference, but you should have used the whole line, “The Ghost of Electricity Howls in the Bones of her Face.” The Israelis are the masters of revenge, taking an eye, a head,
a torso, and a university for an eye. There will never be peace there. This shit will go on until they all kill each other. All this blab about who started it, how it started, etc., is pointless.
Just nuke each other and get it over with, then just leave it for the surviving mutant insect life.