As I suspected, this was one very long week indeed. It’s good to get it the hell over with. I just need to push through one more day of feeling like crap, and then I’m gonna try like hell to sleep ’til Monday. In the meantime, you gotta love Barney Frank:
“At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, [Obama] says we only have one president at a time,” Frank said. “I’m afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have. He’s got to remedy that situation.”
Bush is behaving as if all his deficiencies and tics have begun to overwhelm him. They are certainly overwhelming us. But, as Bushy fades away, the loons in his administration are busy polluting the air and water because, obviously, they do not breathe air or drink water.
Maybe we should’ve just bought $27 billion worth of lottery tickets.
I am soooo glad there isn’t any oversight for this bailout. It allows the delusional ideologues and the Chaney army of robber barons to operate with less stress.
President-elect Barack Obama has begun laying the groundwork for overhauling the troubled U.S. healthcare system, reaching out to interest groups and building grass-roots support for the huge undertaking.
snip
Obama’s coordinator on healthcare, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, will participate in a healthcare reform debate in Colorado on Friday that is expected to begin detailing the plans for change.
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE4B40RF20081205?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews
Reading about what Obama is doing and reading about what Bushco is doing is pulling me between hope and dispair. I think daily about how grateful I am that we are not facing a McLame/ Palin administration.
In light of recent information from a new whistle-blower in the Bush Justice Department’s political prosecutions still under investigation by Congress, including the case of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, the federal court in Montgomery has re-opened the investigation into juror misconduct, according to a document just filed with the appeals court in Atlanta.
“Out of an abundance of caution, the Department of Justice recently reopened the investigation into this matter in response to concerns raised about the completeness of the investigation,†according to the response from U.S. attorneys to a request for supplemental information on Siegelman’s appeal.
snip
Vince Kilborn, one of Siegelman’s attorneys, said the information is significant.
He also said contrary to public and legal opinions published and discussed to date, the three-judge panel could in fact drop the case against Siegelman and HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy next Tuesday, Dec. 9, in Atlanta.
http://blog.locustfork.net/2008/12/04/justice-department-re-opens-juror-misconduct-investigation/
Ouch!
Jobless Rate Rises to 6.7% as 533,000 Jobs Are Lost
:tap: :omg: :fustrate: :fu: 🙁
#33 :rofl2:
Happiness is contagious, spreading among friends, neighbors, siblings and spouses like the flu, according to a large study that for the first time shows how emotion can ripple through clusters of people who may not even know each other.
“You would think that your emotional state would depend on your own choices and actions and experience,” said Nicholas A. Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard University who helped conduct the study published online today by BMJ, a British medical journal. “But it also depends on the choices and actions and experiences of other people, including people to whom you are not directly connected. Happiness is contagious
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/04/AR2008120403537.html?wpisrc=newsletter
Boy is Granny in trouble.
I dunno, I may be revealing my joylessness and being a general bummer but I think that the “don’t worry, be happy” motto ignores some of the very large problems that some people face that are legitimately worrisome. It’s easy to say don’t worry when you don’t have much to be worried about. And it’s usually those people who are saying it. Now, I don’t consider myself depressed as much as freaked out. And that’s because I feel like I am facing an abyss. Having said that, I’ve learned to distract my attention from that abyss by keeping busy and focusing on whatever I can do to move away from that abyss. But sometimes it looms before me and I become frightened. Pair that with your old friends too busy with their own lives to return your calls(plus the fact that most people don’t care to do anything with someone who’s broke all the time) and being surrounded by people you don’t really care for(not you guys, you guys have been some of my best friends the last couple of years) and family members having equally or more difficult problems. Attaining happiness can have many obstacles. The lesbian I work for is a pretty happy, positive person but I’m not sure that it has rubbed off on me because I feel like she is judging me harshly a lot. I feel like she thinks I’m freaked out for no reason and does not appreciate what I’m facing. Anyone would be terribly worried when they don’t know where next months rent is coming from. I’ve actually gotten past worrried and I’m more in the frame of mind of who cares. I’m doing the best I can with what I have and that’s all I can do. I only have financial worries and I’m by myself. I can’t even imagine the worries that someone with kids who has lost their job and can’t find another one has, or someone who is facing cancer or some other life threatening illness. So, I do feel lucky when I look at things from that point of view. And there are things on the horizon but the waiting is maddening and nothing is assured. Sorry to be a bummer but I cannot ignore reality.
This is kinda trippy. As I was writing the above I got a phone call from a stranger that said he got my number from my flyer at Einsteins. He said he wasn’t looking for faux finish work but was with a sales and management training company and wanted to know how my flyers were working. I told him they weren’t and I figured he wanted to sell his training courses to me and I told him I am flat broke and can’t afford anything at this point. He gave me his website address and asked me to take a look at it and he’d like to call me back in a couple of hours to see what we could work out. I decided to see what this guy has to offer. The site has courses that would totally help my inadequasies in selling. When I talked to the guy that offered me the green house job the other day I asked him how many other people they were interviewing and I think I told you that it’s between me and another woman with a strong sales background. At which point I decided to shift my focus of research for this position to learning how to sell. So I went to the library and got “How to win friends and influence people” at the suggestion of the lesbian. So, the timing of this guys call is quite amazing and I wonder how he can offer seminars to people who are flat broke. We’ll see.
KP, I think there is a big difference between legitimate worry about the realities of life and being habitually wretched. You seem to have an ability to have good times and to make the best of things in spite of precarious finances.
Krista, here are some things to smile about.
It was 75 years today…
S.F. toasts the repeal of Prohibition again
And an interesting bit about the Berkeley city council..
UC professor under fire for White House memo
And this interesting bit of politics…
Caroline Kennedy interested in NY Senate seat
Chris Matthews’ Insult to Pennsylvania Voters
Having grown up outside of Philadelphia, I just want to say I really hope Chris Matthews runs for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, and is humiliatingly obliterated in a Democratic primary (preferably by a good progressive like, for instance, former Rep. Joe Hoeffel).* The sense of entitlement that this blowhard personifies is truly stunning. He’s spent his entire life as a principle-free political gossip in Washington – a human embodiment of all that is sick and wrong with Beltway culture. And yet, he really thinks he can just parachute into one of the largest states in the country, buy a mansion in Philadelphia and be a senator on sheer celebrity alone. I mean, maybe he can – maybe politics is now so devoid of meaning that this is just the way it is. But I really hope not.
Hoeffel would have been my Senator if it hadn’t been for the rampant election fraud in the western half of the state.
Not only would it be sweet to see Tweety blown away in the primary, it would be even sweeter because MSNBC would have to take him off the air when he declares his candidacy. No more Hardball!
This would, of course, leave MSNBC with some airtime to fill. They had great success recently bringing a progressive radio host to cable news. Why not go to the well a second time?
Any nominations? Marc and Sam would be a blast to watch, but I doubt MSNBC would go for it, or that most of their viewers would get it. Stephanie Miller? Mike Malloy? Talk among yourselves.
KP, what Sue said. I remember being broke, but I’d always manage to get a freelance gig or something and the bills would be paid. My guy, on the other hand, would be unbearably dismal (he was later diagnosed with ADD). I always had the outlook that my problems were something to be worked on, not obsessed about. I could be depressed as hell, but I still had to get up in the morning.
#12 = synchronicity! :nod: love it!
(hope you’re feeling better Anastasi. you, too, blog proprietor!)
NC, I actually saw the paper today and that article about prohibition. The bar in the photos, The Little Shamrock, is my local next to Golden Gate Park. The guy sitting in the bar is a yoga teacher at my gym. There were also pictures of two other people I know in the paper today.
Thanks, you guys. I did First Friday tonight and didn’t sell a damned thing, but, I don’t think anyone else did either. I had a good time though. My friend, John brought his cool fire carraige and Jeff Farias was there playing with his wife, Tammy Patrick and the Merkin Wranglers. A guy showed up that I knew from working with the lesbian but he also knew my friend John. Weird. I’ve known John for over 20 years and I seem to meet people independant of him who also know him. There was a horrible band playing at the record store next door that drove potential customers away but thankfully they didn’t play for too long but I got to talk to Jeff for a while. He is struggling like anyone right now but he talked about doing some online stuff with some radio hosts and one of them was Mark Riley. Cool.