Richard Day's picture

    OBAMA; SAYONARA! SOTU LIVE BLOG!

    I would like to do a live blog on the STATE OF THE UNION tonight.

    I wrote a few thoughts about this event last night.

    I would appreciate any thoughts you might have during the presentation beginning at 8pm cst?

    Natasha Gural's picture

    I’m a Blackstar (What David Bowie's Death Means For All Of Us)

    I’ve read them all. None of the obituaries succeed. There is too much to say and too little space. Besides, in his ultimate subversion, David Bowie wrote his own.

    Early on during my tenure at AP, I’d asked a superior editor if I could contribute to Bowie’s death “preparedness,” and was denied. I never asked again. I was so hurt at being shut down. Sure, I am as biased as they come, but I challenge anyone to find a rival then and now in the mainstream media who knows (and cares) more about the endless well of Bowie’s far-reaching breakthroughs in myriad forms of art. To call him a rock star is to call me a fan. I lose all humility when it comes to the prowess of my idol worship.

    jollyroger's picture

    Watcha' gonna do when you get outta jail? Think I'll make a movie....

    SMH) We learn again today that the search for fame will subvert the success of even the most fortunate.

    In the case of Joaquin Guzman, boss of the Sinaloa Cartel, he is said to have precipitated the raid which ended his brief hiatus (6 months)  from what promises to be permanent imprisonment because of a stated intention to produce his own biopic.

    Tax Policy Wins!

    FDRAfter I boasted during my show a couple of days ago that I'm the best talk show host on the air, one of my listeners retorted: “You have virtually no guests. You talk about the same things almost every day. You have one of two solutions to every problem….raise taxes or limit freedoms.”

    It didn't take much reflection to conclude Jeff in Columbus has a point when he decries my predictability. There's an old saying if your only tool is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail. Based on Jeff's criticism, you can probably guess that the goto tool in my kit is tax policy.

    jollyroger's picture

    Friends don't let (WASP) friends use Yiddish when campaigning.

    I have previously declared myself deceived by Donald Chump Trump's over the top materialism and coarse address, which,on reflection, gave rise to a misconstruction re:his ethnicity that a close examination of his goyische punim (and goyische kopf) should have corrected.

     

    Richard Day's picture

    WE ARE MARCHING TO FREEDONIA

     

    Mussolini biografia.jpg

    I viewed the new TRUMP ad.

     

     

    There certainly were strange features like Mexicans running over our borders.

    jollyroger's picture

    Why are we with the Arabs and not the Persians? I blame Lawrence.

    From time to time it is useful to raise one's head above the AIPAC  generated miasma of anti-Iranian mania, and ask why, all things taken together, we invariably favor the Arabs (Saudis--with their irredentist head-chopping monarchy that, not incidentally, produced the guys who took down our big buildings--and Sunnis generally) over the Persians (who have women in parliament--shit, they HAVE a parliament!)

    Orion's picture

    Looking Right In The Face At World War

    A couple months ago, I wrote a blog proclaiming that America was immersed in a civil war.

    Richard Day's picture

    BULLETS AS A MAJOR THREAT TO OUR NATION'S HEALTH

     


    Sometimes there are no practical solutions to a conundrum.

    I reside in a seventeen floor apartment building; I am lucky enough to live on the second floor.

    There have only been two 'small' emergencies over the last ten years.

           A small fire in the laundry room
           A bit of flooding (due to a faulty sprinkler system?)


    We do have five? fire alarms a year.

    Danny Cardwell's picture

    What The Left Refuses To Accept About Trump

    "Let me go over that again: Reagan’s popularity was popular. When you went through the various traits of Reagan and what Reagan stood for and his policies and so on vast numbers of people disliked nearly all of them. What was popular was his popularity and I don’t think that Reagan’s alone in this."           

    --Rick Roderick 

    Poll tactics & kissin' cuzzins

    Growing up, every time there was a close football game, I got to hear Frank Gifford or Dan Meredith exclaim how a tie is like kissing your cousin. (My initial reaction was "which one?" some of my cousins were pretty damn cute.)

    At this stage in New Hampshire, it looks like Bernie's playing for a tie - roughly 2 point spread for the last 2 months, and within 5 points since August. 

    The sad news for Bernie fans is that's not good enough - at this point it's dialed into everyone's expectations that New Hampshire's Sanders' back yard, that he should win - it's no longer an "upset". 

    Berntrayal: we wuz robbed

    Keeping an eye on the Bernie squad's meta for some time, there's been an interesting undercurrent of how unfair the whole process is since last summer.

    What's funny to me is why this is news.

    Consider five businessmen at lunch

    Actually more than 5, but there are only 5 that count.

    There's a view of the top of the Chrysler building, not that anyone looks. Conversation is desultory. Not about the NFL. It's an international group.

    Richard Day's picture

    MERRY XMAS DAGBLOGGERS!

    I think Moat was writing about philosophy with Peracles. ha

    I like to read stuff like that.

    I think sometimes about going into the garage, turning on the engine, ensuring that the garage door is secured and then losing my soul. But I have no car or garage. 

    ha

    My son brought his children to my apartment for the first time.

    A New Year's Lament?

    [seemed a shame to waste this/have it disappear as a throwaway comment]

    Once upon a time there were people who expressed themselves - for me perhaps MLK & RFK & others in amazing books I'd read, you may have your own - in a way that was lucid and compelling and convincing. I could listen to them and I'd find reason to mull over what they said and incorporate what they had to say in my belief system - they provided new grist for the mill, not merely retread.

    Under Obamacare costs are increasing -not

    During Saturday's  Democratic debate  Martha Radatz asked Hillary why the annual cost increases have been higher.

    They haven't been.

    Check out today's TPM for the correct numbers.  

    tmccarthy0's picture

    My Irrelevant Rant: Donald Trump, Debbie Wasserman Schulz, Howard Dean & Me

    It all began in July, Donald Trump was on TV continuously, I had a dental appointment coming up. I slept very deeply the night before my appointment and I was dreaming, I mean having a nightmare.  I sat straight up in bed scared to death, because I'd dreamt Donald Trump was my dentist. There he was standing over my face, dye job gone wrong red hair and his his skin was a light cheeto tint, it was disturbing and probably true, but I've never been that close to Donald Trump to say that is absolutely factual. His assistant was everything you would expect of a Trump assistant.

    Recommended Reading for Earnest Voters

    I hope you, Dag reader,  watched the most recent Republican debate centered on foreign policy. If so, I hope that on that one issue alone every candidate on stage convinced you that they are each and all disqualified but also that it is a critically dangerous possibility that one of these people becomes the leader of our country and the commander in chief of our armed forces. No one can turn the big ship of state around quickly but the CIC is in a position to, on their own, speed that big mutha right onto the rocks in short order.

    Richard Day's picture

    SPITE & THE ENVIRONMENT

    When Ronald Reagan first arrived at the White House, he removed the solar cells from the roof of his new home that had just been installed by Jimmy Carter.

    WHY?

    Out of spite or was it due to the lobbyists who were afraid of this new technology OR was it due to energy lobbyists?

    Danny Cardwell's picture

    Crying Out To An Apathetic Nation

    Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
    --Steven Weinberg

    This kind of radical imagery is necessary if we (religious and secular people of good faith and intentions) are ever going to shatter a cultural symbolic order that seeks to lessen the suffering of others. We ingest this symbolic order through benign daily conversations, and the ideas and images disseminated through television and other forms of media. We are being consciously and sometimes subconsciously conditioned to see some people as less than us. 

    Richard Day's picture

    WHERE DO WE GO WRONG?

    Armitage Siren.JPG

    Okay, I need a new notebook.

    I mean, I need pages that can be properly folded!

    I watch my cable far tooooo much.

    Yet, I eschew most of the messages.

    These ads tell me I am in need.

    And who the hell is not in need?

    Missed Opportunities

    More surprising than Scalia's attitudes this week were the Texas attorney's weak arguments.

    "Now's not the time to lower diversity"? Jesus Christ, why not say "you're wrong, I'm right"? Wouldn't we demand our money back, look for better support than this?

    Try it this way -

    Sweet nothings with the Farooks.

    According to Comey's House testimony today we now know that in their pre marital electronic discussions they discussed dying in an attack  on behalf of Isis. No doubt  if we know this now we could have known it then.

    LarryH's picture

    Thank you Justice Scalia

    I can think of nothing that could demonstrate more conclusively the need for a robust and comprehensive program of affirmative action in this society than the ease with which  you proffered such a distillate of racist bigotry in today’s Supreme Court hearing, and that you could do so without the slightest evidence of discomfort nor hesitance, and that among the assemblage of high jurists, legal experts and practitioners there was not the slightest gasp of disbelief that such a thing could be uttered anywhere in public least of all in the Supreme Court.

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