Archive for February 4th, 2010
No one is buying Obama junk anymore
Today, we had to pick up a book we needed from Borders on Michigan Avenue.
We haven’t been in a Borders in a while, not since the incident here in Boystown where we tried to find Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rogue, at the Borders on Broadway and Diversey when it came out, but the store employees had hidden it. We’re still not clear how they got away with that, for about three days, before someone finally made them put up the required displays, but the Dr. Utopia pushing in Borders around Chicago has always been so heavy-handed that we much prefer getting books off Amazon or ABEbooks.com (which is really, really good for dirt cheap textbooks…which, in the political sciences, are good to read even if you aren’t currently in school).
Well, our friend Panda really, really, desperately, his life depending on it, needed a book called “Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter”, in which the young Queen of England becomes not only a monarch and empress at the age of 18, but is also appointed the “one in her generation” to stand guard against the forces of Hell on Earth. It’s essentially Buffy, without the Whedon, and a lot more Prince Albert and giant hoop skirts. It’s so much easier not to ask Panda why he needs these things, but he insists “it will prove something”.
Okay.
Whatev.
In the store, we went up to the remainders table to checkout the bargain calendars, since we always get our calendars in February when they are about $1 or so (scored a great Studs & Spurs cowboys 12-monther, thank you very much…Yee-ha!), and were surprised to see everything Obama-related 75% off. There were many books on Michelle that were cheaper than toilet paper — the single ply, not the tushie pampering good stuff. They had heaps of “Obama paper dolls”, which were intended for children, we guess, or sad gay men who collect Marie Osmond dolls and might need something crappy made of paper to make said collection look cool in comparison. Borders still sells those two “memoirs” William Ayers wrote and tacked Dr. Utopia’s name on for full price, but everything else in the Obamaverse was marked down to less than what it cost to print the stuff up.
Apparently, this is happening all over the country.
The “Obama Store” in Union Station has closed, because no one wants any of this junk anymore.
If an “Obama Store” can’t make it in Washington, D.C., and in Chicago everything related to Dr. Utopia is going for pennies on the dollar, perhaps America has really woken up to the fact that the person in the Oval Office right now, and his “fashion icon” wife, really aren’t the people the media claimed they were…and they were never, in fact, deserving of any of the praise, attention, and mania they were so lavished.
Fantastic February Israel Round Up
Dear HillBuzz,
I thought I would write a short Israel Round Up for you and your readers on this chilly February morning. Israel hasn’t really been in the news much lately, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot of stuff going on.
Israel did a lot of incredible rescue work in Haiti, for a small country, it set up some of the most impressive disaster relief services, including the field hospital, and a crack search and rescue team. Now, they have set up a school in the devastated country.
What has the Arab world done to help? Hmmm…do I hear crickets? Yes, I do…
Meanwhile, a third barrel bomb has been discovered in Israel-which goes to show that there is really nothing that the terrorist won’t use, or try, in their efforts to kill innocent civilians whether in Israel or in other parts of the world. There is simply no living thing, and no inanimate object that they will not use as a weapon of destruction and murder.
Charmingly, 54 members of President Obama’s government have accused Israel of inflicting collective punishment on Gaza-whatever that is supposed to mean. Interestingly, they are always mute on the collective punishment meted out by Hamas terrorists to Israeli civilians in nearby Sderot.
In the larger Jewish world, we just finished celebrating the holiday of Tu B’Shvat-the holiday of the trees. It’s not a very well known Jewish holiday, but a really important one for Israel. In fact, destruction of nature and trees via arson has long been an additionally well tried and true tool of terrorists in Israel.
And it also means it the countdown to Purim-and that’s a fun one. Usually around Purim time, the Arab press pitches a few good blood libel stories-so let’s wait and see what turns up in the next few weeks.
Some people last Round Up left questions about Turkish-Israel relations. Generally, they were very good up until recently. Israeli tourists loved going to Turkey for cheap, fun, sunny, gambling vacations. In fact, the most friction between the countries was due to an ongoing conversation about the extent to which Israel recognized the Armenian genocide. I suspect things will continue to go downhill with the current government in Turkey.
As always, please feel free to leave questions and comments in the thread. And HillBuzz, don’t let the turkeys get you down!
Laura Rosen Cohen
Toronto, Canada.
Great Merciful Zeus — you must stop the demon sheep
Seriously, this is one of those moments, like when we first saw Scott Brown’s Cosmo spread and proclaimed the man Hottie McAwesome.
Chuck Devore won many new fans by getting this “Stop the Demon Sheep” site up so fast — lampooning Carly Fiorina for attacking one of her opponents with an ad featuring, as Devore calls them, “jawa-like, Terminator-esque demon sheep”.
We really, really like this guy.
As for Fiorina, she’s a nice person. We liked her because she was really nice to us in the Democrats for McCain days. We feel sorry for her because she had cancer. But, she’s run a terrible campaign, she’s refused to self-fund, and we want to see Barbara Boxer defeated.
So, as of today, if it wasn’t already clear before, we’re 100% behind Chuck Devore.
If his team is this fast on their feet, and this creative, in the primary, we can only delight at the prospects of what he’ll do to Barbara “Call me Senator” Boxer in the general election.
Who would have thought we’d see demon sheep this far from Sunnydale…and they’d be so creepily adorable?
Question: Why do you think Obama isn't going to the Winter Olympics?
Here’s an interesting question we’d like your opinions on: why isn’t the current president (and first lady, plus Oprah) going to the Vancouver Winter Olympics?
The claim is that they’ve decided to save Canada millions in added security costs that would arise with their presence.
That’s as ludicrous as the current FLOTUS claiming her life’s mission is a crusade against obesity — when her best “chit chat buddy” is the aforementioned Oprah, Charybdis of Lake Michigan.
Something just doesn’t add up when the current First Family talks about saving money. They’d save a fortune, at least $10 million a year, by not throwing lavish “night at Versailles” cocktail parties every Wednesday at the White House to amuse themselves. They cost taxpayers a fortune racing off to Copenhagen to embarrass themselves before the International Olympic Committee last fall, when they put on an ostentatious display that failed to place Chicago any higher than FOURTH (out of four bids) for the selection of the 2016 host city.
Do you think THAT is what this is really about?
Because they felt snubbed by the IOC in 2009, they’re not going to attend the Vancouver Olympics in 2010?
It sure seems more keeping in character for these two (plus Oprah, so, the twelve of them, roughly, all mass considered) than suddenly wanting to save taxpayer money.
Stop sending out for celebrity guest chefs to cook at the White House — that would save money. You HAVE a full-time, excellent chef named Cristeta Comerford. Why do you need Emeril Lagasse and the reanimated corpse of Julia Child, too? Do you even fathom how much bringing a French chef back from the dead costs? It would have just been cheaper to hire Meryl Streep for a night or two.
Quit paying Jason Wu and other “designers” to match $5,000 dresses made from upholstery fabric with $600 earrings and $400 sneakers. Just go down to the basement of an abandoned Howard Johnsons and rip up old couches from the 60s, wrap yourself in them, then hire school children to rummage through Cracker Jack boxes for whatever jewelry they can find. Wear the boxes as shoes. Voila! You’ve saved taxpayers a fortune, AND you look better than you ever have before in your entire adult life. Whew! We’re proud of you!
Truth be told, we think it’s wonderful the Utopias are skipping the Olympics. This way, the Olympics can be about the athletes, the competition, and the obnoxious NBC color commentary…and NOT about the Utopias, for once.
Plus, it’s “unprecedented” for the sitting US president to not travel to an Olympics so close to support our national team — so we can see why this was such a tempting move for him. He’s doing something “unprecedented”, which he loves, while at the same time dissing hard-working Americans and showing everyone his backside, as if he was bending low to the King of some desert or the Mayor of a random city in Florida.
Unprecedented.
Not supporting Americans.
Thumbing their noses at the Olympics for not giving them what they want last fall.
All of that is believable.
Wanting to save money?
What’s that?
Do people do that?
How much is that arugula at Whole Foods again?
Photoshop Challenge: Alexi Giannoulias edition
Last night, a friend of ours in Florida gave us a call. We put him on speaker phone. After, of course, Panda hung up on him twice while trying to activate the speaker phone (“It’s not my fault these buttons are so damn small and close together”). Welcome to Buzzquarters. So not the Bat-Cave.
This friend was very active in the Utopia Resistance during the primaries and general election, because he worked at University of Chicago’s hospital, had run-ins with Mrs. Utopia, and had followed Dr. Utopia’s career closely. He, like us, had Utopia on the radar since he backstabbed Alice Palmer for the state senate seat in 1996. Just so you know not everyone here in Chicago drank the hopium-laced Kool-Aid.
Well, since the election, this friend went back to his “real life” (what’s that, we ask), and got out of amateur politics. He swore he wouldn’t get back into the game…but then Alexi Giannoulias won the Democrat primary and became the frontrunner for a United States Senate seat.
“We have to stop this guy. He’s scum. He’s a crook, he’s controlled by the mob, and he’s probably the worst human being to come this close to a Senate seat in my lifetime. We have to stop him. You have to ask your readers to work hard and stop him.”
People, Giannoulias is REALLY this bad.
He has no morals.
No scruples.
No sense of decency.
He is the spoiled heir to a family fortune built on criminal ties…the kind of guy who watches “The Untouchables” and laughs his head-off when Capone uses the baseball bat during the dinner party scene.
In many ways, he’s actually worse than Dr. Utopia himself. At least Utopia went through the motions of cloaking himself in mystery to gain access to high office. Giannoulias just lets everything hang out in the open…so smug, he thinks his mob connections are no big deal.
That he is, in fact, untouchable.
We need some great Giannoulias photoshop work, people, to start the anti-Alexi campaign rolling. Our niche is making sure every man, woman, and child in Illinois knows exactly who Giannoulias is, why he should not be in the Senate, and how he is connected to Tony Rezko, the Illinois crime families, and Dr. Utopia himself.
Democrats are in a real bind here.
The more Giannoulias is connected to the president, the more the unsavory Illinois connections they both share make news. This is the stuff the MSM didn’t want to report on in 2008, because it hurts Utopia. But, now that Giannoulias is a candidate for national office, and so much attention is being focused on this race, it’s time to bring everything about Rezko and Chicago corruption back into the headlines again (or, in this case, for the first time ever).
Democrats need to save this Senate seat. Dr. Utopia needs to come to Illinois to campaign for Giannoulias to save his old seat. But, if he comes and campaigns, we think it will hurt Giannoulias and Utopia both.
And, as our friend in Florida encouraged us, we need to do everything we can to bring Giannoulias down.
Who knows who he will take with him.
What art can you make to help?
Question: It's one week until Iran has promised to "show the world something". What is that something?
One week from today, Iranian president Ahmadinejad has promised to show the world “something”.
What do you think it is?
February 11th is the anniversary of the fall of the Shah of Iran.
It is also Sarah Palin’s 45th birthday.
Somehow, we don’t think Ahmadinejad has baked her “the world’s largest and most delicious birthday cake, greater than anything Xerxes ever feasted on, more beautiful than anything that ever made Darius weep beneath the wilted branches of old pomegranate trees”.
Iran recently announced it’s acquired new satellite technology.
Could THAT, and not Sarah Palin’s birthday cake, be the “big announcement”?
Could Iran really have a nuke it’s going to test in a week, that it’s kept secret for this long?
Most likely, it’s another major bluff on the part of Ahmadinejad. Jealous of Steve Jobs, no doubt, and the unveiling of the iTab, a certain someone seems to have needed to get himself in the headlines with a big announcement, too. Perhaps he’s going to prove to the world “there are no homosexuals in Iran”, like he claimed the last time he was in New York.
We kid, but we’re actually really concerned about this one.
We don’t think the guy’s bluffing this time…we think he’s up to SOMETHING.
And we have no idea what that something is.
Do you?
Thursday Open Thread: February 4th, 2010
What’s on your minds this Thursday?
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Have you heard about the demonsheep?
Are they coming for you?
Creepy or cuddly…ewe decide.
