Bridgette Elaine..born about 1/2 hour ago.. New technology is amazing.. In the "olden days" we would be waiting a week or so to get a first picture.. Our son is now officially a grownup..:

Republicans plotted from hour-one of the Obama presidency for it to be over in 1 term.

They planned to stall and stall and stall some more..

It was always about denying him all the successes they could, and when the time came to actually address the deficit, when THEIR candidate won in '12, they would just slash all programs they did not like (like they have been trying to do since FDR), and make the Bush tax cuts permanent.

They would have never cared a whit about an increasing deficit..

The problem they have is that Romney LOST, and now they actually have to address the problems..


their plan was marvelous in formation, but lousy in final execution..

The formation of the fake grassrootsy "tea party" was all about stymieing the health care plan before it could be properly explained and nurtured . and the tea party gang was also necessary to ensure a house-take over in anticipation of the final 2 years'-worth of blocked legislation they needed so that when republicans swooped in in charge of all three branches in '12, they were home free..

They got part 1 accomplished & got rid of Pelosi, but from that point on, they never got their footing, and could only jam up everything they touched.

He has abdicated his position. Like Rachel always says, "he is very bad at his job".

He likes the prestige of BEING Speaker of the House, but he apparently speaks for NO ONE.

When an ordinary person is hired to DO a specific job, and they cannot do it, they are fired.

I so wish that President O would go on tv & use his bully pulpit to explain IN DETAIL (a la Bill Clinton), just HOW our congress is supposed to work (according the constitution).

Bills involving PAYING FOR STUFF are supposed to originate in the HOUSE....not the SENATE.

If you ran a company and you hired a CFO, you would expect them to run the financial business of your company...not dump shoe-boxes of receipts on your desk the day before the fiscal year ends and all reports have to be done & filed...and said to you.. "YOU do this, I cannot figure it out."

Boehner wastes all the time he can on bullshit "legislation" like repealing Obamacare 33 times, and he and his gang never miss an opportunity to pass legislation that is anti poor people and women (even though they know it will never get passed also by the senate).

He is all show and NO GO.

Our pathetic media continues to portray this as a failure of "both sides".."both bodies of congress".

Last night, a friend told me about their son's Christmas. He's 4, and this was the first time he really "got" what was going on.

It was about 10AM, and all the presents were opened, and he asked her that question.

She said: "Yes, all the presents are done & that's it...why do you ask"..

His answer?

"Because I have too many presents..I don't need anymore".

The grandparents were hugging & kissing him for being so sweet, but Mom said it kind of embarrassed her & her husband because their 4 year old was overwhelmed at all he got ..

After everyone left, they suggested to him that they get together some of his toys to donate, since he had new ones, and he said.."Next time can we do it before Christmas so the kids can have new presents to open.."?

He's such a sweet little guy...looks like a 4 yr old Harry Potter

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/21/struggling-red-hook-businesses-feed-a-cookbook/

Struggling Red Hook Businesses Feed a Cookbook
By PETE WELLS

In used bookstores and flea markets, I can never resist flipping through community cookbooks put together by churches, ladies’ clubs and such. You’ve seen them — they’re typically typewritten, with hand-drawn paper covers, and they’re bound with a wire spiral or a curled plastic comb.

“All Hands on Deck” has no binder — it is being published on Friday as an e-book — but apart from that it has a lot in common with those books. Its editors, Catherine and Zac Overman, approached people around Red Hook, Brooklyn, asking them to give up their best recipes. As in most community cookbooks, there’s a story behind each dish.

In this case, though, the story is often the same, because many of the contributors own small businesses in Red Hook that were hurt by Hurricane Sandy. Dry Dock, a wine and spirits shop that lost $50,000 worth of liquid refreshment to the flood waters, shares its manhattan recipe. The Good Fork restaurant, a neighborhood pioneer, gives up the recipe for the pork-and-chive dumplings that everybody ordered there from the day the place opened until it was shut by the storm. (It has not reopened yet.)

There is also the recipe for the finest Irish coffee in the known universe, served at Fort Defiance, and a chicken pupusa covered with pickled cabbage and jalapeños from El Olomega, the Salvadoran food truck that has fueled countless soccer matches at the Red Hook Ball Fields. The editors, the Overmans, were married in Red Hook in October in what Ms. Overman called “a real neighborhood affair.” They hosted their rehearsal dinner at Fort Defiance, where Mr. Overman tends bar. The ceremony was held on Valentino Pier with music by the Red Hook Ramblers. The band then led the couple and their guests through the streets in a New Orleans-style second-line parade to Sunny’s Bar for the reception. The meal was catered by a neighbor of the Overmans’, and the desserts were made by a local bakery, Baked.


snip

.All proceeds from sales of “All Hands on Deck” will be donated to Restore Red Hook, which provides financial aid to small businesses in the neighborhood recovering from the hurricane. The book is available for download for $15 from http://allhandsondeckredhook.org/

Many gun owners take offense when they are outed as gun owners..and they are armed. Many (most?) have a confrontational attitude that being armed bolsters.

Journalists, by nature, may be less confrontational, since they use words..not guns.
(some may actually have guns, but do not tend to flaunt it)

When a gun-person gets pissed off, their paranoid side could easily tempt them to ACT..and having the address & google map of someone they perceive to have "harmed" them, could escalate into a violent situation for their target ---the journalist who may have not even been involved in the decision to publish the "gun-list", but who now will have to deal with a possibly dangerous situation.

Does anyone see even a remotely equivalent possibility of journalists roving the neighborhoods looking for gun people who named them publicly?

How would such confrontations look? Journalist standing in the yard yelling headlines at them? vs someone driving around taking potshots or threatening to?

http://www.stripes.com/news/more-soldier-suicides-than-combat-deaths-in-2012-1.201440


By Megan McCloskey
Stars and Stripes
Published: December 20, 2012
Related

Stress on special operations troops 'worse than we thought'

The Department of the Army also showed strains, with soldier suicides outnumbering combat-related deaths for the year. Through November this year, potentially 303 active-duty, Reserve and National Guard soldiers took their own lives. In Afghanistan 212 soldiers were killed as of Dec. 7.
The trajectory for soldier suicides keeps getting worse.

With a month left in the year, the Army set a grim new record with 177 potential active-duty cases. Last year, there were 165 confirmed suicides, which was also a record. Among Army Reserve and Guard soldiers potentially 126 took their own lives, up from 118 in all of 2011.

The numbers have increased despite a range of training and awareness programs instituted by the service in the last few years.

snip

One's 20's & 30's are usually the years when we all start to really pay attention as we build families/careers.

"Middle Class" was created out of thin air by the FDR/Truman policies that kicked in after WWII, so when it started, most of us old-timers (here) were just born or were quite young.

To MY parent's era, middle class meant:

Mom stayed home with kids
Family had A car (they could pay it off in 2-3 yrs)
Family could save up for a few years and could afford a house that they WOULD pay off in 20-30 years
Family had A phone
When stuff broke, they had it REPAIRED, or did without it
Family had a window A/C in the living room
Family had A TV (black & white)
Dad's salary supported the whole family
Kids could afford to go to college without loans
Families used Christmas Clubs at the bank to save for Xmas
NO ONE HAD CREDIT CARDS
Families took a vacation (driving) every couple of years
Families shopped at Sears, Penneys, Wards and "dime stores", and local businesses.

Middle Class denoted what you HAD and how you lived..not necessarily a "dollar amount", since money-talk was always taboo. The phrase "keeping up with the Joneses" was the norm then, as now, and all it meant was that people wanted to live as well as their neighbors (or a bit better), but since everyone was limited by their actual money earned, people pretty much had to live like their neighbors.

When my husband & I were first married (1970), we did NOT pick up where our families left off. We started from scratch..square one.. We used a laundromat for THREE YEARS.. had a black & white tv with an antenna that was coax cable attached to a neighbor's chainlink fence. We got our lawn furniture from someone's trash & we re-webbed them. Our furniture was hand-me-down. Our appliances were also nearly freebies.We rented for SEVEN and a half years. We rarely ever ate at restaurants or went to the movies.

We were definitely not "middle class" even though we CAME from middle class families.

All the other presents were wrapped and under the tree. We were at our son & daughter-in-law's home along with the 50+ family members (hers)..

On top of a big box was this "bowling bag"..

I commented to our son:

Who bought Maria (his wife) a bowling bag?

I was shot an immediate glowering look from her sister..and some laughter from our son..

why?

She (the sister) and her fiance bought it in Paris last week and were too proud of it to wrap it.. The irony is that most of us thought it was a bowling bag..not a $2,350.00 designer handbag..


This is the "bowling bag"



Latest IT Bag The Celine Luggage Tote : Fad or Fab?

http://www.mywomenstuff.com/2012/06/latest-it-bag-the-celine-luggage-tote-fad-or-fab/

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/21/struggling-red-hook-businesses-feed-a-cookbook/

Struggling Red Hook Businesses Feed a Cookbook
By PETE WELLS

In used bookstores and flea markets, I can never resist flipping through community cookbooks put together by churches, ladies’ clubs and such. You’ve seen them — they’re typically typewritten, with hand-drawn paper covers, and they’re bound with a wire spiral or a curled plastic comb.

“All Hands on Deck” has no binder — it is being published on Friday as an e-book — but apart from that it has a lot in common with those books. Its editors, Catherine and Zac Overman, approached people around Red Hook, Brooklyn, asking them to give up their best recipes. As in most community cookbooks, there’s a story behind each dish.

In this case, though, the story is often the same, because many of the contributors own small businesses in Red Hook that were hurt by Hurricane Sandy. Dry Dock, a wine and spirits shop that lost $50,000 worth of liquid refreshment to the flood waters, shares its manhattan recipe. The Good Fork restaurant, a neighborhood pioneer, gives up the recipe for the pork-and-chive dumplings that everybody ordered there from the day the place opened until it was shut by the storm. (It has not reopened yet.)

There is also the recipe for the finest Irish coffee in the known universe, served at Fort Defiance, and a chicken pupusa covered with pickled cabbage and jalapeños from El Olomega, the Salvadoran food truck that has fueled countless soccer matches at the Red Hook Ball Fields. The editors, the Overmans, were married in Red Hook in October in what Ms. Overman called “a real neighborhood affair.” They hosted their rehearsal dinner at Fort Defiance, where Mr. Overman tends bar. The ceremony was held on Valentino Pier with music by the Red Hook Ramblers. The band then led the couple and their guests through the streets in a New Orleans-style second-line parade to Sunny’s Bar for the reception. The meal was catered by a neighbor of the Overmans’, and the desserts were made by a local bakery, Baked.


snip

.All proceeds from sales of “All Hands on Deck” will be donated to Restore Red Hook, which provides financial aid to small businesses in the neighborhood recovering from the hurricane. The book is available for download for $15 from http://allhandsondeckredhook.org/