On This Day: President Barack Obama gestures as he talks with Akira Cooper at the Community Children’s Center, one of the nation’s oldest Head Start providers, in Lawrence, Kan., Jan. 22, 2015 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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Today
The President has no public events scheduled - due to the weather, the National Medals of Science and National Medals of Technology and Innovation ceremony has been postponed.
Good morning Ms. Chips, Danny and TOD family, I hope all is well with everyone this lovely Friday morning. TGIF>>
To all, I hope you have a very successful day today. <3 <3 <3
Thank God that President Obama is still the President of The United States of America. ⭐🏆 ⭐🏆 ⭐🏆
Mooooooooooooooooorning RanMan! Moooooooorning everyone!
Hey Ms. Chips. Are you taking Danny out to play in the snow?
No snow here yet RanMan, so Danny only has the green stuff to play with! Are you snowed under?
Thank God that we’re not snowed in, here in MO.
gm RanMan - work on a 3rd term plan.
It’s the only solution, 99ts. Can we all band together and carry out a coup and give PBO a third term?
If only - amk tunes would be funny if they weren’t so damn true.
GM RanMan, congrats on furst (usually amk’s territory on first thread of day).
Saw your tweet on the overnight thread beseeching MSM to investigate Ted Cruz’s eligibility to be President.
Joaquin Castro is doing his part…
Well, Arapaho, I only have to look at that smarmy face to know that he’s unqualified to be president.
:) Well said Jackie
You can’t be a ‘natural born citizen’ of two different countries.
You can be a citizens of two different countries.
But, not a ‘natural born’ citizen.
Rafael is a ‘natural born’ citizen of Canada, which is how he got citizenship without either of his parents being Canadian.
He is an American Citizen.
He is NOT a ‘ natural born’ American Citizen.
…………………………………
Thanks for stating the facts so clearly, Rikyrah. Would love to have Cruz forced out of the race. He is a hideous person inside and out.
arapaho, thanks for sharing Joaquin Castro’s tweet. I strongly believe, this Constitutional issue should be resolved before any votes are cast.
Good morning to all!
It’s so great when karma boomerangs back on the GOP. Does this make Trump a sure thing, or will they try to get their minions behind Rubio or Bush?
Meanwhile, the Dems are unfortunately eating their own, and the Bernie supporters sound EXACTLY like the PUMAs did in 2008. Now Team Hillary gets a big dose of what they gave out to Obama supporters. It’d be easier to be amused if Trump’s support wasn’t solidfying and if the BernieBots could be trusted to support the Dem nominee regardless. I don’t trust them to do that.
Good Morning, RanMan! Congrats on first! :-)
Congratulations, RanMan! I hope all our East Coast members of TOD are warm and safe!
friday, the 13th.
Jeez, they really are a pair of beauts. Morning Petal!
pick one…. no, only one.
Beautiful AMK, I will take the whole bunch. LOL
Crikey, they’re not even dead - what happened ya, did you bang yer head? (I’ll have a red petal, thanks).
offer withdrawn. gimme back that.
Normal service is resumed :lol:
what? need ’em all. #annivdayafter
Wifey Unit deserves more than petals for putting up with you, get her some gold bars.
been there. done that. didn’t help at all.
w/smh
They were fake gold bars though, weren’t they? :roll:
:lol: You’re a disgrace.
8-) 8-) 8-)
The GOP spawned these monsters with decades of nonstop lies, hatred, fear mongering, and anti-government hysteria. They broke it and now they own it.
Morning Jackie. And now we have some of the GOP establishment telling us that Trump, Palin and Co don’t represent the party - you built ’em, fellas.
Yep. There’s a kind of poetic justice in the fact that these mega creeps stripped the mask off the GOP and revealed the nasty, bigoted core that’s been there all along. The old silent film version of “The Phantom of the Opera” showed the hideous face of Lon Chaney when the mask was removed. I’m often reminded of that scene these days.
Ah, perfect Jackie - they have well and truly been unmasked.
sooooooo on point!!!!!
Given that Kristol, who was mesmerized by the Governor of Alaska, and his friend Lowry, who “sat up straighter” for Palin - are two of those whinging about Trump & Co - they deserve what has happened to the GOP. Kristol also says Trump will not be the nominee - so it seems rather clear that he will be. In the 8 years of my US political watching, Kristol has backed the wrong horse, every time he opens his mouth
That’s exactly who I was thinking of, but couldn’t remember - saw a tweet from him the other day trying to make out these people don’t represent modern American conservatism - oh yes they do!
99, you could get rich betting on the opposite of Kristol’s predictions. I don’t think he’s ever called one political outcome right.
Well explained over at BJ
https://www.balloon-juice.com/2016/01/22/farmer-starburst-is-puzzled-yall/
It took “the work of generations” to utterly degrade the Party of Lincoln, and the National Review, including editor Rich “Starburst” Lowry and his crew, who championed the empty-headed idiot Sarah Palin, published racist screeds and engaged in xenophobic demagoguery in pursuit of power, were avid participants in that enterprise.
Good BJ post. Thanks, 99.
amk, Hahaha ROFL that cartoon is absolutely hilarious. 😂😂😂👌👍👊 I going to tweet that one. Thanks for sharing.
Great cartoon! So true.
GM Chips & Congrats on 1st -est RanMan. Any of our family that is on the East Coast please be safe and stay warm.
Moooooooooorning Roberta!
Thanks amk>>
GM all. The weather predictions seem to be getting worse by the hour here. The high winds and blizzard conditions are supposed to start tonight and continue through tomorrow, so there will be long lines at the grocery stores today and a mad scramble to batten down houses against wind damage. We have gas heat, but if the electricity goes, we’re not only cut off from communication, we eat and drink cold food. Hope people use their heads and stay the heck off the roads.
Boy, do I remember all this:) No, thank you! We had a wood stove that heat the entire house…so at least we could keep warm. Just stay safe and snuggled in. Snow storms really force you to slow down and realize that YOU aren’t the boss:) Mother Nature will beat you every time. I do love the silence and peace of a storm though….as if you can hear the snow fall and the heartbeat of the Earth. I miss that.
Df, that image of “hearing the snow fall” and “the heartbeat of the earth,” is beautifully poetic and exactly right. I love the time when the fresh snow falls and there’s a perfect stillness everywhere. Digging out of it afterwards is a different story.
YES! That’s the part I miss the most….The digging out was miserable, but what I wouldn’t give to be around for one good snowfall….try to enjoy tomorrow:)
They are predicting “thunder snow”, so it won’t be so silent. But I get your drift (pun intended).
Please be safe, jackieg and let us know how you’re doing if you can.
Please be safe!
for those on the east coast, be safe. hope the weatherman is wrong as usual.
Morning everyone…Happy Friday! Stay safe if you’re in the path of all the snow..
Here amk…some toons for you to get:) Good ones, too!
http://juanitajean.com/friday-toons-164/
O+ pool all heated up and ready?
Must be joking:) Don’t have the $$$$ to heat this pool in the winter. I”ll take the 6-7 months we DO get to use it. That’s enough.
Hi everyone. The weather today here is suppose to be historically bad…. Fortunately, I m in the Virginia Beach area so its not suppose to be that bad. Our neighbors and family in central Virginia up to Washington DC are suppose to be in the path for one hell of a storm. It’s suppose to start here in our area around 9 am EST ( It;s 8 as I type) Be safe everyone.
I’m bracing for the worse….. :shock:
Keep safe {{{Donna}}}
Please, you and your family stay safe. I hope you all have plenty of heat and provisions. Please let us know how you are doing if you can.
I been keeping track of the storm , fortunate for us there is a warm front of the coast so the Hampton Roads (Newport News to Virginia Beach) are suppose to get some snow but with the mild temps ( high 30’s) turning it into sleet. We’ll see. I just worry about my father in the Chesterfield County area ( 150 miles away from me) which is center of the storm. My sister and brother live in that area so I been on the phone nagging them to keep a eye out for him since he lives alone. My sister who lives 30 minutes from him did take him supplies yesterday and my younger brother ( who lives in Hopewell - 15 minutes away) is suppose to check on him the next few days. it will be impossible for me to trek the 150 miles through it , but of course if something happens like power outage I will jump in my 4 x 4 and plow through it. Cautiously of course.
Donna be safe. I see up to 24 in for the DC (and area suburbs). And when you add the damaging winds and ice, this is nothing to sneeze at.
I live in Southern Maryland and it’s supposed to start at around 3:00 pm EST. I’ve already bought everything I could think of so we don’t have to leave the house until Sunday afternoon.
Keep safe and warm, everyone!!
Really really really glad we don’t do snow. Bunker down everyone in the snow areas. Cannot even imagine 2 feet of snow. Stay safe.
Great cartoons. You can never make enough fun of Trump and Palin. They’re so delusional. What makes them think that anyone living outside of the Republican media bubble would support a bigot like Trump?
So many great cartoons today.
Sometimes I feel like I’m in a nightmare and I’ll wake up soon and it will all have been a nasty cosmic joke. But no.
I intensify my prayers to save this nation. The risks are just too great. Il Douche, Canadian Cruz, member of the anti immigration law firm Cuban Rubio, Bridgegate Christie, Pyramid Carson, Poor Jeb!, not to mention their endorsers, Wasilla Palin and Crazy Beck!
We need Jesus!
You need an Obama 3rd term.
We also need a massive voter registration, outreach and GOTV effort to get Democrats off their rears and out to vote. When the primaries are over, I sure don’t want to hear anybody tell me they’re not going to vote because Sanders didn’t win. I heard this kind of talk at a meeting yesterday and I just about lost it. The battle ahead of us is one we CAN’T lose and no matter what regrets we have about not having PBO or VP Biden on the ballot, we’ve got to suck it up and give it everything we have. And don’t forget down ticket races. Let’s take back the Senate, win as many seats as possible in the House, make inroads into our state legislatures so we can start cleaning up the toxic waste Republican governance is leaving everywhere they’re in charge.
Sending very lots of wooly warmth to all in the path of this big storm in the East. Please take good care and precaution and check in here if/when you can.
It’s raining here again today and I’m grateful for another good soak. Hope it makes its way down to SoCal, too. We need our reservoirs to fill up to the brim ASAP.
Good Morning TODVille!
Happy Friday.
Google ‘paid Apple $1bn in 2014 to keep search on iPhone’.
Google paid tech rival Apple $1bn in 2014 to keep its search function the default option on iOS devices, Bloomberg reports.
A transcript of court proceedings from a copyright lawsuit against Google allegedly contains reference to a deal between the Silicon Valley firms.
The alleged agreement involves Google paying Apple a percentage of revenue - as much as 34% - gained through iOS devices.
Both companies declined to comment.
The BBC has not been able to verify the claims independently.
Bloomberg added that the referenced document has since been removed from the web.
“The transcript vanished without a trace from electronic court records at about 15:00,” the report noted.
The court proceedings in question regard a lawsuit by Oracle Corp. in which the firm claims that Google used its Java software to develop Android but failed to pay for it.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35380696
yet another reason to hate both.
IMO, Dems/Libs/Progs Voting for Utopia, jeopardizes what we have gained under President Obama’s relentless leadership. Just Saying.
RanMan, I have run out of patience with people who praise Sanders and vilify PBO’s accomplishments. These are the people who believe in unicorns and would be on Sanders like frenzied lice if he couldn’t deliver all their dreams within one month on the job. These are also the people who don’t take the trouble to support Dem candidates for the House and Senate and then wonder why progressive things don’t magically happen. When they casually speak about letting a Republican win if they can’t have their “choice,” they show themselves to be heartless idiots who can’t look behind their own egos to see the suffering this would cause to tens of millions of Americans.
RanMan, my reply to you got lost in cyberspace. Spent some time yesterday with a few of these “utopia” voters and I lost all patience. They are naive and destructive and we have to work hard to defeat their stupidity as well as the outright villainy of the GOP.
Co-sign, RanMan!
Thirty-five restaurants across China have been found illegally using opium poppies as a seasoning, officials have revealed.
Five are being prosecuted while 30 are under investigation, the China Food and Drug Administration said.
Local authorities are being urged to help investigators find the sources of the poppies, the China Daily reported.
Poppy powder, which contains low amounts of opiates, is banned as a food additive in China.
However, restaurants have previously been caught using it.
In 2012, seven restaurants in Ningxia province were closed for using opium poppies and in Guizhou province in 2004 authorities shut down 215 establishments for similar offences.
One of the businesses affected by the latest crackdown is reported to be the popular Huda Restaurant chain in Beijing.
General manager Hu Ling confirmed the company was under investigation and said it may have unwittingly bought seasoning contaminated with opiates. She declined to comment further.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-35381169
and you thought you loved chinese food, didntya?
All this time I blamed it on the MSG:)
I wonder if patrons left those restaurants feeling no pain. Happy, happy people everywhere.
The Deceased is just keeping it real. LOL.
To be filed under “Another thing he said”.
Humble, too.
Telephone/Internet scammers could learn alot from Trump - regardless as to what he says and does - some folks will vote for him. His outbursts seem to be only mirrored by Putin - and the GOP just hate those communists. It is all just disgusting.
Sean is the vicar of a Protestant parish in western Newfoundland, and Patrick is the priest at the Roman Catholic Church across the road. One day they are seen together, erecting a sign which says:
“THE END IS NEAR. TURN YOURSELF AROUND NOW BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”
As a car speeds past them, the driver leans out his window and yells, “Leave people alone, you religious nutters. We don’t need your lectures.”
From around the next curve they hear screeching tires and a big splash. Shaking his head, Father Patrick says “Dat’s da terd one dis mornin’.”
“Yaa,” Sean agrees, then adds, “Do ya tink maybe da sign should just say, “BRIDGE CLOSED?”
Good one.
Holy Moly. The ocean surf is 76 degrees F and fueling this monster snow storm? There is no global warming though! smdh
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Uh huh
uh huh
………………………
When Chicago spent its pension money on the mayor’s pet projects
A decade ago, city leaders acted like we didn’t have a care in the world.
By Ben Joravsky
As we all prepare for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s proposed property tax hike to pay off billions of dollars in pension obligations, I thought I’d take a trip down memory lane to a not-so-distant era when our leaders acted like we didn’t have a care in the world.
The year was 2004—and what a glorious time it was!
We were in the midst of a fabulous real estate bubble that sent property taxes flowing into the city’s coffers like champagne at an Emanuel fund-raiser.
……………………………………………………
As we’ve since learned, the lavishness was heaped atop an unstable foundation. Essentially, Mayor Daley was taking property taxes intended for really boring stuff—like pension payments—and spending it on flashier things that we couldn’t afford.
This!!!! And Daley got away with ALL of it.
I am extremely disappointed in Rahm for many reasons, but he has borne the brunt of Daley’s recklessness that should have driven him from office, if not to jail.
It’s true of the state of Illinois as well - they stopped making pension payments (under GOP & Dem governors) because the stock market was magically going to make up the difference. And now we’re left with a mess.
The pension system is corrupt, to be sure. You can double dip, collect huge pensions. But the vast majority of state and city workers put in their contributions in good faith, and don’t have their pensions to rely on. It’s despicable.
But, we can’t get financing for affordable safe housing or rehabbing of abandoned buildings on the South and West Sides.
Uh huh.
Uh huh.
…………………………….
Mayor Rahm wants to spend $16 million on high-end apartments
Emanuel’s handpicked Community Development Commission rubber-stamps a TIF deal in Uptown.
By Ben Joravsky
On January 12 I headed over to City Hall to see firsthand if the spirit of reform that’s supposedly transformed the Emanuel administration since the release of the Laquan McDonald video had reached the Community Development Commission.
The CDC is a 15-person advisory body appointed by the mayor to oversee tax increment financing deals. As such, the chief challenge for commissioners is to pretend they’re dedicated watchdogs of the public purse while making sure they actually do what the mayor wants.
……………………….
On the agenda for this meeting is the Montrose/Clarendon plan. Emanuel’s proposing to give about $16 million to developers so they can make a fortune building approximately 630 upscale apartment units in Uptown, just west of Lake Shore Drive.
Not that there’s anything wrong with developers making a fortune. I’m hoping to make a fortune one of these days myself. It’s just that we have other things we could do with the money, what with the schools being broke and everything.
Chicago needs a ‘ Jerry Brown ‘ to raise taxes and be fiscally responsible by saying no the general fund is not your candy store for all your pet projects. They need high price properties for high taxes. I hope IL does not turn into MI.
Good Friday, Chipsticks…TOD Family.
Everyone stay safe and warm today; especially in the blizzard areas.
Ah, ah. I recognize the event: the religious fanatic woman is speaking in tongue next to a guy who wants to “Make America Cringe Again”.
I’m not against bike lanes…per se….
But, if I look around the neighborhood, I could find a dozen projects that need funding before some phucking bike lanes.
……………………………………………
South-siders spar over proposed Stony Island bike lanes
Opponents—including Fifth Ward alderman Leslie Hairston—argue the lanes would cause traffic jams, while supporters say they’re a needed safety improvement.
By John Greenfield @greenfieldjohn
For much of its length, Stony Island Avenue is basically an expressway with stoplights. Located on the southeast side between 56th and 130th, it generally has eight travel lanes, the same number as Lake Shore Drive, although it carries half as many vehicles per day—35,000 versus 70,000. Due to this excess lane capacity, speeding is rampant.
The city has proposed converting a lane or two of Stony between 67th and 79th into protected bike lanes. Some residents, and Fifth Ward alderman Leslie Hairston, fear the “road diet” would cause traffic jams, and argue the street is too dangerous for bike lanes. Other neighbors say Stony is too dangerous not to have them.
I know here in Austin they have bike lanes near the entrance and exit of highways, which I think is just asking for trouble. And like Rikyrah said, “if you look around the neighborhood, I could find a dozen projects that need funding before some phucking bike lanes.”
For those in the eye of the storm, please stay safe. Respect the elements. Pace yourself if you are shoveling. Don’t wait until it’s over to begin shoveling.
pathetic jeb now pushes his crazy mom into the campaign cage fight.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/barbara-bush-jeb-ad-218104
POTUS asked for the same years ago. GOP, POTUS was right then, or was he leading from behind?
Assad isn’t going to “resign.” He’s going to have to be pushed so hard that resigning is his only option.
I don’t think Putin is in the “asking” business.
boooooom!
And then go to Disney afterwards while stuffing his face with donuts, burgers, fries, soda, etc…
Chat away
http://theobamadiary.com/2016/01/22/chat-away-759/
G’morning Chips, TOD, lurkers, everyone, and congrats RanMan on #1! Happy Friday everyone, and please be safe, all our TODers who are in the blizzard’s path.
Latest polls in Iowa point to striking scenario
01/22/16 08:00 AM—UPDATED 01/22/16 08:14 AM
By Steve Benen
With just 10 days remaining until the Iowa caucuses, four statewide polls have been released over the last 24 hours, which help cast the Republican race in a striking new light. Let’s take a look at the surveys’ findings, focusing only on the three most competitive candidates.
Loras College: (1) Donald Trump: 26%; (2) Ted Cruz: 25%; (3) Marco Rubio: 13%
Monmouth College/KBUR: (1) Ted Cruz: 27%; (2) Donald Trump: 25%; (3) Marco Rubio: 9%
CNN: (1) Donald Trump: 37%; (2) Ted Cruz: 26%; (3) Marco Rubio: 14%
Emerson College: (1) Donald Trump: 33%; (2) Ted Cruz: 23%; (3) Marco Rubio: 14%