OMG, the poor man just can’t get a break

Then I’ll just stay in my woom

This whole Ukraine thing has put Obama’s next vacation in jeopardy.

Vladimir Putin has put President Barack Obama’s vacation plans on hold.

Obama is headed to Coral Reef High School in the southern part of Miami, Fla., on Friday for an event about education and the economy that first lady Michelle Obama had been expected to attend as well. What hadn’t been known was that Obama’s daughters were planning to come with them, and that the four were going to extend the trip for a brief family getaway.

Now, the White House tells POLITICO that he’s reconsidering.

Readers with a long memory will recall that it was almost three full weeks ago that US taxpayers sent Michelle and the girls off to Vail for a three-day holiday ski excursion. Now, the First Family of Shared Sacrifice may lose its chance to show us yet again how to make do with a short little jaunt instead of a full five -week stint in Hawaii. “It’s almost like a staycation”, Michelle cooed to reporters, “except it’s got palm trees. And now Barry may not be able to join us, all because of that mean ol’ Vladimir. Sniff.”

UPDATE: White House Dossier reports that the vacation is on, and the family will be enjoying the (private membership) Mid Ocean Club Ocean Reef Club this weekend. If there was ever a First Couple who wallowed in the luxury of income inequality more than Barack and his princess, I don’t remember them.

Who’d have thunk it?

 

Harry Reid self-portrait

Uninsured aren’t buying health insurance as they discover that they have to pay for it. It was quite popular before that.

Harry Reid, famous for bemoaning back in 2009 that “one American dies every ten minutes due to lack of health insurance” has remained silent on the deaths caused by his commander in chief’s decision to postpone the program for another two years.

Breaking news from Genesis 7

Arab world rejects Noah.

There’s no room for humans in paradise

 

Say goodnight, Dolores

San Francisco bans plastic water bottles.  They’ve already banned plastic food bags, thus making it impossible to carry home more groceries than an urban sophisticate can tuck in her bicycle basket (a baguette and a slice of brie, that is), banned even pretending to smoke cigarettes, electronic or real, taxed “elite” buses for geeks and zoned out affordable housing so the middle class will just go away.

So, you think, you’ll just drink canned soda instead of filthy, stinkin’ water? Think again: Mayor Bloomberg’s already slouching towards the Golden Gate.

20 West End Avenue sold

 

20 W. End kitchen

$3.825 million. Loved this house, shared driveway and all. I’m delighted to see two strikingly innovative (for Greenwich) homes sell this week, 2 Wooddale and this one. There’s hope that we’re seeing the end of the neo-Victorian cookie cutters, finally.

Playing the race card with taxpayers’ money

NPR attributes defeat of Obama’s black nominee to “a handful of southern Democrats who joined the Republicans”.

Just now on NPR’s Morning Edition (yes, I often listen), a story on yesterday’s failed vote on Debo Adegbile began “a handful of southern Democrats joined Republicans yesterday to defeat President Obama’s choice to head the Justice Department’s civil rights division.” For what it’s worth the Democrats who voted no:

Chris Coons (Del.)
Bob Casey (Pa.)
Mark Pryor (Ark.)
Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.)
Joe Manchin (W.V.)
Joe Donnelly (Ind.)
John Walsh (Mont.)

And, of course, Harry Reid (Nev.), who did it for procedural grounds.

But as a reader pointed out yesterday on another such incident, ask them, and these people will deny they’re biased in any way.

Bank sale

 

Last night I dreamt of Manderley

36 Perkins Road, $2.1 million. This was pretty much a land sale, having sat empty and neglected for so many years, but at one time- 2005 – it was listed for $7.950 million. Hahahhahaha.

I see that Fibrak Wojtek owned it long ago, selling it off in 1998 or so. Wasn’t he  a tennis player?

Making the rounds on the internet

Cougars loose in the back country

Okay, not cougars, but coyotes – death at 20 Heronvue. Someone call PETA.

Bambi meets Wily, and loses (Photo by Che)

Even in the land of common sense, school idiocy trumps all

Damnit,there IS no reason for it, it’s POLICY!

MN: Soaking wet, swimsuit-clad girl forced to stand outside in minus-5-degree weather during fire drill, frostbite ensues.

A Minnesota public high school was so committed to obeying its fire drill policy to the exact letter of the law that it forced a female student–dressed only in a swimsuit, and sopping wet–to stand outside in the freezing cold for ten minutes. As a result, she suffered frostbite.

Administrators wouldn’t let the student retrieve her clothes, sit in a car or wait inside another building, according to WCCO.

The trouble began when a small science experiment triggered the fire alarm at Como Park Senior High School in St. Paul, Minnesota. Fourteen-year-old Kayona Hagen-Tietz was swimming in the school pool for health class at the time. Her clothes were in her locker, and a teacher told her that there was no time for her to change. Hagen-Tietz was rushed outside–still wet and dressed in only swimsuit.

It was 5 degrees below zero in St. Paul that day. With the windchill, it was 25 degrees below zero.

Hagen-Tietz asked to wait inside an employee’s car, or at the elementary school across the street. But administrators believed that this would violate official policy, and could get the school in trouble, so they opted to simply let the girl freeze.

Her fellow classmates, at least, huddled around her to try to keep her warm. And one teacher did eventually lend her a coat.

Still, Hagen-Tietz came down with frostbite on her feet, according to her mother, Eva Tietz, who took her to the doctor as soon as she found out what had happened.

Eva Tietz told National Review that the school was wrong to put a wet, unclothed kid out in the cold.

Tietz also noted that she would have been arrested for doing such a thing to her child.

The school district issued a statement saying only that it routinely reviews such policies.

The poor girl should have pointed her finger at a teacher and said “bang” – they’d have had a police car there in seconds.