CasaSugar

how do i break it off

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:49:09 -0800

My boyfriend and I no longer have a good relationship, we have been off and on for a really long time. I think we both have just come to resent each other a lot for various reasons. I cannot stand his possessive, clingy, dominate nature and over a period of time have felt like Ive allowed myself to change too much for him, and I feel like I've given up too much for him, I feel like he relies on me too much financially. Currently, we aren't arguing. He has promised that he would attempt to get a job and that he would like me to move in over the summer and that he can really see us growing old together. But we spend our days endlessely in the same routines, I have gotten to the point where I literally do not know how to speak to him I just am too afraid to open up to him- Ive found it more increasingly difficult ever since our last argument where he slapped me in the face, I am afraid of that ever happening again. I think I detached myself from him on a lot of emotional levels and yet I almost feel like I am wrong for it because when I talk to him he tells me that he wants to grow old with me... but right now I am just so afraid.

Who Killed California?

Eleuthera — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:50:10 -0700

by Troy Senik
http://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/who-killed-california
My apologies for having nothing originally in this post. The text was here but didn't show up.
Apparently this article is too long to be printed here, at about 11 pages. It is nevertheless worth reading, unless, as someone has already done, you have made your mind up what to believe before reading.

An Ill Wind is Breaking For Our President

Grandpa — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 13:56:17 -0700

An Ill Wind is Breaking For Our President
T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII
Editor at Large, the National Topsider

Another Labor Day weekend wafts into Montauk, borne as always upon a chill wind of melancholy; a breeze that ushers in blithe spirits for the coming gay lawn soirees, the final chukkers of the summer polo leagues, the annual Montauk-to-Newport gin barrel regatta. But the selfsame mistral likewise presages season's end, and the maids' ritual packing away of the pastels and seersuckers for the annual migration to the dismally gauche winter quarters of Florida.

The seasonal affective disorder seems especially hard on Montauk's children, cleft as they are from the loving breasts of their household staffs by the stately carillons of distant preparatory academies. I could see it in the dilated pupils of young T. Coddington VIII last week, as his driver Evgeny packed the lad's trunks into the old family Daimler for the long lonely drive to Quonsocket Boy's Prep and Rehabilitation Center. At our farewell I left him with the same bracing words of encouragement left me by my father, swashbuckling Topsider founder T. Coddington Van Voorhees VI, upon my annual boyhood departures to the finishing schools of Switzerland: "the Alps will bloom soon enough, dear boy -- persevere, persevere."

As the legendary founder of the modern conservative movement Dad knew the perseverance of which he spoke. From the moment he printed the first Topsider in 1946 as an underground anti-Eleanor Roosevelt newsletter at Fauntleroy Country Day to his untimely demise last year, the old man more than once saw his conservative mettle sorely tested. And yet, through all of it, he remained a sturdy beacon of the cause, resolute in the knowledge that conservatism's fortunes would eventually turn. As he wrote in the Topsider's commemorative Nixon resignation issue in 1974, "keep two eyes fixed on the horizon, boys, and three pitchers full of Tom Collins."

Wise words to be sure, but one wonders whether even Dad's famous forbearance and scotch inventory would be equal to the recent privations now suffered by the conservative movement; not the least of which, I might add, have been cruelly inflicted on our gallant young conservative president. I was dumbfounded as you to read the scattered reports of Mr. Obama's diminishing popularity in the hinterlands, as his star remains unequaled in Montauk; particularly among the gracefully aging rock-and-roll troubadours and hiphop moguls who have joined the neighborhood in recent years. But if the nation's statistical prognosticators are to be heeded, the President's political stock has taken a nasty tumble not seen since the Baltimore & Ohio Preferred that sent Great Uncle Exeter Van Voorhees plummeting to a Wall Street sidewalk in 1958. The winds of approaching Autumn bode him no less ill, and unless quick corrective action is taken I fear the conservative renaissance under Mr. Obama will be strangled in the crib.

If I gather correctly from my correspondence secretary, a few Topsider subscribers have taken umbrage to my previous encomiums to Mr. Obama as the nation's foremost voice of conservatism. Invariably, these missives will emphasize at great length the President's trillion dollar shopping sprees, diplomatic apologies and bank nationalization schemes, between explicit invitations to fornicate myself. It is apparent these slow-witted correspondents are incapable of seeing the plain truth: that these are merely brilliant tactical policy feints designed by Mr. Obama to appeal to the wide swath of sensible American moderates who, I am assured, are quite keen on unlimited credit and state ownership of the means of production. Once the proletariat is on board, I have every confidence that our intrepid young captain will deftly steer conservatism back to safe harbor. In saner times it would have been a quick fortnight's journey; instead he has been buffeted by the endless gales and squalls of self-styled "conservatives" who have opposed him at every turn.

These, as is now obvious, are the real enemies of conservatism. Is it really necessary that I once again recite their roster? The Limbaughs, the Becks, the Levins, the entire bloviating panoply of talk radio baboons peddling their toxic brew of anti-government sedition and foot unguents to hordes of slackjawed exurban megachurch McMansionites. The Jindals and Perrys, crypto-secessionist boondock Babbits who rudely decline Mr. Obama's gracious offers of federal largesse. I suppose it is some comfort that we no longer must count the execrable la Palin in their ranks, as her resignation and exile afforded right-thinkers of the nation a brief moment of rational exuberance. But it appears that the ever-fertile Napoleon of Nome intends some sort of coup from her Facebook Elba, attempting to rile up the online lumpenproles with hysteric tales of "death panels" and "tax increases." One is tempted to dismiss it all as some sort of elaborate hoax, but their grunted entreaties have somehow found support among the nation's more dimwitted burghers. What began with the unsightly "Tea Party" idiocy of Spring has metastasized into the full blown dementia on display by health care protesters, filling America's high school auditoriums with simian hoots of insolence directed at the very congressional representives on whose noblesse oblige they depend.

Not even the occassional well-deserved finger-eating seems sufficient to stop this loathsome ill-dressed plague. Is it any wonder that one no longer finds self-admitted conservatives on Montauk, save for the gardening staff and a few swarthy weekend invaders from Queens in rental Porsches? Just as Dad drove Mamie Eisenhower and her cabal of UFO conspiracy lunatics out of the party in 1963, I have made it my personal crusade to purge our ranks of these downscale populist cretins before they inflict further damage to Mr. Obama and the conservative movement. It is for this reason the President wisely summoned me last week to an intimate political confabulation on Health Care strategy at Martha's Vineyard during his holiday there.

I am, in some fashion, Mr. Obama's "go-to man" on matters conservative, and of course agreed. I know the route to the Vineyard well; in his dotage grandfather T. Coddington V often piloted me there in his old auto-gyro, believing it was still Prohibition and he was making libation runs to Joe Kennedy's estate . I instead took the Nancy, our old ketch, laden with a precious cargo of like-minded conservative thinkers; the Mighty Davids, Brooks and Frum, Kathleen Parker and Bruce Bartlett. Not accustomed to the rigors of nautical life, I am afraid that all spent the journey violently vomiting off the beam. But after showers and a fresh change of khakis none were worse the wear when we arrived at the harbor in Gay Head.

The President was there to greet us, looking as elegant as ever, although it appeared his unfortunate smoking habit has increased in intensity. At his side was Mr. Emanuel, his brilliantly ambitious Chief of Staff, whose effortless grace and shiftily dancing pupils tell of his time as a classically trained terpsichorean. Soon joining us were David Axlerod and the Vice President, apparently in the grips of one of his occasional sunstrokes. We were also joined by the dashing Mr. Van Jones who has done such a yeoman's job as national Green Jobs Czar in organizing a boycott against the insipid TV harlequin Glenn Beck. Beck, as is now reported, is lamely attempting to retaliate by blithering about Mr. Jones' past dalliances with the Communist Party and the Black Panthers, as if those bore the slightest relevance to his job as a presidential advisor. For God's sake, our own family driver Evgeny is a former member of the Politburo, but it doesn't mean he can't parallel park a 26-foot Daimler town car.

After a toast to the late Senator Kennedy, it was finally time to get down to business.

"So," asked the President, elegantly lighting a Marlboro with the hot end of his previous Marlboro, "how do we avoid the Waterloo scenario?"

All hands went up, spasmotically shaking in breathless hopes of a presidential dialogue. For some reason, he selected Frum.

"Maybe... hee hee.. hee.. you should... heh.. like.. spin the protesters?... hee.. like maybe like.. hee hee.. they're crazy or something?" said the starstruck Canadian boob, collapsing into convulsive schoolgirl giggles with Parker. Brooks was too far rapt in an epileptic trance over the President's trouser crease to offer anything of substance.

"We tried that, you f*cking retarded f*ck," said Mr. Emanuel, understandably irritated. "We spun them as f*cking retards, as teabagging perverts, as f*cking sh*thead corporate tools, as goddamned batsh*t crazy violent f*cking gun extremists. We called those ass-munches every f*cking name in the cocksucking book, and for some f*cking reason they still won't support us. Now why don't you give us a new angle, before I put a size 7 Capezio slipper up you ass."

"Family," I said.

The eyes of the room turned to me.

"Elaborate," said Mr. Obama, curiously.

"It's really rather simple, Mr. President," I explained. "By all accounts, these simpletons respond like Pavlov's dog to a ridiculously small set of stimuli. God, country, family. Rather than the direct insult approach, perhaps you should leverage those weak spots."

"Hmm... no insults," said the President, intently puncturing a smoke ring with his index finger. "Interesting. Go on."

I continued to expound on my thesis, using a quite personal example. I explained that unlike the obscenely fertile Palin clan, we Van Voorheeses have long struggled with fecundity. As an only child, Dad always impressed upon me the importance of producing an heir, especially after my betrothal to the elegant German-Argentine beauty Mariska von Hilter. On our 15th childless anniversary, Dad asked if we had seen a fertility specialist, and I assured him we both held a clean bill of reproductive heath. "So your mother was right," he sighed. "you are a homosexual." I was shocked by the supposition, having always found fairies too flamboyant and tacky for words. I explained that Mariska and I merely found the procreative act undignified at best, not to mention a sap on our mixed doubles baseline game. "Then there's hope for the family yet!" Dad enthused boisterously. To make a long story short, Mariska and I contracted a fantastic medical specialist who mixed our respective genetic hoo-hah in a test tube and injected it in Guatemalan woman, leaving us to enjoy the entire 1992 summer party season. Nine months and two surrogate arbitration disputes later, the world welcomed T. Coddington Van Voorhees VIII.

"You see, Mr. President, if you can convince these rubes that your health care reform plan will help create and sustain American families, they will eventually fall in line," I said. "I suggest you get your Madison Avenue creative wizards on the case."

"The old sappy soft-sell, huh?" said Mr. Emanuel. "I gotta hand it to you, Van Voorhees, you're a regular f*cking Don Draper."

"And if that doesn't work?" asked the President, warily.

"If they won't listen to reason, Mr. President," I said, "perhaps they'll listen to more finger biting."

The President and staff escorted us to the harbor at Gay Head where we said our goodbyes and traded thank yous.

"If I could ask one favor in return, Mr. President," I said presumptuously. "With Senator Kennedy's seat vacant, perhaps you could prevail upon your friend Governor Patrick to appoint a Von Voorhees. I have a few acres on Nantucket, and an heir awaiting at Quonsocket Prep."

The President elegantly flicked his cigarette into the bay and assured me he would take the suggestion on advisement. In concluding our discussion I left the President with words of encouragement and recalled my father's wise counsel of perseverance.

"I am an old hand at sailing, Mr. President, and I have learned that the winds do not always blow one's way," I said. "When you find yourself in the doldrums, I want you to know that all of us in the conservative intellectual movement will be there to blow you."

Great New Shoes....Volume # 11 August 29th, 2009

MOMto2Kitties — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 03:52:56 -0700

Get ready for Fall..........New Shoes!

Your Own Private Garden From Kate Spade

Walk confidently unique and pretty with this new pair from Kate Spade. Made of leather with suede, fall into endless temptations when you walk in this lovely red poppies. Now that Summer’s over, keep some happy thoughts with you and have colorful steps!
Tagged at US$329.

************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Tease Your Feet With the Lovely Corsage From Karen Millen

This oversize corsage style from Karen Millen will give your feet extra glam that they deserve. Check out the divine details and exquisite shape, isn’t it just fantastic? Available in black and red with slim stiletto heels, hurry bring them home and get ready to show some true feminine style!
Tagged at £120.

**************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Share Your Golden Moments With Christian Louboutin

Are you planning to celebrate something anytime soon? Make sure you have your wardrobe all ready. And if you haven’t found the perfect pair to wear, allow me to suggest this brilliant gold from Christian Louboutin. With a luxurious blend of glamor and style, these £526.09 heels are made of gold leather with classic bow for perfect embellishment.
Walk like a diva and have a memorable celebration with this stunner on your feet!

************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Go Flirty in Bow With Corso Como

Do you still wanna look feminine and stylish even in boots? Corso Como has a perfect pair for you, thanks to the pretty layered cuff & adorable bow detail, now you can keep your feet warm and still looking mighty hot. So there it is girls, walk pretty this Fall with this US$204.95 beauty!

*************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Make Your Feet Noticeable With Marc Jacobs Newest Blue

With those bold blue color and sexy heels, these US$599 Marc Jacob’s peep-toe slingbacks are born to be party shoes. Made from textile upper, it is adorably decorated with bow detail. Perfect for a playful diva like yourself, so make sure to reserve your size now!

************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Charles David Presents the Sweetest Bow For Your Feet

Feel the romance as you walk femininely in these Charles David’s peep-toe slingbacks, it’s all because of the sweet bow detail on the vamp! Made from tweed, this US$144.95 beauty is available in Black and Camel. Hey, that’s not bad at all for a pretty pair like this one, is it?

************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Buckle Up With Paris Hilton Hottest Satin

Whether you are a fan of Paris Hilton or not, I guess we all will admit that this pump looks simply gorgeous, don’t you think? I totally love the buckle detail, it certainly adds a modern twist to it. Comes in Hot Pink and Black, this satin pair is tagged at US$89.
Walk super hot from now on, ladies!

************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Share Metallic Romance With Nanette Lepore

Set your girly mood and create romance in the air as you walk in this ultra feminine pump from Nanette Lepore. Made of crackled metallic leather, this US$350 pair is sweeten up with bow detail at the back… Simply beautiful, I’d say!

*************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Be the Sexiest Trendsetter With Steve Madden Regaal Pump

Looking feminine and bold, Steve Madden would like you to decorate your pretty feet with this new pump. Designed with ruffled ornament detail, this suede pair is all about being stylishly fun! Are you up for it? If so, pick from Blue or Black and grab it for US$89.95!

**************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

courtesy of viecouture.com

All the Rage: Fall Wear

itzmizzstacee — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 22:12:06 -0700

With the summer breeze lingering away, you cannot help but fall back on fall wear. From thick, snuggly coats to thigh-high-knee boots, there is an endless amount of ways to step back into style. Last season's leather jackets are still a big winner, so do not even dare to stash them away. Add the newest trend, blazers, into your wardrobe. Look for ones that play up and emphasize your shoulders with thick padding, or like me, opt for a double-breasted blazer with gold buttons from Gap for $98. Be sure to grab them pronto because these latest additions are selling fast, in-store and on-line.

Step it up with some sophisticated, traffic-stopping boots. Steve Madden carries several slouchy boots perfectly fitting for any boho-chic girls. Fall colors are all about neutrals. Think black or brown ($150), but get a head start with the newest bold colors that fall right into the purple palette. Wear eggplant or plum shoes with dark denim for an edgier look, perfect for night-time.

Right now, when you buy one sweater or top at GAP, you get a second one of lesser value for free. Offer ends soon, so what are you waiting for? Stock up on some hot and in-demand items NOW.

Cash For Clunkers is a Modern-Day Version of the Broken Window Fallacy

StolzeMama — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 08:52:23 -0700

Cash For Clunkers is an economically unsound program that will only make the American economic situation worse. It transfers wealth from one group of people to another while simultaneously destroying real wealth and misallocating scarce capital away from its best use.

To understand why this is, you need only understand the Broken Window Fallacy.

Frederic Bastiat originally formulated the Broken Window Fallacy in his landmark book That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen. Henry Hazlitt then expounded and reformulated it for a more modern audience in his classic work, Economics in One Lesson (which was one of our 31 top resources for small business owners and employees). In Chapter 2, entitled “The Broken Window,” Hazlitt wrote:

A young hoodlum, say, heaves a brick through the window of a baker’s shop. The shopkeeper runs out furious, but the boy is gone. A crowd gathers, and begins to stare with quiet satisfaction at the gaping hole in the window and the shattered glass over the bread and pies. After a while the crowd feels the need for philosophic reflection. And several of its members are almost certain to remind each other or the baker that, after all, the misfortune has its bright side. It will make business for some glazier. As they begin to think of this they elaborate upon it. How much does a new plate glass window cost? Two hundred and fifty dollars? That will be quite a sun. After all, if windows were never broken, what would happen to the glass business? Then, of course, the thing is endless. The glazier will have $250 more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $250 more to spend with still other merchants, and so ad infinitum. The smashed window will go on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles. The logical conclusion from all this would be, if the crowd drew it, that the little hoodlum who threw the brick, far from being a public menace, was a public benefactor.

Now let us take another look. The crowd is at least right in its first conclusion. This little act of vandalism will in the first instance mean more business for some glazier. The glazier will be no more unhappy to learn of the incident than an undertaker to learn of a death. But the shopkeeper will be out $250 that he was planning to spend for a new suit. Because he has had to replace the window, he will have to go without the suit (or some equivalent need or luxury). Instead of having a window and $250 he now has merely a window. Or, as he was planning to buy the suit that very afternoon, instead of having both a window and a suit he must be content with the window and no suit. If we think of him as part of the community, the community has lost a new suit that might otherwise have come into being, and is just that much poorer.

The glazier’s gain of business, in short, is merely the tailor’s loss of business. No new “employment” has been added. The people in the crowd were thinking only of two parties to the transaction, the baker and the glazier. They had forgotten the potential third party involved, the tailor. They forgot him precisely because he will not now enter the scene. They will see the new window in the next day or two. They will never see the extra suit, precisely because it will never be made. They see only what is immediately visible to the eye.

The Fallacy of the Broken Window exposes the lie that, as one Austrian Economist put it, “the … destruction of wealth fuels its creation.” He then goes on to summarize the Fallacy and concludes:

You can see the absurdity of the position … when you take it to absurd extremes. If the broken window really produces wealth, why not break all windows up and down the whole city block? Indeed, why not break doors and walls? Why not tear down all houses so that they can be rebuilt? Why not bomb whole cities so construction firms can get busy rebuilding?

It is not a good thing to destroy wealth. Bastiat puts it this way: “Society loses the value of things which are uselessly destroyed.”

But Big Government frequently peppers hammers us with the message that we must create new wealth by destroying old wealth!

And that’s where Cars For Clunkers comes in. Here’s a quick summary of the program and where it goes wrong.

1. The Federal Government takes tax-dollars, or borrowed dollars (to be paid back later through taxes), and offers to hand that money to people who will trade in pre-selected older cars; the money is to be used toward buying a new car; then the government takes the traded-in car off the road, and junks it, often by destroying the engine; the “subsidy” given toward buying the new car (for each trade-in) is $3,500-4,500
2. If the value of the trade-in car is less than the $3,500-4,500 handed in trade value the government has overpaid for the car, despite that the government is about to junk it, thus ensuring that no value will be received in return.
3. If the value of the trade-in car is more than the $3,500-4,500 handed, the government still derives no value from the trade because it’s not reselling it; it’s junking it and stripping it for salvageable parts (which are minimal)
4. The net number of cars on the road remains the same; maybe net emissions drop or maybe fuel-usage drops (because of better fuel efficiency) in the aggregate, but maybe not! (more on that below)

So, in this new version of the Broken Window Fallacy, our modern-day Window Breakers are destroying drivable cars, then handing out confiscated or borrowed money to the people who are allowing their “windows cars to be broken” because other people are paying for these windows cars to be replaced with newer, better, sexier models!

They do this in the name of saving the environment from pollution, or saving on “waste” through fuel-efficiency, or preventing global-warming through reducing emissions, or whatever. It really doesn’t matter what justification they’re using, it’s wrong on several levels.

It destroys wealth by not letting these cars be used up over their useful life. It destroys wealth by routing scarce resources into activities – in this case, car building – that wouldn’t otherwise take place, denying other industries access to those resources. It destroys wealth by taking on liabilities, through borrowing, that have to be paid back later by taxpayers (reducing their purchasing power in the future) or by taxing them immediately (reducing their purchasing power today).

Also, building the new cars emits all kinds things into the atmosphere and gobbles up energy in the production process! So any gains in emission and efficiency are offset by that, too!

Guess what else proponents of this destruction are missing?

They are oblivious to how the incentives will change future behavior.

These people traded in a car they’ve been likely to drive less. We safely assume these cars didn’t get as good gas mileage or was older, a “clunker”, because they were targeted for these reason. These cars also may not have been driven at all. However, they’ve been used to helped people get a vehicle that they’re more likely to drive more!!! More driving means more emissions, even if the emissions per unit of travel is less. More driving means more fuel consumption, even if the fuel consumption per unit of travel is less.

See, when you change the incentives, you change the behavior. The people who owned these traded in cars were incentivized to drive them less by having to pay more for a unit of travel, and by having to conserve the remaining life in the car, which may have been approaching the end of its life over the next 5-10 years. Now? Not so much.

In fact, the New York Times reports, “Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia Law School’s Center for Climate Change Law, said in a statement that the cash-for-clunker program is not a cost-effective way to reduce fuel use or greenhouse gas emissions. Any energy savings, he said, could take several years to realize, considering the time it takes the fuel savings from a new car to exceed the energy cost used to make it.

Who are the favored parties?

The subsidized consumers, of course. But also the favored industries, who have had their goods favored at the expense of other industries. The government isn’t handing out money to go buy [fill in the blank], yet they’re siphoning off money and resources from a finite supply and putting it into one area, at the expense of other areas.

Think the Auto-Dealers liked it?

Look at this:
“It was an absolute success,” said Michael J. Jackson, chief executive of AutoNation Inc., the U.S.’s largest chain of auto dealerships. “There’s a very compelling case the government should put more money into it. It’s a great stimulus to the economy.”

Of course! The “government” should put more money into it. Let me fix that quote to show you what it should say if it were telling the truth.
“It was great for us, though a miserable failure for taxpayers and other industries,” said Michael J. Jackson, chief executive of AutoNation Inc., the U.S.’s largest chain of auto dealerships. “There’s really no case to be made that the government should confiscate or borrow more money to put into it. But it’s a great stimulus to my bank account, so I don’t care what happens to the people picking up the tab!”

Who were the losers?

Everyone else, especially the taxpayers. And other businesses and industries, especially ones directly impacted by trading these cars in instead of servicing them, auto-parts sellers, mechanics, etc.

The funny thing is that down the road even the dealers will suffer, because this program created false demand and just kicked the can down the road so that the dealers could put off their day-of-reckoning a little longer.

Want to feel some outrage?

Read this story and watch the video, especially watch the video at the 2 minute mark on where they discuss how the cars are junked, and how otherwise re-saleable parts are destroyed in the process. Perfectly usable cars being destroyed! And, as an added bonus, Big Government makes a complete mess in administering the program (but don’t worry, they’ll run nationalized health care flawlessly).

We’re not being fooled. The majority of American people understand that this program is corrupt and just 35 in 100 Americans are in favor of it.

But since we’re living in the age of Big Government, so let’s go all the way with this!

Why stop at cars? In fact, the Wall Street Journal today asked, Why not a “Cash for Everything” program?

Let’s blow up buildings and rebuild them with subsidies to stimulate commercial building. Let’s burn down homes and rebuild them with taxpayer funds to stimulate the homebuilding industry! Let’s break up all our fine-china and buy everyone a new set!

Or maybe not.

Let’s just point out one last thing about the way Cash For Clunkers was run, and how it exposes Big Government hypocrisy.

Very poor people, the car-less among us, who don’t have any private transportation of their own, and who Big Government always profess to help, could have really used those cars. They could’ve been given to people in need.

This summer I donated my “clunker” to the Kars 4 Kids charity, which then sold it and used the money to help poor children. I’ll bet you my shiniest nickle that this government program has caused material hurt to charities like Kars 4 Kids. And not just this year, but also in future years since many cars that may have been later donated to charity had their end-life pushed up to the present day and therefore won’t be available for donation in the future.

Just another sad instance of the Bastiat’s “unseens” or, in words we like to use, “what-might-have-beens.”

http://www.sbabg.org/2009/08/03/cash-for-clunkers-is-a-modern-day-versio...

Great New Shoes .... Volume #4 July 3, 2009

MOMto2Kitties — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:51:14 -0700

Be Sleek and Sassy With Babyphat Consuela Heels

BabyPhat

The platform you need throughout the Summer is here! Yep, with this hot pair from Babyphat, you don’t need to worry about getting new shoes for a while. Check out the sexy strappy details along with the wooden heels, don’t they just mighty divine? Match them with your favorite jeans or shorts and be stunningly hot!

Tagged at US$80.

*************************************************************************

Feel the Delicate Satin on Your Feet With Nine West Snow

Nine West

Available in 5 fantastic colors, this brand new pair from Nine West is simply irresistible. Made of satin with patent slingback, these ultra chic shoes will definitely give more meaning to your evening. So, dress up pretty and walk away with this US$79 beauty on your feet!

****************************************************************************

The Most Graceful Satin From Christian Louboutin

Christian Louboutin

Can’t get enough of Louboutin’s lace? Here’s another one for your pleasure! Remember the lace bouquet that we posted a while ago? here’s another version of it! only it gets better because it’s designed in platform pumps with sexy ankle straps but still looking gorgeous as ever.

So walk gracefully pretty with this £534.78 pair on your feet!

*****************************************************************************

Experience the Most Luxurious Steps From Valentino

Valentino

Walk like a diva you are with these luxurious new pumps from Valentino. This exquisite work of art was born from dark gray mirrored calf leather and completed beautifully with satin rosette for a feminine result. Feel the fantastic extravaganza with this US$775 pair on your feet!

*********************************************************************************

Paris Hilton Makes Your Feet Fairytale Come True

Paris Hilton

There’s a reason why Paris Hilton named this lovely pair “Charmed”. Not only because they do look charming but also the fact that every girl has their own fairytale slippers and if you haven’t found yours, how about take a closer look at this beauty?

Available in black and cream, this US$99 pair is uniquely created from soft satin with dazzling rhinestones on the heels, making them look oh-so-divine!

****************************************************************************

Style it Uniquely Different With Giuseppe Zanotti

Guiseppe Zanotti

This new Pony from Zanotti is all you need to look dramatically hot in every step you make. Made of fantastic black suede accented with glamorous and elaborate Swarovski crystals, this US$925 pair is a total beauty! What makes this sophisticated evening platform so special is the fact that the heels are covered with Pony hair.

What more can we say except that this is truly one of the kind

*************************************************************************

Give Your Feet A Complete Makeover With Tibi

Tibi

Go elaborately beautiful with this fantastic pair from Tibi. Made of silk satin with feathers for more couture and feminine attitude, this US$420 elegance is gonna take you to another fashion level! Wear them with your evening dress and watch out for endless attention!

***************************************************************************************************************************************************

content courtesy of viecouture.com

Summer Sandals Under $25

FashionWithoutGuilt — Sun, 31 May 2009 15:55:50 -0700

Summer and Sandals go hand in hand. The trends this season are the classic t-strap, ankle cuff, fringe, and last but not least the gladiator sandal. The versatility and options for summer are endless. My personal favorite is the ankle cuff sandal. They are a great focal item to finalize that some what simple ensemble. They are made to make a statement.

Below are some great picks for Under $25. For more details or to purchase, please click on the items below.

Every Little Step/A Chorus Line Documentary

stephley — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:38:14 -0700

By Jesse Kornbluth
http://headbutler.com/

The original production of “A Chorus Line” ran for 6,137 performances. It won the Pulitzer Prize and 9 Tony awards. It lives on - the enduring appeal of talented performers looking for a chance to shine is so great it has spawned three “High School Musical” films and the “American Idol” franchise.

So it was inevitable that “A Chorus Line” would be revived on Broadway.

In 1974-5, when Michael Bennett and his team were developing “A Chorus Line”, putting auditions on video was unthinkable. Now, it’s commonplace - when I visited a publisher last fall, an editor whipped out her Flip video camera and, almost before I left the building, had slapped up a blog. Documenting the tryouts for the Broadway revival of “A Chorus Line” was thus a no-brainer.

In 2005, 3,000 performers competed - over eight months - for eight roles in the show. That audition process is the story of Every Little Step, the documentary about those tryouts. It’s an astonishing film, far more dramatic than the summer blockbusters and comedies now in theaters, and if it’s anywhere near you - you’ll find a list of cities where it’s playing here - please consider rearranging your entertainment calendar to see it.

Bring Kleenex.
“It takes your guts, it takes your soul - but you learn to give it,” a dancer says of the endless auditions, and she’s not kidding. Everything is on the line here. Not just childhood fantasies and adolescent dreams, but a needed job, a last chance, basic survival. Metaphors? If you don’t connect to this movie, you must be rich and beautiful and set for life.

There are many eye-popping moments. And one scene you’ll never forget.

It’s Jason Tam’s audition for the part of Paul. When the director asks Paul to tell his why-I’m-in-show-biz story, he starts talking about growing up Puerto Rican and gay in New York. Knowing he’s different. Not understanding why he feels ashamed of that difference. And explaining how he leaves school early and scuffles for work, finally getting a job in a gritty revue - in drag. Of course he hasn’t come out to his family. Of course they suspect nothing.

And then he says this:

We were working the Apollo Theatre on a Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street. Doing four shows a day with a movie. It was really tacky. The show was going to go to Chicago. My parents wanted to say goodbye and they were going to bring my luggage to the theatre after the show. Well, we were doing this oriental number and I looked like Anna May Wong. I had these two great big chrysanthemums on either side my head and a huge headdress with gold balls hanging all over it. I was going on for the finale and going down the stairs and who should I see standing by the stage door ... my parents. They got there too early.

I freaked. I didn't know what to do. I thought to myself : "I know, I'll just walk quickly past them like all the others and they'll never recognize me." So I took a deep breath and started down the stairs and just as I passed my mother I heard her say: "Oh, my God." Well... I died. But what could I do? I had to go on for the finale so I just kept going.

After the show I went back to my dressing room and after I'd finished dressing and taking my makeup off, I went back down stairs. And there they were standing in the middle of all these ... And all they said to me was please write, make sure you eat and take care of yourself. And just before my parents left, my father turned to the producer and said: "Take care of my son..." That was the first time he ever called me that... I... ah... I... ah....

Stage Direction: He breaks down.

Reaction from the casting director, the director, and others behind that table, most of them veterans of the original production: They break down.

Audience reaction: Sniffles and sobs.

Me, I was a mess. This moment - based on Michael Bennett’s interview tapes from 1974 - was beyond drama for me. Because beyond the heartbreak of Paul and his parents, I saw the Apocalypse of AIDS coming for Paul, who’s not just gay, but feminine gay, and thus perhaps the most likely candidate for the gay plague. To see him use this most precious, intimate memory to get the part and grab a piece of glory and for me to know that his story would probably end, ever so badly, no more than a decade latter &mdash hey, that’s a bit more emotion than today’s focus-grouped movies deliver, isn’t it?

“Every Little Step” may take you back to the original cast CD and the script and some books about the production. (Don’t let it take you back to the movie, which was a total dud.) More to the point, it may return you to your own struggle with a slightly more acute notion of how difficult it is to get where you want to go in life, and how you have to risk everything to get it, and how, in the end, if you’re going to pray for anything, pray for luck.

A Preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S_Av4aHCAw

Stephen Colbert goes "commando" in Iraq...

Tulipe — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:06:42 -0700

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
Published: June 7, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/arts/television/08colb.html?_r=1&scp=2...

CAMP VICTORY, Iraq - It was Sunday night in Baghdad, and President Obama was ordering Gen. Ray Odierno, the commander of the American troops here, to shave Stephen Colbert’s head. (Not to give everything away, but the general is not as brutal with an electric razor as one would expect a bald man to be; Mr. Colbert’s hairdresser, on the other hand, has a merciless streak.)

War, as things go, is a fairly unironic exercise. Sure, there are endless incongruities to be found and parodied in the speeches about war from politicians, generals and heads of state. But war itself - the dirty, dangerous business of soldiers on the ground - seems to be about as earnest a trade as you can find.

Into this comes Mr. Colbert. He is taping four episodes of “The Colbert Report,” the Comedy Central show featuring his egotistical, fake-macho, nationalist blowhard alter ego, in Baghdad this week. It’s the first time in the history of the U.S.O. that a full-length nonnews show has been filmed, edited and broadcast from a combat zone .

The week of shows, taped a day or two before they are broadcast, is called “Operation Iraqi Stephen: Going Commando,” and it has a pretty fancy guest list (in addition to General Odierno, and the president, whose appearance was taped ahead) that includes Iraq’s deputy prime minister. But there is also something kind of meta about the whole thing. Mr. Colbert’s entire career is based on being gleefully insincere, a man who literally wraps himself in the flag to the screaming of majestic computer-generated eagles.

On the other hand he is unquestionably a real supporter of the troops, raising money through donorschoose.org for school supplies for children of soldiers, through his WristStrong bracelets for the Yellow Ribbon Fund, which helps injured veterans, and by donating to the U.S.O. proceeds from iTunes downloads of this week’s episodes .

So it was easy to wonder if, given the setting, he would be a little less mock Bill O’Reilly and a bit more risk-free Rich Little.

Any doubt was dispersed the minute Mr. Colbert ran out onstage wearing a business suit made of Army camouflage and, shortly afterward, declared himself the only person man enough finally to declare victory in Iraq. (General Odierno, whom Mr. Colbert compared to Shrek, diplomatically talked that declaration down.)

Mr. Colbert himself does not seem to be fazed by this seemingly tricky balancing act. Neither he nor his character knows what it’s like to be a soldier, he said in an interview here Saturday night. Only, his character thinks he knows.

“Think of certain reporters who lose themselves in their own self-importance and accidentally give away troop movements and get kicked out of the country,” he said in a not particularly oblique reference to Geraldo Rivera.

“The best way I can show gratitude is to do my show the best I can and make them laugh,” he said. “If I tried to tailor my material to people in the Army, there’d be two things. A, that’d be patronizing. And B, I’d be wrong.”

The idea for taping the show here came about last summer, he said, at the suggestion of Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense and a guest on “The Colbert Report.” But the election (in which Mr. Colbert was briefly a candidate) was the show’s focus for the following few months.

Shortly after the inauguration, though, he began talking to a fellow board member at Donorschoose about the troops in Iraq.

There was a general feeling among soldiers there , the board member said, that Americans had largely tuned the war out, that the economy had vacuumed up all the attention even though there are around 135,000 troops still here and still doing dangerous work .

“There’s a thesis statement there, which is something for my character to hang on to,” he said. “My character thinks the war is over because he doesn’t hear about it anymore. He’s like a child. A ball rolls behind the couch and he thinks it’s gone forever.”

Soldiers here are all too aware of America’s attention span about this war, several of them at the taping said. So the visit of Mr. Colbert, postmodern or not, was an unexpectedly high-caliber event among the recent string of retired baseball managers (Tommy Lasorda actually), wrestlers, cheerleaders and actors whose names require a little Googling.

“I’m surprised that anybody comes here,” said 27-year-old Lt. Travis Klempan of the Navy, from Lafayette, Colo. “I mean we had the guy from the Allstate commercial. It’s like: that’s nice.”

(Scarlett Johansson has been talking seriously about a visit, according to John Hanson, a senior vice president for marketing and communications at the U.S.O.)

Along with Mr. Colbert, who arrived Friday, came 30 members of the show’s production staff. That’s one-third of the usual, but still a large operation that takes over several rooms at a former palace of Saddam Hussein, where the show is being taped: skinny comedy writers and producers milling around Camp Victory in vintage sneakers and peasant blouses give the sprawling compound a jarring touch of Williamsburg.

For all of Mr. Colbert’s exaggerations, there are extremes to life in Baghdad that are difficult to caricature. The set of the show here, with a desk made of sandbags painted as an American flag and a backdrop depicting soaring jets, rolling tanks and the ubiquitous porta-potties, pales in tackiness compared to the ceiling it is sitting under: the palace’s blinding pastel gaudiness is unmatched.

The troops didn’t seem to care much about the meta-ness of Mr. Colbert’s visit, nor were they uneasy about his political shtick as they laughed at the gags about clearing Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and last year’s shoe-throwing incident involving the man who was then their commander in chief as much as at Mr. Colbert’s self-deprecating jokes about his lack of fortitude.

“I know his persona is all pro-American,” Lieutenant Klempan said, trying to explain the math of Stephen Colbert and “Stephen Colbert” and which one of them had come for what reason.

Finally he gave up.

“I’m glad either one of them showed up,” he said.