[Rtebydou]

Five days old and already a problem, 2009 prepared for a sixth by brewing up a pot of trouble for D.C.'s newest resident. Forced into it-- by the real estate meltdown no doubt --the next President of the United States found it necessary to put his family up in a cheap hotel in Central D.C. until his new house is ready to live in.
The current tenants are taking their damn time to vacate, so he's forced to run his Visa to the max just to get by. D.C ain't THAT cheap, you know ???
The current people PROMISE that there will be an Obama move-in in two, three weeks tops, since they have to get to Dallas for a closing.

Meantime,those wacky Bushes--the Texas folks who keep the William Howard Taft Memorial Matresses warm on the third floor --are ignoring everything and everybody, like Israel and Billionaire Bernie Madoff (who will,I'm sure, try to Beg a Pardon from W. before he's finally forced out of his home and into a Federal 6'x10'.).
They are biding their time, crossing off days on a calendar and watching old Jimmy Stewart movies in the Ronald Reagan Memorial TV Room, located behind the bathroom.

Israel/Palestine/Gaza.
Another bastard child of '09, a steaming fecal pile in a flaming bag that was just delivered to the doorstep of the Obama's new hotel room; "Package for Mr Obama"--a smelly, unexpected and unsolicited gift to Barak. He HAS to open the door...How WILL he stomp it out ??? CAN he ???

I try not to be political here--I try mighitly to confine my comments to Things New York when I dream up my posts -- and I'm sure the current posts on WNY are rich with Israel-related threads, but I'm gonna go there for a paragraph or two and hope I don't get shifted or deleted.

Israel always puts up with the Palistinean's deadly nonsense--false ceasefires, daily rocket harrassment, mortars into Israeli schools and malls, actual mass murder etc, until it becomes just dumb to permit it or ignore it anymore, then they launch a shock-and-awe fusillade that is supposed to quell the Hamas bloodlust. It never works, and the Pals never learn anything. Currently, Israel is reacting to months of Hamas shells fired from Gaza, hundreds --thousands-- of them, and their reaction is typical --they return the bombs that Hamas shot over the walls, number for number, only they do it faster, bigger and from planes. Then THEY get blame heaped on them, like THEY are the bullies!!!

The Gazans are like High School thugs who never grew out of the gang mentality; they are led by a terrorist government that vows to push all the Israelis into the sea -- and then they make a lot of adolescent attempts to carry it out by smggling things that make bombs into Gaza and assembling them to shoot at the ordinary citizens of Israel,who will never be pushed into the sea no matter how many get killed by the ordinary citizens of Gaza. Israel needs to pound the whee out of these clowns and convince them to stop their harrassment and just GROW UP !!!

Yeah, I know, I said a couple of paragraphs and there they are. But...
The Israel--Pal mess is much deeper and more complicated than my humble synopsis.
Notice how quiet The West Bank is???
Actually, I have no sympathy or concern about the fate of the Palestineans. When I saw the TV news show several minutes of tape of the Palestineans, wearing green and dancing in the streets of Gaza City and Ramallah on the day after 9/11, waving photos of the smoking Towers as they gleefully celebrated-- well, they lost my empathy forever.

Barak OWNS this one, due to a week-early premature birth by 2009. A Caesarian.

John Travolta, my neighbor (he lives about two miles down the road from my house) lost his son, 16-year old Jett, named after a Paul McCartney song. My sympathies are strong here. No one should have to bury a son.

Another reason to rant on '09.

Here's another...
Oh-Nine gave us cheap[er] gas,but like the evil trickster it is,Oh-Nine is about to take it away. Already, since Old Year's Eve when I paid $1.49.9 for regular gas, it has gone up 20 cents. Perhaps, from October until the dying hours of December, cheap gas was a gift from the outgoing 2008, a little dividend from an otherwise unfriendly year whose only gifts seem to spell doom.

Finally, 2009 suddenly appearing is causing me to assemble my records for the Annual Federal Annoyance,THE TAX.
Should I file early, or should I wait and see what Mr Obama is going to do to our--my-- tax responsibilities after he is finally given the keys to 1600 and a podium in Congress ???

It's too early in '09 to even speculate, and besides, tomorrow's coming up fast and could produce yet another gross gift. It's First Tuesday, Ephipiny. What can IT produce???