Your Daily Five Photos (Santa Monica Edition)

Hello Bloglandia! It's been awhile, other than playing whackamole with Chinese spammers, there hasn't been much activity hereabouts for the past couple of months. That changes today. I'm going to post five photos each day to Flickr, either taken that day, or the day previous, and post them as a slide show here. Rather than posting everything I shoot at Flickr, I'm going to pick out shots that seem interesting to me.

Also, with the NFL season approaching, I will do my usual shockingly inaccurate season preview, but rather than trying to pick the whole season, I'm going to pick against the over/under lines for season wins for each team. I'll do a post for each division, all to be posted the day after Labor Day.

Below, today's furious five photos. Taken earlier at the recently refurbished and upscale-ified Santa Monica Place. They tore the roof off the sucka! (literally). Seems like it has succeeded as a draw to the area, but the shops themselves aren't getting much in the way of customers. I think they were hoping that RECOVERY SUMMER 2010! would have been a bit more recovered by now. Most of the stores here have other branches in other close by upscale shopping districts, I just don't see the marketplace supporting them over the long run, but time will tell. The roof off gives a nice updated look, gives a better pedestrian flow to the rest of the area, and the new restaurants seem worth checking out (if a bit on the pricey side).

LOL Obama, Daily 17 February 2010

Couldn't let the one year anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act go by without some sort of commemoration of that $787,000,000,000.00 boondoggle.

(it should become customary not to use the B and T abbreviation when discussing billions and trillions, typing all those zeros adds a bit of perspective to the gargantuan size of the increase in government spending under President Obama)

Your Daily Photo (With a Name Like Zucky's, You Know It's Probably a Bank Edition)

That's Santa Monica's version of a historic building. It was a crap diner when it was a diner, then there was a suspicious fire back in the early 90s, then it sat for more than a decade, finally a bank agreed to repurpose the structure, even though they couldn't tear it down.

Preservationism can be truly idiotic sometimes. Here's a PDF of the City Landmark Assessment Report.

Weep at the idiocy, and marvel at the petty bureaucratic interference into normal commercial land use.

First Republic Bank (that's their branch at the former Zucky's) was recently sold off by Bank of America to some private investors at fire sale prices. Doesn't have much to do with anything, other than to show what a great job all that TARP money is doing.

Actually, Mr. Cooper, I Think It's the Bagee That Might Have Trouble Speaking, Not the Bagger . . .

The Silver Fox is soooo pleased with himself as he mirthfully repeats the term 'teabagging' on air over at CNN.

(I wonder if he kisses his mother with that mouth?)

My Sentiments, Exactly . . .

(via Instapundit)

David Harsanyi speaks truth to the squawking classes

Since when is rooting for the success of an ideologically driven elected official a civic duty, you may wonder? Wonder no more. It merely depends on the politician.

Rush Limbaugh is right, and he expressed his disdain for the policy directives issuing forth from the Obama administration in exactly the right terms. It would be horrific for our nation if they manage (despite themselves) to succeed. We are a resilient, resourceful, and productive people, and even with an Obama administration hellbent on turning us into MegaSweden, we might actually manage to pull out of this recession even with the Democratic party doing everything in their power to undermine our economy and increase the grasp of the federal government.

If the economy recovers, they'll take the credit, and that would be a disaster, cause that would mean more policy suggestions like we've seen these past few weeks, and there's only so much of this nonsense that we can handle before we're plunged into French like economic stagnation and malaise.

So, failure now for Obama's policies, even if that means more economic hardship for the American people, will sow the seeds for a rebirth of economic responsibility, adherence to the federalist nature of our constitution, and decapitation of that evil zombie known as the New Deal (and it's recent manifestation in Obama's New New Deal). When Carter failed miserably in the late 70s, it was the best thing that ever happened to us as a nation, had by some bizarre miracle the economy recovered despite his idiotic policies, then we never would have had Reagan, and we might already be MegaSweden rather than the U S of Effin A!!!

We're Well, and Truly, SCREWED . . .

Not good.

Economic Commentary By Means of Kinks Songs . . .

(The Pretenders version is superior, though)

(and the United States economy is fundamentally strong as McCain has said, even if Obama finds that a risible comment)