Does anyone living and conscious in the Eastern Time Zone not watch the ball drop in Times Square at midnight? Never mind the clocks or local countdowns – it’s not officially the New Year until the ball touches down and all hell breaks loose among the million or so people crammed into Times Square.
Despite having lived less than 2 miles from Times Square for 25 years, I have never had the desire or curiosity to do New Year's Eve in Times Square. I’ve been fortunate, though, never having been to a bad New Year’s Eve party. They were all good and all different. From others’ house parties to pre-Saint parties to the Saint to parties at my WestVillage apartment. [Seehttp://aboutnothing-doug.blogspot.com/2008/08/saint.html] They were terrific. There was the millennium (celebrated) New Year’s Eve – 1999-2000, when everyone feared an electronic meltdown. We took public transportation from Fort Lee to the Village, then uptown to do our partying. From the Upper West Side we headed home at around 5, cabbing it to 175th Street and the GeorgeWashingtonBridge. It was a mild night so we walked the mile across the bridge spanning the Hudson River swirling with fog from the sudden rise in temperature.
Good people – family and friends – have lost loved ones to tragic deaths in 2008. Those we lost survive within us as they touched our lives. Those who survive have a different New Year’s Eve ritual tonight.
Friends and I looked forward to the New Year as we figured it couldn’t be worse than the old year. The old year was often pretty crappy as it always included deaths of friends from AIDS. Nonetheless, we danced forth into the New Year.
I may not be dancing into the New Year, but do look forward to 2009. I made noticeable progress in 2008 conquering the demons that have plagued me since 2004. Barack Obama gives me more hope for our country than I have had in many years. Longtime friends with AIDS live to see 2009. I see much to look forward to in the New Year.
Happy New Year – may you have a healthy, gratifying, prosperous 2009.
As a kid I wanted to celebrate Christmas. Felt guilty as hell about it, but I did. Those beautifully decorated trees, the light displays on the homes in town and general secular festivity had me yearning annually for a Christmas tree to decorate, the Christmas Eves and Mornings of lore and, of course, the great treasure trove of presents under the tree. Now how cool was that – presents waiting for you under that magnificently decorated, warm, glowing Christmas tree.
Being Jewish, my brothers and I grew up with Chanukah. Somehow, 8 days of lighting the menorah didn’t measure up to what our Christian friends did for Christmas. For those of you who don’t know, Chanukah candles last maybe 30-45 minutes before burning out. Once the candles go out, there’s no evidence of the holiday season in which the rest of the world was already immersed. Another Chanukah fact for those who have always celebrated Christmas: Few kids get presents each of the 8 nights. Most get them the first and maybe second, night. Trust me, Christian friends – in general, we Christmas-envious Jews didn’t come close to making out on Chanukah as well as you did on Christmas.
[I acknowledge that this likely doesn’t apply to the “kids want / parents buy” generations of following us baby boomers. More importantly and conversely it never applies to those too poor for their kids to “make out” on any holiday.]
Hmm… maybe that’s why my partners in life have been Catholic. From the first Christmas with my first partner gifts were exchanged on Christmas (Christmas Eve to be exact), not Chanukah. They were also accustomed to having a Christmas tree. Being raised with the idea that having a Christmas tree in my home was heresy, it took my first partner 5 years to erode that erroneous indoctrination. Once he succeeded, though, 27 years of Christmas envy was released like a deluge as we bought, carried home and decorated our first tree in our New York City apartment.
Don’t get me wrong here. I’m as proud of being Jewish as I am of Jewish culture, history and tradition. That said, I think that over time the Jewish culture has taken what was likely a minor Jewish holiday and tried to make it competitive with Christmas. To those still pushing that futile concept to Jewish kids I paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen in saying, “I’ve seen Christmas and Chanukah is no Christmas.”
But, you know – Chanukah has some cool songs, not the least of which is Adam Sandler’s “Chanukah” – embedded below from youtube.
Finally, today is December 23rd. Happy Birthday to Mike, my friend of 52 years. To Frank Costanza and his followers around the world, “HAPPY FESTIVUS!”
To anyone who said George W. Bush doesn’t have the fortitude for quixotic missions, just watch him rewrite history as his presidency dwindles to legacy mending. Talking heads question whether the American people have too short an attention span to remember the 8 years under a Bush presidency. I would find that tragic. As my miniscule contribution to keeping his true legacy alive, here’s a good reminder from Paul Waldman of “The American Prospect”. Web link follows the article.
Please note that Mr. Waldman does not even raise the Katrina disaster and ensuing FEMA relief fiasco.
After eight years of President Bush, we almost don't know how to function without him - almost. But before we move on, we should pause to remember just what we're leaving behind.
Just over two years into George W. Bush's presidency, The American Prospect featured Bush on its cover under the headline, "The Most Dangerous President Ever." At the time, some probably thought it a bit over the top. But nearly six years later, it's worth taking a moment to reflect on the multifaceted burden that will soon be lifted from our collective shoulders.
Since last week, I have stopped short and shaken my head in amazement every time I have heard the words "President-elect Obama." But it is equally extraordinary to consider that in just a few weeks, George W. Bush will no longer be our president. Let me repeat that: In just a few weeks, George W. Bush will no longer be our president. So though our long national ordeal isn't quite over, it's never too early to say goodbye.
Goodbye, we can say at last, to the most powerful man in the world being such a ridiculous buffoon, incapable of stringing together two coherent sentences. Goodbye to cringing with dread every time our president steps onto the world stage, sure he'll say or do something to embarrass us all. Goodbye to being represented by a man who embodies everything our enemies want the people of the world to believe about America - that we are ignorant, cruel, and only care about foreign countries when we decide to stomp on them. Goodbye to his giggle, and his shoulder shake, and his nicknames. Goodbye to a president who talks to us like we're a nation of fourth-graders.
And goodbye, of course, to Dick Cheney. Goodbye to the man whose naked contempt for democracy contorted his face to a permanent sneer, who spent his days in his undisclosed location with his man-sized safe. And while we're at it, goodbye to Cheney's consigliore David Addington, as malevolent a force as has ever left his trail of slime across our federal institutions.
Goodbye, indeed, to the entire band of liars and crooks and thieves who have so sullied the federal government that belongs to us all. We can even say goodbye to those who have already gone, to Rummy and Scooter, to Fredo and Rove, tornados of misery left in their wake.
Goodbye to the rotating cast of butchers manning the White House's legal abattoir, where the Constitution has been sliced and bled and gutted since September 11. Goodbye to the "unitary executive" theory and its claims that the president can do whatever he wants - even snatch an American citizen off the street and lock him up for life without charge, without legal representation, and without trial. Goodbye to the promiscuous use of "signing statements" (1,100 at last count) to declare that the law is whatever the president says it is, and that he'll enforce only those laws he likes. Goodbye to an executive branch that treats lawfully issued subpoenas like suggestions that can be ignored. Goodbye to thinking of John Ashcroft as the liberal attorney general. Goodbye to the culture of incompetence, where rebuilding a country we destroyed could be turned over to a bunch of clueless 20-somethings with no qualifications save an internship at the Heritage Foundation and an opposition to abortion. Goodbye to the "Brownie, you're doin' a heckuva job" philosophy, where vital agencies are turned over to incompetent boobs to rot and decay. Goodbye to handing out the Medal of Freedom as an award for engineering one of the greatest screw-ups of our time. Goodbye to an administration that welcomed gluttonous war profiteering, that was only too happy to outsource every government function it could to well-connected contractors who would do a worse job for more money.
Goodbye to the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war. Goodbye to the lust for sending off other people's sons and daughters to fight and kill and die just to show your daddy you're a real man. Goodbye to playing dress-up in flight suits, goodbye to strutting and posing and desperate sexual insecurity as a driver of American foreign policy. Goodbye to the neocons, so sinister and deluded they beg us all to become fevered conspiracy theorists. Goodbye to Guantanamo and its kangaroo courts. Goodbye to the use of torture as official U.S. government policy, and goodbye to the immoral ghouls who think you can rename it "enhanced interrogation techniques" and render it any less monstrous.
Goodbye to the accusation that if you disagree with what the president wants to do, you don't "support the troops."
Goodbye to stocking government agencies with people who are opposed to the very missions those agencies are charged with carrying out. Goodbye to putting industry lobbyists in charge of the agencies that are supposed to regulate those very industries. Goodbye to madly giving away public lands to private interests. Goodbye to a Food and Drug Administration that acts like a wholly owned subsidiary of the pharmaceutical industry, except when it acts like a wholly owned subsidiary of the fundamentalist puritans who believe that sex is dirty and birth control will turn girls into sluts. Goodbye to the "global gag rule," which prohibits any entity receiving American funds from even telling women where they can get an abortion if they need it.
Goodbye to vetoing health insurance for poor children but rushing back to Washington to sign a bill to keep alive a woman whose cerebral cortex had liquefied. Goodbye to the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research.
Goodbye to the philosophy that says that if we give tax cuts to the rich and keep the government from any oversight of the economy, prosperity will eventually trickle down. Goodbye to the thirst for privatizing Social Security and to the belief that the success of a social safety-net program is what makes it a threat and should mark it for destruction. Goodbye to the war on unions and to a National Labor Relations Board devoted to crushing them. Goodbye to the principle of loyalty above all else, that nominates Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and puts Alberto Gonzales in charge of the Justice Department. And goodbye to that Justice Department, the one where U.S. attorneys keep their jobs only if they are willing to undertake bogus investigations of Democrats timed to hit the papers just before Election Day. Goodbye to a Justice Department where graduates of Pat Robertson's law school roam the halls by the dozens, where "justice" is a joke.
Goodbye to James Dobson and a host of radical clerics picking up the phone and hearing someone in the White House on the other end. Goodbye to the most consequential decisions being made on the basis of one man's "gut," a gut that proved so wrong so often. Goodbye to the contempt for evidence, to the scorn for intellect and book learnin', to the relentless war on science itself as a means of understanding the world.
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye to it all.
Though President Obama will be spending most of his time cleaning up the mess George Bush made, we probably won't have Dubya to kick around anymore. It's hard to imagine Bush undertaking some grand philanthropic effort on the scale of the Clinton Global Initiative, or hopping around to international trouble spots like Jimmy Carter. Republicans won't be asking him to speak on their behalf, and publishers are reportedly uninterested in the prospect of a Bush memoir. His reign of destruction complete, Bush will return to Texas and fill his days with the mundane activities of a retiree - puttering around the yard, reading some magazines, maybe enjoying that new Xbox Jenna gave him for Christmas ("I'm the Decider, and I decide to spend this afternoon playing Call of Duty 4").
This presidency is finally over. We can say goodbye to an administration whose misdeeds have piled so high that the size of the mountain no longer shocks us. In our lifetimes, we will see administrations of varying degrees of competence and integrity, some we'll agree with and some we won't. But we will probably never see another quite like the one now finally reaching its end, so mind-boggling a parade of incompetence and malice, dishonesty, and immorality. So at last - at long, long last - we can say goodbye.
And good riddance.
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Paul Waldman is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the author of "Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success." The views expressed here are his own.
Does anyone know the gory details of the consequences of not bailing out Wall Street and AIG? Anyone? Sure, lots of speculation, but did the Bush administration or Congress do anything more than say “trust us, it’s bad”? Certain members of Congress were briefed by administration officials and it was said the gasps sucked the air out of the private hearing room. OK, so let’s trust this administration on the consequences. Was it the AIG guy who came begging with a 3 page flyer on how he’d use his $85 billion?
Didn’t we see Wall Street licking its chops as the Bush administration removed regulations governing financial practices? Money begets greed for more money and so went the Wall Street bankers freed from annoying regulations. What Wall Street did to get itself into such a “bind” is despicable.
Nonetheless, the federal government shunted aside bankers’ irresponsibility, greed and indisputable mens rea (consciousness of guilt) and funded a $700 billion bailout. The debate on the bill and its initial defeat centered on political posturing and provisions for transparency and accountability. Despite taxpayer protections written into the bill, there is a gaping lack of accountability and transparency on how this money has been spent. Thus far, Treasury Secretary Paulson has been less than candid and/or informed on how he spent close to $350 billion dollars in the two months since the October bailout was approved.
Then it was Citi Group in trouble. Congress didn’t hesitate to bail out Citi Group. After all, it was no less to blame for its condition than the rest of Wall Street.
Then the Big 3 automakers came to Washington asking for approximately 5% of the Wall Street bailout money. Congress interrogated them with a framework of criteria wholly absent in deciding whether to bailout Wall Street. Congress is angry with the automakers for their failure to operate competitively and bolster the economy as they had always done in the past. No doubt – a legitimate beef. Flying in on 3 corporate jets for round 1 was incredibly poor judgment by the CEO’s. As a practical matter, though, it was a non-issue – no more than theatrics. Congress was generally pissed off and took it out on the automakers. Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" suggested that Congress gave Wall Street a pass as it didn't understand the whole financial thing. On the other hand, Congress as well as most Americans clearly understand cars and the auto industry.
We know pretty well what the fallout would be from just GM failing. Numbers have been bandied about for weeks now. Estimates range from 1.5 million to 3 million jobs lost from a GM failure. If one fails, the others won’t be far behind. The math for a rough estimate is easy. November’s jobless report was exceeded 500,000, the largest since 1974. Annualized that’s 6 million jobs lost. I’m sure those more familiar with this stuff will say that annualizing November is somehow not valid. OK – even so, it’s an astronomical number of lost jobs. The holiday season sales figures are yet to be tallied and no one expects them to be good, except Wal-Mart which had a banner November.
Now add to that the jobs lost by the failure of even one automaker. We have seismic ripples. Can our economy absorb seismic ripples at this time? Many doubt it can.
There is talk about Chapter 11 reorganization. Ideally that may well be the best solution. Practically, though, it depends on the effect of the “in bankruptcy” label on the automakers. While the media has and will explain how Chapter 11 would work, it is likely that after shocking sales declines in October, automakers in Chapter 11 would likely suffer even further declines in sales. Overall, Big 3 car sales were down 31.9% with GM down a stunning 45%. Foreign automakers have also seen dramatic downturns due to the economy. Foreign auto companies, however, are being bailed out by foreign governments.
Keep in mind, please, that dramatic October sales declines were due to the faltering economy, not a sudden disillusionment with American auto technology. It was the Wall Street people who started the dominos falling to make the purchase of new vehicles an unnecessary luxury in far too many middle class households.
Some suggest a double standard by class – white vs. blue collar. I, for one, think better of our Congress than that. I’ll concede that there may be a faint undercurrent of class distinction, but nothing overt. May my instincts be right on this one!
The automakers may not have come up with as detailed a plan as Congress hoped to see. That does not affect the dire situation their financial situations present. The unions are cooperating and may need to cooperate a bit more. Let there be real transparency and oversight, with oversight reports determining the disbursement of bailout money. Congress should and likely will demand nothing less.
By the way, word has it that the first oversight report by the GAO on the Wall Street bailout was sparse. Not too much detail on how Treasure Secretary Paulson spent $350 billion.
Not to worry fellow Americans, a Congressional bailout of GM, Chrysler and Ford will mandate full transparency and detailed accountability.
Has the disbursement of $350+ billion to Wall Street, AIG and Citi Group bolstered consumer confidence? Not so much. To drive the economy from the bottom up, you must start with consumer confidence. Seeing a proactive government supporting the recovery and restructuring of GM, Ford & Chrysler will, by definition, bolster consumer confidence. Failure to save American automakers will certainly deal a severe blow to consumer confidence, increasing the already exponential domino effect from such a catastrophic failure in our manufacturing base.
So, back to the title of this article. Why the resistance to bailing out Detroit?
June 1, 2009 update: Today, General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This follows the April 30, 2009 Chapter 11 filing by Chrysler. The Chrysler bankruptcy was the first by a major automaker since Studebaker filed in 1933.
Thanksgiving 2008 I rejoined my extended family and for that I am thankful. For complex medical reasons it had been three years since I joined my cousins, their families, my nieces and brother for a family get-together on a holiday.
My cousins, brothers and I are in our 50’s and 60’s. All our parents have died leaving us as the patriarchs of the family. We are no longer “the kids”. We refer to one another’s children as “the kids”. And some of those kids have kids of their own. A couple of my cousins are also grandparents. Wow – what a time warp from the days at Aunt Millie’s.
When we were the kids, Aunt Millie & Uncle Harry usually hosted Thanksgiving. The uncles played cards and watched football. Ping pong was the hot game and some of us were pretty good at it. Roger comes to mind. Sometimes one or two of the uncles would take on the kids. Uncle Dave and Uncle Bobby come to mind.
Our grandparents, Morris and Ida, had 5 children: Mildred, Sidney, Evelyn, Jerome and Sharon. All were raised in New York City. Their absence around the table is always sorely missed.
Mildred, Jerome, Sidney, Evelyn (front) - circa mid-1920's
Grandpa Morris - NYC's Amsterdam Avenue @ 124th Street - early 20th C.
I am grateful to have spent Thanksgiving with Randy, Paige, Jenna, Gene, Mark, Camilla, Beau, Dean, Barbro, Johannes, Oscar, Carol, Bob, Ricky, Danny, Ellen, Kim, and my partner Jorge. We missed Matt, Judi, Richard, Alene, Roger, Dustin, Lauri, Allan, AJ, Elyse, Artie, Chris, and Kathryn.
To my full extended family – I look forward to seeing all of you as my health improves.
It has taken this long for the election of Barrack Obama as the 44th president of the United States to sink in. The elation was surrealistic. The implications are many. In this article, dancing in the streets.
What especially struck me in the 10+ days following November 4 was the global celebration of Obama’s election. That was also the single most mentioned phenomenon by those with whom I’m in regular contact. History has never seen a global celebration of US presidential election results. Imagine that! Why in 2008 are people around the world overjoyed with the election of Barrack Obama?
The world has become smaller with the exponential advance in information technology. As the world’s sole superpower, events and policy decisions in the US flash across the world in real time, directly affecting the fortunes of populations worldwide.
George W. Bush was America’s face around the world. His is the America seen by much of the world as imperialistic, politically motivated, mistrusted, bullying, reckless and greedy. America had a kinder face before the ascension of Bush-Cheney. Barrack Obama is seen as the ultimate personification of America’s kinder face. Thus, the jubilation. Imagine how much we are despised around the world. The global poll for US president was a landslide for Obama. Citizens of the world knew that John McCain was more of the Bush Republican policies while Barack Obama was different – he offered and personified change. Thus, the jubilation. A small village in Kenya celebrated the son of one of its own elected president of the United States. Thus, the jubilation. He whose administration has brought the world to the precipice of an economic collapse will relinquish power to a president whose party left us a budget surplus in 2000. Thus, the jubilation. Citizens of the world saw the most powerful man in the world as a bad guy. The most powerful man in the world will soon be President of the United States Barrack Obama. Thus, the jubilation.
History shows us that the great presidents have taken office at a time of national crisis. Thus, the jubilation.
No-where is the competition for power more open, inspiring or capable of real change than in America. The rest of the world would do well to look and learn
When the moment came, TV panellists who had talked volubly all evening suddenly found it hard to say a word. In Grant Park, Chicago, Jesse Jackson wept. Nearby, an assemblyman from the Illinois black caucus was asked what the election meant for him. “Now I can look my grandchildren in the eye,” he said simply. “And I can tell them, if they want to, they can be president, too.”
On Tuesday night, with a countdown to precisely 10pm Chicago time, American democracy transformed in an instant not only the hopes and expectations of African Americans, but also the self-image of their country and their country’s image in the world.
Barack Obama stepped out to accept his city’s rapturous acclaim a few minutes later. “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible . . .” he began, but at that moment it seemed no one did doubt it — anywhere. Bedlam had already taken hold in cities across the US, in Berlin, where Senator Obama drew a crowd of 200,000 when merely a candidate, and from Japan to Kenya, where his extended family now awaits their invitation to the inauguration.
Within hours Gordon Brown and David Cameron were vying in the House of Commons for scraps of the President-elect’s reflected glory. In Moscow, by contrast, in an 85-minute state-of-the-nation address, President Medvedev made no mention of the US election. Small wonder. Nothing is more alarming to the stage managers of phoney democracies than the sight of real ones sweeping entire political classes from the stage in a day of bloodless voting.
By the same token, nothing is more inspiring for ordinary citizens. One in 50 people on the planet voted in this election, but it was truly a global political event. This is not just because of the openness of the American electoral system and of its voters’ yearnings. It is not just because of the theatricality of the marathon campaigns, or because, despite its soaring deficits and disastrous loss of prestige in the Iraq war, the US remains the most powerful nation on earth.
The world has been fascinated and profoundly moved by this election most of all because of what America is — a nation founded on universal aspirations, and thus a mirror to humanity. For two centuries that mirror has seemed irreparably cracked by the legacy of slavery and segregation, a pernicious and enduring racism that remains a factor in the blighted lives of so many of the poor blacks among whom Mr Obama launched his political career. He is not the last role model they will ever need, but he is the most powerful proof his country has produced that it is ready to judge them by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin.
The delirium in Grant Park came mainly from the young, diverse, tech-savvy America that gave the Obama campaign many of its footsoldiers and much of its money. A very different America had gathered on the great lawn of the Arizona Biltmore. The Phoenix Boys’ Choir, in immaculate blue blazers, sang for miserable McCain campaign staff who turned off their big-screen TVs to be able to ignore the networks’ mounting evidence of defeat.
When Senator McCain conceded, he had to silence booing prompted by his rival’s name. But he did so in a speech of enormous grace and humility that conveyed not only his respect for the democratic process, but his understanding that in the manner of his losing the election he was helping to make history.
Yesterday President Bush called this election “a triumph of the American story”. It has been exactly that. America may have faltered in its efforts to export democracy, but this time, at home, it has delivered a masterclass in the real thing.
“It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.”
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“… more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.”
It boggles the mind. As the polls open for the 2008 presidential election after the longest presidential campaign in memory, some voters are still undecided. Who are these undecided voters? Why can’t they decide? Why are 2 years of a non-stop media inundation of information not enough? Listen you undecideds – look back to previous presidential elections. Do you remember such a clear choice between candidates and their positions on issues affecting every American? Don’t you undecideds have a fundamental set of values that guide your political views? Does not one of these candidates fit more with your values than the other? I mean – come on folks – what are you waiting for, a burning bush?!
Or maybe not. According to an NBC poll released this afternoon it seems that the undecided demographic comprises a disproportionately large number of older, white women – hardcore, spiteful Hillary supporters. These voters are taking the outcome of their party’s nomination process personally. (See http://aboutnothing-doug.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-you-too-can-become-sexist.html) These voters are so self-absorbed that, despite being lifelong politically involved Democrats, they are undecided as to whether their hurt feelings are more important than their long held political values. How incredibly petty and pathetic is that?! Barack Obama beat the Clintons. Your candidate has fully and sincerely embraced the Obama candidacy and urged her supporters to do the same. That’s politics – get over it and move on.
Not surprisingly, the McCain campaign is capitalizing on this demographic by running robo-call campaigns today featuring Hillary Clinton’s voice. Call content? Don’t know but an educated guess would be a negative, out-of-context, primary campaign snippet aimed at Barack Obama. That any percentage of this allegedly sophisticated electoral demographic would be persuaded by robo-calls brings me to Jon Stewart’s pie chart of the undecided demographic. By far, the largest segment of Jon Stewart’s undecided demographic pie chart, weighing in at 45%, was the “STUPID” slice.
Unknowns in this election include the 2 overlapping undecided demographics, the Bradley Effect (PC with the pollster and a racist in the booth) and the Reverse Bradley Effect (good ole boy with the pollster and closet Obama supporter in the booth). Without a candidate running at 51+% in a state’s polls, these 4 factors play a potentially disproportionate role in determining swing state results. So what are we left with? Choosing our next president could potentially be left in the hands of Spiteful, Vengeful & Disgruntled (the Hillary dwarfs), the STUPID, the racists (Bradley-E) and the spineless (reverse Bradley-E).
The 2008 presidential race is a unique, historic election for the United States of America, determining its course at a critical juncture in our history. May the American electorate do justice to its place in history.
