Happy -- ? -- Hogmanay 2009
Jan 03 '09 (Updated Jan 05 '09)
The Bottom Line Lazy, these cold days of the New Year, I've loosely adapted a comment I wrote this morning in response to a communique from Paul Connors. Let's hope we're lucky.
President-Elect Obama still has seventeen days, by my West Coast time, before he has to assume responsibility for the shambles the Bush Gang, triumphantly greedy Wall Street "supply-siders," profoundly ignorant (mostly Southern, I'm afraid) Republican Congressmen, and timid go-along Democrats have left us in. It is they who have sent many troops, brave men and women (from America and a number of loyal allies), on a bloody wild goose chase, creating a truly formidable resistance in the Muslim World out of what was our delusions over a spectacular attack by 19 thugs, and boiled up simmering Islamic "street" resentments and tribal traditions into what we face now in Afghanistan and around the World. It is the Project for a New American Century Boys who will have destroyed the American "Main Street" by the time the troops return home (if they ever do in our lifetimes). Thousands of American small and middle class businesses will be "gone with the [mysterious financial] wind" because the credit structure on which they depended has been looted; the customers who bought their goods made destitute. Angry veterans and their declassee families, ill-equipt, really abandoned and mistreated for the last eight years -- as the budgets doubled and tripled under the weight of "out-sourcing" and kickbacks -- will go into the streets, asking: Why was our service so taken for granted?
Many financiers and politicians will be willing to "to take responsibility" for "the mistakes which were made," but as usual, few are going go through the hard, messy political and legal business of assessing "the blame" and bringing those responsible to justice. ["Let's move on." "Bush left quietly (sort of)." "Our new President has more important things to do than hunting down home-grown elected war criminals."] Whether in the fastness of Wyoming, the gated communities of suburban Dallas, or the new Bush Family escape compound in Paraguay (among the Grandpa Bush's old German friends), the billions of stolen funds will be spent proudly, as the remains of the American Middle Class try to sell their wildly overpriced accumulated junk on Ebay to buy "The New Economy Big Mac."
It is really going to be 1928 Berlin -- eighty years later -- The Three Penny Opera in a bad Rock translation.
And so, my fellow Epinionators, especially those who already talk of "The Obama Depression," let poor Barack become President before we dump on him for not tripling the Defense Budget or re-establishing a "trickle-down economy." [It will actually be a "fire hose economy" but what it's gushing will not be prosperity.] I didn't support Obama initially, either, and he remains a little too cool and calculating for me still, but I don't know who could do a better job now. It is really going to be tough.
As I speak, the Israeli Army is invading Palestine, an act which could not have been decided, on this scale, without the support of the Administration -- another late Christmas Present to the World from George W. Bush, one that will bear incomparably bitter fruit, I'm afraid.
Below the upper two percent, we will all have our work literally cut out for us -- including those who invested in Bernie Madoff and a hundred other schemes like his -- not to mention rookie President Barack Obama.
It's unseasonably cold, in the low 20's at night (a paradoxical result of Global Warming??), here in San Francisco. Colby Buzzell (my Red Room soldier-writer pal) and I are keeping a bottle of 25 year-old Islay Bunnahabhain on a shelf at The Whiskey Thieves on Geary Street. Take heart, troops and old friends. But hurry! We shall soon not be able to afford buying you a glass of it!
Happy Hogmanay, all . . . .
[Macresarf1]
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Paul Connors, an officer currently serving our country overseas, wishes to stress that his essay, WINTER WONDERLAND, does not reflect positions I've presented above. I fully agree, but if you wish, see for yourself:
epinions.com/content_5266907268
A.F.
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macresarf1
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11/7/09: Another Bloody November.
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