[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???

[DumnEuronoumn]

Always a pleasure to read your posts, Hof. Benchley, Rogers and Breslin.

[xanaxist]

The Merchant Ivory lamp that some are living under in Europe, ME and Africa will come to an end this year as unemployment, food shortages and economic circumstances become more desparate.

Parts of Europe are great, but try to live there as a foreigner, and by that I mean eg a Hungarian living in Austria etc when people have missed two meals.

Thats just some of my thoughts.

[djmassk]

THOMAS KOSTIGEN'S ETHICS MONITOR
The best of times
Commentary: The bottom is clear and from here it's all up

By Thomas Kostigen, MarketWatch
Last update: 7:01 p.m. EST Jan. 1, 2009

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- It's the best of times. Think about it. When in modern history can you have pointed to a bottom with such assuredness? This is the bottom, folks. From here, it's all up.

We've cleaned the sewage system in the finance industry; we've purged the subprime mortgage bankers, brokers, and borrowers; we've blown open the biggest Ponzi scheme ever; we've uncloaked the automobile industry; we've admitted there never was nor is there a good reason for the war in Iraq; we've woken up to the war in Afghanistan; we've owned up to torture and unlawful rendition; we've discovered politicians' affairs, payoffs, and bribes; we've quashed gay marriage rights; we've unprotected protected parks and land areas; we've changed federal documents that show climate change is true; we've allowed genocide to rise and continue; we've been lied to (again) by a best-selling memoirist; we've experienced natural disasters and manmade ones; horses were slaughtered; bees went extinct; oceans suffocated; glaciers receded; and entire countries went bankrupt.

Now we know better.

We know that mortgages come due and real estate prices don't always go up. We know that a financial record too good to be true probably is and should be questioned. We know that manufacturing products nobody wants anymore doesn't make good business sense. We know that saving and not spending is a good idea, especially since employment isn't guaranteed. We know that we must protect our planet to protect ourselves and our future. We know that politicians will blatantly lie and need more accountability. We know that we have a strong say in how our country is run and that, yes, we can vote for change. We know that despite tough times we can come together and celebrate gold medals. We know that we can experience happiness, that no matter how ugly and uncomfortable and downright bad it gets, that we can rise. We will.

And that is why it is the best of times, because the worst of times is behind us. There is hope.

In just a few weeks the emblem of that hope, President-elect Barack Obama, will take office. He said: "Our destiny is inextricably linked ... together our dreams can be one. 'We cannot walk alone,' the preacher cried. 'And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.' America, we cannot turn back ... not with so much work to be done; not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for; not with an economy to fix, and cities to rebuild, and farms to save; not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment ... we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise, that American promise, and in the words of scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess."

Amen.

To hope. To a happy new year. It can be one. It will be one. The tide has turned. Hope heralded can turn true.

So now let me finish that famous Charles Dickens' quote, because it's ending, while less memorable, is in many ways more important than its beginning:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way -- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

Thomas M. Kostigen is the author of "You Are Here: Exposing the Vital Link Between What We Do and What That Does to Our Planet" (HarperOne). www.readyouarehere.com


*****


“Above all, we must abolish hope in the heart of man. A calm despair, without angry convulsions, without reproaches to Heaven, is the essence of wisdom.”
~ Alfred Victor Vigny

[imawlBoli]

Sounds like my father.

[BWJfEkOB]

Zippy, I am your father.

[Feloascarlelt]

Ha Ha!

I meant that as high praise.

[DraidodaRip]

I'm blushing...

[alexbookhyip]

Not quite Fashion Fuschia

[grinaJanoDant]

“Above all, we must abolish hope in the heart of man. A calm despair, without angry convulsions, without reproaches to Heaven, is the essence of wisdom.”

~ Alfred Victor Vigny
Andy Rooney is our savior?

[jeockammece]

I'm blushing...

Watch out for his Wrist of Death.

[UriyVlasov]

January 7, 2009
Predictions
Save your candles – the Dark Ages are coming

A new year, and a new president – plenty of grist for my prediction mill, or, at least, for the obligatory January "predictions" column. Not that there's anything special, really, about it: all punditry is prediction, in an important sense. Every time a writer advocates a particular policy or decries another, the author is predicting a certain outcome, good or bad. The question is, which policies will win out in the battle of ideas? As we look at the incoming administration, especially in the context of trends that have been building over time, a certain scenario begins to emerge, with the first act unfolding on the domestic stage:

1. Hyperinflation and the collapse of the dollar. The trillions President-elect Obama plans on spending to "cure" [.pdf] our economic malaise will prove poisonous to the dollar, with hyperinflation an inevitability. Whether this reaches Weimar levels remains to be seen, but one can easily imagine all sorts of unpleasant, Weimar-like consequences.
2. A barrage of legislation that aims to stop capital flight, including draconian economic controls on the movement of money across borders and the erection of a steep tariff wall in the name of "national economic security." By the end of the year, we will have so many economic czars, each in charge of their own economic fiefdom, that Obama will have to appoint a czar-of-czars.
3. More Israeli aggression. The Israeli offensive in Gaza is but a prelude to a series of IDF military actions, possibly including a third Lebanon blitz and an attack on Syria, the weakest link in the chain of pro-Palestinian regional actors. The whole point of this extended exercise is to involve the U.S. militarily. This will lead logically to the fourth not-so-great expectation.
4. The return of military Keynesianism. To hear Paul Krugman and the other left-liberal economic gurus tell it, all we have to do is spend our way out of the doldrums, and that will do the trick. It doesn't matter what we spend it on – it could be pyramid-building, for all they care – just as long as we "jump-start" the economy with a "stimulus" of freshly-printed greenbacks. That's the ticket! And in the meantime, there will be plenty of jobs in Washington for ambitious young "planners" and other disciples of Saint Keynes, whose purview will be devising imaginative methods of expanding the ranks of government workers. As Pat Buchanan pointed out, this is the dreaded "earmarks" raised to a way of life. Inevitably, this orgy of spending will include – and perhaps even come to be dominated by – increased military appropriations. After all, there are only so many bridges one can build across the same river, and the accompanying rash of corruption sure to ensue is going to put a cap on this kind of spending. One can always cloak cronyism and $200 wrenches under the general rubric of economic collateral damage, a regrettable but necessary byproduct of ensuring the national security.
5. War. Preparations for war usually result in war, and there are several candidates for 2009. The first is Iran, which will undergo a prolonged diplomatic, political, and economic assault before facing the prospect of American bombs falling on its cities. This, however, may not turn out to be the main theater of American aggression in the coming year: Afghanistan and Pakistan will see major efforts by the U.S. to complete a mission that has already failed and that no one is quite clear about any longer. The U.S.-Indian relationship will grow, perhaps formalized by a pact and, in all likelihood, a visit by Hillary Clinton – not Obama – to the region.

What the situation requires, however – the economic situation, that is – is the invention of another Major Threat. Whether that turns out to be Russia, as the neocons would like; China, as the labor unions would prefer; or al-Qaeda, again, pulling off some spectacular 9/11-like operation, is an open question. Throw in the prospect of another non-state actor usurping al-Qaeda's role as global villain, and the possibilities are manifold – and frighteningly plausible. As for me, I'd place my bets on Russia. As in the Clinton era, expect large-scale U.S. government-sponsored efforts to penetrate Central Asia.

An increasingly antagonistic relationship with China is also in our future, especially after the Chinese government orders state-owned enterprises to call in their American debt and offload all those T-bills. If and when it comes, that is the conflict that will see the AFL-CIO, the neocons, both major political parties, and a good proportion of the paleoconservatives in the ranks of the War Party. The Taiwan lobby, an old mainstay of the Cold War conservative movement, will make a comeback, as the Republican Party "mainstream" makes a completely implausible and unsuccessful effort to win over "working class" voters.

By the end of the year, plans for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will be put on indefinite hold, as it's "discovered" that Iran has infiltrated the Iraqi government at the highest levels, and U.S. soldiers are called in to halt an alleged coup attempt by pro-Iranian officers and militiamen. Iraq will increasingly become a battlefield in an ongoing proxy war between the U.S. (and Israel, operating in Kurdistan) and Iran. Allegations of Iranian interference in Pakistan and even Afghanistan will be raised by the Clinton State Department, and we'll be subjected to another long campaign by the War Party to target Tehran for destruction.

All in all, the prospects for liberty and peace in 2009 might be charitably described as dim, although bleak seems more precise. My advice to my readers: save your candles. The Dark Ages are coming. But, hey, I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised.

As I sit here, far removed from the hustle and bustle of the cities, gazing up at a redwood whose tip is lost in swirling mist, the illusion of my own exemption from the onrushing disaster persists. Perhaps it's just a defense mechanism imposed by the structure of the human mind, the same safety valve that blocks out the certainty of death and the ultimate tragedy of human existence. In any case, whatever it is, it feels right – and that's all I can ask for the moment. So, in spite of my rather grim prognosis of the future we face, I can say, with equanimity, Happy New Year, Antiwar.com readers! May the gods protect you from the coming dark age, as they have so far – thank Fortuna! – spared me.

~ Justin Raimondo

[CruzIzabella]

Im praying that the dollar doesnt collapse before I get my tax refund from last year. I want to enjoy the extra cash from exchange to the crap British pound.